#Not saying other species don't have these habits but saying it's silly looking in from the outside. And yeah I agree

[blackvahana]

Ugh god.

Yeah I KNOW old man

Anyway. As I was saying. Ugh god. Fucking. Grey's pregnancy hormones getting thrown at me. And by pregnancy hormones I mean this is literal rut-level internal "my body is telling me it's TIME and something HAS to be created"

"God is speaking to me and telling me to do (what I do)" I already knew that was the story of his life and this feeling is so familiar... At least it's not the "God's telling me to drown and consume the fabric of this city full of people" urge that comes about every thousand years or so but like. Theres a star in me and it's emanating a message just like the beginning of. things

[rustingcat]

Love

Kara loved weddings.

It was a great opportunity to celebrate love, with food and dancing and touching speeches. She especially loved weddings that included people she loved. Being surrounded by their friends, celebrating the reunion of two people she loved so much and clearly love each other more than anything was a touching event.

They included both earth traditions along side Nalturian and Coluhan traditions to make a truly unique and special ceremony.

The machine was not yet ready, but Kara promised them it would be by the time they both decide to bring a child. If they chose to of course. But they would be working on Brainy biological problems, so he would be completely free from the future and free from any family responsibilities.

She made sure to reassure them both, yet she had her doubts on her chances. It was eating her from the inside. She felt like she was lying, but she tried her best to ignore those feelings to allow herself to fully enjoy the weddings.

A lot of food, some dancing and making silly faces with Esme later, Kara found herself sitting in a corner, observing the party from the side. Kryptonian ceremonies, not that they were not special in any way, were not about love, they were about finding your perfect partner. She could never remember a time her parents showed any romantic interest in each other. Then again, she was thirteen when she left, yet she could clearly see the way her aunts and uncles were acting towards each other. Romanticism and sex were not really important to a species that procreated asexualy, so most often than not your partner for life would be someone you would get along with and would bring out the best in you, like a best friend that in rare cases developed to something more. 

She wondered if she would've been matched with Lena. She hoped she would have. On Krypton their ceremony would be a big affair, considering they both come from big houses. Kara would create the perfect bracelet for Lena, sturdy and strong like her determination and will, shiny and intricate like her beauty and grace, and colours… she'd have to check if the Luthors had any colour associated with them. A representative from all of Krypton's important houses would be there. Rao's light would shine brightly on them as they recite the Holy prayers, then after thanking a lot of people they would go to their new house and plan their future together.

On earth of course it would've been a whole different ordeal. Kara wondered if they'd combine traditions like Nia and Brainy, they probably would, wouldn't they? Combine human and Kryptonian traditions along with Lena's Catholic side and the Danvers Jewish traditions. A plethora of cultures to celebrate their happy union with only the people they really love surrounding them. Kara would make sure they'd had all their favourite foods regardless of tradition. It would've been the best party, that's for sure. Maybe it's not a bad idea, they do get along great and bring out the best in each other like all the Kryptonians ideals. But humans have other ideals. They sure do love each other, but their relationship is not romantic. Would it mean that Kara would stand in Lena's way to find true love?

"Hey you." She heard Lena's voice approaching. "Are you okay? Lena asked, taking a seat opposite to her on the table.

"No, yeah. I mean I'm okay." She smiled back at her best friend. Unsure why she found the task so challenging all of a sudden. "Just thinking." She quickly added. "I promise I don't have a habit of sulking at weddings."

"Want to share what's on your mind?" Lena asked gently.

Kara thought for a moment, unsure what to say. "Are you happy?" She asked eventually.

"Me?"

"Yes. Are you happy?"

She chuckled. "I am. Kara, are you really sitting here in the corner pondering the state of my happiness?" Lena arched an eyebrow.

"Yes? I mean, you're my friend Lena, and I want you to be happy, you know that right?"

Lena chuckled again and studied her with a confused look for a moment before getting up. "Well, if you want to keep my happiness at full power, I can't have my best friend sulking in the corner." She reached out a hand towards Kara. "Come on, they were just about to bring out the desserts." 

Kara smiled and reached out for Lena's hand.

