#when i tell you i have fun with her

[ferahntics]

Spectra’s Origins

So I wanted to wait until I had the motivation to do a full comic about this, but at this rate it won’t happen anytime soon, so!! Instead, will do it in this format where I throw in some images here and there ;v;

This is going to be a long post under the cut, but! Let’s get down to talking about Spectra, cause she’s probably my favorite character to work on origin-wise.

I’ve stated before that Spectra is an anomaly of sorts. She is a fusion between her real and Mirror self, meshing into this weird unstable mess that can flip between sweet and graceful, to violent and sadistic in a second.

But I never really went into detail HOW she became an anomaly to start with. So let’s knock out her old, real world self.

Spectra was seen as a matriarch, so to speak, to a group of Babut that were seeking refuge and cover from the ongoing war between the GSA and Nightmare’s monsters - and to avoid any and all contact with Dark Matter creatures. They really just wanted to find a peaceful location where they can live with as few worries as possible and away from any battles. Spectra was seen as a very gentle lady that didn’t discriminate, she took in whoever and welcomed them with open arms.

Eventually, after years of traversing, they managed to find an abandoned castle-like area, imbedded within a cliff, the caverns serving as tunnels and rooms - very welcome for a group consisting of bats that preferred darkness. It seemed to have been abandoned for a very long time, with no real trace of anything within aside from dust... and a shattered mirror.

Upon closer inspection, a being made itself present in the broken object - a spitting image of Spectra, with grey marks as opposed to her usual brown. The Mirror counterpart claims to have been chased away and forcefully locked within an alternate world, unable to escape and live freely. Naively, the real Spectra decided to keep her counterpart company and befriend her.

A decision that would prove disastrous in the long-run.

Over time, she helped a badly injured Star Warrior that had been shot out of the sky during a fight and landed near their home. She helped him recover, and trusted him to keep their whereabouts a secret, for their sakes. The warrior complied, thanking Spectra before setting off, his injuries mended, aside some leftover scars.

This prompted her Mirror self to question her naive and trusting nature - could the warrior truly be trusted? Was he going to stay true to his word? Or did he merely pretend to be truthful and would eventually come back with his own troop and attack her and the Babut. She manages to plant a seed of doubt in her real self’s mind.

And it piles on. The real Spectra begins to worry about being ratted out by the Star Warrior, starts to think she might’ve been taken advantage of. When a group of young Babut pull a harmless prank, her reflection would question if it was really as innocent as she thought - or if there was something worse under the surface.

Another concern.

And it only added up over time. One concern evolved into another, and it kept multiplying.

Eventually, her calm demeanor had diminished, and she became wary - gradually evolving into paranoia, flinching and getting defensive at the slightest and most frivolous things and reading far too much into it. She became accusatory, and with her reflection’s influence, ended up pushing everyone away. Little by little, the Babut left, thinking their once graceful matriarch had succumbed to a form of madness.

This left her alone. Vulnerable. Exposed.

And so, the one being Spectra started to think she could trust and no one else - would prove to be the true mastermind behind it all. Her Mirror self lunged at her through the Dimension Mirror when it was repaired straight at her - and attempted to use her Ghost ability to possess her. She thought that if there were only one of them - she could remain concealed, and eliminate a potential threat who could thwart her.

To counter and in a blind panic, the real Spectra uses her Mirror abilities to defend herself from the possession. And this combination of abilities ended up clashing together, causing a bizarre and intense reaction - merging the two into one unstable creature. Destructive. Unpredictable. Creative.

And no one would know how to deal with her. Or what was unleashed.

[meamiiikiii]

silly comic based on a time i struggled to read live on stream :thumbsup:

context clip compilation below ASDASDFASA

(cw for brief mention of hospitals/strokes)

[paperglader]

they really put alicent in bridgerton blue on the reunion and genuinely expected me to think that she didn’t in fact march all the way to dragonstone to get wifed up? bfr

[bolithesenate]

Satine Kryze should not be a sympathetic character.

A complex and tragic one? Sure. Every day of the week.

But she did not 'have a point', neither in-universe, not outside of the sw framework. She isn't a hero, neither of her own story, nor of someone else's. There is no way she wasn't a tool. You should not look at her and think 'this woman has done nothing wrong and what ultimately happened to Mandalore was to no part her fault'.

