#a naturalist's opinion

[doctorwhoisadhd]

and when the morning breaks i will be lying in the riverbed dreaming of the way it was back then i sent them all away with bitter words i wish i’d never said and nothing green will grow for me again

[tenth-sentence]

Let it be observed how naturalists differ in the rank which they assign to the many representative forms in Europe and North America.

"On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" - Charles Darwin

[togglesbloggle]

For the Reverse Unpopular Opinion meme, Lamarckism!

(This is an excellent ask.)

Lamarck got done a bit dirty by the textbooks, as one so often is. He's billed as the guy who articulated an evolutionary theory of inherited characteristics, inevitably set up as an opponent made of straw for Darwin to knock down. The example I recall my own teachers using in grade school was the idea that a giraffe would strain to reach the highest branches of a tree, and as a result, its offspring would be born with slightly longer necks. Ha-ha-ha, isn't-that-silly, isn't natural selection so much more sensible?

But the thing is, this wasn't his idea, not even close. People have been running with ideas like that since antiquity at least. What Lamarck did was to systematize that claim, in the context of a wider and much more interesting theory.

Lamarck was born in to an era where natural philosophy was slowly giving way to Baconian science in the modern sense- that strange, eighteenth century, the one caught in an uneasy tension between Newton the alchemist and Darwin the naturalist. This is the century of Ben Franklin and his key and his kite, and the awed discovery that this "electricity" business was somehow involved in living organisms- the discovery that paved the way for Shelley's Frankenstein. This was the era when alchemy was fighting its last desperate battles with chemistry, when the division between 'organic' and 'inorganic' chemistry was fundamental- the first synthesis of organic molecules in the laboratory wouldn't occur until 1828, the year before Lamarck's death. We do not have atoms, not yet. Mendel and genetics are still more than a century away; we won't even have cells for another half-century or more.

Lamarck stepped in to that strange moment. I don't think he was a bold revolutionary, really, or had much interest in being one. He was profoundly interested in the structure and relationships between species, and when we're not using him as a punching bag in grade schools, some people manage to remember that he was a banging good taxonomist, and made real progress in the classification of invertebrates. He started life believing in the total immutability of species, but later was convinced that evolution really was occurring- not because somebody taught him in the classroom, or because it was the accepted wisdom of the time, but through deep, continued exposure to nature itself. He was convinced by the evidence of his senses.

(Mostly snails.)

His problem was complexity. When he'd been working as a botanist, he had this neat little idea to order organisms by complexity, starting with the grubbiest, saddest little seaweed or fern, up through lovely flowering plants. This was not an evolutionary theory, just an organizing structure; essentially, just a sort of museum display. But when he was asked to do the same thing with invertebrates, he realized rather quickly that this task had problems. A linear sorting from simple to complex seemed embarrassingly artificial, because it elided too many different kinds of complexity, and ignored obvious similarities and shared characteristics.

When he went back to the drawing board, he found better organizing schema; you'd recognize them today. There were hierarchies, nested identities. Simple forms with only basic, shared anatomical patterns, each functioning as a sort of superset implying more complex groups within it, defined additively by the addition of new organs or structures in the body. He'd made a taxonomic tree.

Even more shockingly, he realized something deep and true in what he was looking at: this wasn't just an abstract mapping of invertebrates to a conceptual diagram of their structures. This was a map in time. Complexities in invertebrates- in all organisms!- must have been accumulating in simpler forms, such that the most complicated organisms were also the youngest.

This is the essential revolution of Lamarckian evolution, not the inherited characteristics thing. His theory, in its full accounting, is actually quite elaborate. Summarized slightly less badly than it is in your grade school classroom (though still pretty badly, I'm by no means an expert on this stuff), it looks something like this:

As we all know, animals and plants are sometimes generated ex nihilo in different places, like maggots spontaneously appearing in middens. However, the spontaneous generation of life is much weaker than we have supposed; it can only result in the most basic, simple organisms (e.g. polyps). All the dizzying complexity we see in the world around us must have happened iteratively, in a sequence over time that operated on inheritance between one organism and its descendants.

As we all know, living things are dynamic in relation to inorganic matter, and this vital power includes an occasional tendency to gain in complexity. However, this tendency is not a spiritual or supernatural effect; it's a function of natural, material processes working over time. Probably this has something to do with fluids such as 'heat' and 'electricity' which are known to concentrate in living tissues. When features appear spontaneously in an organism, that should be understood as an intrinsic propensity of the organism itself, rather than being caused by the environment or by a divine entity. There is a specific, definite, and historically contingent pattern in which new features can appear in existing organisms.

As we all know, using different tissue groups more causes them to be expressed more in your descendants, and disuse weakens them in the same way. However, this is not a major feature in the development of new organic complexity, since it could only move 'laterally' on the complexity ladder and will never create new organs or tissue groups. At most, you might see lineages move from ape-like to human-like or vice versa, or between different types of birds or something; it's an adaptive tendency that helps organisms thrive in different environments. In species will less sophisticated neural systems, this will be even less flexible, because they can't supplement it with willpower the way that complex vertebrates can.

Lamarck isn't messing around here; this is a real, genuinely interesting model of the world. And what I think I'm prepared to argue here is that Lamarck's biggest errors aren't his. He has his own blind spots and mistakes, certainly. The focus on complexity is... fraught, at a minimum. But again and again, what really bites him in the ass is just his failure to break with his inherited assumptions enough. The parts of this that are actually Lamarckian, that is, are the ideas of Lamarck, are very clearly groping towards a recognizable kind of proto-evolutionary theory.

