#phasmology

[takeyourdailydoseofcyanide]

I Know That The Writing’s On The Wall

AO3

Fandom: Soul Eater

Character: Franken Stein

Word Count: 744

Tags: Minor Violence, Blood and Gore, Random & Short, Nausea, References to Addiction, Descent into Madness

Summary: Four separate signs of the times. Things, happenings, signs that were present at the beginning of Stein’s episode of madness. Sort of like documentation.

Notes: This is another defrag fic, a bit of an exercise to hopefully get me back into the groove of writing, as there is a fic I’d really like to finish. May the head fog clear.

I contemplated even posting this one.

The title is inspired by a lyric in the song ‘Candy’ by Paolo Nutini. I can also recommend Marina’s (formerly known as Marina and the Diamonds) cover of the song. Both are quite lovely, in my opinion.

I would like to add that this fic is technically four separate chapters on AO3. Here you go, anyway.

A gust of wintry air cascaded out of the vents, embracing Stein, even despite whatever warmth the stitched-up lab coat he’d slept in provided him. It left his screw frigid to the touch, though he allowed his fingertips to ache as he rather sloppily turned it.

A bird, somewhere not too distant, chirped in the same cadence, in the same tone for a solid minute or so. The pleasant scent of stale cigarette smoke mixed with the lingering scent of various different chemicals soothed the exhausted restlessness causing his limbs to gradually tear apart.

He’d walked through the simultaneously welcomed and agitation-inducing darkness of his laboratory, his body moving on its own towards the kitchen.

‘Perhaps a little piece of my brain remembered some semblance of a former routine,’ he pondered, as he forced something bland, something tasteless down his throat, suppressing a repulsed gag.

He attempted to distract himself from his terribly slow chewing, from the taste and the texture of the unwanted food in his mouth, swallowing.

He stared down at the rest of the bar he held, grimacing. He allowed himself a sigh, as he tossed the item into the trash with the rest of the food he couldn’t bring himself to finish without vomiting.

-

Stein cranked his screw, the loud screeching in his ears a sound he was long desensitized to.

“Okay, class,” two words managed to successfully leave him, directed to the ones with the expectant and oddly concerned gazes. “Today, we’re going to……

…Uh…”

“Are we dissecting something again?” An annoyed grumble came from somewhere in the front row.

“No. ..We’re…”

His head began to violently throb with each frantic turn of the protruding steel.

‘Think, Goddamnit!’

“We’re.. um..”

“Are you-“

“Oh! Yes. Yes, that’s right. We’re going to be delving further into the history of the field of phasmology.”

-

Fingers massaging his temples, a bluish light flooding his eyes.

Each sentence he tried to read appeared as an entirely different sentence at first, before his second reading.

He spun in his chair once, twice.

He bit into his lip, and he turned his screw.

He whipped his head around, the sensation of a hand touching his scalp, tugging on his hair an obnoxious, somewhat unnerving distraction.

He was unable to focus on his work.

He banged his head against the painted wood of his desk, exacerbating his already disorienting headache.

Stein, with a sigh, pushed himself and his chair away from his computer, allowing the screen to darken until it became blank, until the only thing he could see on the screen was a reflection of himself and his worn appearance.

-

Reminders of dissection and cigarettes left his body and him in agony.

They were all-consuming, all that he could possibly think about, save for the frequent agitated ramble.

He’d pace the halls, he’d jerk and twitch.

He’d dreamt numerous times that he had the comfort of a cigarette hanging from his lips, the comfort of nicotine relaxing his rattled mind, the comfort of the taste and smell of smoke looming on his tongue, looming in his nostrils, and looming in the air around him.

He’d dreamt of a warm body lying on, strapped down to his dissection table, as he’d bring his scalpel of choice down onto the softness of the subject’s skin, digging the blade, with precision, down into the tissue, leaving an incision teeming with blood, shining under his surgical light, in its wake. He’d dreamt of removing each layer - flesh, fat, and muscle - leaving organs and bones left to collect and thoroughly analyze with a giddy, ear-to-ear smile on his face. He’d dreamt of injecting a subject with hydrogen peroxide. He’d even dreamt of harvesting an individual’s bones for the sake of creating his own *authentic* ‘classroom skeleton’ of sorts.

And each time he’d wake up, he’d wake up horrendously pained and disappointed that he could not live within those dreams.

Or perhaps he could. Would it be worth it to go down that path? Would it be worth it to sacrifice all that he had built for himself, all that he had promised to himself as soon as his deterioration became far more overtly imminent?

Anything to experience that cocktail of pure euphoria, sadistic pleasure, and the complete satiation of his supposedly “morbid” curiosities, no? Anything to take the edge off and refresh himself, no? Anything to be in touch with who he truly was, with what his soul truly was, no?

[entity56]

Entity/Aspen: My Introduction

Q: What is your name?

A: Aspen offline, Entity online. If I'm called Aspen online, it feels like my parents calling me by my full name because I'm in trouble.

