#The more that I can tell that a monster character (or any nonhuman) was designed to be simped for the more I love it

[tyrantisterror]

No Small Feat Art Pt. 6 - Chaos at the Menagerie

By request, I’m gonna show off some of the artwork for No Small Feat, a Midgaheim story my friends and I told through the TTRPG system Fabula Ultima. I drew a lot of characters and monsters for it, and my friends - in particular, @dragonzzilla, @scatha5, and @dinosaurana - helped line and color them so we’d have cute little sprites to use on our online battlemaps, which really helped sell the whole “we’re playing an oldschool turn based RPG” vibe that Fabula Ultima’s system is going for.

In this part, we’re gonna look at the many NPCs introduced in the campaign’s fourth arc, Chaos at the Menagerie!

All the way from session 0, my player characters had heard rumors of a fabulous menagerie of arcane beasts kept by Sir Peter Hammerschmidt, a merchant who possessed so much wealth and influence that he was knighted and made part of the nobility for it. Some of my players, being nonhuman (or transformed into nonhumans at any rate), were almost poached for the menagerie, in fact, so when they finally got to the town of Sumerlie, they had some idea of what they were getting into when asking Peter whether or not he had a crown jewel in his possession too.

They came on an auspicious day, as Peter was finally opening up his full menagerie for visitors from the creme de la creme of Engelsex, including Prince Huxley Monbatten, the eldest son of the previous king of Engelsex who would be the frontrunner in the competition to become the new king if the crown hadn't been destroyed. Peter was also assisted by Clara Saddel, his trusty chief maid and assistant, as well as Ranzacor, the wizard who designed all the magic safeguards meant to keep the menagerie safe and secure.

The first floor of the menagerie did contain several arcane beasts, but most weren't particularly noteworthy as menageries in Midgaheim go - a couple designer griffins (very trendy, but everyone rich enough to have a menagerie can afford them), some drats (cat/puk dragon hybrids that are heavy on the feline and light on the dragon), flederwyrms (bat/lizard chimeras), one very ill-looking bonnacon (fire breathing and/or shitting oxen), a hoogah (related to dragons but far less vicious), a grotesque (arcane agamid lizards that superficially resemble dragons as a defense mechanism), a hunkypunky (big nasty-tempered arcane tegu lizards), an amphibaena (arcane serpents that are born as conjoined twins), and some sprinting basilisks. Impressive to commoners, sure, but nowhere near the show Peter promised.

But then, in the center of the first floor, there was the first true wonder: a truly wild catoblepas, one that had never been domesticated and subjected to years of selective breeding for docility by human beings. Enormous and magnificent, it was a taste of the wonders that lay below.

While the cockatrices nearby, with their quick two-legged sprinting and devious minds, were a preview of how it would go wrong.

The second floor contained far more dangerous beasts. They spanned different countries, from a knucker wyrm with hydra syndrome from Mediterra to a waterhorse from Celpict. There was a bonafide Chimaera, which Peter had been assured was made to be a perfect replica of the first Chimaera created by Typhon and Echidna in the times of antiquity, and a largemouth wyvern dragon with talons capable of crushing a man in their grip.

But perhaps most telling on this floor were a trio of beasts denied their purpose: a gorgon whose eyes had been gouged out to deny her the ability to turn men to stone, a unicorn whose horn was shattered in its capture, and a Questing Beast - a creature whose entire existence is built on being impossible to catch and imprison - that was born in captivity and never knew life outside the menagerie walls.

The third floor had fewer residents, but for good reason, as it held not only the most valuable creatures, but the most deadly as well. There was an Afanc, an enormous crocodile whose mastery of water magic allows it to create deadly sea storms and floods. There was the Ox Dragon, an enormous and powerful greater drake with a notorious temper. There was a peluda, a lesser drake whose armored hide was covered in thick, sharp spikes.

But they weren't the deadliest beasts in the menagerie.

The most valuable creatures imprisoned in Hammerschmidt's menagerie were, oddly enough, local finds - tatzelwyrms, specifically, a variety of two-legged dragon that normally doesn't get particularly large by dragon standards. The clever tatzelwyrms that lived in the first paddock of the third floor illustrated this well, with each being roughly the size of a wolf. But there were a few exceptions, and one of them was the aptly named Terror Tatzelwyrm, a fifty-foot long dragon with powerful jaws and an astounding running speed for its size. One such tatzelwyrm was a local celebrity in Sumerlie, and Peter had caught the creature in a moment of weakness - namely, sleeping in her den over a nest full of eggs that she had been guarding for weeks without finding food for herself. He caught her and imprisoned her while she was too exhausted to fight back, and sold her eggs to make the funds to get the rest of his prized specimens.

The Terror Tatzelwyrm was, mechanically speaking, the Villain of this arc, though like some of the previous Villains, she was far from unsympathetic.

I imagine by now you've figured out the "joke" of this arc. It's Jurassic Park. Which, of course, is not a fairy tale, but listen, we had to make sure 100 monsters appeared somehow, and isn't Jurassic Park a modern day fairy tale in its own right? A rich merchant, believing his wealth gives him power over nature itself, employs the best wizards he can find to bring impossible nightmare monsters to life so he can show them off as prized possessions, only for the monsters to break free and tear him to pieces. There's a nice tight little moral in there, tell it to your kids!

Gonna post the sprites in a followup since tumblr has an image limit per post.

[cupcakeshakesnake]

You have m o r e ?!?!? Omg they're amazing, I love them already and it's only been like 90 seconds (I've just been staring at them because. Wow.)

Wait but are you actually getting rid of them/ discontinuing their story? I mean, I saw that post about Sisyphus, but I would love it if we got to see more of these guys. I mean, no pressure if you weren't but I just wanted to let you know that I'm a really big fan of your work. I appreciate that, for your nonhuman characters, while their designs are very visually appealing in the artistic sense, you can tell that they're not at all supposed to be attractive in any modern human idealized sort of way (and what does it mean to Objectively Attractive anyway? Popular opinion is so hypocritcally subjective) but instead that each individual drawing, whether it's a character of your own creation or your take on a preexisting one, is crafted to serve their exact purpose on the page (whether it's Humor of Incongruity, expressing frustration, evoking the beauty in the imperfect, etc.), because you can see both the soul of that being and the way the Otherness of their design sets them apart as new and interesting yet accentuates the uniquely human part of their character (however buried and twisted that part may be, in some cases. Looking at you, Valek.)

. . . I was going somewhere further with this but I lost where I was. I'm sorry, it's late and I'm tired, but I just saw this and felt I had to say something (other than "cool monsters go brrr"). I know we're just strangers on the internet, and I'm not any sort of people person. We don't know anything substantial about each other, and we'll probably never meet. But I hope you know that, for whatever it's worth, there are people out there who see what you're doing. And that it's beautiful in all of it's imperfection, and beautiful *because* of it. And that, miniscule though my knowledge of you may be (because who can truly know anyone?), I can *see* the beauty of your soul shining through the crack of your art. And that I get a little bit of joy and inspiration every time I come across your work, so I hope this clumsily, hasty little message can give at least some of that joy back to you.

(P.S. I wrote this as a AtNC reblog, but by the time I finished writing this I figured it'd probably be better to send as an ask, so that you can decide what to do with it. You are in no way obligated to make any sort of response to this. From what I understand, you don't believe in a benevolent higher power, and that's okay, I'm still on the fence about whether I do or not, but I just... felt oddly compelled to write this. Like something was telling me I had to try to convey this to you, because you needed it. It's fine if you don't understand what I'm saying, I'm not sure even I do, but just hope that wherever you are, whatever you are doing, whatever you are going through, you know there's someone out there who cares for you, and that your existence is w o r t h something immeasurable.)

I hope you're okay. You are stronger than you know.

First of all, thank you. It took me a while to reply because I've been very busy with schoolwork, but I've reread this message at least several times a day and it has brought me such joy each time.

