#Extant Universe

[jovialturtleface]

A couple of Tricks.

[extantdecay]

h u n g r y

[momachan]

"Ground zero. Raw energy, expanding itself at an immesurable rate, surges out of control, this is-- the beginning. Time and the Universe are born as one. Fifteen billions years ago, there is only blinding, white light. Quarks form out of hydrogen. Minutes later, the Universe is totally opaque. Form and substance are irrelevant. In the opacity light is unable to travel-- electrons are unable to stay in orbits, and super-hot temperatures drop drastically. Hours later, though, a rift forms... and entropy floods the Universe."

Zero Hour: Crisis In Time (Zero Hour (1994).

[himblebo]

The devil is whispering (thinking about grad school again)

[exercise-of-trust]

Someone Stop Me. Please (<- planning a creative project so unbearably idiotic and niche i despair of myself)

[swallowtailed]

started listening to road to partizan with very few expectations but actually it’s extremely good (a thing that should not surprise me at this point). loving all the added detail on perennial and divines generally, and particularly loving how much of progressive asterism was invented in the microscope game

[darthcontusion]

france existing in the UC is less fucked up than how mecha anime apparently exists in SEED???

that is a concorde

that is specifically an air france concorde

france exists in gundam??

[marzipanandminutiae]

here's a secret about actual Victorian gowns:

the interiors are usually messy as hell

raw edges on seams? finished with the absolute mimimum of work necessary to keep them from fraying into nonexistence. it's not going to touch the person's actual body, given the layers of corset-cover + corset + chemise/combinations in between, so it doesn't matter how it feels on bare skin. pinked and left raw? I've seen that, sure. whipstitched down to the bodice's structural flat-lining fabric? yep! I've seen VERY few bodices nicely lined so the innards don't show; that seems more common on capes, cloaks, and coats. you know, where the lining might end up being visible. because "will it be visible?" is the defining factor here

got a skirt you know will only be worn with an opaque overskirt? why bother making the whole thing out of that expensive silk? go ahead and make the covered part out of unbleached muslin- nobody will see it! (this was not universal, to be clear, but I have seen extant examples of the practice)

one of my museums has a Worth gown. couture! Parisian! guess how :) huge and gappy and messy :) the stitches holding the trim on look from the underside :)

undergarments and nightwear tend to have finished seams because they'll go next to the skin. they also tend to have visibly top-stitched machine hems, because the Hand-Sewn Hems rule only applied to garments that anyone outside the wearer's innermost circle would see. lingerie? machine-sew that hem! the poor underpaid piece-worker has a hundred more of these to make before her shift is over!

Victorians were the epitome of Work Smarter, Not Harder in their clothing, so don't feel like your recreations have to be perfectly finished unless it brings you joy to do it that way

[paper-mario-wiki]

YOUR MISSION:

the next time you enjoy a meal in your home, eat it viscerally and animalistically. this need not obligate eating it "viciously" or "violently", though the interpretation is left up to the agent.

if it's a sandwich, let it fall apart. if it's not a finger food, make it one. rip it apart. food sustains us. the matter you ingest becomes you, the process need not be beautiful. embrace this extant part of the universe into yourself in the way that feels most natural to you. approach the meal like you've never seen what humans eat and you werent instructed on what to do with it.

this action is worth 10 points.

[dogtoling]

OK. . . seems i missed the whole 'chickens are controversial in splatoon' thing. . . why?

To put it short there's evidence both for and against them existing, and this is without me actually looking anything up so i might be missing something.

cases for chickens being extant: there's been chickens present in SOME form in several splatfests, they're not mammals so they're not NECESSARILY extinct, despite being domesticated animals and thus being unlikely to survive it doesn't mean it'd be IMPOSSIBLE because pigeons and other relatively human-dependent birds still survive in Splatoon, and of course there are many instances of Eggs being a staple in inkling culinary culture. egg is everywhere

cases for chickens being extinct: we only actually See chickens (or chicken, as in food) in splatfest art and splatfest dialogue which isn't (or at least definitely wasn't until Splatoon 3) canon-compliant at all. We havent actually seen chickens in-universe to my knowledge, nor had them mentioned outside splatfest. probably the biggest nail in the coffin is that there IS a chicken statue in Splatsville, and typically when there are big animal statues in the cities those are statues depicting extinct animals. this is something from an interview that touched on the crane and tortoise statues in Inkopolis Square; which also confirms that it wasn't JUST MAMMALS that suffered and went extinct, it was also other miscellaneous land animals and even random birds which I think me and initially a lot of other people thought were just. Fine and safe. But if a random bird like a crane can be extinct now then chickens are absolutely not safe just because they're not mammals. although eggs are in like every food it's not really been confirmed in any way that those are CHICKEN eggs (although that is the most likely), they could as well be farming domesticated pigeons or something