What makes Lamarck a punching bag in grade-school classes today is the same thing that made it interesting; it's that it was the best and most scientific explanation of biological complexity available at the time. It was the theory to beat, the one that had edged out all the other competitors and emerged as the most useful framework of the era. And precisely none of that complexity makes it in to our textbooks; they use "Lamarckianism" to refer to arguments made by freaking Aristotle, and which Lamarck himself accepted but de-emphasized as subordinate processes. What's even worse, Darwin didn't reject this mechanism either. Darwin was totally on board with the idea as a possible adaptive tendency; he just didn't particularly need it for his theory.

Lamarck had nothing. Not genetics, not chromosomes, not cells, not atomic theory. Geology was a hot new thing! Heat was a liquid! What Lamarck had was snails. And on the basis of snails, Lamarck deduced a profound theory of complexity emerging over time, of the biosphere as a(n al)chemical process rather than a divine pageant, of gradual adaptation punctuated by rapid innovation. That's incredible.

There's a lot of falsehood in the Lamarckian theory of evolution, and it never managed to entirely throw off the sloppy magical thinking of what came before. But his achievement was to approach biology and taxonomy with a profound scientific curiosity, and to improve and clarify our thinking about those subjects so dramatically that a theory of biology could finally, triumphantly, be proven wrong. Lamarck is falsifiable. That is a victory of the highest order.

[lemonhemlock]

I think a thing that bothers me the most is how fragmented TG (the fandom) is now. After season one, many of us had issues with character writing, but it still felt like we were largely on the same page. Now, some people can accept Aegon got bad writing but not Aemond, Alicent, or Helaena. They are all “good” or “bad”characters depending on how much they hurt Aegon this season. I’m so glad he got the time to be well rounded, and that TGC delivered on all his scenes, but I think people forget Aegon has received some poor writing as well even this season. His whole outburst about Jaehaerys’s death is not about his son, but the impact on his legacy- I thought this very odd at the time, but realize it’s because they can’t have him mourn Jaehaerys for a long time either. Nobody on TG is allowed to focus on this dead child, least of all his mother! Aegon goes out drinking with his friends next episode 😭 seemingly unconcerned. But somehow only Alicent and Aemond are called out for this, when it is a clear problem that Daemon is more affected by this loss than the greens. It feels like such an uphill battle to even discuss the faction and family anymore.

This is such a good point!

I know I am so contrarian about this rn, but I have had some issues in connecting with Aegon's grief scenes over Jaehaerys this season. And it's such an opinion I DON'T want to have, bc I'm fully on the Aegon/TGC bandwagon and I do think TGC is a competent actor.

But it's something about the general clownery of the framing, how everything is gloomy and dark but at the same time no one gives that much of a shit over Jaehaerys? It's very weird to describe. I know Olivia also shows Alicent crying and swallowing sobs and trying to conceal her grief, but, if you think about it, Alicent is just Kind Of Like That in a lot of her scenes anyway. Big doe wet eyes, filled with regret and unspoken emotions etc so that her acting similarly after B&C kind of doesn't hit as much?

And, in that context, having Aegon rage over this event is rendered kind of.....hammy and, honestly, comical. I'm reminded of the scene of the small council where everyone is somber and quiet and he kind of looks like he's pretending to cry. In other moments it's fine but there are frames where I can't take it seriously and it registers in my brain like a parody.

I realise how I sound right now, like I'm not satisfied with the subdued performances, but I'm not satisfied with the expansive ones either. IDK. I have a huge problem with the framing and direction this season, I think it's a huge impediment in making me enjoy the supposedly emotional scenes.

All of this to say that I agree, Aegon has also received some bad writing this season, especially him ALSO being kind of over Jaehaerys the next episode. But people tend to overlook it, because when you draw the line, the writing for him is still so much better than what he got in S1.

And, yes, this is why I can't really join the choir in blaming Alicent and Aemond for how they act with him, because it's not a naturalistic and organic progression, it's shoehorned in with little buildup or motivation and not even drawn to its natural conclusion. For example, Aemond should have been toast the minute Aegon woke up, because Prince Regent or not, Aegon is still the King and has the power to remove Aemond if he fears him. He doesn't have to justify himself in front of anyone, just give the order to arrest his brother and name someone else as regent, then just go back to sleep.

[snapscube]

Hiya Penny! I just got done rewatching the Sonic Frontiers highlights on your channel and I'm curious: now that we're like a year out from your playthrough, you think your opinions on the game have changed at all?

Nope! I had a pretty solid grasp of what I appreciated about the game at the time as well as what I wanted it to improve on and all of those things kinda remain true save for the stuff that they ACTUALLY DID improve on in updates haha!

Still the best written dialogue in a mainline Sonic title in well over a decade, still goes through the effort to (arguably OVERzealous-ly) tie in the stories of previous titles in a way that I really appreciate as an acknowledgement of intent to take the franchise more seriously, and ultimately I think it's still an incredibly fun game in spite of its jank and baffling design choices, of which there are admittedly very many! I like the open zone collectathon-style gameplay loop a lot and would be happy to see this formula expanded and improved upon in future entries. Though I still hope for a larger presence of meaningful NPCs in populated locations connected more seamlessly in the future, and I hope they go in a more naturalistic direction with the level design since they assumedly won't have the cyberspace excuse to fall back on in the future with their floating rails and Literal Sky Boxes popping in from 5 feet away. Pretty much all of these things have been true from Day 1 and I still feel them strongly!

[utilitycaster]

Unpopular opinion: parts of the cr fandom are really dismissive/ reductive of Travis’s characters. It feels like it’s due to Travis being seen as THE cis het man of the group, and by extension his characters must be heteronormative and bad, despite the fact that you could have queer interpretations of his characters. At the very least, Travis’s characters explore masculinity and the different ways it might look. It’s like the people who are all “ew men are gross and shitty” and act like that’s an absolutely normal reaction to a man just existing.

