#cw for dissection

[galactic-rhea]

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.

[demonic0angel]

Dissection (click for clarity)

Cut open, seen, and put back together with only his heart missing.

Inspired by this one-shot

[markscherz]

Just a picture from the office today.

[tearintears]

[professional-rat-eater]

I need people in the IWTV fanbase to realise that you can appreciate a character in all their complexities and enjoy their precense in a story and still wish they had a slow, painful death scene. For non-book readers, I hope to be able to clarify a few things about why a certain character is so hated.

Keep reading for more nuanced Marius de Romanus slander:

I feel like I post at least once a day something about hitting Marius with a car or something and I do it mainly because it’s funny but it’s also because there is a very valid reason he is where a lot of people draw the line, despite the scale of morality in gothic literature being utterly different from that of pretty much any other literature, and drastically different from real life.

I love him for what he brings to the story. He is fascinating and I am excited to see him in season 3. He’s a brilliant character and I want to put him under a microscope and study him like a bug. He is still absolutely vile even for Anne Rice, something she even hints at here and there in her work.

I could go on and on for days about him, but to keep it short (edit: I lied), he met Pandora when she was ten years old and he was twenty five. What makes him particularly sick is nothing to do with vampiric morality, which we’ve seen is completely different, within the world of the books and show, from human morality. We get onboard with Lestat because we get to know him as a human and then watch how he changes as he gets used to being a vampire. Lestat was not a monster when he was human. Marius was.

If you disagree with that, you can think so if you wish as I do not currently possess the ability to control other people’s thoughts (but as soon as I do, I’m coming for you!) but please do not try and make excuses for him on that topic. Most people will not be open to that sort of debate. I know I’m not. Pandora was a baby. He should not have felt anything towards her other than a desire to protect her as a parent might. Yes, yes, gothic morality. But you need to understand that that is just too much for most people.

And you know who else was a baby, especially in comparison to Marius? Armand. Armand, who grew up to do awful things because of how he was treated. He was already being taken advantage of (to put it lightly) before he met Marius. If Marius had cared selflessly for Armand, he would have taken him from that brothel and tried to help him heal from the trauma. That is what real love would have been. You should not look at broken children and think to make them your lovers. All he was was yet another grown adult taking advantage of a boy whose spirit had been utterly shattered by what he’d endured.

(I’m not suggesting that should have happened or it would have been better, but I dislike the insinuation that Marius’s love for Armand was anything other than exploitative. It can be sincere, and still exploitative. I believe he meant it. I also believe he fucked Armand up more than he already had been.)

Murder in a fictional setting can be justified and overlooked, but as soon as anything involves children, you have to accept that you will lose a lot of people, even in gothic literature. That sort of relationship may have been more normalised thousands of years ago, but there were always people who objected to the concept. Even within the narrative of Anne Rice’s books, Marius’s actions are called out here and there (usually subtly) so even there, they are questioned. Compare him to someone like Lestat (I only mention him because for whatever reason, people like to group them together as irredeemable characters???).

Lestat’s actions are deeply toxic but people still like him because we understand why his behaviour is the way it is. As dreadful as what he does is, we are endeared to him because of his suffering and follow his journey as a vampire. He is twisted, but he is behaving according to what his trauma has turned him into. Armand is another example of this. Vile behaviour that is a believable response to trauma. There comes in the gothic morality again. We love them and know they are awful at the same time.

It is not that you cannot like Marius or characters like him. I do like him very much as a character, but you have to get on board with the idea that most people never will. The lines he crosses are unlike many of the others crossed by different characters. No one looks at Madeleine and Claudia and thinks it’s weird because Claudia is not actually a child. Armand was. Pandora was.

I could honestly make a separate post about book!Louis too and why I think the changes from the book were necessary to make people actually care about him, but it is similar. Harming/exploiting children and anything to do with slavery is a hard line a lot of people draw. Marius is still a multifaceted, interesting, complex, humanised character, as all Anne Rice vampires are, but he is deeply disliked for a very good reason. People cannot switch off how they feel about what he did, even if they are invested in the story.

(But also let’s be thoughtful about this type of discourse. Do not look at anyone whose favourite character is Marius and assume they are a bad person. He is a great character, he is just not to many people’s tastes. They likely just find him deeply interesting which he is.)