So really it's a big case of no real confirmation they DO exist, but also no real confirmation they DON'T exist, but also the only context we see them in-universe is in a context where every other animal depicted there IS extinct and it's like a lore thing. So the existence of eggs is a big hint TOWARDS them existing but could easily mean nothing whereas the other one is more in line with proving they do not exist. it is a very uncertain situation for the chicken

HOWEVER!!!!!! there is hope for the chicken. splatfests in Splatoon 3 have had more in-universe accurate themes and dialogue so far (meaning they dont randomly make up shit like "marina's landlord is a narwhal" and "inklings eat red meat" or whatever the fuck in that sea food vs mountain food one we didnt even have that one it was regional). SO THIS MEANS! in the next splatfest we Could get a somewhat stable answer to if chickens exist or not. of course the other 2 options are extinct animals whereas the chicken is 50/50. i'm HOPING the dialogue touches upon this fact and doesn't just talk about all of those like they just Exist. basically we are very close to some kind of progress on this issue that would be Somewhat credible because while splatfest dialogue has never been a credible source in the past, it has been WAY better in S3

TL;DR we just don't know. Chickens are a mystery

[bestanimal]

Round 1 - Phylum Onychophora

(Sources - 1, 2, 3, 4)

Onychophora is a phylum of long, soft-bodied, many-legged animals. They are commonly called Velvet Worms due to their velvety texture, and the human propensity for calling any small animal with a long body a worm. Onychophora is the only animal phylum in which every extant (non-extinct) member is fully terrestrial.

Onychophorans are predators, preying on other invertebrates which they catch by spraying an adhesive, glue-like slime. This slime can also be used to deter predators. They will target slime at the limbs of their prey, and have even been observed targeting the fangs of spiders. The slime is stretchy, with high tensile strength, and forms a net-like structure when sprayed. It takes about 24 days to replenish an exhausted slime repository, so they will eat their dried slime when they can.

Onychophoran legs are called oncopods, lobopods, or “stub feet”. They can have from 13 to as many as 43 pairs of feet, depending on species. Their legs are hollow and have no joints, instead being moved by the hydrostatic pressure of their fluid contents. Each foot has a pair of tiny chitin claws which they use to gain their footing on uneven terrain. They sense the world via a pair of antennae, the numerous papillae covering their bodies, and a pair of simple eyes, though there are some blind species. Their mouth is surrounded by sensitive lips, and their chitin jaws, used for chewing up prey, look similar to their claws. On either side of their mouth are the oral papillae, openings containing their slime glands. Unlike their relatives, the tardigrades and arthropods, they do not have a rigid exoskeleton, restricting them to habitats with high humidity. They are also nocturnal hunters, and shy away from light, leading them to be most active on rainy nights. Onychophorans have two sexes. Females are usually larger than males, and sometimes have more legs. In most species the males will secrete a pheromone from their many “armpits” to attract females. Mating procedures differ between species. Some species are live-bearing, and some are egg-laying. The oldest known fossil Onychophoran, Antennipatus, is known from the Late Carboniferous.

Propaganda under the cut:

The little orange guy in my avatar is a velvet worm!

Some species can spray their slime up to a foot away, though their accuracy gets worse with distance.

Apparently, velvet worm slime tastes "slightly bitter and at the same time somewhat astringent.” Don’t ask how biologists know that.

It is hard to evaluate all velvet worms due to their nocturnal nature and low population densities, but of the few species that have been evaluated, all are near threatened to critically endangered. Main threats come from habitat loss due to industrialisation, draining of wetlands, and slash-and-burn agriculture. Many species naturally have low population densities and small geographic ranges, so a small disturbance of ecosystem can lead to the extinction of entire species. Populations are also threatened by collection for universities or research institutes.

