[image shows two Fullmetal Alchemist characters crying at a grave. A closeup shows a blurry background Ed posing dramatically in a tree, head raised to the sky in some unidentifiable emotion.]
In the vast world of comics, I wonder if there have been heroes with a “Groundhog Day,” type power. By that I specifically mean a hero who, if they die, immediately finds themselves waking up at the beginning of that day again. If they don’t die, they just continue forward through time.
I’m just thinking of how crazy it would be to have that hero on your super hero team. Like, you go to headquarters in the morning, and it seems like everything’s normal. But then you go to fire off a one liner, and they say it at the same time as you. And suddenly you know. Something went wrong.
And then one day you come in, and your heart drops as you see that their every move looks rehearsed. They answer questions before asked. They are totally aware of everything that’s about to happen. Imagine how scary that would be, realizing you’re starting a day that you’re team mate has failed to survive maybe dozens of times.
I would absolutely love it if you wrote some trans Laura content tbh. Even just your tag essay made me feel some kind of emotions
The original tag essay is here, and I’m operating in a functional AU of this thing I wrote one time, but that doesn’t matter unless you want the deleted scene of Laura trying to take Logan’s head off.
X-23 is one of thirteen…brothers, for lack of a better word. The lab staff call them brothers, a little tongue-in-cheek, and X-23 learns to hate the word, learns the taste of being called brother like the taste of blood, learns it as thing and copy and weapon. All of them do, but X-23 hates it the most.
X-23′s brothers die one at a time–some of natural causes. There were ten of them who never made it out of the ex vitro tanks, and X-14 dies at a year, X-11 at nineteen months, X-19 at three years, X-17 at five. X-13 falls during training and the three broken ribs ‘heal’ straight into lung tissue, and the doctors usher the rest of them away. X-13 never comes back from the medical bay, and neither do X-15, X-12, or X-22–broken leg, crushed hand, and cracked skull, in order. Healed to death.
When X-23 comes looking for X-22, there’s a doctor sitting alone in an office with her hands clutched so tight the knuckles are bleached. X-23 has always been a wanderer, more than the other brothers, and given to getting into trouble, often punished and all the more furious for it.
The doctor looks up when the door opens and scrubs the back of one hand over her face.
“Where’s X-22,” X-23 says flatly, and the doctor comes over to crouch down, on eye level. X-23 is short. They’re all short.
“I’m really sorry,” the doctor says, and she sounds sincere, her eyes red and her scent washed with something X-23 doesn’t recognize. “He–he died, Veintitres. We did everything we could to save him.”
If it was any other doctor, X-23 would snarl and storm off, retreat to the others. They’re never reprimanded for their tempers, only for disobedience.
This doctor, though. This is the nicest doctor. She never wears anything that makes them sneeze, and she brings chocolates when they have to get blood drawn, and she never told a soul when X-23 carefully removed one of her earrings, a plain silver hoop on X-23′s palm. X-23 gave it back, but–
“Pretty,” X-23 says dully, reaching out to touch one of the hoops. “He liked them too.”
The doctor’s eyes spill over and that smell pours off her skin as she carefully–very carefully, there are limits even for the nicest doctor–wraps one arm around X-23.
“Come on. Let’s take you back to your brothers.”
There are five of them who make it to ten years old–X-16, X-18, X-20, X-21, and X-23.
There is one of them who makes it to ten years and one day.
We’re getting ready to deploy an overhaul of our search code—here’s what that means for you (along with a tiny sneak peek of the changes).
oh, sure, give me exclusions now after i’ve already given up and developed like twelve new kinks out of sheer self defense at being unable to exclude them from my searches.
[slams the reblog button] BUT WHERE IS THE LIE
#and by grew i mean discovered and oh god what the archive hath given and what the archive hath taken away @shiphitsthefan
I relate to this to the depths of my very soul
Check it out! Soon, it will be possible to exclude tags from AO3 search results without using the “Search Within Results” field!
hey everybody, welcome to another amazing installment of Weird Biology and WOWIE ZOWIE do I have an odd one for you today!
this bizarre creature is among the largest of its kind, but bears hardly any resemblance to the rest of the family. (we’re sure this gets mentioned a lot at its family holiday dinners.) it has a real mouthful of a name and the spirit of a cranky old man about to whack you in the shin with his walker.
give it up for…
I’ll just give this image a moment to sink in.
