#have been a disaster for the human species!

[thermodynamic-comedian]

i LOVE pitying characters who would absolutely hate being pitied. poor jonah magnus. just another victim of the industrial revolution.

[pissditching]

i HATE you media that demonizes sharks. i HATE YOU.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

hate how all these apocalyptic films show society breaking down the hot minute the grid goes down, with all the survivors banding off into tiny violent gangs that prey on each other.

bitch you are a member of one of the most social species in existence! it is actually insane the extent to which humans have evolved to use cooperation as our main survival tool. humans have been building and then rebuilding societies for as long as disasters have been bringing them down. an apocalypse would be fucking awful, but the survivors would end up building communities and networks and pooling resources and knowledge, because that's what humans do. that's what they DO!!!

[reasonsforhope]

People ask me sometimes how I'm so confident that we can beat climate change.

There are a lot of reasons, but here's a major one: it would take a really, really long time for Earth to genuinely become uninhabitable for humans.

Humans have, throughout history, carved out a living for themselves in some of the most harsh, uninhabitable corners of the world. The Arctic Circle. The Sahara. The peaks of the Himalayas. The densest, most tropical regions of the Amazon Rainforest. The Australian Outback. etc. etc.

Frankly, if there had been a land bridge to Antarctica, I'm pretty sure we would have been living there for thousands of years, too. And in fact, there are humans living in Antarctica now, albeit not permanently.

And now, we're not even facing down apocalypse, anymore. Here's a 2022 quote from the author of The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace-Wells, a leader on climate change and the furthest thing from a climate optimist:

"The most terrifying predictions [have been] made improbable by decarbonization and the most hopeful ones practically foreclosed by tragic delay. The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption but also billions of people, well past climate normal and yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse. Over the last several months, I’ve had dozens of conversations — with climate scientists and economists and policymakers, advocates and activists and novelists and philosophers — about that new world and the ways we might conceptualize it. Perhaps the most capacious and galvanizing account is one I heard from Kate Marvel of NASA, a lead chapter author on the fifth National Climate Assessment: “The world will be what we make it.”" -David Wallace-Wells for the New York Times, October 26, 2022

If we can adapt to some of the harshest climates on the planet - if we could adapt to them thousands of years ago, without any hint of modern technology - then I have every faith that we can adjust to the world that is coming.

What matters now is how fast we can change, because there is a wide, wide gap between "climate apocalypse" and "no harm done." We've already passed no harm done; the climate disasters are here, and they've been here. People have died from climate disasters already, especially in the Global South, and that will keep happening.

But as long as we stay alive - as long as we keep each other alive - we will have centuries to fix the effects of climate change, as much as we possibly can.

And looking at how far we've come in the past two decades alone - in the past five years alone - I genuinely think it is inevitable that we will overcome climate change.

So, we're going to survive climate change, as a species.

What matters now is making sure that every possible individual human survives climate change as well.

What matters now is cutting emissions and reinventing the world as quickly as we possibly can.

What matters now is saving every life and livelihood and way of life that we possibly can.

[headspace-hotel]

My mamaw has the book right now so I won't be able to read it for a little bit but my mom read The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan which is about the Dust Bowl and it puts in perspective all the environmental books I was reading from the 1940's and 1950's and the sense of agitation and intensity in them.

Everyone is like yeah yeah the dust bowl we've all heard of it, but the Dust Bowl was apocalyptic. The USA practically eliminated the bison—we are talking thousands of square miles of land littered with bones, enormous pyramids of skulls—and committed genocide against their caretakers, and then settlers ripped up the prairie grasses (which protected meters of top soil) with plows

And what happened was, half the country became in engulfed in horrific dirt storms that turned the sky black and reduced visibility to a few feet. Even indoor environments were full of deep drifts of dirt. When it rained, it rained mud instead of water. In ENGLAND the snow was RED because of DIRT. People died from pneumonia because they were breathing the dirt into their lungs.

Even before mom started reading this book, I was reading American books about the environment from the mid 20th century, and they are animated with the zeal and terror of people who have realized that human mismanagement could make the USA literally uninhabitable. I realized, "Oh. This is right after the Dust Bowl." cause of how they talk about erosion, and I realized just how formative the Dust Bowl was in terms of environmental policy.

Reading about various wildlife species, I realized also how utterly apocalyptic the conditions of the past were for animals. Deer were almost eliminated from my state. Deer.

Why do we have the Migratory Bird Treaty Act? Because just about every large bird species almost went extinct from uncontrolled commercial hunting. We almost had no swans, no cranes, no egrets, no storks. We lost the passenger pigeons and Carolina parakeets, but we could have lost Basically Everything.

So many of the ill-conceived decisions to introduce species to this continent are easily explained by how apocalyptic this period of time was. Why did we think it was a good idea to introduce Kudzu? Because in the 1950's, erosion sparked a visceral apprehension of CERTAIN DOOM, and logging had made the whole southeast start washing away! Why were so many exotic antelopes introduced to Texas? Because every native large animal was almost wiped out!