Anyway, after he gets his screen time and we reach the end of the show and he has gotten his chance to chance screen time, I vote we tie him up and treat him like a piñata.

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 252

“Sir, we’ve… There’s been an encounter with a Reaper class entity.” 

There were several classifications for ecto-entities. Several ways the Ghost Investigation Ward classified each. Several common ones that they could easily destroy, easily study. Others however… others were dangerous. Incredibly dangerous. 

There’d only been two other Reaper-class entities confirmed before- both contained but barely. RP-1, a large knight-like entity seemingly made from shadows, and RP-2, a child-like creature that could near perfectly mimic a human. 

And now, there was a third. A third entity that could- and judging from the reports coming in had- killed. Had done so several times even. Which meant it needed to be contained yesterday. 

“Send out the teams- I want this thing in Site X Now!” 

[phantomwithbreakfast]

𝚃𝚘𝚘 𝙰𝚏𝚛𝚊𝚒𝚍 𝚃𝚘 𝙻𝚒𝚟𝚎, 𝚃𝚘𝚘 𝙰𝚏𝚛𝚊𝚒𝚍 𝚃𝚘 𝙳𝚒𝚎

×͜×

Prologue.

⟢ Danny Phantom Phan Fic • Genre: Angst / Tragedy / Psychological / Horror • Overall TW: Strong Language — Mental Health Struggles — Suicidal Ideation — Violence — Parental Neglect — Emotional Abuse — Graphic Content • M rate (+16!) due Graphic Emotional Intensity — CW: Character Death

Summary: “It’s the end of me. I didn’t want to feel and kiss your lips, I wanted to feel and see you suffer instead.”

AO3.

FFN.

Other Phan fics here.

Under the ‘read more’ line you’ll find the full art piece at the bottom + more. TW/CW: Gore — Vivisection (But we’re used to it by now, aren’t we?).

𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐨 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐯𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐯𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐦.

It’s the end of me. I didn’t want to feel and kiss your lips, I wanted to feel and see you suffer instead. I saw him. Me. Him. My own reflection. You didn’t do this. I did. But that wasn’t true. We’re the same, aren’t we? Two halves of a broken whole. This wasn’t about them. It never was. This was about me all along.

☻% x ـــــــــــــــﮩ٨ـ

I stood there. Frozen.

My eyes locked onto my white-gloved hands, stained in deep crimson. Blood seeped into the fabric, dripping in slow, deliberate drops that echoed louder than they should have. My eyes drifted down, following the deep red river that spilled across the floor.

She wasn’t moving.

Her body lay still, sprawled on her back. Her eyes—lifeless, glassy—staring unblinking at the ceiling, delving for something that wasn’t there.

My chest heaved, gasping for air that refused to to come, as my mind spiraled into a storm of chaos and despair.

What…

What the fxck just happened?

My whole body trembled, shaking under a burden. The effort of standing was too much—my knees gave out, hitting the ground with a hollow sound. I collapsed, crumpled like a broken doll.

Devastated.

I changed—transformed.

Human.

My body felt heavy, mortal, fragile. The tears fell unbidden, carving warm, fragile paths down the frost of my hollow cheeks. A guttural sob broke through, followed by another.

I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t stop breaking.

Whimpers tore out of me—feeling like little pieces of my soul being ripped apart. My breath broke in jagged gasps, each inhale a blade slicing deeper into the hollow ache of my chest.

With the last shreds of strength clinging to my shattered body, I dragged myself forward, smearing her blood beneath my hands and knees. The trail of crimson followed me, marking my every trembling inch. My arms shook, my knees scraped against the slick floor.

Her blood was everywhere—on me, around me. Just… everywhere.

I reached her side and stopped.

The world spun in a blur of red and black. Everything felt too quiet. Too empty.

In that silence, I crumbled. Her absence crashing until I was nothing—just broken sobs and trembling hands, drowning me into an endless ache of what I… of what I could never undo.

…

“You really don’t want to do this. Trust me. Who’s going to protect this town after all, if you shoot me?” Danny said, forcing a grin that felt painfully fake.

