#Creative Evolution

[trendynewsnow]

The Rise and Fall of Henri Bergson: A Biography of a Philosophical Sensation

HERALD OF A RESTLESS WORLD: How Henri Bergson Brought Philosophy to the People By Emily Herring In the early 20th century, Henri Bergson emerged as a philosophical sensation, capturing the attention of the literary and intellectual elite, particularly in New York City. The New York Times frequently featured him, dubbing him “the favorite philosopher of the salons.” His visits to the United States…

[funxsj]

#1 Olho

#1 eye

[musicianfiend]

The Beastie Boys' Journey of Innovation and Influence

Share the story of the Beastie Boys' enduring legacy and their impact on music and culture. Join us in celebrating their genre-blurring music, empowering messages, and commitment to social change. Discover their inspiring journey in this must-read book

Formation of a Legacy In the heart of the tumultuous 1980s, amidst the vibrant chaos of New York City’s underground music scene, an extraordinary chapter in the annals of music history was quietly unfolding. It was a time when hip-hop’s groundbreaking spirit was simmering in the streets, and the city’s boroughs were primed to become the birthplace of legends. Little did the world know that it…

[veil-of-entheos]

Consumed by the Fog

Unveiling the Beauty of Artistic Growth: Embracing the Power of Transformation As an artist, I have embarked on a profound journey of self-discovery and creative exploration. Looking back at my artistic endeavors over the past year, I find myself filled with joy and amazement at the growth I have experienced. The evolution of my skills and the depth of the subjects I tackle in my art have…

[carriejenkinsstar]

I had a dream about a hot tub last night. 🛁

[jojo-schmo]

I forgot my tablet at home so lunch time today became pen and paper Baby Beast Council time!!!

[cireks]

Giluk. Specializes in pursuing prey in-between roots, rocks and other cavities.

Good reminder that the various creatures of this worldbuilding don't belong to any Earth taxon, as the world is not Earth. Despite possible similarities there are no mammals, reptiles, etc.

[charyou-tree]

I'm thinking about changeling myths

What if the fae were brood-parasites of humans?

What if, like cuckoo birds, they left their own young to be unwittingly cared for by another species? Perhaps fae children have become excellent human-mimics out of sheer necessity, with humans trying to recognize the intruder and evict them in an evolutionary arms-race. Maybe they must leave their forcibly-adopted homes before adulthood, lest their fully grown fae forms arouse suspicion, and that most dangerous human threat-response: an angry mob. Perhaps that's why humans have the "uncanny-valley" response of instinctive distrust and aversion to nearly-humans.

What if most fae didn't steal human children outright, but placed their young into the homes of human families that had recently lost a child? Perhaps they took advantage of the tragically high ~50% child mortality rate of preindustrial societies, filling the gaps in families with their own children. Maybe they knew on some instinctive level that they would be cared for by the grieving parents who were thankful for the seeming miracle. Maybe they also knew not to leave a fae child in a healthy human home, for humans would certainly notice if there was suddenly an extra child after all.

What if, sometimes though, they were maybe a little too quick? Perhaps switching out the still-warm body of the human infant who had died in the night with their fae young before the human mother even realized that her child had perished. Maybe from her perspective, it would seem like her child was stolen and replaced, even if it wasn't the fae's fault that they had died.

What if desperate fae mothers would occasionally resort to killing a human child, lacking any other suitable home to place them into? Perhaps It was risky, trying something so overt, but biological imperatives being what they are she would find herself compelled to go through with it before her own child starved. Maybe she made it look like an accident, or a sudden illness. Maybe sometimes they really did switch out the human's offspring for their own, not to steal the human child, but tragically to leave them alone to die of neglect, a sad but necessary price to ensure that their own child might prosper. Maybe it wasn't such an emotional thing for the fae. Maybe they saw it as no different to how the humans culled bulls and rams to ensure that their herds and flocks were amenable to domesticity.

