#enough nonhuman animals have died already

[canisvesperus]

Raw milkers are cooked (no pun intended).

[theavaricesystem]

I'm gonna talk more about my setting, Steam Soul, because it makes me happy and I can't sleep.

If you're interested in a sort of steampunk-y fantasy world's magic system, hit the Read More.

Also, a quick CW for mention of needles, tattoos, death, and fictional fascism/colonialism.

Within the setting of Steam Soul, every living being that is alive and that has memories and emotions, has a soul.

Depending on the depth that these feelings and emotions have, a being's soul can be more "powerful", meaning that there is more of the base component of the soul required to "hold" all of those memories and emotions together.

This base component has no established name in setting, but I personally refer to it simply as Fuel. Basically, the more that a being has experienced, and the more that it has felt, the more Fuel is held within its soul.

This is important, as when said being dies by any means, the last exhalation contains the entirety of its soul, as a pale vapor. The coloration depends on the species, with most animals having a grey, transparent one, that is light enough to disperse from a slight breeze. Humans have a deep blue color, and Fawn souls, for instance (human/deer hybrids) have green.

If this vaporous soul is inhaled, it can be very damaging to one's body and mind. The afflicted will have vivid hallucinations of whatever soul was inhaled, and will enter a catatonic state until the hallucinations stop. In many cases, these effects can cause cardiac arrest, and prove fatal.

However, this phenomena can only happen with very dense and powerful souls, so it mainly occurs from inhaling human or humanoid souls.

Soul vapors also tend to adhere to surfaces that they're around for long enough, with certain metals being far easier for them to bond to: brass, silver, and copper, to name a few.

This vapor can be harvested, and processed to remove all of the memories and emotions, leaving only the Fuel. This Fuel has many purposes, including being highly flammable, sometimes explosively so. However, if properly treated, it can become a powerful healing balm or injection that can cause a being's body to rapidly regenerate.

This can also happen if the soul is inhaled, but it is far more risky and prone to failure. An individual is just as likely to regenerate someone else's body instead of their own, which results in rejection, and often death.

Due to the dangers of soul vapors, it is very common for any individual-especially one in a more dangerous profession-to have a gas mask or an equivalent on their person at all times. Even a very simple one is effective at stopping the inhalation of souls.

Now, to move on to how the ordinary human can perform magical acts.

Certain nonhuman species, such as Fawns, or Gylffians (avian humanoids), have innate magical abilities that must be tempered via discipline and training. Humans, however, lack this quality.

In the ancient history of the setting, Fawns cooperated with humans, and lived alongside them. During this time, the practice of Rune Carving reached a peak. This practice involved etching magical symbols into stone, and pouring the Fuel from animal souls into the stone to create a temporary magical object.

It was Humanity that suggested carving a similar-or often, identical-symbol into one's body. Traditionally, this was done with gradual scarring, but later tattoos were used as a less invasive and time-consuming method.

These tattoos were referred to as Brands, and they used the energy provided by both the human Soul and the body itself to influence reality, essentially warping it to the parameters of the Rune. This mimicked, in a small capacity, the reality-based magic that nonhuman were already capable of. This came at the cost of the user's stamina, as well as, in the case of overuse, their body. For instance, if a user with a Flame Spout Brand were to push themselves past their limits, their skin would catch fire, sometimes tearing as if burst from within.

The powers and benefits wrought from these Brands, however, far outweighed the costs. Or at least, that was the belief of humanity, who lived in a world of monsters and wild beasts, at the time.

Over two centuries before the events of my novel took place, there was a horrible conflict called the Cleanse. During it, a powerful totalitarian government wrested control of the known world, and eliminated or drove out anyone deemed to be a threat. This, of course, included all nonhumans, anyone who protected them, and those educated in the ancient history of human/nonhuman cooperation.

By the destruction of the past, this new government, led by a corporation named Endless Enterprises, sought to take control of the future.

Due to the massive loss of history and learning, many Rune designs were lost to time, some of them being lost forever. The surviving scholars and nonhumans formed a hidden civilization known as Adversa, which was named for the city of learning and knowledge that was razed to the earth by Endless Enterprises. As such, the greatest archives of history lay there, as well as the world's greatest understanding of Runic magic.

The term Brand came out of style, especially with the process of stone-carved Runes being lost in the conflict. As such, the tattoos that allow the wearer to alter reality according to their design and purpose are now simply called Runes.

They function primarily off of the user's emotions, and it takes a great deal of understanding about one's psychology to know what Runes are "compatible" with oneself. A Rune Setter will interview a person, give them a list of possible Runes that would be compatible with them, and then tattoo in the relevant symbol (or symbols) on the person.

Now, modern Runes do not use the Fuel from animal souls, but instead a crushed flower, that grows from Human Soul Vapors. This flower, known as the Memoir's Bloom, is carefully harvested, petal by petal, for use in Rune Setting.

Many properties of the Bloom are still unknown. It has a repellant effect on nonhumans, when powdered, although this is nothing more than a distinct discomfort, and nothing harmful. The flower will also take on a unique scent, based on the last thoughts of the person whose soul fueled it.

That's all I have to say at this moment, feel free to ask any questions you'd like, and, if youre seeing this, thank you for reading all of this. The setting of Steam Soul has been a passion of mine for almost 6 years, and I'm always happy to share my knowledge of it.

[notsamnotreads]

Tender is the Flesh Review/Summary

This book disappointed me somewhat. Well, more than somewhat. My overarching feeling while and after reading was that it didn't do enough. It left every idea half-baked and didn't pursue anything to its fullest extent.

The book follows a man (I never remember character names) who manages a processing factory for humans--after a supposed virus that infected only animals (because humans are not animals?)--humans can now be eaten under very specific circumstances. There is a persistent belief that this is all a conspiracy set up by the government to control overpopulation, but that doesn't seem to change anyone's minds or feelings about eating humans--the whole "meat is a necessity" rhetoric is in full force here, but there definitely is an undercurrent that this rhetoric emerged because of whatever government conspiracy may or may not be at play here.

This man (in my defense, his name is said very rarely) is apparently very good at his job and quite valued, but he also is deeply uncomfortable with his job--as can be imagined. He is gifted an FSG female--a "head" who was not injected with any growth hormones or anything, AKA allowed to grow at the normal rate of a human (I can't imagine being a child in these circumstances, truly). He doesn't know what to do with her. He becomes obsessed with her, though, constantly concerned about her well-being.

He is also obsessed with this abandoned zoo his father would take him to as a child. His father is suffering from some mental break, and about 2/3 of the way through the book, he dies, bringing about the final confrontation between him and his sister. His sister is absolutely obsessed with social standing and graces and so is very concerned about having a proper farewell ceremony for a father she never visited or did anything to contribute to his care (no one does funerals anymore because there are all sorts of rumors and threats that corpses are being eaten).

Eventually he...rapes (?) the FSG female, and she gets pregnant. This is a major crime, but he and his estranged wife were trying for years to get pregnant, and when she finally did, the child died shortly thereafter. So he is obsessed with having this child. When she is giving birth, he calls his estranged wife to deliver the child and they tacitly agree to keep the child and raise him as their own--and he kills the female, much to his wife's dismay, she says that the female could've given them more children (which, again, is a crime).

There are all sorts of snapshots of how the "head" are being treated in this world--being hunted, as food, as lab animals, etc.--but all of it just seems for the point of showing it all off without really developing anything beyond that. What I thought would be focused on showing how nonhumans are treated like this seems to be more focused on how humans are already mistreated in this world, which is not an unimportant topic of discussion, sure, but also just more conversation about humans at the expense of nonhumans.

[random-thought-depository]

Have some Blindsight vampire OCs from my Blindsight elsewhere fic set in the early Holocene (around 8,000 BCE)! You may have met Heron, meet her (surviving, adult) kids!

I might use it pronouns of ancient vampires in my fic, but for now I'll just use conventional ones.

Heron has three surviving adult children: Magpie, Drowning, and Stargazer:

Magpie is Heron's oldest child (she had another one before him, but that one died of disease in infancy).

Magpie is not the child of Heron's regular mate/partner at the time. Different ancient vampire families were very distrustful of each other and mostly just avoided each other, but they did sometimes trade or otherwise cooperate. A feature of ancient vampire "diplomacy" was that they'd often send a breeding-age female near ovulation to the other family to do the deal, with the understanding that she'd get gang-banged by some or all of the males of the other family. This made the other family less likely to kill her, as she'd thereby be a potential pathway for the proliferation of their genes. It also increased the genetic diversity of the species and the family, and thereby mitigated the low genetic diversity of ancient vampires and the tendency of their social structure to compound this by promoting inbreeding. Magpie was conceived in such a union. This means during his early life his blood relatives had to protect him from Heron's regular mate, who'd have killed him to free up space in the family for his own offspring if he could have gotten away with it, much as male lions will kill the cubs of rival males.

Magpie got his name because as a child he made a sort of friend of a magpie, feeding it little scraps of food until it trusted him enough to perch on his shoulder. A normal vampire might do something like this, but probably with the intent of betraying the animal and eating it later; when Heron and her mom asked him when he was planning to do this, they noticed he seemed a little upset by the idea. This was one of their first clues that there was something odd about him.

Magpie is different.

Another early clue was that Magpie did not go through the normal ancient vampire childhood phase of torturing small animals. Vampires are far less playful than humans, but they are a highly intelligent species closely related to humans and play is part of how humans learn and a common trait of intelligent creatures, so play is also a normal behavior of vampire children. An unfortunate but common manifestation of playfulness is sadistic play, which is common even in human children (in our species it is often directed toward other human children), and vampires are an aggressive species with a strong hunting instinct. In ancient vampires, sadistic play with small prey items during childhood was a normal part of how the hunting instinct "wired up" during brain development. Thankfully, usually by the time a vampire reaches adulthood the sadistic impulse has become very tightly coupled to the hunting instinct and thus the sadistic play phase has passed; gratuitous cruelty is rare in adult vampires; it would make them less efficient predators. The worst an adult vampire was likely to do was take a few moments to gloat over cornered and/or wounded prey before delivering the death blow (the most horrific plausible human-vampire interaction is what might happen if an unsupervised vampire child in the sadistic play age range encountered a lone and vulnerable human child young enough to be easily overpowered by a maybe 3-8 years old or so vampire child). But Magpie never went through a sadistic play phase, and even seemed uncomfortable when his mother, grandmother, and grandfathers/great uncles (Heron's mom mated with a pair of brothers, so unclear which is which) were teaching him how to hunt, fish, and trap nonhuman animals. He even sometimes showed altruism to animals; his relationship with the magpie has already been mentioned, and he may even have sometimes tended injured animals back to health and fed and protected them until they could fend for themselves again.

The family also noticed subtler things about Magpie; how gentle he was with his younger sisters and how enthusiastic and attentive he was in helping his older relatives look after them, how attentively he protected Stargazer from her older sister Drowning's attempts to target her for casual low-level sadistic play, how eagerly he volunteered for small tasks around the camp...

Magpie is neurodivergent in the same kind of way as Cassie/First from The Nightmare Stacks; a relatively high-empathy high-altruism individual in a species where sociopath-adjacency is the norm. Compared to a normal vampire, Magpie has an abnormally high capacity for pro-social impulses such as affective empathy, altruism, compassion, and guilt. Empathy is connected to imagination (as it is, after all, fundamentally a matter of imagining what it's like to be something or someone else), so Magpie is also atypically playful for a vampire, in a broad sense of playfulness that includes things like abstract curiosity and the capacity to appreciate art. Another early sign of Magpie's difference was a tendency to doodle representational art. Normal vampires sometimes also make doodles as a kind of stimming, but they are usually geometric rather than representational; for instance, Magpie's grandmother has a tendency to doodle spirals with notches separated by the exact length of a segment of one of her fingers (a human with a measuring device would be astonished by how precise they are for a casual free-hand drawing). Magpie may be a little bit of a runt as a consequence of the genes responsible for his neurodivergence, kind of like how autism often comes with poor sensorimotor coordination and chronic digestive problems in humans, but the effect isn't very severe; he may be shorter than either of his sisters, but within the normal distribution of ancient vampire male size (vampires have lower sexual dimorphism than humans and Stargazer is big). He may also have a mildly neotenous look as an adult (compared to ancient vampire average), as some of the genes responsible for his neurodivergence may be related to the ones involved in domestication syndrome and the ones involved in making Homo sapiens the most neotenous and hypersocial hominid, but again, the effect would be noticeable but not super-dramatic; to vampires of his own time he'd look a bit distinctive but normal-ish.

Around 1-2% of the ancient vampire population were like Magpie, comparable to the occurrence of autism, sociopathy, and transgenderism in humans. This is common enough that Magpie's family were aware of the existence of vampires like him and had that as a reference for his (to them) strange behavior, but rare enough that he was the only person like him in his family (with the partial exception of Stargazer) and, given the ancient vampire social structure, Magpie was the first person like him that any of his family members had extensive interaction with.

Empathy and compassion for your prey has obvious potential liabilities. So does being more altruistic than the other members of your social group. There is a reason Magpie is not typical. In a sense Magpie is a rather lonely and profoundly tragic person. But being kinder than your fellows is not necessarily entirely a negative in terms of personal or reproductive success. Magpie's family benefit from his abnormally high altruism and therefore value him as an ally. If you were a cold-hearted rational selfish killer, whose company would you prefer, another one like you, or somebody more altruistic and compassionate than you, who treats you better than you treat others? The unkind can still appreciate receiving kindness and recognize its source as an asset they wish to preserve.

When Magpie was around 9-11 years old he observed his younger sister Drowning getting casually slapped around by Heron's mate because she'd irritated him. Vampires mature faster than humans, a 9-11 year old vampire is a very different thing from a 9-11 year old human, at that age Magpie was already smarter and more physically powerful than most adult humans ... but he still had not yet reached his full adult size and strength, and Heron's mate was a particularly physically impressive specimen of vampire-kind, bigger and stronger than Magpie would ever be, and would be eager to kill Magpie given an opportunity/excuse. Magpie walked up to him and basically said "If you ever hit my sister in anything but necessary self-defense again, I will attack you. I realize that if that was a one-on-one fight I'd basically just be committing suicide by doing that, as you are a physically powerful adult male and I am a child and you really want to kill me and would have done it when I was a newborn baby if mom and grandma would let you get away with it. However, consider this: mom, grandma, and grandpa/great-uncle value me more than you, because I am their blood relative and you are not, and also because I'm nice to them while you're kind of a jerk even by vampire standards, if I attack you they will take my side and you will end up taking a beating at best and getting expelled from the family or killed and eaten at worst. As you mentally process that, factor in that I would be willing to take what you in my place would consider an unacceptably high risk of getting hurt or killed to protect my sister cause I'm a freak like that. I expect you to now examine my game theory, find it impeccable, and change your behavior in the way I've demanded." It worked! Vampires are highly observant creatures with the memories of metaphorical elephants and if you cross them - or help them - they will remember. You bet Drowning was taking mental notes during that incident and referred back to them for the rest of her life!

I've been talking about this in terms of pure selfish cold game theory logic, but there is also a dimension that humans might find more sympathetic. Even neurotypical vampires have some capacity for affection (it still served important social functions in ancient vampire social groups). It wouldn't be very anthropomorphizing to say that Magpie's mother, grandmother, and fully vampire sister think he's a precious beautiful cinnamon roll too good for this world, that the way he acts toward them plucks at calcified and atrophied but still existent strings in their cold vampire hearts, that his kindness toward them endears him to them, and that they have the same kind of concern for him that human parents often have toward a child who is different in a way that makes them vulnerable.

