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[dynoguard]

Dinosaurs Among Us Song: Dinowave (Let's Dance To)

Ever since Crossover Event Alpha, the Time Slip field collapse has been accelerating at an exponential rate. Get to know humanity's elder cousins as more Dinosovian time refugees arrive in the Holocene!

This video is certified as Unreality in your universe of origin. Congratulations or condolences as appropriate.

More Tunes Like This - My Youtube Channel

A full breakdown is likely coming soon. However, as is standard, the base clips here were generated using a combination of Midjourney, Hailuo and Vidu, with a few shots from other generators.

Editing is, of course, manual.

[dynoguard]

"And we're back." Linda DuPree smiled into the camera, doing her best to appear natural. "With LaBrea... Uh... Is that your first or last name?"

The camera panned over to Linda's "guest." At first glance she appeared human, though the illusion broke down quickly. The size was the immediate tip-off: nine feet tall, with chalk-white skin and half-feline features.

From her short muzzle a pair of dagger like fangs dipped to just under her jaw. She "wore" an evening gown and opera gloves made of viscous liquid tar, the same material that formed an impossible mane upon her head.

The liquid moved and shifted with a life of its own, and a tendril of her floor-length "tresses" was presently dancing behind Linda like an agitated cobra, dripping rivulets of shimmering black oil that flowed along the ground back into her dress.

"Just LaBrea." Her voice carried an odd mix of valley girl inflection and a Hollywood Count Dracula accent, somehow unimpeded by her tusk-like fangs. "Thank you for asking. And Linda, can I just say that I am so thankful that you had little old me on your show, to get to know all the good people at home?"

"Thank, yes, I would like to-" Linda paused, and gathered herself. "I'd like to thank you, very much, LaBrea, for allowing the paramedics to give Sarah and Pauline transfusions."

"They were deliciously boring, dahling." She smiled. "Not like you. So. What do you want to ask me?"

"Well, what are you?" Linda winced. "Was that rude? I-"

"No, Dahling, you're just timid, frightened, like a little mouse. I like you." LaBrea tapped her chin, the slick mass of tar on her head shifted into a raised secretarial bun, a pair of glasses frames forming on her face, evoking a 'thoughtful' look by way of a fashion photo shoot.

"I'm a sabertooth tigress by death, a vampire professionally, an actress by calling and a Fossil Ghoul in general."

"Lets talk about that last one."

"Oh, acting! I don't have representation yet, but you have seen me on the news! And now here! On the hostage episode of The Squadt with Linda, Sarah, Pauline, and the husk formerly known as Darla!" She made an old fashioned 'call me' gesture into the camera with her tar-dripping claws.

"She'll be fine. I mean... not psychologically, but in a few categories I'm sure."

"I meant lets talk about the Fossil Ghouls. What does that mean?"

"Okay, so, like, I'm sure you've heard all kinds of things from the DynoGuard and their little juicebox pals, no offense."

"None taken."

"Wasn't a request. Like I was saying. You've heard that we're some kind of alien species that feeds on fear that's come here to bring an age of suffering and ultimately extinction upon you all. And I just want to let everyone know that couldn't be further from the truth."

"I, for one am glad to hear tha-"

"Yeah, species implies we reproduce and create life like mortals, which is downright offensive. Also, we feed on all forms of evil that you both commit and suffer, not just fear."

"So what are you then?"

"I'm the bones of a sabertooth cat, a whole lot of tar, a mass of your species superstitions, fears, and desires brought to life with a dark heart."

"A Dark Heart... is that metaphorical-?"

LaBrea plunged a hand into the tar at her hip, digging around in it as it were a pocket, before withdrawing a pulsing crystal the size of a cantaloupe. It was shaped like a human heart, carved crudely out of a sickly amber-yellow crystal. Inside, Linda could see a shadow moving around like a bug in a jar.