What if particularly nasty fae outright threatened human families that were starting to become suspicious of their strange wild child? Perhaps openly demanding that they continue to raise them, or face the horror of having their remaining human children killed if they were to kill the fae's child, the way that brown headed cowbirds do to the species that they burden with their eggs. Maybe the rest of the local humans lived in fear of looking too long at the wide-eyed children, or even just whispering the word "changeling", knowing that another child might "mysteriously" fall ill, and then suddenly appear to "recover", but would never be quite the same.

What if it was hardly the fae's fault, but simply their nature? Perhaps a mother fae felt stark terror even after placing her young into the seemingly perfect home, knowing that even if the humans were merely to evict her offspring they were still as good as dead, for they knew no other way of caring for them. Maybe there were elaborate methods and rituals that were meant to give their young the best disguise and protection from human wrath that they could, in lieu of a more direct parental role that their species had long since shed like a vestigial limb.

What if more sympathetic fae sought a consensual childcare arrangement? Perhaps they would approach a grieving family openly, but cautiously, with an offer of a child they could raise in the place of the one that they had lost. Maybe they had learned that some humans would willingly raise nonhumans, after all they kept animals of all kinds, why not a child specifically evolved to be appealing to them?

What if there were whole villages that were relative safe-havens, mutualistic societies with mixed human-fae families an open-secret? Perhaps they disguised it from outside humans that wouldn't understand the arrangement, to protect all of their children, even the adopted ones. Maybe it was worth having a few extra mouths to to feed to also have an inexplicably good harvest every year, and a few pairs of unnaturally keen eyes that can see the things that go bump in the night more clearly than any diurnal ape ever could?

What if humans from such special places might even undergo the opposite exchange? Perhaps they sought out the fae's help during times of dire need in their adulthood, and received it, because they had helped raise their children after all. Maybe the fae they were pleading to for aid was even raised alongside them in their youth, and knew the human coming for their help as a beloved sibling, so of course they would do what they could; it would be repaid manifold by generations of safe fae children, free from the fear of death by discovery by angry vengeful humans.

What if changelings weren't a myth, or a monster, but an adaptation?

[nr1-logo-design-inspiration]

Adobe Illustrator - logo design evolution ☆

Which logo do you like the most? Write in a comment 👇

🙏

[moonlitcomet]

some sort of speculative fuckass penguin-adjacent bird. it has an inflatable air sac on its back which serves as a flotation device and display structure

[rainbow-sunshine-unicorn]

Feeding images of real actors into generative AI to put their likeness into scenes that they never consented to be in and likely have no knowledge of is one of the most terrible things I have ever witnessed in a fandom space.

[thestreamweaver]

Is this good enough to turn into a sticker? I need opinions please!

[noosphe-re]

Nature’s creativity is obviously the wellspring of human creativity. We emerge out of nature almost—and this idea I think was fairly present close to the surface of the medieval mind—we emerge out of nature almost as its finest work of art. The medieval mind spoke of the productions of nature. This is a phrase you hear as late as the 18th century. The productions of nature. And human creativity emerges out of that, whether you have a model of the Aristotelian great ladder of being, or a more modern evolutionary view where we actually consolidate emergent properties and somehow bring them to a focus of self-reflection.

Terence McKenna, Opening the Doors of Creativity

[themissingnumbers]

PARASOMNIA

[AO3 UPLOAD]

For seventeen years, Lance has had the exact same dream every single time he closed his eyes. 01001100010000010100111001000011010001010010000001000011010000010100111001001110010011110101010000100000010101000100010101001100010011000010000001001001010001100010000001010100010010000100100101010011001000000100010001010010010001010100000101001101001000000100100101010011001000000100000101001110001000000100111101001101010001010100111000100000010011110101001000100000010000010010000001001101010001010100110101001111010100100101100100101110

When I sleep, I dream I am someone else. He has my face. He has my name.

He does not have my memories.

The things he remembers, I struggle to recall. As quickly as my memories fade into his, his memories fade to mine when I wake again.

But I do know that the world he’s known is different. So similar, yet so unlike what is real. Through his eyes, it’s comfortable- it is home. Through mine… it’s uncanny. Everything just slightly out of place.

He is the worst of it all, though. His body is the memory that comes clearest to me.

