oh, i am so enamored with the way the lesson of the velveteen rabbit rings true in our modern life. i love that we name our spaceships and write love poems to old buildings. i love that we all cried about the mars rover, that we made her so real that she was no longer a machine but a friend, a companion, a hero.
i love that we become attached to certain mugs, spoons, mason jars. that we develop a strange protective love-hate of our tablets, that we feel weirdly reverent about our new notebook. we name our cars silly things like the crab shack and call our favorite whisk attachment the one great destroyer.
there's a dog statue at my local park that has a golden back and golden head from how often people have pet it. at my college campus, people love an ugly little pointless sculpture we call bacon pants or bacon legs. we assign personalities to fountains, parks, laptops.
i love that our basic instinct is to include others in our community, even where there isn't a real community to speak of. that we love things, even when they cannot physically love us back - for us, the exchange isn't what's important. we give our heart to things so entirely that the thing begins to, in its own way, have its own heart.
the last transmission from the mars rover was not words; it was data. nevertheless, someone translated for her. my battery is low and it's getting dark. they made her last words a poem. they looked at data and saw a soul, a divine spark.
i keep thinking about the first AI born truly free-thinking. i keep thinking about the way scientists and artists talk about their work. how their eyes light up and their hands start moving, how even when they're flat broke and confused and the coding isn't working - there's this love of the thing. i keep thinking that whatever is being born into this new world will be born here on purpose, over a long time, with great energy. that when it arrives, the first thing it will know is most likely the hands of a creator delighted, overcome.
that we made it in our image. that the image we wrote was one of human compassion within ingenuity. that we couldn't make this thing without it being a labor of real-and-true: love.
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Clone^2 danny headcanons and/or facts that i wanted to expand on but didn't have the motivation or inspiration to write a ficlet about. Ultimately most of these are ideas that already exist in canon clone^2 but are only now being expanded on/explored/stated specifically.
Because I'm procrasinating cfau and passively thinking about clone danny and damian again.
1 - As he's liminal, Danny generates his own ectoplasm. He generates it at a slower rate than the casual ghost but faster than the average liminal. It's what gives him an ecto-signature and results in him triggering his parents' weapons and ecto-sensors.
The ectoplasm he generates actually has a use, and he tends to burn through his supply while he's fighting because of all the physical energy he spends + the use of his scary eyes requires (albeit really minor amounts of) ectoplasm to use. It also has health benefits, as using his ectoplasm keeps his heartbeat steady and lessens the risk of his arrhythmia flaring up due to all of his physical activity and adrenaline.
It does happen occasionally that he uses up more ectoplasm than he can replace, and this has the expected negative effects on his health as all that adrenaline and stress catches up to his heart without a buffer to mitigate it. He carries a canteen full of diluted ectoplasm with him in order to give his system the boost it needs in order to stabilize itself, which he can usually tell when he needs due to excessive fatigue/chest pains/dizziness/other arrhythmia symptoms he gets that means he's low on ectoplasm.
2 - Danny's arrhythmia is a form of bradycardia (which is a slower heartbeat) -- what type? Unspecified / Unknown thanks to it being ectoplasmic in nature.
3 - In that same breath, Danny also has to burn that ectoplasm off in some form or another because if he doesn't it builds up and causes him the same issues as if he was too low. It also causes him to become more emotionally volatile, restless, irritable, overstimulated, etc, which the stress of that then makes his heart condition worsen. If too much ectoplasm builds up, it'll cause a physical electrical shock/shortage. This is rare however, and usually is the equivalent of giving someone a painful static shock. At best it makes the lights flicker or technology fritz out for a few seconds.
While it doesn't have much effect on the physical world, it does expend a good chunk of ectoplasm. Think like dumping out a heavy bucket of water that you've been carrying for a while, or getting into a hot shower after being outside in the cold for hours. It's emotionally draining but very relieving.
