If the Galvan had triumphed and wiped out the Petrosapiens, how would the frogs have affected, and been affected by, the galaxy (assuming they lasted until the modern day)?

I think they would've become increasingly isolationist and developed the strongest possible weapons and defenses they could to keep themselves safe from incursion. At best, this approach would lead to a species detached from galactic civilization and cold (if not hostile) towards most outsiders - a dangerous prospect, considering the Milky Way's dependency on the Galvan FTL network. At worst, I could see their tech being so prized that the various empires would set aside their differences and wage war on them to procure it.

Okay, I may have made that post 40% so I could get those thoughts in line before coming over here and making this post, which mostly about the overarching changes daemons make to community construction with a partial focus on the alien species I work with.

So, as we’ve discussed previously, because most species on Earth are human-sized or smaller, most local’s daemons are human-sized or smaller. As a result there’s not too big of an overall change. Homes tend to be a little larger, personal space is held to a higher place as a general rule, communities tend to be slightly more spread out, community populations tend to be a bit lower. There’s a lot of more exacting changes in, pretty much everything, to accommodate daemons and their various shapes, but on a large scale the changes tend to mostly be with space allotment.

The same thing is the case for Osmosians and Perison, both of which are also on the large end for terrestrial species on their homeworlds- Perison moreso than Osmosians. Community populations are smaller, homes/dens are larger, personal space is a bigger deal. The general Osmosian population on the homeworld is smaller. Perison men who Settle as their equivalent of megafauna are less likely to marry. Osmosians are more often Separated than other species and hold a nicer view on the matter (it’s just, easier to end up Separated in the Osmos System, shit went down there and Osmos V is a massive semi-livable desert).

Lenopan don’t actually have much change, on the other hand. They already normally are pretty spaced out dwelling-wise, and have large-ish properties. It doesn’t hurt that, as I’ve mentioned previously, they’re one of the biggest species on their homeworld. Equivalent to something like a kodiak or polar bear on Earth. Pretty much everything on Haseil is smaller than a Lenopan, and by a good margin, so there’s not a lot of change necessary as a general rule besides a touch more personal space given.

Erinaens are actually where you see the biggest change, with severely lower population density, larger homes, and homes being made higher and lower on trees than in non-daemon works, though their laxer equivalent to the Taboo of daemon touching means the personal space isn’t so much an issue. This is because while all the species above are either megafauna or borderline megafauna on their homeworlds, Erinaens very much aren’t. On their homeworld they’re a medium-sized critter, sorta the equivalent of a racoon or coyote in comparison to the big leagues. This means that, while it’s still not the most common thing in the world, Erinaens are the most likely of the species I often work with to Settle as something as big or bigger than themselves. As a result, larger homes and more commonly with easier access to thicker branches, the sky, and sometimes even the ground in particularly bad cases, are more common, the larger homes necessitating fewer homes per tree, forcing the species to spread out more than in other universes.

Last August, Lucy Letby, a thirty-three-year-old British nurse, was convicted of killing seven newborn babies and attempting to kill six others. Her murder trial, one of the longest in English history, lasted more than ten months and captivated the United Kingdom. The Guardian, which published more than a hundred stories about the case, called her “one of the most notorious female murderers of the last century.” The collective acceptance of her guilt was absolute. “She has thrown open the door to Hell,” the Daily Mail wrote, “and the stench of evil overwhelms us all.”

The case galvanized the British government. The Health Secretary immediately announced an inquiry to examine how Letby’s hospital had failed to protect babies. After Letby refused to attend her sentencing hearing, the Justice Secretary said that he’d work to change the law so that defendants would be required to go to court to be sentenced. Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said, “It’s cowardly that people who commit such horrendous crimes do not face their victims.”

The public conversation rushed forward without much curiosity about an incongruous aspect of the story: Letby appeared to have been a psychologically healthy and happy person. She had many close friends. Her nursing colleagues spoke highly of her care and dedication. A detective with the Cheshire police, which led the investigation, said, “This is completely unprecedented in that there doesn’t seem to be anything to say” about why Letby would kill babies. “There isn’t really anything we have found in her background that’s anything other than normal.”