"This is a dark heart. Made form the ichor of Apothis herself, and holding a poor little soul that was too wicked to get fully digested after the master's last stop." LaBrea turned to the heart and its tiny shadow. "Who wasn't digested? You weren't, you weren't digested were you? You little atrocity you!"

Linda flinched as the shadow slammed itself against the wall of the heart nearest to her. She couldn't remember what it looked like, only that it had many teeth and claws it ought not to have, and was scrabbling furiously at the crystal in a futile attempt at escape. The camera did not pick up the finer details.

"You need a lot of evil, a lot of entroplasm, to make a little monster like this big and strong enough to be a real Fossil Ghoul." LaBrea said. "So you see, by letting us run roughshod over your world, you're actually helping us thrive. Isn't that fun?"

"You mentioned Apothis... That's the meteor that killed the dinosaurs?"

"Oh sweet little mouse! Apothis comes for everyone eventually. As a civilization gets big, and gets smart, its capacity to both inflict and experience evil swells. And when you're ripe, the monster meteor herself comes to feast, leaving a mass extinction in her wake. Before moving to the next star to do it, and the next, coming back around when your world has a new set of annoying talking matter that knows how to scream and mean it."

LaBrea shook herself from her ravings and regained her perky, if uncanny, posture. "Annoying talking matter and you, Linda. We're besties. Obviously!"

"How, how many times has Apothis done this?"

"To Earth? More than a couple by a few, dahling." LaBrea. "The lizards were the only ones to do something about it, and we'll have them dealt with soon."

"Why are you telling us this?" Linda asked.

"Because, dahling, it won't help. Not knowing, not begging, not even worshiping me." She tilted her head and smiled. Both the tilt and smile went farther than they ought. "Not that you shouldn't do all three anyway. They're fun!"

Linda blinked, unsure of how to respond.

"I mean fun for me." LaBrea grinned into the camera, then took a long, low inhale through her nose. As she did, Linda saw tendrils of smoke roiling from the cameras, the audience, and even herself, rushing into the creature's oddly petite nostrils. The smoke was an impossibly dark and deep purple and it smelled of burning decay.

She could taste the wisps flowing out of her mouth. They tasted like her divorce, her broken leg, her father's funeral-

"Don't turn that dial." LaBrea said in a mocking parody of Darla's voice. "Some of us will be right back after a message from these sponsors."

[dynoguard]

at the top of every evil organization, you need:

The Overlord, the main villain themselves

The Majordomo, their long-suffering second in command. Either unflinchingly loyal or wildly treacherous

And then filling up the C-Suite under them you have The Four Heavenly Kings. There's some variety here, granted, but usually we can reduce it to:

The Hot-headed One

The Scary One

The Girl One

The Witch One

Arguably the most important is The Witch One, mostly because they serve up the various plot devices that make episodes work.

[dynoguard]

History's Lance - A Side Story

My name is Ronax Tallplume. I am an archivist, class 4, Civilian Logistics, Agriculture and Welfare.

I don't know where I am.

That's not entirely true. I am in my house, or what's left of it, but my house is not all here. Nor is what's here where it should be.

I remember emergency sirens, and an alert broadcast. Someone from one of the Science Towers talking about an emergency procedure. I just remember looking up and seeing a ball of fire in the sky.

Then screaming and then-

The fireball looked at me. No, that's not right.

Then it was very cold, and very quiet.

Then I was here.

The rear half of my home is still entirely intact, as is a section of the yard outside and some of the sidewalk. My kitchen is where the home ends abruptly, cut cleanly through as though by a laser. There's no sign of burns or scorches, but along this line on the ground is a thin ring of irregular cyan-colored crystal growths.

This line forms a circle about 20 meters across centered on the house's capacitor box. Everything within the circle is just as it was before the siren went off.

Everything outside the circle is utterly wrong.

I do not recognize the plant life. There are trees and shrubs, but their leaves are strangely shaped. In place of the carpet ferns are simple leaves that poke up through dry, patchy soil. The air is also dry, and chilly, and it smells wrong.