Of course, like just about every ancient vampire who survived much past their fourteenth birthday, Magpie is by human standards a serial killer. He can basically function normally in ancient vampire society, and he's now in his thirties, which means by now he's personally killed a number of humans that's probably closing in on double digits.

It would be very hard for an "ethical vampire" to survive in Magpie's time; their only plausible options for obtaining the protocadherins they needed would be scavenging by grave-robbing (very unsanitary and therefore dangerous, and inefficient) and non-fatally bleeding humans (very inefficient). A vampire who refused to hunt humans would probably be expelled from their family. But also (and related to the previous sentence), Magpie has never been taught human morality, and insofar as ancient vampires had something like morality it was like tribal/mafia morality taken to its ultimate logical conclusion: the family was everything, entities outside it weren't moral patients, and it was laudatory and often even mandatory to harm or kill outsiders if doing so would benefit the family. To refuse to hunt humans would be to betray the only concept of pro-sociality Magpie has been taught; his obligation to fulfill his social role in his family by, among other things, participating in food acquisition. Magpie's mother, grandmother, etc. recognize that killing humans is emotionally distressing for him and even feel a kind of compassion for him and attempt to offer him a kind of emotional support, but this support is mostly oriented toward trying to make him more OK with killing humans. Magpie finds killing humans unpleasant (they are so similar to his mother, grandmother, sisters, and grandfathers/great-uncles!), but the ecological context and culture he's embedded in is not conducive toward developing this discomfort into any sort of moral principle.

To say that killing humans is "emotionally distressing" for Magpie understates how horrific the experience is for him. The vampire brain habitually constructs much more vivid and tangible remembered and imagined experiences than the human brain. By human standards, Magpie has hyperempathy.

The most common unit of social organization in ancient vampire society was the matrilineal family. The usual procedure was for male offspring to be expelled from their natal family when they reached adulthood, around the age of 14, after which they would seek a family with a new "eligible bachelorette" alpha and try to join it as the alpha's mate. This was a dangerous period in a male vampire's life that they often did not survive; alone, they were easy prey for vampire families seeking to free up trophic space for themselves by killing and cannibalizing a rival, they had no-one to help them if they were wounded or got sick, and also vampire courtship was terrifying, with a high risk of the male suitor experiencing literally lethal rejection (on the flip side, male vampire courtship strategies included things like "kill the alpha's present mate, kill all her existing kids, that way the future kids you impregnate her with will have no competition," and even a courting vampire male might get lethally skittish in the presence of a stranger, so it was pretty terrifying for the females too). Magpie's family decided not to subject him to this experience. For one thing, his atypically high altruism is beneficial to them, and they did not like the idea of losing that asset and transferring it to a rival family. But also, they like him, were concerned about what might happen to him if he had to fend for himself (e.g. his atypically altruistic nature might lead to him being taken advantage of), and just didn't have the heart to exile him. He was therefore allowed to remain in his natal family as a non-reproductive helper. This means he'll probably never get to reproduce, but he'll be safer, and he can still ensure the proliferation of his own genes by helping the reproductive success of his mother, and potentially in the future his sisters and nieces. This is pretty similar to the "deal" many female vampires get, and he's...

... Settling for it in the absence of any clear better options, but not exactly content with it. As I said, in a sense Magpie is a profoundly tragic person; a brilliant, observant, sensitive, compassionate person born into a species of (similarly brilliant and observant) cold-hearted killers, condemned to a sort of profound emotional isolation, forced to prey on beings heartbreakingly similar to himself if he wants to survive. I think Magpie would love to trade places with a modern vampire; he'd be so much happier in some lab somewhere eating ethically produced synthetic protocadherin supplements and writing software or something, getting to work and socialize with a human prodigy or three, who I think he might relate well to (I think they might seem kind of like big intellectually precocious kids to him, in a good way; curious, friendly, playful, intelligent enough to challenge him intellectually, much more fun company than most of his own kind). It's one of history's tragic ironies that the PfizerPharm bio-engineers had only the most common vampire genotypes to work with, had no clue vampires like Magpie existed; vampires like him probably have fit much better into twenty-first century human society than the neurotypical type. Modern vampires are... kind of like if aliens re-created humans in the distant future and only had the most common human genotypes to work with so they ended up creating a version of humanity that's 100% neurotypical cisgender heterosexuals; we've re-created a simplified, impoverished, homogenized version of the original species.

Drowning (or maybe River, I haven't decided - which do you like better?) is Magpie's younger sister, the middle child. She's about five years younger than Magpie (ancient vampires usually had relatively wide birth spacings) - at present, she's about thirty. Drowning is Magpie's half-sister, being the daughter of Heron's regular mate at the time, and unlike him she is neurotypical by vampire standards. She's Heron's only adult vampire-neurotypical child, as her older brother is neurodivergent and her younger sister is half human; by vampire standards she's "the normal one." She's firmly next in line to be the next alpha (breeding female, kind of authority figure) when Heron hits menopause. Despite being the middle child, she has a kind of "big sister" attitude toward her siblings, perceiving that their difference is a kind of vulnerability and being protective of them; this is especially true of her relationship to Stargazer, who is mildly disabled by vampire standards.

She's called Drowning because when she was a young adult she once swam after a teenage human girl and killed her by holding her underwater. :(

Stargazer is a vampire-human hybrid Heron deliberately produced because Heron and her mother decided it would be useful to have a family member who was immune to the crucifix glitch and could pass for human. Stargazer is Heron's youngest adult child. To create Stargazer, Heron picked a nice healthy-looking young human male and spent a few months stalking him while slowly implanting a hypnotic command that, when the trigger stimulus was provided, made him see her as a girl in his community he had a crush on (similar technique to the one Valerie used to implant seizure cue in Echopraxia). From there it was a simple matter of catching him alone, showing herself, giving the trigger stimulus, arranging a meeting in a secluded spot, and... well, you can imagine the rest. That human was relatively lucky; he didn't realize what was happening and came away from the episode alive, intact, untraumatized, and with some subjectively pleasant false memories (though the discrepancies between his memory and that girl's might have led to some pretty awkward questions later); it could have been a lot worse.

Stargazer is human-looking enough to pass for human, albeit a funny-looking human (to humans, the vampire nose would never be fooled). She's very tall and she has a lot of funny-looking features by human standards (big jaw, big ears, etc.), but the only really blatantly inhuman thing about her appearance is her tapetum lucidum, which isn't noticeable in daylight.

Stargazer is very tall; she's the tallest person in her family! Ancient vampires and humans had a sort of tiger/lion/liger dynamic where the hybrid was bigger than either of the parent species. This was a consequence of ancient vampires being taller than humans but having serious problems with lack of genetic diversity, like cheetahs. This lack of genetic diversity, combined with being forced to prey on a very closely related species, meant that infectious disease was a grave problem for ancient vampires and they usually suffered high allostatic load. Modern vampires are bigger than ancient vampires because they don't have this problem. Because Stargarzer has a human father, her immune system and physiology presents a very different disease-resistance profile than most vampires, so she is much more resistant to infections (in fact, she is more resistant to infections and parasites than most humans because her hybrid physiology is so unusual; there are no species-specific parasites well-adapted to live in her). In other words, Stargazer has hybrid vigor. Stargazer's family has noticed that she is rarely sick, she recovers from illnesses quickly, and her injuries heal quickly (especially wounds). This hybrid vigor also meant more vigorous childhood growth.

Stargazer has a much higher metabolism than normal vampires, and she doesn't do the vampire thing where they mostly keep their blood in their core and only periodically refresh the outer tissues. Her skin is much warmer than a normal vampire's; her family think she's great for cuddling up to on cold nights. Because of her higher metabolism, she's much more active than a normal vampire. She has a much more human-like sleep cycle, sleeping 7-10 hours per day and being fully awake the rest of the time. She tends to find the normal ancient vampire lifestyle of spending most of their life in a cramped hiding place rather boring and get restless, although at least it's more pleasant for her than it probably would be for a human (how would you feel about spending most of your time inside a claustrophobic tomb-like hole, sharing it five other people who spend most of their time sleeping?).

Stargazer's higher metabolism and large size means that, by vampire standards, she has a very big appetite. However, Stargazer has a functional human copy of the protocadherin y gene, so she can make her own protocadherin y and does not need to eat humans. In her entire life, Stargazer has only eaten a few bites of human flesh, once or twice, out of curiosity. Her appetite imposes no serious burden on her family; vampires are very efficient predators of nonhuman animals.

Heron originally created Stargazer with the thought that, since a hybrid would be immune to the crucifix glitch and could pass for human, they'd be good at sneaking into human villages and towns and abducting children for the family to eat. They gave up on that idea the first time they took Stargazer with them on a human-hunting expedition and it was a disaster.

Like Magpie, Stargazer has hyperempathy. Magpie is able to be an effective human-killer despite that because, like a normal vampire, he has a brain that's relatively good at shutting down unwanted trains of thought, he has a pain response wired around the assumption that he can't count on help or mercy if sick or injured, and when he's in hunting mode he's in a state kind of like dothe where he's able to ignore even very severe pain if he has to. Stargazer's more human-like neurotype gives her a strong tendency toward perseveration, she doesn't have hunting/combat mode as a distinct physiological state the way a normal vampire does, and she has a pain response more like a human; adapted for a highly social species that can usually count on help if sick or injured. So...

... One of her relatives stabs a human in the stomach with a spear. Stargazer knows gut wounds hurt a lot (ancient vampires had a pretty good knowledge of human anatomy and pain response, partly as an extension of their own medical lore cause they were closely related to us, partly to be better able to kill us). Stargazer imagines what that would feel like and experiences mirror neuron activation and instantly collapses to the ground clutching her own stomach and screaming from the pain of a sympathetic imaginary wound. It really feels like she's being stabbed in the stomach herself! She might start doing a Midsommar empathy maiden sort of thing where she's mirroring the movements and screams of the victim - it's not an affectation or a mind game, she really is feeling their pain! Worse, she naturally perseverates on the distressing idea and stimulus, she can't stop imagining what it would feel like to be stabbed like that, so it doesn't stop when her family get her away from the situation. She spends hours, maybe even days lying near or in the family den, writhing on the ground and screaming from the pain of a completely imaginary wound! I think she might have been stuck in this state until she killed herself with adrenalin overload if her family hadn't eventually managed to basically help her CBT herself out of it. After that, her family gave up any idea of using her to hunt humans and she's completely excused from that; she's the only adult in the family who's never killed a human.

Normally, an adult ancient vampire who can't or won't hunt humans is in very grave danger of being expelled from their family or filicided and cannibalized by their own family (the selection pressure of this is probably part of the reasons vampires are supermajority sociopath-adjacent). Thankfully for Stargazer, she has another value to her family that makes her worth keeping around and alive to them. Because she can pass for human, she can be used to trade with humans. Theoretically, ancient vampires and agricultural humans are natural trading partners. The vampires are excellent at trapping and hunting wild nonhuman animals and being wired for hunting they even enjoy it (hunting was one of the closest things ancient vampire culture had to institutionalized fun!), and being so few in number and having low metabolisms they need little meat themselves, so it would be easy for them to produce a surplus of hunted meat, skins, etc. for trade. Agricultural humans have labor-intensive and resource-intensive manufactured goods like pottery, textiles, and bappir; these are by default "expensive" or unattainable in vampire society, because a vampire family-nation's entire material culture must be almost entirely portable by usually less than two dozen people or disposable, and because labor (or, more precisely, drudgery) is relatively expensive for vampires because there are so few of them and because they are very independent-minded and very lazy. Pottery is particularly valued by vampires; a good pot or two is useful for preparing soups, broths, and medicinal concoctions, and is compatible with the vampire lifestyle, though a bit awkward, heavy, and fragile; most vampire family-nations in the Hilly Flanks region of this era have bought or stolen a pot or two and treat them as valued heirloom possessions, like their meteorite iron axes and knives. A few of these bought or looted pots even pass along tenuous ghostly vampire long-distance trade routes, from family-nation to family-nation, reaching regions where the local humans are still mostly nomadic hunter-gatherers who don't make pottery (this behavior is an extension of an ancient practice dating back to the vampire happy time or maybe even earlier by which resources like obsidian and meteorite iron are spread around). If humans were as coldly selfish and rational as vampires, there would probably be a thriving inter-species trade between vampires and human agriculturalists! But humans are not so logical; humans fear and hate vampires too much to easily trade with them (even humans willing to trade with vampires are disincentivized from doing so because they are often regarded with hostility, as traitors, by others of their own kind who find out about it). In a way, this is a sort of meta-level rational irrationality; by acting this way, humans deny resources to their predators and weaken them. Stargazer's ability to convincingly pretend to be a human (to humans) and trade with humans is therefore useful to her family. Because of her, her family's consumption of grain (mostly in the form of hard dry breads like bappir, which keep relatively well and can be readily eaten) has increased dramatically in the last five or seven years or so; agricultural humans are often willing to trade venison or other wild game meats for grain at a ratio very calorically favorable to the vampires (the agriculturalists are getting a good deal too; their food system is good at producing cheap calories but not so good at producing protein), and agriculturalist-grown grain now makes up a substantial percentage of her family's calorie intake.

Human agriculturalist products acquired by Stargazer in this way include beer. Vampires sometimes accept beer as a kind of food, it has water and calories, but to a vampire getting drunk is a very disagreeable experience; vampires have a strong instinctive sense of a dangerous world and dislike being vulnerable, and drunkenness is a kind of vulnerability. But Stargazer sometimes finds beer therapeutic. She would say that sometimes the inside of her head is "noisy" and sometimes has "too much going on" and beer "quiets" it. She has human-like tendencies toward fantasy, mind-wandering, and self-reinforcing recursive thoughts, but combined with vampire-like sensory hyperawareness, HSAM-like memory, and memory and imagination so vivid it's often experienced like a series of parallel subjective sensory realities almost as detailed, vivid, and tangible as the input from her senses (vampires don't use the past tense because they don't experience the past tense, they don't remember the past, they relive it, remember?). The result is that she's prone to literal overthinking! For her, a cognition-impairing "downer" like alcohol is sometimes kind of like holding down the power button on a computer with too many running programs, shutting down some of her excessively proliferating trains of thought and clearing her head (her family's attempts at breaking her out of her hyperempathy loop episode may have involved getting her drunk, and they might have been at least contemplating trying a "hard force quit" of knocking her out by hitting her really hard on the head).

Stargazer's higher metabolism and more human-like neurotype means she has more human-like play impulses (broadly defined) and enrichment needs. Stargazer has some very strange habits by ancient vampire standards. She makes visual art, such as carving intricate, complex, repeating patterns into spear shafts and other tools. She also makes a kind of music, using instruments she has fashioned or improvised from odds and ends lying around along with her own voice. She's also adorned herself with a kind of scarification-based body art (more on that later).

