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jerktournament · 1 year ago

Note

Anon from the Fluminox ask. I'll just infodump on your askbox all of his warcrimes, cuz you gave me permission (thank you btw!!)

Ok so, basically:

He's a colonizer.

He saw a land of normal animals, then gave them Chi (basically a DNA-altering chemical) and made them evolve into sapient anthropomorphic creatures.

Red flags:

He's a god who felt the need to make normal beings evolve into something 'greater'

The animals evolved a physical appearance that's borderline exactly the same as of the Phoenix Tribe

Have now become dependent on the Phoenixes' technology: Chi

But that wasn't enough; the animals evolved in such a way that it didn't follow Fluminox's expectations. So he did what any colonizer would do: enforce his cultural supremacy onto his victims, by presenting himself as superior with the intention to "enlighten" the "lowly" (his exact words), using his new technology, Fire Chi.

A few animals were not happy with this. One of them was Fangar, who used this as an opportunity to learn and use the Phoenixes' technology against them. Fangar then established the Ice Hunters faction. (Fangar isn't innocent btw, he's for another post)

Red flags:

Fluminox started a whole war because of his supremacist mentality

He was willing to kill those who did not join his side, which the Ice Hunters clearly didn't do, as they have not only different color palettes and motifs than of the Phoenix Tribe, but also use Modern Chi instead of Fire Chi

Fluminox is speciecist (lack of a better word) against the "ground-born", because he associates those who aren't birds (like he is) with the Ice Hunters, who he already deems as "savages".

Fluminox, as the coward he is, did not want to finish the war he started. So what did he do?

He sabotaged a ritual, the Illumination, one that was made to straight up kill all of his enemies. A bunch of Phoenixes + his wife were participating in the Illumination, and Fluminox, leader of the Phoenix Tribe, was also a part of this, but, instead of actually doing his job, he made an agreement with his wife that he was going to not sacrifice himself for the sake of their newborn child, Flinx

This caused the futile death of his brethren, wife, and a thousand years of torture for the Ice Hunters, who were frozen and kept alive inside the Gorge, without air nor anything to live.

Ofc, the ice cage they were in thawed, and war soon started again.

Fluminox knew about this, so he had fully prepared Chima's modern society to follow him. How? He sculpted Mount Cavora, the source of all Modern Chi, to have the heads of all extant tribes of Chima.

Then, he made the MCs babysit Flinx, did not interact with his son ever since he was born, felt sorry for himself and let his son run away and get caught by the Ice Hunters, then STRAIGHT UP ORDERED FLINX TO SACRIFICE HIMSELF INSTEAD, BASICALLY GOING AGAINST HIS WIFE'S WORDS.

Red flags:

Betrayed his tribe for the sake of his own existence, ignoring the fact that he was 100% responsible for the war he started

Made his enemies — who had fought back for their right to live as they do — get stuck in ice, with no oxygen, while alive, for a thousand years

Molded and manipulated an entire society to follow him and fight a battle that was not theirs

Used his son as an excuse to continue living. He did not give a damn about his son, about his wife, about anyone. He's borderline sociopathic

And guess what?

His son forgave the Ice Hunters, instead of killing them.

The Ice Hunters were going to live forever, with their own culture, and won the war.

Fluminox lost everything: he failed to convert the Ice Hunters — he lost the war — but also had his wife and son die in the process.

He got what he deserved, basically.

Legends of Chima is amazing

thank you for your infodump o7

here are pictures of Fluminox for easy visibility

#wow i never knew of this series but it sounds pretty in-depth #ask #anon #racism tw #(for actions done and said by the character; not anon!)#this character is not in the poll however all jerks are allowed to be thrown at me #not a poll #ask to tag

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olivescales3 · 9 months ago

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Thank you, very interesting!

I'd like to point out that (just to avoid misunderstanding) it might seem like ableism, but technically, Scutter is really in the middle between animal and anthro, however, evolution isn't something that ends, so that kind of wording used in the encyclopedia is very awkward. The encyclopedia did use a distasteful description for Scutter, but about Sir Fangar it's actually intentional, since Fluminox is meant to be a racist colonizer, but unfortunately this flew under the radar for most lol.

(sorry to derail in this paragraph but that's why i am genuinely against, and why it goes against canon, to see each chima tribe as a human ethnicity, since this kind of interpretation is perfectly aligned with pseudoscientific racism).