To answer your question, no, I'm not discontinuing or getting rid of anything - I assume this has to do with my monster OCs, and there are two major stories of them so far.

One is Walter, which I simply decided not to use for schoolwork after being told its plot is too boring. That's all. I will do what I want with it in my own time. The other is that one with the mutated office workers, which fortunately got the OK from the professor. Both are still very rough works in progress.

I'm very glad that you like the way I draw... er, things, for lack of a better wording. Things I draw for myself may turn out far from "conventionally attractive", but I like it that way. You made me think about an aspect of my art that I never really considered before, but you have a point; in a way, I could be trying to humanize characters not by giving them a more human face but by giving them their own ways to express humanity.

That being said, I don't know what an "AtNC" reblog is supposed to be, but I wouldn't have minded either way. Your kind words are appreciated all the same.

[idyllic-affections]

tbh, when I saw Skirk, I just thought she kinda looked like a knock-off Jingliu. I mean, we glimpse some more interesting design bits like fins (possibly indicating some sort of connection with the Abyss Whale, the whale btw is just.... mmmm *chefs kiss*, water-themed kaiju ) which brings an issue with howna good portion of the adult model Xianzhou women are all wearing extremely similar outfits with some small personalization and differing color palettes, which is something I honestly didn't realize until someone on discord pointed it out. But that's a discussion for a another ask.

Ans I agree with you, I was always envisioning this rugged, scarred, battleworn woman. Somebody whose spent so much time trapped in a lightless hellscape, fighting day-in and day-out against the monstrous inhabitants, that she herself has started to become something of a monster herself. She's beautiful, but not in the traditional/generic way. Paraphrasing you slightly Alphe, she's not elegant, she's not super precise or surgical with the way she fights, she's feral, monstrous even. She's beautiful not in a way that beguiles, but unnerves, perhaps even terrifies the viewer. That's the vision for her that was in the back of my mind when she was described.

This also brings me a very annoying trend I've noticed. How there's literally not a single female genshin character (or just hoyoverse female in general) who has any visible scars. The closest I can find is Beidou with her missing eye, but I would argue that still doesn't really count because we can't see the area (I’m not saying we need to see her fucked eye, more that'd be cool if we got a glimpse of the area poking out around the eyepatch). And she's not the only one who I feel like we should see some scars on.

Dehya, Candace, Sara, Shenhe. And those are just the ones I can think of.

And I can definitely understand  🦢Anon's feelings for Natlan and Snezhnaya. I'm particularly worried about Natlan, particularly what they're gonna make of Murata, who - to paraphrase Christopher Judge - is a FUCKING GOD OF WAR.

she SOO reminds me of jingliu, you're right. and that's also very true. i noticed that when designing my first honkai star rail oc, lian. it was a huge issue for me because it made it hard to find inspiration.

YOU GET ME SOBS i understand the appeal of delicate designs, i do, but there's so fucking many!!! in hyv games!!!!! is it so bad of me to wish for One rugged lady warrior....... arlecchino is good though i like her design <3 BUT YOU GET IT!!! SHE IS BEAUTIFUL AND ELEGANT BUT IN A NONHUMAN WAY!!!! SHE'S ELEGANT LIKE A HUMAN WHO HAS SLOWLY BEEN CORRUPTED BY EDLRITCH FORCES!!!!! SHE IS BEAUTIFUL IN AN OTHERWORLDLY AND UNNERVING WAY!!!!!! she is a warrior with little honor left in her, because there is no such thing in the abyss.

NO YEAH it's like :((( give them scars!!!!! scars tell stories!!!!!!!

i've been generally gentle about my thoughts on skirk but i will be LIVID if they do this with murata and the tsaritsa.

[hurricanes-club-of-angels]

Information! Pinned Post!!

Hello! Our collective name is Hurricane and our system name is Hurricane & Co. We are an adult, traumagenic polyfrag DID System. This blog will not revolve around system things most likely though. White-Bodily and happily in a relationship. Pagan collectively although works with Catholic/Christian figures.

Our collective pronouns include (bold is preferred): He/Him They/Them It/Its Hell/Hells Cae/Caem Dino/Dinos Bled/Bleed We do however accept any/all pronouns!

Collective Identifications, Bold ones are more aligned. Sexuality/General: Abrosexual Demipanromantic, polyamorous and queerplatonic. Transmasculine, genderqueer. Happily identifies as aroace spectrum. Gender list: Cassflux - An identity where the person feels as though their gender has varying degrees of unimportance. Androgyne - A gender identity associated with androgyny. Angeheasofic - A gender related to angelcore, imagination, and comfort. Angtrapic - A gender that is kind and gentle yet powerful and visually frightening. It feels like an angel trapped in a human body, waiting for just the right moment to break out. Cupidogender - A gender that feels related to sin, demons, pride, and the deep/extreme understanding of attraction and affection. Angeligender - A gender related to angels/archangels and other heavenly beings and concepts. Devilicgender - A gender related to demons, devils, evil, hell, etc. 666gender - A gender related to the Apocalypse and The Book of Revelations. Purehonum - A gender related to empty religious spaces that feel extremely off or unsettling. A false sense of security and purity.

BYI/DNI BYI: - Persecutor heavy system, our persecutors are allowed to interact with others and we advocate for the reformation and helping of persecutors. They are not Evil alters. - Introject Heavy. Includes MCYT/DSMP alters (Although we don't consume much of the content anymore, we are uncomfortable with antis). As well as Biblically inspired/based introjects. - We use our block button happily and frequently! - We have alters designated as "System Assholes". If they are telling you to stop interacting, or that you have crossed a boundary, know that you are likely to be blocked. DNI: - Basi DNI criteria (racist, homophobic, transphobic, proship/anti-anti, etc.) - Endogenic "Systems" and supporters of such. There is no scientific research to validate the existence of systems without trauma. - Additionally, DNI if you believe in "system hopping", all alters are apart of one brain and entity and the idea that they can full on enter another brain is ungrounded in reality and foolish. - Note: This does not necessarily automatically include 'system hopping' in the HC-DID sense of hopping between side/subsystems. - If you identify with any sort of neo-sexuality that targets: Robots, Monsters, Nonhumans, Cat-people, etc. in a non-joking manner. (ie, Monster fucker jokes are fine. But if you ONLY want to date "monsters" go away.) These identities feel fetishizing and uncomfortable to our nonhuman alters. - Anti-neopronoun, Anti-xenogender, obviously. - DSMP Antis and Schlatt antis due to us having introjects that get wildly uncomfortable around Antis. - Additionally, DSMP fans who send Death Threats like they are Antis. You fuck off too. - Delusional Attachments/IRLs, you are simply kinnies cycling back to the "I AM THE ONLY KINNIE OF THIS CHARACTER ALL OTHERS ARE FAKE" . There is no scientific proof I have seen proving DAs/IRLs, and you make us uncomfortable because you insert yourselves into system spaces. - Believe fictives are like their source/treat fictives like they're their source. OR sexualize fictives. - Strongly and vocally anti-religion. - Participate in the sexualization of Minors. Even if you are a minor yourself. You are a child, you should not publically be saying if you're a top/bottom/etc. or talking about BDSM/NSFW topics. - Under 13. You shouldn't be here bro.

We are always willing to talk and explain our beliefs with certain points. However, that does not mean you will change our opinions. We are always happy to listen to other perspectives, but we will not change our stance on things just because you disagree personally.

[avi-draws]

Hi, I'm just dropping here, to tell you, that your drawings are amazing!!! I love your style and designs you did for Jimmy and Lizzy 🌸🌺🌸🌺🌸

No pressure, but you said that Lizzy's design isn't final, and I wanted to ask can you show your sketches (if you have them) of other variants? I'm just really interested to see the way you think and develop your designs. It's okay if not, we just love your giant wife design uωu

Have a good day/night!! 🌺🌸🌺

aww thank you :D and just for you sure ;P lemme just go find em

(they're not as polished as the jimmy ones though, I was still intending to come back n do more lol)

To anyone else interested, I might do a whole big explanation thing below

SO, Lizzie.