Being more active and playful also means Stargazer has more abstract curiosity; the name her family gave her is a reference to one manifestation of it. She watches and studies the stars at night, sometimes seeking high places to better do so. Ancient vampires sometimes studied the stars, but only for utilitarian reasons such as to predict availability of seasonal plant foods or movement of game herds. Stargazer is curious about the cosmos. With her vampire-like eyes she can probably see much more in the night sky than a human can without a telescope, especially as I think she might be able to use her vampire-like sensorimotor system to do something like long-exposure photography; she might know about the moons of Jupiter and other celestial bodies humans won't discover for ten thousand years. Highly intelligent, she's studying the apparent movements of the stars and planets and may also have done things similar to Eratosthenes's experiment measuring the size of the Earth (relatively easy for her to do given the far-ranging nomadic lifestyle of ancient vampires and that she has excellent visual memory); she's trying to figure out the structure and nature of the cosmos...

One time Magpie saw her stargazing and asked if she was planning to eat a star, since in a normal vampire that sort of still posture and attentive observation of distant objects would usually be hunting behavior; vampires can have a sense of humor! The rest of her family are mostly uninterested in her stargazing (it registers to them as weird and pointless but apparently not doing her much harm, so just sort of something to shrug at), but Magpie often joins her in stargazing now. His higher empathy and higher altruism make him willing to show interest in her strange pointless unnecessary work because he can tell that it makes her happy when someone does that, but also, his neurodivergence makes him a little more imaginative and curious than a normal vampire. He'd never study the stars like this on his own initiative, but now that he's doing it anyway, he finds it kind of interesting. From Stargazer's end, it's nice to have somebody show interest in her weird human-like interests (being a person like her in ancient vampire society is rather lonely), and two eyes are better than one, and Magpie's fully vampire eyes may be at least a little bit sharper than hers. Magpie is similarly more-or-less Stargazer's only appreciative audience for her art; he will look at her carvings and listen to her music to make her happy, and will even sometimes make art of his own to show her because that makes her happy too, and he can appreciate her art a little and take a little joy in making art in a way his neurotypical relatives never would.

Stargazer and Magpie are close. They have somewhat similar neurodivergences. They aren't exactly alike; Magpie is neurodivergent but he's still fully vampire, with a vampire metabolism and vampire feelings, instincts, and preferences regarding stuff like preferred activity level. Still, Magpie and Stargazer have some very significant similar personality traits and experiences (Stargazer also has much higher empathy and altruism than a normal vampire), and a shared sense of difference from their neurotypical relatives, so they have a strong bond. I think they'd also be close because... Drowning has a close older sister sort of relationship to Stargazer now, but their relationship did not get off to a great start. By vampire standards, Stargazer is slow, spastic, and probably has other impairments too; this activates the circuits in Drowning's brain that identify vulnerable prey, with the result that child Drowning (called something else back then) saw Stargazer as a good target for predation practice/sadistic play. During those years Magpie spent a lot of time hovering around Stargazer (also called something else back then), protecting her from the casual cruelty of her older sister. Stargazer is half human, and humans feel gratitude to those who help and protect them. Stargazer is half vampire, and vampires take notes on who helps them and who harms them and remember.

Squickly by human standards, as adults Stargazer, Drowning, and Magpie are a polycule as well as siblings. This was a common ancient ancient vampire behavior; ancient vampires knew about the dangers of inbreeding, but they had little inhibition against non-reproductive incest, and since vampires can smell how close a female is to ovulation birth control was easy for them. Stargazer has a somewhat atypical sexuality by vampire standards. Normal vampire sexuality is very tied to sensory and social cues. Stargazer has a human-like tendency toward daydreaming, fantasy, and fantasy-arousal feedback loops. One of Stargazer's odd activities (as her family thinks of it) is masturbation; autoerotic activity is very rare in vampires. They see it as of a piece with her uselessly embellishing tools and uselessly staring into the sky at night and see all these things as connected to her higher metabolism, and they're not wrong!

With the assistance of her siblings, Stargazer has adorned herself with a kind of scarification body art. Stargazer gets Drowning and Magpie to use their sharp teeth to carve patterns into her skin, and maybe then rubs pigments into the wounds to make crude tattoos of a sort. When they do this her siblings get to lick up her blood, which has a little protocadherins in it and therefore is tasty for them, which is nice for them. It wouldn't be wrong to see this as a kind of kinky intimacy.

Most of Stargazer's fantasies are non-sexual; most of Stargazer's fantasies are artistic and abstract. Like many neurodivergent people, Stargazer tends to retreat into her own head, into an imaginary world that is friendlier and more sensible to her than the real one. She has a human-like tendency to daydream and fantasize, combined with a vampire-like ability to construct imaginary and remembered sensory experiences almost as detailed and tangible as the real one. She essentially has a sort of personal Star Trek holodeck in her head that she carries with her at all times, and she creates most of her art in there! Stargazer's fantasies are mostly visual/sensory rather than narrative; she occupies much of her time and mental energy creating imaginary pictures, soundscapes, and smellscapes. What she does blurs the line between imagination and art, as to her these imaginary sensory worlds are almost as detailed and tangible as the real world; she can create an imaginary object that looks and feels to her like a real object, she can imagine rotating it in her hands and it feels like touching a real physical thing, etc.; to her the difference between fantasy and reality is more intellectual than tangible; she knows her creations aren't real because she knows she created them with her thoughts. Some of her creations are representational, e.g. of animals and landscapes, but most of them are highly abstract, often representations of mathematical patterns. In this her behavior is an outgrowth of a common vampire stimming behavior (see: her grandmother's spiral doodles), but her version is much more elaborate and sustained. In a sense, Stargazer's physical artworks are simultaneously her most ambitious and some of her least ambitious creations. In her imagination, Stargazer is a goddess, able to create immense and intricate structures at will; she need merely think it and an impossible sculpture as high as a mountain rises on the horizon or impossible complex tetrahedrons encase the sun and moon or the horizon folds and the distant sea becomes the sky. In the real world, she is limited by physical resources, her own physical strength, and the limitations of physical objects.

A normal vampire could theoretically use their imagination this way too, but normal vampires have little motivation to use their imaginations this way. The closest normal vampire equivalent to human fantasy is an expression of grief; a grieving vampire will sometimes become withdrawn and spacey as they retreat into their memories to spend time in the company of their lost loved one there. It is, in a sense, one of history's tragic ironies; vampires evolved to have incredibly vivid imaginations but mostly use them only pragmatically, while humans evolved to take great joy in imagination and fantasies and paracosms but can construct only comparatively minimalistic wire-frame imaginary worlds. In this, Stargazer's neurotype is in a sense a rare and precious blessing. Stargazer is also in a sense unusually blessed in having vampire-like senses and a human-like sense of beauty.

Stargazer will sometimes describe one of her imaginary creations to Magpie, so he can make a version of it in his own mind. In this way, she is able to share some of her otherwise invisible internal creative life with someone.

Some of the novelties and challenges Stargazer presented for her family while she was growing up and some of the challenges she faced as a child with human-like emotional needs being raised by vampires:

Vampires have a shorter childhood than humans but their language acquisition is slower. Stargazer mostly matured more slowly than a vampire child, but by vampire standards she was a precocious talker. I think she'd have been a slow talker by human standards, but she started talking earlier than a vampire child usually would, and at a lower level of general brain development.

An exhausting hyperactive hellion when she was little! Vampire children are more active than vampire adults and do play, but they're still kind of low energy and sleep a lot compared to human children, they have a strong instinct to cling to and remain close to their mother or other parental figures, and they quickly develop an intuitive sense of a dangerous world that makes them usually stay close to their parental figures (though I think they'd love hide and seek and pursuit games, so they might indulge in that when they feel safe). Little Stargazer had a higher metabolism, more human-like playfulness, and less of an intuitive sense of a dangerous world, so she was more energetic than a normal vampire child and more prone to wandering away. This was mixed with a Magpie-like disinterest in sadistic play, relative disinterest in predation practice, and discomfort when her parents were teaching her to hunt, trap, and fish (I think her hyperempathy might give her problems even when hunting nonhuman animals like deer).

Stargazer's rearing would have been a special challenge to her family because compared to a vampire child Stargazer had higher demands for socialization, enrichment, affection, touch, and positive reinforcement. Vampires by default spend most of their lives in a kind of very shallow open-eye sleep, and they're a lot more touch-averse than humans, and then of course there's the whole sociopathy thing. Imagine a child with the activity level, sleep cycle, and emotional needs of a human toddler being raised by people like that! Thankfully, Stargazer's parental figures were aware of this and wanted her to grow up into an adult who would like them (as that way she would be more willing to cooperate with them), and even vampire parents, in their own way, tend to like their children and want what is best for them, so they tried to adjust their parenting style accordingly, to parent her more like human parents would. In this she was much luckier than modern vampires raised by humans, as her parental figures actually knew approximately how human parenting works; they had opportunities to observe human parents interacting with their children, and ancient vampires were attentive students of human behavior, with a large body of cultural lore about it (in order to more effectively and more sustainably predate on humans). So, considering that she was raised by sociopath-adjacent people-eating monsters, Stargazer's childhood was surprisingly OK and untraumatic; her terrifying people-eating mother, grandmother, and grandfathers/great-uncles treated her a lot better than a lot of human parents treat their children, even by human standards. However, I think it might be difficult for vampire parents to avoid inflicting some understimulation and emotional neglect on a child with human-like emotional needs, even if they were making a real serious effort to not do that. Little Stargazer's favorite elder was Magpie (who'd have been nine or ten when she was born - that's most of the way to adulthood for vampires, but still prepubescent!), who was more patient and attentive to her because of his higher altruism and empathy and had more genuine sympathy with her because of his higher empathy.

As a hybrid, Stargazer is immune to the crucifix glitch. When her grandmother first (carefully!) showed her a cross-shaped talisman taken from a human victim at the seizure-inducing degree of visual arc, Stargazer's reaction was a small involuntary spasm, a giggle, and her language's version of the words "It tickles!" Stargazer soon discovered that the little pair of sticks terrified Drowning, and promptly saw the opportunity to turn the tables on her childhood tormentor and had a lot of fun chasing Drowning around with it, marveling at how her older sister cringed and fled from a harmless pair of sticks. Her grandmother eventually dissuaded Stargazer from this behavior by asking if she was curious what a crucifix glitch seizure looked like and, on being given an affirmative answer, offered to let her induce one on her by holding the cross up close to her face (I'm going with an interpretation that crucifix glitch seizures are usually not fatal in themselves, the big danger to the vampire is they leave it helpless in the presence of its enemies). This wouldn't have worked on a neurotypical vampire child, but Stargazer has much more affective empathy than a neurotypical vampire, and seeing grandma contorting around like a possessed person in an Exorcist knock-off while exploding from both ends with shit, piss, and vomit before passing out was enough to make her decide she'd really rather not inflict that on anyone again. Heron's mother is very emotionally intelligent by vampire standards!

There might have been a mildly scary experience the first time Stargazer cried as an older child, past the age at which weeping normally becomes physically impossible for vampires. She might have been worried that something was wrong with her eyes, and her family might have been like "Is this a neotenous/human distress response or an eye injury or irritation or infection? Can't tell, guess we'll just have to wait for her to be less sad and see if her eyes clear up then!" An epidemiologically vulnerable species with low genetic diversity, ancient vampires were very afraid of infections!

Similarly, there was a bit of a Carrie moment when Stargazer reached her menarche; being closely related to humans, vampire females have a menstrual cycle, but they don't bleed like that; it was a little alarming for her until her family reassured her that, no, that's... probably normal for you? Human females do that! It was also a bit alarming because it made her smell a little like a wounded human, enough to arouse vampire predatory impulses; her family have the self-control to not attack her, but there's a kind of disturbing period every month when her mother and sister are very obviously fighting down the impulse to do that (the selection pressure this represents probably has a lot to do with why vampire females don't bleed like that).

[bloededhoine]

world building cause twn doesn't part 8: nonhumans

this is easily the geekiest part of the series. and it's a Very geeky series. because sapkowski's worldbuilding is waaay more extensive than i have the time, ability, or desire to convey, i'm sticking with races both sentient and important

colour code cause i fucking love colour codes - already happened/introduced, probably s2, important background info, stuff that might be in the prequel, extras

series masterpost

dopplers

dopplers, also known as vexlings, shifters, mimics, doubles, imitators, or pavrats, are a nonhuman race that can take on the appearance of nearly anyone they encounter

before mass migrations of humans, dopplers primarily inhabited the forests and plateaus around the city of novigrad, where they would transform into wolves and pack animals to hunt

their abilities are pretty impressive, dopplers can not only mimic appearance but also voice, personality, skills, behaviours, and knowledge. dopplers can even turn parts of their bodies into pieces of clothing or other objects

however, there are some limitations

dopplers can't transform into someone/thing with dramatically more mass than they have, are burned by silver, and can't drop anything they created (if they did it would kind of turn into a fleshy goop)

we've already met a doppler in twn, this sexy sexy man

BUT

it is important to note that this doppler is a huge deviation from sapkowski's lore. dopplers are pretty much always exceptionally kind and gentle. a lot of times they use their abilities to appear threatening (big teeth, sharp claws etc) because they really don't want to hurt anyone.

when dopplers aren't mimicking another form, they aren't exactly pretty. they're bald, short, have beady yellow eyes, and kinda look like they're made from soft clay

here's the hexer doppler

the most notable doppler is dudu biberveldt, who i mentioned as the halfling dainty biberveldt's fake cousin. dudu's actual name is tellico lunngrevink letorte, but dainty decided to help dudu live in novigrad by adopting him as his fake cousin.

dragons

dragons are fucking awesome. you know it, i know it, and zerrikanians know it. witcher dragons are especially awesome

they are the only being, other than cats, that can naturally harness and absorb the force of chaos

there are multiple subtypes, but most dragons fall into one of four: black dragons, green dragons, red dragons, and white dragons.

black dragons are the largest, and primarily live in swamps and wetlands where they bathe in mud. they have extremely hard scales and don't breathe fire, but an acid that causes burns similar to those from mustard gas.

green dragons (right there) are the most prominent yet smallest species of dragon, mainly living in forested areas and breathe highly flammable chlorine gas.

red dragons mainly live in hills and mountain caves and can breathe fire hot enough to melt metal

white dragons are one of the rarest species and live in the far north, and can breathe frost

however, if you watched the witcher netflix as i assume you did, you may remember golden dragons. these dragons are so rare and exceptional that they are not usually included with other species. they breathe steam and fire and can shapeshift into any living being

all dragons communicate through telepathy, although golden dragons can speak when they are in the form of a species that can speak

humans are pretty divided on the topic of dragons, with zerrikanians worshiping them and nordlings hating them.

because they are incredibly intelligent and emotional, witchers (generally) refuse to hunt them

borkh three jackdaws, also known as villentrenmerth, is the only golden dragon we know. there he is right there.