So this is another one in that I agree with the initial statement, but I'm actually not sure re: the reasoning why. I think it's possible but I could not tell you for sure.

I used to, again, think this was people carrying through Campaign 1 elements well beyond the point where C1 had ended, and so Grog having an intelligence of 6 was being applied to Travis; and this definitely does come through to an extent when people treat Fjord (objectively as smart as Beau without her circlet) as stupid or act shocked that Chetney is the brains of Bells Hells or that he can play a Cerrit, Fjord, or Nathaniel. However, again, I think this is one of those opinions that pops up among people who weren't around for Campaign 1 (or early enough in C2 to be exposed to it regularly) so I don't know if that's the case anymore. It could still be - it could be that Approved Fandom Opinions get passed down even when the logic behind them has long since been lost; that's a really common thing in institutional memory. But I can't say for sure.

I also have in the past credited it to, as you said, people assuming his characters are the cishet guys and then writing them off. That's still possible - I've seen both Fjord and Chetney called "token straight" despite considerable evidence of bisexuality, and they also paradoxically are both commonly headcanoned as trans while still getting called "token straight," which sort of ties into a post I would need to find from someone else from quite some time ago about which cast members are granted agency by the fandom in their choices vs. which are assumed to be the victims of circumstance. And I do think that there are people in fandom who have decided men are icky or whatever, and I used to think this came from a place of bigotry and a slide towards t*rf ideology but I now do genuinely think it's just idiots who don't grant interiority to characters outside their own limited understanding.

But I think it's also useful to consider a few things, most of which I've brought up before:

Travis is extremely offline. He is not here to entertain your headcanons; he has been politely but openly dismissive of some (imo, really fucking dumb) fanon/fan theories. I think the cast frequently talks about how it's their table, and I think that's valid and correct, but Travis is one of the players who lives it the most. He is playing this game with his friends, and he'd like it to be a good story, but if you don't like it, he is not here to make you like it. I think that really fucks with the parasocial connections some people desire with the cast.

Travis's characters tend to examine masculinity as a performance but also the general performance of the self, and the fact that you cannot in the end control how you are perceived entirely, and I think that really unsettles people who have equated presentation with reality and are again, looking for external validation of the self.

Travis can play it big but he's often extremely subtle, especially with his more serious characters, and he's not as easily quotable out of context as some others at the table. I think because he is a lot more naturalistic than dramatic at times (Chetney notwithstanding) and isn't as pithy and quotable in his characters as many of Taliesin's PCs are, and a lot of the strength is in the delivery, he gets overlooked despite being very good with words on the fly.

And finally: this would be a whole post on its own but people are still very foolishly wed to this idea that pressing the big red button in D&D is Wild and Chaotic and haha Big ADHD Man when it's actually how you play D&D if you're not a coward; the button is where the story is stored, and a lot of Travis's strength is that he is extremely good at understanding what the GM wants and supporting it with sufficient grace that it's only visible if you know what you're fucking doing.

[dedalvs]

Would it be reasonable to use a mirative as a way to say that you "ended up doing X" like saying "I ended falling asleep" or "I'll end up getting sick"? I'm having a hard time confirming anything about how languages encode intention, or the lack thereof. After some thinking that's what I came up with, though, but I dunno if I'm just reachinga bit too much with that.

Sure? If it makes sense in your language.

I'm going to pull out a paragraph from the article on mirativity on Wikipedia that I believe helps to illustrate one of the central problems conlangers face in interacting with linguistic research:

As you can see, there's a back and forth here involving Aikhenvald (because of course) and the one who proposed the category of mirativity (DeLancey) and others. In my opinion, the entire argument is f*cking ridiculous and is best settled by asking, "Who tf cares?" It reminds me of the Wikipedia article on the hortative that has red flags at the top saying, if I may paraphrase, "Uhhh...wtf?"

In short, both linguists on either side of this argument believe there's a trophy shelf called GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES where certain features may sit proudly with their name emblazoned on a plaque above the name of the linguist who discovered it. On the one side, you have DeLancey saying, "Mirativity deserves its own trophy with my name on it!" On the other side, "No, what you've discovered can be encoded with other grammatical strategies, therefore it doesn't deserve its own trophy, and you get your name on nothing!"

Meanwhile, languages do need to have a way to express things like "We ended up going to the slam dance protest after all" and "He's apparently really good at juggling mosquito hawk wings", so what does it matter if either of them get a trophy on the shelf or not?

For a conlanger, what matters is how your language is going to express these meanings. It is not the case that you have to unambiguously express every shade of meaning without resorting to complex explanations. If we could do that we wouldn't have fiction. Part of the trick with learning how to create a conlang that feels more natural (whether you're going for a naturalistic conlang or not) is that the majority of meaning are expressed with non-dedicated morphological constructions.

For example, if you look at everything as morphemes, then there should be a morpheme for everything. If you want to turn a statement like "John is giving a fish to the flower" into a question you simply take your question morpheme and stick it somewhere. But look at English!

STATEMENT: John is giving a fish to the flower.

QUESTION: Is John giving a fish to the flower?

No morpheme there at all but a little switcharoo with the word order. Some linguists and a lot of conlangers want to get all galaxy brained and say "MAYBE THE WORD ORDER CHANGE IS THE MORPHEME", and, indeed, maybe the real conlang is the friends we made along the way, but a better way to look at it is we use what we have to express new meanings before creating something new.