The judge in her case, James Goss, acknowledged that Letby appeared to have been a “very conscientious, hard working, knowledgeable, confident and professional nurse.” But he also said that she had embarked on a “calculated and cynical campaign of child murder,” and he sentenced her to life, making her only the fourth woman in U.K. history condemned to die in prison.

[...] The N.H.S. has a totemic status in the British psyche—it’s the “closest thing the English have to a religion,” as one politician has put it. One of the last remnants of the postwar social contract, it inspires loyalty and awe even as it has increasingly broken down, partly as a result of years of underfunding. In 2015, the infant-mortality rate in England and Wales rose for the first time in a century. A survey found that two-thirds of the country’s neonatal units did not have enough medical and nursing staff.

[...] A woman came to the hospital after her water broke. She was sent home and told to wait. More than twenty-four hours later, she noticed that the baby was making fewer movements inside her. “I was concerned for infection because I hadn’t been given any antibiotics,” she said later. She returned to the hospital, but she still wasn’t given antibiotics. She felt “forgotten by the staff, really,” she said. Sixty hours after her water broke, she had a C-section. The baby, a girl who was dusky and limp when she was born, should have been treated with antibiotics immediately, doctors later acknowledged, but nearly four hours passed before she was given the medication. The next night, the baby’s oxygen alarm went off. “Called Staff Nurse Letby to help,” a nurse wrote. The baby continued to deteriorate throughout the night and could not be revived. A pathologist found pneumonia in the baby’s lungs and wrote that the infection was likely present at birth.

[...] A team from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health spent two days interviewing people at the Countess [Letby's hospital]. They found that nursing- and medical-staffing levels were inadequate. They also noted that the increased mortality rate in 2015 was not restricted to the neonatal unit. Stillbirths on the maternity ward were elevated, too. [...] The Royal College could find no obvious factors linking the deaths; the report noted that the circumstances on the unit were “not materially different from those which might be found in many other neonatal units within the UK.”

[...] In September, 2022, a month before Letby’s trial began, the Royal Statistical Society published a report titled “Healthcare Serial Killer or Coincidence?” The report had been prompted in part by concerns about two recent cases, one in Italy and one in the Netherlands, in which nurses had been wrongly convicted of murder largely because of a striking association between their shift patterns and the deaths on their wards. The society sent the report to both the Letby prosecution and the defense team. It detailed the dangers of drawing causal conclusions from improbable clusters of events. In the trial of the Dutch nurse, Lucia de Berk, a criminologist had calculated that there was a one-in-three-hundred-and-forty-two-million chance that the deaths were coincidental. But his methodology was faulty; when statisticians looked at the data, they found that the chances were closer to one in fifty.

[...] “Looking for a responsible human—this is what the police are good at,” Schafer [a law professor at the University of Edinburgh who studies the intersection of law and science] told me. “What is not in the police’s remit is finding a systemic problem in an organization like the National Health Service, after decades of underfunding, where you have overworked people cutting little corners with very vulnerable babies who are already in a risk category. It is much more satisfying to say there was a bad person, there was a criminal, than to deal with the outcome of government policy.”

[...] Several months into the trial, Richard Gill, an emeritus professor of mathematics at Leiden University, in the Netherlands, began writing online about his concerns regarding the case. Gill was one of the authors of the Royal Statistical Society report, and in 2006 he had testified before a committee tasked with determining whether to reopen the case of Lucia de Berk. England has strict contempt-of-court laws that prevent the publication of any material that could prejudice legal proceedings. Gill posted a link to a Web site, created by Sarrita Adams, a scientific consultant in California, that detailed flaws in the prosecution’s medical evidence. In July, a detective with the Cheshire police sent letters to Gill and Adams ordering them to stop writing about the case. “The publication of this material puts you at risk of ‘serious consequences’ (which include a sentence of imprisonment),” the letters said. “If you come within the jurisdiction of the court, you may be liable to arrest.”