It may have been a selfish thought, but Kara wished she could just marry Lena.

Read everything on AO3

[laufire]

author ask tag

I was tagged a few days ago by @goldfinchwrites (ty!)

I've chosen to answer this based on "Underground Elysium", the novella I'm currently working on.

A visionary vampiress, belonging to a matriarchal society of vampires with praying mantis-like habits, saw the apocalypse as an opportunity to subjugate humanity and elevate her species in a new world order, after the outside world became inhospitable to humans. Between the choice of risking falling prey to the walking, rotting corpses that roam the exterior, and a life of servitude under the civilised blood-sucking monsters underneath, many submitted to the second option. Nonetheless, there’s those even among her own that don’t appreciates living under Lucretia’s iron fist; around every corner a conspiracy against her brews, right as election season approaches.

(here's a teaser)

What is the main lesson of your story? Why did you choose it?

I don't set out to do that when I write. I certainly use stories to comment on things and Elysium is no exception, but whether there's a lesson in it or what it is, I'll leave that for others to decide.

What did you use as inspiration for your worldbuilding?

Although this one isn't a secondary-world story (with the exceptions of two of my larger 'verses, I've tried to move away from that), it's so so removed in setting and form to ours that I could do a lot of pick-and-choose with it. Two main influences have been Ancient Rome, Medieval politics, and insect biology LOL, for the vampiress society.

What is your MC trying to achieve, and what are you, the writer, trying to achieve with them? Do you want to inspire others, teach forgiveness, or help the reader grow as a person?

Lucretia's goal is to hold onto her hard-earned power, no matter what. My goal with her is to flesh out a driven, ambitious politician who genuinely managed (and continues to manage) to pull something incredible, miraculous, the kinds of blind spots that threaten to lead to a downfall, and the steps she'd take to handle it.

How many chapters is your story going to have?

It's a small cast, with Lucretia and Dana, the antagonist, at the center. Raina, Dana's daughter, who she's groomed to take power, would play the next most important part.

After that, the other relevant players are, in no particular order:

Constanza, Lucretia's busybody mother.

Graciela, Lucretia's human maid and personal entertainer (she's a violin player, Lucretia picks her first maids for their artistic talent).

Rivka, Head of Lucretia's Sentinels. Kind of a twisted queen and lionheart dynamic.

Zosia, the High Abbess/religious authority, often at odds with Lucretia.

Imogen, Dictator of the Magistrate, the highest judicial authority.

Anouk. The Token Male Vampirito Who Made it To Politics.

I've thought about adding a second male character lol. It'd defeat the purpose of a Token but I started thinking about how pissed Anouk would get if a more revolutionary vampirito was trying to get into politics now that he Broke The Glass Ceiling adsñlfajsf.

Is it fanfiction or original content? Where do you plan to post it?

This one is original content, though I still mostly write fanfiction these days. I don't have immediate plans to post it. Due to some IRL complications it'll take me a bit longer to finish it that I'd want (I wanted it to be at the end of March but it's looking to be a month longer), but by that point, first I'd ask some trusted mutual writers for feedback, and then I'd go from there.

When did you start writing?

The idea first started building around... three years ago? Thanks to a silly tumblr prompt where someone commented about vampires in a zombie apocalypse. I replied with the idea of a vampiric protection racket and it grew from there, much like Lucretia's empire lol.

Do you have any words of encouragement for fellow writers of writeblr? What other writers do you follow?

I'm not good at encouragement LOL. One thing I'd say is to never take Writing Advice And Wisdom as absolutes, because a lot of them simply won't fit your writing. And as always, read a lot. From the genres and styles you want to write in, to see what works and what doesn't, and from others, that might help you hone in your craft.

