#and anyway this is just my headcanon. i like to speculate on the mechanics of cybertronian life | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

orangezinnia · 3 years

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You seem to have lots of good ideas on how nastya's mechanisms works logistically, do you have any thoughts on how she respires? Cos oxygen and CO2 get round the body in red red blood cells, which she doesn't have.

Ashes, I assume, just has very thin, slightly porus areas that allow for gas exchange, but Nastua I am stumped on.

what's really funny about Nastya's mechanism, i think, is 1) how different it is from the others' mechanisms, and 2) how implausible it is to recreate in regards to the science that we currently have. (which is a pretty big dissonance from how her ARI / cybernetics are nearly reality!)

under the cut, because, hoo boy, this got Long!

i mean, think about it. their mechanisms are usually something solid that gets replaced- Jonny's heart, Ivy's brain, even Brian's body. but Nastya? hers is fluid, amorphous, unfettered. pretty strange, right?

and it's something that has to be Produced, too. not stable and grown like an organ or limb. i suppose this can happen in the same way that the mechs can "regenerate" whatever body parts they lose, but considering that the blood production system starts in the bone marrow, it's my personal headcanon that hers has been modified to make quicksilver, as my tags said.

regardless, that's point 1 over with. pretty short, but i'll bring us back to it later!

anyway, for the rest of the crew, their mechanisms are either something that science Has Already done, or is getting Very Close to accomplishing! like, for Jonny- there's no fully artificial hearts yet, but there's assistant devices, like the LVAD, that help it pump blood. there's even coronary stents made of metals like titanium, tungsten, cobalt, steel, etc.

with Marius and Raphaella, prosthetics are only getting more advanced with time, and as per my last Nastya cybernetics post, some even have haptic systems, i.e. Igor Spetic. for Ivy, MIT researchers have already put "tens of thousands of artificial brain synapses" on a computer chip "smaller than a piece of confetti", so who knows what advancements Carmilla could've made!

and with your mention of Ashes there- for a long time, the single implantation and subsequent long-term use of an artificial lung wasn't feasible, because our blood tends to clot when it runs over artificial surfaces, right? but in around... 2011? engineers started to focus on creating a biomimetic lung, with a structure that replicates the blood flow network and non-clotting surface of human capillaries.

and in a parallel experiment, there was an artificial lung (read: a small, flat, clear rectangle) made out of polydimethylsiloxane, a silicon rubber. it had a similar biomimetic structure, save that it was made for the purpose of air exchange instead of direct oxygenated blood delivery, featuring something close to what you guessed- a "gas exchange membrane" that oxygen and Co2 both diffused across.

to be fair, some of this IS just speculative, or else in a very limited testing phase, but a lot of it is based off of technology that we already have.

TLDR, everyone else has a mechanism where we can imagine how it might legitimately work, yeah? but for artificial blood, we've been stumped on that for a long time. and we still are!

from what i've read, the closest we've come to safely and commercially replicating blood is in one-time oxygenation injections... for dogs. with anemia. so, not quite what we're looking for, you know?

to answer your question, the most i can do is explain a bit about our closest-to-effective efforts for artificial blood, aka, PFCs (perfluorochemicals), and HBOCs (hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers)

ever seen that tumblr post about mice breathing in perfluorocarbon liquid? yeah, that's a PFC. they're very good at dissolving gases- both Co2 and oxygen. further experiments showed that long-term ventilation with it would require a sort of cycling system, instead of total submersion, but it's still pretty impressive, and that's why it's been looked into as a blood substitute.

PFCs aren't water soluble though, so they have to be combined with emulsifiers to work, which throws in a lot more issues to iron out- like severe side effects after transfusion from the emulsifying agents, and flocculation and Ostwald ripening giving them a poor shelf life. which means they're basically off the list.

not that this was an option anyway, since Nastya's blood is already quicksilver. i do headcanon perfluorocarbon to be what Aurora's blood is, though! since, as per the Who Killed Dr. Carmilla fiction, Aurora has veins that Nastya can be inside of! isn't that sweet? just like how a human can swim inside of a blue whale's arteries.

anyway, our current best bet for artificial blood is HBOCs, which are focused more on delivering oxygen than accomplishing any of our blood's other functions. since letting hemoglobin blunder around freely would wreck havoc on our bodies, they have to be either created or isolated from an external source, then packed up into a synthetic cell for delivery.

for example, in 2017, we got news of the testing phases of "erythromer", a "bagel-shaped artificial red blood cell", which is a cell made of purified hemoglobin, but safely coated in a synthetic polymer that is sensitive to changes in blood pH, picking up oxygen where pH is high and letting it go when pH is low. (there's also some talk of putting it in a transportable, just-add-water powder form. like a live-saving ramen flavour package.)

now, while that's likely our most scaleable method, i'd like to mention a June 2020 study which created artificial red blood cells, that apparently had "similar size, shape, charge and surface proteins to the real thing". they were made by coating real red blood cells with silica, layering on polymers, taking away the silica, then coating them with regular red blood cell membranes.

it's kind of a loaded procedure, and there was no proof that they could transfer any of their hemoglobin, drugs, and toxin sensor cargo, but in regards to the Mechanisms' futuristic setting, it's possible that Carmilla could have made something like this for Nastya!

Nastya seems to think that the healing factor of their mechanisms relies on nanobots anyway, saying that "They’re nanobot collectives, or biological agents, or something, that constantly remodel their hosts into their original programmed state". so nanobot red blood cells aren't out of the equation!

with all that said, this leaves us with 3 potential realities for Nastya's mechanism, going from least to most probable-

1) She is in a constant, lowkey state of dying-and-revival, with her blood unable to keep her living via basic red blood cell function, but unwilling to let her die. this is sad and i do not like it, nor is it very likely, or else her veins would have that constant self-regulating rainbow shimmer that we see in Drive The Cold Winter Away, for Jonny's heart, and in Cyberian Demons, for Nastya's veins.

2) She has a special sort of spquicksilver (space quicksilver) that has its own mock red blood cells. this isn't impossible, but since we never see anything in canon about her quicksilver being different from normal liquid mercury (beyond the healing factor), i can't say this is likely.

3) Similar to how nanobots might aid in the mechanims' regeneration, Carmilla had modified Nastya's bone marrow / blood itself to create 30 trillion artificial (or nanobot) red blood cells, and it continues to produce however many more she may need.

and say what you will about Carmilla, but for the efficacy of the mechs healing factor, she did a damn good job. i mean, look at all of the ways that Jonny's tried to get himself maimed and murdered! and he always came back at 100%! so i don't think it's a stretch that she could do something similar to give Nastya red blood cells.

anyway, remember when i said i'd bring us back to point 1? well, i'm doing that now. because mercury is a really heavy metal, and nothing in canon says that anything besides Nastya's blood was modified. it makes sense, too- her blood is that fluid, amorphous, unfettered thing, so it needs a lot of blood vessel passage ways to travel through her body.

100,000 miles worth of blood vessels, to be exact. with 10 billion capillaries that are only 0.0001 millimeters in size, and innumerable branches of arterioles and veinoles... yeeeah, i can't see Carmilla being too eager to replace all of that!

which means that Nastya's poor, normal human veins are trying to distribute liquid mercury. and if people with regular, non-metal blood can have their veins struggle to bring their blood back to their upper bodies (like in POTS), then i can only imagine what it's like trying to do that with, oh, you know. Literal Metal.

so while we may have figured out How she respires, it comes with the caveat that her lungs might not be getting good circulation anyway, from her potential spPOTS (space pots) :(

anyway, this was very fun to write, and i hope it answered your question!

#the mechanisms #nastya #nastya rasputina #asks #oz.txt #it took me 6 hours to write this but it was very worth it i learned a lot of fun things #oz.essay

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nevertheless-moving · 3 years

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thanks again to @dykerory and @willowcrowned for this genius au. this is an incomplete collection of very specific set of headcanons/daydreams i had about a tangential version of your au that made me emotional in the middle of the woods. whenever you feel the time is right, i’m very eager to hear your og version on the ‘but obi-wan, tho!’, because i admittedly pushed this one’s resolution really far chronologically because i wanted batman to be involved.

continuation from here

note: my understanding of dcu is as sporadically informed as my understanding of the gffa.

newly graduated clark kent gets his first journalism job and starts settling more and more into the superman thing. the rest of the justice league has been around but his entrance onto the scene is the one that really inspires the various heroes to actually start coordinating to deal with the weirdness magnet that is dcu Earth. Clark is in his early 20s. Anakin is in his late 30s.

He’s been living on Earth, without the force, for nearly 2/3rds of his life. He has a close knit circle of friends who were kind to him even when they thought he was just a weird and crazy emo cult victim (the gradual increase of public encounters with aliens and superpowers sparks some awkward apologies, Anakin at 38 just waves his friends off, smiling and changing the subject, neither confirming nor denying his high school ramblings of spaceships and magic. it doesn’t really change anything).

He lives an hour’s drive from smallville, and runs a successful auto shop. people travel from pretty far to check out some of his more wild and specialized motorcycle abominations. makes enough money selling them to rich idiots to fund his free auto-class and auto-repair programs for impoverished communities.

It took a while but he eventually came around to the idea of helping people without physical force (ironically, this is happening around the same time Clark is coming to the realization that he can help people with physical force). Generally respected as a pillar of the community. When people start to realize how profoundly weird he is as a person in a number of inexplicable ways, someone will generally pull them aside and quietly whisper that he was in a cult at a child, no one really knows much about it except that it’s what inspired his anti-modern-slavery work, which is a little telling. Not married. Was in a long-term relationship for like 9 years. It didn’t end well but no-one knows the details.

Has several cats.

He’s- wistful but settled. He’s been through a lot of therapy. He meditates every morning and night, clearing his mind and examining his emotions in the way Obi-Wan taught him. He thinks Obi-Wan would be proud of him. He know his Mom would be.

Once he gets used to the idea, he never really stops loving the concept of learning just because. Duel bachelors degree in in african american history and american literature, masters in engineering, masters in astrophysics a phd in theoretical physics, another phd in medieval folklore. He’s worked a lot of jobs.

He was already pretty well versed in astronavigation back at the temple. Over the course of his time on earth, he gets more educated in earth astronomy and physics. With is increased knowledge, his theory for ‘how did i get here’ shifts from slight hyperdrive miscalculation, to big hyperdrive miscalculation, to some sort of hyperlane incident. he realizes that none of the stars he knows are familiar in any NASA database. He must be beyond wildspace, which helps him let go of the last bit of hurt he felt that Obi-Wan never found him.

Then he really learns physics- and- light doesn’t exactly work like that right? He thought it was just primitive Earth understanding but... he gets a phd more or less accidentally, trying and failing to disprove that the speed of life is constant constant.

Get’s another even more accidentally, explaining how alternate universes might form if we assume slightly different universal constants. He publishes his thesis anonymously around the same time metas are becoming a household term, and at least one science journalist speculates on it and how alternate universes might explain the increasing prevalence of wildly different superpowers. He doesn’t claim credit for the honorary diploma awarded to the unknown theorist- he doesn’t want to risk drawing any attention to him and by extension Clark, who’s alien differences are far more of the ‘military experiment interesting’ variety then his.

He stops tinkering with Clark’s ship. He finally gets how it works. Now that he realizes how FTL travel has to work in this universe, tinkering with the mechanical generation and harnessing of the massive quantities of energy necessary to do is startlingly familiar. But it doesn’t matter. No matter how far and fast he travels, he’s never going to be able to get back to the life he used to know.

Perhaps this is what being the chosen one actually means- he’s meant to live a life without the force, so that when he returns to it in death he’ll be able to somehow...educate? the force? maybe?

Ok, he’s not great at the metaphysical spiritual side of things, but he does accept that going back is out of his control, and he’s doing good here, even if it’s not galaxy altering.

Despite all the therapy, he never doubts that his early life was real. He has his saber and deep, deep down he can feel a spark in the kyber. He can’t do anything with it, but it’s there. There’s also pieces of the utter wreck that was his ship in the cellar, next to the sleek unblemished pod that Clark arrived in. Shortly before Clark becomes Superman, he asks for his help in melting down his old ship to make unearthly alloys.

He’s not surprised when Clark tells him he met a ‘real’ ‘magic’ user- it stands to reason that considering how relatively easy it is to convert energy from one form to another in this universe (Clark can fly), at least one kind would bend to sentient willpower in a similar way as the force does.

It’s still a little nervewracking showing his lightsaber to someone new for the first time in a decade. Zantana scrutinizes, bewildered.

“There is some sort of power locked within, but it’s unfamiliar to me,” she admits finally. “I could probably brute force it and force the energy to release itself, but it would likely destroy the container.” Anakin politely refuses.

Later, after the justice league’s formation, Clark mentions to J’onn that he has a friend who might be able to work on his ship. J’onn is extremely doubtful when he’s brought to a bizarre autoshop in the midwest that looks half-like a roadside attraction. Anakin sighs and digs his hands into the guts of the craft, muttering incomprehensibly and yelling at clark to melt down some pieces from the special scrap pile. A few days later he explains the patches he’s done to an impressed J’onn. When he asks how a human came to learn such things, he’s absently informed that,

“I used to work in a junkshop in Tatooine. All sorts of ship parts came through.”

“I’m unfamiliar with this world.”

“Tell you what, if you ever meet anyone who’s heard it of it, send them my way, and I’ll make your next repair free.”

“Oh! I’m afraid I don’t have any earth money...”