From my other readings on the subject (Changes in the Land by William Cronon is a good one) devastating environmental destruction started just about as soon as Europeans started controlling the land, and I am guessing that if you examined the timeline of environmental disaster alongside the migrations west, it would support the argument that settlers started pushing west more and more rapidly because of land degradation and environmental disaster.

I wish this was commoner knowledge, getting to where we are now has been a journey. Environmental history doesn't start in 1970's.

It is not the case that things have steadily gotten worse over time and recently are becoming extremely bad, rather, different parts of the environment have become both better and worse in steps forward and backward, and many seemingly unremarkable things around us were earned by a vicious fight, which we can learn from and continue...

[rallamajoop]

So why are there so many gay vampires?

From the time of Carmilla all the way up to the works of Anne Rice (a universe that seems to get only less subtle as the years go on), gay vampires have been a thing basically as long as anyone was writing about vampires. Lesbian vampires have been a genre all their own for decades. Bram Stoker, author of the most famous vampire novel ever written, was gay himself. So why vampires specifically?

I’ve seen people attempt to answer this one before, and there are all sorts of contributing factors I could point to here, from the genres’ beginnings with Lord Byron (infamous bisexual disaster fuckboy), to modern discourse about why queer folks so often find themselves identifying with the monsters and outcasts of fiction. Few other monsters besides vampires can so easily pass for ‘normal’, or are nearly so well known for their snappy dress sense and ‘unnatural cravings’ for human flesh. And that’s without even getting into all those skeezy outdated stereotypes casting queer people as predators, or the idea that even one ‘gay experience’ could somehow ‘convert’ you into being one yourself.

But to my mind, there’s just one really important thing that makes vampires so gay, and it’s the same thing that makes them sexy in the first place: plausible deniability.

You see, a vampire’s bite is simultaneously a) ridiculously sexual, and b) not even a little bit sexual at all.

You don’t have to look far for vampire canons where there’s nothing sexy about being bitten by a vampire. Bloody, violent, painful, sure ‒or just clinically miserable, human bodies torn open or hung up to drain like a human blood bag. What’s sexy about getting bitten by a mosquito, or a fecking leech? The diet of the actual vampire bat requires it to process so much water that it apparently spends mealtimes busily pissing out the difference, and the anti-coagulants in its saliva leave the wound bleeding messily long after it’s gone. The basic act of feeding is no more inherently sexual for a vampire than it is for a zombie.

Vampires are even a surprisingly acceptable monster to market to children. There’s a vampire muppet, a cartoon about a vampire duck, and a whole series of books about a vampire rabbit. You can put a vampire on the side of a cereal box without undue outrage. Vampires do not have to be R-rated for sex or violence.

So of course vampires will go after victims of the same sex. Do you stop to inquire whether the cow you’re eating was male or female? It’s all just predator and prey!

Until it’s everything but.

Do not let the ‘vampires aren’t supposed to be sexy!’-purists fool you. The tradition of sexy vampires goes all the way back to the oldest folklore, where the first victim of a newly-risen vampire was often their still-living spouse. Vampires were even occasionally known to get women pregnant (a convenient excuse for any widow who might turn up pregnant slightly too many months after their husband's death). The ‘original’ Nosferatu sounds more like an incubus than the naked mole-rat creature they made that movie about. The demon lover aspect of the vampire has been there all along.

And it’s not hard to imagine why. If someone is biting and sucking on your neck, then either they’re a vampire, or they’re well on the way to second base (other folklore has its vampires feed directly from their victim’s heart, which is scarcely less suggestive). The implications of an exchange of bodily fluids were never subtle, even in Stoker’s day (I'm looking at you, Lucy-with-the-three-husbands), and the vampire as a sexual predator was a popular literary device well before Stoker's time. Beautiful vampire women would seduce men to their demise, and the males of the species might visit the bedroom of some innocent maiden time and again. The Victorian obsession with mesmerism, meanwhile, provided the perfect explanation for how victims might be hypnotised into eager compliance, and perhaps not even remember being fed upon at all. Vampires have been the ultimate guilt-free sexual fantasy since way back in the day, compatible with all your awkward Victorian mores! (Not quite ready to admit they're sexual fantasies? No problem: he's just here to, y'know, suck on your neck a bit. No subtext here!)

The whole act of biting is so suggestive that in the early years of vampire cinema, it wasn’t shown at all, not even between opposite-sex participants. The camera of 1922’s Nosferatu maintains a demure distance during the climactic scene where the heroine is finally bitten and slowly drained of blood, and Universal’s Dracula conveniently fades to black or cuts away whenever it’s about to take place. But even if the biting has to take place off screen, who’s to say a vampire isn’t going to pick victims of both sexes?

The stately tradition of the lesbian vampire has cinematic examples going all the way back to 1936, with Universal’s Dracula’s Daughter. Though the titular vampire has a nominal male love interest – a psychologist who naively advises her to confront her temptations without fear – the result of his advice is a famous sequence where she picks up a young woman under the premise of wanting an artist's model, and convinces her to remove her top. No actual biting or nudity is shown (it was only 1936), but her fate is left in little doubt.