Q: How old are you?

A: 17, on June 26th.

Q: What are your pronouns?

A: They/them. Sometimes I like he/him or it/its, but just use they/them unless I say otherwise.

Q: How do you identify your gender?

A: Queer.

Q: Are you taken?

A: No, and I like it that way.

Q: What is your orientation?

A: Probably aroace.

Q: Do you prefer feminine, masculine or neutral descriptors?

A: I don't care. Seriously, call me whatever you want.

Q: How do you identify religiously?

A: I am a Hellenic polytheist, but I only really honor Aphrodite for the time being.

Q: Do you have any interests?

A: I study. A lot. I would consider myself a wannabe polymath. Anthropology, psychology, etymology, entomology, phasmology, astronomy, cryptozoology... I also like to roleplay and write, and I play Project Sekai. I listen to music nonstop.

Q: Syscourse and shipcourse stances?

A: Pro endo, ship neutral.

Q: Do you identify as human?

A: No. I am spiritually a satyr, and I have an alien psychological kintype. I am questioning if I am a canine cladotherian.

Q: What is your role in the system?

A: I am the host, and the core. Other than that, I don't serve much purpose. I'm just the pilot of the meat sack I'm stuck in.

Q: How long have you been part of the system?

A: Gods, I think since conception? But at this point, it wouldn't be weird to learn that I've existed for less time.

Q: What is your relationship with the others?

A: It's hit or miss. I get along with some, not so well with others. Sometimes they scare me, but I still love them.

Q: Do you have anything else to say?

A: Please be kind to us. We're doing our best. Most of us, anyways.

[luminolveins]

Art Fight attacks so far! Let's go, Stardust!

Characters:

Myuto [1Greengrass1] | Lee [Ghostbbee]

Shari [Phasmology] | Spierce [Calamityfortune]

[erandiblack]

An idea I got last year while watching Nowhere Productions on YouTube around Halloween that I'm finally sharing.

Phasmopunk!

What is Phasmopunk?

Phasmopunk revolves around the existence of a ghost world and the relations between the living and dead. Ghosts could range from cute little guys who poses no harm to great evils that need to be stopped. Mortals in phasmopunk stories tend to fear ghosts.

Technology

Technology in phasmopunk stories tend to be whatever we have in the "now" with the exception of a few where some people made their own ghost hunting gear. Often phasmology, the study of ghosts, is a thing and there are phasmologists with proof of the ghost world.

Ascetic

There's not an established ascetic, but the exemples I've found are all set in the "now". Some stories may refer to ideas such as ley line, the ethereal plane, and ectoplasm. Spirit mediums and exorcists are also common place.

Exemples of Phasmopunk

Ghostbusters

I haven't watched Ghostbusters besides "Answer the Call" in years so that's the example I'll be referring to. In the story, academia won't help them study ghosts and when they went indie the government told them to lie about the existence of ghosts.

Danny Phantom

The story focus on Danny Fenton, a high-schooler and son of two phasmologists, who became half-ghosts after an accident with his parents portal to the ghost world. He then went and act vigilante with his two friends, fighting ghosts who want to wreak havoc while he avoid being captured or having his secret identity discovered.

Casper the Friendly Ghost

In Casper's stories, he always want to befriend the living despite it being the norm for ghosts to strike fear in mortals. No matter what, he tries his best to fight against conventions to make friends.

(maybe) Beetlejuice

This is a maybe because I'm not too sure. Barbara and Adam Maitland died and found that their home was bought by the Deetz family, who they try to get rid of within the rules of the ghost world. When that doesn't work they get the help of the bio-exorcist, Betelgeuse, who's malevolent methods lead the Deetz to preform an exorcism of their own.

The Haunted Mansion (2023)

I'm referring to the 2023 version because the 2003 version feels more like a standard ghost story. In the 2023 version we follows Ben Matthias, a former astrophysicist who was developing a camera to detect dark matter, who's running a ghost tour his late wife Alyssa once ran. One day, an exorcist priest name Father Kent hires him to use his dark matter camera to photograph the Gracey Manor's ghosts for doctor Gabbie and her son Travis. This tying him to the manor until he and the others can break the curse.

Where did Phasmopunk start?

Paranormal research dates back to the nineteenth century, with organizations such as the Society for Psychical Research investigating spiritual matters, but people had tried to understand the paranormal long before that. Latter in the twentith century, psychic researcher Harry Price published his "Confessions of a Ghost-Hunter" in 1936. Just sixteen years after that in 1952, Alfred Harvey, founder and publisher of Harvey Comics began producing Casper comic books. In terms of ghost hunting, the practice existed in the 1900s but was popularized in the 2000s by television series such as "Most Haunted" and "Ghost Hunters", combined with the increasing availability of high-tech equipment. The Atlantic Paranormal Society reported a doubling in their membership in the late 2000s, attributing this to the television programs. To this day, ghost hunting content remains highly popular even when some amit to acting and editing stuff into their videos.