It's night. I must have been knocked out for half a day at least. And there's no lights anywhere, much less the entire city of Tailspire.

Where the spike am I?

-

I spent most of the night taking stock of my situation. The recorder is charged for the foreseeable. I have some food from the half of the kitchen that's here, but water will be a problem.

I took the hangar pole from my bedroom closet. I don't have any weapons, so a tail's length hollow steel rod will have to do.

I've set out to find water. I've started hiking downhill. West by the sun's position.

-

I found a stream after six hexands or so. I've marked the trail with some rocks, and am following the stream. I've spotted more signs of life. Some of the insects seem familiar, but they are a fraction of the size. I've spotted a variety of unfamiliar birds, none of whom seem to have teeth.

No flappers though.

I also saw something else. Some kind of giant vole, I think. It had four legs, was covered in short, flat fuzz, and had curling horns coming from the sides of its head. Instead of scuttling on the ground it stood with its legs directly under it, legs that each ended in a pair of black claws. It barely had a tail to speak of. It'd say it was five, six claws long, muzzle to haunches.

It gave a low, staccato honk and ran into the foliage when I tried to get close.

Is this Primore at all? Did I get thrown to some other planet, or skipped into another universe like on Worldshifters? Something about the crystal ring seems familiar.

There we go... the stream led right to a small lake and...

A village! Little stone and wood houses in the distance. Dromeons by the size of the houses! Thank Zarr!

-

They weren't dromeons.

They were tailless, flat-faced things that smelled like cittervoles, about half my size. They wore clothing, they had tools, but they're completely alien. I tried to approach slowly to not spook them, but they ran as soon as I spoke.

I'd hoped that my F.I.S.H. would be able to pick up on their language, but the charge is drained and it doesn't use the same cells as the recorder.

I waited a bit to see if any would come out to try and communicate, but after three came out holding what appeared to be large knives or small swords, I decided to attempt again later.

-

I returned to the pond to try and speak with the creatures again. When I arrived, one of their number came forward with two animals like the four-legged vole-thing I saw on the path. It led them with plant-fiber ropes looped around their necks.

Livestock, I assume.

The creature left the two livestock animals tied to a post next to the pond, a new addition since the last time I arrived, and ran back to one of the houses when I tried to approach.

I'm twice their size, and I can see now that they don't have claws or fangs, or any natural armaments at all that I could see. I must be terrifying to them. The animals are a gift to appease me, it seems. Maybe the pole scared them. I'll leave it behind next time.

I have food enough for now. But that won't last long. If I'm not rescued, I may have to take them up on that.

-

It has been a thirdmoon. I have taken the creatures' livestock offerings twice, on days were I was not able to trap wild game. The four-limbed voles are gamey but filling when you cook them right. They come in a variety of sizes and shapes. I've been leery to try the plant life since I have no idea what is poisonous.

I've been thinking about Meg a lot. Partially because I miss her, but mostly because she was always talking about StarNest. She loved everything about space travel, especially the science. She'd go on and on about all of it. Especially the stasis thing. Time slip.

"Did you know they use time slip fields to make more chronite?"

I remember her saying those exact words.

"When the field collapses, everything in the space gets shoved out. Anything that doesn't undergoes the Bronzehorne process and forms chronite crystals."

I remember it so clearly. Maybe because she said it. Maybe because of the ring. The dirt just beyond the ring bulges. It's harder than the surrounding earth. Like it was packed together.

I've been in the time slip. I have no idea how long. If Meg was here she'd know. She was good with science and stars and things.

I didn't notice before, but the stars are different. Even I know that takes a long time. Long enough for voles to learn to make swords. How long is that?

They told us in school we weren't the first people on Primore. They told us we probably wouldn't be the last. That was a comforting thought then.

I watched a vidplay once about a big-brain flapper that got frozen in ice and woke up in the modern world. Awful effects, dumb script, lot of plop-jokes.