ASSASSINS OF KINGS SPOILERS NEXT TWO BULLET POINTS

the other dragon from twn was a green dragon named myrgtabrakke, borkh's mate. their daughter is named saesenthessis, also known as saskia the dragonslayer (an alias she took to explain her extensive knowledge of dragons) and the virgin of aedirn

because saskia is part golden dragon, she can shapeshift, although is much more limited than her father. she can basically only be a human looking woman with blonde hair or a huge dragon.

cut because this part is getting REALLY long

godlings

ah godlings. i love them so much. they're adorable and precious. they usually look somewhat like a human child, but with blue skin and large amber or green eyes. they don't wear much clothes, their focus is in accessories like jewelry, flowers, or tattoos

that's johnny, a holding in wild hunt.

godlings are incredibly rare, and are easily confused with young goblins. they primarily live in swamps near drowners, but aren't afraid of them.

they're quite mischievous but kind hearted, many have happy go lucky personalities and love just having fun. i adore godlings. i've said it once and i'll say it again.

higher vampires

definitely the most important group on this list, higher vampires are incredibly powerful and intelligent. they can shapeshift within certain limits, generally either looking like a human or a large terrifying bat. they also have some telepathic abilities - they can basically make you fall asleep and forget stuff

scary wooo

higher vampires do not need to drink blood to survive. some don't drink blood at all. when they do, it's like a human drinking alcohol. on full moons, groups of higher vampires go out partying and get white girl wasted

although all higher vampires have the same basic abilities, each individual has one skill they are exceptional in.

most find humans harmless but annoying, like mosquitos. they don't really like interacting with humans, which works out pretty well as higher vampires can blend in very well, even a witcher's medallion can't detect one

higher vampires also have three distinct cultures, the tdet in the far east, the ammurun across the great sea, and the gharasham in the northern realms

they are really really hard (or impossible, depending on canon) to kill. based on the books, you basically need to disintegrate them. based on the games, only higher vampires can kill other higher vampires, but humans can get close

we only meet one in the books, emiel regis rohellec terzieff-godefroy. he goes by regis for short. regis was an "alcoholic" in his youth, and has since abstained from blood or any other substance. he's incredibly old, by the end of twn season 1 he'd be 425 years old. as for regis' "special ability", he's just kind. he's an incredibly gentle and loving person. that's it. i love him.

merpeople

probably one you're already familiar with! merpeople are intelligent humanoids that inhabit the great sea. mermaids are notably gorgeous, having green hair and tails, and their scales are prized alchemy ingredients

sapkowski's mermaids can breathe above water, but the sun burns their skin so they don't stay at the surface for very long.

merpeople are incredibly powerful, they can summon krakens and the sea-dragon like race of vodyanoy respect their authority

they use their own language that's quite similar to hen llinge, but more lyrical sounding.

nymphs

nymphs are a humanoid race primarily based around nature. they have 5 subspecies, dryads (including hamadryads), leimoniad, naiad, nereid, and oread.

dryads, called eerie wives by humans and aen woedbeanna by elves, are the most prevalent, primarily living in the brokilon forest. some have human skin with olive undertones, but others are green. they usually have dark brown or green hair which is usually worn in dreadlocks (breaking my promise of not being overtly and annoyingly political in this series yet again - the dryads, especially in the netflix adaptation, are classic magical n*gress stereotypes. but more on that later.)

this is a lore-accurate one that i LOVE

dryads have incredibly strong connections with nature and magic, although it is really rare for a dryad to be a source. dryads are able to draw energy from trees, but rarely do because they don't want to hurt the trees. support dryads and take the bus.

all dryads are women. all of them. they make babies by basically luring men into the forest and doing the adult hokey pokey. also why dryads aren't really a fan of witchers, who don't make the baby butter (i am so sorry)

however, dryads can also turn a girl of another race into one of their own through the use of magic. the water of brokilon has some mutating quality that makes young girls forget their human past and physically turn into dryads, although it is less effective as the girls are older. the dryads tried to do this to ciri, but given that she's a source, nothing happened. generally, this process is done to girls who wander into brokilon, but some dryads will abduct peasants from outside the forest if they need more dryads.

here's twn dryads... yikes

this is where i think the whole racism thing becomes a bit too obvious. "uncivilized" women who live in the forest and have dreadlocks and abduct young girls from "civilized" areas?? in twn they leaned even further into this, having one of the two black women they cast be a dryad and replacing the usual bows and arrows with spears, a less sophisticated weapon. again, this series is about the lore, not the political implications of it, but it is important to keep in mind

dryads are excellent at archery, shooting anyone who comes within 80 metres of the forest. through their connection with nature, they have highly advanced medicine and use glowing fungi as a source of light.

hamadryads are a specific type of dryad that is incredibly connected with her tree. because of this connection they have exceptionally strong magical and healing capabilities, but will also go insane and die if their tree dies.

like merpeople, dryads use a more melodic dialect of hen llinge

leimoniads are a type of nymph that lived exclusively in meadows, but are practically extinct due to wars with humans

naiads, also called rusalki, are nymphs that live in lakes and rivers, although a few live with the dryads in brokilon. naiads are very similar to dryads, although they tend to have very light skin with very dark hair, webbed hands, and can dry out on land

naiads rarely speak common, live in small groups, and have highly developed telepathic abilities

nereids are nymphs that inhabit the great sea, often living closely with merpeople. they usually have blueish skin with either blue or white hair and have some telepathic abilities, though not to the extent of naiads.

oreads are nymphs of the mountains, which, like leimoniads, are nearly extinct due to human conquests.

succubi/incubi

succubi (female) and incubi (male) are creatures which look like incredibly attractive humans but with horns and goat legs. they seduce humans, first in dreams and then physically, using their prey's energy to sustain themselves, often to the point of the human's exhaustion or death

our man eskel has a soft spot for them...

sylvans

sylvans, another race we already met, are exceptionally rare. like, practically extinct. they live mainly in the woodlands of the northern realms and have goat-like faces with yellow eyes, horns, cloven hooves, and tails

my man torque is quite possibly one of the last sylvans on the continent

they are distantly related to elves, and the two races tend to coexist quite well

generally quite mischievous and merry, highly enjoying pranks and parties. they can use simple spells and are mainly herbivores

sylvans live around 100 years and are highly sought after by dryads for their... ahem... reproductive capabilities

unicorns

yep, we got unicorns! i fucking love unicorns and still kinda think they're real. camels are real and those lumpy fuckers are way weirder than a horse with a spike on its head.

anyways

unicorns are highly advanced beings, they can travel between worlds and use telepathy. they don't really like the "less advanced" races, mostly staying around to observe them. they have distinct societies led by a council of elders and tend to avoid evil

these unicorns are badasses

unicorns strongly despise the use of the force but encourage the power of destiny. in the context of pavetta's betrothal feast, a unicorn would not be happy with pavetta's little source hurricane thing, but would encourage geralt to follow the law of surprise

in of the witcher, unicorns are very important because of their world-hopping capabilities. the aen elle, unfortunately, realized this and began enslaving unicorns to help them plunder other worlds. this turned into a massive conflict between the unicorns and elves.

[whump-cravings]

Bird in a Ditch

saw a prompt about someone being dumped on the side of the road and an idea started to form. I’ve also wanted to try a BBU type thing, so here it iiiiiis

Content Warnings: BBU, pet whump, winged whump, nonhuman whump, fantastic racism referenced, extreme disassociation, past torture implied, tbh this piece is pretty mild

Lemon shook xir head to try and clear fatigue, keeping xir eyes on the road as xe leaned forward to manually roll the window down. Cool air blasted xim in the face and behind xir neck, sending refreshing shivers down xir spine.

Something glowed gold on the road and xe jerked the wheel, sliding into the other lane. "Feathers?" xe said, throwing xir gaze to catch another glimpse of the obstacle, already pulling over.

A downed barn owl? xe wondered, flicking the hazards on. Getting xir phone out, xe searched the cabin for a blanket or something to wrap the little dude in. If it wasn't dead, anyways. I better hurry. Another car could come by at any time.

"Probably already dead but just in case—" Lemon muttered to xirself, trying to forestall disappointment before it began. Xe surfaced with a canvas tarp and hustled out into the night, boots hitting asphalt. Xe was a little ways away from the bird...

As the phone's flashlight caught feathers again, Lemon frowned. That looked a lot bigger than an owl. Maybe an eagle, or—

Maybe a whole goddamn person? Xe stopped at the side of the ditch, looking down in shock at the humanoid body connected to the wings. Xe'd never seen any birdfolk up close. They were rare in this part of the world, where everybody was pretty damn racist.

That was neither here or there. Lemon shook xir head, dropping the canvas and propping the phone and its light up before carefully finding the top of the person’s outstretched wing and trying to gently-gently-gently fold it towards their body.

How did I mistake them for an owl? These are huge! Xe felt soft clicking underneath hands through the feathers and bone. Now up close, the feathers didn't seem to shine with the golden luster Lemon had seen before, but were instead dull and dirty.

"Sorry, sorry," Lemon murmured, though the person hadn't stirred. Concern buzzed in the back of xir head as xe stepped around to the face-down body.

Lemon crouched, slipping a hand down the side of neck and searched for a pulse. Still warm—there. Xe let out a sigh of relief at the rhythm beneath xir fingers. "Didn't want to have to report a dead body tonight," xe chuckled.

Xe moved xir hand to the bird person's shoulder, gently shaking. No reaction. "Of course, you wouldn't be lying in a ditch if you could wake up," Lemon muttered, straightening. Xir gaze traveled down, and xe picked up the phone to get a better look.

The bird person was wearing only boxers, so there was a lot to see. Mostly, they were dirty. And the wings looked terrible. Whole patches of feathers were missing, and the ones that remained—Lemon suspected those weren't supposed to look so bedraggled. Xe shook xir head, sympathy turning in xir gut. Poor thing. Had they been mugged and then dumped, or maybe crash landed here?

The situation presented a problem. It’s one thing to bring home an animal, xe thought to xirself. This is a whole person. If they were awake, Lemon would have given them a ride to wherever they needed to go and the little cash xe had on xirself.

Xir mother's voice rattled in the back of xir head. It wasn’t as dangerous for Lemon to pick up people off the side of the road as for xir sister, but their mother always had some new story about somebody being shot and having their car stolen when they mentioned picking somebody up.

Xe waffled. I could wait until they wake up... Assuming they didn’t die of exposure, and assuming xe didn’t want any sleep tonight. Xe glanced around at the dark road, then back down at the stranger. If they were unconscious like this and didn’t smell of alcohol, they probably weren’t that dangerous. And somebody who felt less neutral about birdfolk might come along to finish them off.

Lemon sighed, already knowing xe couldn’t leave them here and trying to figure out how to get them over and into to the truck. Maybe xe could carry them there, but the wings would probably drag. Xe tried imagining walking backwards while carrying them from the front. Could xe lift them high enough? Probably not.

"Tch." That wouldn't do. After a moment's consideration, xe looked back at the canvas.

It took some pulling and maneuvering, but soon Lemon was pulling the bird person across the road on top of the canvas. Xir sweatshirt was tucked underneath their head, keeping them safe from rocks.

"Expected you to be a lot heavier, honestly," Lemon said. Maybe the weight was normal for adult birdfolk.

It would have been way more comfortable for them, Lemon was sure, to be in the cabin, but xe wasn’t sure xe could manage that without damaging their wings further. So, xe carefully lifted them by the front and laid them face down in the truck bed. It was not graceful and xe was a little relieved they weren’t awake for it. Xe tucked the sweatshirt back under the person's head.

"Home is just a few minutes away," xe promised as xe tried folding up their wings, worried about the wind catching them or about hypothermia setting in. Xe unfurled the canvas with a shake, then draped it over the bird person's body and wings to block the wind, securing the cloth at the corners with bungee cords.

Looks like I'm trying to hide a dead body, Lemon thought when xe put the tailgate up. "Hang in there, buddy."

Lemon would have liked to speed home, but the bed's occupant had xem driving far more carefully than normal, particularly around corners. When xe got to the apartment, xe pulled into xir spot in reverse. It was a much shorter distance to carry somebody from the truck bed to the door, so Lemon did—xe wasn’t entirely sure xe could get them through the door otherwise. It was already a hassle to get them past one door, the next, and then settle them on the floor of the small bathroom against the wall.

Xe closed and locked the front door, then flicked lights on. As xe stepped back into the bathroom, careful to avoid any errant limbs, xe started.

The bird person's eyes were open.

"Hey, you're awake," Lemon exclaimed.

But the person didn't seem to hear Lemon--they hardly seemed aware of their surroundings at all, staring straight forward. Shit, had they been awake the entire time and Lemon just hadn’t noticed? How awkward that would be! And...

Xir realized their face was covered in scars. Unable to help xirself, xir eyes were drawn down. Mottled bruising covered their ribs, long-healed scars past that and the dirt. Same with their legs. What had happened to them? Was this just the result of being birdfolk here?

Xe took a steadying breath, crouching down. "Hey, can you hear me? Can you look at me?"

Finally, the tiniest response. Topaz eyes slid fractionally towards Lemon's center of mass, but nothing else. Their expression and muscles remained listless.

"Good, that's—no no no, come on, don't do that," Lemon cajoled in gentle frustration as the bird person closed their eyes. What am I supposed to do with this? Xe scrubbed xir tired face with one hand. What were the symptoms of a concussion?

"Let me get you something to drink," xe said. "And maybe eat?"

No response. The only sign they were still alive was the gentle rise and fall of their chest.

Lemon wearily got back to xir feet, ambling into the kitchen for a glass of water and some—did bird people eat normal food? They looked plenty human. But what if they were allergic to stuff? Xe grabbed a small variety of snacks—string cheese and pepperoni from the fridge and a little baggy of trail mix. Bundling the food into a paper towel in one hand and holding the glass of water in the other, xe returned to the bathroom.

"Here we go," Lemon said as xe returned, kneeling at arm's length to set down the array of food. Xe set the cup of water closer still. "Little bit of food, little bit of water."

Their eyes were open again, looking down at Lemon's offerings. Maybe. It was hard to tell for sure, since they seemed unfocused. They made no movement to accept.

"Does your head hurt?" Lemon tried. "If you have a concussion, we should..." Xe trailed off. I don't have money for an emergency doctor visit. "Have you lie down, probably."

It's like talking to a rock. "I'll give you some space."

Getting back to xir feet, Lemon went back into the kitchen and washed xir hands. Xe probably should have done that earlier, but if they haven’t died of dirt already, they probably won't from a little on their pepperoni.

"Might as well prep a meal," xe mumbled, since xe couldn’t sleep until xir guest was settled. Xe took a moment to draw up some videos online about birdfolk and birds in general, then got to work with the food.

About twenty minutes later, everything was assembled in the pressure cooker. Lemon hadn't heard anything from the direction of the bathroom. Anxious, xe checked on xir guest.

I'm going to have someone die on my floor of starvation and atrophy, Lemon thought. The bird person was in the same exact position xe’d left them. Their tourmaline-brown gaze still rested on the food and water.

Lemon chided xirself. They could be a paraplegic for all xe knew. Maybe their eyes were all they were able to move. It would explain their weight.

This thought in mind, xe crouched a little closer to them. "Hey," xe said. "Can you blink twice if you understand me?"

Their eyes slowly rolled back up to Lemon's chest. Noticeably, they didn't blink.

Lemon laced xir fingers together and pulled them apart, repeating the motion a few times while they thought. Could be he was a paraplegic foreigner? Hells.

Reaching out slowly, Lemon tapped their hand, before picking it up and turning it over. Xe froze.

On their wrist was a black barcode.

After staring for far too long, Lemon let out a shaky, "O-oh."

I'm going to have someone's slave die on my floor. Xir anger towards the Box Boy industry stirred—a regular feeling. The legalized trafficking wasn’t something xe could do much about, other small donations here and there to liberation and activist groups.

Who had dumped this poor bird on the side of the road? Where was the owner? Lemon's eyes went to their patchy wings.

