#- a city or something where theres a larger variety of people and less....

[screamingfrenchfries]

my parents make me hang out with this church group (being a closeted gay in a church is crazy i have so many stories ask me abt it if you'd like) but i find it insane just how different i am from these people like for example this one person was talking about how they get sucked into youtube and could spend HOURS on it and everyone was all like, "wow same," including me, until they Elaborated and turns out they were addicted to youtube SHORTS and i was like.. oh. so MY addiction of rewatching the same three, hour plus long videos over and over again ISN'T normal??

[paleozooseum-blog]

Pet: Pink Toe Tarantula (Avicularia)

*Picture above is my Pink Toe! Still waiting to know whether he/she is a Charlotte or an Aragog

I’ve chosen to do a care guide for my tarantula since it is one of the animals that has some very wrong information out there regarding care. 

Natural environment: Arboreal (lives in the trees). South America. Rainforest. Pet trade industry origins from Guyana. Eats a variety of insects

Fun fact: websites note that Avicularia avicularia was described by Linnaeus in 1758.

What other guides have wrong: the humidity level! A ton of guides post that it needs to be kept in very high humidity, 85-90%. There are several reasons why this is a bad thing. Mold can grow quickly and your tarantula can get sick. In nature, these guys are up in the trees where there is a breeze, making it less humid.

What I do: I keep a bowl of water on the bottom of the tank (some places say to put it up in the trees so they can reach it but my tarantula locates the bowl where I have it just fine). I also keep the bottom substrate moist but not sopping wet. I use a spray bottle (not a mister) each night to shoot water on the sides of the tank and to spritz the leaves and his web so that he has extra water (I do not hit the tarantula). They will actually drink the droplets from the web. Some keepers only do that technique of wetting the web. Currently my stats are 55% humidity near the top of the tank and 82º (temperature should be around 78-82º during the day and drop a little at night), and I haven't sprayed in the tank today yet. Basic physics also fluctuates the humidity between day and night so don’t expect the humidity to not change. This all also depends on where you live and how dry or humid your house is, so do some research within your own home to determine how you can get a humid enough environment for your tarantula.

For heat, I have a purple night time bulb in a metal/ceramic lamp hanging 6 inches above the top of my tank. I had a light blue daylight bulb but he/she didn’t like the light. To make it more natural, I got fake leaves and partially covered the top screened lid to make it look like canopy cover. I did the same to the sides of the tank. The tarantula seems to like feeling hidden and so he/she ventures out more with all the “cover” I have provided.

My tank is more tall than it is wide since it’s an arboreal species. It has a vented top lid, opens from the side, and has a vent below the door. It needs air flow so the vents are key. I have several logs and fake plants. The substrate is coconut fiber. 

I feed him/her about every 3 days depending on the size of the cricket (the bigger the cricket the longer I wait). I keep crickets in a critter carrier but some people raise their own (I just haven't had luck at raising crickets). They can eat a variety of insects (i.e. roaches) but I prefer the cricket route since the place I am currently living is more in the middle of nowhere than what I’m used to. Once I move to a larger city, i may have the opportunity to widen his food choices. I choose to grab a cricket with long metal tongs and drop the cricket in front of him/her or plop it into his/her web. Once in a while he/she will take food directly from the tongs, but be careful, these guys are fast! He/she jumped on the tongs once and it scared me how fast it was (don’t worry I didn’t physically get scared for his/her sake).

I have not handled him/her yet since he/she is still somewhat young and again very fast. This species is docile but a bit reckless so they’ve been known to jump out of their handler’s hands. Since I’m not prepared for that I have not attempted, but one day I will. You shouldn’t handle your tarantula too much anyway since they are fragile and they can get stressed.

I keep referring to my pink toe as he/she since I really don’t know the sex. Females get bigger and live longer than males, so I’m hoping it’s a female. You can tell by looking for a small flap on the inside of their shed molt. When my tarantula shed, he/she kept it in his/her web for a couple weeks instead of pushing it out or by molting on a ground web like most tarantulas do, so by the time mine let me have the molt it was pretty mangled and dry (even soaking did not help). I’ll add a sexing section once I get a molt I can actually see. Mine makes a tunnel web on the side of the tank when getting ready for a molt and tears the web down when finished but other’s pink toes have web hammocks that they keep all the time. Up to your spider but definitely expect a web during molt time.

