#creatures ted talks

[strange-creature-222]

The neat thing about being a Will Wood fan is that you find this decently sized community of people who like this guy and you're like "wow look at all these people I can talk to!" But it definitely isn't that BIG of a community

But after a while you realize that they're everywhere, the best example I can give is that I'm in quite a few different discord servers, for quite a few different things, and I can't name one active server that doesn't have at least one or two Will Wood fans™ and its not like it's always the same people

Idk I just find it really Interesting and cool

[friszil]

the golden ratio

[artist-rat]

my old and new tes character Saima <3 she’s a combination of a couple of my prev. ocs!

[hello-sweetheart]

Eddie ‘Bambi-Eyes’ this, Munson ‘Puppy-Eyes’ that

Guys, guys,, he do be having big ol’ eyes but theyre dark as shit so they’re giving like shark vibes

Watch this:

He’s a fucking baby salmon shark (the first two I believe are thresher sharks tho)

POINT IS Eddie’s shark eyes go •_•

[pngblog]

I hope your headache gets better! 🩷 If it's not much trouble could I suggest the Lykoi cat breed?

[angelicvigilante]

A short and bad, not proofread drabble I wrote for an scp au I've been thinking of. I may not finish it, but it's inspired largely by this; Mc called Zephyr, because while there isn't really a defined personality or thoughts, I felt it fit more than doing stuff from an Mc's perspective where it should fit anyone.

Zephyr swallows nervously, wide eyes gazing up at the door– It looks like claw marks have indented into the metal, yet, here they are. Lamb to the slaughter, unwillingly presented to some keter class that’d have them dead in mere seconds, if the recent declining number of D classes and scientists have meant anything. They were at least thankful with the fact they weren’t told anything– Not.

Blood seeps out the metallic entrance as their led closer, some of it old, muddied, the others a bright, vibrant scarlet that stares back. As sickening as it is, they stay still as the door starts to open, loud and scratchy on the ears as the metal collides with the wall and the floors– Barely able to ponder it more as their shoved in, Zephyr’s heart pounding in their own ears without even seeing anything.

The doors already fucking closed, a death sentence laughing at them, it’s mocking, even more so with the fact that they know the scientists must be watching; Watching as they look around the dark room, stepping over mauled flesh, tattered like clawed clothing. Zephyr can only swallow again, breathing picking up as they hear something, someone move–

It’s inhuman, terribly so, but Zephyr can’t make it out.

So– Despite all odds, it’s already ending, right? They step closer, something ruffles, upon closer inspection, not close enough to disturb though, it’s wings. Feathers stained a deep, dark color, they can only guess one of the original colors– Most likely before the slaughter around, black. The creature doesn’t seem awake, but in its rest, it seems more human than any of the scientists they’ve come face to face with.

Zephyr’s breath dares to hitch, and it all goes to hell, wings fanning out, glowing golden-yellow eyes staring back at them, as wide as Zephyr’s own.

They stumble out as the creature lets out a horrid, screeching sound; breathing so fast they can’t even hear their own thoughts, chest heaving up and down– Just for it to get worse, the creature standing up, far, far taller than them, white claws– Almost like long nails, stained the same red everywhere else, everything is stained– Their going to be stained as well.

Zephyr’s back hits wall, a sob shaking their frame, the claws of the beast reach out and– And they– 

Hold their cheek, wiping away salty tears as they fall.

No pain comes to them, the creature must just love playing with their victims, doesn’t it? Up so close, Zephyr can notice the beast has feathers, scattered throughout their body, peppering their skin like freckles, for some reason– The front of their chest lays barren, tanned skin clean save for blood splatters and white lines, curling up and down in a pattern they can’t quite place. The creature has pants, same as Zephyr themself, but it doesn’t make them believe this thing is human in the slightest, despite the way their form might fool others– Zephyr knows this is a beast.

It croons, a sickeningly saccharine sound; Something they can’t decipher,  chirped out high pitched and needy. Almost greedy in the way it pulls them close, cradled right against the monster's chest.  They don’t kick, don’t scream, soaking up the little kindness they are allowed from it before it will, surely– All go to hell once more, when claws finally dig in.

But they never do.

Even as they shake and tremble, nothing happens– The greedy monster doesn’t do a thing, favoring the lamb it’s been sent like a treasure, for some weird, unknown reason. It sniffs at their hair, nuzzling into it like a starved man, and Zephyr can only think about how it could unhinge its jaw and swallow them whole. They don’t know how long they sit there, don’t know anything, until they cough, their tears stopped some time ago, eyes red and angry, fighting to keep open.