Letby is housed in a privately run prison west of London, the largest correctional facility for women in Europe. Letters to prisoners are screened, and I don’t know if several letters that I sent ever reached her. One of her lawyers, Richard Thomas, who has represented her since early in the case, said that he would tell Letby that I had been in touch with him, but he ignored my request to share a message with her, instead reminding me of the contempt-of-court order. He told me, “I cannot give any comment on why you cannot communicate” with Letby. Lawyers in England can be sanctioned for making remarks that would undermine confidence in the judicial system. I sent Myers, Letby’s barrister, several messages in the course of nine months, and he always responded with some version of an apology—“the brevity of this response is not intended to be rude in any way”—before saying that he could not talk to me.

[...] Michael Hall, the defense expert, had expected to testify at the trial—he was prepared to point to flaws in the prosecution’s theory of air embolism and to undetected signs of illness in the babies—but he was never called. He was troubled that the trial largely excluded evidence about the treatment of the babies’ mothers; their medical care is inextricably linked to the health of their babies. In the past ten years, the U.K. has had four highly publicized maternity scandals, in which failures of care and supervision led to a large number of newborn deaths.

[...] Johnson, the prosecutor, pushed her to come up with her own explanation for each baby’s deterioration. Yet she wasn’t qualified to provide them. “In general, I don’t think a lot of the babies were cared for on the unit properly,” she offered. “I’m not a medical professional to know exactly what should and shouldn’t have happened with those babies.”

“Do you agree that if certain combinations of these children were attacked then unless there was more than one person attacking them, you have to be the attacker?” Johnson asked at one point.

“No.”

“You don’t agree?”

“No. I’ve not attacked any children.”

Johnson continued, “But if the jury conclude that a certain combination of children were actually attacked by someone, then the shift pattern gives us the answer as to who the attacker was, doesn’t it?”

“No, I don’t agree.”

“You don’t agree. Why don’t you agree?”

“Because just because I was on shift doesn’t mean that I have done anything.”

[...] After a few days of cross-examination, Letby seemed to shut down; she started frequently giving one-word answers, almost whispering. “I’m finding it quite hard to concentrate,” she said.

Johnson repeatedly accused her of lying. “You are a very calculating woman, aren’t you, Lucy Letby?” he said.

“No,” she replied.

He asked, “The reason you tell lies is to try to get sympathy from people, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“You try to get attention from people, don’t you?”

“No.”

“In killing these children, you got quite a lot of attention, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t kill the children.”

[...] Toward the end of the trial, the court received an e-mail from someone who claimed to have overheard one of the jurors at a café saying that jurors had “already made up their minds about her case from the start.” Goss reviewed the complaint but ultimately allowed the juror to continue serving.

He instructed the twelve members of the jury that they could find Letby guilty even if they weren’t “sure of the precise harmful act” she’d committed. [...] The jury deliberated for thirteen days but could not reach a unanimous decision. In early August, one juror dropped out. A few days later, Goss told the jury that he would accept a 10–1 majority verdict.

[...] The public conversation about the case seemed to treat details about poor care on the unit as if they were irrelevant. In his closing statement, Johnson had accused the defense of “gaslighting” the jury by suggesting that the problem was the hospital, not Letby. Defending himself against the accusation, Myers told the jury, “It’s important I make it plain that in no way is this case about the N.H.S. in general.” He assured the jury, “We all feel strongly about the N.H.S. and we are protective of it.” It seemed easier to accept the idea of a sadistic “angel of death” than to look squarely at the fact that families who had trusted the N.H.S. had been betrayed, their faith misplaced.

Since the verdicts, there has been almost no room for critical reflection. At the end of September, a little more than a month after the trial ended, the prosecution announced that it would retry Letby on one of the attempted-murder charges, and a new round of reporting restrictions was promptly put in place. The contempt-of-court rules are intended to preserve the integrity of the legal proceedings, but they also have the effect of suppressing commentary that questions the state’s decisions. In October, The BMJ, the country’s leading medical journal, published a comment from a retired British doctor cautioning against a “fixed view of certainty that justice has been done.” In light of the new reporting restrictions, the journal removed the comment from its Web site, “for legal reasons.” At least six other editorials and comments, which did not question Letby’s guilt, remain on the site.

it looks like a british nurse was wrongfully convicted based on poor evidence and the tabloid media environment. this new yorker article is embargoed in the uk!