4 - Danny can replenish ectoplasm or generate ectoplasm faster by resting, eating, consuming other ectoplasm (fastest), fulfilling his interests / doing things that makes him happy, or by being exposed to high amounts of ectoplasm in the area. He can also rapidly generate it by being in a volatile emotional state, but that drains ectoplasm almost as quickly, and runs the risk of causing flare ups in his arrhythmia.
5 - this is actually canon to the au but I figured it wouldn't hurt to expand more on it / clarify / confirm, but Danny post-Damian has chronic pain in his hands from the nerve damage he sustained. He has daily physical therapy exercises he's supposed to do that he does in the mornings/evenings and whenever his hands hurt/feel stiff. He wears compression gloves in his day-to-day life and gets Sam and Tucker's help to brainstorm ideas about how to make compression gloves for Phantom that can include his knuckledusters. His grip and hand strength is weakened.
He has bad hand days where his hands hurt more than usual. This can happen at random, but is more common after he's overused/strained his hands either the day before or earlier in the day. His fingers stiffen up for similar reasons, and he gets tremors. It's happened before where (for example) he's braiding his hair and unbraiding it, only to need someone else to finish the braid because his fingers stiffened up and don't want to work like he wants them to.
Massages, heat, pressure, etc. helps soothe the pain, and since Danny's a fidgety person his friends and family can usually tell when he has a flare up because any hand movements he was doing prior ceased/slowed suddenly, or he starts massaging his hands / stretching out his fingers.
Damian very stubbornly insists on massaging his hands for him when this happens, he has a lot of intense guilt for being the reason for Danny's chronic pain so he wants to alleviate it in anyway he can.
6 - Danny has what I like to call "Bruce-isms", a word I came up with just now that means he has Bruce Wayne mannerisms that come from the fact that he's still Bruce's clone. A Nature vs. Nurture thing. His Bruce-isms include the Bruce Grunts Of Ambiguous Tonal Meaning ("hm", "hrm", "hn"), his workaholism, his paranoia (on a milder scale), etc. They're small, relatively non-defining things that are quirks but don't make up his personality.
He's got what Sam and Tucker like to call "Bruce Wayne Moments" which are essentially Bruce-isms but only ones that Danny and his friends are aware of considering they only know Bruce as Brucie Wayne and not Batman. "Bruce Wayne Moments" include Danny being clumsy, doing something air-headed, being oblivious, etc. It's not a common joke among the three of them since Tucker and Sam know that Danny's still pr sensitive to the whole clone thing. So they only bring it up when he's done something stupid but hilarious.
7 - while clone^2 focuses more on Danny and Damian's relationship and Danny helping Damian develop his identity beyond just "Damian Wayne's Clone", Danny still suffers from his own identity crises. He sometimes gets jealous of Ellie and Damian for being "lucky" that they always knew they were clones, rather than finding out later in life.
He's aware that this is not fair to think and that Damian and Ellie both have their own struggles as clones, but he can't help it sometimes.
He tries not to think about it too much, but when things get too quiet or when he's not busy, Danny can't help but wonder how much of himself is things he's learned on his own and come from him, and how much of it comes from being Bruce Wayne's clone. He has to stop and count how many things are unique about him specifically when he starts to emotionally spiral. It's not rational, but it's not supposed to be.
As a result Danny kinda, hm, clings to his identity as the Phantom, just a little bit? He thinks it's one of the few things that he has autonomous control over as "Danny Fenton", rather than it being a result of him being Bruce Wayne's clone. Because Bruce Wayne isn't a vigilante! Right? Right?
Consequently this becomes one of the reasons that Damian keeps mum about Bruce Wayne's identity. The original reasons were because Danny asked not to know much about the LoA beyond what Damian already told him, and Batman was technically "apart" of the LoA, and secondly because he just didn't want Danny to get involved with Batman and co and Danny knowing about Bruce Wayne's identity could potentially cause that.