“Ugh, of course you don’t. it’s cool, capitalism sucks anyway and everyone’s entitled to free transportation, regardless of the area they happen to live. I do ask that if you can’t pay for the repairs that you spend an equivalent number of hours either attending one of my free auto classes, or volunteer at a community-led charities of your choice, here I’ll get you a pamphlet-”

So the Martian Manhunter becomes a weekly volunteer at a Midwestern Food Waste Reclamation Facility. J’onn J’onzz ends up becoming Anakin Skywalker’s friend well before he becomes comes truly comfortable around Kal-El. For a telepath, 39 year old Anakin’s Jedi orderly mind is a soothing relief.

(again, Anakin has spent far more time meditating on Earth then he ever did at the temple. Before all this, spent five years dutifully memorizing the Jedi way even as he struggled to live up it’s basic practices. For the first few years on earth, religiously practicing every meditation technique Obi-Wan ever taught him, thinking obsessively about the philosophies he never had time to really process, is just a desperate attempt to reconnect with the force, prove himself worthy of it. But even after he gives up on ever touching the force again, he keeps up the practice, he can’t release his emotions exactly, but he does find peace. The tendency to stop mid-rant to earnestly pronounce made up zen bullshit and then sit quietly for an hour before picking up on his tirade again as though there was no interruption is one of the things many things people find profoundly weird about him)

Kal-El doesn’t stop asking new aliens and dimensional travelers if they’ve ever heard of Coruscant, or Hutts, or the Jedi Order. Anakin might have given up, but Superman remembers his older brother scrubbing away his own tears to focus on helping Clark calm down enough to touch the floor again. The more the Kryptonian’s powers developed in alarming ways, the more Anakin set aside talk of missing his home galaxy. Anakin might have claimed it wasn’t like that, but Clark was determined to take every chance his increasingly weird life threw at him, no matter how vanishingly small.

In the middle of his first battle with Braniac, Clark starts insulting his incomplete database. The world collector pauses, demanding a more precise explanation. Clark complies, giving his best technical description of Coruscant’s cityscape, Tatooine’s binary star system, and so on. Braniac is so distracted that Superman recovers completely from his kryptonite poisoning and easily saves the day.

Neither the lantern corp or the denizens of the neutral zone have the answers. Superman doesn’t mention it it Anakin, but he never stops looking and listening.

“How did you even meet that guy?” Flash asks curiously after stopping to say hello on one of their after work laps of the country.

“Aliens among us support group,” Kal-El responds deadpan.

“Oh. Wait, what? He’s an alien? I thought he was from the future or something! You’re messing with me. No way that’s a thing. How many people are in the support group? This is a joke, right?”

“Sorry, most of them aren’t out and I don’t want to violate their privacy- a lot of them have high profile jobs. How do you think I met J’onn?”

“SUPES I’M FREAKING OUT RIGHT NOW YOU’VE GOTTA STOP”

Anakin is just sort of vaguely known by a solid chunk of the super community as ‘that one midwestern zen space mechanic’ and no one really questions it because everyone’s life has just gotten so goddamn weird. A few of them know he used to be a space wizard of some kind. Space wizards now being a regular hazard of life on earth, no one has reason to doubt this, and it’s as good an explanation as any for Anakin’s general vibe.

well. almost no one doubts this. Batman does not simply accept Anakin’s general bullshittery without carefully investigating and drawing his own conclusions. He does not share these with anyone.

But one day Clark- this is well after Superman became Kal-El to him, and not long after Kal-El tells him to call him Clark- comes up to him and asks for his help finding about an alternate universe. Knowing and dreading where this is going, Batman stalls,

“Shouldn’t you be asking one of the league members who regularly travels between universes?”

“I have, over the years,” Clark admits, awkwardly scuffing a boot on the floor of the cave. “But no one’s familiar with the exact one I’m looking for, and I thought since you’re a detective, and also one of the smartest people I know, you might be able to help me...”

“You’re an investigator yourself, and you can survive the vacuum of space,” Bruce shoots back flatly. “I’ve told you before Gotham is my priority, and this has ‘personal project’ all over it.”

“Come on, B, please,” Superman pleads, trailing Batman around the cave like an overgrown puppy. “In a few months it will have been 30 years! He’s my brother! Just let me see the research you’ve already done!”

“Who says I’ve already done research on your brother?”

Clark shoots him a look. And Bruce concedes the point with a grunt.

“I’ll need need to talk with him first,” Bruce finally concedes. “Bring him by the cave. Take the-”

“Take the tunnel entrance, I know, I know,” Clark agrees with a grin. “This doesn’t mean he’s authorized to know your secret identity. Thanks Bruce, this means a lot. I’ll ask him tomorrow about his schedule.”

Superman flies off and Batman scrubs his face with a gloved hand. After a moment he pulls up Anakin’s file on the main monitor. Bruce honestly respects and likes the man, as much as he respects and likes anyone who’s not family. He admires his sense his style, appreciates his upgrades to the batmobile, and is impressed by both this civil rights work and his additions to the scientific community.

That doesn’t mean he’s not convinced that Anakin’s brother is a bit insane. Again, he’s not judging! He dresses like a bat to scare random henchmen and beat up actual demigods! He wishes his rogues gallery was as capable of directing their ptsd-inspired delusions and staggering intellects towards such productive pursuits!

Bruce was already in quiet awe of the Kent’s ability to raise an outrageously superpowered being without blowing up a chunk of the country; their success in derailing a supervillian origin story just puts him over the edge. He stares at the three most likely profiles he’s pulled together. Christen Jones, from a negligent family, death certificate filled out suspicously sloppily at age 3. Earl Lucas, went missing at age 9, both parents dead in a violent assault. And Jake Hayden, who at age 5 disappeared along with the rest of his family in a seismic accident later linked to Luthercorp.

Anyone of them could have suffered on the streets for years and coped by establishing an elaborate fantasy world, aided by self medication, only to eventually be picked up by the Kent’s and start healing. Certainly Anakin had the intellect to create worlds in his mind. All his rogues were smart enough to create their own little realities in their heads- it doesn’t mean they were actually reachable.

Unfortunately Anakin had a Kryptonian younger brother who was determined to actually find the space wizard knight homeworld, even as the 'Jedi’ in question had slowly moved away his reliance on the delusion as an adult. Batman really didn’t see any way bringing up his conclusions to Anakin or Clark could possibly be helpful, and so many alien allies had a ‘If you find about the Jedi please contact Kal-El of Krypton on Earth’ pamphlet that it would be excruciatingly awkward to try and discretely correct anyone.

Bruce was not looking forward to this conversation.

#star wars #star wars au #dc #crossover #batman #anakin skywalker #corn boy anakin au

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sepublic · 3 years

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Escaping Expulsion!

LUMITY! LUMITY DEVELOPMENT! LUZ REALIZING HER CRUSH!!!!

Amity calling her MY Luz… Amity and Luz back-to-back! Playing tricks together that’s so ADORABLE!

There’s so much to this episode, I… I…!

Gus! His growth spurt will take a lot getting used to, it’s like watching your favorite kids grow up… At this point he may as well go back to Augustus! And Perry, I love seeing more of him!

WILLOW’S DADS! They’re GOOD parents I tell you, they talk a lot about grounding or whatever, but then IMMEDIATELY drop their jobs for Willow’s sake!? To home-school her, to have fun! GOOD PARENTS! And the Glasses Dad, he’s a really chill dude, sees Willow going behind the back and is like “I won’t tell!” Nice. VERY nice…!

BUMP! Not only do we get confirmation that he’s in the Abomination Coven, BUT HE’S A SWEETIE! He’s an utter sweetheart! This really all adds to my headcanon that he felt bad about what happened with Eda, and I bet he was being reminded a LOT of that when he had to get rid of Luz, Willow, and Gus… At least with Eda she more or less left of her own volition, but these kids WANT to come back! I love this principal and his layers… Also Frewin’s tail moving?

I agree with Alador, and I find it hilarious that he doesn’t seem to understand Frewin that much either… Or he does but he’s still curious! Al IS interesting like Odalia said… Not exactly a good parent, but he is a man of his word! Also WOW he looks like an utter mess, nothing like the prim and proper noble we all expected! I guess Alador from Amity’s flashback was in dress clothes for Amity’s birthday and all that… But yeah he IS fascinating as Dana said! I guess he is the inventor as some people suspected…

His whole demeanor matches his brief depiction in YBOS pretty well; Looking like he’s mostly just kind of THERE, just kind of chilling for the ride. Has his head in the clouds and focuses on the inventions, on the technical know-how, on carrying out the orders and seeing them through, while Odalia is the leader who instructs things- Just as we suspected! I can already see the neurodivergent Alador headcanons… If Amity is autistic, does she get it from him?

ODALIA… Ugh. I mean, she’s about as rancid as we all expected, but it’s interesting that she DOES listen to Alador, so there is still that respect there! But JEEZ, she’s an attempted child murderer?! Goes back on her word!? I have to wonder if Alador was the original Blight actually, and Odalia was the one who married in; That, or Alador just has actual integrity and acts as like… The second voice who helps rein in Odalia and remind her of things every now and then. Interesting… But yeah, I loathe her!

Of course, back to Al- He may not necessarily be so great himself. He does seem to prefer the easy path, the path of least resistance; He adapts to Amity standing up to him and Odalia by instead considering how she could replace the current Abomination Head one day… Which makes sense, that’s HIS expertise, and daughter takes after father! And Odalia really is an Oracle as we thought… Oracle magic for spying, makes sense, but that necklace…

UGH… Remember when we all liked that necklace! How we thought it was SO CUTE? How Amity wore it at first in Adventures in the Elements… But then she rarely wore her casual outfit? WELL NOW WE KNOW… Here’s hoping the intro changes to remove the necklace, but WOW I was genuinely feeling sick in my stomach when I saw that!

And Odalia and Alador are even WORSE, because they’re literally arms-manufacturers! Do I even need to explain why that’s awful? But I’m really having a lot of fun with the idea of Abominations as robotics; I’d considered the idea of Abominations melding with Automatons, and the show just confirms and validates that! I love this show… I have to wonder if we’ll see Amity and the Abomination Head interact more? And I like how Abominations is basically shape-shifting and form-changing, but applied to a magical goop that Abomination Witches can control…

Belos and the Golden Guard! More worldbuilding- Of course Belos is monopolizing and taking things into his own control, he’s expanding his influence! And of course, as Golden Guard pointed out- Not only does he want soldiers –glad we’ll see more of these Abomination things in practice- but also… He doesn’t want anyone raising a private army against him; Which again fits with how Belos operates!

But the way Odalia and Alador look at one another… WERE they intending to raise a private army? Or were they always open to selling out to the highest bidder- With their desire to install Amity as the new Abomination Head, we might see them ally with a rebellion, but for their OWN purposes… With how their audience and customer base was cloaked, they may have been unknowingly selling to people with a vested interest and stake in taking down Belos!

EDA AND LILITH! This show once again confirms my read on glyphs; Not containing magic, but more commanding the magic around them! Lilith is SO smart, figuring out how it works… And YES, I love delving into the mechanics! How glyphs are about COMMUNICATION with the Isles, that calls back to Adventures in the Elements! I wonder then if Belos can communicate with the isles too, possibly through glyphs…

But we get more insight into their dynamic! Eda was always that talented kid, so she could always breeze the basics and get right into experimentation! It was good for critical thinking, but as we see, she can be really hyperactive and impatient… And of course, this frustrates Lilith, who is very stoic and rule-bound! God she was adorable this episode, how she clearly wants validation… She really is the embodiment of “My child is fine!” “Your child was a pleasure to have in class.” Couldn’t get validation from Gwen, so Lilith went to teachers…

AND JEEZ, no wonder Belos’ approval meant so much to her! Maybe like Marcy and Andrias from Amphibia, Lilith kind of latched onto Belos as a potential found family figure for her… But as we know, she still had her own desires and wants because she IS a person and not a mindless drone.

BUT YES, I love the show delving into how Lilith and Eda work as different people! Lilith is by-the-book, and Eda recognizing that Lilith’s methods have value, because Eda is really out of her own element here. I love seeing Eda experiment with glyphs, just the way they experiment with glyphs- I’m glad it’s not just Luz! Also it’s interesting… The show seems to imply that there really are only four glyphs in existence; Light, Ice, Fire, and Plant! That’s a shame because I’d have liked to see more glyphs in the future, just a few more…

BUT YEAH, this hearkens back to that shot of Luz combining Glyphs in the trailer, and I’ve always hoped that mashing Glyphs can unlock more complex spells! I love this kind of worldbuilding where basic elements are combined in certain ways to yield more specific things, it’s making my worldbuilding brain buzz happily! And I love Luz just freely giving out stars… Lilith is SUCH an Elsa, and her friendship with Hooty is adorable! And here’s hoping that Eda uses that messed-up spell anyway, against enemies…

Overall this was an AMAZING EPISODE, so strong! Luz isn’t dense, like Alador she’s just distracted… Oh dang, maybe my Luz and Alador parallels idea wasn’t so far off? BUT YES this show promises and delivers through on these characters! I do wish we got to see more of Willow’s thought process about Odalia and Alador interrupting her life again, but with how the episode is already jam-packed with glyph lore AND Luz’s own thing, and I can see why they had to leave it out-

But give her some more spotlight, please! I wouldn’t be surprised if some things had to be cut out thanks to Disney downsizing the show… Also again, it’s interesting that based on what this episode implied; The Plant Coven is the ONLY Coven to have such a close basis in nature. If there are only four glyphs in nature, theoretically there should only be four main covens…

Belos, your system is beginning to look even MORE sketchy now! And dang, the revelations, the lore, the reveals… Not much of Emira and Edric alas, but what we got was short and sweet, and I love how they felt the need to be nice but also sneak in a prank, but Amity just sees them! And also CAT ABOMINATION, the fanart came through!

