I'm only 10% into guards but I need a little poll as a tread

Inherit the Stars Cover Art by Darrell Sweet

Inherit the Stars by James P. Hogan (1977)

Art by Darrell K. Sweet

Kojima on the setup of Inherit the Stars

At its heart, it’s a completely new kind of puzzle mystery stemming from a question —Why is a dead body here?— that doesn’t quite fit into a traditional whodunit, whydunit, or howdunit. A corpse in a red spacesuit is discovered on the surface of the moon. Dr. Victor Hunt, a nuclear physicist, is presented with an image of the corpse along with the following explanation:

“That is the body. I’ll answer some of the more obvious questions before you ask. First — no, we don’t know who he is —or was— so we call him Charlie. Second — no, we don’t know for sure what killed him. Third — no, we don’t know where he came from.” “Let me say that from what little we do know so far, we can state one or two things with certainty. First, Charlie did not come from any of the bases established to date on Luna. Furthermore” —Caldwell’s voice slowed to an ominous rumble— “he did not originate from any nation of the world as we know it today. In fact, it is by no means certain that he originated from this planet at all!” […] “You see, gentlemen — Charlie died over fifty thousand years ago!”

How about that? I’m not sure if any other novel has so excellent a setup and as surprising a plot. —Hideo Kojima, The Creative Gene (2011)

“Charlie”

Ink on paper

By me

INHERIT THE STARS: RiverClan Leadership Inherit The Stars is a discord Warrior Cats Rp server based on the Canon Clans, with an original setting, plot, and clan history. The character creation features a basis in D&D system stats, and Roleplay system features both ooc-chat style messaging and originally designed dice rolling mechanics. The server is 16+ and open for all to join. Join here at: https://discord.gg/ESJZU7Wu RiverClan has recently entered a new era of peace through the guidance of Cloudstar. After moons suffering from raids via ShadowClan, Cloudstar made the ultimate sacrifice in giving a piece of territory over to the newly appointed Wildstar as an olive-branch, forming a strong new alliance with their former enemy. Recently, the other leadership positions have been replaced, as the elder deputy Rowanspring and elder medicine cat Leafshade, stepped down into retirement.  Replacing them is the father-son pair, Redstorm and Tigerbelly. Tigerbelly, a young warrior who has served as a close friend to Cloudstar for moons. While he’s suffered his own loses, including a dear love of his in Sunsplash, he has strived forward as a proud warrior of his Clan. Tigerbelly is composed and dedicated, and ready to serve as deputy, though the position did come as an honor and shock to him.  Redstorm, Tigerbelly’s father, was formerly a senior warrior of RiverClan. Having lived through both the floods, and even the beginning of the raids, Redstorm has known great loses during his lifetime. Cloudstar came as a blessing to the clan in Redstorm’s eyes, and the gruff warrior settled into peace, though not without a bit of struggle. Fatigued by his duties, and inspired by his own newly found faith, Redstorm stepped in to the mantle of Medicine Cat, much to the shock of his clanmates. Tigerbelly Credit: Exonovus

pride ych #2 for my friend

The Midi-chlorian essay only a few asked

(or, How Is Anakin Skywalker a walking biological horror)

So I made this post and a few were actually interested, also i needed to write down all of this or I wouldn't be able to sleep.

The way I went just from "hahaha they're just mitochondria before becoming forced symbionts and losing all autonomy" to the Medical Horror that would be Anakin Skywalker .

Let me explain, going from this theory, let me tell you that the average mammal cell can have between 800 to 2000 mitochondria. In Star Wars we're told that the average living being, has 2500 midi-chlorians per cell. The difference isn't that big, so we can assume that mid-chlorians are smaller than our real-life mitochondria, and it would make sense since the mitochondria have the best possible living conditions, whereas midi-chlorians, if they're free-life bacteria (as in, they aren't forced to live in the cells of another being) it would make sense if they're just smaller, let's say, sneaky, to increment their chances at living.

So Midi-chlroains don't just produce ATP, Force sensitives have a minimum of 4000-5000 midi-chlorians per cell. That's...a big number, but not very horrific. See, the amount of mitochondria is related to how much energy the organic tissue requires. The cells of muscular tissue and neurons are the ones with the highest mitochondria count. Also the mitochondria in the neurons are mobile and flexible, because just thinking burns ATP.

We can assume that using The Force burns insane amounts of ATP, so I assume it makes sense for Force Sensitives to have big amounts of Midi-chlorians. But! The problem with this is that we're told that the Midi-chlorians are attracted to the force, not born within it. But any multicelullar organism (with a few exceptions) need the mitochondria. Mitochondria have their own ADN, and they're always inherited from the mother, so we can assume that there's two different types of midi-chlorians: The ones any normal being borns with, and the ones that get attracted because of the baby's force potential. Either that, or both the mithocondria and the midi-chlorians exist simultaneously.

