#xena asks

matoro (how could i not have mister "doomed and saved the matoran universe at once" himself at #1)

lewa (he gets into so much trouble all the time. rest in peace, dude. being stuck in tren krom sucks)

lariska (my "deeper cut" character, given she had no official appearance during the time bionicle was ongoing. but still.)

FISH FACT: okay not exactly a fish fact but it's adjacent. did you know there's two major types of INVERTEBRATE chordates? yes! chordates! the thing all vertebrates are! there's invertebrate ones!

the most commonly known one is tunicates or sea squirts. funny little sessile guys, they're more closely related to you and me than we are to an octopus.

the other one, which i wanna draw attention to, is known as a lancelet. what do they look like?

they look like this.

"xena" you say, "that just looks like a weird fish"

and you'd be CORRECT because it DOES look like a weird fish! a weird fish without a spine!!! lancelets are filter feeders and lack a backbone. instead, they have a notochord - something that other vertebrates actually do have! tunicates do as well they just lose it when they metamorphose into the funny sessile guys.

so like, Officially she's not.

but her arc in xenoblade 2 is the single most trans thing i can think of in a game that isn't LITERALLY about a trans person.

xb2 spoilers i guess but i don't respect xb2 as a whole to censor it beyond this but. with the bathhouse scene, i didn't realize it was about her core crystal. i thought it was her actually being trans and going "please don't out me until i'm comfortable with that" but no it wasn't that.

she still ended up being closeted and hiding who she "really was" and it's extremely telling how she went from wearing a big baggy set of clothes that totally cover her (such as, idk, a dysphoria hoodie!) to something far more revealing (which i have issues with that but that's just a general xb2 "why did saito have to make all the main female blades in the party Like That" critique) like...a fair amount of trans people also tend to do. also the whole "This is who I really am!" bit, too, feels trans as hell like someone coming out as trans to people.

one can argue that nia being forced to become a flesh eater in and of itself strengthens that - forced to go through something that left her body permanently altered against her wishes. kinda like what puberty does!

also her core is blue and pink and light reflecting off it can make it white which i don't think was intentional trans flag imagery (given all flesh eaters have that and the pink is more meant to be red, as seen by jin) but also it's a very funny coincidence.

so that's why i think of nia as a great trans character even if, by all accounts, she's cis. but god, you couldn't make a more trans-coded character without just making them trans.

holy shit this is revolutionary information

god i love them so fucking much. you want some facts? here's some facts.

sea slugs love eating things and taking things from them. famous example: blue angel sea slugs take stinging cells from their prey and just incorporate them into their skin. some species incorporate chloroplasts from algae they eat!