By the era of 70’s sexploitation, all such subtlety had been abandoned. If we’re all good with naked boobs, who’s going to be offended by a little biting?

In fact, when it comes to men rather than women, a vampire bite was, for many years, far too sexy to be shown, or even alluded to. Nosferatu clearly feeds on that film’s Jonathan-expy, but our only evidence is the bitemarks on his neck in the morning, and the final sacrifice to defeat the evil monster must naturally be female. Universal’s Dracula had to ignore explicit studio mandate that only the brides should be allowed to feed on their own Jonathan-equivalent, as to even imply that Dracula himself had fed upon a man was obviously far too homoerotic to contemplate (never mind that it’s Dracula who must be established as the threat in this opening sequence, or that it’s Dracula his victim will spend the rest of the film obsessed with).

But in that unspeakable land of male-on-male homoeroticism, you might be surprised how much homo we can squeeze in even without resorting to fangs-in-necks. The Lost Boys is surely one of the most homoerotic vampire films ever made, but there, the one big blood-drinking scene is rendered in a bloody massacre of slasher-movie violence. And though Anne Rice certainly describes the scene where Lestat drains Louis of blood in lurid detail (and even has them spend their first sunrise together sharing a coffin), Louis is already thoroughly seduced before he ever reaches this point.

You see, the lore of the pop-cultural vampire conveniently comes with a second and equally-compelling target for plausible deniability: the act of making a new vampire.

Obviously, to work, this has to be deliberate. A world where anyone bitten by a vampire becomes one hasn’t much to offer us, and the relationship between maker and fledgling can just as easily be framed as parental, as recruitment into a cult, or purely transactional. But whichever way you twist it, the implications of choosing another to share in your own eternal youth and immortality… like, I don’t have to spell this one out for you, do I? Did I mention how that thing where a vampire’s traditional first victim tended to be their own mortal widow goes all the way back?

But if we’re not ready to be completely obvious with our mainstream audience, some alternative explanation can always be provided for cover. Lestat doesn’t really want Louis, he just wants Louis’ money! (He also really wants Louis.) The Lost Boys just want Michael to join their gang! (Their very, very pretty gang, who swan around in mesh shirts, tank tops and assless chaps.)

The two sides of the vampire-deniability coin aren’t mutually exclusive, either. Carmilla drinks her new paramour’s blood, but also gazes into her eyes while promising her you will be mine. Drinking blood is a key part of making a new vampire in so many vampire stories, after all.

Carmilla isn’t even the only gay vampire story of the Victorian era. I recently posted about two other fascinating examples, both featuring male/male pairings: one being pretty much just a gender-flipped version of Carmilla, and the other a tragic love story filled with significant "vampire = gay lover" metaphors (why oh why must the townsfolk keep us apart, when we’ll only ever be happy once we’re united once more?) This stuff goes surprisingly far back.

In fact, you can find queer subtext in vampire fiction that predates even Byron and Polidori. 1819's The Vampyre was the first published vampire story, yes, but the first known work of vampire-fiction in the English language is a poem published by John Stagg in 1810, also called The Vampyre (look, the genre didn’t exist yet, you didn’t have to be creative with your titles).

In brief, Stagg’s poem recounts a conversation between a wife (Gertrude) and her dying husband (Herman), whose dear friend Sigismund, lately deceased and deeply mourned, has returned as a vampire. Night after night, he crawls into Herman’s room to drain his blood. Herman’s fate is already sealed, but unless Gertrude takes action, it will surely be she that Herman will take as his own first victim when he rises from the grave.

There may be nothing intentional about the queer subtext of this tale. A vampire’s victims often include friends he knew in life, as Stagg himself cites in his introduction. But if Herman’s first victim will be his wife, what are we to read about the fact Sigismund’s first victim is Herman? Especially given how long he’s kept secret from poor Gertrude that his dear ‘friend’ has been climbing into his bedroom each night, lying beside him in bed and sucking and draining "the fountain of my heart!" while Herman moans and tosses (in pain, obviously!), always leaving him "exhausted, spent." Ultimately, Gertrude is saved only when both Herman and Sigismund are staked through the heart, and we close on the image of them slumbering together in the tomb.

It is, however you turn it, pretty gay.

I reiterate: this is the very first known work of vampire fiction written in the English language. The second was the one that was kind-of-written-by, kind-of-stolen-from, and unambiguously based on bisexual-disaster-fuckboy Lord Byron. And the two most influential works of vampire fiction of the next hundred years would be Carmilla, the very lesbian vampire story written by a… presumably straight man? And Dracula, the not-completely-convincingly-hetero story written by #1 Walt Whitman fanboy Bram Stoker. Vampires have always been very equal-opportunity kind of monsters.