Real Life Phasmopunks

Any paranormal investigators or researchers who are actually looking for evidence to the existence of ghosts.

I guess also anyone who tries to live harmoniously with ghosts.

How do I feel about Phasmopunk?

I love it and want more of it. There's an idea that some believe, that ghosts feed off of electricity. I think someone could do something with that and Nikola Tesla's wireless electricity. He was interested in the paranormal and created gear people are still using to hunt ghosts such as spirit boxes and infrared sensors. Also, Beetlejuice's whole bio-exorcist thing is an interesting idea. I can invision a group of ghosts keeping other ghosts' properties safe from the living. If someone try to make phasmopunk music a thing, I want a lot of theremins. The theremin sprang up around the same time as research into the paranormal, are often associated with ghosts, and have been used before in rock music.

Questions

Do you guys think there's something here or am I just seeing things? I believe there is but one can easily blind themselves in their beliefs and need the help of others to see clearly.

Also, I was considering listing "The Ghost and Molly McGee", "ParaNorman", and "R.I.P.D" as exemples of Phasmopunk but couldn't decided if they should count. So tell me what you think should count.

[call-me-cc]

[sᴏᴜʟ ᴇᴀᴛᴇʀ ᴏᴄs ɪɴsᴇʀᴛ]

°~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~°

𝙈𝙖𝙨𝙠𝙚𝙙 𝙈𝙚𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧 | 𝙊𝘾𝙨

Part 01 | Part 02

Name : Ember Stein

Age : 16

Pronounce : they/them

Height : 170cm or 5'7

Weapon : Ruby Akawaga

Family : Franken Stein [Creator/Father]

Likes : Cleaning, clean things, science (specifically Phasmology) , experiments/dissection, coffee, apples, their father, Ruby, Death the kid...

