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"My name is Caitlyn Kiramman. I set fire to my ex-best friend's house. Why? Because Jayce Talis killed my mother."

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Jessica and Simon trying to cook at Kyle's when he's sick

Jessica: That's not how you make pasta!

Simon: How would you know?

Jessica: You put the pasta in after the water boils. It's Cooking with Guy Gardner 101!

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scratched fanfic - Eli has a sister and visits her after Will falls

Eli doesn't talk about the Surface. Ever.

So, it's a surprise when three weeks after Will Shane disappears that he's still picking at his food - which even Pronto isn't complaining about - and suddenly announces, "I'm going back up the Surface."

Trixie's fingers freeze, the computer screen stops on Slugnet page about the Deep Caverns. She twists around, forgotten dinner forgotten even more on the desk beside her. Pronto and Kord stare at Eli with her.

Their leader folds his arms nervously. There are bags under his eyes and his hair is messy like he hasn't slept in days, but he insists, "It won't be for too long, but I'm planning on leaving before light tomorrow."

Kord sets down his bowl on the table. "Bro... I know you're stressed over, um, losing your old man and all, but this really isn't the best time for you to leave."

"What he said," Pronto adds. "After all, the Shane Gang is still needed by the people of Slugterra!"

Eli sighs. "Guys... I know I have to be here, and to save my dad - I just..."

"Why do you have to leave?" Trixie walks over and sits at the table with Pronto and Kord. It's like their mission-planning meetings, with him explaining his decisions to them before they offer their own takes. "It must be important, considering."

He glances down for a moment, hands twisting. All ten nails are chewed well to the flesh.

Burpy nudges him, chirping something in his ear. Trixie clasps her hands on the table, silently waiting. If there's anyone who Eli will listen to, it's Burpy.

Eli looks like there's a war inside his head. He scratches the back of his neck and exhales tiredly. "I haven't been completely honest with you guys," he says. "I have a sister."

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Politics and Structure

Ok, not studying here because my exams are over (woohoo!), but I want to get something new up on this blog.

I figured out how Doctor Blakk gets away with all his infamousness. In this world, AKA the Surface, what he's doing is closely related to producing illegal chemical weapons, but while here we have laws that make it, you know, ILLEGAL, in Slugterra he can't get caught because either there aren't any laws to make him an official criminal, or the actual leaders are all turning a blind eye on his actions.

Ghouls are resources of power, just like guns and bombs and other whatnot. However, they're not mechanical weapons, so they're more like genetically engineered weapons like viruses. Anyone read "Russian Roulette" by Anthony Horowitz? Spoilers: Yassen's hometown was infested by an airborne chemical virus that killed everyone and then the town was wiped out by the government to cover up the illegal activities.

Yikes.

But here, Blakk's activities in using Dark Water - a strange substance that Slugterra has barely any information on except for a few ancient cave troll legends - on slugs, Slugterra's literal lifeblood, is hardly considered as a threat by any leaders.

This implies to me that Slugterra has no official leader, no government to distribute laws or any status. It only comes down to which individual or group has the most power in their hands.

Blakk has power over weaponry and also political power, having learned commerce and also being very manipulative, as shown when he told Eli how he forced people to give away their land, hence how he stole Slag Rock Cavern and turned it into his own cavern.

On to the Shane Gang.

The Shane Gang have referent and expert power as they are well known to be excellent slugslingers and are also trusted to help because of them carrying the Shane mantle, which is like a symbol of hope and justice. Everyone trusts them, and that might be why Blakk sees them as such a threat to his power. Not only do the Gang mess up his industry, they also try and expose how he's a bad guy to the public.

A flaw in the show is that they don't show much on the rest of Slugterra. We don't know who else is pulling the strings, so it's either a big bag guy or a bunch of kids grouped together to defeat him. There should be other leaders out there, like the King of Sling who doesn't do much apparently, or Judge Logan, but he also doesn't do much and is also a corrupt leader who is under Blakk's influence.

So, the worldbuilding could've had more details. The base is good, having slugs being vital to the world and the whole code for slugslingers, but we needed to see more structure, not just the sci-fi structure.

Some ideas are maybe there could've been a government, but it's extremely disorganised, allowing people like Blakk to thrive and take over without blinking an eye. There should be an actual police force to take down Blakk, but some of the officers are corrupt and the ones who aren't are killed off or have their careers destroyed by Blakk and it's up to the Shane Gang to help them and fix things up with the government.

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Psychological Studies (CAFS)

Ah. Leadership. Now isn't there a lot of that in Slugterra.

Okay, okay. Let me just say, I love Slugterra. There are things I admire, and things that I think need improvement.

So, I gotta study leadership stuff.

There are many leadership styles, but Kurt Lewin categorized four. Autocratic, democratic, transformational and finally, laissez-faire. Now, obviously we have Eli as the leader, but I've got something to say about that part of his story.

He starts out as not a leader but learns fast and accepts others with a very nonjudgmental view. He's a quick thinker especially under pressure, and his most leaderlike trait - in my opinion - is his ability to communicate and bond with others, which is crucial for his democratic style of leadership, but also for a transformational style.

Democratic leadership style is exactly what it sounds like. A democracy. Basically, there's a group with lots of discussion allowed, and everyone gets a say to help the leader to make the final call.

