#uncombinably

[anistarrose]

to me, it always felt like Lucretia immediately recombining the reclaimed Grand Relics, starting with the Gauntlet, was a bit of a plot hole or at least a bad decision by someone who should've known better, because Lucretia had no guarantee that she'd be able to find and gather the remainder by the time the Hunger showed up...

...until I realized that to keep the rest of the Bureau safe from any undestroyed Relics' thrall, then Lucretia would have had to hide those Relics somewhere secluded. and, well, Lucretia quite literally remembers better than anyone what happened last time anyone set out, on their own, to hide the Relics starting with the Gauntlet

[mo-ok]

bonk

[tachyon-omlette]

is it strange that the Enigma of Combination was so vilified(?) for being the Thing That Makes Combiners or is it just 5am

[freshlycaughtseaweed]

Wolzard - Stage 11: Night of the Vampires

Bonus:

[ev-n-learning]

Huh... i just noticed duolingos czech course "update" basically uncombined the skill paths. Further proof they fucked up, but don't want to admit it & have to revert their ui lol.

[sunlightfeeling]

combined a few pictures~

from Frau: 2017.5 No. 512

[ghostboyhood]

i accidentally combined the lineart and color layer, clicked off the cavas (meaning i cant uncombine them!), and immediately got discouraged so here u go!! unfinished drawing of dennis as rocky

i might redraw this in a different style later

rocky <3

[mychlapci]

Arranged marriage between combiners, for peace. It's like a mutual nuclear disarmament for both factions. Stunticons to Aerialbots. Combaticons to Protectobots. Computron to Predacons. (The 'structies get Prowl)

Some of them will remain distant and antagonistic, while some will get closer and become amiable. Vortex and First Aid in particular would find themselves in an unlikely freaky but romantic relationship. One that's so lustful it influences the rest of their teams. Bruticus ends up getting urned on by the sheer horny exuded by Vortex, while Defensor gets super needy just from First Aid's thirst for that rotarycock.

Bruticus would make such a good wife out of Defensor, he'd keep him pregnant in order to force the teams to stay combined for as long as possible. After all, Defensor can't uncombine when he's gravid with all those bitties, and Bruticus can't pump him full of the transfluid he needs without having his massive goliath spike to plow him with. This might result in all of the respective gestalt members mind melding permanently into a singular psyche, but they're always so horny, they don't really care by that point. Till all are one and shit, yanno-🔌

ooooH yes yes yes... Love me some pregnant combiners. I am all for Defensor being kept pregnant for so long that he forgets he can uncombine. Maybe he can't uncombine at all anymore. Maybe Bruticus can't either, the two of them constantly locked in a breeding frenzy...

Once again I am thinking about how disastrous it would be if a bot that big started giving birth. There'd be a little river trailing down, all of it thick, viscous birthing fluids. It'll take a couple weeks for it to dry up. I bet some bots could even bathe in it...

[wearyparanormalist]

These guys got a panorama (it’s punishment for having uncombinable last names)

[periodictabletournament]

Round 3 - Matchup 10

Nitrogen 7 (N) - 78% of the earth's atmosphere as the diatomic N2, the most abundant uncombined element.

vs

Copper 29 (Cu) - It's a cool colour! It's antimicrobial! It oxidises into a cool green colour! Also great for moving electricity around inside stuff!

[deusvervewrites]

Polymerization x Bloodright: All for One stole Midoriya's Quirk and forcefully combined him with Himiko in order to have them infiltrate UA. He simply uncombines them whenever Himiko needs to do villain things.

Horrifying!

[olimari-artbox]

Bug bread <333

My boyfriend is having a hard time with testing, so i decided to make him a treat, as well as some for some of my friends.

Some closer images

- Recipe below

- ingredients

- 2¼ tsp of quick rise yeast

- 1 cup of water (110° F)

- 1 tsp of sugar

- 3 cups of cake flour (you can add more)

- ½ tsp of sea salt

- ¼ cup of milk

- 1 tbsp of butter (melted)

- instructions

First, you should put the water, sugar, and yeast in your stand mixer and wait 10 minutes for the yeast to do its thing

Once the 10 minutes are up, add the flour and salt (combined) to the "yeast water". Turn on your stand mixer to the stir setting or the lowest setting. Let the flour mixture and yeast mixture stir together until mostly combined, then pour the butter and milk in slowly.