There are, of course, plenty of influential heterosexual vampire tales to fill out the roster too. Varney the Vampire, a penny dreadful from the 1840s, was so successful it ran for over 200 chapters. The 1960s had their own wildly successful Varney-equivalent in the soap opera Dark Shadows. Love it or hate it, we really can't ignore Twilight either. My own introduction to the genre was Christopher Pike’s The Last Vampire series, which came out alongside the original Vampire Diaries novels. So there's plenty of material around to keep the straights entertained – and honestly, that’s only as it should be, because the very thing that makes vampires so queer-friendly is that the sex of their victims doesn’t matter. And it’s so easy to make vampires sexy (let alone a full vampire-proposal!) that even the Victorians could do it.

Now, if your reaction to all this theorising is to tell me "but the LGBTQ’s shouldn’t have to hide behind plausible deniability!" I can only counter, "well sure, but why should the straights have all the fun?" Because playing with all the ambiguity of "is this monster really just after my blood or is this going somewhere?" can be all sorts of fun, regardless of the genders involved. And as long as they’re up for exchanging bodily fluids with persons-and-or-victims of either gender equally, why not have some fun with it?

So, okay, maybe the real title of this post should have been "why are there so many pansexual vampires?" But the answer doesn’t change. Vampires have been the bisexual disaster fuckmonsters for as long as anyone’s been writing about vampires, and have been a metaphor allowing people publish barely-coded gay attraction since 1872. And much like the queer community, they’ve only become more complex, more sympathetic, and all the more popular as romantic paramours as the years have gone by.

[fox-bright]

My covid post from last year is going around again, as I sit here debating how and what to write about HPAI H5N1.

I'm tired.

Things to know:

HPAI H5N1, Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza H5N1, is so far wildly lethal when humans get it. Somewhere between 53% and 56% of the humans who have been found to have it have died.

Those people mainly got it from interacting with sick birds. A couple have gotten it from interacting with sick mammals. The one of those that's most important to US news right now is a worker at a milk cow farm who got sick very recently. That worker's only symptom before getting on antiviral medication was pinkeye.

(Keep your cats indoors; cats are getting it from sick birds. Don't have bird feeders this year. Do NOT interact with wild birds that are acting strangely; do not poke at dead wild birds.)

Humans are not yet giving it to humans. There are one or two cases where they might have done, in the last few years; those cases guttered out quickly, to the great good luck of our species, and did not spread.

Human-to-human transmission is the big concern.

We are not in any immediate danger of H2H transmission. When we're in immediate danger, you'll know.

When the flip happens, we will go from not being in immediate danger to being in immediate danger, very rapidly. This could happen this month, or in five months, or in five years, and we don't know when.

By the time we are in immediate danger, it is too late to do the greater bulk of your preparation.

So it's time to prepare now. This time we have is a blessing. We should not squander it. What would you have done differently in September, 2019, if you knew what was coming? Do that.

With some differences; a) flu can pass by fomite--that is, a sick person touches a doorknob, you touch a doorknob, you rub your face, you get sick--so you actually do need cleaning chemicals for this one. b) This one gets in through the eyeballs pretty easily in its current shape, so eye protection should be prepped for adding to masking in public spaces. c) this one is gonna call for fever reducers and we know how hard they were to get when covid hit; stock up. And stock up on pet food if you can keep it from going bad, because pet food gets its protein from cow and bird meat; there will be shortages.

With a lot of similarities; the flu is airborne so don't stop masking, if we have a proper lockdown this time you're going to wish you had flour and rice and canned fruit so keep stock of all your staples. If you have a nice big freezer, now is the time to get beef and chicken before the prices shoot to the ceiling. I'm also stocking up on powdered milk and powdered eggs for baking with.

We have made a lot, a LOT of mistakes with how we've handled covid. But one thing we didn't do wrong was all of the community-building in the early days. Think about what worked then, and what didn't really work. Now is the time to make sure community bonds are strong. As always, as in ANY potential disaster, there are two most-important questions?

Who can protect and support you?

Who can you support and protect?

Plan accordingly.

[galehowl]

Another Digimon often seen in Aurora's setting, Seadramon

These large aquatic serpents are another common inhabitants of the Digital World, and can be found in various bodies of water, from rivers and lakes to seas and oceans.

They're excellent swimmers, unsurprisingly, and can dive to impressive depths. A very noticeable feature all Seadramon possess is the metal helmet-like armor on their heads, which is a part of their body, something observed pretty often in many different Digimon species, where various metals and minerals grow naturally on them. The beak and fins of the helmet keep growing with age, and it loses its shine the older the serpent gets.

They also come in a variety of colors, though the most common ones are blues and greens with white undersides, and red tailfins and jaw markings. Purple, grey and white of various hues were observed, along with some minor differences in appearance, which is attributed to different habitats. There have been cases of Seadramon found with bioluminescence, those who seem to prefer living in caves or at greater depths - another trait of Digimon - fast evolving adaptation - compared to any life forms of Earth. They can breathe on land, but they're slow and somewhat clumsy, moving around with the help of their front flippers and powerful tails.