I follow quite a few writers and I'm sure I'll forget more... feel free to take this as being tagged in for this game (and if someone tagged you already, this is just a shoutout :P)

@erensattacktitancock @pinespittinink @missbrunettebarbie @varpusvaras @hellispeacefullandempty @cypresssunns @blairwaldcrf @bombshellsandbluebells @asablehart

[nomsfaultau]

hi hello I am currently obsessed with shred your wings to make you ours, so if you want to go on a ramble session about that fic I am sitting attentively and cheering

OKay, so. Well disclaimer that I do not in any way think authors are required to be experts on the subjects they're writing like math physics astronomy whatever like we're not cinama sins in this household and the fear of incorrect facts should not hold people back from beautiful creativity. (personal petpeeve in writers circles)

however I'm autistic and love researching so this is ENRICHMENT FOR ME.

Biology

I cornered a paleontologist/ornithologist (Hereafter Dr. S) to try and get information about the evolutionary history of birds so that the fic would be more accurate. And you will have to forgive me if I am not understanding everything accurately, because that's not my biology specialty! And the convo was a week ago.

Specifically, I was trying to figure out the environmental conditions that could lead to the size of Elytrians we see (although it could very well be that Elytrians are human sized and Avians are just tiny!).

So, I asked about how climate impacts species sizes. Dr. S discussed how in a particular ice age, there was both mammal shrinkage and reptile enlargement in the same area, which is honestly fascinating! But no dice on birds temperature wise. Next I asked about oxygen content, since I know that it had an impact on insects at least, and figured the aerial aspect might be something? IDK again I'm not an ornithologist lmao. We had a fascinating conversation about not yet published findings about fossilized ostrich eggs (so sorry don't have a source). Essentially, there's holes in the eggs that allow for gas exchange with the yolk. So, hypothesis was that the oxygen content in the atmosphere would influence the size of the holes in the ostrich eggs! Except, uh, it kinda didn't. At which point Dr. S, who is QUITE the rambler, finally said that there isn't much crazy variation in bird sizes over evolutionary history (compared to dinosaurs and what not).

(Which threw out my next theory on legumes, because I know that was big for the explosion of diversity and size in mammals post (paper here since I'm just a silly tumblr guy and you should fact check stuff I say, unfortunately can't give the Dr. S source without doxxing myself (for the second time talking about Shred Your Wings) so- uh- homework time?)

At which point I was like aw :( maybe my bird hybrid people (already insanely speculative biology and absurd for earth's evolutionary history) are even less biologically feasible due to their size :(

....And then I looked up the largest bird in history. Maybe not that far outside of theoretical, actually! Remember kids, why waste time talking to a professional when you can just google that crap!

wait no I shouldn't promote that message to my followers I'm a bad influence

Anyyyway. Hehe. Um.

Other stuff I'm thinking about:

The reason they don't have feathers around their mouths is for hygiene.

Researching migration feeding and sleeping habits. Wait sick some birds can sleep half of their brain at a time while still flying?? Also a least part of my explanation for Avians having arms is to carry resources during oceanic migration, but there's also some studies about plummeting calorie requirements that's fascinating

Now the Eleonara's falcon also does migration but that would super duper get in the way of the plot/ending so I've decided to violate that. Because all this research is fun and all but the story comes first y'know?

I don't think Avian or Elytrian are species. Techno makes a comment about the falconiform language barrier, and so I believe the divide is actually along Orders. So, Avians being Passeriformes (most birds tbh, ravens, sparrows, robins, etc) and Elytrians are Falconiformes (falcons). Fairly recent common ancestor, potentially there's another group based on the other two idk.

Lastly. Their forward facing eyes T-T chat I'm cooked. Absolutely no reason for them to have forward facing eyes, ESPECIALLY for an aerial species! I tried to poke in the direction of maybe them evolving in a hella dense jungle like area that would require insanely good depth perception to navigate, but like. I mean parrots don't have it so like. Whah. And it's not even for a narrative reason so it's my cross to bear ig.

Culture

My next big world building question (that honestly is why progress has stalled) is what type of technological and cultural development these guys have.

(As a note the ideas of 'more advanced civilizations' get quick into things like colonialism or racism so I'm trying to avoid that quagmire and be conscious of my status as a sedentary agriculturalist).

