#rolswap

Where did the "Octopus" idea come from?

My dream in life was to become a paleontologist, but unfortunately where I live that is not possible, geologically speaking, my land is very young and there are no fossil remains, so I could not study here and the truth is that I love more my family and my land than my dream of studying extinct creatures, I will not go study far away.

I was talking with an old classmate about what other specialty I could choose and she told me that she had always believed that I would end up as a marine biologist, I asked her why and she told me that it was the impression she got on the visit to the "oceanographic".

Apparently, on a trip we made to the Oceanographic Institute, she heard me giving fun facts about octopus, squid and cuttlefish; I have always been fascinated by cephalopods and since at that very moment they were studying the life cycle of octopuses in the laboratories that they showed us, I was a little excited; and then there was an incident with an octopus… What a day... really, but when I remembered it, I kept thinking.

Two days later there was the first Spider-man film from 2002 on TV and I saw the beginning, when they arrived at the laboratory where the spiders were and it reminded me so much of the excursion I had been talking about the other day with my partner, so much, that I couldn't avoid thinking:

“Radioactive spider + nerd = Spider-man

Radioactive octopus + nerd = Octopus-woman?”

And then I remembered Dr. Octopus and thought "Why not?"

It started as a bit of a joke, as if on that excursion I had been bitten by a radioactive octopus and had become a superhero with octopus powers. I took all my knowledge about cephalopods, I designed the outfit inspired by my own clothes, I thought about what things I could make a superhero where I live and when I wanted to realize it, I had created Mo Octavius, my Dr. Octopus sona, one of the characters I've created that I like the most, even though I hate drawing humans.

It has undergone some modifications since the beginning, especially in its background and powers, but it is now ready to go out into the world.

Headcanon:

No, she actially wasn't bitten by a radioactive octopus. Instead, some chemicals fell on her, mutagenic risk products containing DNA fragments from cephalopod for hybridization, belonging to a project to create transgenic octopuses for commercial purposes. (I hope I can elaborate on this a bit more, I find it very interesting)

Her mother and sister are alive, but they live very far from where she studies, so she stays with her uncles, Otto and Rossy. Her uncle, Otto Octavius, is the true inventor of the actuators she uses.

She has two names, Micaela Ophelia, but she doesn't like either of them, so she prefers to be called Mo, after the initials, M.O.

In Spanish, two surnames are used, the father's first and the mother's second, but since Mo never met his father, she usually uses only her mother's surname, Octavius. (She lives in a part of Spain)

She is the superhero in charge of protecting the city where she lives, and why not Spider-man? Because the Peter Parker of her dimension purposely modified a spider, imitating what happened with Mo, to also obtain powers, but it went wrong, the spider's venom altered his brain chemistry and turned him evil and monstrous, a mutant spider-man who almost destroy the city. The biggest enemy of The Octopus.

Climbing

Her climbing ability comes from the suction cups that cephalopods have on their tentacles. If she is nervous or holds on too tightly to smooth surfaces like glass, you can sometimes hear the “Blup” of the suction cups coming off, although you can't see the suction cups on her hands or feet. Unlike other climbers that tend to slip a bit on glass, she sticks to it wonderfully, her problem is with surfaces that are too rough and uneven.

A classmate did rock climbing, canyoning, "salto del pastor" and other activities that require surviving between the walls of a ravine. Mo asked him to train her and with some effort she improved her arm and hand strength so she can climb when the suction cups don't help.

However, she rarely has to use her bare hands to climb rocky surfaces, in these cases it is her tentacles that lift her.

Camouflage

Cuttlefish can change color and texture to adapt to literally any environment, even artificial ones, and the mimic octopus modifies not only its color pattern, but also its way of swimming, to impersonate other marine animals.

In Mo's case, these abilities translate into invisibility, or rather the ability to impersonate objects, animals and even imitate other people, which allows her to go unnoticed, sneak into places, hide better her alter ego and hide in the crowd if necessary.

Instead she's not exactly a shapeshifter, more of a very good mimic, with slight invisibility and a perception filter.

Metabolism

The mutations he suffered also affected his metabolism and internal anatomical structure, which can be a problem, since Mo has three hearts, more even than a time lord.

This gives her greater resistance, better blood oxygenation, tension problems (Not only high, but ups and downs) and some chest pain due to the extra space occupied. The main problem here is that if a doctor auscultates her, they will realize that something is wrong with her heart, they're going to want to find out why her heart is beating strangely and she doesn't want to become a guinea pig, so she can't go to the doctor and risk, If she gets sick or ends up hurt, she's on her own.

Or not at all...

Cephalopods are one of the few animals in the world capable of regenerating their nervous system, and their nervous system is one of the most complex in the animal kingdom. They can regrow their limbs and in the case of octopuses, which have a "little brain" in each tentacle, they can completely regenerate it. Mo also has this ability, she can quickly heal his wounds and regenerate her limbs if she loses them.