Zephyr wished it was earlier, with a nicer scientist, one only using them to stare into a tank– Even if something doused them in water, leaving them smelling exactly like whatever beast inhabited that tank.

They might have preferred that beast over one who can breathe oxygen– Though they don’t know if the one from earlier was a sea monster, or what; But now isn’t the time for thoughts, not when the beasts shifts Zephyr in its arms, head against its chest– Able to hear the beating heart, just like their own.

That doesn’t make it human, it’s not human in the slightest; A monster with no empathy waiting to attack. Even as that starts to feel farther and farther from the truth.

[downtherabbitholewithlucy]

ↂ | WES BↂRLANↁ | ↂ

[mental-about-you-too]

Why I believe the Will Darling Adventures were originally conceived as johnlock fanfiction

I will die on this hill.

The Will Darling Adventures (Slippery Creatures, Sugared Game, Subtle Blood) by KJ Charles are my favorite guilty pleasure comfort books. I have listened to the audiobooks an embarrassing number of times. I can play exchanges of dialogue in my head from memory, reader’s inflections and all. If you haven’t read them and you like a mix of adventure and gay smut (plus it’s a trilogy so there’s time for more complex characterization and more gradual relationship development than you usually get in books of the genre), then absolutely go do that, and don’t read below—because here be spoilers. Also, because the books are a delight.

So. Grand theory.

To be clear: I am not knocking these books AT ALL (if I’m honest, the Holmesian flavor is part of why I like them so much). As in many really good works of fanfiction, the characters have ceased to be mere copies, and have gained their own original and internally consistent characterization. Kim and Will are not Holmes and Watson, but I am completely convinced that the latter were the inspiration for the former. Here are some of the parallels/moments of homage:

Watson => Will

Returned to England from war with nowhere to go; ended up in London: “I had neither kith nor kin in England, and […] naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.” (Study in Scarlet) => “…his mother had died from the Spanish ‘flu while he’d waited to be demobbed […] So, like everyone else, he’d come to London…” (Slippery Creatures)

Ran out of money as a recently-discharged veteran: “So alarming did the state of my finances become…” (Study in Scarlet) => “…his slide into poverty was unstoppable...” (Slippery Creatures)

War wound that nearly killed him: “For months my life was despaired of...” (Study in Scarlet) => “A month in hospital.” (Sugared Game)

Saved by an underling who never appears in the story: “…had it not been for the devotion and courage shown by Murray, my orderly, who threw me across a pack-horse and succeeded in bringing me safely to the British lines.” (Study in Scarlet) => “If it hadn’t been for the bravest stretcher-bearer in Flanders, I’d have died out there.” (Sugared Game)

Retained his favorite weapon from the war: “I have my old service revolver and a few cartridges.” (Study in Scarlet) => “…the Messer, his old trench knife...” (Sugared Game)

Is asked to bring the weapon on adventures: “Put your pistol in your pocket.” (Study in Scarlet) => “Got your knife?” (Sugared Game)

POV character

Holmes => Kim

Has a bunch of names but goes by a middle one: William Sherlock Scott Holmes => Arthur Aloysius Kimberley de Brabazon Secretan

Has pretty hands, which are something of a fixation for the POV character

Doesn’t eat much: “My friend had no breakfast himself, for it was one of his peculiarities that in his more intense moments he would permit himself no food…” (Norwood Builder) => “They ate breakfast, or at least Will did, while Kim chewed a single slice of toast with distaste.” (Subtle Blood)

Withholds information because he doesn’t trust his partner’s ability to deceive: “You won’t be offended, Watson? You will realize that among your many talents dissimulation finds no place.” (Dying Detective) => “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before, but subterfuge isn’t your strong suit.” (Sugared Game)

Withholds information for dramatic effect: “It was too bad to spring it on you like this, but Watson here will tell you that I never can resist a touch of the dramatic.” (Naval Treaty) => “Of course Kim would turn up after two months with some bizarre story; of course he wouldn’t tell it like a normal person.” (Sugared Game)

Plays fast and loose with legality: “Doctor, I shall want your cooperation.” “I shall be delighted.” “You don’t mind breaking the law?” “Not in the least.” (Scandal in Bohemia) => “I am absolutely not empowered to break the laws of the land, so I try not to get caught at it.”