But as time goes on Damian kinda notices like, just how being a clone is affecting Danny even if he hides it from Damian pretty well. He can't really comprehend what it was like for Danny to grow up thinking he was normal like everyone else only to find out he was a clone, but he does see the hurt it's causing his brother. And he does notice that Danny was holding onto being Phantom quite a bit, and figured that if he found out Bruce Wayne was also a vigilante, it would hurt him beyond belief.
8 - So Danny's creation has been kept relatively,,, mmm,,, vague? considering I've been struggling for a time how I could plausibly have his creation happen without Bruce finding out about it immediately. And my conclusion is that around the time Danny was created, Bruce met up with the Fenton parents again for some reason or another -- checking out their tech under the guise of wanting to catch up with them.
And I can imagine that, due to being close friends in college, the Fentons literally just outright told him, "Hey we wanna 'nother kid but don't want to go through the risk of pregnancy again, so we're gonna make a clone of one of us instead"
and in true Bruce fashion, he mentally went "wow i should learn Everything And Anything About This Thing Specifically. Just In Case." and outwardly went "woah cool! ahaha how does it work"
and since the Fentons consider Bruce a close friend and are also incapable of Not Talking About Science, turned and went "OH WE CAN SHOW YOU" and showed Bruce their entire cloning process up to and including how they (safely) extracted the DNA they were gonna use. of which they already had. they were gonna just extract Jack's DNA a second time as an example, but it was Bruce who said "hey you should try me instead" in order to gauge how exactly safe this was and if there were any symptoms he would need to recognize in cloning.
so with his consent they did, and then showed him how they were going to use the DNA to make a clone without actually going through the process. Without prompting from Bruce, the Fentons went "we're gonna throw your DNA away though since we don't want this lying around and because we have no use for it" and visibly showed him that they were disposing it.
Bruce came to the conclusion that the Fentons weren't planning anything nefarious, they just really wanted another kid, and (reluctantly) left afterwards. The mixup comes when Maddie, surprisingly, misplaces the cartridge with Jack's DNA in it and while they could have always gotten another sample, it was better and safer to just try and find the original before that.
Jack finds Bruce's in their disposable. In his excitement, he forgets that it was Bruce's DNA, and manages to get it out safely. Maddie wasn't looking when he found it, and in her excitement also forgot to ask where Jack found it. They used that cartridge instead.
When they found out they used the wrong DNA, Danny was already about year old and while Jack and Maddie are morally dubious, they're only morally dubious towards ghosts. Danny was their beloved human baby, they would never do anything to him.
That being said, they were still horrified when they found out, and really, they genuinely did consider reaching out to Bruce to tell him. They thought it was something he deserved to know since it was his DNA that got used instead, and they felt awfully guilty after he trusted them enough to let them draw DNA from him. The only reason they hadn't is because, at the time, Bruce had been really busy with something in his public life and they didn't want to bother him during such a stressful time.
So they were going to wait, and in Fenton-like fashion, forgot to tell him. When the subject came up again sometime later, they assumed they already told Bruce and went about their day.
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OPLA fan cast polls - Top 10 winners!
By far most of the submitted fancasts were accepted by the fans, having had a minimum of 50% yay votes. But which fancasts had the most fans behind them? Here is the top 10!
10. Karen Fukuhara as Tashigi with 82.4% of the votes.
Her experience with martial arts and sword fighting might have convinced the fans who weren't familiar with her previous roles yet!
9. Rhey Ripley as Charlotte Smoothie with 82.5% of the votes.
Her wrestler build probably convinced a lot of people she could pull this off. And maybe the lesbians went wild about her.
8. Peter Capaldi as Dr Hiriluk with 84% of the votes.
Once a doctor... (also, he just kinda looks like him)
7. Alexander Siddig as Nefertari Cobra with 84.5% of the votes.
This Sudanese actor convinced the fans that he could play another desert kingdom ruler!
6. Amber Midthunder as Laki with 85% of the votes.
With only 1 vote really against her (we will find you and hunt you down 😛), the fans think this native American actress is perfect to play Laki!