Because Avians are migratory, I think that would have a big influence on things like, having agriculture, or certain types of technologies that are based on permanent settlements. But only partially, I picture them as having two homes, one north and one south, that they split between. Techno at least seems to be from a species that migrates solo, but I think other Avians do group migrations. Because part of it is instincts, magnetism, constellations, etc leading them back to specific breeding grounds, I imagine this has created a very funky kingdom/settlement arrangement, where things like borders and territory are REALLY hard to maintain what with everyone moving twice a year. Who knows? Imagine coming home after 6 months to figure out the neighbors razed your house before leaving to annex it. I'm imagining less of monarchy or democracy systems, and more like clans. Of course not all Avians migrate, which could lead to those stationary species having lots of trust/power due to taking care of everything while everyone else is gone....OR could be there are biannual wars as those groups take over while everyone is gone, take all their stuff, and then deal with hoards of angry Avians in a couple months time!

Trying to maintain a proper kingdom wouldn't work, because a large control mechanism is inhibiting im/emigration. If someone hate their ruler, they can just pick a new place to land when they migrate next spring/fall. So factions are constantly shifting around, and places change a lot every year depending on who got there first and how much fuss they intend to kick up about staying there. Avians move a lot and aren't really tied down to a particular home. There's a constant flux to these societies. Some Avians cope by forming close knit groups, and get entire towns migrating together, but others bounce from group to group.

I'm super certain wars are happening. But we also don't see Techno as being notably armed while migrating -which: this is Techno! If there are weapons he'd have all of them! Which might be oversight on my part tbh, but also I think in that case the Elytrian kill strat explains why: usually, Avians are either immediately killed, or can escape. So, not much use for a weapon there, especially against someone faster and stronger than you. And since Avians are trying to max out carrying food during migration, I imagine weapons aren't carried on them because every gram counts when you're flying across the ocean. So, weapons are for fighting Avians, running for your life is for fighting Elytrians. (Could've been a few centuries arm race between Avian weapons and Elytrian armor, but, speculation).

Most Avians are on the herbivore/omnivore spectrum, and since the migration means they have two growing seasons but also giant periods of time where areas are abandoned. So while I do picture them having farming, I think it's very different from human styles. Much much much less intensive, long fallow periods, potentially more diversity since you can also trade with an Avian with a different diet! Scavenging/hunting is still very large in the culture, because you WILL need it during migration at the very least, so you better not get rusty or you'll die! Also some people need bugs/fish/whatever in their diets. I think most of their clothing is made from cotton they've grown, and they get crazy dyes from all over the globe.

I also think that the ability to fly would vastly structure how things like towns are built because that's all about proximity, but the sheer distance anyone can cover means that I think they're less concentrated.....by species. Niche partitioning baby! And also some birds are very territorial compared to others who form massive flocks. So, big difference there again.

I gotta imagine their sense of ownership looks very different to ours too.

AS for Elytrians:

Imma focus on Phil's species that don't migrate cause I like the contrast! They are more firmly in one place for most of the year. They don't grow crops cause, well, carnivores. I can see an amount of animal husbandry for them though, which works for a mildly nomadic species since birds do tend to drift around even if not migrating. I think circling their herd overhead would also give ample opportunity for hunting, since blatantly Phil is still a predator. Particularly for his species, they eat insects and fish and what not most times of the year, but their chick season lines up with when a bunch of Avians migrate through because they make a fantastic source of protein.

Comparatively, Elytrians are far more invested in their one area than Avians are, who migrate frequently and mingle a lot. So I picture Elytrians having more complex architecture, and potentially inventions since you're not abandoning a project every half year to potentially never come back to again. Which honestly suits the Philza/Techno building philosophy divide....

Since writing systems were developed for counting agriculture stuff, I kinda see these guys inventing it and arithmetic as a way of marking how big their herds are, branding them to prevent thefts, stuff like that. Probably have things like literature being big hits in the Elytrian communities, especially since distribution is so easy. Passarines being more song birds I think have oral story telling traditions instead.

Now Elytrians mostly just use natural weapons for hunting evidentially since- I mean- can you throw a spear faster than a 200mph falcon? If it works it works! Their aerial combat with each other has got to be WICKED though.

