#fictional primates

[liminal-therianthropy]

!!Small rant, about 'fake therians'!!

I know i dont usually post things like this but i just wanted this out of my brain so i can move on if that makes sense? This will be a long read so sorry in advance. So i keep seeing on tiktok, roblox, and now youtube of fake claiming therians and im honestly tired of it? Like really tired of it. All the points {in my opinion} are really dumb too. Point one was that 'Oh you have a common theriotype you clearly choose that and yer fake11!!!1!'. Which.,,.so? So what if some creature 'has a common theriotype'. Who cares? I certainly dont and most creatures ive met and seen do not care. It is such a minute thing to care about. Now do i find it interesting? Yes but in a /pos way! That there are 'common theriotypes' in the first place! But i find it ridicules to be made that someone else is a wolf or cat therian must be fake in someway. Like calm down it is not that serious. Point two is 'oh you have multiple theriotypes? Yer clearly fake especially if they have nothing to do with eachother!11!1!!'. Creatures can have multiple theriotypes and still be valid. Period. Point blank. And so what if they have nothing to do with each other??? That feels so random to me. So what if a creature is both so a lion therian and a deer therian. THAT IS STILL VAILD!! Someone's experience is just different then yours and THATS OK!!! Nothing is cookie cutter. We even have a term for this, its called a polytherian. A therian who has multiple theriotypes. So i dont know why that is being demonized now but here we are i guess. Point three 'oh yer popular you must be faking it!!!'. Which.,,.what? What kind of an excuse is that? Just say you dont like them! Its not that hard you do not need to fake claim a fellow creature just because they are popular. To me its like 'good for them for getting popular.' and i move on? I dont see why its such an issue. Now i can understand if said creator did something very bad and something that is unforgivable. Then yes hate them and deplatform them. Get them off the internet. But really guys? Oh yer popular? Must be fake! /sac, really gets on my nerves. Point four is a big one to me. 'Oh you dont know the definition of something? FAKE! YOU DONT KNOW WHAT YER TALKING ABOUT SO YER CLEARLY A FAKE!!111!1!!!'. Which. Guys. My fellow creatures. What ever happen to education? Like educating yer fellow creature? Education is one of the most important things in todays climate and i find it imperative that we just inform politely and move on. Ive had to, and always its just they didnt know and that they learned something. They most likely do not honestly know and thats ok. Some just simply dont know. Educate and move on. Simple. Or if they are somehow intentionally spreading hate or misinformation, educate and block or straight up block. Thats just on the top of my head, i bet there are more bs points that i just dont know or have the energy for. Thank you if you read this far, sorry again for posting this. Just needed this out of my brain ^^;

[dewardin]

[aut2imagineart]

Knocking around ideas, I came up with two new concepts of Uplifted for my Centauri Universe. To recap, the Uplifted are hybrid animals created to have human level sapience. I have created four of them thus far but looking at lists of the most intelligent animals I figured there were enough others to make at least two more.

The first species I currently call the Scurachin. These lemur-like Uplifted are hybrids of rats, squirrels, capuchin monkeys, and raccoons. The second are the sprites, which are hybrids of ants, bees, and Portia spiders. To give a sense of scale, the Scurachin shown her stands 18in tall while the sprite has a body length of roughly 5.1in. If I like these ideas enough I'll probably refine them more in the future, maybe give them better names unless they're liked enough.

As always, comments and critiques are welcome

[markhors-menagerie]

Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus)

These large tree-dwelling apes are found only on the island of Borneo. They are highly sexually dimorphic, with dominant males growing large cheek flanges. They eat fruits, leaves, flowers, bark, honey, small animals like insects, spider webs, fungus, and soil. They build complex nests to sleep in, and have been observed using leafy makeshift ‘umbrellas’, sticks to obtain foods like ants, and leaves to hold spiny fruits.

[kryptonbabe]

Hope you are having a great day.

Thank you!

I'm having a nice day so far, drank some coffee, sent some emails and since I don't know how to answer this nice ask any other way, I'll share something that's been on my mind the past couple of days and I was going to keep to myself, but here you go: The unjust erasure of Mr. Hogan from comic book history!