Has a brother seven years his senior, whom we meet (several adventures in) at a gentlemen’s club in Pall Mall, and who looks like him but bigger: “Mycroft Holmes was a much larger and stouter man than Sherlock.” (Greek Interpreter) => “He looked like someone had drawn a caricature of Kim as John Bull and not been kind about it. He was significantly bulkier…”

The club (The Diogenes => The Symposium) has a Strangers' Room, and in at least part of the club: "no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed" (Greek Interpreter) => "speech is strictly forbidden" (Subtle Blood)

Chases down the leader of a mysterious criminal organization who appears respectable in normal society, and who stays one step removed to leave no evidence of his involvement: “But the Professor was fenced round with safeguards so cunningly devised that, do what I would, it seemed impossible to get evidence which would convict in a court of law.” (Final Problem) => “[Arrest him] on what grounds? I’ve got a lot of nothing. Straws in the wind, and fears, and the words of the dead. The case needs to be iron-clad, and mine is wet tissue paper.” (Sugared Game)

Has a chat with this adversary before the action kicks off: “…I was seriously inconvenienced by you” (Final Problem) => “It has caused me enormous inconvenience” (Sugared Game)

Better at hand-to-hand combat than he looks like he should be: “I have some knowledge, however, of baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling…” (Empty House) => “Where did you learn knife fighting?” (Slippery Creatures)

Lounges around in a purple dressing gown (Blue Carbuncle; all three Will Darling books)

Tall, slender, pale, and dark-haired, with remarkable eyes (at least, the POV character sure remarks on them a lot)

Other parallels:

Inspector Lestrade (“lean and ferret-like as ever”) => Inspector Rennick (“He was a short, shrewd-looking man who sounded North London.”)

An aortic aneurism renders prosecution of a criminal moot: Jefferson Hope (Study in Scarlet) => Lord Waring (Sugared Game)

Will’s expectations upon meeting Waring line up with a description of Moriarty: “His face protrudes forward, and is forever slowly oscillating from side to side in a curiously reptilian fashion” (Final Problem) => “[Will] wasn’t sure what he expected. Something snakey, some reptilian air of cruelty…” (Sugared Game)

This rather iconic phrase: “He sits motionless, like a spider at the center of its web...” (Final Problem) => “…sits like a spider at the centre of a web of obligations...” (Sugared Game)

Alongside the parallels, Charles adds elements often found in the best works of fanfiction: in addition to the on-page romance, there's expansion of the characters' backgrounds, including an exploration of class and privilege, plus a fix-it-esque resolution of the issue of Holmes'/Kim’s dishonesty (I for one always wished Watson would confront Holmes about lying to him for cases).

There. Cataloguing all the parallels was taking up a ridiculous amount of space in my brain, so now you know & I can stop obsessing over it so much.

[l48yr1nth]

this is kind of all i care about if im honest

[thenecropolix]

@sketch-pencilpoint @/notsozenzeneth [Cracks Knuckles] you two gave me an inch and now I'm going a mile

OK so off the bat when I started thinking "what would a train look like if it was a biological organism" I turned to the obvious that was crustaceans, with lobsters in particular what with their multiple legs (in place of wheels), armored bodies, and the way said legs look when they move

I wanted to keep it as realistic as possible, so instead of mammals, I immediately thought of these guys, which then quickly diverted me to insects, specifically millipedes

So we have a general basis for how a biological engine should look, but now comes the issues of wheels; while we have animals that roll their entire body as a form of locomotion (e.g. armadillo) or roll things (e.g. dung beetle), we have no critter that could be said to have wheels in place of legs in the taxonomic domain eukarya. Ergo, I decided to take a page out of Nintendo's book and turn towards making train wheels into skin patterns that would go on the train's feet.

Enter the humble caterpillar

Barring the first couple set of legs, you'll notice the "feet" of a caterpillar are rather round; that's because they're more like little suction cups that help them stick to the surface of things; what I'm getting at is that train "wheels" would instead be more like these suction cup feet that are patterned in such a way that resemble said wheels.

I want to quickly give a shout out to @theflyingkipper for this next point as their monster engine series introduced to me the concept of turning the funnel of trains into blowholes that release steam. I thought it was a very clever design, but I realize it could be taken a step further if we consider the funnel to be a horn; more specifically, I thought about the parasaurolophus

A thing to make note is that these guys' iconic horns were thought to act as an amplifier for their calls; I figured the same could be applied to trains, boiling down to 2 possibilities:

The blowhole is placed either in front of or in back of the horn, thus creating the illusion of a steam-blowing funnel

The funnel itself has the nostrils on the end like a trunk shaped horn, thus housing another airway aside from the mouth where steam is released

This brings us to the topic of steam and feel source; as much as I find the idea of flesh-eating trains fun, I do think realistically, their diet would be the same as the fuel used to light their fires. I think of how some of the largest animals on earth are primarily herbivores (or in the case of the whale, filter feeders) and how even if they don't eat meat, that doesn't make them any less frightening that say a tiger or wolf.