As for general technologies: Clothing, basic tools, dying, stone/wood work, fire. I cannot for the life of me picture either Order working in mines but Techno has clearly forged pieces of copper/gold/metal worked into his clothing so I imagine it's happening. Nothing along the lines of industry. If that were to happen I think Elytrians are more likely, buuuut then they'd have to fly in all that smog so potentially that wouldn't go far.

uh. Good enough ramble session?? I hope? This certainly helped get my thoughts in order to continue working!

[unhingedlesbear]

Omg hey I'm back I'm sorry for responding so late i was outside but back to the bugs. I like budwig mantis because they have like insane hunting habits?? I like them mainly cause the aggressive habits of mainly the females in that species is interesting and slightly disturbing like theyd be threatened by any predator and they'd still try to jump it (queen behaviors iguess???)I also like their patterns and their silly little faces. I think hissing cockroaches are really cute idc what anybody says because that silly little guy is just minding his buisness most of the time. I also like spiders a bit but I'm scared of them but I like to learn about them because some of them have such unique abilities like the diving bell spider oh or jumping spiders (sorry for ranting but long story short bugs are severely underrated and overhated)

No worries!! And OMG?? That is SUCH queen behavior actually 😭😭can confirm that mantises just REALLY don't care how big something is, they'll still go for it (My mantis has gone for ME before) and ur so right abt their patterns! They're such unique looking mantises! Mantises with wings like that always look so pretty I stg! And hissing cockroaches ARE cute! They're super gentle and harmless too, they don't even bite bc their mouths are too small! They also can recognize and prefer individual humans which is amazing to me! And YEAH spiders are also super cool! (I keep three spiders; a tarantula, jumping spider and house spider) and I'll admit myself I used to be slightly creeped out by them! Not REALLY creeped out but enough that I wouldn't handle them without issue like other invertebrates 😭after keeping my three for a while though I've found myself hardly bothered at all! Do you have any particular favourite spiders? But no ur so right! And I don't mind at all I LOVE talking abt bugs bc they ARE so underrated and overhated, their world is a whole different one from ours and so many people dismiss them or fear them too much to even acknowledge how fascinating it all is!

[frowzyfeathers]

Roze Dreamer

This is one of my main horse ocs. She's one of the first pony characters I created back in the day on general-zoi's pony creators on deviantArt. Her design has changed massively from when I first made her, but this is her most current one.

above is a bust headshot I drew of her waving hello

Full Name:

Roze Dreamer (rose dree-Mur)

Nickname(s)/Aka:

Dreamer, Rozey(rosey), Randa-roze(rANDuh-rose), Roze(rose)

Age:

22 years

Gender:

Female

Pronouns:

She/Her; They/Them

Species/Type of Creature/Race:

Pony/Pegasus (without wings)

Height:

3' 8" or 107cm (just under average mare size)

Skin Tone/Fur Color:

Medium azure blue with bright light blue markings

Hair Length:

Slightly longer than shoulder length

Hair Style:

Mostly to the left side; Small part of hair is pulled aside to right side; Usually down, soft and straight, full of dead-ends; She sometimes has it worn back in a ponytail if she's too annoyed with it getting in her face all the time.

Hair Color:

[Left side] Milk chocolate brown (with a natural red-ish tint in the sunlight) and a washed-out used-to-be red (now salmon) strip of dyed hair. [Right side] Stripes of dyed pastel pink, purple, and blue hair, all in one small section

Eye Color:

Light lavender/Pastel purple/Light purple (Pupils are almost-black purple)

Usually carries:

Dark turquoise colored satchels/saddle bags; mechanical pencils, half lined half unlined notebook,

Usual attire:

None usually; sometimes wears a black hoodie or scarf, with an optional grey beanie

Cutiemark:

A purple rose with the green stem, lined with small thorns, twirled in a loop and the end pointed down, cut to form an inkwell pen tip, dripping rainbow-shimmer deep purple ink. The leaf, attached to the outer loop, is half on fire with a yellow-orange-red fading flame. A small white/very light blue cloud surrounds the background of the rose.