So, if your state zero is you have something that express mirativity (i.e. surprise at some state of affairs), then, hey, why wouldn't use that for "it ended up that"? It's kind of surprising if you end up doing something. It's running counter to your expectations. Sure! If you want to get all "my eyeglasses put on a pair of sunglasses" on it then you can have your genunine-shock-mirativity suffix and your we-didn't-intend-to-but-it-happened-anyway-mirativity suffix and someone-told-us-it-would-happen-but-we-didn't-believe-them-but-then-it-happened-but-we-weren't-dismayed-mirativity suffix, etc., etc. If you keep going down that road, though, you end up with there's a unique word for every possible thought, and you end up with an ultimately unlearnable and unusable language.

In short, you do you. As long as you can explain it and it makes sense to you, then it works.

[even-in-arcadia]

Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales

In my very informed opinion it is absolutely essential to read Chapter 55 with visual aids. Here are some highlights pulled from Ishmael's Most Hated depictions so we can all be on the same page about what whales definitely don't look like.

Guido Reni & William Hogarth get the benefit of the doubt on account of the fact that it never says Perseus's sea monster is a whale. We can all agree that these definitely are not:

2. Robert Sibbald was the first naturalist to officially describe a blue whale and I'll give him a pass on being first and blue whales being incomprehnsibly large even now, but this really is not accurate in pretty much any way.

See below the cut for more "monstrous" depictions!

3. Physeter or Spermaceti Whale by Captain Colnett. Allegedly drawn from "life" but, getting out our scale rule will show that its eye is the size "a bow-window some five feet long. Ah, my gallant captain, why did ye not give us Jonah looking out of that eye!" Truly a missed opportunity from the captain there.

4. Oliver Goldsmith's An History of the Earth and Animated Nature is truly a treasure. Per Ishmael "I do not wish to seem inelegant, but this unsightly whale looks much like an amputated sow". The illustration on the right isn't directly mentioned in here but honestly it's a treasure and I feel obliged to share it with you. There's too much going on there for me to possibly pick out highlights. They're so bad they're perfect. No notes.

5. Bernard Germain, defying the laws of physics here. "Not only incorrect" but also does "not to have its counterpart in nature"

6. Cuvier's Sperm whale is "not a sperm whale but a squash." Succinct and shady. Perhaps my favorite description in the entire chapter.

[violant-apologia]

There is a vital part of Fallen London that the railway has recently given me a new lease on, so I'd like to talk about it for a bit. The topic in question is the colours of the chessboard: White, Black and Red.

In their purest form, these categories are the sides of the Great Game. White represents light, law and order, but also hierarchy and restriction. Black represents darkness, freedom and equality, but also chaos and uncertainty. Red represents... neither of those.

In the context of the Great Game, Red is typically just in it for itself, ideologically neutral. Many of the branches which require having a specific colour on the chessboard require White/Red or Black/Red – while the monochrome pair are doing the act because they believe in it, Red is just doing it as a means to an end.

The Great Game isn't the only place this trichotomy exists in Fallen London, though. Many choices can be linked back towards the trio:

Identified with a School is one of the most obvious: the light-loving Celestials, the avant-garde Nocturnals and the explicitly venal Bazaarines.

The sides of the Parabolan War: the Cats, the Fingerkings and the Chessboard.

The Youthful Naturalist's qualities (and their associated endings): Acceptance, Cunning and Malleability.

Even the BDR stats are loosely aligned: Respectable, Dreaded and Bizarre.

But the triplet that has fascinated me recently is that of the factions of the Tracklayer's Union: the Prehistoricists, the Liberationists and the Emancipationists. All three factions are revolutionarily-minded, but their diversity brings a lot more texture and depth to the dynamite faction than the exclusively liberation-focused view we've had previously. While this is definitely a good thing, and has helped me figure out more diverse opinions on the revolution for my characters, the thing I want to focus on is Emancipationism.

Similarly to many of the incarnations of the trichotomy, Red is a bit of an outlier. The Prehistoricist utopia is a perfected system which serves those it governs; the Liberationist utopia is one without a system at all.

The Emancipationist utopia is everyone getting fed.

This placement of Red as a sympathetic side, and a creator of current good, is very refreshing. The writing itself admires that thought, too. In a balanced city, while the other two factions plan for the future, the Emancipationists are doing tangible good in the here and now: making sure everyone survives to realise their grand plans. It keeps the fundamental core of red, its apartness from the ideological battle, and turns it to something kind. Red is not just the dilettantes playing the chessboard for profit (though it is, still, them,) but it is also those agents trying to do good, no matter which side it happens to serve. It is the artists who pursue beauty in whatever style strikes them in the moment. It is those who war for the sake of peace.

[lycanthropyreturned]

My experiences with alterhumanity and therianthropy, and why I'm here now.

I have always been nonhuman, and I have always known that. However as time goes on, so does my identity. When I was a child, I simply didn't discuss or worry about it. I knew who I was and that's all that mattered. In around 2014 I "awakened" into the therian and alterhuman community. Back then, the therian community was rather small, and focused on things such as aesthetics or care guides. Truly simpler times.

As I went through school, I distanced myself from the therian community, more focused on excelling in school and personal life struggles. When things finally died down I was left to have time to rediscover myself. I reentered the therian community around 2020, created a tiktok- and saw how much things had changed.

Therianthropy was now all about presentation, labels, quadrobics, views and likes. Now there's nothing wrong with that, every community evolves over time. My issue personally was the amount of misinformation. At first, I merely interacted with the surface of therianthropy and its social aspects, doing the occasional post, etc.