Admittedly I haven't watched her videos yet, so this is mostly vibes, but I kinda wanted to do a more nonhuman design for her even compared to jimmy, considering she had a whole remembering being the daughter of a deep god/sea monster reversion thing going on, especially as the transformation seems to be triggered by prolonged exposure to land.

Which, considering Jimmy's empire is more marsh/semi aquatic than hers, I think he probably has a more human appearance than her now, though his aquatic features never quite faded in the first place (kinda ironic considering she's the amphibian and hes a fish lol. perhaps he's actually a mudskipper? ;P also means potential full on mer Jimmy)

which leads me to my physical design for Lizz. its not quite so obvious in the other pic, but I like the idea of slightly more axolotl-y proportions: slightly lower hips, longer torso (was not taking any insp from zelda's zora ;P) less defined bone structure and more rounded features in the face, and really framed by her gills. body structure-wise she probably swims more by her tail then classic strokes?

You can also see the other colour palette I tested here (blue axolotl and what-not) until I decided in the end I liked an overall pink scheme, what with the contrast to her hands and such and more natural continuity to her hair colouration.

As for outfit design, I'll be honest in saying my first thought was just 'try and draw a pretty dress,' secondly for a character constantly on the move and frequently swimming.Given more time to think about it, I think I'd like to try some classical greek styles; her empire gives me almost Atlantis-esque vibes, and her skins p toga like.

for now I liked the idea of a a lot of a crown of shells, gauzy, flowing fabric, maybe some tearing to match her skin, and a lot of jewelry for her out of coral, shells, pearls, and other sea themed pretty objects. Considering her main business was initially prismarine, I think I'd also like to try and work that in somehow too? From there it was just testing concepts as design ideas sprung.

So here you go if you made it this far, the Lizzie designs so far, and potentially more in future :P

[a-dragons-journal]

My Experiences of Nonhumanity

I get asked about “what makes you/people in general feel you’re/they’re otherkin” a lot, and while the answer is far from simple and my experiences are anything but universal, I figure it deserves a write-up once in a while. A friend asked about it a couple nights ago, so I wrote up a huge long message on Discord, and decided to rewrite it into a Tumblr post for posterity. This’ll be a long one, folks; hit J on desktop to skip.

It’s worth noting ahead of time: none of these things are required to be otherkin, and none of them automatically mean you’re otherkin. In fact, most of them are little more than mildly “weird” quirks when they occur in isolation, and only start to push outside the range of “normal human experiences” when many of them occur together. You can’t look at someone (including yourself) and say “they like collecting things, they must be dragonkin!” It’s not that simple. You have to take the individual as a whole even as you examine each specific experience in more detail - don’t lose the forest while you’re studying the trees. This is just a description of my personal experiences.

Shifts

- Phantom shifts/supernumerary phantom limbs: Probably the most obvious thing and the hardest to brush off, although I still managed to do so for years. Phantom shifts, aka supernumerary phantom limbs, are the experience of feeling limbs or body parts that do not and never have physically existed. In my case, the most common phantom limbs to show up are my wings and tail; other body parts, such as digitigrade legs, horns, snout, and paws/talons, also make appearances less frequently. While my phantom limbs almost never attempt to replicate tactile sensations/interactions with the physical world, they’re often defined by very vivid proprioception (ability to tell where your body is in space, mainly via muscle stretch receptors), and I can tell where each part of the limb is at any given time - it’s not just a shapeless sense of “weight,” or it wouldn’t be phantom limbs. I can also move them at will, typically. My phantom shifts are typically spontaneous and involuntary, but they’ve been induced artificially a couple different ways as well, though I can’t typically do it at will.

- Sensory shifts: Still not something I’m totally sure I experience, but there are definitely times my sense of smell becomes insanely strong compared to usual even for me, which fits the definition of a sensory shift.

- Astral shifts: While I’m far from an adept astral traveler, when visualizing “traveling” within my own mindscape, I shift form fluidly between human and dragon - although I almost always have wings at the very least.

- Cameo shifts: Mentioned only because it’s relevant to my phantom shifts. I realized at some point that the reason I get cameo shifts of canine/feline ears sometimes is because they usually show up when they’re pricking/flattening to express emotion, and the muscles that move to do that action are basically the same as the ones that do those actions with the crest that runs down my neck, and because of my obsession with cats/dogs/horses as a young child and because that’s not a particularly strong phantom shift for me usually, I connected the dots a little wrong and created a false association.

- Self-image: This isn’t technically a shift, but it’s going here anyway because it doesn’t really fit in any other section either. My body image/self-image is weird. I know, consciously, what I physically look like. However, my instinctive self-image is... hmm. What I “expect” to see doesn’t always match up with what’s actually there when I look in the mirror. Teeth are a huge point of fixation for me for some reason; I always expect them to be larger, sharper, stronger. I expect my neck to be longer, my face to be... different. I expect scales in places. I expect claws. Even knowing consciously that of course it won’t be there, it’s still strange sometimes that it’s not. There’s sometimes some mild disconnect when I see myself. (Sometimes not. But sometimes.)

Homesickness

(Or, the sense of missing something you’ve never had - not of “I want/want to be [x], and it makes me sad/upset that I don’t have/am not that,” but of “I should have/be [x], and it is fundamentally wrong that I do/am not.”)

- Flight: I have always wanted to fly, and for a long time I thought everyone ached for the sky the same way I did. Most people don’t, as it turns out. Yes, everyone’s fantasized about flying, but most people don’t feel bones-deep, crushing, physical pain in their chest thinking about it. Most people don’t lift up onto their toes instinctively straining for the sky. I’ve felt that aching longing for it for as long as I can remember.

- Connection to dragons: For as long as I can remember knowing about dragons, I loved the idea of them and even when I was very young, when I’d only really been exposed to media where they were the great evil for the hero to defeat and received no more character development than “evil, destructive, fire-breathing beast,” I was always on the dragon’s side and wanted to learn more about them. That hasn’t faded. I’ll watch an absolutely terrible movie or TV show that I otherwise loathe if it has good enough animation and sound design on the dragons. (Looking at you, Game of Thrones.*) I would commit arson to see one of those Isle-style dragon survival games actually go through and finish production. (Holding out hope for the Dragon Game Project on YouTube; go check them out if you haven’t already.) I’ve also used dragons to represent myself for pretty much as long as I’ve had an online presence - years before I ever heard of otherkin, I was calling myself Dragonheart.

- Dragon-like creatures: Snakes, crocodilians, and dinosaurs all fall into this category - all of them give me a similar heart-and-breathing-pick-up, aching familiarity to dragons. They’re not perfect, but in a snake’s scales and a crocodile’s bellows and a dinosaur’s spectacular reptilian size I see echoes of us and I have always loved them with a passion, even before I quite knew why.

- Dragon/”monster” noises: Sound generators, creature sound design, real animal noises, etc. that are meant to be monstrous and that most people find unsettling or even frightening, I find comforting and relaxing. Alligator bellows, “monster noise” soundscapes, etc. all apply here.

* No shade on anyone who likes Game of Thrones, I’m just not a fan. :P

Behaviors/Instincts/Urges

- Hoarding: I’m still not sure how much of the crystal thing is "monkey brain say Shiney Colorful," how much is a witch thing, and how much is a dragon thing, but some of it is a dragon thing.

- Territorial/possessive nature: I can get... extremely territorial over my stuff and my home. This can extend right into being ridiculously protective of my people too, although I do try to rein that in to a reasonable amount. This also extends into games like Capture the Flag, because put me on defending the border during middle and high school and I got frighteningly territorial. (Fun fact, this extends to spiritual protection stuff and it has almost gotten me in trouble a few times on that front.) The other main side effect is my brain trying to claim completely inappropriate things as “mine,” like every piano I have ever touched or, that one time, the entire city of Portland.