“What use would I have for you if you’re… dead?” Her tone shifted slightly, dipping into something that sounded almost sinister. “No. If I killed you, I couldn’t examine you. I couldn’t study you the way I need to. You have to be conscious for that.”

Danny’s grin faltered and swallowed. His stomach twisted at her words, but before he could say anything else—before he could even move—there was a flash of light.

And then... there was nothing but darkness.

⟢ All this time that I was working on this art piece, I had a pang feeling in my chest. Guilt. Empathy. Compassion. I even cried at some point. I blindfolded Danny for a while, and did the eyes as final.

⟢ The art piece itself is a mix up from my dissection—vivisection stories. Plus, other ones that are about to follow, like this preview of the prologue.

⟢ It’s possible I might still change the prologue up a bit.

⟢ I’m so, so, so fxcking sorry Danny. (╥﹏╥)

♫ ▸ MOMMA’S BOY. :3

“You’re a ghost. You can’t feel pain or experience any emotions. But you? You’re so… Fascinating.”

“Why did I… deserve this? Why? What is it that makes me… interesting? That you have to… vi—vivisect me?”

⟢ Only the bad memories will last.

[papiliomame]

Cleanup

A little comic about the headcanon that Danny uses his body as a storage.

[voisbian]

man i honestly feel kind of bad for the professor who teaches the 200 level bug-type adaptations class because like,, i almost never stay for the whole class. i swear i have up and walked out of that class more times than not because she'll be like

"okay, I'm leaving 30 minutes at the end of class for the dissection"

we've done 5 dissections so far and i have not stayed for a single one of them. i left during the wimpod one. just walked out. then i asked to leave early during the silcoon one. i didn't show up to class during the nymble one. then i left early for the caterpie and dwebble ones as well like man i have REALLY not stayed in her class at all

the last time i walked out halfway through class there wasn't even a dissection!! i literally was half falling asleep, saw some other guy fully asleep (9am class) and decided if i was going to sleep anyway i might as well go to my dorm, so i left

now i have the final exam tomorrow and its so awkward like hi do you remember me. the girl that has fully sat through 3 whole classes this semester. i don't even remember why i took this class

[holyruin]

[markscherz]

The dissection begins! I’m joined by Pasha van Bijlert, a PhD student at Utrecht University in The Netherlands. You can follow along on Instagram or Facebook. Nothing in the world could convince me to use Tumblr Live. ;)

[loserlovercafe]

I remade the chapter 1 title, but it’s ok because now it’s done and I can move on (I say so that I don’t go back to tweaking it for the 20th time)

-

Anyways, I only remade it because the whole “frog dissection” thing just generally fits better for my comic than the “frog in boiling water” thing.

-

[Uncensored versions below!!!]

Also multiple version’s because I’m indecisive lol

[livingdeadhorse]

i’ll meet judgement by the hounds

[miasmadevil]

Makube: today we are disecting frogs :)

Student: Mr. Azaraku this is a theology class

Makube: the frogs didn't believe in god

[danphanwritingprompts]

Jazz found out that her parents dissected Phantom when they asked her to clean up the lab. Yeah, it's Danny's chore, but he hasn't come home yet.

[synchros]

Figured I may as well post my original reverse big bang concept sketches because I love process stuff! (and also maybe to hold future me accountable to doing something with the two rejects)

From left to right we've got:

The one I went with, as it's an idea I've been mulling over for a long time and best fit the scope of the mini big bang: A very young miner Megs discovering his unusual spark after an accident and having to reconcile that with his cold constructed frame, perhaps being what catalyzes his political writing in the first place (inspired by the below exchange from Chaos Theory Part 1).

Pre-LSOTW Ultra Magnus gifting the power armor to Verity in a very rare moment of emotional genuineness from him at this point in his character development. We were ROBBED of Uncle Magnus and Verity bonding via misadventures in space, and I still so desperately want to see it.

Pre-Requiem of the Wreckers exploring the fucking wild "neither of us are over our not-exes" situationship Tarantulas and Overlord had that I still can't believe is kind of canon. Overlord has an apparent lack of sensation due to the ununtrium coating, and you can't tell me Tarantulas wouldn't want to get his mad scientist on to figure out how it works.