I continue to be of the opinion that the no1 best use for rivens is "dumb shit"

Time to sink three forma into a weapon I don't know if I'll even bring to sortie-level things just bc the idea of an orange crit bow is very entertaining for me

"PREGNANT, IF I WANT, WHEN I WANT, HOW I WANT" FRANCE BECOMES FIRST COUNTRY TO EXPLICITLY ENSHRINE ABORTION RIGHTS IN CONSTITUTION The Washington Post | Published March 4, 2024 PARIS — With the endorsement of a specially convened session of lawmakers at Versailles, France on Monday became the first country in the world to explicitly enshrine abortion rights in its constitution — an effort galvanized by the rollback of protections in the United States. The amendment referring to abortion as a “guaranteed freedom” needed the approval of three-fifths of lawmakers — or 512 votes. The vote result on Monday evening was 780 in favor and 72 against. “We’re sending a message to all women: your body belongs to you and no one can decide for you,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal told lawmakers assembled in Versailles. Thousands of Parisians gathered to watch the proceedings live on a giant television screen at Le Parvis des Droits de l’Homme — or “Human Rights Square” — in central Paris, with the Eiffel Tower looming dramatically over the scene. Before the political debate began, the television screen showed a montage of women’s rights campaigners around the world holding signs declaring, “My body is mine” and “My body, my choice.” The sound system blared Aretha Franklin’s “Respect.” Parisians driving by honked their horns. France decriminalized abortion in 1975; abortion is legal for any reason through the 14th week of pregnancy. This amendment won’t change any of that. But while other countries have inferred abortion rights protections from their constitutions, as the U.S. Supreme Court did in Roe v. Wade, France is the first to explicitly codify in its constitution that abortion rights are protected. France is not interpreting its constitution; it is changing its constitution. The outcome was “also a promise for all women who fight all over the world for the right to have autonomy over their bodies — in Argentina, in the United States, in Andorra, in Italy, in Hungary, in Poland,” said lawmaker Mathilde Panot, who had introduced the bill in the National Assembly. “This vote today tells them: your struggle is ours, this victory is yours.” People gather near the Eiffel Tower during the broadcast of the special session of Parliament, in Paris on Monday.

Hmm. Kind of kicking around a MegaSound, MegOP, SoundOP AU where the meeting was a trap and before Orion can speak Megatronus is taken captive and executed in front of him and propaganda is put up about him attacking first. Soundwave is convinced Orion betrayed them amd is being "rewarded" in the clutches of the Prime's palace. So he wants to kill him. Instead he finds a near feral with grief and thoroughly worldview shattered Orion Pax who joins him in leading the Decepticons and drags his people with him.

Megatron the Martyr and Orion Pax puically broadcasting the truth and a recording of his memories just really galvanizes everything.

Megatronus haunts the narrative amd slowly Soundwave, who had distrusted and disliked Orion, closes closer to someone who understands his grief and as his co-leader he can be honest around despite and because of how often they argue vehemently and call each other out on both their prejudices.

I mostly have vibes now but I have been wanting to reread the Aligned books and rewatch.

Damn

Damn

Interesting

I'm sure this changes how Soundwave views Orion, and this so changes the dynamic of decepticon command in this universe

Because, if I know tfp Soundwave pre-war, of course he immediately suspected the worst of Ori

I've never read the Aligned books, but I've went through tfwiki so many times I have an 💖idea💖 what goes down

Here you go, two questions: What is your opinion on Bevin (Kevin x Ben)? And who is your favorite Ben 10 character?

Bevin is a ship that I really like, I love the dynamic of enemies who become friends and then lovers (I wish people would write better fics about them). Personally, I like having Gwen in the middle, I think the idea of ​​them being a loving trio is really fun.

My favorite character will always be Albedo, he is my sweet baby and I have loved him since I was a child, no one will convince me that he wasn't very naive and sweet in UAF although I also love his chaotic phase in OV (HE DESERVED MORE 😭 )

Not ironically, this is Albedo at his first opportunity to sow chaos on Galvan Prime:

can i ask what the general lore for your au is? love me some good lore

I think I’ve done a pitch outline before that’s covered some of this, but I can give you the basic background for reference! (Tumblr page search seems a bit broken the further back you get anyway)

Cybertron is an alien planet with a long history of strife. Following the reign of the Quintessons, a hostile and colonial alien species, and their eventual ousting, the remnants of a military-industrial state and its tyrannical caste system left only a matter of time before massive conflict erupted.