He must have been so lonely.

-

The spiking voles attacked me.

They had one of their own tied to the pole when I went down to get water. It was wrapped up in white clothing and was screaming and wailing. I cut the ropes with my claws and tried to tell it calmly I wouldn't hurt it.

I heard weird, hard running steps behind me and before I turned around one of the little monsters had a spear in me. It was on one of their labor animals, both of them armored up like for war. I knocked them both down with my tail and ran.

I'm back at the house. I'm trying to bind the wound but it won't stop. I want to go home. I want the warm air. I want Meg.

Meg. Meg, where are you?

It's getting dark.

-

I don't want to hurt you! Listen, please!

I'm just lost. I'm like you, I talk, I can feel. Please!

Stop! I'm not a monster!

My arm, you broke my arm! Why are you doing this? You horrible naked little voles! Overgrown garden pests! ANIMALS!

I never did anything to you and you stabbed me and burned my home!

Get back! I have teeth! I'll bite! That's what you understand isn't it? Hurting and biting and killing!?

Come at me then! You're so brave with your rocks and knives when I'm bleeding and tied up! You wanted to feed me one of you, so c'mon!

Do it. Do it you cowards!

Meg. Meg. I'll see you soon Me-

--

The last testimony of Ronax Tallplume, previously known as the Singing Stone of Silene, recently translated by and repatriated to representatives of the Granite Mountain Dinosovian enclave.

[dynoguard]

I admit I was a bit surprised the current conception is that compassion would universally "taint" the fossil ghouls food. I assumed because of how the Fossil Ghouls need to make things feel personal so victims don't just dissociate, a little mix of positive emotions or bittersweetness (with a Fossil Ghoul that imitates dead lovers or something), might occasionally beneficial to Apothis. Like a vitamin or mineral or something but still needs all the negative emotions to make it go down smoothly.

Well, I chose Borax for the example because you can eat a lot of borax and not die, as seen with Poison Squads of the early 1900s. You just wouldn't want to eat it, and you wouldn't be able to live off it long-term. Apothis's digestive system treats anything that isn't "evil" as either indigestible matter or as toxins to be filtered out.

The Ghouls each have a mortal virtue (as the Dinos all have a character flaw), they just perceive them as vices. They interact with aspects of "good", and the whole point of them is that they can understand it intellectually enough to manipulate it, whereas Apothis understands evil the same way a hummingbird understands the chemistry of sugar.

But the core idea is that they're feeding on evil, and natural evil is the lowest kind of evil. An accident or disease that has no cause, animal predation, natural disasters, etc are all just 'bad stuff that happens.' There's suffering to it, it produces some entroplasm, but it takes a sapient being that can understand malice, callousness, superstition and greed to produce food-grade wickedness.

Apothis slams himself into planets with sapient life at or approaching the industrial level because that's a greasy buffet table compared to a pile of iceberg lettuce (a world of non-sapient animal life).

A mismanaged care home would produce a lot of fuel for a ghoul. One run well is empty calories at best, poison at worst.

The ghouls have a bit of these elements left over, partially so they can still understand mortals enough to do their jobs and partially because just a scrap of mortal virtue means they're monsters, not natural disasters.

[dynoguard]

I've got those in my setting. They're called Fossil Ghouls (it's an action cartoon), creatures created by the Monster Meteor Apothis from the half-digested souls of the wickedest beings from his past harvests, a (usually ancient) corpse, and the zeitgeist of the creatures it is made to hunt (This time, mostly humans).

They don't feed on suffering, exactly. They eat evil, defined as "That which we suffer, that which we inflict" by converting it into a physical form called "entroplasm" (working title, portmanteau of 'entropy ectoplasm") or "dark amber". This McGuffin-goo can be used as food, power magical artifacts and spells, incarnate a new Fossil Ghoul, or create "nightmare zones". That last one is important for the topic at hand.