Seadramon, though not all, are known to be more dangerous and territorial than some other Digimon humans encountered, and are somewhat prone to attacking without asking questions first. Any smaller Digimon or animal, including humans, are potentially on the menu, as Seadramon are near-exclusive carnivores, though mostly hunt fish and other aquatic life forms. Digimon can be sought after as a source of pure energy, rather than food. They attack by strangling their opponents and dragging them underwater if they can drown, or breathing out a cone of frost and ice.

Despite this, several non-partnered ones are known to work on Earth, in the organization alongside humans and other Digimon, namely helping with marine biology research, human-Digimon tech development, and issues like climate change and pollution. Later on, as Digimon become more publicly known, they take on the roles of helping in cases of natural disasters, sinking ships, and also patrol of coastal lines in case of aquatic hostile Digimon appearance, as well.

[route-to-eutopia-if]

Route to Eutopia - New WIP IF

DEMO(28K) I CHARACTER DOSSIERS I PLAYLIST (TBA)

You have one year left to live.

But are you afraid of dying? Probably not. Since you don’t even know how to live your life. You have been hidden away from public eye since young. And the only friend you have is an Alter, humanoid species born to only serve other people and nothing else. Alters live so ‘people like you’ could live.

That makes the two of you. Alive. But never here. Never lived.

If opportunities arise, would you take a chance to change it? Only you can answer.

In a world where feeling nothing at all is better than letting your emotions rule over you, your choice to break those rules and make a change will paint a new shade of history that no one ever could. 

Hidden behind shut doors to live your quiet life as a secret child of Bastien Palmer, Sole Leader of Eutopia paradise, you never experience anything except for repeating the same old routine your entire life. You are the existence which should not be known, not just for the reason that you are the byproduct of your father and his secret lover. But also because of your frightening ‘Alter-like’ eye color, most of it is silver like any Stargaze–but nevertheless… tinted shamefully by crimson streaks.

You are told to stay away from public eyes for the sake of Palmer’s reputation in which you feel obliged to. However, your life of peaceful solitude will never be the same again after tonight…

Route to Eutopia is a violent dystopian loosely-conceptual interactive story where you are a bystander surrounded by The Chosen One of your own choice. You are to designate whether this story will head towards the direction of mutual peace between Alters– a human-like species believed to be plagued by uncured disease since birth– and Stargazers —a group of survivors whose ancestors once lived on a faraway planet before an inevitable disaster occurred and forced them to flee into another dimension, or towards a doom fate that cannot be reversible.

To be noted; RtE is a heavily-relationship based game (not necessarily in platonic/romantic sense) each of your interactions with any character will determine the tone and purpose of their motivation. Any choice you have chosen, make sure to embrace the consequences of your action at your own expense.

With that being said, it is also worth mentioning that you don’t need to engage into a romance or specific relationship with any character to complete the story.

RtE also rated 18+ for strong language, suggestive contents, disturbing topics such as racism, sexism, discrimination against queer people, explicit descriptions of violence, murders, drug use and sexual behaviors of certain characters with optional intercourse scenes.

Setting

RtE takes place in a post-apocalypse society where the concept of time is lost and any history known was only speculations at best and rumour at worst. Trying to maintain their sense of utopia, Stargazers built and operated their space colony as a temporary base for self-preservation (in which only fews know details about) called ��Eutopia’. 

In this dystopian paradise people’s sole purpose of living was fixated on surviving. And in order to do that, the whole population creates a solid ground rule not to let themselves ‘feel’ about other emotions that do not serve for public favors. Hence, you will be challenged to adapt to several situations and handpick the best flavor of your actions based on the emotions you have learnt or developed from your surroundings.

Who do you play as?

For now, you will be playing as a secret child of Bastien Palmer, the leader of Stargazers who already has a wife and two other perfect children, your younger sister and brother. Ones you have never interacted with nor you ever get the chance to.

MCs subjectively considered a white sheet which you can paint anything on by your preferences. Explore the world full of colorful emotions or bottomless pit of numbness by your own choices. 

But remember, Eutopia is a place where everything goes according to one simple rule ‘To survive’ hence the marriage between a man and woman will be set as the norm and only truth, and someone who will state otherwise must face and suffer the ugliness of social standards accordingly. However, I do not encourage any transphobic/homophobic behavior of the characters in this story. Please kindly be assured of that.

There might be a chance where you can start off as other characters, that is, however, still a subject-to-change matter as of now.

Introduction to the Chosen Ones [ ROs]

**Please be aware of mild spoilers below**

Vegaris (M/F) 19 Star-crossed lovers or Nemesis route, The Rebel.

They would do anything to survive, even if it means to betray the only person who trusts them deeply… like you.

Vegaris is an Alter who has so many sides hidden behind closed doors. Unpredictable, cunning, hot and cold are the words that describe them best. Due to their traumatic childhood (much like other Alters on Eutopia), they have a deep-root hatred for Stargazers. Although they were brought in by your family and treated almost the same as one of your father’s own kids. They still witness the unfairness of being an Alter in society and never afraid to point the wrong in other people’s doings. 