Dislikes : Dirty things, people going into their lab without permission, people touching them or their stuff without permission, people calling them weak, being a "failure"

~~~

Name : Ruby (Red) Akagawa 

Age : 15

Pronounce : She/her

Height : 155cm or 5'1

Meister : Ember Stein

Family : Akagawa Clan (Former)

Likes : sweets, cats, soft/comfy things, the color red, her friends, Mr. Noir (cat plushie), head pats (mainly from Ember) , cute things, Dresses

Dislikes : creepy bugs (cockroaches, spiders, etc.) , People calling her short, bitter and spicy things, blood....

°~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~°

ᴀ/ɴ:

ᴛʜɪs ɪs ᴛʜᴇ ᴘɪᴄʀᴇᴡ ɪ ᴜsᴇᴅ. ʙᴜᴛ ᴛʜᴇ sᴏᴜʟs ᴀʀᴇ ᴍʏ ᴏᴡɴ ᴅʀᴀᴡɪɴɢs

[isaactheautobot]

#danny phantom#ghost taxonomy#ghost classification#ghost science#ghost biology#ectobiology#phasmology#Bongo's Ideas!!!#I've had this written in my notes since pretty much the Day I got tumblr and I'm finally unleashing it!!!#I'll be honest with you this is probably the first of a Lot of posts about ghost science & history#Kind of nervous about posting this but I'm Very Brave and also I love talking so!!!#dp headcanons#dp hc#danny phantom headcanon#danny phantom hc

Ghost Taxonomy!!!

Okay, so you know the taxonomic classification system??? Like, this thing, where the genus and species make up the scientific name of an organism: 

(This diagram and all the other diagrams that’ll be on here are made by me so sorry if they’re messy!!!) (Picture transcript: downward triangle split into eight sections, labelled (in descending order): domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species.)

Huge Huge Huge credit to @its-rat-time-babey for this idea, because it's so cool and the concepts in that post hugely inspired some of my own takes on this- this being a taxonomic system for ghosts as well as humans!!!!! I'm gonna be referencing both kinds of taxonomy here, so we’ll call the ghost one ‘phasma-defined taxonomy’ just to differentiate!!! :D

There are only seven categories in phasma-defined taxonomy because there’s not really a kingdom category equivalent (which is the one to do with animals, plants, fungi, etc.), since it’s sort of covered in other sections, but we’ll go into the categories themselves now with a diagram!!

(Image Transcript: Diagram is labelled ‘Phasma-Defined Taxonomy’. The diagram is a downward triangle split into seven sections, labelled (in descending order): formation, origin, composure, state, subsistence, denomination, and temperament.)

Alrighty, now that we’ve got a thing with them all on, here’s what they mean, and what makes up each category!!!

(Explanations + examples under cut!!)

Formation: Basically just how much of a ghost they are?? It’s barely used as a category because obviously the majority are full ghosts, but with the existence of halfas, and mediums (who carry just enough ectoplasmic content to survive in the GZ’s atmosphere/be recognised as an ectoplasmic entity), it has to be taken into account. The sections in this category are, as mentioned before: full ghost, halfa, and medium!!

Origin: How they came to be!! There are only two sections to this category, being natural, and post-Eukarya. Natural just means that they were never a living thing, and were created purely from the GZ’s energy (or another ghost’s if we’re getting into Ghost Procreation™). Eukarya refers to a part of the Domain section of the normal classification system (which we’re calling ‘Sapien-Defined Taxonomy’ just to make it easier to differentiate), and short-hand it just means that the organism- multi celled or single- contains a nucleus. Post-Eukarya then means that they used to be made up of cells that had nuclei, but because ectoplasmic cells lack a nucleus (a thought I have about ectoplasm’s properties that I’ll maybe talk about at some point!!!), they don’t anymore!!! So, yeah, there’s natural and post-eukarya. 

Composure: Composure is their sentience, and this comes in three sections!!! Sentient, non-sentient, and simplified!!! The definition of sentient is “Having a faculty, or faculties, of sensation and perception/Experiencing sensation or feeling”, and then obviously ones in the non-sentient composure lack that!! Simplified is basically a weird spot between, in that they might kind of have a capacity for feeling (or, more specifically, they’re made of a feeling), but they don’t really have sense perception at all- like, certain kinds of ‘blob ghost’ can be comprised of a certain emotion, but they’re not really things that think??? Just an emotion that has a form and sometimes a face, if that makes sense. 

State: Fairly standard- just what state of matter they are!!! You’ve got solid, gaseous, and subliming!!! Solid and gaseous are pretty self-explanatory- just ghosts who exist exclusively in that state of matter- but subliming ghosts can go between either state!!! (Ghosts/ectoplasm don’t have a liquid state, because the solid state already really weird but still a solid?? The closest it gets to being an actual liquid is just. Weird clumps. If I figure out how to word this better I’ll talk about it but rn please please just go with me on this lmao!!!)

Subsistence: Subsistence refers to how they regain energy!!! The two categories here are ambient and active!! Ambient just means that their body absorbs the ectoplasm in the air automatically without any effort on their part, and active just means that they have to consume/ingest ectoplasm and/or other forms of energy in some way in order to get it into their system!!

Denomination: This is where we get into the more nuanced categories of phasma-defined taxonomy!!! Denomination just refers to what kind of ghost they are, with examples like shades, wraiths, banshees, and poltergeists all being different denominations!! There are a lot more than this though!!!!

Temperament: This is probably the broadest category out of all of them, which is why it’s at the bottom, but it’s also easy to understand, since it literally just refers to cores!!! Not going to list every option, but examples include: ice, fire, and electricity!!! There are a ton of different types of core, and the way they’re externalised can vary wildly between even same core-types, so it can be hard to properly pin down temperament, but it’s also an important one, so there’s a reason it’s here!!