Transformational style is less set on completing a task efficiently but seeks more to complete a long-term goal of creating a social goal. Like how Trixie blogs the damage Blakk does to inspire people to fight back.

The first introduction we have to him is a newbie entering an almost alien world. A normal kid fresh into fifteen with not-so-normal secrets. He struggles with slugslinging at first. He assumes that his place would already be established by being a Shane, until he gets knocked on his butt and has to get saved instead of it being the other way round like he assumed.

We see his openness and naivety here, and also when he signs up for the Tournament. He stands out as an outsider, a Shane who can't slugsling. However, he quickly steps into the expected role of him only to face the trouble that defeated his dad five years ago.

He communicates efficiently with his slugs, not just the whole naming slugs part, but also how Burpy just immediately knows what Eli's plan is in his first round with Shockwire, and how Eli naturally becomes a leader figure in the round with Kord, Trixie and their slugs against the Power Triplets.

So, first, I would've liked to see more on Eli and Will's relationship. And second, Eli's flexibility with others and any situation he's in leans towards both high task and people emphasis, meaning he has good social abilities and workplace abilities among a group.

So, Eli has a democratic and sometimes a transformational leadership style.

The problem with how the show addresses this is it happens fast, which, okay, maybe he's just a natural leader. But it's a little too fast. There should've been more of a struggle for Eli to really step into his father's footsteps, since it literally only lasts, like, half an episode that he goes from 'I-have-no-idea-what-I'm-doing' to 'Yep-all's-good'.

Speaking of which, I have this fancannon(?. Sorry, not familiar with all this yet): The reason Eli's so good at slugslinging and connecting with Slugs and being able to withstand the Shadow Talker is because of a genetic thing, and not about the whole Shane thing. Maybe the Shanes have some ancestry with the Shadow Clan that gives them a closer connection to the energy down there. They both start with the letter S - alliteration, ha - and if Will was able to wear the Shadow Talker and Eli is too, then it's genetic. Possibly. And Eli's able to do that shared-sight thing with Burpy.

Eli should have a character arc that the show misses. And that's kind of my problem here. So yea

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slugterra science

in plants, the vascular bundle consists of the xylem and phloem vessels. The phloem vessel translocates organic substances like amino acids and sucrose. The xylem vessel allows the transportation of inorganic materials, like water and minerals. In trees, they are made of lignin, which is a substance that allows greater stability in structure.

Something interesting about Slugterra, the "vegetation" is mostly fungi, not plants. That's a really good thing to put to the slow, because plants are autotrophs, so they photosynthesize. However, because Slugterra doesn't have a sun, the light energy comes from the fungi. At least, they should.

Yeah, it would be kind of hard to animate a place where the light source constantly comes from a bunch of fungi. So, there's some plants in Slugterra, but they probably photosynthesize using the fungi light.

Oh, that also means Phosphoro slugs have a convergent evolutionary relationship with fungi. Maybe. I'm not sure if two different cell types can have convergent evolution.

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this is how i study now

I have examzzz

So I gotta focus. And Slugterra is my focus-candy - I swear I don't do drugs. Don't do drugs, kids.

Ahem.

Cell theory has three parts. First, cells are the smallest unit of life. Second, all living things come from cells. Third, all cells come from other cells.

To apply this to Slugterra, it's basically exactly what it is. Slugs, Molenoids, trolls, and humans and humanoids are all made of cells. But they are more primitive than the organisms on the Surface. This is because Slugterra has not evolved geographically to be like the Surface. It has extreme abiotic factors in areas, such as Chillbore Cavern and the Magma Caverns.

I don't really know a lot about deep sea gigantism, the phenomenon about how marine life are so big where light doesn't touch. But oxygen, being a nutrient to living organisms, can cause larger body structures. During the Jurassic period, dinosaurs and insects were huge because of the increased oxygen levels. They had to be big so their bodies could sustain the high levels. And now insects are tiny and are sad :(

Narrowing down on the Magma Caverns, I haven't gotten to figuring out why the fauna are so big, but that magma monster - actually, that's a horrible name. I'll call it... Magmadon. Like the iguanodon. Heck, I dont do dinosaurs. I'm just winging that area.

Anyways, the Magmadon must be an extremophile. An extremophile can be a bacteria, archaea, or eukaryote, the three domains of life. There are three types of extremophiles.

A thermophile can survive temperatures up to 82.2 degrees celcius and feed off inorganic chemicals. A psychrophile has antifreeze proteins that allow them to survive severely low temperatures. And finally, tardigrades. These guys can survive almost anything. They have the ability to curl up into a ball and slow down their metabolism. In this state, they can survive for decades in extreme environments.

Some evidence that the Magmadon is a thermophile are its obvious shelter in literal magma. And... uh, actually that's about it. But because it takes the form of a fish, it must be a multicellular organism with some thermophile genes or ancestry. It has eyes and fins and the predatory behaviour to chase down the Shane Gang and try to eat them. And it also survived being frozen in ice.

Speaking of ice, the Frostcrawlers must also have some psychrophile genes. They're able to survive the extreme temperatures in Chillbore Cavern, and then project ice powers... Yeah, dunno about that.

Anyways, that's all I'm gonna say on that area. This is getting too long