Cybertron: The original home planet of the Cybertronians, and the current territory of the Autobots. Cybertron is a very ancient planet formed around the remnants of an enormous organic “ancestor,” whose blood and other material is extracted for use as food. This organic material is vital to the survival of all Cybertronians, and the most important component, Energon, is extremely highly coveted. It can be found sparingly in other parts of the universe (notably other early established Cybertronian space colonies), but without access to the original ancestor, or its sparsely documented relatives and protégé, it is unrenewable, which would inevitably mark the end of the Cybertronian race. Extensive industrialization on a global scale made Energon sparse, and an exhaustive global war only exacerbated this scarcity.

The Decepticons: Made up primarily of the former lower castes of Cybertron, the Decepticons are a mish-mash group of revolutionary mercenaries, banded together to end the tyrannical rule of Cybertron. Although they were originally known as the Ascenticons, they gained the derogatory name after their defacto “leader,” Megatron, permanently maimed her rival for the primacy, Optimus, during a political demonstration that turned violent. Optimus was famously left without a lower jaw, and the brutal scuffle was used to galvanize moderates against the perceived extremity of the group.

Now, having been largely driven off of Cybertron after a battle which devastated both sides., the fractured branches of the Decepticons struggle to find places they can recoup and regather amid the cosmos. Their primary squad, team Alpha, is currently drifting in space, eagerly anticipating the day it can find the resources to reestablish communication with what remains of the Decepticon army.

The Autobots: A faction formed out of the former military of Cybertron and its allies. Figureheaded by the stoic and personable Optimus Prime, the Autobots barely hold onto control of Cybertron, and seek to persist against the Decepticons’ demands for radical reconstruction. Now made up of many of Cybertronian’s youth, plenty of Autobot soldiers aren’t fully aware of what they’re fighting for, and barely retain memories of life before the war. If the current course of the war continues, they hope to drive the Decepticons out of anywhere they’ve hidden until they surrender and concede.

The Present: With impassible stakes for everyone involved, if they want any hope of surviving and reclaiming Cybertron, the Decepticons must do the impossible: overcome their many differences and work as a team. Our story starts in the far reaches of space, where Decepticon Team Alpha is searching for resources and a temporary residence where they can begin to reestablish communication with their allies.

The members of Team Alpha include:

Megatron: the melancholic leader, whose reputation does not match her lethargic withdrawal.

Starscream: the second in command with a penchant for mutiny. Her disloyalty is kept a secret, for both Megatron’s sake and Starscream’s.

Soundwave: the enigmatic and cynically self-important communications officer and third in command. Their speciality is espionage and information control, though they haven’t seen much of it recently.

Lockdown: former bounty hunter turned medic. this mean-looking ‘Con might not be certified, but in a pinch, he’ll patch you up—by any means necessary.

Knockout: the only thing worse than a mad doctor is his lackadaisical and negligent assistant. Knockout doesn’t really believe the Decepticons will win, but his hate for the Autobots is stronger than his realism.

Breakdown: a bruiser-in-training rescued from a docked Decepticon warship. He and Blitzwing were the only trainees who survived being stasis fried. Albeit a strong and capable fighter, this ‘Con doesn’t really have the “Deception grit” yet.

Blitzwing: Breakdown’s fellow soldier. Though she was also trained to be a mercenary, Blitzwing lacks a lot of the natural talent for fighting Breakdown has. Her unrecognized skill lies in weaponsmithing, though Starscream hopes to make a competent combatant out of her yet.

Ravage: don’t be fooled—this weapon class Minicon only looks like a Cybercat. The eldest of Decepticon team alpha, this odd bot gave up his Cybertronian appearance to live out the laid back life of a lazy mechanimal. His powerful spark makes him Megatron’s weapon of choice.