- Prey drive: Going on a walk in the woods with me will always be an exercise in stopping every twenty seconds because I heard a small animal move in the brush and froze instinctively to track it. Prey drive ranges from "okay I can indulge this enough to track-stalk-chase without actually intending to catch-kill-eat" to "this is entirely inappropriate and needs to Stop Right Now" depending on the day and the situation - sometimes it’s fairly low-key and innocent, but sometimes it's also being confronted with the sudden and completely serious/genuine thought of grabbing someone or something by the neck/around the body with your jaws and hunt-prey-kill-devour when it's completely inappropriate and kind of disturbing or even sickening. It’s one of the more annoying things, although it’s not like it’s severe enough that I’m an actual danger to anyone - it’s just a gut thought that gets filtered out at the conscious level without significant problems. This also bleeds into games (I get... maybe a little overenthusiastic during tag) and even watching TV shows or gaming videos - most of the time at least part of me is rooting for the hunter because I relate to them as a fellow predator, even if the audience is supposed to be rooting for the prey - I mean, protagonists.

- Basking/heat-seeking: Probably only partially a dragon thing, but despite the fact that I hate heat in general, radiant/sun heat and heat from a heated surface are both fantastic feelings provided the ambient air temperature isn't too high. I'm guessing this is at least partially a reptile brain thing.

- Height-seeking: Give me a chance to climb up on top of something - a rock, a cliff, a chair, a table, a bunk bed - and look out over everything else, and I'll take it in an instant. Getting to climb up on the roof is the best thing that's happened to me this entire quarantine.

- Flight instinct: Being mildly leery of cliffs not because I am afraid of falling, because I'm really not, but because there's always some part of my brain that goes "jump, fly, this is a perfect takeoff spot" and I have to squash that before I do something particularly stupid. This manifests in other ways, but that's the most dramatic (and annoying) one. This is also one of the things I noticed as definitively not normal long before my awakening. (The Grand Canyon was fun.)  Similarly to the prey drive thing, it's not like I'm actually in danger of throwing myself off cliffs, it’s just - there's a not-insignificant part of my brain that thinks "hey we should go run and jump off and take a quick flight," in the same way I might also casually think "hey I should stroll across to the corner store for a bag of chips" before I consciously decide whether or not to do that. It’s the exact same type of thought process, despite the fact that one of those things is something I might do on any given school day, and the other is, you know, physically impossible.

- Combat instincts: I get in a fight and my pure instinct is to bite or claw, not kick or punch or whatever it is humans do instinctively. I have those reflexes now courtesy of Krav, but I had to train them in - if you’d thrown me into a fight before, I absolutely would have resorted to claws/nails and teeth immediately (and I still will, when pressed into a corner). Sometimes, unfortunately, this goes off completely unwarranted, either in an anger situation that does not deserve a physical response, or for no apparent reason whatsoever. It's one of the more problematic things, but once again - it’s not like it’s a compulsion, just a gut-emotion thought that gets filtered out at the conscious level.

- Scent focus: Who knows how much of this is environmental influence and how much is instinctive, but I always have and still do focus on scent more than most humans seem to. I can identify people by scent, I seem to pay more attention to it than most people do. I also seem less bothered by natural body smells than most people do, but considering the responses when I asked around in the otherkin community once about that, unclear whether or not that's connected.

- Nonhuman noises: I make just a bunch of weird nonhuman noises, and always have. Growls, hisses, croons, hurrs, throat-clicks, chirps, etc. I've never met any human who does them instinctively like I do except my half-sister (whom I didn’t meet until a couple years ago), and she was just as surprised to hear me do it as I was surprised to hear her do it.

- Affection: Face-rubbing, light head-bonking against someone’s shoulder/body/head, and love nips/bites are all perfectly acceptable ways to show platonic affection, to dragon brain. Human society disagrees. The instinct to do these things is so strong that I definitely do give into the first two with people I’m close with, and I have physically had to catch and restrain myself when I was about to unthinkingly bite/nip someone’s skin because I wasn’t paying enough attention.

- Movement: Moving on all fours just feels better than moving on two legs, even though it’s objectively physically uncomfortable because humans aren’t built for that. I also have the instinctive want to be a lot more flexible than I’m capable of being, in ways I’m not capable of being - curling all the way around something or someone to squeeze them tight in the coil of my body, turning my head a hundred eighty degrees because my neck Should Be Longer.

- Expression: Baring one’s teeth when frustrated, irritated, or angry is not a particularly human instinct. I realize it’s something a lot of primates do do, but. *gestures at society* Humans ain’t one of them, at least not anymore. Even in Krav Maga, which is a self-defense style that focuses on being vicious and “dirty fighting” to survive a real street fight, every single time I have a new partner (and most times I have a partner I’ve worked with before) and I get tired enough to get snarly, they respond with some variation of “god that’s scary”. See also: gesturing at things with my nose because it should be long enough to make that a much more dramatic gesture than it ends up being.

- Den/lair/small spaces: I never feel safer than when curled up in a tiny alcove just big enough to comfortably fit my body curled up into it. The only position I’ll prioritize over it is getting up onto a high space.

Past Life Work

Unlike every other bullet point on this list, most of these didn’t apply until I started actively seeking them out, because, you know. Past life memories are like that.

- Past life regressions: I’ve got a tag for these, but tl;dr I take anything I learn from a past life regression or similar meditation/visualization with a whole spoonful of salt, forget “a grain,” because I know for a fact my brain is very good at making stuff up with these types of exercises. Unfortunately, they’re the only way to get information on certain things, like appearance.

- Tarot: Got a tag for that too. I use tarot to ask questions and confirm or reject suspicions.

- Spontaneous memories: I don’t have many, but they’re clear as day when they do appear. I don’t count something as a “true” memory unless it includes senses I can’t reproduce through imagination - smell and touch, mainly. Mostly these are quick flashbulbs, nothing cinematic or anything like that.

- Noemata: Again, I don’t have much in the way of noemata, but what I do have is persistent and consistent. I know things about my wing shape and flight style despite not having really experienced that in detail during past life regressions. That particular set of noemata has been confirmed to fit with real-world physics and bat wing shapes (the closest wing type to mine that exists or has existed on Earth).

[black-mesa-slut-voice]

Hey! you should probably change your benrey design, they have a fair few antisemetic features (skin tone, teeth, claws namely)

Thank you for contacting me about this! gonna put it under a readmore cus i like to talk ig!

the TLDR is i’ve done my research and will be changing my designs. My art does have some things I can do better- and I will do better from now on. I’m going to fix Benrey’s skin/blush tone and change some other features of his. But if anyone who’s jewish (and isnt an anon) genuinely feels uncomfortable I am willing to change my designs further. I firmly support the jewish community and want to do better if I can.

Alright! Again, thank u for this ask, I just wanted to go in a lil deeper.

Anyway! to start, I want to make things clear- I just turned 20, white, raised christian now athiest. Not that it changes anything, I just want to point out that- while I have done my best to research- I am not Jewish, so take everything I say with a grain of salt, because I don’t want to speak over actual jewish voices.

I've done a lot of reasearch both before and after receiving this ask, and I agree that my art could have a lot of things I can change. I will admit that I’ve used some bad stereotypical features in combination with each other, mainly grey/blue tinted skin and blush. I will be extra careful with it from now on, and not do that anymore. It was wrong of me and I apologize. I won’t go back and delete old art, but I edited my sidebar and icon and I’ll keep it like that from now on in any art I do.

The main reason for the stuff that I’ve done isn’t because hes the villain- it’s because I like drawing creatures/monsters/aliens- splatoon, tmnt, etc have always been my favorite things to do. I love creating biological headcanons and ‘xeno’ art, and my benrey is an alien. I find it fun to create biological, anatomical and social hcs for things like that. Which is why he has them at all- not because he’s a “villain”, but because I like monsters and aliens. I thought the blue thing was cool, but I see why it’s wrong now. I didn’t really associate that a lot of my interests unintentionally overlap with things that can be harmful.