The heroes do attempt to make peace and negotiate on similar terms, but it fails for several reasons:

Being designed for the purpose of extracting misery, the Ghouls are fundamentally sadists in the way that humans, being evolved as social animals, are fundamentally cooperative. Fossil Ghoul find evil both fun and funny, and have a sort of "Addams Family if they actually wanted to hurt you" good is bad, up is down outlook.

Their master requires an extinction level event to harvest enough misery to keep going. They have to keep their numbers up or its back to the proverbial gullet.

Situations like the chronic pain scenario are like being handed a steak breaded with borax. Those people are being cared for. Their suffering is poisoned with kindness and hope and decency.

If a ghoul were to try and 'farm' ambient suffering, eventually the area they hang out in would start turning into a Nightmare Zone, a place so soaked with entroplasm that it becomes an extension of the ghoul itself. The mundane surroundings turn into a cross between Halloween Town and Cool World by way of the natural history museum, and mailboxes try and eat mailmen and such. Also, everyone in the area's miasma has their negative emotions and personality traits amplified.

Even if liberated from Apothis's authority, the Ghouls were all the likes of warlords, killers, plutocrats, and influencers when they were people. Lord Extinxion wants to be free specifically so he can turn Earth into his own personal nightmare dictatorship where "nothing ever gets better" and the others aren't any more altruistic.

They aren't redeemable because they aren't metaphors for bad people, they're metaphors for things like superstition, greed and record 4th-quarter earnings.

Well, except for Dimetrogorgon. He's a youtube broseph pastiche.

Demons and monsters that torture people because they feed on human suffering are so dumb. People are suffering everywhere my guy go literally any place and take a deep whiff.

[dynoguard]

"Night on the Town"

"We dated for a year and a half, the reception-"

"-was a mess, absolute travesty. We wanted Swedish meatballs."

"They're just like vorma. Something both sides of the family can enjoy equally. And we all also equally shared in the food poisoning."

"But that's normal wedding stuff, which is kinda the point. The dinosovian conception of marriage has more in common with ours than not."

"There are compromises, of course, but neither of us is very traditional, so its easy to accommodate most of our family's little demands. Like, I took her name, which made my traditionalist mom and aunt very happy."

"And made uncle Robert very annoyed, which I greatly enjoy."

"But to be fair, in a nod to her traditions, we chose to live in our own home rather than a multi-generational arrangement, as is thyrene custom."

"Sweetie, plenty of humans live in multi-generational homes."

"Can you not print that last bit? My mom reads your magazine."

-Dyo (34) & Melynie (28) Sledge, Newlyweds

Dyo and Melynie were made using multiple midjourney generations, photo-manipulation, and digital painting.

Normally, when I post something of this complexity, I don't give full details because its just a massive volume of information almost no one will care about. But I figure what the heck. Might as well show it off once.

MJ can do theropods pretty easily (assuming you're not picky, don't want feathers, and it doesn't need a tail), almost any other kind of dino is going to be a collage process. Ankylosaurs are a major blind spot.

So here's just some of the prompts I used to make bits and pieces of this composition.

photograph of a humanoid snapping turtle with a large, thick shell

an ankylosaurus anthro with a long, powerful, alligator tail, large, thick shell, green scales, white horns and spines, ankylosaurus tail, thagomizer :: long green reptile tail, over the ground, photography

a green humanoid ankylosaurus, photography, nighttime city background

photograph of a an attractive, heavyset woman with red hair wearing a sweater and jeans, standing on a city street, looking lightly up, friendly, happy, nighttime scene*

a green ankylosaurus tail, photography, black background :: alligator tail ending in a knob of bone

To get the image I wanted, it had to be built in chunks, assembled and then painted over and photobashed to blend the pieces.

Getting thyrene clothing to make sense requires some sci-fi hand waving. the smart-fabric cinches around the gap between the back armor plates and the main torso. The "hood" is a flap that buttons on one side and is open in the back. It's a cold weather outfit.

