#brainstorm tag

[pyromechanical]

watching that new big mtmte fan animation again and smiling so big every time. well actually smiling big most of the time anyway but especially so when they put my beloved genius jet on screen

[pyromechanical]

hello transformers fans

[pyromechanical]

rodimus: so, remind me why percy banned you from his lab?

brainstorm: cmon rodders, this is like science 101. you cant have food in the lab and im a total snack ;)))

perceptor: you ignored safety procedures and blew up half of my fucking equipment

[pyromechanical]

wanting to draw brainstorm in typical wacky scientist clothes vs wanting to draw brainstorm in terrible science pun shirts: fight

[pyromechanical]

anyways based on the extensive evidence I’ve acquired, I’ve come to the conclusion that IDW Brainstorm has easily one of the most kissable faces

[pyromechanical]

brainstorm wearing his faceplate 24/7 had nothing to do with the secret deception insignia and everything to do with the fact that his actual face is just too damn pretty.

[ofwizardsanddaemons]

((since i'm eating and can't also grade papers))

THOUGHT 3: darryl + daemons that don't settle

i'm torn between his daemon either settling really early (super-long Ordeal by the books, but the hardest part was just taking the Oath and that took way less than three months) OR (and this OR is where i'm leaning)

i'm not sure if his daemon ever settles, really. (i'm also not sure if that's a darryl thing or an abdal thing or a thing that may be viewed by some in-universe researchers as an autie thing.) like, they have a preferred form, but it's not permanent, just comfortable. as an abdal, it might be related to being such a direct conduit to the One--daemons settle as power levels start to settle. (they probably already have a form in mind coming out of the Ordeal, but can change for a little while after that, it's just harder.) and we don't know a whole lot about abdals outside of darryl. (as tom said, "they don't grow on trees" meaning they're uncommon rather than suggesting their habitats.) an unsettled daemon is probably not a trait of all abdals.

aha, we're far enough into this universe that tom is telling me about it. YES. tom says it might be a combination of the abdal thing and the autism thing. it's dangerous to make sweeping generalizations like that, because no two cases are the same (in either category). it's easiest to just say it's a darryl thing (and to let darryl assume that it's a darryl thing, and somehow loosely connected to the bi-location but definitely not a cause for concern). he says there are other wizards whose daemons never settle, and there aren't too many common factors among them beyond that they tend to be fairly rare. the lone power seems to be particularly interested in them, too, but whether that's because of the unsettled daemons or the unsettled daemons are because of the interest... well, that's anybody's guess. the Powers tend to play those sorts of things close to Their chests.

[ofwizardsanddaemons]

THOUGHT 2: kit (this was originally part of the same post as nita, but then it spiraled and i thought it should get its own post)

but now that we work further into this idea, i'm not quite sure about ponch as kit's daemon. on one hand, it completely makes sense, like tatterpig was saying--they're both unflinchingly loyal and especially during the events in AWAl, ponch basically acts like a daemon in canon, anyway.

on the other hand, ponch has been in the family for years. (or has he?) in the 'verse i'm building, we've mentioned that daemons aren't exactly physical beings to the uninitiated, so it wouldn't be self-consistent to just keep up the premise of ponch as the family dog, unless there was some reason for him being visible to everyone (potentially even before kit took the Oath). and then if he's the family pet, there's a lot of work needed to keep up that appearance--if, like i've suggested, kit starts undergoing separation training with his daemon during TWD, then what was ponch doing while kit was at school? kit can't just leave him at home, and his parents would be suspicious if their dog mysteriously wasn't home during the middle of the day when kit is supposed to be in class sans his loyal dog.

so i mean, one thing we could do is take ponch as the family dog out of the narrative, or give the rodriguezes a different dog in addition to kit's daemon. some options:

-ponch is a separate entity from kit's daemon, but still gets the 'strangeness' in the books and basically functions the same way i imagine peach functions: not anyone's daemon, but a Power in Its own right. Powers aren't necessarily obvious as such right away, so this could work.

-the rodriguez family dog is different from kit's daemon, but at some point something happens to said dog (probably after kit and daemon undergo separation), so (physicalized) daemon seamlessly fills the hole left by mysteriously incapacitated dog. which could lead to interesting commentary on kit if his daemon essentially becomes a Power. (i mean, dairine is kind of like this, too, and it could be argued that nita and bobo are in a similar situation.) in this case, i think the choice to be uniformly visible would be a suggestion made by the daemon, who isn't really sure why the suggestion occurred to him but it's one of those hunches you can't ignore. (but does this invalidate kit's very real relationship with his dog? hm.)

-the family dog is not kit's daemon and the two continue existing independently, but kit's daemon still fulfills the same narrative purpose as ponch in the books. (the dog is as normal as wizards' pets ever are.)

-the rodriguezes don't have a dog. ponch is kit's daemon, but the rest of the family doesn't know about him. (well, carmela does once she learns the Speech, but the rest of them don't.) this is bad news for questions like the meaning of life, and doesn't make a lot of sense if we try to keep the 'wizardly leakage' storyline from AWAl onwards, where ponch starts affecting normal dogs.

-ponch is the rodriguez family dog and has largely the same narrative as in the books. kit's daemon is separate, but the two are close (which becomes a topic of interest to the Seniors later on, i'm betting). in this option, kit's daemon settles as a fox. (it's hilarious later that raoul's nickname for kit is 'kit fox'.) that means the wizardly leakage involves ponch as a nonwizard being able to see kit's daemon at all, for a start. part of the strangeness is their communication.

i think i'm favoring that last one. (which, re-reading this, is an extension of the first one.)