Also, something about how I see Chima: there is no gender in Chima, and "gender roles" are actually just normal roles for both sexes, but instead of being about gender, it's about the individual (eg. if an animal is strong they could be a warrior, but if their body is more sensitive to pain or they have a physical condition, they might be a historian or something else). So transgender isn't really a thing in Chima in how I see it, unless someone analyzed the characters using human lenses, which creates possibilities for transgender allegories in the characters. It's interesting to see how Chima animals would see themselves if they're intersex, and I think they'd see themselves more like your first description of perisex, but instead of it being influenced by gender, it would be by behavior, similar to how maned lionesses act like males.

I am definitely against giving Chima characters penises and vaginas for non mammals because.... honestly it falls under the fetishization of anthros, since Chima animals are supposed to be animals and not humans. But that is literally an entirely different subject.

Scutter, in how I see it, would be trans because his genitalia doesn't work like the others, as in he doesn't have the necessary bits, but his body's behavior is male. This is what I'm trying to find in Chima characters, or at least see how I can fit in. Chima, for me, is heavily based on animals, so I'm trying to adapt human ideas into animals without making the latter stop being animals...

I don't know if what I said makes sense, but I hope my point came across well lol. Your post was very informative, thank you!

Hey, since you're interested in scorpion biology, I thought you'd be interested in the idea of... intersex Chima scorpions! Well, sort of.

There's a specific character that's been bugging me a bit. Scutter is kind of the scorpion equivalent of a centaur; he has two torsos, one anthropomorphic, and another of the scorpion body. With scorpion anatomy in mind, it's easy to reach the conclusion that Scutter's reproductive organ would be heavily altered because of his body, making him intersex to a certain extent.

I hope this makes sense. I'm trying to look for possible trans rep in Chima characters (like in this example). What do you think of this idea?

Oh friend, you don't know the essay you just inspired.

You Opened This Can Of Worms, Now Lie In It

Some important bulletpoints before I get going, just to get all of my followers on the same page:

Disclaimer: I am a transgender nonbinary perisex individual. This means I am not intersexed (to my knowledge), I don't identify with the gender I was assigned at birth, and I don't identify as male or female. The closest thing to describing my gender is literally "no".

I am a strong advocate for making as many characters transgender as possible, regardless of "realism". That's why, in my own writing, half of the Scorpions are retroactively transgender (though they don't understand gender on the whole and most of them would probably be nonbinary if someone took fifteen minutes to explain gender, variable social constructs, and the concept of genitalia tying to gender roles) and also Razar is too on account of I said so.

Being intersexed does not inherently mean being transgender. There is a lot of discussion and individual choice between intersexed people about whether or not they're part of the queer community. It's a very individual thing, and I am not part of those discussions on account of not being intersex myself.

When it comes to humans and other beings with a level of sentience and sapience, the term "hermaphrodite" and its derivates are considered slurs. When talking about animals, hermaphrodite and its derivates are scientific terms. So in something like the Legends of Chima series and other humanoid-animal media, the proper term is "intersexed". (I noticed you used the term "intersex" in your ask, and I appreciate it!)

I know too much about scorpion mating and birth.

We're talking way too much about genitalia and gender tonight in regards to fictional characters.

I am genuinely delighted that you decided to drop in here to discuss this, because boy howdy do I have a lot of thoughts about transgender headcanons/representation and scorpions specifically! Scorpions are just. So damn cool.

Note for my fellow arachnophobes: There are no images attached to this post, but it's really easy to find videos of scorpions doing various things on YouTube, which is actually how I've been studying them.

Scorpion Sex, Mating, and Genitalia

Scorpions of both "genders" have genital opercula (singular: genital operculum), and their asses run up into their tails. In order to mate, they don't just do like horses. No no, buddy, they have a really weird, specific method!

In order to start wooing his potential mate, the male scorpion will lock chelae (pincers) with the female scorpion, and they will start to "dance". The male scorpion will drop a sperm packet onto the ground and lead the female scorpion over it. If the female scorpion is down, she'll basically squat and absorb the sperm packet into her body, which is then followed by a "mating plug" to keep it in while it does the fertilization thing.

(It's important to note that the courting process also contains "juddering", aka the male scorpion doing the dance that the stickbug meme did, and may also contain clerchical "kisses". Honestly, pretty romantic for an arachnid. And possibly tail-rubbing and sexual stinging. Scorpions are very kinky!)

(It's also important to note that some species of scorpions have been reported, though not reliably, to reproduce through parthogenesis.)

Post-coitus cannibalism has not been scientifically seen in scorpions, so the male scorpion is generally safe as long as he scadoodles.

Gestation in some scorpion species can last over a year, and different species can have anywhere from 2 to 100 little scorplings - the physical size of the scorpion is not necessarily tied to how many babies they'll have.