And Amity just immediately recognizing her girlfriend’s work to figure out Luz was there, I love it so much! Overall, an AMAZING episode that blew my expectations out of the water! Now after this we have Echoes of the Past, which promises even MORE in regards to King! I love that these characters are getting a lot of focus now.

Also it just occurred to me, but yeah- Edric’s occasional air-headed moments, Emira being a bit more bossy and strict… As we all speculated, they get it from their respective parents!

(Also Hop Pop cameo I see you TOH crew.)

#the owl house #the owl house luz #luz noceda #lumity #the owl house amity #amity blight #the owl house odalia #odalia blight #the owl house alador #alador blight #the owl house eda #edalyn clawthorne #the owl house lilith #lilith clawthorne #the owl house gus #augustus porter

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dittomander · 3 years

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Hi! I love your fanfic contribution for Ship Appreciation week! Even though I don’t really ship Elena with either of the Sirena siblings, I’ve often wondered how a relationship with Marisa or Marzel would work for Elena. Despite their tails turning into legs when they’re out of the water, would they be able to live on land? Or would Elena have to turn into a Sirena permanently to be with Marisa or Marzel (and presumably abdicate the throne in the process).

ah, thank you so much!! it makes me really happy to know people are enjoying my work 😊

for the rest of the ask, this is where I'd normally present a range of options and then describe which one I personally feel is the most likely based off the text (or my own vibes), but oh boy this one really is just a total speculative toss-up:

Like, I think the longest we see Marisa or Marzel out of the water is when Marzel is hanging out with the other kings in Two Left Fins -- even if we assume he stays out of the water from the end of his song until the moment he and the kings go swimming the next day, that's at most like 36 hours, and that's being incredibly generous. There's just no way to gauge the kind of long-term effects staying out of the water could have on the sirena sibs.

on the flip side with Elena becoming a sirena, I'm... not totally convinced that the transformation is as permanent as the show makes it out to be. Like there are plenty of other examples in the show of so-called "permanent" or "unbreakable" magical effects that... get broken? Pretty quickly, no less? Like, Fiero getting petrified was supposed to be permanent, no one apparently knew how to do undo the El Guapo curse, and for all the "you can't undo what's been done but you can change what you do next" stuff in Coronation Day, Elena, uh, sure undid a bunch of stuff that sure had been done that episode once her forgiveness magic kicked in.

And especially because transformation/shapechanging is one of the more common forms of magic in the show! The noblins can do it, the sunbirds can do it, at least two sirenas can do it, the malandros can do it, one out of four Shades can do it, wizards can do it, that one freaky grotto in Vallestrella can do it -- like there's gotta be some understanding of how it works, right?

And even further, if Camila is truly, permanently, and fully sirena as a result of her transformation... then why do her kids count as half human in the first place? Has-- has anyone tried to undo her transformation, or did they just assume it was permanent? Has she tried to go on land since she got fins? How much of a precedent is there, really, for humans getting tangled up in the milagra and turning into sirenas? They seem to know about how the Red Avari blossom works in reversing the transformation before the whole tail glowing thing stops and apparently makes it permanent for real, and Pescoro seems awfully confident in his "it's just not possible" remark, but like... Cahu was pretty confident her powers were permanent, too, and we all know how that turned out.

As far as I'm concerned, magic in this show is only as permanent as a given writer wants it to be. (And that's not necessarily a criticism! A magic system with a consistent rule of "any magic can be undone with a counterspell of equivalent complexity and strength" still works, and doesn't rule out "permanence" for drama's sake if the requisite counter is nigh impossible to do. It's being consistent that's important -- if you repeatedly tell me an effect is permanent, and then repeatedly undo it anyway, then I'm gonna stop believing true permanency is actually a possibility.) ((And yes, I'm including fanfic and headcanon writers in that category of ‘a given writer’. Run wild.))

I, uh. In case it's not obvious, I care a lot about the mechanics of magic systems.

Anyway, I had a point--

And that point is basically just a massive shrug emoji lol. We don't really know what would happen if Marisa or Marzel stayed on land long term, nor can we, in my opinion, say we truly know what happens once a human becomes a sirena. And honestly, I think there's enough interesting possibilities with both options of "M-sib of choice moves on land" and "Elena moves to the sea" that I don't really have a preferred headcanon for how that would work. I think both of those stories could be interesting in the right hands. Or rather, all four of those stories.

One last option that hasn't been mentioned thus far -- Elena and Mar(isa/zel) become a long-term couple but still live in their respective kingdoms. I remember reading a fic on here once (although I cannot for the life of me remember the title or author, so if you recognize the story I'm talking about, let me know so I can credit it properly?) where Elena and Marzel were married and like. Marzel still lived in the ocean? I think Elena had moved the main seat of Avaloran political power to Nueva Vista so she could be closer to him, but she was definitely still living on land, and she would walk down to the pier to meet up with him. So like, that's an option, too. It would definitely bring its own relationship challenges to the table, but it is, technically, on the table.

#elena of avalor #eoa #ditto answers #prince marzel #princess marisa #long post #elena castillo flores

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redwinterroses · 3 years

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I heard minecraft mechanic headcanons? Anyway as a prospective physicist and all round nerd I like to think that the different dimensions travel at different speeds relative to each other, allowing for relativity to come into play. length dilation already occurs in the nether (7 blocks to every one in the overworld), so why shouldn't time dilation occur between the end and the overworld?

Yessss time dilation headcanons! And space, since the speed at which you move directly affects the time you experience. AND we do get the achievement "subspace bubble" for the nether which implies that there's SOME kinda funkiness going on with space/time there.

As for the end... that's an interesting one. Because on the one hand, players outside the end will experience time the same way as players inside the end. However, time clearly doesn't work there (as shown by clocks not working.) So maybe it's not so much a time dilation between the End/Overworld and more just... time doesn't exist in the end? It's a state of arrested entropy? Which could possibly explain enderman teleportation: as one fic I recently read posited, maybe they're not actually teleporting, but rather simply jumping through time to a moment when they were already in a new place.

Which leads to interesting speculations on how that effects the player. Clearly your own entropy still exists in the End -- items can wear down, you get hungry, etc. But do you still age? If someone lived in the end for an extended period, would they maybe age slower than someone in the overworld? Maybe even eventually slow down and stop altogether?

Mmmm. My brain just went wild with the idea of someone deliberately moving to the darkness of the End purely with the intention of becoming immortal, but in the process also becoming... less than human. (cue Game Theory ideas of the Endermen being the morphed descendants of a race of ancient builders.)

#headcanon accepted #redwinteranswers #minecraft #minecraft headcanons

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glon-morski · 4 years

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On Noctis’ Injury And Its Effects On His Magic

A̷ ̷f̷i̷l̷l̷ ̷f̷o̷r̷ ̷t̷h̷i̷s̷ ̷k̷i̷n̷k̷m̷e̷m̷e̷,̷ ̷I̷ ̷g̷u̷e̷s̷s̷.̷.̷.̷?̷

Anyone who has played FFXV knows that as a child, Noctis suffered from an injury that rendered him unable to walk for a while – the reason for his visit to Tenebrae as a kid, and thus his first meeting with Luna shortly before Tenebrae fell. The Brotherhood anime and Kingsglaive movie expand on it a little bit, giving more information on the extent of the injury, as well as what caused it: a daemon called the Marilith. As a reminder, I mean this thing:

The injury was severe enough that Noctis remained in a coma for an unspecified amount of time (though most likely at least a couple weeks, if not a couple months) and even once he woke and recovered a bit, he was unable to walk, his legs being paralyzed (or he was literally paraplegic, meaning paralyzed from the waist down; that’s a valid possibility as well, and an even more likely one all things considered). Furthermore, it is a widely assumed headcanon (and rather heavily implied, though never actually stated in the game) that he was infected by the Starscourge through this injury. For these reasons, he was taken to Tenebrae so the Oracle may heal him, though this led to Niflheim attacking and conquering Tenebrae as a result.

Well, fine, he was healed. That’s that then. Except it’s not, according to Noctis’ character sheet in the game’s archives.

“An injury incurred as a young boy deprived him access to the full potential of his innate power”, huh?

Unless there was another ‘childhood injury’ that we don’t know about, which is unlikely, this references the Marilith. And that injury, though healed by the Oracle, apparently left marks deep enough that it affected Noctis’ ability to use his magic. But that begs the question: how exactly was he affected? No part of the game or the anime or ANYTHING gives us any real indication on that. So all we can do is speculate. That said, here are some thoughts I had on the matter.

1 – Warping

Noctis can warp. That’s obvious to anyone who played the first five seconds of the game’s gameplay or watched the first minute of the brotherhood anime. It’s one of the basic abilities he should have as a royal, of course he learned how to warp.

Here’s the thing, though: just because he can doesn’t mean it was (or still is) easy. In fact, Noctis had experienced uncommon difficulty in mastering this skill, as stated in the book/script ‘Prologue: Parting Ways’. Ignis outright says there that Noctis actually only mastered warping recently and goes as far as to speculate that his difficulty in learning might be connected to his childhood injury, which is as much of an indication that it’s the case as we can get since the characters visibly aren’t supposed to know for sure. Furthermore, if we consider Gameplay-Story-Integration – something FFXV does in spades, far more than I think I’ve ever seen any other game do – at the very beginning of the game, warping (and warp strikes in particular) is very costly in MP. In fact, unless you’re on a New Game+ (which doesn’t count), overusing warp strikes is the best way to end up in Stasis in only a few attacks, along with aerial combat which, surprise surprise, also makes Noctis warp and phase a lot to not fall down prematurely.

The effect lessens as Noct gains levels and thus more MP, but even late game you can sometimes end up in Stasis against stronger, aerial opponents if you’re not careful. That said, while the gameplay mechanic of gaining more MP as you level up is nothing new, here it could be explained in-story as well: as Noctis grows stronger because he’s fighting nearly every day and is thus forced to practice both his combat skills and his warping, he perfects the skill he had so he doesn’t need to use as much magic for it. He may have ‘mastered’ it before leaving Insomnia in the sense that he never fails to warp when he wants to, but for most of his journey he’s perfecting it so he can do it with more ease and using less of his reserves of Magic, and thus not fall into Stasis so easily.

Speaking of which…

2 – Stasis

Stasis is something akin to a ‘status ailment’, yet different. It’s what the state of having 0 MP is called. When in Stasis, Noctis can’t attack because he can’t summon his weapons and can’t avoid attacks well because he can’t phase, much less warp. He can’t use the magic flasks, either. The only thing he can do is run around but that, interestingly, only makes the Stasis last longer. In order to recover MP and thus get OUT of Stasis, he needs to stop moving entirely (and preferably hunker down behind a rock or something of that nature). Stasis only ends when he recovers all of his MP.

There’s a few things interesting about Stasis. The first, as I already mentioned above, is how to get out of it. You need to stop and cease moving entirely – which, if you’re in the middle of combat, is of course nothing short of idiotic. But then, since you can’t do anything anyway, Stasis is something you usually need to get out of ASAP if you’ve already failed to not fall into it in the first place. Finding a hiding spot and hunkering down helps as Noctis’ magic recovers faster that way. While there’s no indication how Stasis may feel to Noctis, however, there’s a widely-accepted headcanon that it is not pleasant. The fact that you have to stop and that crouching makes Noct recover faster lead to believing he might feel dizzy and maybe even nauseous or otherwise sick, that he as a character feels the need to sit or lie down when he ends up in Stasis. Which would make sense considering that, as far as we know, his Magic is and always has been a part of him, so having it deplete to zero is likely to not feel nice. It might be similar to when you’re anemic for the exact same reason: you need a certain amount blood and hemoglobin for your body to function properly. It’s not too much of a stretch to assume that it’s the same for Noctis and his magic power.

Noctis, however, is not the only character who may have to deal with Stasis if he’s not careful about his magic use. The others are the members of the Kingsglaive, as shown in the Comrades DLC. However, even at the very beginning of DLC, you have to try really hard to get the Kingsglaive character into Stasis. Like, fighting an aerial enemy and constantly warp striking it even though you have shuriken you can throw from a distance kind of try. In fact, in all the time I played Comrades, I only managed to get into Stasis ONCE and my reaction to it was ‘wait what? Stasis? HOW?!’ that’s how surprised I was that it actually happened, even though I theoretically knew it could. Furthermore, at no point in the Kingsglaive movie was Stasis ever so much as mentioned as far as I recall. So in this case, it is safe to assume that it’s either a case of Gameplay-Story-Segregation, or in case it’s not, that most Glaives only know vaguely that Stasis can happen, but rarely-to-never actually experience it. By comparison, early-game Noctis falls into Stasis nearly all the time (or he did the first time I played the game and before I learned to watch my MP and periodically point-warp, a tactic I largely dropped late-game and barely use in Comrades).

There’s one thing, though: magic is not a native ability of the Glaives. They get the ability to use magic by borrowing said magic from the king. Their bodies are not as adapted to it as Regis’ and Noctis’ would be by virtue of magic being an energy they don’t usually have access to. This is further reinforced by the fact that they have varying affinity for magic. So since the energy wasn’t theirs and their bodies were not meant to be able to use it, but do so anyway due to their connection to the king, it would make sense if there was a limit of how much magic they could borrow before something blocked them – either because the ‘sharing’ works by them having a certain stock which runs dry or because their bodies refuse to accept more magic from the king past a certain threshold, thus inducing Stasis. The same cannot be said for Noctis. He’s of royal blood. He was born with his ability to use magic. It’s part of him. It’s his magic, not someone else’s that he’s borrowing.