Personality/Backstory:

A very shy, mostly kind, easy-going horse who's considered a bit of a silly weirdo at times. She's not one to talk a whole lot around creatures that are strangers to her, but she still wants to/likes to socialize with others. Most of the time, she comes off as awkward, usually waiting for the right moment to speak up and not make too much of a fool of herself. She took the phrase "don't speak until you're spoken to" very literally at a young age, mainly out of fear that others would dislike her or wouldn't care what she had to say anyway. Not being really exposed to many social situations as a filly led to her current struggle of interacting with others. She usually was and still is the shoulder to cry on, always willing to listen to others and console them. She doesn't mind doing such, as long as they are genuine and aren't tricking and trapping her in situations.

She does tend to get stuck in her head A LOT of the time. Sometimes it's to a debilitating point of not wanting to get out of bed or do much. Usually, art is her outlet for such, where she can draw or scribble whatever she feels the need to.

Roze loves doing artsy things, like clay sculpting, pencil and paper sketching, acrylic painting, and digital art on her laptop with her drawing tablet. It's mainly horses and cartoony animals and creatures either from her imagination or shows she watches. She loves to sit around and watch nature do its thing. Like sitting outside and watching the clouds drift by, finding interest in swaying trees as the cool breeze shakes some leaves down, hyper-focusing on a jumping spider for 4 hours straight to watch it interact with a small cricket, looking up in awe at bigger birds flying through the sky, stuff of the sort.

Missing wings:

Roze cut off her own wings when she was 16, thinking and feeling like life wasn't worth living anymore. The story behind such deals with her natural habit of getting stuck in her own head, usually with negative thinking and assumptions that aren't 100% true. The reason why deals more from her past trauma and her not having any outlets for her emotions and being too scared and hopeless to ask for help. She has since regretted that decision heavily and is trying to have a more positive outlook on life, as some things causing her distress are lessening. Gaining motivation to try and find ways she can fly on her own again is usually difficult for her. Motivation is growing as she tries to look more on the positive sides to her life now. Thick weather-proof patches are stitched over the area where her wings would be.

Hobbies:

Drawing

Vibing to music

Playing video games

Watching nature

Sleeping/napping

Jumping spider keeping

Likes:

Hugs (both giving and receiving)

Pineapple on pizza

Plushies/soft stuffed animals

Miniatures (figurines, dioramas, items, etc-)

Mythical creatures/legends

Caring for/being around animals

Favorite animals are big cats, small cats, butterflies, ferrets, jumping spiders, giraffes, snakes, sugar gliders, hedgehogs, and many others-

Talents:

Artistic creativity/ability to draw

(still discovering what she's good at)

Dislikes:

Bugs flying/leaping towards her

Large crowds of unknown strangers

Embarrassing social situations

Talking about her wings situation

Weaknesses:

Very small and cute things

Soft fluffy things (will try to pet/snuggle it)

Sudden loud noises

Fears:

Being trapped/submerged under water

Being yelled at randomly

Upsetting others by accident

Being left alone by creatures she trusts

Habits:

Procrastinating until last minute

Shaking her back right hoof while sitting

Sticking her tongue out while focusing on something

Daydreaming/spacing out

Slight twitching when highly anxious

Pets:

None

Favorite color(s):

Purple

Red/maroon

Blue

Pink

Crush/Lover:

She is not taken and is not looking for a lover at the moment.

Sexuality:

Pansexual

Other:

420-friendly (marijuana user); Fall is her favorite season, Spring is second;

^ Roze's main reference sheet

^ Roze Dreamer's PonyTown design

[clannfearrunt]

Actually I wasn't expecting this to get rb'd around so I don't think I made some things clear enough so I wanna address some stuff!

#man that adds extra horror to all those infection aus too #they literally have no immune defenses #damn does this mean in any 'last surviving human' aus they'd all die out because of whatever pathogens the human would have (tags via @smithy-will-eat-your-babies)

Cephalopods (and other invertebrates) DO have a perfectly good innate immune system!! It's adaptive immunity that they don't have. Adaptive immunity is thought to have evolved in jawed fish approximately 500 million years ago, and also in jawless fish independently as well apparently. Things like idk a frog, human, a shark, the powerful lumpfish, we all have this awesome adaptation! In addition to our innate immune response, we also have the ability to adapt to new pathogens and remember them when we encounter them again.