Because guys. Friends. Strangers on the interwebs.

Pacifism doesn't work.

And it certainly wouldn't have worked in motherfucking Star Wars – the 'wars' is literally in the title – for a system or series of systems who wanted to stay neutral.

YOU DON'T STAY NEUTRAL FOR LONG BY JUST SAYING 'YEAH, NO THANKS <3' TO A LARGE-SCALE CONFLICT.

source: I am Swiss, we've looked at this in history class. Extensively.

Satine was a dreamer (thanks Obi-Wan) who was allowed to keep her delusions because they actively benefitted Palpatine's plans. And that's something you can quote me on. There is literally no other reason (apart from supremely bad writing but we'll leave that aside here) for her and her little friends' 'Alliance of Neutral Systems' or whatever to be allowed to exist.

Not that they were neutral in any way, shape or form, by the way.

So yeah sorry to the Satine stans, but you're idolizing a character that was written exclusively and specifically for Obi-Wan's manpain and who, in-universe, was a supremely bad politician. Because the level of mental dissonace needed to factually be a Republic System, have a seat in the fucking Republic Senate, rely upon their military for aid while actively proclaiming that All Violence Is Bad And Barbaric one sentence later AND THEN CLAIM TO BE NEUTRAL IN THE WHOLE CONFLICT – it's just mind-blowing. Even moreso that people actually look at this character and see something aspirational in her.

Again, I'll gladly dissect her character any day of the week. She is fascinating because of all the implications her existence as a head of state carries with it, as well as her deeply complicated family history and her relation to mandalorian culture.

But it just grates on me personally that that all gets ignored in favor of her being some sort of icon of white american saviorism (bc that's literally what she is) and her objectively bad political takes being treated like they are the only correct stance to be taken during the Clone Wars/Mandalorian Civil Wars.

If you think pacifism works and actually lets you stay neutral, I desperately urge you to open a history book. Because those two are mutually exclusive. Especially in the scenario that Star Wars paints.

[anemonet]

pro tip: you can always put the bugs in little outfits :thumbsup:

[mishiami]

seen a lot of fem skk lately thought i'd share my 15 fem skk designs

[waterlilyvioletfog]

See the thing is, you read HtN and like yeah, obviously lobotomizing yourself so a dead girl’s soul doesn’t get cannibalized is completely fucking wild and you probably have to love someone at least a little to do that, but Harrow has spent the whole book having tension with Ianthe and fervently claiming to be in love with the Body— and then you get to Act V and Harrow is literally weeping wailing feral about Gideon, constructing Prince!Gideon AUs (which, she doesn’t know about Gideon’s paternity!! She is simply drawing upon a (romantic!!!) genre trope!!!) and role reversal AUs and fucking coffee shop AUs about Gideon, and she’s refusing to go back to her own body, and Abigail and Magnus and Dulcie so obviously and completely believe that Harrow is in love with Gideon because they directly compare them to Abigail and Magnus, and she says she’s saving the last dance. Agh!!! Aggghhhhh!!!!!!

[katiekatdragon27]

A silly assortment of Flatland shitposts from yours truly~

Some of these are older than others lol.

Og images below cut:

Have a good one dudes!

[queenlua]

hey lua what decks do phoenix aceattorney and miles aceattorney play in magic

PHOENIX WRIGHT

once upon a time, a friend bullied me into going to a Pro Tour Qualifier, which was probably the largest Magic tournament i’d ever been to at that time, right?

i was happy to be bullied, to be clear, but the problem was… i hadn’t played standard-format Magic competitively in about 2-3 years.  so my knowledge of the current metagame, what deck archetypes were popular, and what the current cards even were, was staggeringly limited.

“it will be fine,” said my friend.  “here, take this spare deck i built.  it’s super-straightforward and easy,” he lied.

he said this to me approx. 8 seconds before the first round began, so uhhhhh, i sure was playing a game of magical cards without ever having even looked at the damn deck before!

so, lo, literally in the course of playing the deck, i was learning how this shit was supposed to work.  “oh!” i’d exclaim with delight, halfway through my turn.  “THAT’S how those two cards are supposed to interact.  oh that’s super clever.  what a neat combo.”  and then i’d proceed to shiftily look at my opponent over my cards, riffle those cards a lil bit, and then say “pass” with as much of an enigmatic vibe as i could muster.

meanwhile, my opponent was Actually Prepared, and they were Trying To Win, and they were pissed.  they threatened to call Slow Play on me because i was taking so fucking long reading all the cards.  as in, he literally called a judge over, who stood there watching me the whole time, in order to determine if i was being Criminally Bad At Magic versus just A Regular Amount Of Bad At Magic, and i was sweating bullets the whole time because i didn’t know this deck or their deck or any of those cards and AHHHH why is the judge staring at me!!!

