nonbinary, they/them | this was a sideblog meant for rants and rambles, its now mostly dispatch hcs | holding onto the last strands of my sanity by the skin of teeth
he would not fucking say that, but with disability.. he would not fucking be able bodied. sick n tired of characters walking away from multiple life changing injuries without a scratch. let’s get some natural consequences in here.
give that knife/sword fight survivor nerve damage. give the character who was shot in the gut a stoma. give that fire survivor lung damage and an oxygen cannula. give that leg injury survivor a cane. give that starvation survivor gastroparesis. give that spinal injury survivor a manual chair or powerchair.
while we’re at it, give your characters congenital disabilities too, just because. give them intellectual and development disabilities. give them acquired and postviral illnesses. dare to make somebody bedbound. for me.
Im doing my usual 'jotting down random notes as the thoughts come to me' that I do as part of the beginning of my creative process, and this has to be one of the silliest things I have ever written.
Robert Robertson absolutely gnashing, biting into an ice cream sandwich with the full force of his front teeth meanwhile Flambae is viscerally cringing just looking at him because he has sensitive teeth :( also maybe still some unpleasant memories about losing his front tooth
Your character has been in a coma for three weeks and just woke up, said something profound, recognised everyone in the room, and will be walking by next chapter. i love you. i respect your commitment to the plot. but i need you to sit down because we have to talk about what the human body actually does when it's been unconscious for three weeks.
⊹ Waking from a coma is not waking up. it is a gradual, nonlinear process that can take days or weeks. there's no moment where the eyes open and the person is back. there are stages: responses to pain, then to voice, then to commands, then inconsistent awareness, then windows of consciousness that come and go. Your character might recognise someone they love and then have no memory of it an hour later. the people waiting at the bedside have to live in that uncertainty for a very long time.
⊹ Muscle atrophy is immediate and significant. after one week of immobility, you lose a measurable percentage of muscle mass. after three weeks? your character cannot sit up unaided. they cannot stand. their legs do not work the way they used to and getting them to work again involves weeks of painful physiotherapy. They will not be walking to the window to look meaningfully at the sky. They will be trying to hold a cup without dropping it.
⊹ Cognitive effects are real and unpredictable. memory gaps. difficulty concentrating. words disappearing mid-sentence. personality changes that might be temporary or might not be. your character waking up is the beginning of finding out who they are now, which parts came back intact and which parts are different in ways that can't be fixed by time or willpower. The person who walked in is not quite the same person who wakes up.
⊹ The psychological experience of the people who were waiting is also almost never written properly. you visited someone unconscious every day for three weeks and talked to them and held their hand and made decisions about their care and lived in a sustained state of grief and hope at the same time. and then they wake up. and you're supposed to be relieved. and you are relieved. but you're also exhausted in a way nobody is acknowledging, and slightly angry in a way you can't justify, and you've changed too while they were gone. the reunion is complicated. Write the complicated.
⊹ What the coma patient experiences, if anything, is genuinely unknown. some people report nothing. some report vivid dream-like states they can't distinguish from memory. some report hearing voices around them, including things said at the bedside that were never meant for them. Your character might have three weeks of false memories they believe are real. They might have heard something they weren't supposed to hear. they woke up knowing something about the people in that room that those people don't know they know.
I’m having enrichment time in my enclosure in the form of excessive biochemical anatomy & physiology research as applied to our favorite flaming homosexual, I was interested in examining how his powers work in addition to what realistic drawbacks are to his power usage similar to the drawbacks Chase experienced, please enjoy!
Images posted below will be in relation to the molecular structure of fats and sweat glands
When I started this research I was trying to examine how metahumans, specifically Flambae, manifested their powers and how that would change the function of his internal biological systems. We know that magic exists in the dispatch universe but we also know most metas, unless specified otherwise, are regular genetic mutations (non-magical)
As a brief explanation of my start I examined the basics of fire. An exothermic chemical reaction that’s color is dependent on the type of fuel involved in the combustion. Things that can produce/fuel flames include but are not limited to: oxygen, hydrogen burning in chlorine, and certain metallic fuels. The most common flame color, including Flambae’s flames, are hydrocarbon flames. This led me to types of materials burning and the temperature they corresponded to; one of which being animal fat which has a max flame temperature of 1,472-1,652 degrees Fahrenheit (800-900 degrees Celsius).