Furthermore, there is King Regis, who we know is weakening due to sustaining the Wall. He’s been weakened to the point that already at the time of Brotherhood, he lost access to his Arminger – not the entire arsenal, he can still summon regular weapons, but the Royal Arms no longer appear to him because he’s too weak. Yet even this weakened monarch withered by years of using the Ring of the Lucii is never so much as implied to experience Stasis, or to ever have experienced it. Even now, when he can hardly use magic in general, there’s nothing that may imply he’s close to or dealing with Stasis. His magic is there, he just cannot use it. But if Noctis’ father never experienced Stasis in all his life, then it would mean it’s weird that Noctis does, especially as easily as he does in early-game.

Unless, of course, his childhood injury and the Starscourge play a role in it. Hence why I believe they do.

3 – Elemental Magic

Another direct ability connected to his magic that Noctis has is his Elemancy and general spell-casting. And here’s where things get really interesting in my opinion. I’ll be breaking this into two separate parts, one about the obvious Elemancy from the game (i.e. making the magic flasks) and one less obvious aspect. Let’s start with the less obvious one.

3.1 – Elemental Deposits

In order to use elemental magic in the form of flasks, Noctis has to first store the energy from elemental deposits. These are strewn about all over Eos, most notably with one of each element (fire, ice, lightning) around every haven blessed by an Oracle. However, they’re also found in different locations to varying amounts. Mt. Ravatogh is littered with fire deposits and maybe a lighting here and there, but you won’t find any ice, which makes sense considering it’s a volcano. The cave behind the waterfall, aptly named Glacial Grotto, is littered with ice deposits and you’ll be hard pressed to find anything else (though there is exactly one fire and one lightning deposit). This implies that elemental magic is part of the very earth itself, which is important when you consider another thing:

Noctis is the only character who requires these depositis. Everyone else can cast spells ‘just like that’ as far as we know. The Kingsglaive? Both in the movie and in the Comrades expansion, they just do it. There’s not even so much as a mention of the deposits. Ignis, who’s implied to be the most magically adept of Noctis’ companions? His entire fighting style when you play him relies on elemental magic, and when you don’t play as him, he has elemental techniques to use via the tech bar like Sage Fire. He can do both whether or not Noct has stored any elemental energy himself, so it’s not connected to that.

Where, then, do these characters draw the magic from?

At first, one may think that they draw from the royal family. It’s how the Kingslaive’s abilities are explained in-game, after all. They can use magic because of their connection to the king, because the king gives them access to his own magic. The same goes for the Crownsguard, though to a lesser degree, as they don’t seem able to do much more than just conjure and dismiss weapons from the arsenal. Cor doesn’t warp once the few times he’s a guest member in your party and, unless I’m misremembering, none of the Crowsguard were able to warp in the Kingsglaive movie, either. Same for the Crownsguard enemies in Episode Ardyn. Outside the royal family, only the Glaives could do that.

So they draw their magic from their sovereign – King Regis in most cases, Noctis in the case of Ignis, Gladio and Prompto. Except we just talked about how Ignis’ fighting style, particularly when he’s the player character, relies heavily on elemental magic and he can use it whether or not Noctis has any elemental magic from deposits stored. This leads me to believe that using elemental spells is actually a two-fold job. Because the magic of the royal family is bound to the Crystal. But the elemental deposits can be found literally anywhere (even in cities in odd containers) and the kinds of deposits you find in certain terrain depends on that terrain, meaning the elemental energy is something that can be found in the earth… and by extension likely the sea and the air, too, it would only make sense.

So the royal family doesn’t actually have direct use of elemental magic, but their Crystal magic gives them a way to manipulate these elemental energies to form spells. This is further reinforced by the fact that when Noctis absorbs elemental energy, it is portrayed as colorful, smoke-like wisps or something. There’s no small flame or ice particles or sparks of electricity in the energy he absorbs (though they are there on the deposit before he starts siphoning it). That only comes when actual spells are cast. Which would mean it’s possible that whoever gets access to the Crystal’s magic via connection to the royal family gains an ability to manipulate those energies as well, and is thus capable of using elemental magic. Which would also explain why some people have more of an affinity for it than others because let’s be honest, that sounds like complicated, hard work.

As I said before, though: Noctis is the only character to actually use the energy deposits. So where do other characters grasp the elemental energy to manipulate it with the Crystal’s magic to create spells? The answer is simple: everything around them. The earth. The water. The very air. They can draw that energy from those places and manipulate it to form spells. And Noctis should be able to do the same. Yet he seems to require the deposits instead.

Could it be due to the fact that, for some reason, he lacks some aspect of his Crystal magic, be it fine-tuned control or something as simple as the instinct for it, that would allow him to weave these energies from the very air around him? Could it be that in order to grasp those energies and manipulate them, he requires a higher concentration of that energy? It seems to be the case. And by that logic, unless we assume he simply doesn’t have the affinity for magic, the only other possible explanation is his childhood injury.

But wait. One thing doesn’t add up. Noctis can use elemental spells in his parries, after all. Against certain enemies, when you block at the right moment and then press the attack button when prompted, an animation will start where Noctis counters, usually with magic. For instance, he can jump onto the flat side of a Red Giant’s sword, run up to it, up its chest, jump away and throw a fire spell at it. A similar counter is possible with one of the Niflheim machine enemies of the X generation (X-Angel or something along those lines, I think). And those counters, much like Ignis’ fighting style, can be executed whether or not Noctis happens to have elemental energies for Elemancy stored.

And that’s true. But there’s a few details to consider here. First, these counters are available against specific, late-game enemies. Besides which, no matter what the enemy’s weakness or resistances might be, Noctis will only ever use a fire spell in those parries, and not an overly powerful one, either. So going by Gameplay-Story-Integration again, this can be explained thus: by virtue of fighting and using magic far more often than he ever had to in Insomnia, Noctis eventually learned to draw the elemental energy from the air as well, but still not in what can be considered an effective manner. Especially since I’d consider fire to be the easiest spell to cast of the three (even if blizzard, by virtue of being connected to water, may be the one for which the energy is easiest to draw from the air in particular). Because lightning would be difficult to conjure from the air in general and blizzard, while probably having an amplitude of water energy that can be used, needs far more manipulation because you need to freeze it and stuff. By contrast, with fire, you just have to manipulate it enough that there’s a first spark and the rest is a chain reaction because the flames use the air (or rather the oxygen in the air) as fuel to burn. Furthermore, compared to blizzard and lightning spells, fire spells have far less of an area of effect. They’re more concentrated and thus safer to use for a counter without endangering one’s comrades, but that’s another matter entirely.

There’s another aspect of the deposits, too, namely that they’re the one thing in the game that Noctis’ companions never point out. If you pass a shop, they’ll talk about shopping or getting curatives. If you pass a haven, Gladio will often ask if you want to make camp. If you’re near a fishing spot, either Noctis or one of the others may comment on the opportunity to fish. But elemental deposits are never commented on by anyone. Almost as if they’re not seen. (Much like mineral deposits and places where you can pick up food, but admittedly, those really can be overseen. The same can’t really be said for elemental deposits, considering their glow and stuff.)

Which… actually would make sense if you think about it. Episode Gladio and Prompto were both in locations that should have been rich in deposits – Gladio’s by virtue of being a generally magical location and Prompto’s because it’s still relatively near to Shiva’s resting place, which should make him stumble upon ice deposits all over, especially considering that there were several of them in abandoned containers on the railway where the train Noctis, Gladio and Ignis were using was forced to stop (you know, that spot right to Shiva’s corpse’s head?). Yet in neither location is even one deposit to be found. Not even in a ‘yeah, there is one here, but obviously you can’t make use of it’ kind of way. Similarly, there were a couple deposits in containers in Altissia, but when you play Episode Ignis, there is not a single one. Finally, there were even deposit containers in the ruined Insomnia. I find it hard to believe those would have been brought there by Niflheim, so they had to have been there before Insomia’s fall and might even have been lying around for years. And yet you also don’t see a single one when you play Episode Ardyn. Ardyn who, being a Lucis Caelum, has access to the Crystal’s magic as well as far as we know. Admittedly, he never uses the elemental aspect, though. Actually, all he does use is warping and the Royal Arms during his final fight with Noct. Nothing else. Almost as if… as if he’s lost access to it. Maybe because of all the Starscourge he’s absorbed.

Much like Noctis, who had been infected with it to a lesser degree as a child and who thus has issues with using it as well.

But back to the deposits. One more interesting thing to note in the case of Insomnia is that these deposits lie literally in random spots among the rubble. With the addition of the Glaive Encampment and stuff in the Royal Edition, you would think there wouldn’t be deposits at least around the encampment, right? The Glaives might not need them, but still, why would they just leave them lying around in random spots like this? Especially if it was known Noctis makes use of them. Then it would have been even more logical to gather them in a safe place for him, if only to make sure they’re preserved for him to use whenever he comes back. So why wouldn’t they do that? Why just leave them? Why won’t Noctis’ comrades ever comment on them, even when you have nothing stored and they would usually remind you to maybe stock up like they do with everything else?

Simple: no one but Noctis can actually see/sense them.

As I said before, one of the possibilities of how elemental magic is weaved into spells from the Crystal’s magic and natural elemental energy is that it’s done instinctively. It’s not that the characters can SENSE the elemental energies and decide to use them. They just go ‘I need this spell’ and instinctively reach for the energies they need for it. As the energies they need are literally everywhere around them, there’s no NEED for them to be able to sense them.

But Noctis is different in that the energies flowing all around him are not enough for him to actually grasp and weave into spells. He needs spots where those energies are concentrated. Spots which he needs to FIND. And so he may have developed a sort of sixth sense, a way to sense elemental energies when they’re concentrated enough (and possibly the Crystal magic, too, because the two likely aren’t that different; the Crystal magic could even be a sort of fourth element). A way that no one else has, because no one else NEEDS to find these places. Hence why they’re only actually there in the main game, which is from Noctis’ PoV. No other character could make use of them and because they don’t even need them, no other character can even sense/see them.

3.2 – Magic Flasks

As extensively discussed above, Noctis cannot easily cast spells, not the way the Glaives or Ignis do (and his father as well before he’s been weakened by the Ring of the Lucii, at least according to ‘A King’s Tale’). He can’t draw the energy from just anywhere, it needs to be concentrated enough. Furthermore, considering you can’t draw from elemental deposits even when you happen to be right next to one in a fight (and you can do a lot of things in the middle of combat via even the main menu in FFXV) and that it’s an ability that you can ‘level up’ via Ascension, it would be safe to assume even that is not easy for him. It takes time and he needs to concentrate. Because of this, it’s very possible that the difficulty of just drawing the energy makes the simultaneous manipulation of it into a spell nearly impossible for him (the exception being the aforementioned, tiny fire spell in counters). As a result, instead of drawing energy, manipulating it and then releasing the crafted spell simultaneously like the Glaives (as well as his father) do, Noctis needs to separate the steps.

Step one has been discussed extensively above. He draws the energy from places particularly rich in elemental energy – the deposits.

Step two, an intermediate step necessary due to the apparent difficulty in drawing elemental energies, is storage. As Noctis cannot manipulate the energy at the same time as he draws it, he needs to do something with it so he can do so later. The only logical thing to do is to store it, which he does likely in his own body (as he can do it since the beginning of the game and there’s no item or anything that’s in any way required for it).

Step three: he forges the spells. Now this one is interesting, because it doesn’t seem like Noctis has much issue with this particular step. Once he has the elemental energy necessary, spell-crafting seems to be simple, at least if one looks at it once again through Gameplay-Story-Integration glasses. As stated earlier, you can’t draw elemental energy from deposits while in combat. You can, however, craft spells mid-combat via the use of the main menu. So, going by the same rules as we did for the drawing of energy, this means that crafting spells is quick, easy and doesn’t require much concentration on Noctis’ part.

Why then does he always store them in flasks? If crafting the spells is so easy, why not cast them directly from his own energy storage?

Well, another widely accepted headcanon (to my knowledge) is that Noctis can’t control the spells that well. Not in terms of crafting them, but in terms of their power and where they land. Thus, he uses the flasks to both have better control in terms of aim, as well as actual power. This idea is supported by two things.

The first is how crafting spells works. You can decide how much of each elemental energy you want to infuse into a flask and you see what the end result will be before you actually craft the spell. This is, of course, an obvious game mechanic to avoid frustration for the players so they don’t craft blindly. But it would also make sense if this was another bit of Gameplay-Story-Integration, because Noctis himself likely doesn’t craft the spells blindly hoping he’ll get the right one, either. He can either ‘sense’ what spell will come out, or he’s practices crafting spells long enough to just know from experience.

The second thing is the difference in spells between Noctis and the Glaives. Whether you look at the Comrades DLC or the Kingsglaive movie, the magic of the Glaives is far more controlled than Noctis’. It’s more focused while being just as destructive and there doesn’t seem to be nearly as much risk of getting your comrades caught up in the cross-fire, and considering I only ever played Comrades offline (meaning with AI), trust me that the difference wasn’t between actual people knowing to get out of the way. Especially since it’s not like Comrades actually has a chatting system or anything, so it’s not like you can warn anyone ‘magic incoming!’ or anything. And yet unlike the main game, your party members are never actually caught in the crossfire.