….which only served to make it EXTRA-humiliating for this poor fuck when i proceeded to eviscerate them 2-0.  hahahah get dunked onnnnnnnn nerd!!!

and then i also proceeded to eviscerate my next opponent???

sheer dumb luck.  i cannot overstate how ill-prepared i was for this tournament.  i absolutely did not deserve these wins.

meanwhile the friend who gave me the deck was having a much worse time with their deck, and they were like “what the fuck. you weren’t supposed to win. how are you winning with that shit, my deck’s so much better than yours”

anyway.  i think that’s the kind of scenario Phoenix would get into if he were an MtG player.  dude Gets Himself Into Situations And Then Uses Cleverness + Bullshit + Luck To Get Out Again.

(AA4-era Phoenix seems like he’s doing the same thing… but, in reality, he’s actually been meticulously crafting his deck in secret for the past six months.  he’s not even aiming to win the tournament, he’s just exploiting a known weakness in the opponent-matching system that lets him know with certainty who he’s going to get matched up against (spoiler: first round is Kristoph), and he’s hyper-optimizing his deck to beat Literally Only Those People.  meanwhile, Apollo, who built a tryhard hyper-optimized variant of Red Deck Wins, is lowkey annoyed that Phoenix's seemingly-random pile keeps vaulting him just one table above him in the standings, because Apollo knows his deck is better. he knows it!!!! just let him go 1v1 and prove it aaaaughhhh!!!)

((also, in case you want Actual Concrete Cards And Colors And Stuff: in general i think Phoenix prefers limited play (draft, sealed, "anything where you open booster packs on the spot & throw a deck together") to constructed play, because he doesn't like being tied down to any one game plan. when he does play constructed, i think he's less attached to a specific colors and more attached to specific mechanics. in particular: he's not a combo player exactly, but he likes mechanics that feel like bullshit. dude saw Madness for the first time & his eyes lit up & he was in LOVE, "you mean i'm discarding the card but then i can cast it for free??? hell YES." he absolutely ran a poison counter deck during New Phyrexia. ah fuck i just realized he was probably a huge stan for noted awful expansion Battle for Zendikar, i think i gotta cancel him now, sorry))

((and i think Phoenix also has a touch of Timmy in him! like, i went to a huge state tournament once with a bunch of really skilled players, and there was this one dude in our car who had a really solid deck, clearly adhered to a lot of the trends in the meta at the time... but his win condition was a Shivan Dragon. which wasn't a bad card at the time, it was a reasonable win condition, but it was... slightly suboptimal? not at all the obvious pick? sort of random? and multiple people asked him "why is that your win condition" & he shrugged and said "i like dragons." so the dragon stayed & that dude ended up getting second place in the whole tournament so FUCK optimal play, bring a dragon. i think Phoenix would sneak in a dragon now and again. just 'cause))

MILES EDGEWORTH

this one is trickier!!!

young!Miles is just going to play Whatever The Meta Deems To Be The Best Deck, right. the von Karma perfection thing and all. it's all very boring & micro-optimized to be the Best Deck Of Its Kind & he pours over the results of the big name tournaments week after week & does some math or whatever to hyper-optimize his own build of the Obviously Correct Deck. there is no soul in any of this, purely Executing On A Formula.