I'm getting realy worried that ferrari made the wrong choice by signing Hamilton. He doesnt seem at his usual level

nah come on, you guys have short memories and focus too much on stats that are taken out of context. he literally had a brilliant drive just two weeks ago in jeddah!

maybe he isn't prime hamilton, but experience and talent don't vanish overnight on that level. it's also worth considering that he's in a pretty unusual (i would almost say unique) situation right now. to come back with increasingly disappointing cars after something as tough to swallow as abu dhabi 2021 must've felt genuinely horrible. i think he's just completely lost confidence in the team and isn't feeling at all motivated atp. and it's not like russell is out there getting wins while he's languishing in p12 or something – the car is the main problem.

i'm sure a change of scenery can and will galvanize him. and if ferrari can deliver a good car and we get to a point when he can smell the blood in the water... well, there is no doubt in my mind that he still has a lot to give

I made this a while back for an AU a Friend and I are making, but here’s Malware and Ben! They’re form an AU where Ben was raised on Galvan Prime. For context, Malware’s DNA was fixed before he could do any uh, murder lol. But he and Ben become like brothers. Ben’s a little more cynical in this AU, being more easily irritated and hot headed. He’s still sassy tho lol. 

How would the stuff with Albedo work with Omni-Ben? He isn't actually human, so how does getting stuck as a copy of Ben work? Just his human form until UA?

Albedo is in the series a little earlier, and stays galvan for a long time. He was introduced as Azmuth's new assistant when he returned to Galvan Prime, and Ben met him when visiting. Ben liked him, but it turned out Albedo did not enjoy the idea of Ben. He couldn't understand why Azmuth would let Ben walk around with no restrictions, heck, not even have Ben on Galvan Prime 24/7, just leaving him to do whatever on earth. He doesn't believe Ben is a living creature, just advance AI that should have more rules around them. He tries making comments to Azmuth about it, but Azmuth doesn't listen in the slightest. Things ended up coming to heads when Ben was having a mild glitch due to an update, and came to see Azmuth to help fix it. Nothing serious. Azmuth was busy at the time, so let Albedo go and help him. The process require Ben to be offline, and while he was, Albedo almost wiped him of his memories, in hopes to turn him back into a regular AI. Azmuth thankfully caught him, and right away booted Albedo off of Galvan Prime for trying to harm his son. Ben, as you can imagine, was very confused when he woke up. After that, Albedo basically made it his goal to prove Azmuth wrong, and keeps going on about how Ben is a danger, shouldn't have so much free will, and that does lead to him making his own omnitrix after painfully removing some parts of Ben at one point. However, his watch is still linked with Ben, who has human DNA as his base form, so this leads to Albedo being the human Albedo we all know and love. Ben hopes that maybe being a similar form to Ben will have Albedo see some reason, but it seems to have made matters worse.

some headcannons about the little chills getting lost and ending up on Azmuth's planet?

Ooh, I like this! There's quite a lot of potential here.

This is what I thought of:

I imagine one of Azmuth's lab hands would come to him, telling him there's a situation he needs to tend to. They take him to where they're keeping the Little Chills, and his annoyance turns to interest. Young Necrofriggians don't tend to stray far from their home planet, so he's wondering why they're on Galvan Prime of all places.

Azmuth has done a lot of research on many species in the galaxy, so he knows how to take care of them just fine without hurting them or anything.

Out of curiosity, he decides to run some tests, hoping to find some information on their parent so he can return them.

Imagine his surprise when the DNA matches exactly with the Necrofriggian sample in the Omnitrix.

He puts two and two together pretty quick and calls up Ben.

"Come get your spawn, please."

Ben's confused as hell and mortified at the same time.

Rook is ecstatic bc he loves he kids and wants to see them.

Honestly I need something someday where Cooper or Mike finds out about the whole incident on Galvan Prime. Just, somebody needs to get all incredulous about "all the focus you put on keeping Kevin from being killed, all the work we went through, just so you could shove him into freefall later?!?!!?"