Henceforth, I like the thought of living trains grazing on grass and being fed coal by their drivers and firemen, but it bets the question: how do they get nutrients? Initially I thought they'd be literal gastroliths and actually eat the coal they're given, but given how most stones are consumed half of the time to aide in digestion rather than be digested themselves, I figured perhaps something else could be at play.

Enter the volcanic snail

These little guys are amazing because they are found in hydrothermal vents, aka underwater volcanoes. They were actually one of the first guys I thought of with train armor because their foot and shell contain iron, which I think makes for a fun comparison of biological organisms and engines with steel bodies. But back to my initial point, these guys are chemoautotrophs, aka organisms that get their nutrients from chemical reactions through a process called chemosynthesis. Ergo, it wouldn't be entirely unrealistic for engines to technically get nutrients from steam itself rather than what produces the steam, but that begs the question: how do they produce the steam?

After much thinking, I deduced that they could "eat" coal by swallowing it whole and they lighting it up from the inside using a pyrophoric liquid contained in a separate chamber that gets "leaked" into the chamber where the fuel is, thus producing steam that then is released through the funnel/blowhole. And as crazy as it sounds, there is some potential due to the inspiration for this idea: the bombardier beetle

Cute right?

This little fella uses chemistry to ward off predators: essentially there are 2 chambers in its abdomen that contain 2 separate liquids that upon contact, produce a chemical reaction that reaches the boiling the point of water, to which is then expelled as a scalding liquid that causes irritation upon contact. Let me repeat that again: a bug is mixing 2 volatile liquids to create a new liquid as hot as 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius) and is then spraying it at everyone else.

From this, I figured the inside of a train would be just as heavily armored as its outside in order to prevent internal scarring from its own pyrophoric liquid once it ignites; I'm comparing it to what the bombardier beetle does in that rather than releasing the explosive reaction, it keeps it inside and and instead releases the byproduct (steam). That being said, I enjoy the thought of an engine "breathing" fire by expelling this liquid not unlike a spitting cobra as a scare tactic.

On a final note, I think if the buffers of trains weren't just elaborate body gear akin to what horses wear when pulling goods or people, I could see them as modified spikes seen on a thorny devil or the kentrosaurs, pointing forwards not unlike a boar's tusk and used in combat and perhaps be subjected to being dulled with tennis balls to prevent accidents like one does with goats.

If by some chance anyone reads this and gets this far, I'd like to both thank and applaud you for taking time to listen to this nonsensical rambling of mine as I've quickly gone down the mine that is ttte and creature design.

[persephone-s-moon]

Sorry I've been dead! I've been working on a long-time personal project of mine, and I might start posting about it here soon <3

(I'll probably get things set up ✨aesthetically✨ first because I LOVE making my life more difficult <3)

[strange-creature-222]

My favorite part of The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is when Henry said "Its Edward Time!" and Hyd all over the place

[stardynamite]

Story where there is a creature that erases people out of existence (so nobody remembers them and has any records of them whatsoever) but nobody knows what the creature does because we don’t remember it’s victims (so we dont know the effect of it’s powers)

[ginger-idiot]

When you think about it, A Chinese dragon is actually a Lung Dragon or Salamander dragon, just people think they're Wyrms. Their not, they're a completely different species of dragon to begin with, they're Lung Dragons, and some are even depicted as Salamander Dragons. So, technically speaking, Chinese dragons are the only type of salamander/lung dragon that can fly without the use of wings, and even then they wouldn't be a full salamander/lung dragon if they had said wings.

(Art here https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/a9l0ba/ever_wondered_about_different_types_of_dragons/ )

Chinese dragons are, most of the time, huge. And only found in few place, the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean areas. By logic, Chinese Dragons should technically be their own type of dragon, either being an offshoot of Lung Dragons or Salamanders.

It's my firm belief that every nation that's been around since before the Americas were even discovered has their own type of dragon.

Take Russia for example, they have the Zmei. A winged king Hydra.

(Ps, look at this kick-ass statue in a Russian Theme Park)

This is, by logical standards, its completely own species of dragon. An off-shoot of the Hydra.

[rainofthetwilight]

@taddymason HEY i uh may or may have not combined our dad jay aus together, using memes :"DD

only child kaida trying to get used to her new siblings lmao

[distrxst]

hollow was always impure like subscribe hit the bell for more true thoughts