Their classification is based on their denomination+temperament- like how they’re based off genus+species for the Sapien-defined taxonomy!!! 

Right!!! We’ve got the explanations, so now for some examples!!! We’ll start with Vlad just because he’s fun!!!! Here’s what his classification looks like!!!

(Image Transcript: Downward triangle split into seven sections, labelled (in descending order): halfa, post-eukarya, sentient, solid, ambient, revenant, fire. Vlad is labelled a ‘fire revenant’.)

And just for the sake of it, here’s two more examples!!! Spectra!!

(Image Transcript: Downward triangle split into seven sections, labelled (in descending order): full ghost, post-eukarya, sentient, subliming, active, obake, plasma. Spectra is labelled a ‘plasma obake’.)

And a Danny just for fun (and also so I can mention how much I love him being a banshee)

(Image Transcript: Downward triangle split into seven sections, labelled (in descending order): halfa, post-eukarya, sentient, solid, ambient, banshee, ice. Danny is labelled an ‘ice banshee’.)

As for whether or not some ghosts make use of Sapien-defined taxonomy??? They do!!! It’s particularly useful for  post-eukaryotic ‘animal ghosts’ like Cujo, because sometimes their denomination can be kind of hard to pin down, so it’s just easier to refer to them through their living classification!!! Like, you couldsay that Cujo’s a Grim, but you don’t really know on first glance and not every dog ghost is a Grim, so if you can just say ‘he’s a dog’ then you circumvent the issue (it’s still good to know though)!!!!

And there we have it!!!! That’s pretty much all I have to say about it, but if you have any questions or just want to talk about it more, please do!!! I absolutely love this sort of stuff even if I’m not like. An expert on it lmao!!! I’m kinda working on the stuff about ectoplasm as a substance atm, so hopefully I’ll actually post that at some pint because I have Thoughts™ lmao!! Either way, have a good day!! :D

(Post about ectobiology/ghost anatomy is up now that has some expansion on ghost post-eukaryoticism + some other stuff if you're interested!!!! Here it is!!!)

[unownzone]

I made a DWMA student ID template based on the one Death the Kid has in the series. This is the most accurate fan-made template to date, since my friend helped me translate all the Japanese text on it. I only made some changes to the format so that it would fit English words better.

This template is free-to-use for all Soul Eater fans! (Please remember to give credit!)

You can download the template from the dA post.

How to fill out

1. Image     Add an image of your character in the box on the left. It is best if the image is 7:9 in ratio and depicts a portrait of your character's face.

2. Name     Write the full name of your character above the thick black line on the top right. It is best if the text is Arial, Bold, and all capitalized. Characters with nicknames may be written like: SOUL "EATER" EVANS  3. Student No.     Write an eight-digit student number for your character next to "STUDENT NO." It is best if the text is Arial, Bold.

4. Class     Write your character's class name next to "CLASS." It is best if the text is Arial, Bold, and all capitalized. EAT Class students will most likely be in class CRESCENT MOON. You can come up with other class names like SHOOTING STAR and SUN BEAM to show your character is in a different EAT Class or in NOT Class.

5. Role.     Write whether your character is a WEAPON or MEISTER. It is best if the text is Arial, Bold, and all capitalized.

6. Partner     Write the full name of your character's partner. It is best if the text is Arial, Bold, and all capitalized. Students without partners can write N/A.

7. Stars     Fill in the stars with a dark red to signify the rank of your character. NOT Class students have no stars. EAT Class students have one star. Advanced students in EAT Class have two stars. Extremely skilled and high ranking members or faculty of the DWMA have three stars. 8. Chart     Each box is a school subject. Cross out the box with a diagonal line going from the bottom left to top right if your character is qualified to take the subject. Remember that some subjects have prerequisites. For example,     You MUST have taken LIBERAL ARTS I before LIBERAL ARTS II     You MUST have taken PHASMOLOGY II before PHASMOLOGY III     You MUST have taken BASIC P.E. before APPLIED P.E.

[ink-asunder]

Maybe Okhubo wasnt sure himself how strong kid was and wanted to leave the possibility open to him be either stronger or weaker than the teachers? Or maybe him being stronger than them would negativly impact the teacher stundent dynamic, while being weaker would make his reaper status seem less signiticant?

Yeah, that's the vibe I'm getting, lol. As I said in the tags of the original post. Either Ohkubo didn't have an answer, or he didn't WANT to have an answer because yeah! HOW is a fight like that going to affect the teacher-student dynamic?? And yeah, he's a Reaper, but he's immature (as in, not fully grown into his powers yet), so I CAN see him losing simply because he's young, but still. I feel like Kid's schooling is a put-on. He doesn't have to go to school, and arguable he doesn't even have to study. He's a Grim Reaper; he already knows phasmology by his nature as a god of death. So sometimes, to me, it feels like Kid is just Pretending to be a student, and the teachers are just Pretending he's normal so no one has to deal with the cognitive dissonance in the fact that Kid is literally a god with divine amounts of power, knowledge, and skill.

It's really interesting to think about!

[requinade]

last two af attacks so far

character credit:

1. phasmology 2. SESMIFIENTHAL

[clown--wormz]

Not all of them are evil tho, and the ones that are evil are most likely negative emotions manifested into a malevolent spirit :)

Other ones that aren't malevolent may just be souls of children who bonded to a childhood comfort

As a society, we place great value on things that are old, flawed, rare, unique or unusual. Unless it’s a person, in which case we shun them.

[phasdraw]

https://artfight.net/~phasmology

;3c

[dunhoof]