Which means that Jedi (or anyone who wants to know, really) would need to take several blood tests for midi-chlorians count. Because a newborns midi-chlorian count wouldn't be the same through a babie's infancy. UNLESS...The midi-chlorian infection (yes, i'm calling it that) ocurrs already since the pregnancy, if the force is strong enough for a fetus to be a possible force sensitive in the future, then I guess the midi-chlorians would get attracted to the parent during the pregnancy as well.

WHICH BTW, IT FITS WITH PADMÉ BECOMING FORCE SENSITIVE, at least for a while, like the discarded ROTS concepts. But also, would mean, that poor Shmi became a hella strong force-sensitive person as well, at least for a while.

And it would be a biological advantage if we take this route, because it would possibly make the pregnant being stronger and with a higher supply of energy.

It also explains why the jedi would only take a single blood test when the force sensitive is just a baby, because the infection is already settled. It can also be argued, that any baby born with a fairly high amount of midi-chlorians (like the 4000 per cell count minimum) would only increase, if only slightly, as the force sensitive grows because the midi-chlorians will get attracted regardless.

There must be a limit, or more like, a balance, that the midi-chlorian and the force potential of the individual met. As in, there's just enough force within the individual for a certain number of midi-chlorian, and all of this is probably decided already during the fetus formation or very early on the baby's life.

Now, Anakin...would be an abomination. Because his cells are so full of midi-chlorians, that it's scary to think how the cells aren't exploding or downright giving malfunctions to the rest of the cellular organelles.

If we go by the route of "midi-chlorians start infecting the force sensitive host mother during pregnancy" it means there were high chances of a misscarriage or an incompatibility between Shmi and Anakin, because holy cow, Anakin is just too much.

But you know what also, it could potentially mean? That Padmé's pregnancy was a risky one, fron the start -slowly nods-. Luke and Leia's force potential was lower than Anakin's, but there's still a lot to unpack there in terms of compatibility. We are never given the exact count of midichlorian count for the twins, but let's pretend it was low enough for Padmé to not inmediatly have a miscarriage. That, and also, maybe, Padmé isn't strong in the force to manipulate it, but maybe just close enough for the pregnancy to be carried to term, let's say, her midi-chlorian count is 3900, close enough.

Something similar with Shmi, I'm taking for granted that she also had a difficult and risky pregnancy (on top of it being a pregnancy she had no agency). It becomes worse because, unlike the twins, Anakin is just...50% human. The only possible genes Anakin has are from Shmi. So he's probably...genetically, almost a clone of Shmi but with a massive infection of Midi-chlorians (yes, this implies that Anakin has homogametic sex chromosomes, aka XX, there's no other possible explanation because he literally only has Shmi's genes to work with!).

But he's Space Jesus, though,so let's pretend that the "no father genes" helped with this and allowed Anakin to grow into a...normal-ish baby despite it all.

Midi-chlorians must be extremelly small, closer to the size of a virus in this case, viruses vary on size and the way they infect the cells is by hijacking the nucleus, which then can produce more viruses instead of its own proteins. This can vary anywhere between a production of 50.000 to 100.000 viruses produced by infected cells.

Which, btw, still fits somewhat with the mitochondria theory, because mitochondrias are believed to have been from a genus of bacteria called Rickettsia, which used to be believed to be the in-between of Viruses and Bacteria due their small size and extreme endosymbiotism.

Still, we aren't even told how many midi-chlorians Anakin had, just that it was over 20.000 and thus the chart couldn't even register it. Even if we're just counting 21.000 midi-chlorians per cell, that's...a lot. Even if the relationship is symbiotic and positive in nature, that's excessive, an infected cell will usually die faster. So Anakin's cellular death must be on record time.

The life span of a cell varies highly depending of the type of cells, white cells can live about 2 days, others about 5, and then there's others that live about 6 years in average.

Forget all of that, Anakin's cells die anywhere between a few hours and a week. Which also means a super fast regeneration and healing (Hey! that tracks, that's how he didn't die even though he should have, on several ocassions).

But that's not the only problem here, the production of energy is strong with this one, too strong. Again this should make the cells burst due too much ATP because of an increase on osmotic pressure. Anakin is producing so much damn ATP (which we can assume it becomes glycogen stored in muscles and fat tissue) his need to be active and just doing something skyrockets, he might as well be the equivalent of being high on meth since birth.

The accelerated cellular formation and death, gives me the horrific idea that Anakin was probably one of these babies that are born premature, but also that he probably was bron with, idk, teeth and already lots of hair. Maybe that's also why he got so tall of all sudden, lots of cellular grow, huh.