Of course, there’s one big difference between throwing a flask (which is basically a magic bomb) and casting a spell yourself, and that’s the amount of control you have over the spell at any given moment. You need to control it to cast it, control where it lands by aiming and likely control it at the very moment of casting, so when the magic is released and possibly what it considers a target, as well. Flasks remove one-and-a-half of those. Noctis still needs to control the spells when he crafts them so they don’t blow up in his face or something before he stuffs them into flasks. But he doesn’t need to keep controlling it when he aims and he literally can’t control it at the moment of casting, because that happens on its own when the flask breaks. So while the Glaives can be assumed to control even the release of the spell (exactly when it goes off, how far it reaches etc.) this is out of Noctis’ hands. Once a flask breaks, that’s it, the energy inside literally explodes outward in a big, destructive mess. And that’s exactly how Noctis’ flasks work: a big explosion of magic that decimates everything in its path.

But then we return to the question: why bother? Why not just cast from his ‘internal storage’ where he keeps the elemental energy before he puts them in flasks?

I believe that is due to the fact that casting normally would be too difficult and demand too much concentration, much like drawing the energy from elemental deposits in the first place. As I said before, putting the magic into flasks removes two steps of casting where tight control of the magic is needed: to aim and to release (and potentially to designate the targets versus the people who are not to be harmed). And that is the EASY step, as Noctis can even do it mid-combat. It’s the aiming and release that likely pose issues, which would make sense. When it’s merely in ‘wisp-form’, the energy may be more or less difficult to manipulate, but is likely easy to contain. Once it’s crafted into the spell and becomes magic, however, the actual power/strength of it likely amplifies, since you’re combining various energies together. It’s like a chemical reaction. As soon as you start mixing stuff, a kind of reaction happens and energy is released. This is likely the same. And containing that energy, that pure power that’s created when a spell is crafted, may be beyond Noctis’ grasp on his magic. Which would mean that he does not have that tight or fine-tuned a control over it. He can manipulate it to craft spells, but anything other than that is either difficult and demands a lot of concentration, or is outright beyond his capabilities.

(Again, there’s this one little spell he does in counter-attacks, but that might be about all he can safely manage.)

4 – Healing Magic

There’s one more aspect of Noctis’ magic in terms of spell-casting: healing, otherwise known as the Cure-line of spells (Cure, Cura and Curaga, as well as potentially Raise and Arise, though the latter two don’t seem to be a thing in FFXV in general). It’s the one type of magic that’s nearly entirely unavailable to Noctis.

He can’t cast healing spells. The Glaives can and do.

On the other hand, Glaives don’t use potions. I don’t think a potion, or any other kind of curative, has even been mentionned in the Kingsglaive movie (though it’s been a while since I’ve seen it so I may be wrong), and they definitely aren’t in Comrades. Curatives are something only Noctis and his companions have access to, and the description of each points out that they only work ‘by way of Noctis’ power’. So he’s the one that makes them.

The idea here is similar and yet different to magic flasks. For magic flasks, Noctis needs to gather elemental energy first. He doesn’t seem to have any need for it to create curatives. On the other hand, he can’t just stuff healing magic into a flask. He requires a medium of sorts, apparently preferably in liquid form considering he always uses various types of energy drinks. Interestingly, the potency of the curative doesn’t seem to be how much magic Noctis’ stuffs into it, otherwise they could probably buy Hi-Elixirs for the price of a mere potion, but rather what kind of medium (so energy drink) he uses. Almost like the magic he infuses it with directly interacts with the chemical contents of the medium to determine the curative’s potency. Which is, at the very least, plausible.

Here we have another wonderful bit of Gameplay-Story-Integration in that you can buy curatives of any sort nearly anywhere, up to and including Gralea. Which makes sense if Noctis himself is the one who creates them. Surely even the empire would have energy drinks for their human citizens, right? And furthermore, with the exception of one (1) cutscene in Episode Prompto where Aranea uses a curative (which, considering she’s met Noctis and the others in Tenebrae before, she might have gotten from them; even if they didn’t have enough stock themselves, Noctis could have turned all energy drinks she had into curatives to further enable her relief efforts; and let’s be honest, it’s totally something Noctis would do) no one else but Noctis and his crew ever uses curatives, or even seems to know they exist. I mean, all those hunters you rescue in random side-quests? You’d think they’d have their own potions and antidotes and stuff on them if it was something that could be bought anywhere. Except all they can buy is an energy drink. Only Noctis can actually make it into a curative.

As for actually casting a healing spell in any form, Noctis cannot do that at all. The only thing he can do is mix a curative or some food into his elemental spells to create healcast spells. (Which, by the way, is another example of magic actually interacting with matter on a chemical level or something of that nature – though it’s likely more abstract than that - to determine an additional effect. If you use other items, you get stopcast, venomcast, failcast etc.)

5 – Sharing Magic With Others

The final point in which Noctis’ injury may have affected how well he can use his magic is actually sharing it with others, the same way Regis does with the Crownsguard and the Kingsglaive. However, at first glance, in this one point, it doesn’t seem like Noctis has any difficulty compared to his father. He shares his magic with Ignis, Gladio and Prompto easily enough and they can do everything a Crownsguard is supposed to.

As stated before, the Crownsguard doesn’t seem to have that much access to elemental magic, at least going by what little we see of them in the movie and the fact that in-game, Cor isn’t very magically inclined in terms of elemancy, either. However, they can materialize weapons from the arsenal. But they can’t warp. Cor never does and neither do the Crownguard operatives in Episode Ardyn.

The Glaives (and the Royal Guard they’re derived from) can use elemental magic and they can warp (though some are better than it than others). They can also manifest their weapons, as prove in both Episode Ardyn and Comrades.

I don’t remember if it was said in the Kingsglaive movie itself or if I read about it elsewhere, but I’m pretty certain it was stated somewhere that these differences were due to how powerful the ‘sharing link’ between King and subject is. The Crownsguard, being a ‘defense and reaction only’ kind of force and derived of what used to be the Lucian army to boot, only have the most basics of links to allow them access to the arminger arsenal. The Kingsglaive, on the other hand, was meant to basically be the new Lucian army (and yet, ironically, they’re based on the former Royal Guard). They were meant not to be a defense force, but an attack force. And since most of the magic the king can make available is more attack-oriented anyway, he bestowed those powers to them.

There’s also the fact that this more powerful link is more draining, too, which was likely another reason the Crownsguard only got the bare minimum of magic access.

Thing is, Ignis, Gladio and Prompto are all part of the Crownsguard, so they should also only have this ‘basics only’ connection. And yet Ignis can use elemental magic like no other Crownsguard member. Which leads me to believe that Noctis, being young and not yet burdened by the Ring, gave the strongest connection he could to his friends, allowing them access to every aspect of his magic.

But wait. If that’s the case, why don’t the other three warp? Ever?

Well, in Prompto’s case, that’s simple. He’s only been trained for a couple of months and while he was accepted into the Crownsguard, it’s downright said at the beginning of the game that his training was more meant for self-defense than to actually protect Noctis. Ignis and Gladio, however, don’t have that excuse. Gladio in particular has been trained in combat all his life. You’d expect him of all people to know how to warp, right?

Here’s the thing though: if you look at the Brotherhood anime, then outside of the few scenes actually set after the beginning of the game, neither Ignis nor Gladio are shown to be able to use magic. Even in the scene in episode 3 (I think?) where Gladio and Noctis trained with wooden weapons, they didn’t call for them or dismiss them with magic. In Noctis’ case, he might not have wanted to or he might still have been struggling to, since he was still a teenager then. In Gladio’s case, it’s safe to assume he hasn’t had access to it at that point. Especially since neither Ignis nor Gladio wear a Crownsguard uniform in the anime.

So that would mean their link to Noctis, and thus his magic, is relatively recent. Two, three years at most. And warping isn’t something that’s easily learned. Noctis might have additional trouble with it because of his injury, but even among the Glaives there are those who warp better (Nyx) than others (Libertus, who complains it makes him nauseous and that he needs to practice more). And these are highly skilled combatants with lots of experience and decent-to-exceptional magical affinity who have likely been training for years before being sent into the field (a lot can be said about Regis, but definitely not that he would send poorly-trained soldiers into a war). So learning to warp, whether you have aptitude for magic or not, takes time. Thus it is very likely that Ignis and Gladio could learn to warp if given the time and opportunity to do so. It’s just that once they leave Insomnia, they never do.

There’s one more thing, too: Ignis has a tendency to throw his daggers in combat and Gladio often throws his sword at Noctis during training. Both ultimately end up summoning the blades back to them in the end, but there’s always a second or so of delay before they do, as if they were originally trying to do something else. Like warping after the weapon. It’s thus very possible that shortly before leaving Insomnia, they have both begun warp training, it’s just that they haven’t had the time to finish it and actually learn to warp. And then once they leave Insomnia and then Insomnia falls, they don’t get much opportunity to train. Even during the ten years Noctis is in the Crystal, or rather especially during that time. Because daemons are springing up all over, the nights are getting longer and it’s basically the apocalypse. You don’t really get the chance to learn a new skill when something like that happens, you focus on the skills you already have to better them in a way that can make it possible for you to survive. So in the end, they never really learned. And after the Dawn, they didn’t really have the opportunity to anymore.

However, looking at everything else, it’s safe to assume Noctis allows them free, full access to his magic. His ability to do so is not hindered by his childhood injury.

In conclusion:

Noctis’ injury, sustained by the Marilith and likely made worse by a Starscourge infection, affected his magic on nearly every level. It made warping (and possibly conjuring weapons and other items) more difficult for him to learn. It immensely impacted his ability to cast spells, both of the elemental and the healing variety. It made him susceptible to falling into Stasis. Almost every aspect of his magic that we know of has been affected in some way. The only part of it that still seems perfectly fine (or at least there’s no reason to believe it’s been affected in any way) is his ability to create a ‘sharing link’ to give someone else access to magical abilities.

#FFXV #Glon's meta wordvomit #meta analysis #Magic #Noctis' backstory #Marilith #injury effects on usage of magic #FFXV kikmeme fill of sorts

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laurelnose · 4 years

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monster! parasites!

you know how a few days ago i said we weren’t going to talk about monster parasites? that was a fucking lie.

the basis of my monster parasite thoughts are: every organism comes with its own internal ecosystem that goes with them everywhere. it’s like having built-in friends! ergo, when monsters crossed over to the witcher dimension during the Conjunction of Spheres they must have brought many new and delightful parasites with them. you know what fiend manes are full of? MITES. you know what drowners got on their skin? COPEPODS. what can we do with this information? anything we want.

i promise there are no pictures below the cut. i have tried to put warnings on all my sources but click any of the links below at your own risk. warning for internal and external parasites of animals, monsters, humans, and witchers; parasites altering the behavior of their hosts; and probably general body horror. if you read the eating-liver-flukes post that’s probably a decent baseline for how revolting you will find this post.

also, super obvious bias towards aquatic parasites as referents. my degree is fisheries science not terrestrial ecology so that’s primarily what i’m drawing on even though nearly all of the witcher monsters are terrestrial. there is a TON i’m missing here bc of that bias! specifically i really wish i could talk about how parasites of invasive species often act as co-invaders with their hosts and monsters definitely count as invasive species and would have majorly reshaped ecological interactions on the Continent but i don’t know enough about terrestrial ecosystems to speculate properly. (ETA: while i still think monsters would have majorly reshaped ecological interactions on the Continent, I don’t actually think they’re invasive species anymore!) hopefully you enjoy it anyways!

it is, hilariously, canon that parasites are used for alchemy. according to The Last Wish, the Temple of Melitele’s grotto grows a bunch of different “rare specimens—those which made up the ingredients of a witcher’s medicines and elixirs, magical philters and a sorcerer’s decoctions” and some of those specimens are, uh, “clusters of nematodes.” nematodes being parasitic roundworms. this is really funny because it’s so fucking weird. also everything else in this description is a plant or a fungus and nematodes are definitely animals? i choose to believe the world makes sense and nematodes aren’t plants in the witcherverse. therefore parasites are alchemical ingredients, it’s canon, give me more witchers digging through monster intestines in search of worms and put a nematode colony in the basement of corvo bianco please and thank you

this actually leads right into my personal favorite drowner headcanon (hello yes i’m tumblr user Socks Laurelnose and i am always thinking about drowners)—you know those bits where drowners kind of have red blotches in their skin? those are nematodes, actually, because i said so. the reference is Clavinema mariae, a nematode that infests English sole. the worms are basically harmless but they’re dark red and you can see them through the skin. it freaks people out and makes it hard to sell sole. (IMAGE WARNING: a picture of an infected flatfish. it looks mostly normal but there’s a dark red lesion near the fin.) said lesion is probably a coiled-up Clavinema. sole have so many of these, it’s not even funny (PDF article link, IMAGE WARNING for worms visible underneath skin of flatfishes. relevant images pointing out exactly how many worms on page 5). “but the red parts of drowners could just be flushed from blood”—no. worms.

okay that was my main specific-parasite-for-specific-monster headcanon (except also succubi probably have a unique species of lice for their hairy legs. but that’s barely even a headcanon, basically all terrestrial vertebrates have a unique species of lice.) i wanted to start with it because i think that everyone should feel free to arbitrarily assign a totally benign but conceptually gross worm to their favorite monsters. why not, yanno? also it probably sets the tone for the rest of this post.

carrying on: “what monsters might have nematodes, besides drowners,” you may be wondering? probably all of them! all of them are full of nematodes. nematodes are fucking everywhere. allow me to share a deeply unsettling quote from nematologist Nathan Cobb:

“In short, if all the matter in the universe except the nematodes were swept away, our world would still be dimly recognizable, and if, as disembodied spirits, we could then investigate it, we should find its mountains, hills, vales, rivers, lakes, and oceans represented by a film of nematodes. The location of towns would be decipherable since, for every massing of human beings, there would be a corresponding massing of certain nematodes. Trees would still stand in ghostly rows representing our streets and highways. The location of the various plants and animals would still be decipherable, and, had we sufficient knowledge, in many cases even their species could be determined by an examination of their erstwhile nematode parasites.”

jesus christ! thanks nathan, I hate it. nematodes are usually both benign and microscopic, but we’re talking witchers, we want some parasites we can fuckin get our hands on. sperm whale placentas are sometimes infested with nematodes up to 28 feet long but only a centimeter in diameter (Wikipedia link, no images). like an incredibly awful spaghetti! we don’t really seem to know if this bothers the sperm whales. also, i unfortunately do not know enough about the size of whale organs to tell you how big the placenta is in relation to this worm. the point is: real big monster? REAL BIG NEMATODES.

moving on from nematodes—okay, you know, since i mentioned eating deer liver flukes at the start of this post, let’s just go there. real life flukes max out at about 3 inches long, but hypothetical monster flukes could be much bigger and equally edible if desired. (if you’re wondering what a liver fluke would taste like: the flukes feed on the liver and they have very few organs of their own, so they would taste basically just like liver, just also long and flat like a fruit roll-up. if you’re going there, a witcher should not eat any flatworm live. if they’re digging them out of cockatrice livers or whatnot they should kill them before munching or save to cook later. it would probably be safe to eat one live, but you know that cliche “their tongues battled for dominance”? handling a live flatworm is like a handling very strong and energetic tongue complete with slime, okay, it wouldn’t be nice.)

parasites often need more than one host to complete the life cycle—for instance, Leucochloridium paradoxum (VIDEO WARNING: you may have seen this, it’s the one that makes snail eyes pulsating & green) has a bird stage and a snail stage, and it makes the snails look and act really weird in order to attract the birds. parasites altering host behavior to attract the next host in the life cycle is pretty well-documented; for instance, there’s an eye fluke that can make fish swim near the surface where predators can eat them (New Scientist article link, images of a microscope slide & a normal-looking fish) and a tapeworm that does the same and makes the dark silver fish turn white (JSTOR article, no images). i posit that at least some monsters are accompanied by “ill omens” of animals looking or acting strangely because they become infected with a stage of one of the monster’s parasites—usually, the mechanism is that internal parasites lay eggs that are passed in feces & transmitted that way. witchers who are up on their parasite ecology might be able to identify what monster is hanging around by observing exactly what kind of freaky-looking animals or animal behavior is going on around the area!

(if geralt is involved you may desire to have him explain this totally non-supernatural mechanism for abrupt animal appearance or behavioral changes at excruciating length to the chagrin of all present. or maybe that’s just what i desire. it would be funny okay)

potentially even more hyperspecific application of dual-stage parasites: there’s a dinoflagellate parasite that, when it infects crabs, makes the meat chalky and bitter like aspirin (Smithsonian link, images of healthy crab and microscope slide). geralt hunts down dinner, digs in, and immediately sighs and grabs jaskier’s portion away from him to the poet’s complete bafflement before going to get his swords because judging by the flavor there’s definitely a shishiga nest in this forest.

like. parasites are one of THE most hyperspecific things in biology. the majority of them have very specific hosts and life cycles, many of them are completely unique to a species, if you think a fictional parasite is too specific to be plausible you’re probably wrong, make it even more specific. “the witcher monster lore is so hyperspecific lol” IT AIN’T TRULY HYPERSPECIFIC UNTIL YOU CAN IDENTIFY EACH MONSTER SPECIES BY ITS UNIQUE PARASITIC LOAD, OKAY.

and, with regards to behavior-affecting parasites, before anyone brings up Cordyceps (Ophiocordyceps, as of 2008): yeah that sure is a thing! if you weren’t aware, just a couple of years ago we found out it actually is not a mind control fungus!! it bypasses the brain entirely and affects the muscles (Arstechnica article, Atlantic article—photos of fuzzy ants and electron microscope pictures of fungi). or as Ed Yong puts it, “The ant ends its life as a prisoner in its own body. Its brain is still in the driver's seat, but the fungus has the wheel.” which is. significantly worse than the brain thing. awesome!! i bet there would absolutely be similar fungal parasites of endrega and arachasae. real Ophiocordyceps still very much does not affect humans, but you know what, if plants can be cursed into becoming archespores and cultivated by mages i see no reason why mages could not also curse endrega fungus to affect humans, just saying

aaaand quickly back to hyperspecificity: monsters in different geographical areas having different abilities because of their symbionts. forktails in vicovaro acquire a bioluminescent symbiont in their diet that forktails in other parts of the continent can’t get, and they can create flashes of light? that’s sure gonna fuck a witcher on Cat up when he comes in the cave expecting a normal forktail. (geographic location affecting bioluminescence is a thing that actually happens in midshipman fish—Wikipedia link, no parasites.) geographically-dependent symbionts can also produce different toxins and such for their hosts! this isn’t exactly a parasitism thing per se (although parasites are also symbionts because ‘symbiosis’ refers to two organisms in close association not two organisms in positive association) but like. it’s cool okay ecology is so cool

writing fic and tired of all these same-old monsters-of-the-week? quick and easy way to spice up either the horror factor or just make the hunt stand out slightly: just add parasites!! i know i’ve read fics where monsters were described with distinguishing old wounds. you can do the same with parasites! i would fucking swoon over a detail like an ancient water hag’s eyes glowing in the dark, one of them marred by a dangling parasite—geralt notes the blind spot and presses his advantage. (Wikipedia link, no images: this one is referencing an aquatic copepod called Ommatokoita.) also, please put barnacles on skelliger drowners, i want it so badly. just—some percentage of monsters should be Extra Grody on the inside and/or the outside, that’s how nature works. spicing up a mundane hunt by making the monster a little extra gross for its species is Valid, is what I’m saying.

also, every single time frozen specimens with obvious fungal/ectoparasite infections come into the lab we absolutely always take extra close-up pictures of those suckers and make sure everyone else gets to see them. witchers bringing field sketches and notes of the weirdest shit they found on the path back for winter. lambert declares they’ll never know if this alleged fiend tumor was a fungus or mange because geralt sucks at drawing. eskel, the man who hauled a katakan corpse all the way up the mountain so he could dissect it, produces actual skin samples of his own encounters for examination, possibly in the middle of dinner. this elicits mixed reactions.

quick detour into preservation, since I went there—witchers are probably immune to parasites that infect humans by virtue of having pretty different biology to begin with, and probably immune to parasitic infections from other sources by virtue of superhumanly boosted immune systems and all the poison they put into their bodies on a regular basis. picking up a monster parasite would probably not be a big deal for witchers, either in that they have total immunity or that they would only be minimally and briefly affected, but the field of monster biology is likely such that they probably just don’t actually know what would happen to them in the majority of cases. this has potential as a source of battle stories and/or stories intended to freak out trainees, i think. therefore, out of caution, a witcher harvesting/preparing parts for alchemy might want to be sure to treat them first. personally i think all monster parts should be preserved immediately anyways to avoid attracting necrophages, and given that alchemical concoctions in witcherverse are alcohol-based, preservation in strong alcohol is probably the best way to maintain potency and kill basically everything. (cons: alcohol is SUPER heavy and jars are fragile. tissues or organs which are thicker than perhaps half an inch or an inch require additional preparation for the alcohol to penetrate properly. other preservation methods are more efficient for travel. depends on how soon your witcher intends to use or offload their stash.)

also, here’s an absolutely wild marine parasite that would make it worth a witcher’s while to make certain everything was dead! pearlfishes are long eel-like fishes that live inside the anus and respiratory organs (which are attached to the anus) of sea cucumbers, and they have pretty nasty teeth (PDF article link, IMAGE WARNING: dissected sea cucumbers literally stuffed to the gills with pearlfish). the highest number of pearlfish discovered in a single sea cucumber was sixteen (ResearchGate article, free PDF; no images). a different fact: we discovered tiger sharks eat each other in the womb because a researcher got bitten by a fetal tiger shark while he was dissecting the mother (NYT link, no images or parasites). what i’m saying is: parasites are often very small relative to the host and usually harmless to things rummaging around inside, but what if the monster’s parasites were also monstrous. give me a monster that has to be very dead or when you start rummaging around for alchemy ingredients the things in its intestines will lunge out and bite you.

what happens if a human becomes infected with a monster parasite? bad things, probably, i mentioned before that parasites in the wrong host, if they don’t just die, often super fuck things up internally (if you get tapeworms outside of the intestine where they’re supposed to be... it’s not good y’all. CDC link, no images). host-jumping for parasites is actually fairly rare since most of them are highly specialized for their hosts, but it does happen. humans are very not my strong suit so i’m not going to dwell on this but it is entirely possible that something like necrophage infestations or monster-contaminated water sources or just being a little too involved on a witcher’s monster hunt could produce strange parasitic diseases in humans. up to you how well-known and/or how clouded in superstition these effects might be! opportunities for hideous whump? gross body horror? messy and horrifying parasite-driven behavioral changes? terrifying and potentially prolonged uncertainty over what the issue actually is because of minimal information about parasites? the decision whether or not to dose with a witcher potion? excellent possibilities.

okay last one, just because i think it would be fun: myxosporeans and sirens. Myxos are a parasitic relative of jellyfish that produce whirling disease in baby salmon. whirling disease causes neurological and skeletal damage and has a pretty high mortality rate, but it also makes infected fish do this, well, whirling behavior and it’s honestly fascinating. (video link: a pretty normal-looking young trout spinning like a fuckin top). imagine a siren doing that in the sky. i just think myxos are neat!

tl;dr: extra grody hyperspecific biology of monsters!!!

#kaer morhen biology of monsters 101 #fic reference #parasites cw #VERY parasites cw #body horror cw #i have a bunch of new followers who i think came for library content and to you i am so sorry #half the time i am yelling about libraries but the other half of the time i am yelling about the GROSSEST bio shit

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selenuntius · 3 years

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Zhang Longevity - Southern Archives

Hello I know I just wrote about this at length but like I acknowledged in that post, I hadn’t read Southern Archives. Well now I have, and I’ll make a couple of additions/speculations based on the information in that. Don’t read if you haven’t read Southern Archives. Some of this information is related to plot points.

The main takeaway from Southern Archives that’s truly unambiguous is that there is a way to destroy the Zhang longevity (quite violently it appears).

Two other ones that have ambiguity to them are related to qilin blood. It’s a bit hard to just give a conclusion so I won’t be giving one here. My take beneath the break, or just read the novel.

Again, I’m trying to make clear what’s speculation and what’s actually in there, but I think even just by pointing out ambiguity, I’m making an argument. Just read the goddamn novel, really, especially to draw your own conclusions about the qilin blood things.

There are some other takeaways from Southern Archives about Zhang clan lore but I thought I should make a followup of sorts to my previous post with new info. Also Southern Archives was a pretty good read. I enjoyed the third-person POV and the period atmosphere. Zhang Haiyan, Haixia and others are some very engaging characters. I feel I may be a little attracted to Zhang Haiqi but I also want to call her mommy, so you can say I’m in a bit of a Haiyan predicament.

Zhang longevity can be destroyed

Probably one of our biggest takeaways from Southern Archives. This was achieved here via some kind of gas. The people who became aware of this in Southern Archives are Zhang Qishan (and some of his clan?), Zhang Haiqi, Zhang Hailou, Mo Yungao.

This may give support for the Zhang Qishan died because he found a way to age normally theory.

Zhang longevity is in their “blood” (not said to be the same blood as qilin blood; might just be blood as in they’re born with it)

This one is more ambiguous. The quote I’m drawing this from is in c.55:

“That German nerve gas was not produced in Germany, and its origins are unclear. It seemed to be able to destroy the mechanisms within Zhang people’s blood. Mo Yungao mentioned in his records that he found this by chance, and only possessed a single cylinder of it.”

If you’re checking your sources and see that this translation and merebear’s edited MTL is different and want to know why, I will leave a note at the end about this.

Anyways, like I said, I feel like immediately saying that this blood refers to qilin blood is a bit of a leap. I, for one, mostly read it as like a Zhang inherited trait rather than qilin blood. I went into a bit of why I felt the qilin blood is directly linked to their longevity theory wasn’t the best in my previous post, and I did see a reblog also theorising about that but I was too tired to finish writing my response (and I didn’t want to seem like I’m trying to start shit; I really just have too much time on my hands).

If qilin blood is directly linked to longevity, then everyone who has lived for longer than usual has to have a bit of qilin blood. That would mean there’s some kind of threshold for recognising qilin blood, and below that threshold it counts for longevity, but isn’t strong enough to detect.

To confirm the theory, we need some kind of confirmation that an in-between state between full-on qilin blood and non-qilin blood exists. The blood has different degrees of strength - this is true. Wu Xie speculates that the Qiling is chosen by who has the strongest qilin blood (book 8 c.81; N.B. that in Shahai 3 a different reason for selecting our Qiling was hypothesised), and Zhang Haike talks about hearing rumours as a child that our Zhang Qiling had the strongest form of their kekkei genkai blood (ZHH 2 c.7).