flight rising is being rude right now and not letting me change out my coli team so i can’t train anyone but! while i’m waiting for that to un-hiccup, i figured i’d post my stores of dragons im planning to get rid of (the ones that don’t have anything special with them anyway) in case anyone was interested! lots of breeding project rejects here, everyone in the second image is in the hibden rn but i honestly don’t mind holding them if u want

if you want one you can send a cr rq with like, 1t or something to phasmology#40235 along with the id of the dragon

[dunhoof]

owo

send me a 💬 and one dragon to hear them talk about someone else, or two dragons to hear them talk about each other

feel free to reblog! my lair is here!

[bongo-clash]

Ectobiology: Ectoplasmic Anatomy of Ghosts & Halfas!!!

Okay, I mentioned in my post about ghost taxonomy a couple things about ectoplasm that helped with the different category sections, and I thought it’d be nice to go over that stuff plus some other ideas in more detail!!! Please don’t mind too much if the science is a little wonky, because I love this kind of thing but I am not a STEM guy, and my only resource is questionable websites and my own brain!!! Anyway, let’s get into some of it!!!!

(Everything under cut!!! :D) 

Before I start, I want to make a point of saying that I’m only talking about Ghost Ectoplasm™ specifically and not ectoplasm as a whole (i.e., atmospheric/ambient ectoplasm), and while I might mention it in a section or two in terms of how it interacts with Ghost Ectoplasm™, I won’t go into too many details on the stuff itself (Might do a smaller thing for that though too, if I ever get in the mood for ectochemistry I guess!!!)!! (I also mentioned mediums in my taxonomy post, but we’re ignoring them for now because this stuff doesn’t really apply to them!!! This is exclusively ghost and halfa stuff!!!)

But, now that that’s out of the way, here we go!!!!

-

Section 1: Ectoplasm’s Prokaryoticism

I’ll start with one of the things that came up in my taxonomy post- specifically to do with why ghosts that were alive at some point are classified as post-eukarya, which definitely raises questions to what they’re like now. Let’s talk about that!!

Post-eukaryotic kind of implies they’re now prokaryotic, meaning they lack a nucleus/membrane bound organelles. In the Domain category of taxonomy (the normal not-ghost one lmao!!), there are two other sections other than eukarya, which are bacteria and archaea. I bring these up because they kind of serve as a base to understand ectoplasm with!!! Post-eukarya ghosts’ ectoplasmic structure more closely resembles organisms labelled bacteria, whereas natural ghosts’ more closely resembles archaea. I wanted to make this distinction because it makes sense given their different niches:

(From the three-domain system wikipedia page)

‘Bacteria tend to be the most prolific reproducers, at least in moderate environments. Archaeans tend to adapt quickly to extreme environments, such as high temperatures, high acids, high sulfur, etc. This includes adapting to use a wide variety of food sources. Eukaryotes are the most flexible with regard to forming cooperative colonies, such as in multi-cellular organisms, including humans.’

An archaean-like structure makes a lot of sense for natural ghosts because of its ability to thrive in extreme conditions, since the Ghost Zone definitely counts as an extreme environment (for non-ectoplasmic entities at least). Bacteria-like qualities, on the other hand, make more sense for post-eukarya ghosts due to them being more likely go into the human world, and thus needing to be much more prolific cell-reproducers and restorers, having to be more ‘self-sufficient’ in that sense as a result of there being a lesser supply of ectoplasm to draw from. 

So I feel like I should mention now that I’m not thinking of ghosts as single-celled organisms here, even though that’s how prokaryotic organisms usually are because!!! They’re not always!!! It’s been a least a little bit evidenced that certain bacterial species can aggregate together, which is what multicellular organisms do, and even though there’s a big debate about whether or not we can really call them multicellular, I’ve made the elective decision that we can for ectoplasm!!!! Because they have at least some adhesion even if they’re pretty easily and harmlessly separated (which we can see in most ghost fights), and because the cells can clearly communicate seeing as they all move as part of a body!!!!

Anyway, back to more structure stuff, I’m gonna focus on post-eukarya ghosts just because (though a lot of this could be applied vaguely to natural ghosts too) we’re gonna look into a more specific part of it now to do with the subsistence category- which if you didn’t read the taxonomy post, is basically how ghosts ‘get’ their energy- either by naturally absorbing the ambient ectoplasm in the atmosphere or by having to actively consume energy through any one of various methods. 

I mentioned before that post-eukaryotic ghosts are more ‘bacteria-like’. But there’s also a further distinction in the ectoplasmic structure of ambient and active ghosts!!!! There’s a type of bacteria called cyanobacteria (also known as blue-green algae) which can perform photosynthesis thanks to them containing internal membranes unlike heterotrophic prokaryotes (that can’t produce their own ‘food’), as well as photosynthetic pigments. Ambient ghosts function in a similar way to this, able to absorb the energy from atmospheric ectoplasm rather than having to actively consume anything- also why most post-eukaryotic ghosts are ambient!!! It’s advantageous when taking into consideration the lesser ectoplasm supply in the human world; if they’re constantly, automatically ‘recharging’, then it’s easier to quickly recover from damage (though we’ll get onto the specifics of that later)!!!

However!!! Active post-eukaryotic ghosts also exist (like Spectra!!), so their structure is a little different!!! Their structure can vary more wildly than an ambient’s can, but the more common structural resemblance is to the bacteria Actinomycetota, which can have a kind of symbiotic relationship with their surroundings. 