Anakin seems to age normally by what are we given by canon. So despite it all, his life-span or aging doesn't seem to be compromised, this is probably because of how strong he is with the Force. In the sense that...he needs the midi-chlorians to handle this much power, but he also needs the force to handle with that many midi-chlorians, otherwise he would have been already born dead.

See, ageing has a lot to do with stem cells. Anakin's stem cells need to be highly prolific and potent to keep cellular division happening at such a high rate, we can infer that any force sensitive has potent stem cells, so the force must inherently affect stem cells. So Anakin's stem cells must be monstruosities in efficiency. If Anakin donated stem cells to someone else, that person would either have a strong inhumne reaction against them or they would get some of the worst cancer ever seen. Again I'm no expert, but the fact Anakin doesn't develop cancer at all as soon as he was born is already impressive. The rate in which Anakin's cells die must be ridiculous, even has a baby, he must have required tons of energy and endure lots of stress which...tracks. The fact he gets electroshocked, burned, gravely wounded or whatever every week or so, must help him to no develop some cancer, which is a bit funny.

But it would also mean he can go long periods of time without eating or resting like...a normal human. Not saying that he doesn't need it, though, but his neural activity and use of the force must be high at all times to burn out that much energy. Theoretically, the production of glycose and glycogen helps him through long periods without sleep or food so he doesn't get long-term damage, or at the very least the ability to keep going, like I said, maybe is like being on drugs all the time; there's still the need to sleep and eat, but he can push his body to keep surviving beyond what's considered normal without having long-term damage. (Don't get happy, this isn't taking into account all of the stuff that happens to him, lol)

The balance between burning too much energy and not burning enough must be insane as well. As Vader, a lot of this probably watered down because all of his energy must be saved for...you know, surviving all the torture. But as a young teen/man amist war? Oh boy.

I'm not an expert, but I'm theorizing that putting Anakin in an induced sleeep must be...fricking hard. Painkillers that work on him? fricking hard. Anesthesia? Probably the same used for big animals, he must be insane and awful for a doctor to work with! Just imagine it, he probably gets injured in such a way that would have anyone else fall unconscious, but Anakin remains awake and with tremendous amounts of adrenaline triggered by a stress response sustented by the extreme amounts of energy that the midichlorians produce.

When it happens in the central nervious system, excess of ATP can produce neuronal dysfunction. In fact, many degenerative mental illnesses have a lot to do with a malfunction of the mitochondrias. There's a corelation also with neurodivergency sometimes, like autism or ADHD. I will leave it there.

And with all of this...I also conclude that Anakin, on general basis, doesn't like sugary things and doesn't even rationalize why, but is because he has already enough glycose. Having something sugary probably gives him a headache.

God what has Star Wars done to me.

I want to see the indomitable human spirit but instead of killing the alien they are offering a hand to help the alien from falling, the one hand they have left after dragging their injured body over to the edge of the cliff. Using the last of their energy to assist.

The indomitable human spirit is putting your body in the way to save a small creature or alien child from harm. Willingness to care combined with that willingness to die for the greater good.

The indomitable human spirit can be terrifying, but why don't we make it awe inspiring instead. An outstretched hand instead of a pointed gun or weapon.

i looooove pokémon npcs whose team members subtly imply something about them that's never touched upon in the story or at least never outright said. i love villains having friendship evos. i love trainers who commit hard to one aesthetic or vibe with their team (beyond simply sharing a type) and i love it even better when there's one random exception especially if that's their ace. i love when later down the line someone boxes the cute fun soft baby pokémon they used to have in favor of a seemingly stronger or scarier one to show that they're getting serious. i love when they have a pokémon that's difficult to get and raises lots of questions about them. i love it when the lore behind a pokémon fits the character to a T and i love it even better when it appears to contradict them. give me the story-gameplay harmony but better yet give me what appears to be story-gameplay dissonance but might actually have implications if we're willing to dive deep into it

ouppys and kibbys

dohan is really out here living in a high stakes thriller while jihan and ajeong try out an enemies to lover romcom

No Order 66 AU where Anakin leaves the Order after the war ends and he and Padme end up retiring to Naboo to try to raise the twins together, but neither of them ends up feeling particularly satisfied with life on Naboo (for Anakin it just doesn't give him any purpose the way he desperately needs and for Padme it's always been this perfect rosy dream and reality doesn't measure up), so they end up leaving the twins behind a lot so they can pursue other things and are pretty absentee parents in general. They mostly end up getting raised by Padme's parents instead, and while they're perfectly good guardians for the twins and raise them kindly and love them a lot, there's always an obvious elephant in the room regarding who ISN'T there.