This also has a bad side. His regenerative ability is faster than a surgeon's hands. Once they tried to do an operation to leave her with only one heart so she could return to normal, but the incision the surgeon was working on closed faster than he could handle, he hardly had time to get his hand out and the scalpel from inside Mo and was only able to remove one of the three hearts, which grew back completely within days.

That ability to divide cells is very dangerous, a cancer that could be benign and easily treatable in other people, in her it could be a death sentence in a couple of days or even hours. Mo is really terrified of the idea.

Tentacles

Tentacles, all cephalopods have them, but she doesn't, she's human. Instead her mutated brain, trying to adapt to the new body, began to demand more limbs, more tentacles, which caused her a serious PLP and she couldn't go to the doctor to ask him to reset her anything for the pain.

Her uncle Otto had been working on renewable energy for as long as she knew him, what she didn't know was that he had previously tried to create power using a stable fusion reactor and to be able to operate it safely he had created four mechanical tentacles.

The experiment went wrong, there were injuries and her tentacles were damaged and they had to remove them. Since then he had been working with less dangerous energies and creating four new tentacles, better than the previous ones. He never got to try these new inventions of hims, he always felt that they were missing something, until his niece confessed to him about her pain.

To help her, Otto gave her the four robotic tentacles and her own Mo's body took care of giving them what they lacked, generating new nerves to move them instead of cables, making them part of her.

By having their own nervous system (a brain each like octopuses) the tentacles developed their own intelligence (not artificial because it is not technology, but a real brain), each with its own mind. Mo had to learn to live with them as theyr intelligence grew, and she learned to override her commands over the individual minds of the tentacles.

She can hear the voices of all four in her head and talk to them, they are no smarter than a domestic dog, but they makes good company and she gave them names, named after four gods of the aboriginal culture of their land.

Magec: upper right hand - Is usually the detail-oriented, very dynamic, attentive to Mo's needs and very affectionate, they're the one who comforts her if something goes wrong.

Achaman: upper left hand - Calm, formal, attentive to his surroundings, prepared to stop any threat, protective…

Guayota: lower right - The most violent and a bit rebellious, the anarchist of the group, but also the most protective to Mo and their brothers. (have a "scar", a dent)

Chaxiraxi: lower left - Calm, responsible, the most loyal, the one who responds best to orders and the one who usually carries the heaviest part of the work.

Ink

She can produce ink, she have two glands on their wrists like spider-man's web-slingers and connected to these are some sacs where the ink is stored, similar to that of cuttlefish but much darker.

Out of the water they are not very useful, so she only uses it in an emergency, throwing a jet at the enemy's face to mislead, or to draw and write. She always liked using a feather pen and with how expensive ink is, having free and portable ink is very useful. She only need to gently press the gland with the tip of the pen and the pen is soaked enough to be able to write and draw.

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Some new fanart and some ideas I had about @daughter-of-sea-and-wisdom's AU where Bruno and Juliet's gifts are swapped.

I made a little change to start with and he commented that Juliet's visions were blue and it would be very cool, but then I read that Disney made them green because of a belief that if you look into an emerald you can see the future, for what the prophecy had to be green like emeralds. In addition, the color blue has always been closely related to medicine and the health field, so I decided to change the colors of the clothes as well as the gifts.

For Julieta I was inspired a bit by the designs in the book "The Art of Enchantment".

I have planned to draw some other ideas, but for now I leave you some written:

I see the song "The family Madrigal", when he sings the part of the parents, saying "Tío Félix married Pepa And my dad married Julieta..." and the people in chorus "We don't talk about Julieta" and then Agustín gets very sad (poor boy).

The fact that Mirabel will have a much worse life is obvious, not only because it is her own mother who disappears, but also because being her mother, everyone will tell her that Julieta left because of her. I know that Julieta will hear that from the walls and it will make her feel terrible, I imagine that more than once she wondered if it was worth it.

One night when Mirabel was really having horrible nightmares, Julieta came out of the walls to try to calm her down, took her in her arms and sang to her "You're ok, you're all right, I'll never ever leave your side...", she would tell her nice things, how brave and special she is… When Mirabel woke up she remembered it, but she would think it was just a dream.

I toyed with the idea of ​​trying to mix the gifts in another way and that Pepa was the one who sees the future, but there was a problem, after seeing Mirabel's future, Pepa couldn't leave or hide in the walls of the house like Bruno did.

I explain:

When Pepa had the vision and saw Casita collapsing, she would also see the scene of Félix saving Antonio, she doesn't know who's that boy, so she investigates more and sees that it is a son she will have in five years and then her dilemma begins. She must disappear to protect Mirabel, but if she does then Antonio will don't born and she could see that he was a very good boy and that he helped Mirabel a lot. Although her child was not yet born, she already loved him and her mother's instinct would overcome her love for Mirabel, so she would decide to stay and Mirabel's prophecy would be discovered.

Now that I think about it, I'm going to develop this idea a bit more and write a couple of drafts, because it sounds interesting too.