As my life and identity continued to evolve, I continued to delve into not just the therian community- but the alterhuman community as a whole. I strived to learn more about myself and my identities, and I wanted others to learn too. Back in 2022, I started spreading alterhuman and therian education. To this day, it's something I deeply enjoy doing. Nowadays, it's rare to find someone spreading education on the topic, especially accurate information. I wanted to be that person. However, I realized that in my pursuit to help and teach others, social media had overtaken my identity.

Therianthropy and alterhumanity is inherently rooted deep in nature. The identities themselves that so many people identify as are naturalistic. Even so, we find that the community is mostly online, and with that, comes drama and discourse.

For a term so broad in nature, it's astonishing how split the community can be. Drama, discourse, infighting, name-calling, shaming, and more is rampant. I began to realize that more and more as I became a semi-popular creator on tiktok. I was being pulled into the "trends" and not truly listening to my inner self.

Alterhumanity is best experienced offline. With your true self, and not for the self you put up for others. I believe that a lot of people need to hear that and learn from it. With an identity so rooted in nature, depriving oneself from it can be a pain.

And as I learned this, I distanced myself. I had a few run-ins with some nasty folks, and that taught me that I don't want to turn into that.

So I spent time to myself. Reevaluating my identity and what it really meant to me. I spent time offline and outside, with the people I love and doing the things I loved. And in this time I realized that I didn't need the approval of others on my identity. As long as I knew who I was, that's all that mattered to me.

After being offline in the therian and alterhuman community, I began to realize that if I did return, I could do it how I wanted to. Post whatever I wanted, when I wanted to, and not worry about other people.

I could be myself, and that's all that mattered. So now I'm here. While I still use the term therian for myself, I have changed and grown with it. I now use more broad terms for myself, and have begun to not worry about mirco-managing my identity. Some people find comfort in labels, and that is entirely valid! But some folks can find them restrictive as well, and that's also a valid opinion and experience.

That is one thing I value so much about therianthropy and alterhumanity. The terms are both so broad that you may not meet a single other nonhuman who has the same experience. I love and cherish the diversity of this community, and I think that people need to realize that a bit more.

So this blog here is for me. For me to journal about my experiences, to occasionally post education- whatever I want. I made this blog for myself, and that's how it most likely is going to stay. I hope you enjoy the future for this blog, and join me on this journey.

[maniculum]

Bestiaryposting Results -- Gligglae

Sorry this is later than usual; traveling for the holidays makes it difficult to keep up with this sort of thing. The smart move would have been to write it up a couple days ahead of time, then on Monday just update it with anything new that had been posted since, but see, what happened was that I did not do that. Instead, I tried to type this up Monday evening in between various family obligations, realized I didn't have time to do it properly, and just shoved it in my drafts. Then all of Tuesday was taken up with the long drive back home from where my family lives, and now you're getting it on Wednesday.

(Also, don't worry, I followed all CDC guidelines appropriate for someone who had recently had covid, and wouldn't have traveled for the holidays at all if I hadn't been without a fever for 48 hours prior to departing. Plus I drove instead of flying, didn't visit anyone but immediate family, and had a mask the whole time, so even if I am still contagious somehow, exposure was pretty minimal.)

Anyway, the entry that our artists are working from is here:

And, of course, all previous material on this matter can be found at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting.

I think a larger number of people than usual identified the animal in question right off the proverbial bat, because this one has some pretty blatant tells, but as always I appreciate everyone trying to put it out of their minds.

So, anyway, in rough chronological order:

@coolest-capybara (link to post here) (thank you for providing your own alt text, I really appreciate it) brings us her usual impeccably medieval-stylized rendition -- the swirls and curves in this one give it a really interesting vibe, I think. We can see the Gligglae in full-body profile on the left there, and a group of them doing their cluster behavior on the right. The, like, griffin/cockatrice/vampire look is pretty great, also. I enjoy the overall design, which you can find some discussion of in the linked post. Gold foil also a nice touch.

Coolest-capybara also notes that the entry is very interested in the ways in which the creature is "almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a bird," and I can explain why that is. It is because this entry is in the Bird section of the bestiary, so officially this is a bird -- I mean, it flies, what else can it be -- but it's sufficiently un-bird-like that it really sticks out to the authors, so they need to explain the ways in which it's Doing Bird Wrong. Everything else in this section does X, so we need to point out that this one does Y, kind of thing.

@silverhart-makes-art (link to post here) has drawn an absolutely adorable little Gligglae. (Adorable if you have my sense of aesthetics, that is -- I suspect if you're among the portion of the population that finds aye-ayes more creepy-looking than cute, that might apply here as well.) There's an explanation of design decisions in the linked post, including a number of references to real animals that provided inspiration. I like the decision to play up the "lowly" and "mean" part of the description by making it small and kind of scruffy. And the general concept of blending "gliding rodent" with "nocturnal primate" to make an arboreal mammal with elements of both really worked out well here, in my opinion.

@aethereaii (link to post here) has done this beautiful piece in a style that kind of gives "19th-century naturalist" vibes. (Actually, it makes me think of James Gurney, but I suspect that association says more about my childhood reading habits than anything else.) This is a great design in my opinion, and you can find some brief discussion on design decisions as well as an earlier version of the Gligglae in the linked post. The earlier design is also very good, but I agree with Aethereaii that this one is a step up, particularly with the Anomalocaris-inspired faux-wings. I also really like the inclusion of the juvenile Gligglae (Gligglings?) clinging to their parent's back in the corner there.