This species is messy! Mine expels his/her waste right on the door. It is white and looks like bird poop. If they do their business while upside down the fecal matter may wind up in their mouth, as per a frantic text I received from my husband thinking it was vomiting, a week after getting him/her. After a frightening google search of nematodes (your tarantula will die from nematodes and they can be acquired by crickets on occasion), a forum had pictures and talked about them accidentally chewing their feces. If something yellow and liquid is coming out of their mouth take them to a vet ASAP! If it looks like bird poop and theres white streaks on the glass, your tarantula probably is having regret from doing business upside down like mine was so don’t worry!

The Arachnoboard forums are excellent for questions but are slow to nonexistent for helping you sex your tarantula. 

[isaacathom]

ok ive decided Kysroa is fine as a name because honestly, whatever. Kysro as a a word (and not the name of the Goddess) probably has some additional meaning, and its less about Kysro being the head of state and more about having her protection.

theres other stuff i need to deal with. like, for instance, are Divinitians actual native to the region or did they come from elsewhere?? ive sorta decided theres a group native to the south of the region (modern day Kysroa) who were big supporters of the independence movement and from whom the Revolutionary Leader came (she needs a name). but where did the Divinitians come from? how many southerners are there?? are they the majority in Kysroa?

i think probably? however they do have a sizable ethnic Divinitian population from before the civil war (somewhat diluted but many people would still identify with that label) and due to their trade with other former Divinitian states, there is a general diversity in the population. for instance, the western port would be incredibly diverse due to its nature as the sole way in and out of Kysro (due to the closed border with Divinice and the inability to cross the southern mountains without risking the spread of That Funky Darkness). itd lessen the further out you get from that point. the capital is likely diverse. Black River is almost certainly solely inhabited by the native population (call it a stubborn refusal to abandon a place theyve called home for centuries, even in the face of fucking dark god gargoyles. damn). which would mean theyd have greek influence since Thalia comes from the region buuut its not hard and fast by any means. its quite possible non-natives moved into the area in recent years in an effort to help the people living there, allowing for a spread of culture. plus there might be non-natives who had lived in the region prior to it becoming black? idk. i like having flexibility in terms of which culture acts as inspiration.

but again. where are the Divinitians from? the fact Divinice serves as the capital of the empire, and that the Empress (aka the embodiement of Ylais) stays on this peninsula implies theyve lived there for centuries. and it would explain why the southerners only started chafing as Divinitian demand for their resources started to outweigh the freedom of their people. but theres also the possibility, ad what i think would be interesting, is that the Divinitian empire initially started elsewhere, and they relocated in accordance with their beliefs?? if the idea is that eclipses are incredibly significant, then them moving to a location that lets them see it better makes sense. perhaps the intent wasnt initially to move the capital, but after settling the northern part of the peninsula, they went ‘hmm damn thisd be perfect’ and it just sorta gradually became a thing. or it ITSELF declared independence for a previously existing entity that had colonised the region, and then began the Divinitian Empire in direct contest to its original owner. with the native southerners going all ‘listen if we give you some jewels will you like........ leave us alone? cool’

cause the issue is that if Divinice was actually a colony, it wouldnt be the crux of the Empire - it’d simply be a member of it. it wouldnt be the Empire of Divinice, itd be the Constituency or State of Divinice within the larger Empire. so in order of Divinice to act as the center of an Empire (thus justifying the prescence of the Empress and her Temple Maidens) it has to either be a full on migration of a previous country (basically picking up and putting back down of a people group), a previously dependent nation that sought its own independence in goddamn antiquity, or they were always there.