Seeing the “cerebrocrustaceans are highly territorial” headcanon slowly start to pick up more steam (albeit with a split as to whether they’re so cliquey and ride-or-die they view everyone who isn’t in their in-group as a potential threat until they’ve made it abundantly clear that they mean no harm or if they despise any sort of group collaboration unless it’s absolutely, positively necessary) makes me wonder if it’s a common stereotype by the galactic audience to view them as being massive pricks to everyone they meet. Like, oh, everyone on Encephalonus-IV hates each other’s guts and they’re incessantly rude to anyone and everyone they come across! They’re so petty and envious they can’t stand the thought of anyone being better at them than anything and delight in the suffering and misfortune of people they don’t like! They fly into murderous rages if a galvan so much as breathes on them, and if they weren’t such cowards, they’d nuke Galvan Prime into oblivion only to immediately start yet another rivalry with some other species for one reason or another!

Hah! Doesn’t help their case that Dr Psychobos became very well known thanks to the super famous superhero Ben 10!

But no yeah with galvans being the cold detached sort of smart, especially with their prevalence in intergalactic relationships (you don’t become the smartest being in not one but multiple galaxies by sitting alone in your room), what comparatively little interaction to the wider galactic sphere cerebrocrustaceans have has more expectations than if the galvans were more subtle in their influence. If you’ve heard how much of an grumpy old man scientist the First Thinker is, especially when you hear about one of his creations striking out against him due to neglect, well you’ve already started to get the picture of an isolated workspace that no one dares interrupt.

So then you come face to face with a snappy cerebrocrustacean scientist who’s rude, direct, and hovering over your shoulder making sure you don’t fuck up, well you won’t really find many cases of neglect when everything you do is under scrutiny. I guess the difference between my headcanon and @ohyeahben10 ‘s headcanon would be if you can endure the territorial… hostility may not be the right word, the fact that you’re in the same space as a cerebrocrustacean at work is already more than what they’d typically give, in my headcanon sphere you could potentially get past that barrier and transition from outgroup to ingroup; I don’t know exactly what’s in ohyeah’s head but I assume given his headcanons she might say that you practically could never get on a cerebrocrustacean’s good side, or at least not as close as an ingroup would suggest-

Either or, it’s gonna leave a bad first impression, and that is how the stereotype for being prickish is so widespread. Potentially, if a notable cerebrocrustacean scientist works intergalactically, the stereotype may narrow to Encephalonus IV having a very dickish social culture.

Love the art. Can't wait to see your version of the Plumbers' Kids (and Kevin's transformation), but it got me thinking. I know you retconned the Rooter retcon, in that they're not genetically modified hybrids, but how did they come to be?

It's hard to imagine an osmosian and a human creating an offspring considering they're completely different species, let alone a tetramand or a pyronite.

I have a whole system behind hybrids in Ben 10. For starters, quite a few aliens can have kids with each other naturally if they are close enough. So a tetramand and human, or even a kineceleran and human, can have kids, they just often have to be wary of issues that could arise. But the more unnatural a pairing is, the harder to have a kid is naturally, to the point that you get cases where they can't have a kid naturally. But there are many facilities that help via science to help parents have kids if they can't naturally. This is often taking the parents gamete cells, and raising the baby in a test tube like environment so they can control the entire process from the start, sometimes having to select specific genes to make sure the kid can live a healthy life. One of the most successful facilities is on Galvan Prime, run by a galvan doctor named Doctor Geno, she's a friend of Azmuth's sister. Of course there are limits to what aliens can have kids with each other, but as science grows each day, some things that were thought to be impossible have become possible, so you never know what could be made next. Hybrids also seem to function a 70/30 percent rule, in that they take after one species gene more than the other. E.g Helen is more kineceleran than human. Hybrids can only be two things as well, you can't get a big mix of many aliens in one alien. Though there are some that break these rules, like anodites and osmosians due to how their genetics work. So in terms of the plumber kids, ones like Helen and Manny were naturally made, though Alan was made via the science route when his parents went to one of these facilities. In terms of Kevin, since you mentioned osmosians, they behave more by inheriting powers. Due to osmosian having DNA absorption, it means a lot of them are able to have kids with many races, but their hybrids don't look like them. They will always look like the alien species their other parent is, beyond maybe getting minor things like eye or hair colour. What the kids inherit is the matter and energy absorption powers, though not really the DNA absorption (unless the omnitrix is involved lol). So they're kind of a changeling vibe with them. So Kevin looks entirely human, but as a hybrid as the powers.