The image of skin stained in the colors of ink and blood haunts me. The memory of his form shivering and corrupting, little more than a ghost, swirls through my mind like a song I can’t get out of my mind. The shadows that cling to him, the red that drips from his face- eyes, nose, mouth, ears… I feel them stick to my own skin, even as I leave him behind for my own waking world.

And that face… my face… never ages, never changes, never grows. That man is a man slaughtered and butchered at the bright age of twenty-one. A man who will never again know what it is like to live up to his full potential, flesh mangled into the shape of that which should not exist.

These dreams scare me.

He scares me.

It feels childish, to be so frightened by things that are nothing more than nightmares. But every night- every single time I close my eyes, these are the images that haunt me- that body I become trapped in never fades. These dreams stick like tar, not to my memory but to my soul. It sings a playground taunt about how I can run, but I can’t hide, and it’s only a matter of time.

A matter of time until what?

My stomach turns at the thought. My intuition screams the answer, flashing red and black in my face. But I always find myself too cowardly to face the music. 

Every passing day, and every passing night for the last seventeen years, it becomes more and more undeniable. That song grows louder. I don’t know how much longer I can keep running…

Especially when the stench of truth lingers more and more around these dreams- dreams that feel more and more like memories.

Blue had confided in me long ago about a dead reality that only he remembers, after all. And I know I never saw him as a madman… but more than ever, his words are holding more and more weight.

The scars on my back have begun to open.

I’ve started to wake further and further from my bed. 

The man I am in my dreams scares me, because I fear I will soon know his pain.

[captainswaglord500]

Goliath Spiny Shark

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Clade: Eugnathostomata

Clade/Class: Acanthodii

Order: Ischnacanthiformes

Family: Ischnacanthidae

Genus: Tyrannoselache

Species: T. polycanthus (“many-spines tyrant shark”)

Temporal range: late Miocene to recent (7.7 mya - present)

Information: 

T. polycanthus, better known to the natives of Xenogaea as horduuń/hórduuń (/ˈxo̞r.duːŋ/, “dread”) or mevoskaska/mévoskaska (/ˈmɛ.vo̞.ska.ska/, unknown etymology, likely of pre-Xenogaean substratic origin), and to Western scientists as the Goliath spiny shark, is unusual amongst the acanthodian family (a group of stem-chondrichthians [cartilaginous fishes] colloquially called “spiny sharks”) for its sheer size: around 17-18 feet in length and weighing between 2.7-3 tons, the Goliath spiny shark is one of the largest known non-coelospondyl acanthodians ever discovered, practically rivaling the sizes of its distant shark cousins and with an attitude to match, nearly 100 times the size of its closest known relatives, making it an anomaly amongst its family, its size a mystery, especially amongst an already wide assortment of other large predators in its environment. However, the most commonly-accepted theory is that its ancestors adapted to life in the deep sea before eventually moving back to shallower waters, its size an atavism of its ancestors’ deep sea gigantism. Nonetheless, despite its humble origins, the Goliath spiny shark is still a force to be reckoned with, being notoriously territorial and responsible for many sinkings of small boats and canoes. Like the sharks it is distantly related to, its method of killing prey, although gruesome, is highly effective: prey is usually pursued from below before the animal, with a sudden burst of speed, seizes it, propelling the both of them into the air as it violently shakes its prey to dislodge bite-sized chunks. An incredibly patient and persistent predator, it has been known to stalk prey for several miles, sometimes even propelling itself onto land to chase fleeing prey. Alternatively, prey may be flanked and rammed into from the side before a similar method of dispatching it is utilized. Speaking of prey, as a near-apex predator, the Goliath spiny shark is an opportunistic predator which hunts a wide variety of different prey items, both vertebrates and invertebrates alike. Though sea turtles and cephalopods appear to be some of its favorite prey, it has been known to eat pinnipeds, sirenians, small cetaceans, sea-monkeys/mermaids, small-to-medium-sized marine reptiles (namely plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs), and several varieties of large reef fish and sharks, hybodonts, and other shark-like fishes. In areas where it shares its habitat with the mud tiger, the two species are known to occasionally prey on one another, and though never confirmed, great whites are notably absent from the areas where the Goliath spiny shark is found, suggesting either predation on young individuals or competition for the same food sources. Individuals living near the edge of the deep ocean may also sometimes venture out into deeper waters to pursue tuna. Scavenging is also quite common. 