Mr. Hogan, the monkey, on the shoulder of the adventurer Lance O'Casey in their first appearance (Whiz Comics #2).

But who is Mr. Hogan? As I was curious about Captain Marvel (Shazam) first comics I started a journey of looking for his first publication on Whiz Comics #2 (fun fact: this is actually their 1st issue not the 2nd, for convoluted reasons). Finding these comics is easy for they are public domain, and I had a little help too (thanks @justletmeon12!), so I started reading the issues when Lance O'Casey's stories caught my attention, not because of the main character's originality, there's nothing really special about his naval exploits, but I was amused by his monkey side-kick Mr. Hogan and just how relevant he is to the stories. Ever since I was a kid I really liked animals in comic books, especially primates. I don't know, they are cute and fun and I won't apologize for it.

I read this first Lance O'Casey story expecting nothing, so it was quite surprising to realize it was a good story for its limited length and time period. Captain Marvel was a huge success back then and Whiz Comics had a long run - 13 years total, from 1940 to 1953 - until they were ruined by the famous DC lawsuit. But honestly I'd never heard of Lance O'Casey and admittedly he was not the most famous of the other feature characters in Whiz.

However, from 1946 to 1948, Lance O'Casey had a 4-issue mini-series at DC, and after reading a few of his Whiz stories I was slightly curious to see how this series would explore the extra pages... How disappointed was I to find out Mr. Hogan, the monkey side-kick, had been completely ERASED from O'Casey's stories, as if he had never existed...

And ok, why should you care? Why should anyone care? What's so special about Mr. Hogan. Well, I'm glad you asked, because I have some panels to show you... (all from Whiz Comics #2)

O'Casey and Mr. Hogan arrive at this island after some unknown adventure, the island is empty and they investigate, they find a guy passed out, he tells them some white people were kidnapped, they need to save them. The details are not important, but look how Mr. Hogan engages in the investigation... looking at footprints, holding the victim's head. You might argue these are passive actions though, O'Casey could be guiding him...

Take a look at these panels then, they show a careless Lance O'Casey absentmindedly running through a dark forest before Mr. Hogan astutely warns him of the death trap in the way, saving O'Casey from certain doom...

Later is Mr. Hogan who climbs a palm tree to reveal the enemy's hideout to clueless Lance O'Casey waiting on the floor...

Let me tell who saves the victims at the end... After arriving at the place where the kidnapped white people are, it is Mr. Hogan who releases them while O'Casey fights some guy. I'm not denying O'Casey's importance, I'm just trying to highlight that without Mr. Hogan's help Lance would not even be able to accomplish his feats...

Close to the end of the tale, in a impressive accomplishment of acrobatics and intelligence, we see a quick Mr. Hogan being catapulted to the drifting boat (their only escape from the enemy's island) and, by himself, maneuver the boat to the coast, saving the humans.

He even had a panel to introduce himself to the kidnapped victims they just helped.

I've only read a few of the Whiz Comics issues and Lace O'Casey is not featured in every issue, so it will take me some time to figure just when exactly they ditched Mr. Hogan for a human side-kick, and if any good reason is given for it. I just know he's absent from the #155 (and last) issue of Whiz, from Lace O'Casey mini in the the late 1940s and from the post-crisis cameo of O'casey in The Power of Shazam. I also have this quote about Mr. Hogan from his page at the DC Comics fandom wiki:

"Mister Hogan was the unofficial first mate on O'Casey's first ship, The Brian Boru. After several adventures, Lance moved on to a new vessel, the Starfish and brought on an actual first mate, Mike Bellow. Mister Hogan's actions from that time onward remain unknown"

The last sentence is certainly worrying. But rest easy, I'll be keeping a close eye on this, I will know what happened to Mr. Hogan, or at least his last appearance in the comics.

I must say, at the end of this little essay, that Mr. Hogan was not without his flaws and complexities, in Whiz Comics #5, after being bitten by a turtle, he had no reservations punching the creature. More room for character development and improvement I say, Mr. Hogan was a golden age character after all, and it's time to bring him back.