Let everything combine and use a spatula to help get uncombined ingredients off of the sides of the bowl. Once everything is combined, check how sticky the dough is, if it sticks to your skin with a light touch, add more flour gradually until it doesn't immediately stick to your skin.

Once everything is combined and in one piece, put in a bowl and cover with a clean towel, then place the bowl in a dark, warm place for 30 minutes (I used my microwave)

After the 30 minutes, you're done, you are free to make your bug bread :]

(The bugs should bake for around 12 minutes)

- Tutorial for bug bread specifically

An image from before they went in the oven <3

The green is matcha power because I like the flavor it adds :3

[rust-bearer]

Ambulon’s death says, read between the lines. There isn’t enough space to dedicate to half a man anymore. Read between the line he has been cut in to, and pry out the weeping there. First Aid locks himself in his room for months. Ambulon’s corpse is reassembled and repainted. First Aid combines with his dead best friend, only to uncombine and leave him behind again.

Ambulon is torn in half, so dig inside the seams and pull out the way his death will replay in First Aid’s head, over and over, but in two separate, horrible ways now: like the corpse that can’t ever be made whole, now First Aid can watch Ambulon die from his perspective, and he can watch Ambulon’s last moments from his own eyes.

The way the story is called, how to say goodbye and mean it. The way Ambulon’s corpse never leaves the morgue.

[telomeke]

THE SIGN EPISODE 4 – MUCHNESS IN THE MIX (BUT THE NAGA AND GARUDA STILL PEEK THROUGH THE MUDDLE)

This episode of The Sign somehow managed to be a LOT and yet not quite enough (for me) at the same time.

After the languid pacing of Ep.3, set in far-off, semi-rural Nong Khai and punctuated only sporadically with moments of drama and foreboding, Ep.4 took a jarring tonal leap back into the darker, sleeker world of modern Bangkok as the boys got stuck into their day jobs as newbie investigators for a mysterious crime involving rape, abduction, torture, murder and media manipulation. 👀

Maybe it's just me, but the show is starting to show signs of having bitten off more than it can chew – with aspirations to being a fantasy, a procedural crime drama, a supernatural thriller, a comedy and a love story. Is it some of the above? All of it? At the same time? It's early days, but there are hints it may be going down the same meandering path trod by KinnPorsche, flailing in several directions on a whim. (At least KinnPorsche flailed with style, but I'm not sure The Sign has quite the luxury of a Romsaithong budget to ladle on the bucketloads of sugary gloss needed to make a ramshackle raft of uncohesive elements at least superficially appealing to the palate, if not exactly good for your soul.)

Don't get me wrong though. I think there is a place for the mixing and even blending of genres in media, and there is a long history of this in the Asian cinematic universe (what's coming to mind are Bollywood/Kollywood films in which a mafia tale can also be a love story and musical for example – echoes of KinnPorsche here, though most of KP's musical bits were tacked on in the after-concerts – and also Hong Kong movies of decades past where a martial arts movie could also be a slapstick comedy and nobody would bat an eyelid).

A culinary metaphor might be the easiest (laziest) way of making my point: the mile-long ingredient list and complex spicing of a curry may seem like you're inviting nothing but clashing and competition in the claypot, but careful dosing can stew them up into a sumptuous, unified result. And the myriad of ingredients in East and Southeast Asian noodle soups and flash stir-fries not only foreground contrasting textures and flavors in a single dish but actually celebrate them. Both approaches assert that artful assemblage and the right dosage can bring together disparate components (that might seem uneasy companions in their raw and uncombined state) to finish up with a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

I'm no media expert (necessary caveat inserted here) but I think The Sign needs quite a lot more finessing with all that it's taken on, and getting the proportions, mixing and balance correct will be the tricky bit given the wildly contrasting ingredients they've already added to the pot. I'm not convinced KinnPorsche got it right and I have concerns The Sign may slide down that slope too (if Ep.4 is anything to go by).

Even the acting is starting to betray the fact that Kruu A's assured directorial hand, so evident in the first three episodes, is possibly losing its grip on all the disparate threads and themes. (It's not too late for him to pull it back though, so I think the next two episodes or so will be critical to see if The Sign can live up to the promise of its first three episodes.)