So to explain the difference (as I understand it- if I make any mistakes pls feel free to chime in) and why I was horrified:

The innate immune system is like, the Default Defense you were born with. It's the part of your immune system that looks at a foreign invader and goes UNAUTHORIZED FUCKING THING. BLOW IT UP NOW. Most living things are gonna be pretty decent at this. You have to be, to keep on being a living thing on this Earth. The functions of the innate immune system are genetic, and it does not improve with experience. If you happen to meet a pathogen that has evolved to survive whatever default defenses you were born with, then well. That's that. There's also the risk of managing to fight off an infection, only to immediately be re-infected by the same fucking thing you just fought off, and you start the fight alllll over again the exact same way you just did, with no improvements, because your immune system cannot remember Who this intruder is and how to tailor its response to it specifically. An important thing to remember, though, that not everyone has the same genes, so Squid A might still have been born with a stronger immune system than Squid B, and survive an illness that Squid B might die from. Unless you have a population with very little genetic diversity, like, say, maybe if your country had a habit of cloning soldiers off of tentacle cuttings or something silly like that, then you're prooobably not just going to have everyone wiped out from One Disease. Also, innate immunity within a population can improve over time, but it'll be over the course of generations, not within an individual person.

The adaptive immune system is the part that can learn to identify invaders it's seen before. It's that system of target-tailored antibodies and other fancy shit that makes fighting an infection more efficient. You know how when a human child gets chicken pox once, and then once they recover from that they'll never get sick from chicken pox again? Or how you can get vaccinated against various terrible, deadly diseases, and it'll let your body know how to fight off a real infection without nearly killing yourself in the process? That's adaptive immunity in action. It lets the body remember enemies it's seen before, and respond efficiently. With this ability, you're not just stuck your whole life with whatever Default Stats you happened to be born with - your defenses will improve with experience. This is a big fucking deal!!!

Like. Consider how important the invention of vaccines have been to society. We've eradicated entire deadly diseases through vaccinations. And then to consider this whole society made up of a bunch of species that don't have that option? (Though maybe with gene editing tech they might be able to, idk but that's a pretty advanced tech compared to traditional vaccines) That's horrifying!! Also, the body not being able to adapt to shit it's fought off before also means that if you don't do a good enough job sterilizing your living space after getting sick you might get caught in a death loop of being re-infected over and over until your body just can't keep up the fight anymore. Imagine getting fucking spawncamped by idk the same strain of strep throat that's still hanging out on the toothbrush you forgot to throw out. Scary!

As far as the "Inklings meet a human" scenario goes most pathogens are specific to a host so unless the human just happened to be carrying something that knows how to infect cephalopods, they'll be fine. Given how terrestrial cephalopods weren't even a thing during humantimes I would think the likelihood of a human carrying any pathogen that would know what to do with an Inkling, let alone efficiently enough to cause a significant epidemic, would be fairly slim. You could certainly play with this slim chance though, just keep in mind they're not just inherently all fucked, they do stand a chance as a population. Also remember they have access to medicine and sterilization techniques and such let's be fair 2 them in our horrible pandemic scenarios

@mosspodge said:

dang so a single deady infectious disease could reasonably take out a large portion of if not all inkfish huh. interesting interesting ✍️✍️

I initially put this at top but I reread it and yeah you've got the spirit lol. Like I said, there's still going to be differences in immune response between individuals, so it probably won't wipe out everyone. But it can easily get really bad.

I've been mulling over what this might mean for how their society handles infectious diseases though. I'll probably make its own post, but one thing that's probably taken a lot more seriously than it is in some human societies not naming any names that start with U and end in A, would be quarantining sick individuals. That's probably the very first step they recommend taking, and I would hope they take it seriously enough to actually accommodate it! It won't help much for a disease that has a contagious stage before any symptoms appear, but it's something lol

U can look into sea cucumber toxins but watch out. You might shatter some crucial underlying assumptions you were making with regards to fantasy cephalopod society epidemiology