But yeah, thanks for the completely non-related ask, hope you're having a great day too!

[cosmicredcadet]

I think i would like sci-fi a lot more if more stories took the evolution route to it. so many sci-fi stories focus so much on the technology side and "Let's go to space! let's see capitalist hell!" and like, yeahh those have their purpose and place in sci-fi. But personally i love when sci-fi gets speculative with biology. How will the earth change? what animals developed from changed ecosystems - which animals evolved and which ones went extinct? I want people to take the science part of science fiction and explore biology and ecology and how the planet and animals change with the world. I"m tired of it only focusing on technology and robots and being more cyber fantasy.

[jadeseadragon]

Lawrence Sterne Stevens (American,1884-1960), illustration for "Intelligence Factor" by Corwin F. Stickney in the December 1953 issue of Science-Fiction Plus.

[krokodilesideshow]

If i spend too much time not talking about Swanky i start to miss him a lot and i become depressed /j

Ahhh i miss him, i miss him so much, i want to hold his hand, i want to hug him tightly, i want to tell him everything will be okay, i want to give goodnight kisses, i want to make him the happiest man alive

[idkimnotreal]

my uncle and my dad have two different theories about the construction of the pyramids in egypt.

my dad says some technologically advanced human civilization was wiped out, but it built the pyramids before that, and he believes we live in cycles and that ours will also be wiped out in time to give birth to a new one.

my uncle straight up believes it’s aliens.

i tried explaining to them humans have been smart for quite some time. thousands of years to be precise. i told my uncle humans have known the approximate circumference of the earth for more than 2000 years. we didn’t need satellites for that. thus it’s comprehensible that ancient egypt would have the tech to build the pyramids.

but it didn’t get to me that they’re not doubting ancient egyptians had the capacity to build those huge things - they’re doubting they actually did it. and to me it seems that 1) they don’t understand the motivations to do that, as a pyramid is meaningless to us today and 2) they can’t grasp logistics to build those things and the absolute tragedy of massive loss of human life (for instance; my uncle says that saws are fragile and will break every so often, so i said they made another one. he scoffed at that. but they really did make another one - thousands of times. that’s the power of absolute state the likes of which we see in china today. egypt was just the first).

that is why they think it’s aliens (or almost aliens). they just don’t understand how ancient societies functioned. future humans or our descendant species might wonder why we built the burj khalifa or football stadiums and how. but they’re important to us now, and we’re willing to dedicate massive resources to build those things (even though some stadiums will only be used once, and even though the burj khalifa is empty inside). the pyramids were just that on steroids.

[cupiidzbow]

🌈 freddie/rudy ✤ he/him ✤ gnc trans gay ✤ black fictional others! / art tag! / comm sheet! (CLOSED)

hi there!! 🐒 welcome to my personal selfship blog!! this is my place where i giggle and kick my feet over big fictional men! it doubles selfship blog and a personal blog, all my likes and rbs come from here!!

if you’re curious about my fictional others the full list is featured above, my two current mains are funky kong (donkey kong country) and gongon (super monkey ball!) i’m totally okay with sharing all my f/os! please heed the disclaimer at the very beginning of my f/o list if we do share some!!!

my byf is in my carrd, but overall i do not tolerate zionism, transmisogyny, antiblackness, and hatred against lesbians in the slightest. your only warning.

i ADORE primates and super into learning about l conservation and research!! im also very attached to many monkey focused series as you can see! 😼☝🏽

I’m also on these other blogs/sites!

twitter/bluesky/toyhouse/strawpage (OUTDATED)

- nsft blog ( ASK FOR URL, 18+ ONLY.)

thank you for reading!!!! 🌼

[liminal-therianthropy]

Question time!!

Also am i posting to much in a day? I can space out my posts if thats what yall want ^^

[serpentface]

do the qilik see themselves as a kind of bird? (and do the other races see them that way?) how does it affect how they interact with birds, and are any of their closer relatives still alive, the same way monkeys/apes are to us?