This causes a bit of a rift between Luke and Leia because while Luke is trying to keep the peace and give their parents the benefit of the doubt as he moves on and figures out his own life with what he DOES have, Leia is less willing to just forgive and forget.

Luke ends up becoming a pilot working for the royal palace for a while, but Leia goes into politics (something she'd entered while younger because it's what her mother did and she'd been hoping it would get Padme's attention and bring the two of them closer; it didn't work out that way at all and now Leia's sticking with it at least partly to spite Padme) as an aide for her cousin Pooja who is now Senator of Naboo.

And it's here, once she finally makes it to Coruscant and starts working in the Senate, that Leia meets Bail Organa, still working as Senator of Alderaan. The two of them click IMMEDIATELY and Bail ends up becoming Leia's mentor in politics, as well as the person who actually introduces her to the Jedi themselves. Anakin and Padme had never really bothered to do so, both because they were so rarely around, but also because they had chosen not to give Luke and Leia to the Temple and decided at that point that it would be easier to keep the twins and the Jedi separate. Bail of course has no such compunctions and even if he knew about Anakin and Padme's feelings on the matter, I imagine he'd find ways to allow Leia to accidentally bump into some of the Jedi while she was on Coruscant. If he just so happens to double book himself for lunch with both Leia and Obi-Wan, it's hardly anything malicious and they may as well all eat together!

Leia finally feels like she has a parent who gives a damn about her, someone who acts like a parent to her, the parent she's always wanted. Her grandparents had always been incredibly kind and they obviously had to do a lot of parenting, but they'd always been very strict about making sure the twins saw them as GRANDPARENTS and not their actual parents, which just make the absence of their parents that much more obvious and painful. But with Bail, she's finally got someone who doesn't care that Anakin and Padme aren't there and doesn't feel the need to create a wall between them for Anakin and Padme's sake. Bail takes her under his wing, teaches her everything she knows, allows her to explore things she'd never been allowed to explore before, connects her to even more people who can help her understand herself better than she's ever been able to before. THIS is what a parent was supposed to do for her and she knows it, THIS is what selfless love looks like from a parent and she THRIVES under it for the first time in her life.

She eventually decides not to stay on as Pooja's aide because she has no real desire to become a senator for Naboo at any point, but she IS good at politics and desperately does want to help people any way she can, so she starts up some sort of organization of her own to help people around the galaxy (and connects it to the Jedi because deep down she KNOWS she was supposed to be one of them even though that path is now closed to her). But she doesn't go back to Naboo, she doesn't make her home on her mother's home planet.

She goes to Alderaan instead. And this time, she gets to stay there for the rest of her life.

Headcanon du jour: What if most Vulcan’s aren’t massively bigoted space racists?

The majority Vulcans we’ve met have essentially been Vulcan Royalty. You know, the institution which, here on Earth, is notorious for being bigoted, backwards, and inbred. 

Tuvok and T’Lynn aren’t like that. 

But then, they’re not direct descendants of Surak, son of a galactically famous ambassador, born and raised in the capital city of Shi’Khar, heirs to a massive estate on the homeworld, and educated in schools where admission to the elite Vulcan Science Academy is taken for granted. 

Spock is the adult Vulcan equivalent of Prince Archie, if Harry hadn’t left The Institution.

Of COURSE we get flashbacks of Vulcan kids bullying Spock! The Learning Center is equivalent to the sort of British Boarding School where they sent King Charles. These places are meant to break kids. They’re all about exclusivity and maintaining the elite status quo. After all, maintaining tradition is only logical, and holy shit do Vulcans love their rituals - even if those rituals include hardcore school bullying. 

Look at how the British royal family and media treat Meghan Markle. Now look at how all the Vulcans in Spock’s orbit treat Amanda Grayson. If Amanda had married a nice Vulcan biologist somewhere out in the colonies no one would have cared, but no, she married the single most high profile Vulcan Royalty of his generation. Plenty of Vulcans were no doubt jealous she snatched up that prize of a bondmate, then masked it as criticizing his choice for being “illogical in the extreme.” 

I like to think that most Vulcans are just out there living their best IDIC lives. 

Meanwhile, the S’chn T’gai family is out there living by Royalty Rules in everything they do. 

Mutiny? Pshaw. Our great grandmother T’Pau knows a guy who knows a guy who will make the paperwork disappear. Stealing a ship? Well, the family could buy it outright, but that would be gauche. Starting a cult? Sybok is a direct descendant of Surak himself. Who better to lead a revolution?

Brent Spiner as Dr. Arik Soong STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE (2001-2005) — Season 4

Golden Hour (+ lineart below cut)

I took a picture of the lines for once and did some basic crappy photo editing on my phone, so you could probably print this out and use it as a coloring page or something if you so wish lol. Do with it what you will.