I think it’d be good to have an example for this, so Spectra’s ability is probably an easier way to look at it!!! Some kinds of Actinomycetota help out in ecosystems by converting nitrogen in the air into ammonia for plants, and in ‘return’ gain access to some of those plants’ saccharides. Spectra’s ability works in a similar way, even though the symbiotic nature isn’t mutually beneficial. She induces mood alteration (of the negative kind), and uses that to kind of ‘gain access’ to a target’s energy!!!! But not all active ghosts function this way- some can be beneficial like the kind of Actinomycetota mentioned before, and some are less symbiotic and just stay in the zone to ‘feed’ off its natural supply!!!!

Okay I’m gonna be honest my eyes are blurring looking at all this stuff about prokaryoticism so we’re gonna move on to a new section now for the sake of my brain staying not-melted!!!!!

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Section 2: Anaerobic Classifications

Just to make sure I’ve got a definition down before we get into it, aerobic and anaerobic respiration basically refers to whether or not an organism respires with oxygen/uses oxygen for growth or not- aerobic is when it uses oxygen, anaerobic is when it doesn’t!!!

Ghosts are anaerobic!!!! The GZ doesn’t naturally contain breathable/sufficient levels of oxygen (although it can be found in higher contents in areas with a higher population of post-eukaryotic ghosts and portals!!), so it makes sense that they don’t actually have a need for it, however!! There are actually different classifications of anaerobe, and a ghost can fall into almost any one of those categories!!!! There is a little bit of debate about the accuracy of these categories as classifications, but rn we’re just going to ignore that because they work well enough for ghosts!!! 

Anyway- there are three categories of anaerobes!!! They’re pretty easy to understand, so I’m just gonna put down what the Wikipedia page says!!! :

Obligate anaerobes, which are harmed by the presence of oxygen. Two examples of obligate anaerobes are Clostridium botulinum and the bacteria which live near hydrothermal vents on the deep-sea ocean floor.

Aerotolerant organisms, which cannot use oxygen for growth, but tolerate its presence.

Facultative anaerobes, which can grow without oxygen but use oxygen if it is present.

So, which ghosts fit what definition?? Well, no ghosts are actually facultative except halfas in their human form!!! Or, well, on the whole they’re kind of a weird mix of a microaerophile (which is fully aerobic but higher concentrations of oxygen are poisonous) but also maybe slightly facultative, which I know sounds weird but halfas are just super weird either way [and we’ll get into some of that weirdness more in the fourth section lmao]!! Mediums are full microaerophiles but I haven’t talked about them properly yet so we’ll leave them for another day!!!!

Moving on, the majority of natural ghosts are actually fully obligate with a couple of noteworthy exceptions like Clockwork, Undergrowth, Nocturn, and some others!!!! I know you might be thinking if you read the taxonomy post- ‘why is this not a section in the taxonomic classification system??’ And my answer to this is!!! Because if a ghost isn’t fully obligate, it can get pretty complicated. I say fully obligate because, in reality, all ghosts are obligate in a weird way, but some- namely, post-eukaryotic ghosts- have adaptations to help with this!!!!

I’m going to say the adaptation is kind of like. A protective layer of sorts??? They have a kind of ‘outermost layer’ of aerotolerant ectoplasm to protect everything underneath from coming into contact with oxygen, and it also works as a filter system for ambient ghosts so that the ectoplasm absorbed from the atmosphere is pure and any oxygen it might have reacted with is separated and left behind!!! It’s pretty quick to cover over again when a ghost is hit unless the damage is serious- I guess you could compare it to potassium metal!!! If you’ve ever seen a video of someone messing around with potassium metal, it’s got this kind of dirty-looking layer over it, and if you cut it the inside’ll go bright at first but it tarnishes super quickly, and it’ll soon look the same as the other uncut parts of the outer layer!!! 

Speaking of which, this is a pretty good way to bring in how ecto-weapons work and why they hurt ghosts beyond just the force of the shot!!! Like I mentioned before (and Might get into more sometime in another post), atmospheric ectoplasm will react with oxygen!!!! This is important because that’s the stuff that ecto-weapons use; it’s not pure ectoplasm because you can’t find that naturally outside the GZ!!!

So, if the stuff is shot at a ghost through something like an ecto-gun, because it’s obviously forceful and makes contact at a high-speed, it can damage and even break through that aerotolerant layer and get oxygen into their system, which really isn’t good!!!! If the damage is just surface-layer/superficial, it can be recovered from pretty quickly (thinking back to the potassium analogy!!), but if the damage is more serious and that oxygen- even reacted with ectoplasm- manages to really get into a ghost’s anatomy, preventative measures need to be taken in order to ensure that it doesn’t reach the ghost’s core/the rest of their body, and this is where the next section comes into play!!!!

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(TW: There's some pretty bad injury/medical talk in these next sections (Section 4 especially), so please be mindful!!!!)

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Section 3: Programmed Cell Death

Okay when I said I was done talking about prokaryoticism I actually meant I was done talking about cyanobacteria and actinomycetota similarities. Prokaryotic organisms like bacteria don’t really have ‘immune systems’ in the same way most eukaryotic organisms do, so they sometimes can’t fight off things like infection if the infection isn’t manageable from the get-go. Instead, they initiate a form of ‘programmed cell death’ in order to prevent the pathogen from reproducing!!! And now here’s how that’s relevant to ghost injury!!!!