"Can't be sure they didn't do this to you," xe said softly, jaw clenching at the idea of it. They could have very well escaped and ended up in that ditch on their own, just to get away from the abuse written on their body. It matched up with the stories Lemon had heard and read about how owners fucked their slaves over.

Fuck, and it wasn't even like this man was nondescript. Birdfolk were rare enough, a Pet bird was sure to be noticed in a crowd. Stealing a Pet was grand larceny, and Lemon didn’t want to think about how much an exotic specimen might go for.

Calm down. So far all you've done is provide aid. That's not theft.

But Lemon's hands shook as xe held onto the bird person's, because xe knew xe couldn't—

That's a problem for Future Lemon, xe decided, taking calming breaths. There were groups xe could contact, but not tonight. Tonight, this poor bird needed a safe and calm place to recuperate. Lemon could provide that.

[ibtk]

Book Review: THE ANIMALS IN THAT COUNTRY by Laura Jean McKay (2020)

(Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review through Edelweiss and Library Thing's Early Reviewers program. Content warning for violence, including that against animals. Caution: this review contains a spoiler in the form of an excerpt.)

'Well, I’ve got a secret for you, Miss Kimberly Russo.' She digs her sharp little nails into my skin. ‘What is it?’ ‘This flu means people can talk to animals.’ Her head shoots up. ‘I want the flu, Granny. Don’t you?’ ‘Grown-ups don’t wish they had diseases, and neither should you.’ ‘But don’t you?’ Outside, Wallamina and Princess Pie are nose and beak to the sliding door, trying to press their way through. Eyes shining. ‘Course I bloody do.’

I can see the wild in her. She looks and acts like any dog. Plays, wags, stares into my eyes with her baby browns; does chasey, catch, begs for biscuits. Then the dusk comes and she lifts her neck and howls the saddest song in all the world, and there’s that wild. Dingo, owl, night thing — that sound is a warning. Loneliest you’ll hear. Wraps around your face, your sleep, your dreams. She’s saying: ‘Hey, hey. There’s something coming.’ The rangers here are always telling me, don’t talk like that. They say how dingoes are just establishing territory, checking on their pack. Dingo admin. But stand on the hot road that runs from the gift shop to the enclosures, and listen to the dingo in her cage call out to the packs on the other side of the fence. Tell me that’s not special. Tell me she doesn’t know something about the world that you and me haven’t ever thought of.

Jean Bennett isn't you're typical grandma - unless you're picturing Gemma Teller Morrow, that is. Jean drinks, smokes, swears, and sleeps around, usually all at the same time, and occasionally with her gay and committed coworker, Andy. She's got a tiger tattooed on her boob, and a dingo named Sue imprinted on her heart.

A lowly guide who dreams of becoming a ranger, Jean works at an Australian wildlife park, run by her son's ex-girlfriend Angela and owned by Angela's father. Jean and her husband Graham landed there years ago, after bouncing around the world for a while. Eventually Graham left Jean to shack up with another woman; their only child, Lee, jumped ship too, but not before hooking up with - and impregnating - Angela. Now Ange mostly keeps Jean around for the free child care (and maybe also because Ange feels sorry for her).

As for Jean, she stays stuck in this weird, awkward morass for her granddaughter Kimberley - one of the few people she can tolerate, let alone love. Jean prefers animals of the nonhuman variety, and the Park's residents/captives are her found family. She has a special place in her cockles for Sue, a dingo mix who she helped rescue as a wee little pup.

Jean's precarious life is already teetering on the edge of chaos when THE FLU arrives - first in southern Australia, then at the Park's gates, thanks to none other than an infected Lee, as charming as he is irresponsible.

Zoanthropathy (from Greek: zóo, “animal”, anthroponis, “human”, pathy, “disorder”), aka zooflu, otherwise known as "the talking animal disease," allow humans to understand and communicate with other animals:

'The strain known as zoanthropathy affects cognition in humans, and it is believed that enhanced communication between humans and nonhuman animals is possible. Zoanthropathy is hosted and spread by humans. [...] The disease is very high in morbidity and very low in mortality. Infected humans appear able to communicate (encode) and translate (decode) previously unrecognisable non-verbal communications via major senses such as sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound with nonhuman animals.'

When Lee runs off with Kimberley - to commune with the whales on the southern coast - Jean embarks on a cross-country road trip to find them. Riding shotgun is Sue, whose keen nose points the way to Tomorrow (Tomorrow being Sue's conceptualization of Kimberley. Jean is Yesterday, and Lee is Never There. Scathing, yet accurate.)

As with most potentially animal-friendly tales, I was equally nervous and excited to dive into THE ANIMALS IN THAT COUNTRY. As it is, the book both thrilled and disappointed me; I almost feel like it deserves two separate ratings, one for the idea and actualization of the dystopian zooflu future - which is breathtaking - and another for the human-centered plot that propels the audience's journey into this world - which is decidedly less so.

Let's start with the zooflu. It seems like it would be awesome to be able to talk to animals, right? Think again. I mean, really turn the idea over in your head, sit with the superpower, and try to envision what this might entail. Given that most of the nonhumans we encounter on the daily are exploited, oppressed, or otherwise negatively impacted by humans -

be it the 25 million farmed animals we create, torture, and kill for food every year in the US alone; the "wildlife" (read: free-living animals) we displace, starve, and kill through habitat loss; the dogs and cats we buy, neglect, and then abandon at shelters; or the animals we unintentionally hit with our cars (or the bugs we trod on just walking down the street); etc. x infinity

- we are weapons of mass destruction. To most of our nonhuman kin (and sometimes our fellow humans, too). Instead of words of wisdom and messages of hope, we'd be more likely to hear cries of terror. Confusion. Pain and agony. Hellfire, everywhere. Created and fueled by us and our own.

Heck, I'm not even sure it would be beneficial to always know exactly what our beloved, nonhuman family members are thinking. I have a fifteen-year-old dog named Finn who's going deaf and blind and battling dementia. More often than not, I suspect that being privy to his innermost thoughts would freak me the fuck out. Not to mention break my damn heart.

And then there's the mode of communication: not just just verbal, as we're used to, but all-encompassing: "sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound." Think pheromones, sound waves, scratches and ticks. The beating of countless tiny wings, all bombarding your brain and trying to tell you something. That kind of thing, coming at you uninvited and from all directions, is apt to drive a person mad. And it does, as evidenced by zooflu sufferers who stuff their orifices with whatever's handy to block incoming stimuli - or, at the more extreme end, the pseudo-religious trepanners who invite strangers to drill holes in their skulls in a misguided attempt to relieve the pressure.

Talking to animals sounds like the stuff of dreams - but in McKay's hands, it's a nightmare.

And a pretty trippy one, at that: fittingly, the incoming messages that Jean's left to decode aren't quite what you'd call straightforward. There's a lot of translation required, and Google hasn't yet caught up:

I’m reading her body like some language I barely remember from a high school textbook. Bonjour madame, connaissez-vous le chemin de la gare? Let’s go to the station. Or, where the hell is the supermarket? I can parrot the words, but the meaning is in scraps.

Copies of this book should be sold with a sheet of acid, or maybe some edibles. I kid, but also not.

If, like me, you assumed that increased understanding and compassion would surely spring forth from this newfound ability to communicate with nonhuman animals, you'd be wrong. While some people do indeed embrace the flu, many others lash out: animal-free zones are established, and hungry citizens start hunting former pets, since they make for easy prey (apparently they've never heard of fruits and veggies?).

There's one especially excruciating scene that I don't think I'll ever be able to forget. Jean takes refuge in a makeshift church, only to catch a glimpse of how the missionaries make their sausage (stew):

A small fluffy dog has pelted out a kitchen door, thin bit of twine tangled around its legs, body blonde fire, screaming, Hello. Please. Please bite its soft. Quick. Help me. I jump up, calling the poor little bugger, but the parishioners shriek louder, climbing on their chairs like that dog is the snake from the garden of Eden. The woman rushes for her daughter and hauls her by an arm out of the room. It’s funny, for a second, until the laugh dies in my throat. The little dog, too tangled in the twine to move, slumps panting in the aisle. It’s not just m e. Where’s other me. She’s still — The god-botherers are faster than me. They grab that dog with WWF wrestling passion, using real lumps of wood, real knives. The little dog has enough time to issue a thick whiff of terror from its undercarriage, Help her, before they’ve slit it ear to ear right there in the pulpit. There was no blood with Lee. He didn’t even look that drowned. He might have come alive any moment. He might be alive right now in his grave. This little dog, though, is bleeding out on the beige carpet. The door to the kitchen is open. Matthew the soup cook leans on the jamb, then turns back. A fluffy tail on a chopping board. The steaming pots. Pain like a stab to my guts — he stirs a soup very much like the one he was serving up in the park.

Of course, this scene is so repulsive to most of us - Jean included - only because the animal being killed and consumed is designated for "companionship" instead of "food," at least in this particular culture. Chances are you've known and loved a dog or two yourself - and so the doomed beast transforms from a something to a someone. Not an unfeeling object to be used and discarded at will, but a sentient creature with her own feelings, desires, and loved ones. Had it been a chicken or pig, the result wouldn't be quite so horrifying; Jean herself eats meat, and justifies doing so, on several occasions.

Yet an earlier scene - in which Jean comes upon an abandoned tractor trailer truck packed with pigs destined for slaughter - will hopefully challenge readers to expand their circle of compassion:

I’ve seen battery hogs before — of course I have. But not out and about. Not staggering around and trying to walk, calling to whatever they think is ‘more’. Glazed eyes that strain like they’ve never seen sunlight. Skin stretched over bodies fed to the point of bursting — something between swine and meat. Saw some animal liberationists on the street in the city one time, saying factory farms were the same as Nazi camps. I called them bloody racists too. The pigs clatter past me down the ramp, fucked-up eyes on the road ahead, calling, Hello is it more. Those animal nutters were wrong, but not in the way I thought. It’s not the same as the Nazis: that was us doing to us. What’s this? [...] A hurt sow sits on her haunches, then lies down on the verge, panting unevenly under the slathering sun. Another weaves blindly over the asphalt toward her, flies spinning around her head. They push their noses into each other. Send me a postcard, the sick one says. Postcard, indeed. What the fuck. I watch more closely. The meaning bright off that tight skin. All the little bits saying, Leave me, and, I’ll hear about it, and, Don’t you see it. Move on. There’s more. The ones that can walk stretch their legs, for, More, more, more. I stand at the top of the truck ramp watching them break into a group trot toward the next paddock. Skin rippling. Hooves carolling. Know that heart-in-your-mouth run. Know exactly what ‘more’ is. I’ve seen it in Lee and I’ve had it too, at times. These pigs are half dead, they’re stumbling around, blind, mad, and fucking hopeful.

Even if many of the characters in this book resist the humanity clearly evident in nonhuman animals, I hope that readers will hold these passages close - especially at the dinner table.

Sue, our main nonhuman protagonist, is a fascinating character; like many of the semi-domesticated animals in the park, McKay paints her as a series of conflicting impulses: safety or freedom. Hunger or satiation. Dingoes or humans. She is fiercely loyal, much to her own detriment. She has wants and needs of her own, and she's often satisfied to set them aside for the good of her (adopted) pack.

And I guess that brings me to the second half of this review: the humans, most of whom are awful. Jean, exponentially so.

Initially I thought that Jean would be my people: she's a hard-drinking, mold-breaking badass broad who gets on better with animals than people. She has a mini-rescue in her backyard where she keeps some of the park's doomed relinquishments. (The public treats the park like a rehab facility when in fact it's in the business of entertainment - old, sick, injured, and "common" animals are routinely killed.) She and Kimberley spend their afternoons together designing the animal rescue they hope to build one day.

But Jean is kind of a terrible person. To call her a misanthrope is half the story: she's also senselessly mean and cruel, especially when drunk, hungover, or frustrated (in other words, 90% of the time). I don't fault Jean for her substance abuse problem - alcoholism is a mental health issue and should be treated as such - but nor is it an excuse for being such an asshole. (There's even a scene where she trolls people discussing the zooflu online, like a fucking American redhat.) She's shit to everyone around her, except for Kimberley and Lee (Lee, who could use a good ass-kicking).

And then there's Sue: Sue, who followed Jean across the damn country when she should have been settling into a dingo pack of her own. Sue, who found Kimberley and saved Jean's life. Sue, who is nothing but good and true and trustworthy. Sue, who Jean assaults on multiple occasions: kicking her in the ribs, binding her with rope to prevent her escape, and even trying to shoot her (with a gun that's thankfully empty of bullets). At one point, she "forgives" Sue for saving her life - as if Sue's the one who needs forgiveness!

Despite the abuse, Sue continues to stick by Jean's side, which galled me endlessly. Towards the end of the story, following the attempted murder, Sue gets revenge of a sort, dominating a delirious Jean and forcing her subservience. However, the book ends shortly thereafter, cutting any sense of satisfaction far too short.

I really felt cheated with Jean: I thought she might be my avatar in this world - but she's just another terrible human who doesn't deserve the company of animals.

Likewise, the whole subplot involving Kimberley's parentage is way over the top dramatic and unnecessary; it seemed like we were being plucked from a dystopia and dropped into a soap opera for a minute there. Just, gross. So yeah, there are definitely some aspects of the book that I appreciated more than others. THE ANIMALS IN THAT COUNTRY may be imperfect - but I'd still wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone looking to explore our relationship to nonhuman animals in a dystopian setting.

[rorykillmore]

what would you want to do with dolores if you apped her? or like, in a perfect world, what kind of plots would be be involved in

okay a change in pace from all the big roster-long asks,

dolores is the kind of character who could really... go a lot of different ways. she’s -- i don’t think she’d try anything on a big “let’s take over the fuckin world” scale on denny, being that she’s the only one of her kind and what even would be the point in a dimension she’s trapped in temporarily, but she still might be a pain in some people’s asses. she’s liable to get pretty brutal with like, anyone she perceives as a threat (and physically hosts certainly are uh, capable of doing a number on people once they override their safety programming) and honestly if she’s angry enough and has the opportunity to instigate trouble on a larger scale, she might. it depends on what kind and what the end gain would be.

so there is a possibility she might be the kind of character who’d join up with a cause or two even temporarily, although i can’t think of any currently existing groups that would particularly get her attention. she’s not really interested in vigilantes and she’d HATE the mld, but she’d also pretty quickly set herself at odds with like, anarky’s group i think, because as it is now she’s too quick to get angry and become violent. but hey maybe she’d help start a new group! like if there were... say, nonhumans who felt similarly threatened by the human population and wanted a force to protect themselves with. something more combative and potentially hostile than the nonhuman groups that currently exist.