*Midjourney's dataset leans to extreme thinness, so 'chubby' or 'heavyset' will typically produce a normal looking thin-to average person, while "zaftig" or "plump" are required actual heavyset builds.

[dynoguard]

A Dinosaur’s Harvest Festival

Everyone loves a feast, no matter when you’re from.

Of the five sapient civilizations to call this planet home, only one (the one we don’t talk about) had no known form of harvest festival. The festival for our most recent cousins, the dinosovians, translates as “Festofall,” a corruption of the archaic “Feast of All.”

The “modern” (from the standpoint of dinosovian time-refugees) holiday is a synthesis of a number of similar festivals, mainly “Tubersprang” and “The Hunt of the Gorged” that merged with the rise of multi-species nation-states during the first industrial age. 

From a human perspective, Festofall comes across as a mix of Halloween and Thanksgiving held at a state fair. Cooking begins a full thirdmoon before the festival starts. Each family prepares a vast quantity of a specific dish, all of which is brought together for a community-wide potluck and cook-off. Competition is intense, though caring about winning is seen as gauche. 

The festival lasts for “two claws” (eight days) of feasting, carnival games, live music, dancing, and traditional theater. The potluck aspect is used by every aspect of food production, from farming to dining, to showcase wares and joust with rivals. On the fourth day of the festival, just as the sun begins to set the participants’ offerings are judged, and prizes are passed out.

The prize in question is an “honorloop”, conceptually similar to a blue ribbon or a medal, but taking the form of a ring of metal, braided leather, carved wood, or horn (tough plastic is always an option in the modern day) that is inscribed with the accomplishment.  These are worn over the winner’s own horn-tips, spikes, or talons as jewelry during every major festival for the year, before they are returned for the next year’s competition.

But when the judges go to give the honorloops, they are always wrong! Each replaced by a crude fake bearing a humorous, insults. The nature of the insults varies regionally, but “least improved”, “tastes like it smells” and “bland in, loud out” (very rude in the native podite) are traditional favorites. The honorloops have been stolen by impish bogies called “wildmolts”, “hollowkind”, or “Snappy Jarry.”

Dinosovian folklore associates the child’s first full molt with the shedding of their “hatching wildness” (Dinosovian children can walk within hours of hatching. A hatchling for the first three years or so is essentially a pet raccoon that gets bigger and more sapient every day, with substantially more bite-strength). The wildmolts are this lost wildness made manifest, in the form of macabre goblin-like pranksters.

The wildmolts, are of course, dinosovian children, who have been making their costumes and planning the theft of the honorloops since cooking began. The children hide the stolen loops in public places, and the winners must find their proper prizes before the festival ends or they must wear the mock-prizes at each of the year’s remaining cultural festivals and bank holidays (of which there are many). Wildmolts trade hints at their hiding places (in the form of riddles and puzzles) for treats and small toys. Adults are expected to play along with the ruse.

The second half of the festival belongs to the wildmolts, with adults and children alike participating in ritualized practical joke games that vary community-by-community (the uniqueness of which is a point of local civic pride.) These range from insult-competitions to hold-my-klem* reckless self endangerment. At night, live theater performances take on a more macabre tone and scary tales are told around bonfires.

Many of the more modern additions to the holiday, such as Aegis Shows, Pulse-Tag, and the Gorge-o-Rama (sponsored by Mr. Big Byte, Gorge Responsibly) take place in this latter half of the festival. 

The dual nature of the holiday symbolically conveys that even in times of plenty, the unexpected can strike at any moment. Post Time-Slip Festofall celebrations are held from November 16th through the 23rd. Mid October is generally considered more “seasonally accurate” to the original Pre-KT celebration, with the later date being intentionally chosen to overlap with American Thanksgiving. 

Festofall is, in human terms, a largely secular holiday and is open to human participation in most communities.