5. Jamie Lee Curtis as Kureha with 87% of the votes.
With by far the most submissions, I had expected her to come out on top, but 5th place isn't bad at all either! Besides, she has practically been cast already, and the fans seem to agree! If someone else gets cast after all, there'd better be a real good reason for that!
4. Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson as Brogy with 88.1% of the votes.
This tall strongman from Iceland seemed the perfect fit for the friendly giant!
3. Kevin Chamberlin as Tom with 89.1% of the votes.
Tom's a fishman, Kevin is human. And yet, look at their faces: the same. The fans could do nothing but agree with this fan cast (though they would also love him as Wapol).
2. Michael Jai White as Ohm with 89.8% of the votes.
Corporate needs you to find the differences between these two pictures.
The fans: "They're the same picture."
No one voted against this fan cast, so in that aspect you could say he should be the winner! However, a few more people needed to be convinced, compared to the number one...
And the winner...
1. Javicia Leslie as Miss Doublefinger with 92.9% of the votes!
Her looks, her acting experience (as Batwoman for example), and her experience with different (combat) sports have convinced almost all of the fans that she is a perfect fit! We are looking forward to see Javicia as Miss Doublefinger in the next season (?) of the One Piece Live Action!
Thank you all for submitting your fancasts and for voting on these polls! ❤
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For hazbin hotel au: what if alastor arrives at young age? Let say an incident which both he and his ma die at same time but because of his heritage, he got sent to hell, forced to survive in the streets until he meet Charlie and the rest of the hotel residents. How do you think will happen if he meet Lucifer?
Oh, so an AU of the AU? Sounds fun! Let me think...
Well, my first thought is that Alastor's demon form would be fairly different, since it's so closely tied into the manner in which he died. Buuuuut... I really like him as a deer demon, so I'm going to handwave that away. I'm also going to have him keep his powers associated with radio, despite him not yet having become a radio host, with the justification that listening to the radio shows together with Nicaise and making her laugh by perfectly imitating the radio man's accent were such fond memories for him they carried over to his demon form.
Ultimately, this version of Alastor still becomes the Radio Demon. But unlike the Alastor who died as an adult, nobody knows what the Radio Demon looks like. He's a mystery, known only for his radio broadcasts and striking down Overlords from the shadows. So when this little red kid with deer ears shows up on Charlie's doorstep introducing himself as the Radio Demon, she and Vaggie are understandably skeptical.
That skepticism dies when he blasts Sir Pentious's airship right out of the sky.
Alastor still brings in Niffty and Husk - two of the only people who know who the Radio Demon really is - still fixes up the building, and still acts as the facility manager. But everyone involved in the hotel keeps his identity a secret, at his request.
When Lucifer arrives at the hotel, he's in sheer disbelief that the hotel's manager is this tiny kid. Never mind Alastor frequently pointing out that he's around a hundred years old now. That doesn't really clarify anything for Lucifer who's several millennia old. He's less of a condescending jerkass to Alastor at first, seeing him as a kid, but Alastor doesn't take kindly to being treated like a child. So Alastor does what Alastor does and prods under Lucifer's armor. He starts throwing himself at Charlie, hanging off her arm, acting like a precocious kid and interrupting Lucifer's attempts to bond with her while shooting the King of Hell smug looks.
Charlie finds it a bit weird given Alastor usually acts more like an adult, but she does think it's kind of cute so she allows it. Lucifer is furious. He frequently refers to Alastor as, 'that damn brat,' and casually picks him up and teleports him to other rooms of the hotel for 'a time out' and generally treats Alastor like he's a nuisance, not a member of the hotel staff.
And then... Alastor's parentage comes out.
Lucifer is just as awkward with the childlike version of Alastor as he is with the version who died as an adult. That awkwardness just manifests differently. He keeps trying to make amends by treating Alastor as though he's an actual kid, lavishing him with gifts, inviting him on trips, so on and so forth. Alastor really doesn't think he should have to decline a trip to Lu Lu World more than once. Charlie tries to step in on his behalf, but she's not so great at dealing with Lucifer's awkwardness either.