This comes down entirely to cultural variation, but qilik cultures squarely conceptualizing themselves As Birds is relatively rare (at least partially in the sense that peoples often imagine themselves as separate from other animals in general). At most (with some exceptions) it tends to involve dividing the world into different Types of creatures and placing themselves into a very broad 'feathered' category, but not in a way where it's like "I am the same kind of Thing as a sparrow". Most qilik would take the question of 'are you some kind of bird' in the same way the average human would take 'are you some kind of giant rabbit' (acknowledging 'there's some things in common I guess, but no' at best, being intensely insulted at worst).

This is intensified by the fact that qilik are very obviously distant from most other birds in the setting (and are materially evolutionary distant). There's two surviving 'bird' groups here, class Aves (all irl birds) and a different paravian class that qilik belong to (the clade is fictional). Qilik-like birds are MUCH rarer, having been largely outcompeted by aves birds over the course of history and only remaining where they have securely kept their cousins out of occupying their flightless niches. The majority are found in old and isolated island environments, and many of these have gone extinct with pressures from dispersal/settlement of various sophonts and the animals they brought with them. Some do occur in mainland areas, but few of these have a wide spread (many were actually driven to extinction in ecological competition with early qilik, they tend to be found in places where qilik never spread en-masse).

Those that DO live in proximity to other qilik-like birds will generally at least note the resemblance. This does not necessarily lend towards them considering themselves the Same Thing (for comparison, humans living in close proximity to other primates don't tend to conceptualize themselves As primates. The reverse is more common if anything (imagining other apes as a sort of wildman)). It also doesn't tend to have the same degree of uncanny factor that tends to develop around Our closest relatives, because no qilik relative alive today resembles them to that same degree. It's more like a human looking at a tamarin or a spider monkey, you can see that their faces look a good bit like ours and their hands are almost identical, but it's not like the 'I am looking at a thing that is shaped almost exactly like a human but Not' factor that chimps have.

Where a qilik culture considers themselves distinct from/above other animals, they tend to treat these qilik-like birds as 'its like if a qilik was a bird lol'. Where a qilik culture conceptualizes all animals as being their own peoples, these qilik-like birds tend to be conceptualized as 'little cousins' or the like.

There are at least Some tendencies for above-baseline focus on birds in qilik cultures. Stories that attempt to explain why qilik have wings but cannot fly are VERY common. Cultural origin stories involving descent from an animal (usually an animal being transformed, or an animal mating with a qilik) frequently involve this animal being a bird (these stories almost always describe the origin of a singular ethnic group as a means of differentiating themselves from neighbors, rather than the entire species). Dances that mimic the movements/courtship behavior of birds are very common across qilik cultures (whether it be for beauty, an act of veneration, an act that attempts to summon wild game, a display of masculinity, etc), as is vocal mimicry of birds having notable significance. The motif of qilik with bird wings as deities, spirits, monsters, demons, etc, is EXTREMELY common across cultures.

None of these things Aren't true of other animals though. If you did an exhaustive compendium of all animal cultural elements in all qilik societies, you'd actually find INSECTS having slightly more prominence than birds.

The only qilik groups I've established that self label As Birds are those in structurally (rather than incidentally) interspecies societies with caelin/delkhin. This is partly a matter of explaining/justifying their commonalities by placing themselves on a sort of bird spectrum (caelin have beaks and can fly, like most birds, but have 'fur' (pycnofibers) instead of (overt) feathers. Delkhin have 'fur' + can't fly, but have beaks like most birds. Qilik cannot fly but have feathers like most birds). This classification system is usually supplementary to origin stories that Explain this connection, often placing the three groups as the first birds to be created, or superior/lords among all birds.

(There are probably some groups that self-label as birds without this factor at play, I just haven't established them and this probably isn't that common).

EXONYMS for qilik by non-qilik groups tend to describe them as birds. The most common exonyms for qilik as a species tend to be things like 'bird people' 'birdfolk' 'talking birds' etc. It's also fairly common that some dehumanizing (for lack of a better word) rhetoric used By qilik for other qilik revolves around comparisons to certain kinds of birds (this tends to be more specific than just birds in General, usually species culturally viewed as vicious, lowly, stupid, etc).