I think this loss of control is especially noticeable in Billy's acting for Ep.4 – his thespian chops had been confident and dependable enough in Episodes 1 to 3 (even during the high tension fight scenes and especially during the quieter emotional interludes with Babe). But in Ep.4 he crossed the line repeatedly and was visibly overacting in almost every take. I'm guessing they needed to amp up the energy level of his portrayal since Phaya is supposed to be a hot-headed garuda after all. But I think the actorly resources currently at Billy's disposal don't quite allow him to pull off the bigger emotions and scenes with authenticity, not just yet anyway. (Babe showed characteristic restraint throughout though, and I thought he consistently did a good job.)

Unfortunately Billy wasn't the only one falling short in the acting department; the extras and bit players were also allowed to ham it up no end (yes, I'm sorry for the kid who was sexually assaulted, but the hysteria on display was jarringly and completely inauthentic, and drew more mockery to the predicament rather than sympathy, which is such a shame). 🤷‍♂️

Special mention also for the OTT expressions of the investigative group during each team meeting – they all appeared to be reacting exactly in unison to every turn of events, whether it was exaggerated focus on new findings, flinching in collective disappointment whenever their leads were thwarted, or looking around suspiciously and suddenly when it was suggested the murderer might be one in their midst. It looked far too much like a group of actors responding to instructions from outside in, rather than a team of individuals reacting from inside out, each with their own agency but choosing to align themselves as one. And this should have been weeded out by the director, since we know this team was largely able to deliver on the acting front in the first three episodes.

I stand with Inspector Akk whose confused expression in most of the group scenes seemed to be saying "What the hell is going on here?" 🤣

(above) "Inspector" Akk Akarat Nimitchai: "What is going on? Why am I here? Why did I listen to my agent? I am an Actor!"

Although this is probably just The Sign telling us that Akk knows more than he's letting on, and the newbies he's assigned are doing a far better job than he thought they would (and which is maybe not the desired outcome?). 🤔

Anyway the writers dialled back somewhat on the naga/garuda mythology in Episode 4 to shine more light on the NCIS-style criminal investigation, and this isn't doing The Sign any favors because the mythological themes roiling beneath the surface were what set this series apart in the first place and made it such a fascinating watch.

We still got to see some of it though. Whenever the naga and garuda's inner energies are especially stoked, the lighting often plays along (e.g., the brightly sparkling lights that accompany garuda Phaya charging up his batteries at Ep.1 [4/4] 14.20 and Ep.3 [2/4] 19.07, PhayaTharn's toilet encounter at Ep.2 [4/4] 9.12, the Mekong rescue at Ep.3 [2/4] 19.18, and Tharn's erotic dream of him and Phaya having shower sex at Ep.4 [2/4] 5.52). When it's fiery garuda Phaya and watery naga Tharn experiencing this together, the lighting dances between warm tones (suggesting the flames of the garuda) and cooler blues (suggesting the watery world of the naga).

I think that's why they made such a big deal with the blue and red lighting in this scene:

Phaya and Tharn have just survived an encounter with an armed and possibly insane killer. The flashing lights (blue for the marine naga, red for the fiery garuda) quite literally signal them recouping their respective beast energies after their near-death experience. (I also like that in the screenshot above, the light on Phaya is blue while the light on Tharn is red – each seems to be reflecting what the other is giving off. 👍)

There are also a few other examples of the naga and garuda dynamics in Episode 4, if we look a bit more closely.

Naga Tharn really had to fight to overcome his aversion to the flames in the abandoned mental facility (the Molotov cocktail is also I think a callback to the naga fireballs of the previous episode); garuda Phaya on the other hand breached the fire without a second thought.

But in hand-to-hand combat with the masked Molotov man (an agent of the malevolent naga out to get him and Tharn I suppose) Phaya is swiftly overcome – take a look at where they're fighting though (at Ep.4 [3‌/4] 12.25); it's a forest clearing right at the water's edge (with water being the nagas' stronghold, while it seems to weaken garuda Phaya's abilities).