(although for what it’s worth, she’d find both the dragons and the cat clans pretty interesting and probably adopt a much more... docile demeanor with them. dolores is so complicated to explain because essentially she has MULTIPLE personalities programmed into her, and she’s kinda trying to ignore both of them in favor of being her own person, but certain circumstances could push her more towards her peaceful rancher’s daughter disney princess self or her ruthless mass murderer self. but she really likes animals, so that might bring out more shades of the former)

her feelings re: humanity would be such a struggle of a unique development issue on her own, because dolores certainly has every reason to hate them. i mean not that her hurting people on denny would be justified, but coming fresh off her canon, yeah she has EVERY reason to hate them. and certainly plenty of people on denny aren’t going to mean her harm, but it’s like... it’s not just an issue of dolores going “oh wait the humans in my world were bad, but these ones are good!” because the humans in westworld were just... normal people! they were just existing in a space where they could act freely on their whims and desires with no apparent consequence. people can be fucking cruel when they’re indulging themselves! so dolores’ issues with humanity are very deeply rooted in its inherent nature, and its kinda something she either has to come to terms with and forgive or... not, and let that consume her. i’d really like to see this cause external conflict but also internal conflict, because if she does bond with some of denny’s human characters, that creates a lot of implications for her to examine. a romance with someone might even be super interesting because boy the last time did NOT end well for her.

but initially it might not come up all that often or right away since it’s safest for her to just let herself pass as human, so in the meantime i’d get her settled somewhere (maybe she’d start out most comfortably in the southwest, but like... outside the no-tech border, but i’ve already been thinking that a scenario where she accidentally crosses it and technically ‘dies’ and has to have someone drag her out to revive her would be interesting because that’d be a pretty immediate giveaway of what she is. westworld hosts don’t really die so much as they’re programmed to simulate death or go offline whenever there’s a problem, but as long as their cores are intact they can be rebooted, so maybe she and maria can just die a bunch together!). and she has a long way to go in the meantime with like, coming to terms with her consciousness and with what it means to be a person and how her inherent programming factors into it ( “how sentient is sentient” is a question westworld is always making us ask).

oh and! i’d wanna find her a tech person who can patch her up when she needs it and also maybe help her override some of her programming features she doesn’t like so much. it might need to be someone a little more morally dubious than say, ratchet, but we’ll see what the possibilities are...

[foundcarcosa]

cccxxvii.

What would you change about yourself if you could? >> I... don’t know. I don’t know, really. I know there are some things I wish I had a better time dealing with, but it’s difficult to name what those things are. And just about all of the things about myself that give me problems are trauma responses, in which case changing the behaviour or the thought process without addressing the root cause would just be putting more bandages on a deep wound that requires surgical attention. Who is your hero? >> Hmm. What really makes you angry? >> I’m not terribly in touch with anger, since it’s an infrequent occurrence and kind of... random, when it does happen. Responses of mine that I used to think were angry ones are usually just overstimulation/meltdown responses, not actually anger. So. IDK. If you could choose to do anything for a day, what would it be? >> My days all belong to me, so I don’t know what I could imagine differently from what I already do. Would you rather vacation in Hawaii or Alaska, and why? >> Hawaii, because the weather would be more agreeable. I think Alaska is amazing, I’m just not as equipped for that climate.

How would your friends describe you? >> I would rather let them describe me than attempt to read their minds. If you could go back in time to change one thing, what would it be? >> I would rather not. What would you do if you won the lottery? >> Hmm. What’s the tallest building you’ve been to the top in? >> One World Trade Center, aka one of the great nonhuman loves of my life. What’s your favorite zoo animal? >> I don’t know, I rarely go to the zoo. If you were a superhero, what powers would you have? >> Matter manipulation, which really just covers it all. How many pillows do you sleep with? >> One. What is the most daring thing you’ve ever done? >> When I was eighteen, knowing nothing of the true and full nature of the world, I fell in love with a drug addict (in a feeble attempt at self-defense, I didn’t know he was one until I was already in love with him), and I lived with him, and I risked money and life to keep him alive. When our living arrangement fell through, I picked myself up and moved to New York City, alone, with no real money to speak of but with enough precious teenage stupidity to not crumble under the weight of impossibility or despair. --Or maybe it was a combination: of precious teenage stupidity and having already learned that life was constant struggle, and not realising that I could want anything different. Either way, Tommy died a few months later, I figured out the layout of the entire city and its subway system, and homelessness became my default state of being for the next 10-odd years. What’s your favorite type of foreign food? >> The flavourful kind. Is your glass half full or half empty? >> Whatever was in the glass, I already drank it. What was your favorite subject in school? >> --- What is the most unusual thing you’ve ever eaten? >> From a USian perspective, I guess shark or octopus. Do you collect anything? If so, what? >> No. What was your favorite food when you were a child? >> I don’t know that I had one. What sound do you love? >> Distant traffic through an open window at night. If you could choose to stay a certain age forever, what age would it be? >> I can’t imagine being any older than I am, and I can’t really remember exactly what it was like to be much younger than this, so that’s difficult to answer. If you could work on only one project for the next year, what would it be? >> --- If you were immortal for a day, what would you do? >> Actually, I’ve been immortal for many days. After all, I didn’t die any of these days, so I was at least temporarily immortal. Only death proves mortality. ;) What fictional place would you most like to go to? >> I’m not sure. They all have their problems, and a lot of them are problems I really don’t want to be in the middle of. What jobs do you think you’d be really good at? >> I like to imagine myself as a bartender, but that’s probably dumb. I was a merch boi for a while and I know I was good at that, so. What would be the most amazing adventure to go on? >> All of them. What would you consider to be your best find? >> Find...? What takes up too much of your time? >> Fear. What do you wish you knew more about? >> I’m fine with my level of knowledge. I learn new things every second, anyway. Who has impressed you most with what they’ve accomplished? >> I don’t know, I’m not really impressed by the accomplishments of people because I generally assume they’re capable of a lot anyway. Most people’s setbacks are self-imposed, and I’m not saying that to invalidate people’s roadblocks or imply that every shitty thing in their life is their fault. Brains just make mountains out of molehills, it’s common for everyone and no one’s exempt from it. What’s something you like to do the old-fashioned way? >> That’s a good question and I know I have an answer for it, but I can’t think of it off the top of my head. What’s your dream car? >> As much as Elon constantly makes me sigh heavily and put my head in my hands, I still want a Tesla. What’s the best thing that happened to you last week? >> Hmm. How different was your life one year ago? >> Sigma lived here, Sparrow worked somewhere else (Meijer?), I was broke as hell because the NOLA trip and Sigma’s idiotic rent blunder bankrupted me, and I hadn’t met Wednesday yet. Where is the most relaxing place you have ever been? >> Hmm. What are you looking forward to in the coming months? >> I’m not sure what’s happening in the coming months. What is one thing you really want but can’t afford? >> To travel. What website do you visit most often? >> This one. What’s special about the place you grew up? >> Elizabeth, New Jersey, is surrounded by refineries and power plants and various other forms of big industry. When people make those jokes about New Jersey smelling bad, it’s actually Elizabeth and surrounding areas that they’re talking about, and it’s all from heavy pollution. (Most of NJ does not smell like Elizabeth. The Garden State is not a misnomer, it’s just that most people don’t see anything but the parts closest to NYC, and miles and miles of Turnpike.) During the time I was born, respiratory problems (among other disorders too, I’d bet) were pretty much expected in newborns (I was an anomaly). I actually knew a lot about Elizabeth because my father lived there for 40 years and is one of those people who will study everything about a place he lives in, but I’ve forgotten a lot seeing as I haven’t lived there since last millennium. What are you absolutely determined to do? >> [re]learn to live without fear of dying. What is the most impressive thing you know how to do? >> Adapt. What is the best compliment you’ve ever received? >> I don’t know. What do you wish your brain was better at doing? >> Processing anxiety. I don’t have any experience in doing that since it’d never been a problem until now, so I’m still figuring it out. Have you ever given to any charities? >> No. What is something that your friends would consider “so you”? >> Trying to seduce aliens or demons or something, probably. What risks are worth taking? >> Living. What do you take for granted? >> I’ve taken everything for granted at least once, like... come on. A constant state of total appreciation is almost impossible to attain. We need our brains for other shit. What makes a good life? >> I don’t know, I’m just trying to live, not worry whether it’s “good” or not. Who’s fuckin counting, anyway? When do you feel truly alive? >> Hm. Have you ever saved someone’s life? >> I don’t know. Maybe indirectly or by some six degrees of separation shit. What are some of the turning points in your life? >> Hm. What’s the title of the current chapter of your life? >> I don’t know. That sort of thing is best figured out in hindsight. All stories are told from either the past or the future, not the present. What mistake do you keep making again and again? >> Whatever it is, I’ll probably make it again tomorrow. What do people think is weird about you? >> That’s not for me to say. What have you created that you are most proud of? >> Xibalba. What’s the best and worst thing about getting older? >> The best thing so far has been just the gaining of experience, and the processing of that experience, and seeing the way experience changes me. The worst thing so far has been the bodily changes -- not appearance-wise or anything, just... the sensitivities and weaknesses the body develops as it ages. They start small, but I’m sure they’ll only pile up as time goes on. Hopefully my ability to adapt holds fast. What genre would a book about your life be? >> That kind of liminal space between a fiction book and a biography. What lifestyle change have you been meaning to make for a while now? >> Hm. What food have you never eaten but would really like to try? >> I can’t think of anything right now. Where do you get most of your decorations for your home? >> This place isn’t very decorated in the first place. It’s mostly just stuff Sparrow brought over from her previous dwellings. Which celebrity do you think is the most down to earth? >> I wouldn’t know. Do you think that aliens exist? >> Sure, why not. What mythical creature do you wish actually existed? >> They all exist. What’s your cure for hiccups? >> I don’t have one. I haven’t had hiccups that lasted for longer than a few minutes. If you could visit any famous world monument, which one would you visit? >> I don’t know. Any of them, I’d imagine. Angkor Wat looks really neat. Macchu Picchu? Cristo Redentor? Mount Kilimanjaro? The world’s full of wonders. What outdoor activity haven’t you tried, but would like to? >> I think I’ve tried the ones I’m interested in already. I just want to do them again. When was the last time you slept more than nine hours? >> I don’t remember. 

[skeletonmaster69]

makin dnd-but-not aus for all universes now so heres one for the aarons(should i start calling them the found and lost gang? i dont really want to though... calling them the aarons is more fun) First, i cannot see erin as anything other than an aasimar. which honestly makes no sense with how his “wtf is happening to me aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa” storyline goes but ill figure it out. maybe he was like half/quarter aasimar but didnt know it and didnt really have any aasimar traits and then one day encounters something or other that unlocks those aasimar traits? Idk. it doesnt have to work in actual dnd since this is just an au loosely based on the fantasy stuff from dnd so yeah. He’s also a sorcerer, with some mix of the celestial, stormborn, and solar bloodline. though if i had to choose his main on its probably celestial(cuz aasimar). he’s only level 1 cuz he hasnt had his magic very long but would probably level up pretty quickly and be able to catch up with the others.

aaron is a human ranger. how special and interesting of her. Shes level 4, her chosen combat style is two weapon combat and she has a cat animal companion named Sourdough. Lived in a little house in the forest with her totally just a best friend arin until Plot Happened.

arin is a half elf druid. again, how original. also level 4, and has a dog animal companion named Fern. Fun Fact: Arin and Aaron named eachothers animal companions. which is Very CuteTM. but they arent gay i promise they are totally completely platonic best friends who lived alone in the woods together(I am joking they are a little gay)

Erryn is either a dhampir or a tiefling! probably a tiefling honestly. u wanna know why? Well 1. tieflings have horns, erryn has antlers, close enough to the same thing. 2. hehehehheh tiefling x aasimar 3. shunned from society and finally 4. unlike with aasimar where they seem to always be born that way, tieflings arent! I have proof! This image is taken straight from that one site with pretty much all pathfinder information ever

SOMETIMES LATER IN LIFE. BOOM. i am very cool :) anyways, hes got 2 levels in fighter and one in spellscar oracle. His curse is scrouge. 

airen is a human level 4 wizard! hes got a blue ringed octopus familiar thats named spot but he never calls the octopus that infront of other people and pretends hes completely indifferent toward it but he really really loves spot. hes in the enchantment school

erina is a kitsune! Though just like erin and erryn she wasn’t born one. all three of those guys were born human. she has a level in plant witch with a centipede familiar named lilac and 3 levels in rogue. also, in this au she is not evil, shes a solid true neutral! thats because while in the main universe the apocalypse killing all her friends and family kinda broke her a little bit, but that didnt happen in this! So instead shes just a person trying to be nice but whos really mischievious and ends up kinda manipulative sometimes. so maybe shed fit better as chaotic good but she doesnt really wanna break any rules and shes not that good at being good so neutral fits i think.

aerin is a drow! Which is Very Unfun for them, as they have crippling anxiety and depression. Level 4 monk, wouldnt be any kind of class at all but their adoptive parents said it might calm them down a little. It did not. Atleast they can kick stuff now though. i really should make an au where aerin isnt in situations that constantly worsen their mental illness, but that wouldnt be very fun, would it.

finally, aron is a human oracle with the ancestor mystery. her curse is clouded vision But Worse cuz hes just completely blind. level 4 like everyone else. i dont really have anything else to add since im still working on arons character in the main universe so yeah..

erin aaron and arin(And eventually erryn) are all in the same party

airen, erina, aerin, aron, and erryn are also all in the same party

They are Rivals but its kinda an unfair rivalry for awhile since erin’s party has two less members than airens party for awhile and erin is only level 1.

erin erryn and erina all got their Magic Stuff from the same accident. I am still working out what that accident was but either A. some deity got angry, a city suffered the consequences, B. uh oh cultists fucked up a ritual, or C. it was actually deliberate and Someone is trying to bring more magic into a world that probably cant handle it. its probably b tbh. Still deciding if they were the only ones close enough to be effected, everyone else near the accident died, or theres a whole bunch of new nonhumans in an area but itll probably be a mix of all three. Erryn and Erina were already in their party at that point so they were trying to protect the others and get people away, meanwhile erin was just alone and Very Confused. he ran away from the accident unlike the other two so hes still a little human? but probably becomes full aasimar as hes exposed to more magic stuff. 

[theramseyloft]

How did you come across/get ankhou? Hes such a wonderful bird and it really goes to show how feral pigeons are domestic birds!

Some of my long time followers know that, on top of raising show birds and fostering rescues, I am the Columbidae specialist at the service of Highland Animal Hospital’s wildlife rehab team.

I have been rehabbing orphaned mourning doves and feral pigeons for them for the last three or four years.

Out of ten total mourning doves, I have successfully returned eight to the wild. ^v^

I don’t release feral pigeons, though. That’s like dumping a stray puppy back into the street after bottle feeding it to the point of weaning.

Feral pigeon peeps are hand reared, socialized, medicated, and paired up with new homes.

Some kind soul found naked, emaciated, 4-week-old Ankhou in a parking lot, running circles around a street light, crying at the top of his lungs to frightened, agitated parents who were not capable of getting him off the ground to safety.

For reference, this is 3-week-old 1079.

And here is 5-week-old Shadow.

This is 4-week-old Ankhou, the day he came in with a 2-week-old mourning dove child.

Here he is later the same day, with a full crop bigger than he is. Probably the first time in his life he’d ever been full.

You can clearly see his keel bone behind it with almost NO muscle development.

He was SO emaciated that his body had to prioritize growing muscle over growing feathers because there was just *not* enough fuel to grow them both.

Here he is a week later, the same age as Shadow in the photo above, but just *that* stunted by malnutrition.

It took him 6 MONTHS to get his big boy feathers!

I spend a few hours cuddling him every day because young pigeons suffer touch starvation and genuinely *need* to be cuddled.

One night, nestled in the crook of my arm, dead to the world asleep, he started shaking and crying.