@karthara (link to post here) decided to go in a reptilian direction with this one, which (a) works well and (b) caused me to spend a chunk of time reading about flying snakes on Wikipedia just now. So in this version, the "rowing motion with its skin" is a description of the Gligglae flaring its ribs and undulating through the air -- which I genuinely think really makes sense. The entry seems to legitimately disagree with itself about whether this critter has wings (or, taking it entirely literally, it has wings but flies through a completely separate method that specifically does not involve said wings, which I think we're justified in deciding is Wrong), so I think going with such a non-wing-like flight method works here. Also like the concept of making these very cuddly (and apparently loving, according to our bestiary author) creatures into a type of animal that usually isn't seen that way. The linked post also contains some brief notes on design decisions.

@strixcattus (link to post here) has, as per usual, provided a really excellent modern-naturalistic description of the creature they've designed in the linked post, and you should definitely go check it out right now. I'll wait.

... back? Okay good. I particularly like their interpretation of the "grape-cluster" behavior as a social group that's specifically not a kin group; and also the fact that said group is officially referred to as a "cuddle". The choice to make it a whole genus and show us several different wild and domesticated species, also very good, love it. As with several of these drawings, Strixcattus's Gligglae (Gligglaes?) are extremely cute -- which, really, does also fit the description provided in the entry. They're like tadpoles crossed with sugar gliders.

@cheapsweets (link to post here) credits Ken Sugimori's Pokemon illustrations as a stylistic inspiration, which I suppose explains why the Gligglae cluster seems to be hanging from a Sudowoodo. The linked post also draws certain parallels between medieval bestiaries and the Pokedex, which I think is actually pretty insightful. There's also a breakdown of their design decisions there, go read it. I think this is a pretty good rendering of something that is like a flying squirrel but distinctly not a flying squirrel, and I like the shaggy look of the fur.

Also, thank you for providing your own alt text.

@pomrania (link to post here) is, I think, the only person to take the bestiary author at their word that this animal has wings but flies through some other, non-wing-related method. You can see the tiny useless wings at the shoulder there. I really think that's fascinating as a concept: what evolutionary pressures would produce an animal that (a) has wings and (b) flies but (c) those two things are unrelated? Although this many appendages on a fur-bearing creature puts us firmly in the "alien biology" territory, so maybe it's silly to expect it to make sense by the standards of terrestrial biology. Regardless, I like it, and I think the decision to run with the "rowing" description by giving it those oar-shaped appendages is a good & creative one. The post linked above contains a fair bit of information on design decisions and the drawing process here -- there are sketches and everything.

@vindikat (link to post here) has interpreted this in a way I find really charming. The art is of course excellent, very well drawn, and I appreciate the effort that went into doing these different poses. However, I really like it from a worldbuilding perspective: this gives me the impression of a small species of griffin that's adapted to urban living, more pigeon/cat than eagle/lion. (Come to think, both pigeons and cats are examples of feral populations finding a successful niche, rather than wild ones that adapt to a city, so maybe we can speculate that these guys are also descended from domestic ancestors.) Also the Gligglae under the eaves there remind me of pictures of chimney swifts that have made the rounds on Tumblr.

The design is also generally very appealing; I think the extra wings and the long tail really work here. The linked post includes an explanation of the design decisions that I think is worth taking a look at.

@moustawott (link to post here) has given us another very cuddly version of the Gligglae. I particularly like the wing design here, how it's kind of a mammalian version of a pterosaur -- Moustawott indicates that they were specifically trying not to draw the animal that they're sure this is, and I think the pterosaur-squirrel design here is a great way to make something that could fill kind of the same niche while being an unmistakably distinct creature. The little round head and eye markings remind me of a chipmunk, also, which is cute.

@rautavaara (link to post here) continues to do interesting stylistic stuff with their contributions. I like how the limited color palette here makes this look kind of like a single-block woodcut or similar relief printing. Like, you could plausibly see this as a design someone's carved into a wood block, then printed on mustard-yellow paper with purple ink. (I'm actually not 100% sure that's not what it is; I would just be surprised if someone actually went the extra mile of breaking out the engraving tools for my little bestiaryposting thing.) Very dynamic scene, also, and a charming creature design; love the huge mouths with pointy little fangs.

All right, these are all the ones that come up on the search; if I missed yours, let me know please.

(I have to apologize here for another delay that's absolutely my fault -- I would have had this out a few hours ago, but I got derailed by impulsively deciding to check out that Hbomberguy plagiarism video everyone's talking out, and... yeah.)

Anyway, as a number of this week's artists indicated, this one was really easy to guess, so the reveal seems a little pointless, but we have a format, so:

Obviously, this was the sheep.

What? Look, you can't make assumptions with these things. Some of these medieval bestiary entries are really counterintuitive. Medieval Europeans believed there was a species of small, highly-social, flying nocturnal sheep native to Ethiopia.

Really, it's in Pliny the Elder.

...

Yes, fine, I'm just lying to you for fun. It's the animal you all think it is, there are no flying sheep to my knowledge. Here's the Aberdeen Bestiary illustration.

Yep, it's the bat. Oddly human face on that one, and generally I don't think this was drawn from life, but it's definitely a bat.

I do kind of find the way it's described in this entry kind of interesting, though. The confusion about whether bats count as having wings (even after having been placed in the "bird" category) is kind of odd, and the "rowing" description is not one I would have ever thought of. I very much like the declaration that the way bats huddle together is "an act of love of a sort which is difficult to find among men"; it's a sweet way to talk about a creature with a generally negative reputation, which contrasts interestingly with the fact that the author also thinks of them as "lowly" and "mean". You kind of get the idea of a creature that's a bit wretched but in a sympathetic way. "Scrungly", one might say.