...but then he experiences Character Growth & has his big gay crisis & now he has to pick up the game again. he opens the latest tournament results... clicks around some win % stats for various cards in a desultory kinda way, and... his heart's just not in it, right?

enter 2-4 era Miles. 2-4 era Miles is playing some utterly unhinged Five Color Good Stuff thing. there's a lot of Planar Chaos cards in there, because that whole set was about Weird Shit & cards doing Stuff You're Familiar With (But In The Utterly Wrong Color!!!) & all that is resonating with Miles more than he'd care to admit. he cannot possibly talk about his unnecessary feelings but he can make a weird noise rock album about them. and by noise rock album i mean this fucking Magic deck.

and he's playing this deck with a 100% straight face, as though this is the exact same behavior that won him the Junior Super Series five years in a row & not a desperate cry for help from a madman. everyone else is like Miles... are you playing fucking singletons... in a fucking standard deck... you know your deck will be more consistent with four-ofs right... and then he gives a cool fish-eyed stare & taps out to cast some arcane bullshit legendary creature & gives a single rap of his knuckles against the table to indicate that he's passing the turn.

and it works, is the thing! all those years of training to be the Spikiest Spike Ever have paid off; this Five Color Good Stuff thing relies on some pretty clever insights to make the mana base work, and parts of what he's doing eventually get adopted by the larger metagame to become an Actual Serious Deck. but, like. it's still a monstrosity. any skilled players watching are still definitely wondering Are You Okay, Dude.

after 2-4, i think Miles settles back into playing something more normal. he still cares about winning, but he's going to do it with a touch of class. he wants a game that involves dialogue, some actual back-and-forth, because just trying to combo off is lame coward behavior.

aw yeah baby we're talking counterspells!!!

he's a blue player at heart & he's happiest when he's updating the autopsy report shutting down whatever his opponent's plan is. he'll splash other colors as the occasion calls for it, but he'd be happy running mono-blue the rest of his life. like, i ran a pretty fun Legacy deck back in the day which consisted of:

every kind of counterspell i could get my hands on,

propaganda because FUCK creatures,

thieving magpies for the card draw,

and a few silver wyverns to, y'know, actually win the game

...and i think Miles would appreciate that deck. just play counterspells until the opponent runs out of steam & then cruise your way to victory with a couple birds. simple. elegant. classic. doesn't involve any of this modern Planeswalker bullshit (Miles regards most developments that happened to MtG post-Time Spiral block or so as affronts to game design).

(i do think Miles has a secret fondness for sagas as a card type, however. they remind him of all that Character Growth, but in an abstract/subconscious/nonthreatening way. too bad most of them are a bit of poor match for the kinds of decks he likes to play)

FINALLY: i think Miles hates playing Commander with every fiber of his being & Phoenix loves it & this is a pretty serious point of contention in their relationship. poor dudes

[randomminty]

Yeahlow

[buttercup-barf]

Meet Penny Pancake! Draw her with Peppino pls!

Tried doing a title card with her in the Pizza Tower style. Hope I did her justice!

[sysig]

Family ♥ (Patreon)

[skybristle]

rbs > likes

ATTACK 12 - The Princess @princess--bongwater and The Phantom [mine]

[miusato]

Bro said not to talk to him anymore and then hours later he says wants to talk like why are boys so complicated????

Anyway its based off this dumb screenshot meme lol

[peak-dumbass]

*emerges from the fog* have you heard of my boy called sideswipe he suffers from little bitch syndrome and unresolved trauma he refuses to talk about

I also think he’s aroace—*gets shot*

[crabsnpersimmons]

"Hellooooo, sailors! You've travelled long and hard, why not kick your feet up and rest with me? I'll sing us a little song."

meet Echo! my new Eclipse OC! she used to be a performer on a luxury cruise ship (and this was one of her outfits!) but now she works as the front desk/security at an office building. a free-spirited bot with the confidence to boot, she lives life on her own terms—to the fullest.

some other facts about her:

she stands at 8'5" (same height as Clip! i realize this is my default Eclipse height haha)

her voice claim: HWASA Don't: "I don't care who you are, don't make me cry. I don't care who you are. I don't care who you are, don't make me lie."

however, there are moments when she sings that a second voice seeps in to harmonize: Whee In Watercolour: "I'm gonna raise me up, I want more colours for me. Now, just pick anything, ah!"

her "hair" is made up of wires that she plugs into the back of her faceplate! she changes them up often.

she hates it when people touch her hair, partly because they get tangled and partly from a bad past experience

she loves eating and can handle a lot of spice

she dates around, she finds humans entertaining, especially when they can pay for her meal

also tagging @starriegalaxy because she wanted to be tagged and i took that as an invitation to share the Echo brainrot with her right before her meeting today (wishing you the best, jestie!)