Non-indicative image: Sentient Phlebotinum

The image here gives no indication that what's happening has anything to do with the trope at all. I see a slightly blurry woman and a distressed man doing something somewhere. The caption doesn't help much either.

The image does "holographic woman" better than sentient phlebotinum. That said, the page seems to have a problem.

How about the Wave Existence◊ (the fourt post) from Xenogears? It's what powers all the Humongous Mecha and fancy magic, everyone assumes it's a Lost Technology era generator but is in reality a life form from another plane.

edited 28th Dec '10 2:04:54 PM by Earnest

It looks a lot more like a Sufficiently Advanced Alien or Energy Being than phlebotinum to me.

would this◊ image work well if shrunk to the proper size?

also, was that image brought up in the Projected Man discussion? It looks like it could work.

That is incredibly hard to see.

... Magicite is◊ made of Espers!

Sorry, sorry, I know that makes zero sense unless you've played Final Fantasy VI, but after finding it randomly it was too funny (if niche) not to share.

On that note, what if we added a speech ballon to an image of an actual example, to make it really obvious it's sentient?

A Magic The Gathering Elemental might work. Fusion Elemental is made of a combination of mana and looks like a sentient combination of phlebotinum. Image is a bit big, sorry.◊

Kataki, War's Wage looks like a pile of living armor and weapons. Sorry, this image will need to be cropped if used.◊

Lightning Ball might work too. [1]◊

It's too bad that Our Market Research Shows That Players Like Really Long Card Names So We Made this Card to Have the Absolute Longest Card Name Ever Elemental doesn't have the full illustration readily available, since that one is literally made of books.

edited 28th Dec '10 11:00:24 PM by Scardoll

I actually like the Fusion Elemental a bit.

I don't see how the fusion elemental represents phlebotinum in any sense at all.

edited 29th Dec '10 4:23:50 AM by Clarste

It struck me as "living magic" by way of Elemental Magic.

I suppose magic could considered phlebotinum in some settings, but it looked to me more like a super elemental-elemental. Which it is. Might look good on Elemental Embodiment.

Yeah, it would look a lot better over there. You want to start the Image Pickin' or should I?

I'm not really a starting-things person.

Here is a sharper version of GSC's suggestion:

Still can't tell what they are. Probably bullets, but it's not entirely obvious.

(cropped per )

edited 29th Dec '10 9:55:48 PM by rodneyAnonymous

Crop out the right side and part of the left.

Bump.

bump

A collage of the bullets in the box and loading themselves in the gun would work best, I think.

Bump, since we still need to do something about the current pic. I'm voting either use the two panels of the toon bullets, or leave it without a pic.

Um, what about Phazon and Dark Samus from Metroid Prime?

How would we go about showing that it's sentient?

I don't think there's a single moment in any of the games where it's shown as both sentient and phlebotnium.