[imaginarylungfish]

i just discovered anti-natalism (on reddit oi) and found the name for my philosophical beliefs! this is kinda cool! i didn't know there was a name for this stuff.

i see anti-natalism as a positive thing. i agree with david benatar's asymmetry argument. if a person does not exist, they don't know pain or pleasure. i see that as better than a person existing and enduring pain (because there is no pleasure without pain).

my other main argument for anti-natalism is the fact that people don't consent to being born. i just can't see any justification in anyone birthing another human for the mere fact that that human did not consent to life.

i understand this belief system upsets some people, but idk i can't change how i feel. i have a right to my opinions. plus, i'm not saying other people need to understand or follow what i believe. obviously, plenty of people birth children. i just don't believe in doing that.

seeing others have thought about this idea makes me feel validated!

i feel very alone in loving children but not believing in creating them. i work as a naturalist for elementary school kids and a tutor for middle and high school students. my life revolves around youth. i want to make sure i can help children in any way i can since i know living life can be difficult. i want to help people avoid as much pain as possible. so, i believe the kindest way to do that is preventing people from being born in the first place.

[polish-art-tournament]

round 2.4 poll 1

Kuropatwy / Kuropatwy na śniegu (Partridges / Partridges in the snow) by Józef Chełmoński, 1891:

propaganda: look how soft it is. look at the perspective. look at the snow. look at the partridges. i love them so much.

(also, according to the artist's daughter, before he painted this, he used to lie on the snow and watch partridges. which is very understandable but also a mood)

Ziemia (Earth) by Ferdynand Ruszczyc, 1898:

propaganda: in my opinion, it's a very powerful piece which glorifies and elevates the every-day hard work of people across millenia to a kind of mythical status - the plowman is depicted as the centre of the universe, right between the vast sky and the earth. his pose, with the raised arm, resembles an epic hero, but the title tells us: this scene is not unique, millions of men across time have done this, this IS the earth, the world. it's grand and universal but naturalistic at the same time

submitted by @gniew777

[canmom]

I will admit, as a fan of old scifi TV, I prefer the more theatrical style of filmmaking? Particularly for more fantastical genres. Partly because it gives each series it's own unique feel - you can identify old TV scifi by sound palette and shot type alone, and it lets you know you're in for a scifi romp rather than a crime procedural or a sitcom. Like, a lot of modern scifi uses the same shots and a similar sound palette, and like. A lot of storytelling language is unavailable to the realistic styles.

Also, the emotional heart of scifi and fantasy relies on being able to empathise with situations and people who are not familiar or human, sometimes with bodies that cannot do human body language. Theatrical TV allows the show to do the live-action version of those big ghibli tears - you know, the ones that look unrealistic but are exactly what sobbing feels like? Which is really useful when you want your audience to empathise with a character who is extremely non-human, and also in cases where the special effects have not aged well. Like, the monster might obviously be aquarium tubing covered in vaseline, but the theatrical nature of the acting, camerawork, sound and lighting etc can still produce a thrill of terror.

[in reference to this post]

I definitely agree! So would Bertolt Brecht, probably, who was strongly of the opinion that you should draw attention to the constructed nature of a play rather than try to hide it. ( @baeddel and I would always be going on about how Drakengard was Brechtian, those were the days...)

'Naturalism' in cinema, acting etc. is not actually 'natural', but something carefully constructed in a way that tries not to draw attention to its constructed nature. The most 'naturalistic' acting would be a candid video of someone who isn't aware they're being filmed, but that doesn't typically make for good film.

One of the interesting things that comes up towards the end of that video on acting is how there's been a bit of a return of the theatrical style, or something of a blend of that with the "naturalistic" practices developed in the last half-century. He reels off a bunch of examples, such as Wes Anderson or Yorgos Lanthimos's films, particularly Emma Stone's performance in Poor Things. Which I haven't seen yet so I can't comment.

However, in animation, I would definitely talk about the puppet stop motion films of Barry JC Purves, who adopts a very theatrical style. For example, look at the way Tchaikovsky moves in this one:

His films on classical themes, like the one on Achilles, are perhaps even more so. The vibe of this is fantastic, perfectly suited to the range of motion of the puppets (which are limited in terms of facial expression) and coming across as very intentional and distinctive. I wrote about him a year ago for Animation Night 161, where I've collected all the films of his that I can find online.

Really there's no one 'best' acting style - it's a toolkit, which you can apply to different ends. The kind of 'naturalism' that pleases the Academy can be a very good tool for a drama, but there are plenty of other ways to do it, especially in animation where the entire world can support the performance far more easily than choreographing a comparable sequence in live action. Something like Revolutionary Girl Utena or Rose of Versailles would not be improved by a more naturalistic acting style! But equally Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade benefits hugely from its realist style and reserved performances. Maybe if there's any advice to give, it's that be conscious you're making a choice and commit to it whole hog...

[bestworstcase]

Question from someone who's attempting to write rwby fanfiction. Do you have any advice on how avoid portraying team RWBY and their peers (JNPR, Penny, Oscar, etc) as people who are 'just better' or somehow more inherently virtuous than Those Evil Villains Over There Who Must Be Defeated and The Failures Of Generations Past? Because I want to write the girls and their friends bringing an end to a millennia-long conflict and upending the status quo and yeeting the brother gods, but like. I don't want to somehow imply that they have some special holy righteous sacred innate thing that made them succeed where others couldn't. And I feel like I keep accidentally implying that.

step 1. Worry Less.

if you don’t believe that RWBY et al are intrinsically Just Better Somehow you’re probably not going to write your story in a way that inadvertently implies as much even if they’re ultimately the ones who Solve The Problem. they’re just in the right place at the right time to escape this cycle these things happen bfrgk

step 2. remember that everybody does what they think is right

no one is a Bad Person on purpose and even when someone does something they know or believe to be wrong there is always some rationalization going on that makes it okay or makes it something outside of their control. keeping this in mind whenever you write character conflict is really important for portraying conflict in a naturalistic way—even if it isn’t something you put In The Text it’s useful for you as a writer to know what’s Going On in the heads of the characters who are wrong and why they’re doing the things that they do.