Pigeon children make four noises: the hungry cry, the lonely/cold cry (I specify because the same cry will be used by a warm peep in an incubator who wants to be touched), the honk of frustration, and the call for help.

Ankhou was trembling in my arms and calling for help in his sleep.

And he didn’t stop until I hugged him and set my chin on top of him. 

That little pigeon child had already been through hell. 

He is TERRIFIED of the sounds of thunder and rain! He will come into the bed room like a toddler and want to sleep with me when it’s storming.

And this week, with all the storms going through, he has done his VERY damnedest to be brave and reassure me that it was ok, rather than beg for reassurance.

He’s growing up.

I don’t know what he saw, or how many people left him in that parking lot before some one took pity on him.

I don’t know how many little pigeons just like him have just died hungry. 

It is a miracle that he lived long enough to come to me.

And as important as stability is to the mental health of pigeons, and as closely as he bonded to me, there was just no way in hell we could give him up.

And then Ankhou taught HIMSELF to be my alert bird!

If I don’t have family or friends with me, I can’t function in public without Ankhou to warn me before I stress into nonverbal shut down, prevent it from getting that bad, or snapping me out of it if it still happens.

Now that I’m on insulin and have to take meds and eat at a specific time, he’s decided to be my alarm clock too.

He is amazing.

And despite DECADES of raising and loving all kinds of pets, I *NEVER* could have imagined loving a nonhuman SO much.

[leopardprinttrashchild]

Gepäckausgabe / Luggage Claim. n “Smile!” Phichit grabbed Yuuri’s shoulders and pulled him in for a selfie. The resulting photo, showcasing Phichit’s cheerful grin and Yuuri’s lopsided grimace, was immediately uploaded to his various accounts. “Made it to #Berlin! Who’s ready to start some research? waddup just like all the infrastructure of research like what's the history on all that and the basis n institution okay character limit ty

HECK YESOk, so at this point, to be completely honest, I had no idea what this research was going to be other than “find stuff out about vampires to make Viktor suspicious,” BUT NOW I can answer it with an actually good answer. 

(adding a cut because this is going to be long, and after this point, major spoilers for my vampire/modern fantasy YOI au A Heart Beats at Night)

The basic idea I had was that vampires, as a community, would be severely limited in their ability to communicate with anyone who wasn’t essentially living in the same city - before phones and email became an easily available and commonplace thing, the only ways to pass information (except super short stuff through a telegraph, which has obvious limits) would either be through written letters or in person. Writing letters has a complication, in that if you don’t know who you’re writing to, it would be a bit of a problem to hand a mail carrier an envelope addressed to “any and all vampires” and say “take this to Paris.” Essentially, torches and pitchforks become a distinct possibility in superstitious times and places, and the likelihood of actually making contact with someone useful is unlikely. 

In person would work a lot better, except that, as discussed several times in the fic, travel becomes distinctly dangerous when sunlight = poof. In general, to travel safely requires a lot of time and money, as well as the assistance of trusted non-vampires. (The Viktor method of “I’ve got my tarp, let’s walk to Paris is not recommended.) So, again, going there and back is going to generally be a lot more work and probability of dying than it’s really worth, for long distances. 

Now comes the part of why Japan, in particular, has such an isolated community compared to continental Europe, and also where you can clearly see my biology background come into play. 

Migration, in the case of vampires, is both more and less complicated than actual animals. However, we can say that people, human and nonhuman, will get places. Reasons to even attempt such a dangerous relocation might include violent superstition, overcrowding, politically powerful enemies, extreme curiosity, etc. 

First off, the period of Japanese isolationism (1641-1853) would have severely reduced the viable opportunities for migration, which would have predominantly meant stowing away on a ship. So, we can safely say that while a few vampires would have successfully made it, most of them wouldn’t have survived the voyage and even fewer would have been able to survive once they got there, without fundamental resources like shelter and community. 

After the isolation era was over, it would have been easier - but not much. As technology advances, so does security, resulting in a success rate that might have been a bit better but wouldn’t be too great. 

Next up, in my world, Japan has its own native supernatural communities based on Japanese folklore etc. Some of them would have been welcoming to the newly arrived vampires and helped them out, but others would have not taken kindly to a horde of bloodsucking undead monsters showing up without invitation. 

Finally, there’s the population bottleneck. Because the founding population was very small, without a regular influx of successful newcomers, there is a limited amount that these founders could know about vampirism (they’re only individuals, after all) and the amount they could successfully pass on to anyone they turned would be even lower. As such, subsequent generations are in a position of knowing basically jack shit about the details, except for obvious stuff like “drink blood” and “don’t go out in sunlight.” Some of what Yuuri is researching in the story - the example that comes to mind is the overall success rate of turning someone into a vampire, if certain things like how they died or how old the sire is affect whether it works or not , or why/whether they have to be buried before waking up and what the limits are on that - require collecting a frankly staggering amount of anecdotal evidence because it’s not quite possible to follow the scientific method here without, uh, killing people. Essentially, this is a general loss of culture and information, which is going to lead to vampires dying earlier and more frequently because so many dangers are unknown. 

Enter Minako and Yuuri’s family. My backstory for Minako is that she is a tree spirit, and her tree is on what is now the Katsuki family property. The Katsukis are pretty chill, and for generations they’ve been super cool with all this - she’s basically a member of the family, like “oh hey that’s Aunt Minako” and have helped protect her tree for many years so she has more freedom to move around and doesn’t have to guard it all the time. Minako also has a history of taking in supernatural people who are in need, giving them a place to stay for a while (the onsen, often), and helping them get back on their feet and to the next safehouse. She has a huge network of friends who do the same thing all over the country. As a result of this, she would, if not have directly helped out vampires due to their scarcity, know people who had tried and failed and lost friends due to this lack of resources. 

Enter Yuuri. Yuuri grew up being fairly familiar with the idea of magic and magical beings, due to his family’s relationship with Minako and her guests. His backstory, which I didn’t really get a good chance to explore in Heart, is that he became a professional ballet dancer and retired from it in a way that parallels the Sochi GPF - his dog died before an important audition for a leading role that shouldn’t have even been a question, and he decided to quit dancing due to how terribly it went. However, Viktor wasn’t there to drag him back. After this, as we see in the show, Yuuri was depressed and didn’t know where to go next. It was Minako who grabbed him by the short and curlies and told him to do something and stop moping around the hot springs, because he wasn’t happy and couldn’t hide forever… and, conveniently, her network of friends and collaborators extended to academia, where they were getting increasing traction, and needed a smart, driven person who is already familiar with the supernatural world to really get this rolling. Doing this through a university, rather than independently, gives them access to a lot of resources, including academic databases, the magic of a .edu email address, the capability to actually print and distribute their results, and an aura of legitimacy. 

So, Yuuri is off to grad school, in a department that only kind of exists, pursuing a research project that is heavily side-eyed, even though Japan would be slightly less hostile to the idea of “the myths are real” due to hella different history and mythology than would be found across European cultures with the much more intense pressure of Christianity. 

There, he takes the classes he needs to learn enough about sociological research that he can actually do it usefully, ingratiates himself with related departments, and generally helps Minako’s group convince the Rich Magic People to fund this project, which is basically a test run. There, he meets Phichit, who has graduated from Detroit and, as mentioned in the story, is going for a graduate degree in translation and interpretation, and they obviously hit it off. Then, who honestly can NOT follow Yuuri across the world for such weird shit, because holy charisma, batman. 

Then!! Finally!! They manage to arrange everything and finish all the background work, and they’re officially off to Berlin to start Actual Research! So, here they end up, in Berlin-Tegel, 90% jetlag, 5% well-meaning arrogance, and 5% anxiety. 

[loveanimalstory-blog]

Chimpanzees Are Going Through a Tragic Loss

Imagine that an alien species landed on Earth and, through their mere presence, those aliens caused our art to fade, our music to homogenize, and our technological know-how to disappear. that's effectively what humans are doing to our closest relatives—chimpanzees. Back in 1999, a team of scientists led by Andrew Whiten (and including Jane Goodall) showed that chimpanzees from different parts of Africa behave very differently from each other. Some groups use sticks to extract honey, while others use those self-same tools to fish for ants. Some would get each other’s attention by rapping branches with their knuckles, while others did it by loudly ripping leaves with their teeth. The team identified 39 of those traditions that are practiced by some communities but not others—a pattern that, at the time, hadn’t been seen in any animal except humans. it had been evidence, the team said, that chimps have their own cultures. It took an extended time to convince skeptics that such cultures exist, but now we've many samples of animals learning local traditions from each other. Some orangutans blow raspberries at one another before they are going to bed. One dolphin learned to tail-walk from captive individuals and spread that trick to its own wild peers once released. Humpbacks and other whales have distinctive calls and songs in several seas. And chimps still stand out with “one of the foremost impressive cultural repertoires of nonhuman animals,” says Ammie Kalan, of the Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. But just when many scientists have come to simply accept the existence of animal cultures, many of these cultures might vanish. Kalan and her colleagues have shown, through years of intensive fieldwork, that the very presence of humans has eroded the range of chimpanzee behavior. Where we flourish, their cultures shrivel. it's a bitterly ironic thing to find out on the 20th anniversary of Whiten’s classic study. “It’s amazing to think that just 60 years ago, we knew next to zilch of the behavior of our sister species within the wild,” Whiten says. “But now, even as we are truly going to know our primate cousins, the actions of humans are closing the window on all we've discovered.” “Sometimes within the rush to conserve the species, I feel we ditch the individuals,” says Cat Hobaiter, a primatologist at the University of St. Andrews. “Each population, each community, even each generation of chimpanzees is exclusive . an occasion might only have a little impact on the entire population of chimpanzees, but it's going to wipe out a whole community—an entire culture. regardless of what we do to revive habitat or support increase, we may never be ready to restore that culture.” Since 2010, Kalan has been performing on the Pan African Programme, an intensive effort to catalog chimp behavior in 46 sites across the species’ entire range, led by Hjalmar Kühl, Christophe Boesch, and Mimi Arandjelovic. At each site, the team checked whether chimps were completing any of 31 different behaviors, including many from Whiten’s original list, and a few that had only been recently discovered. “We had things like termite fishing, and fishing, algae fishing, stone-throwing, leaf clipping, using sticks as marrow picks, using caves, bathing, and nut-cracking,” Kalan says. After all this work, the team showed that chimps living in areas most suffering from humans were 88 percent less likely to point out anybody of the 31 behaviors than those living within the most unaffected regions. “However we divided the info, we got an equivalent very obvious pattern,” Kalan says. It’s hard to prove a negative, though, and it’s always possible that the chimps were up to their old tricks without the team noticing. But the Pan African Programme team filmed the apes using camera traps, to capture behavior without disturbing the animals. It checked surely traditions by trying to find discarded tools or checking for specific foods among the apes’ poop. And it scored the chimps generously: albeit it only saw a specific behavior once, it recorded the behavior as being present. If anything, the new results underestimate the extent to which humans suppress chimpanzee cultures. Such suppression isn’t deliberate. Chimpanzees and other apes learn skills and customs from each other, and people chains of tradition depend upon having enough individuals to find out from. So when humans kill chimps for bushmeat, they aren’t just killing individuals—they also are destroying opportunities for the survivors to find out new things. once they fragment the forests during which chimps live, they’re stopping the flow of ideas between populations. The primatologist Carel van Schaik wrote about these problems in 2002 after studying orangutans, and he predicted then that “major traditional erosion is to be expected altogether great apes.” “I realized that testing the hypothesis would be extremely difficult,” van Schaik says, but “thanks to the gargantuan efforts by this team, we have the primary data, and that they appear to totally confirm the model. It’s a really impressive study.” And it’s worrying, he adds, because many of those cultural behaviors aren’t arbitrary. They’re adaptations, and their loss could push an already species even closer to extinction. No one knows whether the hemorrhage of chimp culture is getting worse. Few places have tracked chimp behavior over long periods, and people that have also are more likely to possess protected their animals from human influence. And “not all human impacts are an equivalent,” cautions Hobaiter, the University of St. Andrews primatologist. Clearing forests for vegetable oil is extremely different from sustainably employing a forest as a food source. The Pan African Programme team clumped many indicators of human presence into one metric, but teasing them apart is vital. “Long-term conservation approaches are only getting to be effective through the support and leadership of the local communities who live there,” Hobaiter says. In some cases, the presence of individuals might create new traditions to exchange those on the team’s list. In Bossou, Guinea, chimps have started drinking the wine that's fermented on palm trees. In other areas, they’ve taken to raiding human crops. “If you’re getting tons of energy from high-nutrition human foods, you don’t need to spend half your day breaking nuts,” Kalan says. There’s certainly evidence that chimps can adapt to the presence of humans—but can they innovate quickly enough to catch up on the loss of their old ways? Even if they will, isn’t that also a tragedy? We care about the loss of our own cultures. We work to document languages that are going extinct. We store old art in museums. We establish heritage sites to guard our cultural and historical treasures. It seems shortsighted—unimaginative, even—to be so concerned with our own traditions, but so blasé about those of our closest cousins, especially when we’ve barely begun to appreciate how rich their cultural landscape is often. Parts of that landscape could be lost before anyone realizes why it exists. In 2016, the Pan African Programme team reported that some West African chimpanzees habitually throw stones against an equivalent tree, creating buildups of rocks that are like human cairns. nobody knows why they are doing this. “We’re still investigating it,” Kalan says. “And we'd be running out of your time .” Other animals also are likely losing their ancestral knowledge at our hands. When poachers kill an elephant matriarch, they also kill her memories of hidden water sources and anti-lion tactics, leaving her family during a more precarious place. When moose and bighorn were exterminated from parts of the U.S., their generations-old awareness of the simplest migration routes died with them. Relocated individuals, who were meant to replenish the once-lost populations, didn’t know where to travel, then did not migrate. These discoveries mean that conservationists got to believe saving species during a completely new way—by preserving animal traditions also as bodies and genes. “Instead of focusing only on the conservation of genetically based entities like species, we now got to also consider culturally-based entities,” says Whiten, who made an identical argument last week during a paper co-written with many scholars of animal cultures. Kalan and therefore the Pan African Programme team even think that conservationists should recognize places connected with unique traditions as chimpanzee cultural-heritage sites. “When we encounter a nut-cracking site that’s been used for several generations, that site is a component of the cultural heritage of this one population of chimps,” Kalan says. an equivalent concept might apply to orangutans, whales, and other cultured creatures. “What we've learned about culture also can be applied to how we conserve animals,” Whiten adds. When people raised endangered whooping cranes in captivity, that they had to point out the naive birds the way to migrate by hopping into ultralight aircraft and showing them the way. “Where animals are to be reintroduced to areas during which they earlier became extinct, we've to form special efforts to reinstate the cultural knowledge they lost,”

[roaringheat]

Wait so what happened to barrett, pleasE, i want to know more!