The above images were taken at the Ceratopolis Festofall celebration on the 7th-12th of Harvest Moon 2, 5 BKT, and were generously provided by the Dinosovian Cultural Council of Colorado. 

* a foamy beverage distilled from cycads 

[dynoguard]

So you want to Do/Commission DynoGuard fanart.

I've gotten several asks about this, so I'll post the answer here.

My positions are largely copyleft. I am pro fanworks, pro transformative work. If you want to do fan stuff for personal use, that's 100% fine and cool, providing you're not selling bootleg merch or the like.

Fic is fine, but anything with story, I will not be reading/watching. That's basic creator self-protection, standard operating procedure. Do not send me unsolicited story materials. Just art* tho? Love to see it. Really recharges the batteries.

That's the easy part.

I also received an ask about NSFW content. That''s a complicated (and awkward) ask. I'd rather Rule 34 exist than be a snarling anti-fanwork type and I have to stay true to my pro-transformative ideals. I do however, have three simple requests for fanart:

Tag all fan works accordingly, if possible, include that it is fanart in the description. This is just for clarity.

Please do not tag anything NSFW with #DynoGuard. #DynoCrack or some other divergent tag is fine. This is just so when my concept is being searched during pitch processes that Rule 34 doesn't pop up.

If you do NSFW, keep Jason and Linn out of it, please.

I've never fielded questions of this type, and I hope I've done so in an appropriate way. I reserve the right to edit these preferences based on future experience.

*Oh, and when I say I like to see fanart, that's SFW stuff. Don't send creators porn.

[dynoguard]

Jack Abel, Pilot (52)

"Personally, I prefer your aircraft. Sure, they're ugly as last week's dinner, but you feel the turbulance, you taste the danger. Makes you feel like a dactyl.

Pay's total plop though. That I do miss."

Prompt: a photograph of a real dinosaur-person wearing 1985 clothing,, ultrasharp details, stan winston sfx, large, clear eyes, photorealistic, hypermaximalist, golden ratio, environmental key art, octane render, zbrush, ray traced

[dynoguard]

Know Your Voles

Burrowing fuzz-bearing critters may seem creepy, but did you know voles are an important part of the ecosystem? Yes, even if they dig up a few of your tubers every spring! Here''s some fun facts about our tiny roommates!

Every garden cittervole eats thousands of insects and arachnids per moon, including mites and tuber-beetles that are dangerous pests!

Most Voles don't lay eggs, and instead give live birth! This does not mean they are closely related to snakes, however. That's just an old wives' tale!

Voles are social creatures that raise their young, just like we do! Vole mothers even feed their young with a special sweat they produce from patches on the belly

Voles are not downy! The fuzzy covering that keeps them warm is called 'fur' and, while structurally similar to down, it is a more primitive and less differentiated structure.

Vole jaws can move side-to-side, an ability they use to "chew" through solid wood to make burrows in tree stumps or, yes, your house. Some voles can even bite through metal given sufficient time and inclination.

Despite this, you can keep voles out of your home with a spritz of diluted longberry oil. Voles are sensitive to the flavor-compound capsaicin and avoid it.

For more information about voles and how to handle them ethically, contact your local office of Civilian Logistics, Administration and Welfare for our informative pamphlet packed with scientific facts, handy tips and tricks, recipes, and a field identification guide.

[dynoguard]

Cora's mug & cranial spikes turned out very neat. Some of those prior Midjourney renders turned out with rather deep fenestrae/eye sockets, but her muzzle seems a bit more fleshed out here.

The model has been improving, as has my prompting. The fact that the model is good enough to recognize some specific dinosaur species, with dracorex being one of them, is impressive.

Part of it was earlier models were very limited in the selection of dinosaur pictures, and "dinosaur" grabbed both concepts of reconstructed dinosaurs and of fossils. Between outdated shrink-warp reconstructions and actual bones being in the dataset, the quirks make more sense.