Basically, Benrey canonically said “I’m not human” and I sorta took that and ran with it cus I love monster designs, not out of any malicious/antisemitic intent.

But more importantly than any of my preferences, I support my jewish friends and community here on tumblr and irl, and don’t want to fall into anything to unintentionally harm people. Their comfort is more important than my interests.

Last, I want to point out I have like... 15+ ‘benreys’ that i use for different arts, different aus, and whatnot- and my actual design of my main benrey literally changes all of the time. He’s had everything from antennae to frog eyes to unicorn tails just depending on how I’m feeling, I don’t have a set design for Benrey. I know it is not Jewish people’s job to correct me; It’s my job to do my research and avoid caricatures, but if there’s anything else that’s harmful that I missed, please tell me. Again, I’ve done research, but there’s a lot of conflicting information even from the jewish community (like on fangs+claws).

And as far as bubby goes, cus I know it’ll be brought up most likely- I don’t really draw him, but a while ago I gave bubby sharp teeth, but I don’t do that anymore. Kinda realized it was wrong after I started seeing more posts going around, and realized it didn’t make any sense? lol. I havent really posted anything with him in it lately tho so. The only nonhuman characters i hc to be that way are Benrey and Tommy; Bubby and Coomer are completely normal people as far as my designs go. I don’t hc Benrey with stuff cus he’s a villain, it’s only because he literally says ‘I’m not human’ and I like to draw creatures

SO: TLDR ive done my research and will be changing my designs. My art does have some things I can do better- and I will do better from now on. I’m going to fix Benrey’s skin/blush tone and change some other features of his. But if anyone who’s jewish (and isnt an anon) genuinely feels uncomfortable I am willing to change my designs further. I firmly support the jewish community and want to do better if I can.

[witcher-ot3]

More Character Designs: (Im)Perfect Strangers

@void--punk​ introduced me to https://www.heroforge.com/ and I... may have gone a little crazy. But hey, figure someone might care and I like sharing things.

Scoia’tael

Iorveth is the Commander of the Scoia’tael and is best known for uniting the disparate Scoia’tael units and leading them to Vergen’s aid to achieve victory during the Siege of Vergen. While many would easily believe that the elven commander would sooner die than stand alongside humanity in peace, Iorveth swore his service to Saskia of the Free Pontar Valley eagerly and has dedicatedly served at her side ever since.

Ciaran served as Iorveth’s second in command for many years, but when the Scoia’tael Commander swore allegiance to Saskia of the Free Pontar Valley, Ciaran decided to lead a group of disgruntled Scoia’tael to form an elf (and a single dwarf)-only city. 

Maeral is one of the most respected commanders to ever serve in the Scoia’tael. As the lead strike force, Maeral’s elite all-woman unit faces the highest odds of death. And yet, since Maeral’s unit rose to prominence, their death rate has been extraordinarily low.

Kythaela is best known for her bright and peppy demeanor. It takes a great deal to dampen her spirits and she has often been known to smash through human guards with a laugh. Kythaela considers her biggest pride to be her inclusion in the elite woman-only strike force in the Scoia’tael.

Rinn is the best spy in the Scoia’tael, and no one is entirely certain how she manages to get where she does. However, no one can deny, she gets results. She is the only spy to ever manage to follow the Blue Stripes Commander Vernon Roche without getting caught. This duty just so happened to lead to her meeting the most incredible woman she’d ever seen: Priestess Adda of the Temple of Melitele.  It has been theorized that only those with superhuman senses can tell when Rinn enters a room. 

Imadia is old, even for an elf. She remembers a time before humanity drove the Aen Seidhe to resort to guerilla warfare to survive. At heart, Imadia believes that life should be bright and happy - and she lives this out in her work as a healer and her loud fashion choices. 

Sylvar is a fierce warrior, despite the burn scars covering the majority of his body that limits his range of motion. He has fought for the Scoia’tael since the day a human mob burned down the house he and his mother lived in. Only the advanced abilities of elven healing saved his life, though unfortunately his mother was not so fortunate. 

Taredd is considered the best tracker in the Scoia’tael. He reads the ground as easily as he reads a battlefield - which is to say, if you are attempting to outrun the Scoia’tael, you better hope you don’t have him on your tail. Taredd is also exceptionally short for an elf, measuring no more than 4 feet tall.

Blue Stripes

Vernon Roche commands Temeria’s elite Blue Stripes special forces unit. Tasked with hunting down the nonhuman terrorists known as the Scoia’tael, he has proven himself an effective commander as the one special forces leader in the North that the Scoia’tael Commander Iorveth has never managed to defeat. If one looks closely, they might spot something around his throat that indicates there’s more to this Temerian loyalist than meets the eye.

Ves is the first woman to ever serve in the Temerian Army. As second in command of the elite Blue Stripes unit, Ves eagerly proves that any woman can fight as hard as a man. According to Ves, the best thing a woman can do is cut down an elf or kill a Nilfgaardian. 

Other (Im)Perfect Strangers Characters

Geralt of Rivia is a Witcher, a monster hunter created by mutating a human child. For several years, Geralt of Rivia was considered dead, but he reappeared recently in the Court of King Foltest of Temeria. It is rumored that the Witcher and the Court Mage are involved.

Triss Merigold is best known for her work as a political advisor to various Northern Kingdoms throughout the past several centuries. Most recently, she has served as Court Mage for King Foltest of Temeria and Queen Saskia of the Free Pontar Valley. Triss is not the most powerful mage, but long, long practice means that while the power she draws may be small, it is steady and longlasting. As a mage, Triss has always found the nature easy to call upon and indeed, if one is so unfortunate as to piss her off, they will discover just how eager the natural world is to answer her call. Fortunately, Triss’s passion is in healing and politics, not in warfare.

Saskia the Dragonslayer - who also happens to be a dragon - rules the Free Pontar Valley. While she is a fierce warrior, Saskia believes in offering a hand to those in need. It is said that dragons have hoards. If so, one might expect that Saskia hoards gold or gems. And indeed, the mines of Vergen produce these things. But the truth is, Saskia’s hoards her people, and a dragon does not suffer harm to their hoard.

Adda’s life started as a horror story - cursed into a striga before she was even born, she spent the first 8 years of her life living as a monster. Geralt of Rivia was able to lift the curse, but even so, some monstrous attributes remain. She’s rather come to like them though - especially when it meant that she could sense the elven spy that followed her Uncle around. Adda trained as a healer at the Temple of Melitele, but sadly politics interfered with her dream and Adda was forced to marry King Radovid of Redania, from whom she determinedly hides her more monstrous traits.

Luka is the librarian for the grand library in Vergen. She has dedicatedly cared for the books and scrolls for centuries and intends to spend many more doing the same.

Set Way In The Future

Anais is practiced at both melee and ranged fighting and her weapon of choice is anything that can be swung hard enough to ruin someone’s day. She loves fighting and glories in it, just like her mentors taught her.

Boussy is a lover, not a fighter. But, on the strangely common occasion that a flock of baby birds needs rescuing, his aim is good enough that he can fight off whatever is hunting them. He also lost his right arm at some point, but he’s pretty happy with his magic prosthetic. 

[writingwithcolor]

I’m writing a story in which a nation of nonhumans, having been trapped in a pocket dimension for two millenia, integrates into human society. Would it be insensitive to have them successfully argue that, as they were indigenous peoples of the Americas, they should be legally recognized as a Native American tribe with tribal sovereignty? Native Americans (specifically of the Ojibwe tribe) magically trapped them in the first place, but I’m hoping that’s ok because all humans have magic, not just

“Native American mystics” or w/e, and the character designs aren’t based off any NA myths. But they’re VERY inhuman, resembling animals, and a subplot is that they’re called “monsters” so often they begin to embrace/reclaim the term. It’s mainly just a device to deal with the logistics of integrating thousands of new people (with their own established government) into the American political system at once, so I can scrap it if needed.