Also, scorpions give live birth!

The baby scorpion is essentially folded like a Fedex package and launched out of the womb. It will then unfold and climb on top of the mother to make way for its next sibling. These will hang onto the mother until their first molt, which happens as a group and launches them into the juvenile stage. After this, they will still stay with their mothers until their carapace finishes hardening and gaining color, at which point they hunt prey on their own and will wander off on their own terms.

Hey, Jasper, That's Pretty Fucked Up, But How Does This Tie Into Chima?

I'm getting there, hold your centaur scorpions!

This is where we get into the worldbuilding of the Legends of Chima series, the Character Encyclopedia, and our poor boy Scutter.

See, the Legends of Chima as a series is very much a product of its time. There is some rife ableism and questionable word choices in regards to the Crawlers (and Sir Fangar, but this isn't about him). According to the Character Encyclopedia, Scutter is "less evolved". There's a looong history of racism in using phrases like "evolution" in regards to other humans, so taking that and applying it to an animal world leaves us with some very strange dissonance, because it's used in Chima to mean animals turned into a more humanoid form by the Chi.

Because really, what is the Chi? It's a magical substance that, depending on how you read it, could be the animist spirit of the land (I say, as an animist myself), or it could be drugs. Or it could be any number of other things! I know one person who writes Chi as the blood of dead gods, which is metal as fuck!

Ultimately, it depends on how one is writing the Chi that makes the usage of phrases like "less evolved" more or less questionable than it was intended. We're all dragging around the corpse of a Lego theme across our writing desks anyway. And the way I go about answering the question of "what is Chi" is definitely different from others. (Again, see the dead god blood part.)

The question of whether or not the Scorpion Tribe, namely Scutter, would count as intersexed relies on 1) defining intersexuality in regards to genitalia arrangement (scorpions don't have penises and vaginas by default; and the Wikipedia article on scorpions just uses "genital orfice" or "genital opercula"); 2) determining if the Chi has magically changed how genitalia works for Scorpions (admittedly, I do this because I didn't want to have to use the term "genital opercula" over and over); 3) determining the humanization extent of the Scorpion Tribe as you write them (I lean more towards human than you do, just from what I've seen of your work); and 4) deciding if such terminology even exists in Chima.

But looking at Scutter and going with the assumption that the back end is fully scorpion... No, I wouldn't count him as intersex by default. Intersex implies landing between the two human biological extremes (which, as we all know, is not as cut-and-dry as high school biology taught us), when really he's kind of a secret third thing (a Scorpion who probably doesn't have either a penis or a vagina).

(Of course, there's also what you said, paraphrased to my own wording: the Chi may have just decided to fuck up this poor man's genital situation and do a half-ass job.)

That's not to say he can't be trans. I mean, I made Scorm and about half of the Scorpion Tribe trans already. That's also not to say they're not all trans by default, considering scorpions without the ability to think wouldn't have the concepts of genders anyway.

Okay Jasper, So How Do You Write Him?

So, here's the thing. I'm aromantic-asexual, and I also write smut and, to a lesser extent, romance, which means I think about fictional character genitalia too much. But thinking about Scutter has left me utterly baffled.

On one hand, I usually write the Chi as a magical animist force of the land of Chima on the whole, and part of that is that the Chi tries to get everyone on the same playing field, physically speaking, which is how we get retroactive transgender man Scorm in my Tales of Chima series.

On the other hand, look at him. Look at him. He's a centaur arachnid. I know he can pass the Harkness Test, but I still feel weird thinking about his genitalia. If I go with my theory of the Chi giving everyone penises and vaginas at random, then I don't want to think about how much that would get in the way for the poor boy! On the other hand, his lower body is still mostly scorpion instead of, well, Scorpion, so who's to say he doesn't have a genital operculum?

Too Long, Don't Want Details About Scorpion Sex

Alright, spoilsport. Here's your TLDR:

It genuinely depends on what the Chi does in your version of the story and how bad it fucks up. It depends on how dedicated you are to scientific accuracy. It depends on how much you want to think about scorpion genitals.

And being intersex is not necessarily trans rep, unless it is, unless it isn't. I'm not intersexed, so I'm not going to say what that falls on myself. There is an intersex pride flag that was created by Morgan Carpenter in 2013.

Trans characters can exist outside of being intersexed, you don't have to conflate the two in order to have transgender representation. Just hit the characters with the Transgenderinator 5000 Beam. Fuck realism, this is a series about walking talking animal people. Who's going to stop you? The fun police? Transphobes? Eat them.