The AI ability to intepret requests is also improving. One aspect I'd noticed is that if I did historical dinosovians from recent history (IE, my lifetime), the results would tend to reflect the level of special effects you might expect for the time. They're really paper mache-looking if you prompt for the 60s/70s, get rubbery but still fake-y for 80s, and more Stan Winston-y if oyu requested 90s or onward. That doesn't happen as much. And the stuff the upcoming v4 model can do...

(one of my prompts for my D&D character Albert Sauros got picked as a demo-prompt for v4 and, yeah, that's some good dinoface, but you still get some shrinkwrap)

A lot of the passes for Cora did have very shrink-wrapped fenestrae and eye sockets, but that's where all the compositing and repainting comes in. The eye, jaw, mouth and horns were were where most of that attention went, to mold her close to being on-model.

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Eon Magazine “Strange in a Stranger Land”

B.K. McNair finally gets to talk to a member of the DynoGuard, providing the first full-length interview with the Dinosovian Emergency Response group’s leader, Dracora “Cora” Rex. She opens up about life the late cretaceous, the stresses of being a single mother in an alien time, the fossil ghoul threat, and an epoch’s worth of culture shock. 

Disclosure: Eon Magazine is owned by Anning Media Holdings, a subsidiary of AnningTech.

A bit of worldbuilding for DynoGuard and my first "canonical" "live action" dinosovian. 

Cora was made possible in large part to Midjourney's new remix feature, which allowed for tweaking of the prompt throughout to produce the raw material for the final edit. I started in v3, moved to --testp, and hit several variant prompts throughout. 

This makes prompt reporting tricky, but the main one was "photograph of [a pachycephalosaurus person, humanoid dinosaur, dracorex fursona] Forest ranger/park ranger, wearing a outdoors/hiking clothes in a national forest, admiring nature."

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Me smashing the follow button when I see an amazing artist that has amazing worldbuilding:

Thank you! I was fortunately not standing behind said button!

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The Dinosovians are Here to Stay, But Who Are They?

B.K.  McNair, Eon Magazine

It is June. I’m in a medium-sized dance studio in uptown Chicago. I’m here to meet the past, face-to-face, but I’ve forgotten my stepladder. The past’s ambassador is seven foot seven inches tall, has a foot long muzzle filled with razor-sharp teeth, and equally sharp talons.

She’s also a person. This is my first time meeting a Dinosovian. I am unsure of the etiquette,but thankfully one of us has done their research. She pushes her hand into mine and shakes it. Her name is Deinah Keenfoot. It is a translation, she tells me. Her real name would take a piccolo to recreate. 

We sit down to talk.

Excerpts from B.K. McNair’s profile of Dinosovian civilian life are available (top to bottom, left to right): Each with a lore snippet. 

“A Change of Career” -  Dr. Drake Sharpdome, Paleontologist (68).

“Leading Man” -  Gerry Nuthetes, Actor (38).

“Do you have an appointment?“ -  Deinah Azureback, Office Manger (43)

“ Ancient Beats “ -  Quilliam "3 Large" Trimbo, Musician (45).

“ What is coffee, Anyway? “ -  Crez Paraso, Barista (28).

“ Keep Austin Prehistoric” -  Apatricia Rootminder, Builder (83).

“ Exiled to Paradise” -  Nip Megal, 'Tech Bro' (56).

“ A Respectable Carnivore “ -  Ty Y'Scute, “Importer” (36).

“Plumage and Claws “ -  Deinah Keenfoot, Dancer (48).

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The dromaeosecretary's eye & plumage-coat contrast really turned out neatly intense.

Thank you!

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"It's kinda chilly, sure, but around here people respect a mid-size carnivore, ya know? Great parties, important friends, houseboat that fits both, et-cetra. Back when? I was just little Ty. Here, they call me L'l Ty, but like, ironically, on account of you all being so short." Ty Y'Scute, "Importer" (36). Midjourney Prompt: a dinosaur-person on Miami Vice, on-set photography, 4k, sharp focus, official media,