the full on migration actually sounds interesting to me. perhaps they fled disaster, or war, and established themselves on this peninsula with the understanding blessing of the locals. after all, they share the same religion, albeit from a different perspective, so there is commonality (sorta like..... protestant and catholic?? i guess? the same foundation upon which a differing understanding is built. with the kysroans worshipping Kysro and the ylaitians worshipping ylais). theyre essentially sympathetic. they help this group of people settle and build homes where they can live, and in time even to establish whole cities for their people. meanwhile these religious kysroans (and etnic Whatever the hell their name is, boyo) are chilling out further south. the two groups are very close! everyones chill! then things start getting a little weird when perhaps the straight up leaders of their original homeland arrive and start running the place. they establish an Empress, which at this early stage is likely an actually hereditary, human held position. even at this stage, the Empress is still “the personification of Ylais”, but again. hereditary and good fun. the natives are a little perturbed, but since worship of Ylais is in theory wholly compatible with worship of Kysro, theres no broad conflict. and then when Maidens start existing (possibly as a direct result of Ylais following her “people” to the peninsula and being forced to interact with Kysro, thus brokering their short lived peace for the benefit of their people) things are still fine, and in fact get even better, just based on magic progression.

then, at some point, the peninsula is declared Divinice, with a variety of local southern leaders agreeing to the union on the basis that it will benefit the south in the long term, with the trade connections of the seafaring Divinitians. this doesnt really come to fruition, and infact the south is left worse off after the christening of Divinice, as the elite in the north seek to expand territory. many southerners are conscripted into their armies, ruining families and communities. worsip of Ylais is emphasised more and more. and then, of course, theres an eventual discovery of a huge ore deposit or something in the mines down south, which drives demand up and standards wayyyy the fuck down. everyones kinda fed up now. then they refuse to allow maidens to perform kysro-centric blessings on miners or anything related to mining (ie tools or what they gather) and thats when the south goes ‘yknow what. fuck you. what the fuck’ and thus the civil war begins.

i think i like this idea. with the northerners interested it what lies out on the horizon and the southerners more interested in the mysteries under their feet. both initially friendly and compassionate, but shit getting bad with more people coming in and deciding they had more power. and if the southerners had fought with exactly the same tools as the north, they wouldve been! except they didnt, because southerners went ‘whats the point of magic if i cant use it to kill a man’ and sent willing maidens into battle to absolutely demolish the Divinitians. get rocked. and the southerners could easily have laid claim to the entirety of the peninsula, based on the fact theyve lived there the whole damn time, but they actually decided that they were fine to stay north. also because the Maiden Empress at the time bent over BACKWARDS to appease them. full and immediate independence, land concessions,COMPLETE backwards to prevent the total removal of Divinitians from the peninsula. preventing what caused them to come to the peninsula in the first place from happening again.

actually on that REAL quick. the Divinitians (which is almost definitely not their ethnicity, just their nationality) probably came from the east. which then explains their subsequent expansion westwards after the establishment of the Empire of Divinice, if the whole point was that they were afraid of the eastern powers. it then explains why Kysroa is friendly with the western Divinitian states, because theyre in a similar boat. theyre chill.

anyway this tab has been open for like 3 hours so im gonna shut this down. uh tl;dr in the way distant past, a people group from the east of the peninsula were driven from their homeland by something or other (possibly for religious regions, possibly because their leaders were complete assholes, anything is possible) and found themselves on the northern shores of the peninsula. the inhabitants, sympathetic to their plight and sharing a religion, allowed the refugees to establish towns and homes in the north, provided they didnt do dick things. with time. they did dick things. they established the Empire of Divinice, which included the south (to a lot of confusion and vague aggression, but their general shared culture made it. fine??). Divinice expands further. magic occurs. shit gets whack. the south goes ‘actually no, fuck you??’ and bam. an independent Kysroan republic on the same peninsula as the capital of the Divinitian Empire. and THEN. that Kysroa is majority of the original peninsula ethnicity (whatever that might be), with more diversity the closer you to get to its sole port city in the west. Divinice is broadly speaking more diverse, but is definitely the hub for its ethnic group, originally from the east.

fun!