Ancient Monsters Indigenous to America; Should They be Called Native?

So. There are four parts to this question, based off how you’ve worded the question. 

1- Native Americans Shunning An “Okay” Group

2- Native American Monsters

3- Imposing Monsters Where None Exist

4- What Makes Someone Native

One at a time:

Native Americans Shunning an Okay Group

If these inhuman people are a genuine threat or were a genuine threat, then this is less relevant. But even if some of them were a threat, and the whole group was shunned, you end up recreating a big piece of racism in modern day:

Natives hate outsiders “needlessly.” If only they gave this group a chance, they’d find out they weren’t that bad. But they’re too mean to do that.

The modern caution around Native and colonizer culture mixing is, as the term implies, modern. Natives didn’t necessarily shun outsiders, and as evident by how colonizers needed us to survive for awhile, they were relatively welcoming early on. In Canada, we even have a whole group of people who were born out of intermarriage between traders and Native people: the Metis.

But non-Natives tend to take this caution as an insult, because they assume they should be welcomed with open arms despite the atrocities committed. Colonizers have far, far, far exceeded the threshold for “general mistrust”, but they don’t realize it. They think everything should be fine, because schools teach only that Natives used to be welcoming, but then turned mean and jealous without saying why.

For example, when I was in my teens, my grandma went on a probably 15-30 minute rant about how my (white) cousin wasn’t allowed to work horticulture on the local reserve because it was taking jobs away from Native people. My whole family spent the next hour agreeing with her, how they really were just so closed off and mean, he was just trying to help.

Now factor in how the largest group of unemployed people in Canada is Native people, because they lack job skills from a lack of opportunity. Now consider how horticulture was actually one of our specialties and there’s still a lot of tradition around how to take care of the land. And how a white person fresh out of college with a degree was being brought in as the “expert.” And how he was doing the work, instead of helping people on the reserve do the work (which would allow them to put landscaping skills on their resume, giving them a foot in the door)

Suddenly that “unnecessary shunning” makes a whole lot more sense, doesn’t it?

I want to know why the Ojibwe sealed them off. Because I highly doubt such a drastic action would’ve been taken if they were truly a benevolent group. 

Native American Monsters

And this is where things get touchier.

I want to ask all writers who want Indigenous monsters to ask themselves one question: why do you want to tie Indigenous identity to “monster” so strongly?

It’s a fixation I see time and again: the concept of Indigenous people as inhuman, as having ties to the inhuman, as having ties to creatures who could be feared. 

If these monsters are a complex society, are intelligent, are generally… people, then you’ve fallen more heavily into the first point I mentioned (which I’m uncomfortable with) but mitigate this part. They’re shown as people-like and worthy of respect, then it might work as showing Indigenous people aren’t inhuman.

Or it might further reinforce the concept that all Indigenous people are monsters.

Which one it does depends on the writing. Either way, it’s something I’m deeply uncomfortable with, just from sheer exposure. A lot of the questions I receive are about dark, twisted, criminal, or otherwise monstrous Indigenous people. Like, about half the questions. It’s a lot.

Why are we tied so strongly to monsters? What about Native identity makes this such an easy connection? Why just the monsters and none of our healing from them?

Why?

Imposing Monsters Where None Exist

Further, it’s honestly a bit weird to me that they don’t come Ojibwe/Great Lakes legends. Because I’d assume sealing away a whole population of monsters would merit some oral legends and teachings for how to seal them back away should they return. And these monsters would bleed into other peoples’ legends, with how each creature as a concept spread across such a wide landmass and across so many peoples. So everywhere these monsters touched, there’d be some version of the story.

It’s a little too close to playing god with real religions for me. Indigenous oral legends around the globe are meticulous, and when analyzed are as solid as written history. Creating a group of monsters that are not based in our stories, that have no oral histories and legends, just has me wondering how this impacted society. 

Monsters have a place in Indigenous society. They are cautions, they are warnings, they are sickness, they teach lessons about how to care for the earth and/or yourself to starve off the monster’s approach. 

(And no, this doesn’t contradict the fixation on Monstrous Natives. Why do you fixate on the monsters and not how we heal from them? I specify “we” because there’s a tendency to make the antithesis of Native monsters Christian, which further colonizers the narrative. We had our own ways of healing)

Indigenous people, in general, have history from around the Ice Age (Australian Aboriginals have from during if not before). Two millennia is nothing for the oral history, even if you brought in the angle that the stories were genocided out in the residential school system (Which would be a very touchy subject as well). Because something that big would be spread among a dozen tribes, and would have threads that survived in whispers.

Indigenous religions aren’t a mythology playground where you can free-reign insert or remove whole concepts like sealing away monsters willy-nilly. 

I’d run this concept by somebody Ojibwe before proceeding. They might find a way to make it work, or they might tell you that there’d be a much deeper cultural impact than can be handled by an outsider.

What Makes Someone Native

Here’s the thing: being Native isn’t just about how we were here first.

There’s taking care of the land. There’s our language. There’s our unity to each other. There’s our religion. There’s so much nuance to what makes somebody Native that goes beyond just time spent on the continent. 

Each tribe has its own definition of what it means to be part of the tribe. The government doesn’t always line up with who we are, but we have our own definition. A lot of basic principles are similar (sustainability, for one), but the nuance for each people will be different.

And the government still doesn’t recognize all the tribes that were self-governing peoples before colonizers got here. That fact alone makes it a stretch to believe these monsters could successfully argue to the government they belong as Native. The only reason I could see it as successful is the government rather overtly assuming Native people are monsters, which codifies the above.

You’ve got to keep in mind that the government wants as few Natives to exist as possible. Because the more Natives exist, the more political power we have, the more resources the government has to allocate towards us, and we are seen as an inconvenience. 

Getting off the registry of Native people is laughably easy. Getting back on is notoriously hard. This isn’t a case of “have a hearing and the government gives you full status rights.” It’s “we have petitioned the government to have our claim to this land recognized for literally hundreds of years and now they’re about to bulldoze our sacred land so we have to protest to put a stop to it and suffer the arrests and deaths required to keep our land safe and hope that this protest gets enough pressure on the government to have them back off.”

(True story. The latter describes the Oka Crisis, which thankfully did have the land restored, but not until 1 death on each side, and 75 Mohawk and allies injured. And it was a long, long, long drawn out process).

Natives are, technically, wards of the state. The more Natives exist, the more people the state has to take care of. And history proves the state absolutely hates taking care of Native people.

Overall

This feels off in multiple ways, for me. It’s treating our legends as if they’re just frilly decorations that don’t deeply inform our culture, for starters, then there’s how no matter which way it’s sliced it’s reinforcing some sort of racist idea about Natives: either we shun “good” groups for no reason, or we’re tied to monsters. Then there’s the assumption our identity can be easily expanded to include a nonhuman group when it’s more complicated than that. There’s also the assumption the government would actually work to add more people it has to take care of.

You’re going to need to do a lot more research and reach out to a lot more sensitivity readers. It’s so far removed from who we are and our cultural identity I’d take a good hard look at the concept before continuing.

~ Mod Lesya

COMMENTARY:

@octopodesinmybutt

So the concept of "indigenous monsters sealed away" would actually work really well with Irish mythology about the Fae/Tuatha de Danon. They're considered the real indigenous ppl of Ireland. It's a bit more complex than that, but you could look into it.

[megadimension]

Darling in the FranXX midseason thoughts.

I want to preface the rest of this with a disclaimer and promise that this isn’t an April Fools joke, because for any of you who (like me) caught a few episodes of this show, only to promptly drop it because it was hot garbage that was going nowhere fast, any praise I’m about to give it will seem like a joke. So, I assure you, I’m playing this all straight. Also, spoilers up to episode 12.