(a good exercise if you want to practice is to rewrite a scene from the other side’s point of view; if you have for example an argument between two characters who are both extremely convinced of their own rightness and don’t like each other, can you leap into the antagonist’s perspective and write that argument from their side in a way that paints the protagonist as irrational, stubborn, foolish? if you can switch your writer POV around like that to see things from the Wrong Perspective it becomes a lot easier to handle complex conflicts because you have a really solid grasp on what everyone’s stakes and opinions and reasons are.)

step 3. don’t be afraid to let the Good Guys fuck up & don’t be afraid to let the Bad Guys have a point

rwby does this really really really well. nobody is ever one hundred percent completely right—not in the story and not in real life—so letting the good guys be a little bit wrong and the bad guys be a little bit right creates points of common ground and margins for compromise to be built in between. and obviously if you have protagonists who are able to make mistakes and grow and accept compromise then Innately you have protagonists who are flawed and three dimensional, because if they were Perfect they wouldn’t need to learn or grow.

step 4. think about Why these characters are the ones who solve the problem

this is something that’s just helpful to have in mind as a writer to clarify your own framing; often the answer is a lot more about circumstance than any intrinsic Betterness and in the case of rwby a lot of it just comes down to the fact that salem attacked when she did—team rwby et al weren’t inculcated into the paranoid keeping secrets cult and didn’t have ozpin to lead them, so they figured out their own way of doing things that (because it plays to humanity’s strengths) works a lot better.

y’know how every time someone new is let in on the secret, the first question they ask is “why don’t people know? why not tell everyone?” the story is making the point that the natural, instinctive human response to finding out about a secret war is to go “it shouldn’t be secret!”—ozpin has to work very hard and be extremely careful about Who he initiates into this conspiracy because his methods run contrary to human nature. it takes active effort to quash that reflex to ask for help. what makes team rwby et al "special" isn’t anything unique to them, per se; its that they learnt the truth outside of this coercive environment that trained the old guard to Never Tell Anyone, so they intuitively grasp that telling more people and asking for help is better than not. because Most People put into this situation would intuitively grasp that.

[is-the-snake-video-cute]

Hiie!

I can't find any posts about this yet. What are your pros/cons on bioactive enclosures? I've seen alot of opinions online but like, professionally what's the move? I'm a naturalist at a state park and we are getting new terrariums and I want to go bio to display native plants alongside the animals! Can live plants and reptiles do well without the "cleanup crew"?

Also, if moving in the bioactive direction, do you recommend buying an active soil like biodude? I've seen people online using soil, moss, plants, isopods, worms from outside in their tanks. How do you sanitize/quarantine? Are parasites an issue?

Askinf for corn snake, king snake, box turtles, if that makes a difference. I already sent our vet these same questions, I'm casting a wide net for all the info I can get :) Thank youuuu I love this blog sm 💗

Hello hello, very good questions!! I don't keep any of my personal snakes in bioactive enclosures (I don't enjoy trying to keep plants alive and I'm not the biggest fan of insects), but at my wildlife center we've been moving to keeping several of our display snakes in bioactive enclosures for the past few years and they're really nice in educational settings!

Like I said, I don't like bioactive enclosures for my own pets - aside from the additional hassle of bugs and plants, I keep a lot of snakes with special needs and more sterile enclosures make things easier on me. I wouldn't recommend bioactive enclosures for special-needs animals because they make it harder to spot problems like abnormal waste.

On the flip side, though, they're really great tools in educational settings because the naturalistic look sells the whole setup and (as you mention!) is perfect for highlighting native flora. They also never need deep-cleaned, which is a huge plus. They're time-consuming to set up but they can save you time in the long run.

If you're going bioactive, you really do need a cleanup crew. An ideal bioactive enclosure is a minature, self-sustaining ecosystem, and your cleanup crew is essential to getting the nitrogen cycle a-flowin'. Aside from doing the obvious and helping to clean up messes, insects also aerate the soil by burrowing through it, keeping everything healthier. You can totally try to set up plants without the clean up crew, but you might have a bit of a time with regular cleaning at maintenance without their help.

I asked our soil biology expert at my wildlife center, and she says that pre-packaged soils from the Biodude and the like can be super convenient and helpful, but there's also no harm in DIY-ing it if you'd like. You can buy the topsoil, moss, etc. you need at garden centers, and often much cheaper! She agrees with me that there is enough risk of parasites and other dangers such as fertilizers and pesticides with dirt/worms/etc. straight from outside that's it wise to buy it instead just to be safe. Be sure to look for organic topsoils without fertilizer or vermiculite - soils have ingredients written on the bags so be careful to look and make sure! Kellogg brand is my go-to soil for reptiles.

No matter where you get your soils, a good way to sterilize them is with heat. What we actually do at work is just pop it in the microwave! About five minutes per batch works well. This is really important because it kills any mold that may be sneaking in. You don't have to bother with this step if you buy a pre-made soil like the Biodude's, they come safe and ready to use.

Your cleanup crew (springtails and isopods are probably the easiest to work with, I prefer them to anything else honestly) shouldn't need quarantined, though. They should be good to go as soon as you bring them in.

Once you get everything set up, I recommend letting the enclosure cycle for at least a month. We learned from hard experience that your cleanup crew can easily be overwhelmed the presence of your reptile if they're not acclimated to their new home!

All the best!! If you all do decide to go bioactive, I'd love pictures - there are few things better than seeing happy snakes in beautiful enclosures!