While most countries offer little to no protection for their velvet worms, Tasmania is unique for having its own velvet worm conservation plan and one region of forest dedicated to preserving the endangered Blind Velvet Worm, Leucopatus anophthalmus (seen in the 3rd image).

Onychophoran’s stub feet allow them to be sneaky ambush predators which hunt only at night. They move slowly and quietly, with their body raised off the ground. They only use their claws when needed for climbing, otherwise they walk softly on the pads of their feet. They are often able to get so close to their prey that they can gently touch them with their antennae to assess their size and nutritional value before the prey is alerted.

Onychophorans have small but complex brains, and are thus capable of sophisticated social interaction. Some species live and hunt in packs, acting in aggression and territoriality towards velvet worms not in their own group. After a kill, the dominant female always feeds first, followed in turn by the other females, then males, then the young. High-ranking individuals will chase and bite subordinates who climb on them, but will allow juveniles to climb on their backs without aggression.

Somft

[jovialturtleface]

Rosemoth's mothtastic new look!

[extantdecay]

fellas, is it gay to lose your mind trying to save a boy who already died

matching damien and malachi commission i got from malachi's designer, CL0WNERY/LEFT_4_DEAD on toyhouse!

[momachan]

"We're five grown men dressed in bright colors inside a clear plastic bubble set against a rainbow background, Jaime. They saw us."

Booster Gold (2007-2011): Blue And Gold. "The Secret Origin Of Booster Gold."

[artbyblastweave]

So, one criticism of Deadpool and Wolverine, and a criticism to which I think there's some meat, is that they basically chucked the entirety of the supporting cast from the first two movies in order to shift focus onto Wade and Logan- which is especially egregious because a major part of the emotional thrust of the movie is Wade's unwillingness to abandon that supporting cast by transplanting into the MCU proper.

But what I find interesting about this, right, is that Wade getting shanghai-ed away from his normal supporting cast to go on a metatextual multiversal road-not-taken adventure would be a pretty standard 3-to-6-issue plot in an ongoing Deadpool comic. I can think of at least four times I've seen this done. And in the comics, any given member of the supporting cast not being on-panel this particular issue doesn't mean that the authors forgot about them, doesn't mean they aren't coming back at some point. That would be a ridiculous complaint. Infant-level object permanence. It's different with a film, though, because in a film franchise, the wacky multiversal excursion constitutes a third of all extant content involving the character- you're genuinely losing out on the cast from the other two-thirds, it's zero-sum, and you never know who'll be available for the fourth movie or if there'll even be a fourth one.

I once saw someone (I forget who) make the argument that one of the issues with translating the marvel universe to the MCU is that most of the movies are depicting or adapting crisis-crossover-level shitshows and status-quo shakeups without similarly porting in all of the smaller-scale status-quo-compliant adventures that serve as connective tissue between the big shakeups and give them actual weight. This leads to some ambiguity as to whether these films are depicting the only interesting things that ever happen to these heroes, or if there's a wealth of unseen smaller-scale villains being fought in the space between installments that just never come up. And here we get a film that's an adaptation of that exact kind of connective-tissue adventure, and suddenly, uh oh! It's actually kinda fighting for space with every other kind of story you could tell in the same runtime. I don't think I'm describing a real problem here, It still can handily justify itself, but that question wouldn't even come up if it were a comic. A tension inherent to adapting any character and supporting cast native to the sprawl of big-two cape comics (despite the movie in many ways being about that tension!)

[hollow-head]

some off the cuff thoughts about how go s3 seems like a metaphor for itself

Obviously I dont know what pratchett had planned, and I dont know what, if anything, gaiman had planned (although I have a hunch he would have interjected sort of unneeded metaphor about middle eastern politics, to say it vaguely).

It strikes me as interesting that a plot was being set up wherein the creator of the universe (God or terry pratchett) had departed, and his extant representative (metatron or neil gaiman) was following his own designs-- with the effect of hobbling aziraphale's character inparticular--but in the end crowley and aziraphale can only find true salvation when they are freed from their creators and are fully embraced by humanity (which can metaphorically be abandoning sides, or becoming human, or just living on as beloved characters in the public imagination)

Does this make sense? It just seems interesting to think about.