When Phaya insists he and Tharn have dinner, it's at a hot-pot place (a culinary experience of both fire and boiling water at the table, another metaphor for the coming together of the naga and garuda). And the red and blue lighting of the restaurant also pays homage to the mythological pairing:

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When Tharn is cooking breakfast for him and Phaya, it seems the sizzling on the stove is all it takes to remind him of his sex dream with hot-as-fire Phaya (although that is likely an induction hob though, not an open flame 🤣):

‌

And when offered the breakfast, Phaya lets us know in no uncertain terms he prefers the more liquid option (just as his garuda self has chosen a waterworld naga):

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OK so on to the most direct reference yet to the fantasy world-building in Episode 4 of The Sign – the visitation from the mysterious old woman spouting warnings and exhortations to Tharn and Phaya:

Her serpent bracelet and subsequent physical transformation show that she is most likely a nagini from Tharn's past life, come to warn the pair that the vengeful naga whom Tharn betrayed previously (see Heng Asavarid's interview spoiler here) is nearby and out to get them (remembering also that at least some of the nagas have the power to shapeshift).

My guess is her golden eyes and general coloration at Ep.4 [1‌/4] 15.40 are signaling that she's Wanwisa, Tharn's sister in his previous life as a naga:

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Going off-tangent just a little, the mysterious gran/golden dragon lady is another example of a wise and mysterious elder popping into a Thai drama to dispense life-saving wisdom.

Not sure if it's enough to be a trope, but The Sign's psychic gran calls to mind a couple of other almost deus-ex-machina plot-helpers:

the loong with the time-portal crystal ball in Be My Favorite; and

the wise monk at the end of Nang Nak (the Sine Inthira version).

There are surely others (but I just can't recall them at the moment). I also can't help but think Uncle Tong in Bad Buddy fits this mold as well, because his wise, unworldly advice helped PatPran re-think and re-chart their lives (except that Director Aof had the good sense not to spring this sage and magical loong on us at the very last minute, and introduced him to us earlier in BBS Ep.6).

Anyway, on to Ep.5 of The Sign. I can't wait to see what's in store, and hope they can get the series back on track! 💖

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[reversemoon255]

BoonBooom Shobosha / BoonBoom Leon / BoomBoomRobo 119

I mentioned before, but I know quite a few people were upset when BoonBoomger's mech was revealed to not be posable like the last two years. But I think this release in particular really exemplifies the playability over posability that this season is going for. I'm sorry you can't pose them easily, but they're just fun to mess with. Maybe next year we'll go back to posable, but for now I'm more than happy with what we're getting.

The Good: Tiny vehicle in big vehicle is always fun. Even if it doesn't add much to the toy's individual play value, it does make it feel more fun when you play with, it's a fun way to incorporate the head, and also makes it feel bigger than it is. I also always enjoy when they do a non-humanoid robot mode. It even, weirdly, perfectly fits on top of Boomer in vehicle mode? Don't know if that's intentional, but it's neat.

The fact that it can more easily do Boomer's gimmick of activating attack modes is something the line needed, and that it as both a vehicle and a robot can participate in the line's armament gimmick to a similar extent to Boomer and a greater extent than ByunD really adds to its playability.

And 119 is also a really cool combo, as well as still allowing a similar amount of play with the other BoonBoom Vehicles that it has when uncombined. And while there aren't a lot of them, Leon does have 2 unused male C-Clips that hint at another, even greater combination down the road. At least I hope.

The Bad: I don't really have anything bad to say. It's a great release for this toyline.

Overall, Even if you've skipped out on the other support vehicles, I would definitely recommend this if you own Boomer. Heck, I think I could recommend it even if you don't have him. It's that good an auxiliary mech.

Champion Carrier is coming out fairly soon, and considering it's the same price as Boomer by himself, and has no robot mode, it should be very big. They only advertise it as having a combo with Boomer, but there's also the chance it could facilitate a combo with both ByunD and Leon as well. I really do want a huge vehicle combination.

[robotclownindulgence]

A seeker combiner that I think would be silly goofy is basically starscream, thundercracker, slipstream and skywark combining into the decepticon army's poster child gestald who is this super competent cool being, but they could uncombine at the slightest inconvenience and end up bickering in a cartoon dust clound. So a dynamic like this basically