Additionally Flambae’s fire exclusively ignites from his skin directly. He does not seem able to summon the fire (and the flame) from a distance. My theory of his anatomical process combines the idea of that animal fat burning with the emission from direct skin to that of a biochemical process internally allowing for ignition as well as examining which parts of his anatomy would allow his skin to not burn / why his hair still can.
My working theory is his powers are a conversion from fat to fuel in a literal sense. I did not calculate his bmi but I determined on baseline stats that he has to have a low fat ratio to his design as he is, quite literally, burning it before it develops. The basics of how fat works in the human body can be broken into three main stages: lipolysis, transport and oxidization, and the use of hormones. A very basic breakdown of the process is:
1. Fat is stored in the body in the form of triglycerides as seen above. Lipolysis breaks down the fat into fatty acids and glycerol.
2. Fatty acids and glycerol are transported through the bloodstream to various tissues and cells that require energy. The mitochondria break down the acids through a process called beta-oxidization into smaller units then burned through the Kreb’s cycle producing ATP (your body’s energy to function)
3. Hormones control when and how the fat is used. Insulin stores fat, glycogen burns it when blood sugar levels drop, adrenaline stimulates fat burning, cortisol attempts balance deciding when to store or burn based on the body’s needs in interpreting stress
Considering Flambae’s powers are tied to his emotions it only seemed practical his powers would be directly correlated with his hormones as well. If we think of the fire both as a chemical process as well as a physical extension of a muscle he practices we can then determine fat is the primary fuel to his flame.
Considering, as I stated before, that his fire is summoned from his skin and not from afar, I determined the easiest area for the fat to be distributed as energy from the body would be through his sweat glands (also known as eccrine glands as those are the more common ones in the general exposed regions of skin on the human body). But if the fatty acids are his muscular energy the question of the usage of glycerol came into play.
Glycerol is a sugar alcohol that’s structure is found as the backbone of lipids known as glycerides. Glycerol is mainly metabolized in the liver and, when not properly processed, can be elevated in cases such as diabetes. In the food industry glycerol serves as a sweetener and preservative commercially. Glycerol is not considered flammable or combustible under normal conditions but can burn if subjected to high heat and open flames. Auto-ignition occurs between 698-752 degrees Fahrenheit (370-400 degrees Celsius). I believe that this is one of the compounds excreted from his sweat glands after going through its own process internally to be better ignited. In a way leaning into the “sugar alcohol” name. If we have fun with it we can say that his sweat could have a sweet alcoholic tinge to it to allow for easier ignition / combustion.
To accommodate for the fact that his body burns a majority of fat in this case to use his powers he would have to accommodate that with a significant increase to his daily caloric intake. The ballpark caloric intake required of an approximately 6’4” 180lbs physically fit male is 3,200 calories per day. I would say, with his intensity and prolonged use of his flames, he would have to double that number to keep up with his body consuming nutrients faster than the average person. Working out in this scenario would only be useful for muscle definition and strength training. No need for aesthetic toning when your body is constantly burning fat (literally).
That’s my comprehensive analysis of his power and compounds in the body. I’m not sure if anyone’s also interested but I also have a bit of analysis on how his increased internal temperature could affect his reproductive systems as I’ve seen different mentions of it in certain fics and went down a different rabbit hole of research. If you’re interested in that portion, lemme know! But for now I hope you enjoyed my ramblings
#'you just sit at a typewriter and bleed' hemingway you poetic asshole it's way harder than that #you gotta force the blood out of your veins without ever lifting a knife #through sheer force of will (@aethersea)
characters who get the "i can fix him" urge not because theyre a saint who loves everyone inherently but because they think "if i can prove there's good in everyone, maybe i can start feeling like i'm worthy or being seen as good too."
however i may have cooked it a lil too long. mine was more coagulated and less soupy, so to speak, and eggs are my nemesis when it comes to cooking them except by themselves.
I love how the notes for this are just chock full of examples of the most batshit specific things people research for their fanfics. Truly a treasure trove.
Thinking more about the feral robert AU, and honestly, I think Robert has to have bitten Flambae's fingers off. I'm sorry, but there's no other way. Robert being a biter is such a big part of his alternate role of Stray, and it makes sense because I can imagine the pain and shock would have been enough for Flambae to theb do that burn damage to his back.
Which in turn makes it all that funnier when Prism realizes Flambae is falling for him and is like, "Really!?! That one?! The man who acts like he hasn't had basic human interaction since birth, who literally bit your fucking fingers off! That's the man you want!?" She lives her bestie and is greatful he helped her keep away from the Red Ring but, good lord, have some standards.
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