[ozzgin]

do Xenomorphs pass the harkness test genuine question

I've seen a reddit thread arguing that they wouldn't, because they view humans as merely food/incubators. In my opinion, it's entirely plausible.

Does this character have human intelligence (or greater)? Depends on the Xenomorph. According to the wiki, "most Xenomorphs appear to possess an intelligence level equivalent to that of a typical primate." This refers mostly to the lower ranks, i.e. the drones or warriors. The Queen, however, is shown to have an advanced social behavior and understanding, much closer to humans. Additionally, there's always the chance of inheriting their host's properties, so a highly intelligent Xenomorph wouldn't be out of the equation. It would be interesting to see how a Deacon or Xenomorph evolved from an Engineer would behave, given it'd have a much more advanced starting point.

Can it talk or otherwise communicate with language? It has been shown that Xenomorphs can at least minimally communicate with each other. It is also hypothesized that they operate under a hive mind controlled telepathically by the Queen. Another snippet from the wiki regarding their communication: "There is evidence that the Xenomorph hive mind also includes a collective memory that passes along even at a genetic level. Through the tests conducted on Ellen Ripley, it is revealed that the memory passed from Ripley onto the new generation of Xenomorphs allows them to read and understand different languages. Events on the LV-426 colony and the USM Auriga show that the species excels at observational learning." Therefore, I believe a Xenomorph who has had the time to observe human behavior would most likely be able to understand certain cues.

Is it of sexual maturity for its species? Absolutely. We're talking about adult Xenomorphs here, the last cycle of their lives.

To summarize:

For 100% ethical certainty, go for a Xenomorph Queen. They're intelligent, can communicate, and are fully developed, sexually mature organisms.

Warrior and Drone Xenomorphs are grey areas, but hey, it's fiction. No one's going to stop you from being lewdly disemboweled by an aggressive Alien.

Facehuggers fail every criteria, so I'll be giving you a side-eye.

Take your hands off the baby Xenomorph,  rampallian! They are for gentle nursing and loving only.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Hi! I really like your other takes on Underdark races, and wanted to ask if you had any thoughts on improving grimlocks? Beyond the permanent blindness they have and the whole being humans who adapted to the underdark, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot else done with them.

Monsters Reimagined: Grimlocks

Would it surprise anyone to learn that a d-list d&d monster has It's roots in 1800s ideas about eugenics and bad adaptations of genre fiction? No? Then you've been paying attention, top marks.

Asker is absolutely right in their assessment that there's not really much to grimlocks. They're one of many "hostile tribal primitives" that have filled out the monster roster ever since the original developers lifted them en mass from the pulp adventure stories they grew up reading.

A common theme among these pulp works and the early scifi that inspired it was devolution, the idea that a people could degrade from greatness back into an animistic nature. The most well known pop culture example would be HP lovecraft's deep ones, where the author's fears of race mixing manifest as monsters that literally push humanity back down the evolutionary ladder to the stage of fish.

There's plenty of different ways to explain the origin of this writing trend, but I like to chalk it up to an anxiety resulting from the widespread acceptance of Darwin's theory of evolution by a society that believed wholeheartedly in scientific racism. If intelligence (read: whiteness) wasn't just a god given right but was infact inheritable, then it could also be disinherited, bred out of a population whether by on purpose or by accident. This made it so important to practice good breeding (read: eugenics), to preserve the pure stock from falling to degeneracy (read: miscegenation) and introducing undesirable traits into the genepool.

We can see fear this with grimlocks, humanoids who were inherently lessened by their "adaptation" to life underground, losing their intelligence and eyesight and descending into a state of barbarism. Given that this is one of the few d&d monsters that mention evolution at all, we can trace this feature to their likely inspiration: The morlocks in H.G. Wells' Time machine, published a scant 36 years after Darwin published The Origin of Species.