Their usual mask, however, is one where you cannot crack open that easily. They always remain calm and composed in front of you, and only show their fangs when circumstances arise.

Dana/Darren Regency (M/F) 22 Childhood friends, Forbidden route, The Face.

For a person who seems to be easy to read as much as an open-book, they sure talk with silence better than with their own voice.

A poster girl/boy for Regency Academy. Your former childhood friend (for some unknown reason, they're trying their hardest to avoid you) and an only child to the Head of Deans at Regency, Sandalphon. They are the precise image of how one should raise a Stargazer. Being a honor student. A model citizen. And a perfect ideal partner. They are assigned to be married with the most capable genetic-wise fiancé. As popular as they appear to be to the public, their private life (as private as it can be) is still a gigantic loophole for most imprudent reporters trying to catch even just a glimpse.

It seems like what they are trying to avoid is not just you, but the entirety of Eutopia.

Sandalphon Regency (M/F) 40 Age-difference, Single-parent route, The Pacifist.

Do you believe in something just because it's true, or it becomes the truth only when you believe in it?

Sandalphon is the most powerful influence among the deans of Regency. A group of people that has control over governing matters even beyond that of Bastien Palmer, the President. For Sandal, they are anything and everything people could ever ask for in a Regency. Kind, generous, well-versed with every branch of knowledge in the universe. Never wrong in anything. And never judge anyone based on their bias.

If only people knew the truth, they’d probably beg to differ.

Maybe they are just good at hiding beneath that gentle facade, maybe a calculated mind with strings to pull works best with neutral suggestions... who knows?

One more hidden character will be revealed in the demo, Into the Madness route, The Savior.

[ Classified info. ]

**There will be two sub ROs and flings to be introduced later in the story.**

More info will be announced.

Demo 1st update : 24/01/2024 Chapter 1 (28k codes excluded)

Datalog is completed roughly til the end of the story. Coding and polishing will certainly take time. Any more updates will be announced solely on this blog.

Reblogging is appreciated. Thank you!

[o-craven-canto]

Selected recurrent patterns or "laws" of evolution, of potential use for speculative biology. List compiled by Neocene's Pavel Volkov, who in turn credits its content to Nikolay Rejmers (original presumably in Russian). These are guidelines, and not necessarily scientifically rigorous.

Dollo's Law, or irreversibility of evolution: organisms do not evolve back into their own ancestors. When mammals returned to the sea, they did not develop gills and dermal scales and change back into fish: they became whales or seals or manatees, who retain mammalian traits and show marks of land-dwelling ancestry.

Roulliet's law, or increase of complexity: both organisms and ecosystems tend to become more complex over time, with subparts that are increasingly differentiated and integrated. This one is dodgier: there are many examples of simplification over time when it is selected for, for example in parasites. At least, over very large time scales, the maximum achievable complexity seems to increase.

Law of unlimited change: there is no point at which a species or system is complete and has finished evolving. Stasis only occurs when there is strong selective pressure in favor of it, and organism can always adapt to chaging conditions if they are not beyond the limits of survival.

Law of pre-adaptation or exaptation: new structures do not appear ex novo. When a new organ or behavior is developed, it is a modification or a re-purposing of something that already existed. Bone tissue probably evolved as reserves of energy before it was suitable to build an internal skeleton from, and feathers most likely evolved for thermal isolation and display before they were refined enough for flight.

Law of increasing variety: diversity at all levels tends to increase over time. While some forms originate from hybridization, most importantly the Eukaryotic cells, generally one ancestor species tends to leave many descendants, if it has any at all.

Law of Severtsov or of Eldredge-Gould or of punctuated equilibrium: while evolution is always slow from the human standpoint, there are moments of relatively rapid change and diversification when some especily fertile innovation appears (e.g. eyes and shells in the Cambrian), or new environments become inhabitable (e.g. continental surface in the Devonian), or disaster clears out space (e.g. at the end of the Permian or Cretaceous), followed by relative stability once all low-hanging fruit has been picked.

Law of environmental conformity: changes in the structure and functions of organisms follow the features or their environment, but the specifics of those changes depend on the structural and developmental constraints of the organisms. Squids and dolphins both have spindle-shaped bodies because physics make it necessary to move quickly through water, but water is broken by the anterior end of the skull in dolphins and by the posterior end of the mantle in squids. Superficial similarity is due to shared environment, deep structural similarity to shared ancestry.

Cope's and Marsh's laws: the most highly specialized members of a group (which often includes the physically largest) tend to go extinct first when conditions change. It is the generalist, least specialized members that usually survive and give rise to the next generations of specialists.

Deperet's law of increasing specialization: once a lineage has started to specialize for a particular niche, lifestyle, or resource, it will keep specializing in the same direction, as any deviation would be outcompeted by the rest. In contrast, their generalist ancestors can survive with a marginal presence in multiple niches.