However, I still think there’s a distinction between the ones who do and the ones who just don’t, and it’s not all about how strong the blood is. Going back to the Qipan Zhang sect, they wielded quite a lot of power within the clan because they “held the qilin”, which Wu Xie guesses to mean the qilin blood (book 8 c.50 p1). Don’t know if that meant only Qipan Zhang had qilin blood, or if there was just a higher occurrence and a greater strength (I’ve read a headcanon that it’s because the Qipan Zhang absorb anyone who has the blood). Also, Wu Xie says in the 2017 short of Zhang Hailou, “You’re from the branch family… like me, you have to worry about mosquitoes.” Wu Xie, by this point, is quite knowledgable about the Zhang clan so what he says is kinda? reliable. In fact, all three of the Zhang that have qilin blood are from the main family or descended from a sect of the main family (Haiqi is one of the few Hai-generation main family members, southern archives c.47; Qiling was part of the main family according to Haike; Foye is a descendant of Ruitong of Qipan Zhang and Wu Xie speculates at the end of book 8 that Foye’s father brought their entire sect out of the Northeast Zhang’s control, which makes Rishan a descendant of Qipan Zhang too). So is it only the main family that ever has proper qilin blood? If it’s a thing all Zhang have to a degree, surely sometimes it pops up in the branches too.

This is pretty much a joke but I was going to say that maybe bare min qilin blood only protects you from mosquitoes and nothing else but still counts for longevity, and I can’t even make that joke anymore…

The problem here is at what point do we stop saying the longevity has to do with qilin blood and just say the longevity runs in the family, and for some reason, Foye didn’t get it (or died for other reasons). And even if we take a step back and say, yes, longevity does come with the Zhang blood but qilin blood makes you live even longer, not enough time has passed for us to say that.

An addendum about qilin blood, not directly related to longevity: Can qilin blood be an acquired trait?

Mo Yungao believes qilin blood to be an acquired trait, because he asked Zhang Qiling about it and he said it was acquired (Archives c.55).

This is contradicted in other places, for example, by Zhang Haike in ZHH 2 c.7, where he specifically talks about qilin blood as an inherited trait. The two previously mentioned passages about Qipan Zhang and from Wu Xie duking it out with Xiao Zhang Ge also support this, though less directly.

So, why did Zhang Qiling tell Mo Yungao it’s acquired?

There are a couple of possibilities, including Zhang Qiling lying and this actually being true and everyone else being wrong, but I think this was a misunderstanding.

Mainly because I don’t think the line is entirely without ambiguity.

He had asked this strange person if he had been born with his extraordinary abilities or if they were acquired, and the person had replied that they were acquired.

(I have another note about this line but it doesn’t matter for the ambiguity bit, so I’ll leave it at the bottom too.)

The key here is that Mo Yungao, in this omniscient narrator recollection, did not specifically ask about his blood. Mo Yungao clearly meant his blood, because a couple of lines above, Mo Yungao is saved by this person and his blood, and his later obsession is with this blood. But what he actually asked was his extraordinary abilities (plural) so maybe Zhang Qiling took it to mean combat ability rather than specifically his blood?

Again, there are other possibilities, but I prefer a simpler answer rather than a complicated one that takes more speculation to support.

Nerve gas line note:

The original contained the phrase 张家人血液中的肌理, literally “the skin texture of Zhang people’s blood”. This is because 肌理 (skin texture) was likely a typo of 机理 (which I translate as mechanisms here; not necessarily the best one. Could also use principles but I felt that sounded less physiological and more philosophical). These two words have the exact same pronunciation. XL makes these mistakes quite a lot, and because most of our stuff is sourced from his serialisation and web versions, these mistakes don’t get corrected. I suspect this is why merebear uses the vague sentence “but it seemed to specifically target the Zhang’s family blood” instead. It’s not a huge difference, but I thought I should explain my addition of mechanisms and using destroy instead of target (this I don’t quite understand, the original says destroy and I don’t see an issue with simply using destroy) so it doesn’t seem like I’m making stuff up.

Acquired abilities line note:

“Extraordinary abilities” is actually my guess of what XL means when he wrote 无常的能力, because I feel the adjective used is a misuse of the word. 无常 can mean changeable, can be a reference to a Buddhist concept of the cycle of life and death (don’t have the best grasp on this, but bear with me), can be a euphemism for death, or can be a kind of ghost? spirit? that collects people’s souls, kind of like the Grim Reaper I guess but they work for the king of hell. None of these quite fit here. The two characters, taken on their own can maybe mean something like extraordinary, so I’m thinking maybe that’s what XL’s trying to get at but used a slightly different word to replace what you might usually use for extraordinary (不凡 or smth idk), but not to great effect.

#southern archives #南部档案 #dmbj lore

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mlmdarkfiction · 4 years

Note

leslie vernon for that character ask :0 ?? - bb

MAN I SURE WISH TUMBLR LET ME KNOW WHEN I HAD NEW ASKS-

anyway @bloodybrahms

1: Sexuality Headcanon

To be honest it’s pretty hard for me to pin down Leslie as anything concrete tbh. Sometimes I get hardcore vibes for a character and I can say that I HC them as ‘this’ and give the ‘why’ even if the why is as simple as “I feel it” but with Leslie I don’t really get any feelings towards anything particular, not even in a “He may be ace or aro” way. I just don’t have a clear concise headcanon for Leslie but-

Wow as I typed all that I realize I actually do have a headcanon for Leslie and it’s that he’s questioning. Only because the more I thought about it, it’s kind of because I don’t see Leslie as someone whos done a lot of personal introspection on himself outside of his work and therefor I don’t think even he knows.

2: OTP

No one really? I don’t like Taylor enough with him as a concept to say her, and I don’t want to say Billy because I like the concept of Billy/Gene and his wife in the movie. So...No one. Kind of going with my previous statement on Leslie not taking too much time to think about things.

Arguably like with the “Do you love her?” “I love the idea of her” scene in the movie.

3: BROTP

Him and Billy/Gene for sure.

In the movie I really like the concept of them having more of a mentorship, but in a concept in which they’re the same age I like the concept of Leslie annoying Billy into friendship with him.

I can kind of see Leslie and one or both of the original Ghost Faces, but I also feel like they fundamentally disagree on too many things and because of how the GF pair are on principle any disagreement would probably end up in an explosive confrontation.

4: NOTP

I dunno. I don’t really have one? Maybe Taylor but even then I’m not opposed to it enough to call it a NOTP especially since it would make sense within the scope of canon--

5: First Headcanon That Pops Into My Head

Although Leslie coopted most of the legend about Leslie Vernon from the town of Glenn Echo he did choose it for a reason. I think on some level as a child, in his real life, Leslie was an abused child with bad parents and a horrible upbringing, and he picked that story because he related to a legend of an abused boy killing his parents the same way Leslie wishes he could have killed his own.

6: Favorite Line From This Character

I don’t know the exact quote word for word, and I also think it’s only in a deleted scene and not the actual film itself, but there’s a bit where Leslie and Taylor are talking and Leslie thinks the camera is off.

Taylor asks him how he feels about killing innocent people and Leslie says that his job isn’t about killing innocent people, and how innocent people probably don’t even exist, but if the girl really is innocent, or as innocent as Taylor thinks she is, then he wouldn’t kill her.

I feel like it goes back to the abuse angle and some kind of anger and rage but also willing to have humanity and protection of innocent that someone doing this as some sort of fucked up coping mechanism might have? Idk that my onion

7: One Way In Which I Relate to This Character

Hype fixation on horror greats, along with prementioned abuse headcanons, and also the fact I’ve talked on this blog bf that I hc Leslie used to self har. It’s mainly speculation but-

8: Thing That Gives Me Second Hand Embarrassment About This Character

Uhhh tbh I dunno if anything does? I’d say sometimes the way he expresses his joy is a bit over the top and I might be embarrassed if it were irl or I was in public with him, but I also find the way he expresses himself (hugs, jumping, summersaults) all to be very cute so much so if a friend of mine did the same I wouldn’t be bothered either so.

9: Cinnamon Roll or Problematic Fave?

I mean when compared to some of my other favs Leslie is absolutely a Cinnamon Roll.

#leslie mancuso #leslie vernon #behind the mask: the rise of leslie vernon

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nattikay · 4 years

Text

So I got the Magic game pack so Sim!Claire could be magical, and was playing around with it a bit last night. I went ahead and made Blinky magic as well cuz why not. I considered giving Jim magic...at first I was like “nah it’s not really his thing” but then I was like...gosh what if it’s genetic...if I made both Jim and Claire magic and then had them have another baby WOULD THE BABY BE MAGIC TOO??

Now I haven’t tried that yet...and if I were to guess as far as game mechanics go I would say probably not, idk if children can even have the special “life states” or if you have to be a teen/adult first...but nonetheless it got my noggin joggin’ and well...

Here’s some thoughts for a fourth Jlaire baby, who happens to be a bit magic haha oops

I’m a wee bit hesitant to “go through” with some of these ideas before we’ve seen Wizards, cuz much of it could be easily invalidated...that said these are just tentative concepts/ideas I’m playing with that may change later.

The new kid is a girl, who I named Laura because idk “Laura Lake” just sounds pretty lol. Unlike her siblings, whose appearances and even snippets of their personalities were influenced at least in part by the randomization aspect of their Sims counterparts, Laura’s design is wholly from my brain and she does not yet exist in the game.

Here’s a little doodly thing comparing the now-four siblings:

And yes I just used the same body four times because I just wanted to throw the concepts out there quickish :P

Anyways, I headcanon (until/unless Wizards proves otherwise) that magic is not necessarily genetic; anyone can technically learn it if they want to. This is not even necessarily limited to humans; there could hypothetically be troll wizards or even Akiridion wizards as well, if they wanted to learn.

It appears in the Wizards poster that the white part of Claire’s hair has spread. Given that the first white part was caused by exposure to extreme magic via the giant portal, it’s reasonable to conclude (disclaimer: not guaranteed) that she has experimented more with magic since then, and particularly major forays are what affects her hair.

So hypothetically...what might happen if adult!Claire went experienced such an incident--intentionally or not--during pregnancy? Would it affect the baby, and if so, how?

This is what I imagined happened to Laura, and is the reason she’s the only one to “inherit” Claire’s hair streaks. It’s not genetic--she was simply touched by magic before birth in a way that the others weren’t. This early magical interference may also explain why she has the most trollish/“unnatural” skin color of her siblings.

It is also why, while any of the kids could learn magic if they so desired, Laura has a natural affinity towards it, and can pick such things up a little more intuitively.

So uh...yeah, there’s some ideas. Like I said any of it could be easily invalidated based on what we learn in Wizards so it’s all pretty tentative. But still fun to speculate on.

@arcadia-trash look, babies lol

#trollhunters #tales of arcadia #jlaire #(ish)#headcanon #future au #my art #jamie lake #drew lake #ryan lake #laura lake

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lunamanar · 4 years

Note

Since it's Squall's birthday today, do you have any miscellaneous headcanons/essays/whatever about him?

So this is long after the fact. I wasn’t here for Squall’s birthday, for the first time since I signed up for tumblr. I wasn’t anywhere online, at all. It’s probably unsurprising that 2020 hasn’t been kind to me, or to most people. So, hopefully my answering late isn’t too disappointing.

I have a lot of misc headcanons, a lot of unfinished essays (some of them are finished, but I’m unhappy with them, so they’ll sit and rot in my drafts until I die). It’s hard to come up with any particular one at the moment. I’m better when I have specific prompts.

I guess one I’ve been thinking about recently (and I think I’ve mentioned it in passing before) is that, for my Squall at least, the concept of jealousy is almost alien. Not that he doesn’t get competitive, but his motivations for that have nothing to do with wanting what other people have. In fact, actively wanting things (or people) for himself isn’t...really something he thinks about. They’re not goals that concern him.

I suppose, to be (belatedly) topical, it’s for this reason that Squall is an absolute nightmare when it comes to figuring out a birthday present.

[Embarrassing old fanfic ramblings ahead]

I once wrote an old (and terrible) fanfic called The Birthday Present, actually, about a 13 year old Squall sparring with Seifer on the 23rd. Seifer’s ‘present’ to Squall was going to be to kick his butt, but it was (in that particular story) the first time Squall actually beat him, with some pointed retort about maybe not being able to think outside “the box” (god what an on-the-nose metaphor) like Seifer can, but being a hell of a lot better at working with what’s in it. Which, I think, is true, but hell if the writing wasn’t ham-fisted about it, and the conclusion really never felt right to me anyway.

Actually, thinking about it, I never thought about it before, but it seems I have a pattern about this sort of story. I wrote another one, also bad, also archived to my Google Docs of Shame, called The 23rd Hour, which was 23 pages long in MSWord, written on August 23rd, 2004 (by my estimation, if you assumed 17 was his official age upon the date of development completion in 1998, he would turn 23 years old in 2004), and I posted it at exactly 11PM/2300 Eastern US. It was about Squall’s 23rd birthday post-game. It was...also awful, but I had fun with it and let myself be weird because it was just a challenge I made up with those specific time/number constraints. It ended with a giant mechanical Tiamat robot getting electrocuted in the water fountains of Balamb Garden’s lobby...um. I had less than 10 hours to write and edit it, start to finish, ok.

Anyway, the theory was much the same, in regards to giving Squall a good birthday present. It couldn’t be a thing. It had to be an experience. Which meant you had to know what his goals and frustrations were, and the best gift you could give him would be something that would help him satisfy one of those goals or address one of those frustrations (in this case, the mundanity of life when you don’t have an all-encompassing emergency to deal with. Selphie’s solution? CREATE ONE!).