Im so happy you asked holy shit

Under a read more cause it’s just as long as the last one lmao

I really should have done this before talking about Morgan but im doing it now i guess!! So, starting over again, Barrett goes into the woods to experiment with plant photography cause Morgan likes the outdoors and Barrett wanted to gift him those plant photos as a kinda thank you for the camera thing. I also want to mention that both Barrett and Morgan are in their early to mid 20s rn. He’s wandering and taking pics along the way when suddenly he spots a big bush of pink marigolds. The kind of marigolds that are bigger and have a bunch of smaller ruffled looking petals. He’s immediately intrigued and he doesn’t know exactly why but he starts walking towards it. He’s never seen pink marigolds before and there seemed to be some kind of glow about them so because of that, he crouches down to get some close up pics. The bush suddenly lashes out, immediately grabbing hold of him and dragging him in and thorns that weren’t there before are now suddenly digging into his skin. At this point, he’s thrashing around and being pretty loud which catches the attention of someone named Muriel as she steps into view. She’s a black woman in her late 30s who could be described as a “witch” kind of but i dont really think that term suits her. She’s brandishing an axe covered in charms, got this iridescent cloak sort of outfit, has some gold lines on her face, and both her eyes are this solid dark blue. No pupils or anything. But yea she happens upon this scene cause she was out on a routine check to find and destroy things that have gotten mutated due to the “magic” she does in her house nearby. This plant in particular had basically mutated pretty far to the point where it became basically a carnivore. The reason Barrett was attracted to it so quickly was,because of the mutation, the plant could attract/lure humans and some animals within reaching distance so it could attack and eat them. Everything caused by the mutation is the “glow” Barrett saw which was actually a faint pink aura, the ability to move, and the thorns which were used kinda like venom in the way that with enough of it its supposed to kill the victim quickly so that the attacker can eat with ease. So Muriel is feeling pretty responsible for Barrett being in this position so she goes over and gets him out of there and kills the bush with her axe. The plant managed to get a bit of the venom stuff in Barrett’s system so he’s weak and kinda just passes out after getting saved. Muriel hoists him over her shoulder and takes him back to her house a little further into the woods. She genuinely feels like shit for indirectly being responsible for this so she decides to keep an eye on him til he’s ok again. Barret wakes up in a spare shitty bed in Muriel’s place in the most excruciating pain he’s ever felt all over him as if his whole body was on fire. He launches himself out of bed but just drops to the ground again basically screaming. and Muriel bursts into the room and doesn’t know what to do but she sees him on the ground in pain and then notices he now has this pink aura around him and it starts clicking into place for her. Basically with the venom from the plant, its kinda like a zombie bite. The intent is to kill but if bitten and then left alive, the person would turn into a zombie. In this situation with the plant, the venom was never meant to turn others but yet since Barrett got the venom in his bloodstream and wasnt killed, the plant has basically grown in his body and given him all it’s abilities including some extra stuff. But yea back to the scene, he’s basically begging her to stop the pain in any way possible and so she knocks him out. When he wakes up the 2nd time, the pain is a lot more dull but now he’s freaking out cause he’s now noticing the pink aura and like he almost fuckin died and now he’s in some stranger’s house. Muriel explains to him all of what happened and Barrett is kinda a dick to her cause he absolutely doesnt trust her and i mean like he’s a white man in the 1920s. Ofc Muriel doesn’t take too kindly to that but she’s convinced if she lets him leave while he has no control over the shit that he got into, he’ll get killed. So he stays with her for about a year and eventually they warm up to eachother. That whole year, they both learn most of what exactly Barrett can do now. As far as appearance, his eyes have changed into this shimmery pastel pink and he’s gained that same pink aura that the plant had so his whole body looks tinted pink. They make him look pretty fuckin inhuman so Muriel teaches him how to suppress it so he look normal. It’s easy for him to do (just a bit uncomfortable) as long as he’s in a stable mental state and as soon as he stops holding it back, it’ll come right back out again. As for abilities, He can grow and control those marigolds branches/vines from his skin, heal quicker and more efficiently so he’s a lot harder to kill (although serious wounds can still take him a couple days to heal), and he’s gained the same attraction ability that the plant used to lure victims. This mainly makes people immediately trust him and easier for him to manipulate which comes into play a lot later on. Then they find another ability of his thats completely different than anything the plant had and this one is 100% my favorite. If Barrett is making physical contact with someone else’s skin, he can bring out the most recent emotion that person is feeling towards the person theyre looking at and like amplify it to the extreme. So like for example, if person A is mildy frustrated at that moment with person B and theyre looking person B, when Barrett uses that ability on person A, itll amplify that frustration and make person A suddenly extremely hostile towards person B even if they would never hurt person B normally. It always depends on the most recent feeling towards someone so a lot of the time Barrett has no way of knowing what he’s amplifying and which emotion will come out. Depending on how much effort he puts into using this ability, this effect can last from 15 minutes - an hour. Its harder for him to use it on anyone who isnt human so he has to put significantly more effort and usually wont last as long as it would on a human which i absolutely did on purpose cause i introduce more nonhuman characters later and its really cool. The way to tell if someone is under that effect (other than the abnormal behavior ofc) is that theyre eyes will turn the same shade of pink as Barrett’s are when he’s not holding everything back. The draw backs to using this though is that the more effort he puts, the harder it is for him to keep himself looking normal. So if he were to use that ability with like full force, he wouldnt be able to hold back the aura, eye color, or any branches growing from him. So basically he has to be real careful. Its really useful for fights/ self defense tho which i have a lot of scenes like that planned out. But yea Barrett and Muriel find this out cause he accidentally does it on Muriel during an arguement. Muriel is looking at Barrett at that moment and was currently feeling immense guilt for everything that happened to him so when Barrett accidently amplified that she just starts sobbing. It doesnt last long cause although Muriel is technically human, she has some powers herself due to “worshipping” this beetle god which is a whole nother story lmao. But yea anyway, Barrett learns how to control all his shit over that whole year staying with Muriel and once they both think he’s gotten a decent amount of control, Barrett goes back to normal society and brings Muriel with him since theyve gotten really close in that period of time. Muriel tells him not to tell anyone in fear that he’ll be hurt but he doesn’t really listen. And like you guys already know he goes to Morgan and then Virginia and tells them all about everything that happened. Virginia takes it a lot better than Morgan obviously. For a short period of time before Morgan starts going crazy, Barrett, Muriel, Virginia, and Morgan all become like a kind of friend group. Once Morgan starts getting paranoid and reclusive, it gradually falls apart. Muriel has been staying with Virginia since coming with Barrett back to society which is why she was there when the hitman Morgan hires is threatening Virginia. You guys know the basics of all of what happens next pretty much. There’s more scenes with Virgina in between this and Morgan’s death but they aren’t really major scenes. She does try a few times to fix everything with Barrett and Morgan but obviously it doesn’t work out. So skipping to after Barrett and Muriel flee, like i said Barrett is never caught cause ya know 1920s crime investigations were shit lmao. The murder does cause uproar for a while cause of how weird it is what with all the flowers and Morgan’s weird behavior before his death. and cause Morgan was almost famous. Barrett becomes pretty untrusting towards humans after this and as the years pass with Muriel he gets to the point of just straight up hating them and hating being referred to as one. I have ideas for events that happen in between the 1920s and modern times for Barrett and Muriel but don’t have anything set in stone yet. Around late 1920s early 1930s they discover that Barrett’s aging has also been affected. At this point they dont know how much but its obvious hes gonna have a longer life span than most humans. Barrett gets really upset thinking about out living Muriel and basically begs her to work some “magic” so she’ll live longer cause she’s pretty much the only person he trusts completely. Muriel says no cause tampering with the natural cycle of things rubbed her the wrong way. They get into an argument where Barrett is mainly just pleading with her and she storms out. While she’s out tho she decides to do it for him and arranges some stuff to pause her aging until she decides to let it keep going again. There’s drawbacks to this kinda magic of course but i still havent decided what exactly. So basically after this point her body stays aged in her early 40s. Years past and its modern times and Barrett and Muriel are now a little over 100 years old. Barrett’s only aged about 15 years since now he looks to be in his early 40s as well. He’s definitely adapted with the current life style a little bit but still really keeps an old timey way of speech and clothing style. He’s changed a bit personality wise due to being alive so long tho. Him and Muriel have become very nihilistic. Barrett still really resents humans especially with how his attraction ability makes them all so trusting of him and predictable which has gotten boring for him. He’s kinda gotten a bit of a superiority complex due to believing he’s above humans in every way but learns to be charming and fake nice around them to not raise suspicion. Then they meet those 2 nonhuman ocs i briefly mentioned earlier! I got a lot of plot stuff for modern times as well as currently working on figuring out more stuff for Muriel and Barrett back in the 1930s and 40s but this has gotten insanely long and probably more than you even wanted to know so ill leave it at that!

[hellofastestnewsfan]

Imagine that an alien species landed on Earth and, through their mere presence, those aliens caused our art to vanish, our music to homogenize, and our technological know-how to disappear. That is effectively what humans have been doing to our closest relatives—chimpanzees.

Back in 1999, a team of scientists led by Andrew Whiten (and including Jane Goodall) showed that chimpanzees from different parts of Africa behave very differently from one another. Some groups use sticks to extract honey, while others use those same tools to fish for ants. Some would get each other’s attention by rapping branches with their knuckles, while others did it by loudly ripping leaves with their teeth. The team identified 39 of these traditions that are practiced by some communities but not others—a pattern that, at the time, hadn’t been seen in any animal except humans. It was evidence, the team said, that chimps have their own cultures.

It took a long time to convince skeptics that such cultures exist, but now we have plenty of examples of animals learning local traditions from one another. Some orangutans blow raspberries at each other before they go to bed. One dolphin learned to tail-walk from captive individuals and spread that trick to its own wild peers once released. Humpbacks and other whales have distinctive calls and songs in different seas. And chimps still stand out with “one of the most impressive cultural repertoires of nonhuman animals,” says Ammie Kalan, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

But just when many scientists have come to accept the existence of animal cultures, many of those cultures might vanish. Kalan and her colleagues have shown, through years of intensive fieldwork, that the very presence of humans has eroded the diversity of chimpanzee behavior. Where we flourish, their cultures shrivel. It is a bitterly ironic thing to learn on the 20th anniversary of Whiten’s classic study.

“It’s amazing to think that just 60 years ago, we knew next to nothing of the behavior of our sister species in the wild,” Whiten says. “But now, just as we are truly getting to know our primate cousins, the actions of humans are closing the window on all we have discovered.”

“Sometimes in the rush to conserve the species, I think we forget about the individuals,” says Cat Hobaiter, a primatologist at the University of St. Andrews. “Each population, each community, even each generation of chimpanzees is unique. An event might only have a small impact on the total population of chimpanzees, but it may wipe out an entire community—an entire culture. No matter what we do to restore habitat or support population growth, we may never be able to restore that culture.”

Since 2010, Kalan has been working on the Pan African Programme, an intensive effort to catalog chimp behavior in 46 sites across the species’ entire range, led by Hjalmar Kühl, Christophe Boesch, and Mimi Arandjelovic. At each site, the team checked whether chimps were carrying out any of 31 different behaviors, including many from Whiten’s original list, and some that had only been recently discovered. “We had things like termite fishing, ant fishing, algae fishing, stone throwing, leaf clipping, using sticks as marrow picks, using caves, bathing, and nut cracking,” Kalan says.

After all this work, the team showed that chimps living in areas most affected by humans were 88 percent less likely to show any one of the 31 behaviors than those living in the most unaffected regions. “However we divided up the data, we got the same very obvious pattern,” Kalan says.

It’s hard to prove a negative, though, and it’s always possible that the chimps were up to their old tricks without the team noticing. But the Pan African Programme team filmed the apes using camera traps, to capture behavior without disturbing the animals. It checked for certain traditions by looking for discarded tools, or checking for specific foods among the apes’ poop. And it scored the chimps generously: Even if it only saw a particular behavior once, it recorded the behavior as being present. If anything, the new results underestimate the extent to which humans suppress chimpanzee cultures.

Such suppression isn’t deliberate. Chimpanzees and other apes learn skills and customs from one another, and those chains of tradition depend on having enough individuals to learn from. So when humans kill chimps for bushmeat, they aren’t just killing individuals—they are also destroying opportunities for the survivors to learn new things. When they fragment the forests in which chimps live, they’re stopping the flow of ideas between populations.

The primatologist Carel van Schaik wrote about these problems in 2002 after studying orangutans, and he predicted then that “major traditional erosion is to be expected in all great apes.” “I realized that testing the hypothesis would be extremely difficult,” van Schaik says, but “thanks to the gargantuan efforts by this team, we have the first data, and they appear to totally confirm the model. It’s a very impressive study.” And it’s worrying, he adds, because many of these cultural behaviors aren’t arbitrary. They’re adaptations, and their loss could push an already endangered species even closer to extinction.

No one knows whether the hemorrhage of chimp culture is getting worse. Few places have tracked chimp behavior over long periods, and those that have are also more likely to have protected their animals from human influence.

And “not all human impacts are the same,” cautions Hobaiter, the University of St. Andrews primatologist. Clearing forests for palm oil is very different from sustainably using a forest as a food source. The Pan African Programme team clumped many indicators of human presence into a single metric, but teasing them apart is important. “Long-term conservation approaches are only going to be effective through the support and leadership of the local communities who live there,” Hobaiter says.

In some cases, the presence of people might create new traditions to replace the ones on the team’s list. In Bossou, Guinea, chimps have started drinking the wine that is fermented on palm trees. In other areas, they’ve taken to raiding human crops. “If you’re getting a lot of energy from high-nutrition human foods, you don’t have to spend half your day breaking nuts,” Kalan says. There’s certainly evidence that chimps can adapt to the presence of humans—but can they innovate quickly enough to compensate for the loss of their old ways?

Even if they can, isn’t that still a tragedy? We care about the loss of our own cultures. We work to document languages that are going extinct. We store old art in museums. We establish heritage sites to protect our cultural and historical treasures. It seems shortsighted—unimaginative, even—to be so concerned with our own traditions, but so blasé about those of our closest cousins, especially when we’ve only just started to appreciate how rich their cultural landscape can be.

Parts of that landscape might be lost before anyone realizes why it exists. In 2016, the Pan African Programme team reported that some West African chimpanzees habitually throw stones against the same trees, creating buildups of rocks that are reminiscent of human cairns. No one knows why they do this. “We’re still investigating it,” Kalan says. “And we might be running out of time.”

Other animals are also likely losing their ancestral knowledge at our hands. When poachers kill an elephant matriarch, they also kill her memories of hidden water sources and anti-lion tactics, leaving her family in a more precarious place. When moose and bighorn sheep were exterminated from parts of the U.S., their generations-old awareness of the best migration routes died with them. Relocated individuals, who were meant to replenish the once-lost populations, didn’t know where to go, and so failed to migrate.

These discoveries mean that conservationists need to think about saving species in a completely new way—by preserving animal traditions as well as bodies and genes. “Instead of focusing only on the conservation of genetically based entities like species, we now need to also consider culturally based entities,” says Whiten, who made a similar argument last week in a paper co-written with many scholars of animal cultures.

Kalan and the Pan African Programme team even think that conservationists should recognize places connected with unique traditions as chimpanzee cultural-heritage sites. “When we come across a nut-cracking site that’s been used for many generations, that site is part of the cultural heritage of this one population of chimps,” Kalan says. The same concept might apply to orangutans, whales, and other cultured creatures.

“What we have learned about culture can also be applied to how we conserve animals,” Whiten adds. When people raised endangered whooping cranes in captivity, they had to show the naive birds how to migrate by hopping into ultralight aircraft and showing them the way. “Where animals are to be reintroduced to areas in which they earlier became extinct, we have to make special efforts to reinstate the cultural knowledge they lost,” Whiten says.

from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2VLXvmn