(it’s also called the small-headed softshell turtle, because scientists are a bunch of mean highschoolers.)
seriously, I don’t even really know where to START with this guy. unlike the humble regular earnest hardworking turtle, the Narrow-Headed Softshell Turtle does not have an armored shell (hence the name). instead, its shell is soft and leathery. like a pair of well-broken-in Timblerland boots, except that the boots will not bite you.
oh, he is absolutely going to bite you.
this soft pliable shell cuts down on the turtle’s weight by a huge amount, making them far more agile in the water and faster on land than a conventional everyman turtle (this should make you worried). the flattened shape of the shell also makes them more hydrodynamic, making them faster in the water than you can possibly imagine.
for a turtle, I mean.
this is an important advantage, because the Narrow-Headed Softshell Turtle spends most of its life in the water. they live on the bottoms of sandy rivers across a wide area of central and southern Asia, where they reach sizes best described as fucking huge. adults can reach up to 45 inches (shell length only) and 260 fucking pounds (whole damn turtle).
their total body length can be over a meter. fuuuuuuuuck. a turtle that size needs a LOT of shoulder room, especially because the adults are a bunch of cranky ginormous chompmonsters. (can’t really blame them, I guess. I’d be irritable too, if my head was that small)
now imagine a cheesed-off 260-pound turtle swimming towards you at Mach Fuck.
Narrow-Headed Softshell Turtles are aggressive, and will attack anything they consider a threat (including humans, fishing boats, and probably also rocks). their primary attack is to just bite the fuck out of whatever is annoying them , but their secondary move is the one to watch out for.
when terminally pissed off, the turtle extends the full length of its surprisingly long neck and delivers a literal cannon headbutt. this attack has been documented as being powerful enough to damage fishing boats. imagine what it would do to your face. (nothing good. if you see this turtle winding up, run.)
the true face of terror.
when left to its own devices, the Narrow-Headed Softshell Turtle spends its time buried at the bottom of the river, waiting for its next meal to happen by. (which it can do almost indefinitely because softshell turtles can breathe underwater, holy shit.) once another animal smaller than itself passes overhead the turtle strikes, mortally wounding the prey with its nightmare bite (no joke, the first strike usually kills instantly. this is a creature capable of taking a chunk out of your leg). it’s a pretty solid gig, if you’re a lonely grumpmonster.
beats pumping gas all day, I guess.
in fact, the Narrow-Headed Softshell Turtle spends so much of its life underwater that we… don’t really know all that much about it. apart from the biting thing, I mean. the turtle has been very clear on that.
we’re not even entirely sure how long they live, though captive turtles have made it more than 70 grouchy, grouchy years. locals in India claim that in the wild individual river bastards can stick around for up to 140 years, which I am inclined to believe because these people fish for a living and they have to remember where the boat-sinking nightmare turtles live.
it’s only common sense.
despite its wide range, the Narrow-Headed Softshell Turtle is now considered Endangered. (note: this is not allowed. what would we replace them with? large cantankerous frogs? big passive-aggressive catfish? I DON’T THINK SO.)
this is primarily due to human hunting, as the turtles are consumed in huge number throughout Asia. (humans will eat anything.)
the government of India has now moved to protect the turtle, restricting trade and moving to conserve the species. we dearly hope this will be enough to save the grumpy frumpy river grandpa.
please stay with us forever, Narrow-Headed Softshell Turtle. we love your tiny tiny face and terrible attitude.
–
thanks for reading! you can find the rest of the Weird Biology series here.
if you enjoy my work, maybe buy me a coffee to support Weird Biology.
–
IMAGE SOURCES
img1- Wikimedia Commons img2- conservationindia.org img3-zoosrcool.wordpress.com img4- Joel Sartore img5- Turtle Survival Alliance img6- Turtle Survival Alliance img7- The TeCake img8- Joel Sartore
Fantastic! When the apocalypse occurs and I become the morally ambiguous monarch we all deserve, I’m filling my moat with them.
[Image summary:
First image says, “The Narrow-headed Soft-shell Turtle.”
The rest of the images show the turtles from different angles. They range in colour from grey to yellowy-brown. Some have darker spots or stripes.
Their backs have a wide, shallow shell shape covered by leathery skin, which continues past the shell edge over their heads and legs. Their legs look somewhat like empty gloves – wrinkly, shapeless masses with a few claws barely attached.
Their heads are very small, and their shells are much bigger, so their necks are weird collapsing cones … okay, I actually did a google search looking for alternate descriptions, but google agrees with me … their necks look identical to a penis’s foreskin. When at rest, their heads are retracted so that they are very close to their shell, but they can extend out quite a ways when headbutting/biting something. I really can’t avoid the comparison.
They have tiny bug eyes that seem to look in different directions, a weird little anteater nose, and a muppet mouth.
kiragecko 