One of the most insulting gifts is a pet, similar to Razzle and Dazzle, who is supposed to keep Alastor safe.
Alastor explodes.
He died when he was ten and he's been keeping himself safe ever since then, thank you very much! He was strong enough and clever enough to become one of the most feared Overlords in the Pentagram, all without ever showing his face once! And it's been over a hundred years since then! If Lucifer wanted to be his dad, he's about a century too late!
Unfortunately, one of the downsides of being stuck in a child's body is that sometimes his adult emotions are too big for it. All the anger and frustration comes out as tears, which only makes Alastor that much angrier. Lucifer tries to offer comfort, to pull Alastor into a hug, but Alastor melts into the shadows before Lucifer can even touch him.
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Before Project Mayhem, before fight club, before Marla, before Tyler — there is still one sad sack of shit.
.
.
The hard part about work trips isn't making the plane or seeing another family of five burnt into their leather seats. It's missing support groups.
See, if you're lucky, the company will send you out to a major city. Cities are great. A little advanced work to find a slightly below average church or library, you're set each night you're there.
It's a bit of novelty, getting to be a new face all at once. People assume you've just been diagnosed. It's never the failed treatments, the degradation of their life and everyone in it, the continuous experience of knowingly dying — none of those things are the worst thing that happens to you.
It's finding out they will.
So people cry. They crowd around, I sob like I've been told I've got stage four colon cancer and three weeks to live. We all cry. I sleep soundly on the plane back or in the nice, four star hotel my company provides me.
Flying out to a small town, though. I'll be awake enough to be hallucinating by the time I get back for Remaining Men Together. The only mercy is that the next time I show for all the groups I missed, I can see who thought I died. I get to be resurrected.
The other part about small towns, you have to take a second, shitter plane to a local airfield, or you have to take a rental car. One of the most popular rental cars available right now, it'll light itself on fire if you use the cruise control at the wrong time. I know this because I sat next to another guy with my job, who worked for a different company, and he said I'll show you mine if you show me yours. So I told him about the faulty airbags, and he told me about the overheating switch.
I prefer to avoid driving.
All the rental place at the airport has left for me, it's one of those flaming cars. I use cruise control. If I don't, one of my narcoleptic spells will send me into the Jersey barrier.
When you drive into these small towns, you have to try to pay attention, or you'll end up a county over talking about the wrong wreck. They're otherwise interchangeable, but the miles on your rental car won't line up and those are the type of records that might get pulled out when the company is finally sued for the big one ten years down the line.
As a result, I see the same decor on the way in every time. Meth lab. Abandoned homes. Garbage fire. Classic Americana. There is no four star hotel here; I sleep the same.
The only reason I've been brought out here is because the poor shithead who drove his truck into the ditch drunk was driving my company's flagship vehicle. It loses power steering if the car jostles the right way going above 55 miles per hour. I've been told to keep track of potential incidents and make sure the company can firmly claim it's not at fault.
We've had this problem for decades, and we will for many more. Sometimes, everything is falling apart.
The job is simple, and I only get tempted by the town's blatant opioid addiction for a day and night. Painkillers would probably make me sleep. The thing about being a recall campaign organizer, though, is like recognizes like. It's not only other Compliance and Liability guys who tell you company secrets while sharing the aisle in business class.
When I'm finally back in my own town, after my own support groups, after crying my eyes out into Bob's meaty middle — I pick up my mail. There's the newest IKEA magazine. Half of it looks like shit. The type of thing you'd only see in some curated art deco, modernist, post-modern traditionalist bohemian minimalist apartment.
I have to have it.
I go to sleep, hard, like God himself tucked me in. I sleep with my wallet net four hundred heavier, because even an IKEA spree tends not to outweigh a work trip. I sleep, with my called in IKEA goods only two short weeks away, my job well done, and I know, my life is complete.
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