Osborn's law, or adaptive radiation: as the previous takes place, different lines of descent from a common ancestor become increasingly different in form and specializations.

Shmalhausen's law, or increasing integration: over time, complex systems also tend to become increasingly integrated, with components (e.g. organs of an organism, or species in a symbiotic relationship) being increasingly indispensable to the whole, and increasingly tightly controlled.

[niqhtlord01]

Humans are weird: Poop Crystals

( Please come see me on my new patreon and support me for early access to stories and personal story requests :D https://www.patreon.com/NiqhtLord Every bit helps)  

The pace in which human technology progressed over the millennia was rather standard for a class 4 species. Even when accounting the periods of scientific degradation which resulted from natural plagues or religious persecution; it was expected that humans would not achieve advanced space travel until another 2-3 thousand years had passed.

Scientifically speaking human scientists were well more advanced than the society they lived in, but due to the technological limitations of the human race they were held back from implementing their designs. A primary limitation was the lack of a sufficiently powerful power source. They did have many different forms of power generators ranging from solar to nuclear, but to power larger machines often required equally large energy sources. To power their ships alone around a third of their vessels were dedicated to the power cores.   

With these restrictions in place travel between stars for humans often relied on decade long journeys in cryo sleep; which ironically required even more power generators to maintain. Their large size made them easy targets for natural disasters such as space debris or prowling space pirates seeking an easy profit margin at the slave markets. These dangers became a standard for human travel until the Terran civilization encountered the planet Nolla 987 and the species that called it home.

During a long duration colonization trip the human ship “Midas” was struck by the trail debris of a rogue comet and knocked off course. The robotic caretakers tried their best to maintain the course, but with the damage done to the ship their primary programming to maintain the lives of the crew kicked in and diverted the ship to the nearest habitable planet for debarkation. Nolla 987 was the closest planet with a stable atmosphere. Originally charted several years earlier but deemed unsuitable for colonization or industrial expansion, it was not ear marked for either and left alone; until the Midas incident that is.

The landing was not a smooth one. Several engines had been damaged and multiple hull breaches resulted in portions of the ship being shredded away during the entry process. It would be safer to say that the Midas crash landed during the final stretch of the maneuver, but with a 73% survival rate of the crew a rather acceptable crash landing.

One by one the crew and colonists were unfrozen to find the ship a burning wreck and only a handful of robotic assistants still functioning. The industrial printing machines were relatively undamaged but without the ships power core they could not be used to print components or tools needed to make the necessary repairs. The crew was then forced to ration its remaining power supply and divided into two teams. The first team would comb through the wreckage and salvage what they could of the wreck while also building shelter. The second group would scout the surrounding area for anything of use and then report back.

It did not take long for the second team to stumble upon a nest of the dominant species of the planet. An insectoid called the “Sectar” which ranged from the size of a house cat to as large as a two story building. These insects digested their food and excreted the waste into a dense crystalian substance that they then used to build massive hive like complexes.

The occupants of the hive had been driven from the hive by the crash landing of the Midas leaving it almost completely empty save for a few eggs and new hatchlings who were not strong enough to flee on their own. Several of the second team members had been scanning the crystal structures while interacting with the newborn Sectar’s. To quote a journal entry of one of them, “They were like insect golden retrievers. Extremely derpy with at least four times as many sets of eyes. They followed us around on their legs like we were their mothers and clung to our legs when we began to return to our ship for the night.”

At least one of the second team was confirmed to have brought a hatchling back to their camp. There was a debate amongst the survivors on if they should try and eat it, but the notion was quickly squashed as they still had food reserves and no one was brave enough to see how the alien’s bio matter would react inside the human digestive system.

The same human who had brought the hatchling back offered it a portion of food which it eagerly ate. Not long after the hatchling excreted a hardened crystal roughly the size of a thimble. When the human made to pick up the seemingly beautiful gem they recoiled as an electrical discharge shocked their hand. This immediately drew the attention of the rest of the crew who began carefully examining the crystal substance. After some rather rough jury-rigging, the crystal was wired into one of the printer machines and to the surprise of everyone powered the machine. The crew quickly learned that the older Sectar’s would produce larger crystal excrements but were extremely hostile and territorial. Smaller Sectar’s were deemed more desirable for the time being as they were easier to train and harvest crystals from.  

Within a matter of days the crew had not only collected enough crystals to power all of their machines and send out a distress signal, but also used the new found crystal power to create a full settlement on the planet complete with water filtration, crop fields, and a sizeable wall to keep out the native wildlife.

It would not be for another thirty years before a passing human shipped picked up their distress signal and went to investigate the planet. When they arrived on Nolla 987 they were astonished to find a fully functioning colony complete with limited orbital facilities. Nearly every human settler and their descendants had a Sectar in their household that they would take care of and feed and in exchange use their crystal excrement to power nearly everything they needed to live.

From there it was only a matter of time before the entirety of human space was aware of the events of Nolla 987 and the Sectar species. Within the decade the colony on Nolla 987 became the capital for a fully settled world with dozens of cities and communities. The Sectar species were transported throughout human space and began being implemented in all aspects of society.