Found all across Archaeonesia’s shallow seas, the Goliath spiny shark primarily stalks the waters around kelp forests and coral reefs, though it has occasionally been as much as 10 miles inland. Typically a nocturnal or crepuscular hunter, its eyesight is superb, with its sense of smell, although substantially better than a human’s, being relatively rudimentary in comparison to sharks. Contrary to the stereotypes of sharks and their relatives being ram ventilators, the Goliath spiny shark is not, being able to remain perfectly still on the ocean floor while still being able to breathe, and it does so during the day to rest. While not necessarily gregarious, 2 or more individuals may occasionally work in groups to take down large prey, and cooperation with other large carnivores is also documented. Nonetheless, these animals tend to be territorial and generally do not take kindly to trespassers, chasing off crocodilians and mosasaurs which enter its territory and readily killing other large predators which enter its domain. Cannibalism is well-documented, with larger adults readily consuming subadults and juveniles who stray too close. Notably, however, it will abandon its hunting grounds entirely if large predatory placoderms show up (with the exception of the estuarine flatshark, which it is notably tolerant towards due to pursuing different prey animals), large mosasaurs, and orcas are spotted in its area. Exceptionally intelligent for a fish, it appears to some ability to solve rudimentary problems and seems to be able to way-find with great efficiency, memorizing landmarks or other pieces of the scenery and returning to these areas if hunts have proven successful there before. They also engage in what is believed to be playful behavior, nudging objects in their environment and reorienting them seemingly as a way to stimulate itself when not hunting. Its peculiar habit of arranging objects, namely stones and pieces of corals, in highly-organized patterns across its hunting ground, and its strong tendency to correct their positions when the waves or other animals move them out of place, has consequently earned it the affectionate (and somewhat humorous) nickname of the “OCD fish” or the “autism fish” in online spaces. 

An exceptionally colorful large predator, it is covered in spotted and striped patterns all along its body of varying black and brown hues while its flanks are tan and its underside cream-colored, and during the spring and summer months, when these massive fish breed and when food is most available, the colors of the male will become all the more vibrant. Males will court a female by presenting her with a fresh kill, after which copulation begins. Goliath spiny sharks are internal fertilizers, the males utilizing a pair of modified pelvic fins called claspers to inseminate the female before the two part ways once more. Gestation is quite long, taking anywhere from 10-12 months. Unlike other acanthodians, the Goliath spiny shark is ovoviviparous, giving birth to around 2-4 pups. Cannibalism in the womb is known but does not appear to be common. Nonetheless, when the pups are born, they immediately flee to find cover, as the mother may eat her own young if they linger for too long. For the first decade of their life, they will slowly begin to reach full size, eventually moving out of the safety of the coral reef and into less obstructed waters, around 16-18 years old, they will reach sexual maturity. If all goes well, a young Goliath spiny shark can except to live between 50-60 years.