I'm not well read enough to know whether Wells pioneered the idea of subhuman descendants, but I can say that most of his imitators missed the point of his writing: Wells saw in his day an increasingly indolent upper class inflicting brutal and dehumanizing labour conditions on the poor to support their own carefree lifestyle. He satirized this in his book by showing that while the descendants of the rich had devolved into beautiful, useless, idiots, the descendants of the workers devolved into subterranean ape-things who maintained the machinery that allowed the eden like existence of the rich while farming them for meat. Say what you will about Wells' race politics (Neither degenerate fop or inbred ape can withstand the smarts and strength of the enlightened colonial Englishman) but his writing was specifically class continuous, and the brutality of the morlocks was a direct result of the exploitation of working people in his own day and age.

When the morlocks were adapted into the grimlocks , the d&d writers kept their canibalistic streak but specifically removed their class based origins as well as their mechanical knowhow. This is a near identical process to what happened with a creature the worlocks helped inspire: Tolkien's orcs, which were likewise turned from a commentary on the brutality of the industrial age into warlike primitives. It's a bit of a trend.

If you wanted to "fix" the grimlocks I'd go one of two ways:

If you want to engage with themes of primality, make them legit underdark dwelling primates/australopithecus type of creatures, just figuring out tool use and language. Make the rumours of them being descended from cave-exploring humanoids a common myth made up by surface dwellers.

If you want to get spicy about it though, give them back their mechanical aptitude and maybe mix in a few more dashes of pulp "lost civilization" ancient aliens nonsense. Have them dwell in great mechanical complexes beneath the earth, worker drones who've long outlived the creatures that enslaved them and scribed mechanical knowledge into their very being. Originally denied understanding of the machines they toiled to build, work, and maintain, the grimlocks jealously guard the science they've spent generations reverse engineering, giving them the reputation of being violently territorial for those underdark travelers who venture too close to the megastructures they inhabit.

Artsource

[creatingblackcharacters]

Mentioning Zecora brings up an issue I've seen crop up in furry fiction; it's quite common to code furry characters as being of a human ethnicity that originates from wherever the animal species is from, so Black zebras, Chinese pandas, Desi tigers, etc. This, um... raises problems with African great apes, for obvious imagery reasons. Would you recommend avoiding Black-coding primates entirely or are there grey areas?

I am personally not comfortable with it unless it's a Black artist doing it. Like I won't say it can't be done without being racist, but I wouldn't trust everyone with it. That's also just my opinion, I don't think we all have the same take on it.

But there are so many other animals to pick from in Africa lmao. Lions, elephants, cheetahs, leopards. I'd feel a bit sus if you had all the whole savannah and your first thought was "the Black people should be apes because apes are from Africa" like put the pen down for a second and dwell 😅🤣

[writingwithcolor]

Creatures of Folklore Who Represent Cultures Preventing Wars Throughout History

Anonyomous asked:

Hi! I’m writing a story which is set in a fantasy version of our world. The main difference between our real world and my fictional version is that the spirits and fairies of each culture and folklore exist, and that the majority of them basically stop war from happening because they react very badly (and potentially violently) when invading forces etc try to start battles. 

I’m doing a lot of research into the histories of the various cultures that will be featured in the books set in this world so I can hypothesise how they might have developed without, for example, violent colonialism, and where trade and so on might have flourished in its place. However, it’s possible for colonialism to happen through more insidious ways, such as assimilation. In one of my books, I’m intending to use this as part of the plot, where Japan will try to colonise the Ryukyuan Kingdom through assimilation, but will be stopped by the Ryukyuan Kingdom making allies with other nations (amongst other tactics), but I was wondering if you had any advice for respectfully handling the colonialism that very much did happen in real life in a fantasy setting where it didn’t manage to occur, without erasing the history and ramifications etc of what actually happened?

Do fox spirits have citizenship? 

You mean well with this concept, but there are multiple key problems. 

One major issue with cordoning off spirits and folklore creatures by “patron” culture and have them fight said patrons’ battles is that there’s a lot of overlap. It’d be hard for there not to be a conflict of interest. 

For example, everyone knows about the kitsune fox spirit from Japan. But the story of the fox spirit was introduced to Japan and Korea by China, where they are called húlijīng. These foxes are remarkably similar, with their characteristics and stories almost borrowed wholesale. Are they all the same “species?” If so, when small differences emerge in the countries’ folktales, how do you resolve this? Do these spirits also morph and specialize, or does one interpretation win out? How about when kingdoms are unified, like the Korean Three Kingdoms–do separate versions of the kumiho reverse-evolve into a single variant? What side do they pick when these kingdoms and empires try to battle? If they live apart from humans or aren’t very friendly with them, why would they have a reason to care about invasions when they have no reason to be allegiant to said borders, or whatever name they’re called in whichever country whose land they live on?