Darling in the FranXX was a show I was skeptical of from the day of it’s announcement. Trigger is my favorite anime studio of all time, but the mere presence of A1 could ruin it all very, very easily by injecting it with the same brainless pandering designed to sell merch to otakus. Once the show hit air, I began to see much more of the traditional A1 treatment, which makes sense, considering the staff. Even so, I found myself sorely disappointed, having seen so much Trigger in the concept (a dystopian world where humanity’s forced to live underground in cities that elicit the hell out of Neon Genesis Evangelion’s architectural stylings, with just a touch of Honnouji.) Though, as it turns out, the assumption that this show would forever be sex jokes in service of nothing and cool mech fights in service of nothing would be wrong. I find it interesting that they’d hide the real beginning of the show in the seventh episode--the dreaded beach episode. Initially, that was the point where I convinced myself it was over for this show, and it wasn’t interested in being good, something you’ll have to forgive me for, considering all six prior episodes almost solofocus on hammering home that the show’s all about sex. From the doggystyle mechs, to the girls changing in the locker-room, A1′s otaku-pandering hands dominate the first seven episodes, before it decides it’s had enough of that, and slowly begins to drop it’s facade, revealing the actually interesting stuff it’s had behind the curtain this whole time. As much as I hate to admit it, the effect worked. It was just subtle enough that you had to stop and make the connection that just a couple episodes ago, these kids were ogling the girls at the beach, like it was the start of a hentai. Like, seriously, this:

Is from the same show as this.

Given, tone shifts of this measure aren’t exactly atypical of anime, but for a show to start out this insepid, with mostly just fanservice and Trigger mech fights (To be fair, trigger mech fights are valid justification for watching a show.), it felt like I was watching brainless eye candy that wasn’t ever going anywhere. I brushed over this briefly, but surprisingly, the beach episode is where my perception of the show began to change, where I began to put all the puzzle pieces together and see the show for something beyond just mechs and tits. I’d been looking for a long time for the reason such obvious, constant allusion to sex would be included, hoping that it wasn’t just to please an undiscerning audience, and until that beach episode, I had no reason to believe this wasn’t the case. The beach parts of that episode in and of itself is nothing special, but towards the end, the characters find an old ruin--a run down Japanese town, and go into a building that resembled the kid’s shared housing, a ruined wood building that turned out to have been a nursery in the old world. One of the characters picks up a book on childbirth, and I begin to realize that it’s not all about sex, but about procreation. The presence of modern day Japan and the childbirth book felt a neon sign that assures anyone still doubtful that there’s a message here. Even with that idea in my head, it still took me a few more episodes to understand what exactly that message was, considering the show seriously has no clue what it wants to be. However, I do think it’s got a point to make about Japan’s birth rates.

Before I delve more into why, an understanding of why Japan’s birthrate is declining is requisite. There’s many theories, and certainly just as many factors, but the most commonly accepted theory is that the expectation of males to be the main moneymakers in the household, combined with the fact that most jobs in Japan can only provide enough money to support one person, making it not viable for a man to have one job that can cover for the cost of 2 or more extra people. Add the fact that women are typically discouraged from working, especially so if they’re married with children, and women with jobs are subject to serious inequal pay and treatment in almost all cases, and you have a serious problem. Now, Darling in the FranXX is a show that is very clearly about sex and procreation, and establishes a very clear dichotomy between the emotional, pubescent teenagers, and the faceless adults who are banned from enjoying life, who live the dystopian life the kids fight to protect. The dichotomy between males and females is also established, if less apparent, with the males having a big X on their uniform, and the females having a big Y on theirs, in addition to eating at separate dinner tables, and the like. The division between the male and female is established, much like it is in most societies.  However, there’s one character who doesn’t seem to fit in to any of these dichotomies, and that’s the big posterchild of the whole show: Code 02, or Iota, as she’s later called. The show establishes she’s nonhuman, and she refuses completely to fit into any of these dichotomies. She has the knowledge an adult would possess, yet she’s considered a kid. She’s a female parasite, yet she doesn’t wear the standard ‘Y’ Uniform. She’s a member of Ichigo’s team, yet she’s never really around their gatherings. She’s rebellious, disinterested in the norm, and really only interested in “becoming human.” She’s a pretty obvious catalyst of change, and she has the power to save the show.

I didn’t really want to focus too much on the bad aspects of this show, that wasn’t really the point of this post. I wanted to focus on the ways this show surprised me, but I don’t feel it fair to not mention it’s failings, because there are quite a few.

First and foremost, it is very confusing to watch, because all it really does is open plot threads it forgets about instantly and leaves you to wonder if it’ll ever get closed. It gives the feeling that it doesn’t know what it wants to be, which, isn’t really something I can argue with, it absolutely struggles with the point often, but I really can’t tell if it doesn’t know what it ultimately wants to be until the show’s run it’s course.

Second, are it’s extremely conflicting messages on sexuality. Piloting a FranXX is a metaphor for not a direct metaphor for sex, rather procreation (by piloting a FranXX, you defeat monsters, thus allowing humanity to continue existing, in much the same way as having a child allows humanity to continue existing.) While the show takes time to establish that two parasites of the same sex can’t pilot a FranXX together, it for some reason, leaves the possibility that it’s actually possible to do. It’s confusing and entirely undecipherable, and until the show ends or expands on this point, It’s likely that it will remain this way.

I don’t really want to recommend a show solely based on it’s potential to be good, and while it has it’s moments, I still think it’s a show you should hold off on until it gets a proper conclusion, because as it is now...it’s a lot of weird, and a lot of confusing.

[zyzzyva1936-blog-blog]

“You’re Not an Ordinary Girl”

Published: December 2, 2017

http://www.mcstories.com/YoureNotAnOrdinaryGirl/index.html

This one’s pretty cute. A woman wants a Girl(tm) with some very... specific... modifications, and gets such a one. Straightforward and right up the usual Girls line of someone having something in their personal life they’re embarrassed by, Girl helps resolve it with acceptance and affection all around, fin. But it also has a couple of interesting worldbuilding hints around the edges. Full disclosure and slight spoiler warning, although it’s not really a twisty story first: Charity’s* specific kink is hypnotism, in the very specific “Kaa from the Disney Jungle Book” subgroup you see a bunch of on DeviantArt. I’m going to have to admit that it leaves me a bit cold. Which is odd, since, you know, I find hypnosis hot** and I often quite enjoy eg space aliens or mythical monsters or whatever hypnotizing people, so it’s not the non-human-ness per se that’s the problem. My guess is that The Jungle Book just came too early in my life for me to really wire it into the kink, and now it’s a “childhood” thing rather than a “sexual” thing. (I have similar memories of being freaked out, rather than aroused, by the Yeerks in Animorphs as a kid.) Still, not an insurmountable difficulty: just a heads-up that I’m coming at this from a “huh, nice worldbuilding-advancement story” rather than “dayyyyum that was hot” angle. Spoilers end.