And I screwed it up twice, because even at age 20-22 when I wrote these things, I knew the answer intuitively, but not how to arrive at it. Squall wouldn’t see beating Seifer at sparring as a gift, because that’s not a goal with a purpose (it begs the question: now what, and Squall hates that question because it means the next step in his process is obscure, which is existentially stressful for him). He wouldn’t like people manufacturing a struggle for him, either, even if it was exciting and ultimately harmless, because he’d rather be bored than confused and people making decisions for him based on assumptions about what he wants is exactly the sort of mother-hen doting he finds both upsetting and offensive. Not to mention, it’s an interruption, keeping him from doing other things he’s planned. Sincerely, he’d be so much happier with a can of Break-Free than a fancy new toy or a paid vacation, or an exciting battle, or heaven forbid, a party.

I think I finally got it concept right in Growing Pains, although that wasn’t explicitly about Squall getting a birthday present. It would have happened around August or September, the way my mind parses the passage of time in the game (you will never convince me, with all the ocean-crossing travel that was necessary, that the game’s events took less than 10 months in total...there were absolutely unmentioned birthdays happening throughout all this and almost everyone crossed 18 by endgame). Mainly: if you want to give Squall a gift, you have to know what he needs by listening to what he says and paying attention to how he reacts to his situation and surroundings, without reading into or speculating about his words and actions, which are usually pretty straightforward. It has to be a goal that he can’t or hasn’t been able to satisfy on his own, and if you decide to intervene, you have to do it in a way that isn’t an interruption of his current efforts toward that goal. TL;DR -If you want to figure out what to give Squall for his birthday, know him well enough to never have to ask.

I guess that’s my headcanon of the day.

#ff8 #squall leonhart #asks #headcanons #is it self-promotion if its humiliating?#Anonymous

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player-1 · 4 years

Text

So yeah...Twilight Thorn...What about it?

There’s just-...so much to unpack here...There’s just so much...

Every time I think about Twilight Thorn, aka Ephemer’s “speculated until proven canon” Nobody, I always get myself pissed at his wasted potential and the unfortunate fate of having to make my own content regarding it. But on the other hand, it helps to over-analyze and slowly murder my hard-drive writing self-indulgent headcanons I may never finish...

-Anyway! It has come to my attention the shocking lack of ideas on how Ephemer became the Goliath of Thorns and the big boss man to the Creeper Nobodies. Putting aside the interesting fact that T.T.’s the only Lesser Nobody with the ability to summon or command that multipurpose rat-pack of the Lesser Nobodies, I need to talk about something very important...

Ephemer’s (speculated) death and the hidden-in-plain-sight themes of his Nobody.

(Long post under the cut)

Even if we’re nearing the end of the UnionX murder mystery, as well as filling in the gaps for the Union Leader’s fates, we know all of them but Ephemer. Sure we know he eventually turns into the Heartless Dark Inferno and the Nobody Twilight Thorn, but what we don’t know is how and why.

So before the fandom learns how Ephemer properly bites the dust in any of the future updates, let me explain how he might have turned into Twilight Thorn.

(Best quality: HIS WIGGLES)

Aw yeah, look at that giant noodly jumpsuit go.

Of course it’s easy to see how slow and somewhat mechanical his movements are. But because of how quickly the battle goes, there’s a few things people fail to notice on closer inspection. -How the scarf threads always stay above the head, almost like puppet strings. -Depending on how Twilight Thorn contorts its body, it follows the motion of said threads, practically pulling itself through the movements. -Gif 2 and 4 shows how the lower portion of the neck is completely concealed, more so covering the area where the windpipe could be severely damaged (based on human anatomy really).

It’s also worth noting that while the Nobody symbol brands the entire face, it is usually obscured on the bottom-half, right where the mouth would be.

Based on the discoloration between Twilight Thorn’s face and neck, it takes on a more armor-like appearance. But notice how the scarf is slanted downward instead of parallel to the neck (that has a questionable duvet .

Notice how the scarf has to literally lift itself up, by the neck, in order to keep itself upright. So whatever happened to Ephemer has to do with how his trademark scarf would be the only thing supporting his Nobody’s entire body at this point, a puppet of its own design even... So consider this:

Both his Heartless and his Nobody have a prominent characteristic to Ephemer’s identity, his scarf, but they both hide their entire neck; though it’s more prominent to his Nobody. If my speculations are correct, then the scarf holds a double meaning, to show his identity (the reddish accents in D.I. more natural design to his original scarf) or to hide his failures and shortcomings (”turning blue [in the face]” from his death and how it’s grafted to T.T. to hide his collar, and how it practically pulls his head upright through the entire battle)...

Long story short, I believe that Ephemer died from a broken neck (or asphyxiation leading to the fatal injury), while his Nobody counterpart reflects his final moments, letting himself get suffocated by the strings of fate to save the only friends he has left (ie the Union Leaders).

Little bonus: With the 9/3 UX update, tensions are high regarding the Leaders realizing Ven was the imposter of the group. The battle between Roxas and Twilight Thorn also works on the idea of Ephemer’s Nobody (either being controlled by Xemnas to capture Roxas or by said strings of fate) was trying to kill Ven for being the (unwilling) scapegoat of the Union Leaders. Do what you like with that :)

#kingdom hearts #kh2 #twilight thorn #lesser nobody #headcanon #kh ephemer #:( sorry #death tw #kh3 spoilers #kh dark inferno

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out-of-this-dimension · 4 years

Text

Let’s Talk About Andross and His Plan in Adventures

This post is brought to you by the fact that when I was doing my huge Venom headcanons post, I started critically analyzing Andross in Star Fox Adventures and came to the conclusion that his plan was perhaps more thought-out than I had originally realized. I mean, of course it’s well thought-out, it’s a plan made by Andross, but when you really put a magnifying glass up to it, you begin to see that it was perhaps so well planned that by the time the game starts, Andross can’t really lose. His revival is inevitable. Except then, you know, Fox McCloud shows up and does his thing.

Disclaimer: Obviously, Andross’s inclusion in Adventures was very last minute, which caused a lot of plot points to get cut and story bits to get revised. There’s a lot of evidence that implies that the Krazoa and Kamerians still had a hefty role to play in the story until very late into development but I still think it’s important that we really look at Andross and his absolutely off-the-wall plan because it can be kind of telling about both his desperation to be revived and other lore bits as well that often get overlooked. Despite there being huge meta influences on why the game played out the way it did, it’s still fun to talk about and speculate over. And y’know, we’re here to have fun, so let’s get into it.

To understand his plan, we need to go over what bits we know and don’t know about Sauria, the SpellStones, and the Krazoa:

Sauria has a huge amount of magic that’s constantly trying to rip the planet apart.

The SpellStones are guarded by GateKeepers and usually they sit at the planet’s core, brought there via a Force Point Temple.

SpellStones can block the magic flow (presumably absorbing it) and cause the planet’s energy to stabilize.

If the SpellStones are removed, the planet will fall apart.

The GateKeepers have the ability to move the SpellStones in a time of need.

The Krazoa Spirits also somehow keep the planet together.

The Krazoa Spirits live in Krazoa Palace but when things get perilous, they hide at their own shrines to await a person of pure heart to escort them back to the Palace.

Pure heart can mean pure good or pure evil. This isn’t overtly stated but it’s implied because Scales has a Spirit in him.

With all of that being said, let’s look at Andross’s main goal-- revival. Through means we don’t really know, he can revive himself using the Krazoa Spirits. But to get to the Spirits, he would obviously need some form of army. That’s where General Scales comes in.

Scales is smarter than the average SharpClaw but we really don’t know if that’s because Andross got his hooks into him or if the Spirit he’s got his claws on has anything to do with it. But Scales’s intelligence doesn’t really matter because he’s malleable and Andross understands this early on. He convinces Scales to attack Krazoa Palace -- presumably to get the Krazoa Spirits. At first, I thought Andross’s plan was to get the Krazoa to flee to their shrines but now that I really think on it, his plan from the start could have been to nab the Spirits in the first attack... but maybe he realized he couldn’t do that so easily? I mean, how does a ghost nab... other ghosts... Unless he was hoping the SharpClaw would suffice?

Anyways, if that was his plan, it wasn’t well-thought out and the Krazoa fled to their protective shrines all over the planet, which I’m sure he was just positively thrilled about.

Before, I’ve stated that I was pretty sure that Andross had led Krystal to Sauria for the express reason of collecting the Spirits but I think there’s a chance that he didn’t for that exact reason. We already know Scales was able to ferry the Spirits around and was able to pass one of the tests. Andross had his perfect pawn in Scales by him having a pure heart of evil and in being the leader of a dinosaur tribe.

Krystal however, seems most definitely baited to Sauria because of her channeling powers. I think her collecting the first Spirit was a bonus for Andross and that he only had her captured because he knew Scales would be up for the task. And, you know, Krystal had her part to play in his plan as a sort of magic medium to put him back onto the mortal realm in a more corporeal state. I think otherwise, he would’ve just let Krystal go around and collect all of the Spirits for him and then had her captured at the end.

Overall, I think this plan is ultimately a pretty good plan except for two glaring factors: 1) I don’t think it was common knowledge where the Shrines are located and 2) Fox McCloud shows up and begins wrecking the SharpClaw.

I kind of wonder if Andross hoped Star Fox would arrive so he could have his chance at revenge but ultimately, if you take into consideration that Scales could have just run around and done all of the Shrines then Fox showing up was actually kind of a thorn in Andross’s side. After all, what are the odds that two people with pure heart would just happen to end up on Sauria in such a close time frame?

HOWEVER, I will say there’s a chance Andross was actually kind of happy about Fox showing up because of two big reasons: 1) Fox literally did all of the leg work for Scales, which actually kind of frees up Scales to do other things like ransack CloudRunner Fortress a bunch and expand his tyranny and 2) Fox would be close in proximity to the revival so Andross would have a quick chance at revenge.

Okay, okay, at this point, you’re probably asking, “So... what about the SpellStones? Isn’t Scales really just looking for those?”

The answer: Yes but also no. I’m pretty sure the SpellStones are a distraction.

Now if you really look at his plan, Andross doesn’t really have a need for the SpellStones. Having them get removed is just additional chaos to be added and if you notice, it’s the thing that both General Pepper and Star Fox hone in on. Funnily enough, it’s implied that Scales didn’t even remove them all-- the CloudRunner Queen hid hers in the treasury of her fortress, Garunda Te hid his in the mines... the one at Walled City and the one at Dragon Rock seem to be the only ones Scales formally got his hands on. But it didn’t matter because when the other two were removed, the Saurians just played into the chaos even more, giving further distraction. I think maybe Andross’s initial plan was that while Fox was hyper-focused on the SpellStones, Scales would be trying to find the Shrines and getting the Spirits.

But then he realized that Fox was doing the exact thing he wanted Scales to do (and more efficiently) and honestly? I would like to theorize he just lets Fox do it because the outcome is literally the same regardless.

I can only imagine how elated Andross must have been when he realized Fox was unwittingly playing right into his hands. Because sure, Fox was doing the right thing. He was saving the day. But Andross had already been a couple steps ahead and had set the stage for his own arrival.

I think Fox showing up made Andross realize he didn’t need Scales after all and that was why he was so quick to get rid of him at the end. Because at the end of the day, it didn’t matter who brought the Spirits back, just that they were back. And Andross would just let Fox do whatever with the SpellStones because they had no real value to him. Andross, by the end, doesn’t care about Sauria being put together or pulled apart-- he wants everything to die, which is presumably part of his madness from being a lingering ghosty spirit for most of a decade.

So Andross is revived because that’s the only inevitable outcome other than Sauria being destroyed. He rises up, filled with Krazoa Spirits and vengeance. And he... proceeds to fail in the fight that he ought to have won, if only because of Falco showing up to rescue Fox. Falco, the wildcard. Falco, who Andross did not account for, but, granted, no one else really did either.

Wow, that’s a lot of text. Confused yet? Here’s the recap of my making sense of Andross’s plan:

Andross picks Scales as a pawn because Scales is politically powerful and has the capabilities to take in Krazoa Spirits.

He lures a suitable channeling mechanism (Krystal) to Sauria to use as a medium. She gets the first Spirit and Andross is pleasantly surprised but still captures her regardless as Scales and his buddies rampage across the planet, looking for Shrines and SpellStones both.

Star Fox gets called in. Andross gets kinda spooked by this but realizes Fox is effectively doing what he wants anyways so he just keeps his eye on Fox and lets Scales continue his rampaging. I think he’s figured he’s already won at this point anyways.

Andross gets all of the Spirits and his plan for revival effectively works...

... All up until he dies fighting Fox and Falco.

This does include a hefty bit of speculation but seeing as they leave only bits and pieces of lore to sink your teeth in, I feel like it’s within the realm of possibility. Of course, there’s other possible explanations, some of which I did poke at within my theorizing. However, this is the breakdown that I can make the most sense out of. I know in the past my theories have been 1) Krystal being his chosen puppet to get the Spirits but then I realized he wouldn’t have just turned around and imprisoned her immediately if that was the case and then 2) Fox being his chosen puppet but then I realized that there would’ve been no point to Scales having a Spirit in the first place if that were even the case so it felt a little janky as a theory.

Anyways, that’s my analysis of Andross’s crazy plot, thank you for reading the ramblings of a madwoman thinking way too hard about space dinos and space monkeys.

#Andross #Starfox #Star Fox #Star Fox Adventures #Starfox Adventures #Sauria #Dinosaur Planet #long post #speculation #theorizing #discussion #General Scales #Fox McCloud #Krystal #Krazoa Spirits #SpellStones

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