Folkloric beings are never static, and are influenced over time by cultural shifts and exchanges, including shifting borders. Human history is stuffed cover-to-cover with events of what we called “conquest” then and “occupation” or “colonization” now. And through these changes, cultures diverged and came together, creating new stories. In other words: not even fairy tales are immune to colonization. 

Leigh can explain the rest. 

~ Rina

The Problem with Retconning War

A very simple question for you:

How are you going to rectify every single historical war that’s ever existed?

Like, the whole plot of the Trojan War as we know it is that the gods of the same culture were on different sides! And the gods made the war last as long as it did. Alexander the Great was a colonizer. Romans were definitely colonizers. Ottomans and Mongols, also colonizers. It wasn’t to the scale of modern colonialism, but it happened. If you look at census records from the 1800s of Indigenous populations in North America, you’ll find that the men 20+ have way lower numbers because they died in war! 

I’m not of the opinion that the basic state of humanity is war and we are barely contained by base instincts. But I’m also not so far in the other direction that I believe humans lack any sort of warring instincts. It shows up in chimps and other primates, so it shows up in humans.

In a way, it sounds like you’ve taken a very Christian-fundamentalist-centric view of things, which is: humans need religion to be “contained”. That humans are amoral without some sort of religion or folklore or spirits telling them to not do a “bad thing.”

This is ignoring how people have been using religion to justify wars since religion was invented. As Rina said, there can be overlap in groups’ beliefs and deities so there’s the side-picking issue, which as I mentioned is the whole plot of the Trojan War. Even when humans write about gods meddling in war, they have the gods not all be on the same side.

Humans have war. Humans try to take over other groups because they want the resources that group has. Alliances shift. Territories shift.

This is also treating humans as a monolith—there are populations within the colonized groups that agree with the colonizers because they get benefits. Claiming that all colonized groups hate all aspects of their colonialism all of the time is deeply ahistorical and flattened. Sometimes the benefits were only for a small group, but sometimes the benefits were far-reaching. It’s in the India tag on WWC, varying views of the Mughals. 

Also, how will you handle the Christianization of Europe? How will you handle all of this folklore that only got written down via monks and nuns making notes and modifying beliefs to fit the Bible? Will any area with only Christianity’s records written down not have folklore? 

And how will you handle folklore drift? Religions are not static. If you look at Greek myths, there are ten to thirty versions of each story and those are just the ones that survived. Each city-state had its own mythology, using the same gods, modified to fit the local needs.

And what about folklore that deals with war and thrives in war? What about the gods of war and destruction? I know Norse mythology is Christianized beyond recognition, but even in its Christianized form half of it is about war. Would the Valkyries, whose whole purpose is to find valiant soldiers slain in battle, not want war? Their whole purpose is war.

Also, on top of it—how will you handle revolution?

You say yourself, colonialism could still happen subtly. Colonialism and injustice can still happen. Will these subjugated spirits force an already disadvantaged group to exclusively use a rigged system to try and politely ask for their rights back? Or would these spirits want to be free and support the means necessary to take it back?

War has happened to upend the divine right of kings. War has happened to free slaves (Haiti). War has happened for basic workers’ rights (some union strikes have resulted in war). 

You’re basically removing a whole toolbox in the fight for a better world. Yes, not being able to colonize because of fantasy AU sounds fine, until you realize that pretty much all of human history from the Romans has been created via war to some degree.

You’re basically just saying “violence is bad and humans need fantasy babysitters to not dive into it”, which really doesn’t sound that great once you sit with it. It removes human agency, removes human nature, and ignores the entire history of the planet.

-Leigh (Lesya)

Marika interjecting here:

We had an ask (Linked here) envisioning a story set in a de-colonized Hawai’i and the socio-political issues with that. Same problem.