There is a little more casual stuff about Girl-dependent Aaron doing better in life since he broke up with Charity and got a Girl, pretty standard by now. What’s interesting in this is more the look into how the Girls’ approach has been progressing***. Notably, it’s fairly clear that Charity expects Aaron’s Girl to be pretty intelligent, and also the Girl is relatively open about being space aliens from space. (Charity doesn’t make the connection, but “We have some information we can reuse from—from another rollout” re giant nonhuman body designs? Come on. ;) ) Likewise, there are videos of Girls hypnotizing people available on the internet - not a lot of them, and not too easy to find if you’re not looking for them with the fanatical intensity of someone fulfilling a fetish, but a definite step up from Adele in Diamonds..., who is kinda blindsided by the eye lasers in her confrontation. (I’m also a bit amused by the Girls’ priorities of customization options: sixteen thousand shades of pastel for the body and a whopping four different voices? Don’t go nuts with the choices or anything, Girls design teams. :P )

The resolution leaves a couple of interesting doors open. Charity gets her custom Girl, and is, of course, completely satisfied with it. She also explicitly gets it for free, which I’m going to take as confirmation of my “the Girls hand themselves out gratis as often as plausible deniability will allow” theory. Charity’s Girl confirms that the Girls will be producing more, erm, customized Girls in future****, but isn’t clear how exactly they’ll be advertising them. Possibly a “do you like centaurs? Because we’ve got centaur-Girls” website checkbox, although that seems a little out of place given their otherwise “any colour as long as it’s black” approach to sales. Possibly just a form saying “I want my Girl(tm) to be able to...” that from which they ignore all the responses that come model-standard? Alternately, since they seem to be going for the really, really small surface presented to the outside world approach, they could ship everyone a standard Girl and have them replace/upgrade themselves if the purchaser really needs something out of the ordinary?*****

The one other question for me is whether Charity is ever going to tell/show Aaron her custom Girl. She’s clearly uncomfortable sharing this with him during the story, but one of the things the Girls have been established as doing for people is making them more comfortable with their sexualities. Obviously, Charity doesn’t “owe” Aaron shit, but on the other hand if they broke up over the whole sexual incompatibility thing (as may be implied) and are still friends (as they clearly are), a little openness wouldn’t be bad, if Charity wants to. I suppose it depends a lot, again, on just exactly how long-term dependents behave, individually and as a community. As usual, I’d be very interested in seeing a story about someone who’s had a Girl for a very long time. (It’d be missing the taking-over aspect that is most of these stories’ raison d’être, but a reader can always hope.)

So, overall, fun little story, fairly standard for the Girls line. Didn’t rock my socks off, but some interesting worldbuilding and some fun possibilities for where the Girls are going in future.

Next time: the first real Girls hard-sell in quite a while. *I think every single “Charity” in this post was typoed as “Chastity”, independently. It’s a better name for an erotica character, anyways. ;)

**The author reveals, 30-ish mind-control erotica reviews in. Shock!

***Up to 630m served!

****Charity briefly worries about some communications SNAFU resulting in her accidentally getting eaten by a wrongly-customized Girl, which is (a) a cute little joke and (b) suggests the question of how long it will be before there’s an official vore!Girl with sliding distending jaw-throat-belly sheathing that lets it ingest a playfully-struggling human-sized object in one motion without harming it. I give it seventy-two hours. *****This one has the advantage of matching up with the Girl’s MO from all the way back in Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, although enough has changed since then that I’m not sure how “canon” all of that is anymore. I like it anyways, because it fits with the “drawing out needs you weren’t aware of, for your betterment” theme of the series as a whole, and especially the idea of the Girl upgrading herself to better help her dependent, which fits with the reasons I liked Factory Girl so much. Probably that one worked so well because it was a one off, but since @jukeboxemcsa​ is unlikely to actually go into this much detail about how the process works in future, I can imagine whatever I like to exactly the degree that is enjoyable. ;)

[bcwallin]

The Creature Featured: Monster Movies and the Human Capacity for Evil

When I was a child, there were two things in film that definitively scared me. No matter how many times I watched The Wizard of Oz, the scene of Margaret Hamilton (not even as the Wicked Witch!) riding a bike to the most chilling musical cue I knew to date would send my hands over my eyes in a heartbeat. My other filmic fear would have me covering my ears every time a DVD played the THX deep-note; always unnaturally loud, forever unskippable. I didn’t like getting scared.

I’ve started watching monster movies. They’re fascinating, aren’t they? This look into the human psyche—what scares us, what keeps us up at night? I may not want to be scared, but still, I can’t resist. I went back to the classics. Dracula. Frankenstein. The Mummy. Interesting stories, wherein we learn that we shouldn’t mess with things we don’t understand and also that Frankenstein’s creature is an adorable cinnamon bun.

But the next movie on that syllabus, The Invisible Man, is entrancing in wholly unique ways. Even the character design, that first striking image of a hat over steampunk-looking goggles, a face covered in bandages, snow falling off of him. Here’s this character who steps in out of the blue and, as a result of a strong temper and the fact that he’s invisible, he terrorizes a town.

The Invisible Man is unique from so many other monsters because he has no powers. Yes, he’s invisible, but that’s it. He is no more than a man that can slip by people easily. Notable in the film is a certain degree of cleverness that’s enjoyable to watch, as characters figure out how to protect themselves. A room is swept with a net to check if anybody invisible is hiding in it. People’s doors are to remain shut so that this nude man will suffer from exposure in a winter landscape. The Invisible Man does not face off against imbeciles. But these people are up against a very different kind of monster.

It’s not just his powers that set him aside; it’s his appearance too. The fact that there is none. Nearly every other monster movie/creature feature is all about coming up with the scariest design, through prosthetics or CGI. Can this scare you??? You’ll never believe the extent to which our art designers were able to create this fictional being. Monsters, to be scary, generally look the part.

Appearances are important. They give us first impressions and tell us how we’re supposed to feel about who we’re looking at. This is the benchmark of monster movies. Things that are so patently inhuman are automatically evil. Then humans attack the creatures and most of the damage done ends up being retaliatory. People have this problem of dehumanization as a method of connoting evil, and it goes beyond the monster movies. Shakespeare did it, too.

He did it in the opening of Richard III, with the soliloquy of a person out of place. Everybody else is happy about the end of a war, except Richard. He bemoans, “But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks/ Nor made to court an amorous looking glass/…so lamely and unfashionable/ That dogs bark at me as I halt by them.” This humpbacked man, deformed and terrifying as he appears, cannot fit in with the rest of the world. So he kills his way into the crown. The real Richard may not have been so wretched in appearance, but in drama, inhumanity makes evil easy.

In a similar moment in a Shakespeare adaptation, the big question on everybody’s mind is whether The Lion King’s Scar was called that before or after he was deformed. Either way, this visual symbol of evil spoke for itself. Why else would Blöfeld, Anakin, that colonel from Avatar, and Tony Montana have such similar facial abnormalities? This is not a mere practice of fiction; the very question of Napoleon’s height or of Hitler’s genital condition raises the possibility that they were not quite human. And the moment somebody is no longer human, we cannot become them. Separating ourselves from the evil demonstrates that our own potential inhumanity shocks us.

Some of the sociological and psychological phenomena that garner the most shock, recognition, and feelings of significance are those which show us a human capacity for evil. Milgram, Zimbardo, and Genovese all brought up the possibility that any human could be cruel or uncaring. This terrifies and thereby is remembered.

Scarier than the monster in the movie is the possibility of that being us. Compartmentalization is easier than dealing with a problem head-on, and turning one committing monstrous acts into a monster, a nonhuman, makes compartmentalizing so much more simple. One might suggest that Richard could have been a good uncle if he was more good-looking, Napoleon a less ambitious ruler without his eponymous complex. Dehumanizing serves no other purpose than to neglect human capacity for evil.

We can’t see the Invisible Man, but he is human. He’s not a vampire, a reanimated corpse with super-strength, an ancient spirit with mind control abilities, or a vicious werewolf. He’s some guy who was given free rein to do whatever he wanted. The Invisible Man shows the capacity of a normal human being to commit atrocities, when given the chance to go forth, destroy, and get away with it.

There’s this wonderful shot around two-thirds of the way into the movie that I will never forget. The camera pans over from a car to a seemingly empty shot. Yet because of context, we know. Is there any better way to “Show, don’t tell” than by not even showing? We know who’s there, invisible as he may be. We know that in ourselves, there is the capacity for evil. It’s just so human. And it’s the reason why, no matter how much green makeup Ms. Hamilton wore, the scariest part of Oz is a regular woman, riding a bike to a fearsome tune, sepia-toned and capable of anything.

Originally published on Audiences Everywhere