Both feared and revered by the Native Xenogaean peoples, this creature is seen as what is known as a so-called “realm-walker”, a creature said to have the supernatural ability to cross between worlds. This ghostly ability to migrate between the celestial world, the world of the living, and the underworld means that it is regarded as, in some aspect, sacred and therefore untouchable, though its aggressive nature complicates this relationship. As such, it is seen to embody the force of nature itself, unpredictable yet majestic in nature. Amongst the Banguani, in lieu with their Polynesian culture, the Goliath spiny shark is seen as both a god in its own right and as an ancestral spirit, perhaps a unique example of the traditional Xenogaean and surrounding Austronesian folklores converging on a similar worldview. The Hachin people of the outer islands also view it as a minor death and ocean god called Qxhóíràà (Hachin: /q͡χoi˥.ɾaː˩/), a sentiment mirrored by the Hnipixe people of the western Isle of Perils, who see it as their version of the Draconic sea god, Angiosaa, whom they called Dyehnyíí-tk’ùùxyap (Hnipixe: /ɟe.ɲ̊iː˥.tkʼuː˩.çɑb/, “shark king”). It appears prominently in the traditional artwork of the Hnipixe as well, seen as an emblem of strength and courage. Alas, despite this animal’s ability to captivate the spirit of people across many cultures, attempts to export it to foreign aquariums have proven difficult, as its needs, although not impossible to meet, are rather fickle. On rare occasions, this species has been spotted outside of the Archaeonesian archipelago, with a relatively stable population believed to be inhabiting the waters immediately surrounding the outside of the border mountains. Reports of Goliath spiny sharks have also surfaced across parts of Remote Oceania, being sighted as far as Jarvis Island in Micronesia and being reported from French Polynesia as well. Granted, such reports cannot be confirmed, particularly when its general aversion to deeper waters, which it would need to cross to read such locations, are taken into account, but nonetheless, such stories of Goliath spiny shark sightings outside of their native Archaeonesia are commonly circulated amongst cryptozoological circles. With around 9,000 mature adults in the wild, its population appears to rebounding from a century-long decline, the cause of said decline being unknown but possibly related to disease. Fossil deposits of this species go back as far as the late Miocene some 7.7 million years ago.

[aswegoalong72]

Reyal At A Glance - Climate

Map by @nexelart (twit)

Reyal - A World of Extremes

As per the previous post stated, Reyal is much like our own Earth in terms of biodiversity, as well as a few other traits. In this post, we'll explore Reyal's weather and biosphere a bit more!

Reyal's climate has shifted greatly during it's history. From the early start of life, it was a much hotter world; it's atmosphere used to contain much higher amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses, making it a much more tropical world than it is today.

Nowadays, Reyal experiences a much colder climate than Earth, as it lost much of it's greenhouse gasses during its several billion year long evolution. On top of this, Reyal orbits a bit further out from Tenav's habitable zone than we do around our own Sol.

At the poles, including wind chill, temperatures drop down to -103c on average at the surface. At the equator, the highest you can expect is a balmy 27c. Weather can of course influence these temperatures, but thanks to Reyal's lack of seasons and relative climatic stability, these tend to be year-round temperatures.

Thanks to it's colder climate, most of the planet is dominated by humid continental biomes, as well taiga and tundra. Due to a lack of water compared to Earth, most of the equator tends to be dominated by savanna and desert, with only a few key areas near the equator bearing rainforests.

Life has taken a massive advantage of this stability, and as such, Reyal can be very well described as a garden planet. Flowers and fruiting plants tend to grow very rapidly, leading to an abundance of food and other biological resources.

This all works out perfectly for the Lyratet, however, as they have evolved to be more adapted to colder climates. Due to their thick fur, habitation near or on the equator is near impossible, lest they suffer from the effects of overheating. Only a few settlements exist in the equator, and are primarily underground. Despite the heat, some do inhabit the surface briefly during the night or Tenavset/rise.

Edit of @nexelart's map, showing the equator and northernmost/southernmost parts of the poles greyed out

As seen in the image above, this excludes a fairly large part of Reyal for habitation. Most of the equator is designated as a ecological reserve then, with very little being known about it. Scientists do mount expeditions to document flora and fauna, but more often than not, the region is left to itself.

This lack of habitability at the equator has greatly affected Lyratet history. For almost the entirety of the two hundred thousand years that they have first had cultures, they had no real means of accessing the northern hemisphere. As such, they were relegated to the south, and struggled to develop for much of their history. In what would be 1113 A.D. our calendar, two brave souls finally took it upon themselves to transfer through the mountain ranges that intersect with the Great Desert Rings, and set foot up north. This is a story for another time, though!

In the next post, we'll be exploring the origin land of the Lyratet; the Land of Tenav's Dawn.

Directory: Intro | Climate | the Land of Tenav's Dawn | the Desert Rings | Therikine | the Great Central Desert Mountains | the North Glacial Plains | the Yuniv-Semat Basin | Juleg Marrdev Technocracy | Yuniv-Semat Trail | Ro | Velgae