So!!! Long story short, if a ghost gets oxygen into their ‘inner system’ thanks to something like an ecto-gun, the area the injury originates at literally just dies off, and separates from the body before it can spread to other parts. For example, if a ghost was hit in the arm badly, that arm can literally just fall off and grow back like a lizard tail!!! This can be done with pretty much any part of a ghost’s body- the only aspect of a ghost that’s actually genuinely problematic to injure is the core, because most ghosts- provided they’re not already low-energy- can just regrow everything else, though they may need to head back to the GZ for the higher ectoplasm quantity if the loss is severe enough!!!!

Really short section, I know, however!!! There is a complication to this stuff, and this is where we get into the difficult bit!!!!

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Section 4: Halfas

The problem with halfas is that they’re not totally ghosts or totally humans no matter which form they’re in, and this can cause a lot of complications when it comes to stuff like injuries- but first, we’re going to go into integration. 

Ghosts are prokaryotic. Humans are eukaryotic. Halfas are…???????? Kind of both kind of neither????? There’s this one thing called a Parakaryon that we can’t classify as either eukaryotic or prokaryotic because it’s so weird, and it’s kind of like that, in that their cells have aspects unique to both types. This is probably a result of all their ghost stuff and all their human stuff trying to combine/integrate into one thing, and ending up as something almost entirely different in the process. This also means that their structures in both ghost and human form are weird, because halfas at least somewhat need organs, which ghosts don’t (other than a core if you count that as an organ), and they also need ectoplasm, which humans don’t. 

Because of all this weirdness, there can be a lot of potential issues with a halfa getting injured, because humans can’t and don’t defend against harm in the same way ghosts do, and vice versa. While ghosts can just get rid of something and grow it back, that’s not a natural option at all for humans, and while humans can fight against infection in an injury thanks to their white blood cells, ghosts don’t have that in the same way. So what does that mean for a halfa?????

What I’m thinking is that, for most non-lethal but slightly beyond superficial injuries (slashes, broken bones, burns, etc.), they’re able to defend against them in a human way, since they still have a human-immune system. So, for injuries like that, especially if it’s caused by an ecto-weapon, it’s weirdly enough best to deal with those in human form, since they can be pretty easily recovered from and it’d really suck for your finger to just. Fall off because you hurt it pretty bad and stayed in ghost-form for too long so your ghost-recovery-system kicked in before your human one did. I’m almost completely sure it’d grow back, but that’d still cause a lot of problems, since you wouldn’t have a finger. 

However, major injuries are a bit more… difficult. Because at this point your ghost-recovery-system would be kicking in regardless of what form you’re in. It’d want to activate programmed cell death and separate from the body, but human bodies just don’t do it the way ghosts do, and it’d be fighting to keep all your everything attached because separating could make it a lot worse. So major injuries aren’t just problematic because they’re major, but also because they present a whole new issue: necrosis. 

Basically, the ghost stuff wants the whole injured section totally separate from the body, so when the human stuff doesn’t let that happen, it does what it thinks the next best thing is: having the cells sort of ‘spew their guts’ as like, a really weird and warped form of ‘separation’. The cell membrane ruptures and releases the contents of the cell, but because it’s such an uncontrolled release into a space outside the cells, it causes an inflammatory response in the surrounding tissue. This then gets the attention of the human white blood cells to get rid of the dead cells, which is all well and good, except that some kinds of white blood cells (leukocytes) release a microbial-damaging substance that ends up causing more damage in that inflamed surrounding tissue. That all ends up inhibiting the healing process, so the decomposing surrounding tissue and the dead cells can just build up around and cause even more issues (Like, gangrene in particularly nasty cases, which. Ah. Eugh.). 

If it doesn’t heal on its own and does just build up, the only real way of getting anything better is to surgically remove the necrotic tissue. Thankfully, despite all the horrific stuff I’ve just said about halfas’ injury-response systems, they do actually have an accelerated healing factor thanks to the extra energy source (ectoplasm), so it doesn’t tend to get to this point in the first place. This is just what happens if that rapid-response system decides that the only way to solve the problem is to try and totally get rid of the problem, which I guess is just one of the downfalls of being someone made up of a combination of things that shouldn’t really exist together. A double-edged sword of sorts!!!

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Maybe not the lightest note to end on, but either way, that’s all I’ve really got the energy to give you right now!!! This ended up even longer than my taxonomy post, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask because I love talking to people!!! I might add onto this at some point with another post- mainly because there’s some very brief stuff about atmospheric/ambient ectoplasm that I kind of want to cover (which, like I said at the beginning is more ectochemistry anyway, and I might do a separate post for that too)- but for now, that’s it!!!!! Hope you’re all having a good day!!! :D

[phasdraw]

selling this pretty imp on the AH w/ some “oh thaaaat’s how you use that feature” experimental art!! their name is felis and they’re up for 50k treasure rn (gem/mixed payment available thru crossroads :3c), seller is phasmology#40235

l0nk in rb!

[dunhoof]

ill send u a cr! (phasmology#40235)

Going thru my lair because the amount of old dragons that don’t serve a lore purpose & need genes are piling up which is frustrating me

I don’t need my family’s propensity for hoarding to bleed into the digital world lol

I’ll probably exalt most of them but for now they’re just chilling in the sale tab