There was initial resistance to the new power source by existing power blocks which realized Sectar power would be far more efficient than nuclear powered engines, but unlike other power sources they had squashed in development the Sectar power option had thirty years of trial and error to back it up with research as well as a fully functioning model with the planet of Nolla 987.

Sectar’s became a common sight on every human planet and were treated like common pets. It was even studied that when introduced to different food sources the energy output of crystal excrement could be increased resulting in certain food industries booming overnight. The composition of spices, cooking technique, and flavoring became an entirely new and highly prestigious academic field with the most successful of its practitioners being highly sought after by companies.

The technological capabilities of humanity experienced a massive surge in advancement within fifty years to the point humans no longer needed cryo ships to travel between stars. Those who had been studying humanity found themselves now being introduced to them as humans winded up on their doorstep with a Sectar on their shoulder and a perverse obsession with collecting its bodily waste.    

[gffa]

So according to the timeline thing Yoda was 100 when he started teaching padawans? Isn’t Grogu 50 in The Mandolorian? Does that mean Yoda was still practically a baby when he started teaching??

It's an interesting question! I've been going on the assumption that Yoda and Grogu's species don't progress in a 1:1 relationship with human-like species' progress--that, once they reach 75 or 80, they experience a major jump in cognitive abilities, as compared to the same arc a human-like person would experience. But it could also be that Grogu is way behind where he would have been with the Jedi, given that he's been deeply traumatized by both witnessing the Jedi genocide and whatever happened to land him on Arvala-7, and there was no one to really communicate with him until Ahsoka met him in season 2. Or it could be that Yoda, much like the rest of his disaster lineage, was a prodigy for his species and was basically a baby when he started training other Jedi and I hope he was like 120 when he joined the Council and there was at least one other Wookiee or Besalisk (who live 400+ years) who basically said, "Yoda is joining the Council?? But he's a BABY!" because that would be hilarous.

[andejoe]

Jngyi loved teaching humans. Truly. Most of them were problematic in their own ways, but he loved being able to help shape them into beings that wouldn’t destroy the galaxy. One of his favorite lessons was teaching humans that sometimes there was no way to ‘fix’ something. Humans needed that lesson. They tried to fix everything, and sometimes made things much worse.

Jngyi gave his students the task of ‘terraforming a planet for habitation’. The goal was to give students a planet that could not be terraformed so they would admit the planet is undesirable and thus accept defeat. Most of the time, even humans would admit a planet would require too much money or effort to change or that attempting terraformation would damage the planet beyond survivability. Ganix was the planet assigned to the more stubborn or supercilious students.

The planet Ganix is unsuitable for life, any life. Most of the planet’s surface is covered in black water, both colored and contaminated by the ash of overactive underwater volcanoes. The excessive ash in the water choked any wildlife that had the misfortune of trying to live there.

What land exists isn’t even dry, instead covered in large patches of marsh. The three seasons observable from a safe distance fluctuate so quickly and harshly that these marshes freeze over and melt in a matter of days, effectively destroying any flora that tries to survive.

While it’s hard to call anything a ‘flood’ when the planet is mostly water to begin with, the tides still completely cover what little land exists when the lunar cycle reaches perigee for a full day every standard two weeks. The climate is no easier to deal with. Rain carrying enough ash to coat the ground, ice falling like rocks, or the excessive heat that accompanies the ‘dry spells’.

The planet isn’t even able to be terraformed as the unstable tectonic plates would fracture and cause even more geological disasters. Which is exactly why Ganix had been classified as uninhabitable and used only as a way point for those whose nav systems broke down.

Jngyi felt very confident that Millie, Elan, Rene, and Brenden, his four most human students, would come to the same conclusion.

The report Rene handed in for the group was over 20 pages long.

“This is quite the long report for what should be a very short sentence,” Jngyi stated.

“What do you mean a short sentence? Just setting up appropriate farm land takes up three of those pages. Elan wanted to write five but we convinced her to shorten it down.”

Jngyi quickly scanned his eyes down the first page of the report. “In our research, we have discovered terraforming in its current meaning is not required for habitation. What do you mean?”

Rene glanced at Millie, who nodded encouragement.

“Well, we don’t believe you need to alter the planet to adjust its climate or structure in order to live there. We believe that it’s possible to adapt to the circumstances available with a little bit of outside supplies.”

Jngyi slapped the report down on his desk. “The assignment was meant to make you admit defeat, not write nonsense to make you sound clever.”

Brenden stepped forward next to Rene. “We didn’t make up stuff! Everything in the report you haven’t bothered to read yet will work.”

Jngyi stared at the upset boy. “You cannot be thriving members of the galaxy if you cannot admit you are incapable of something. Ganix cannot be terraformed. The last attempt at it is what set off the underwater volcanoes to begin with. It is beyond repair and thus is not sustainable for life.”

“Well we say you’re wrong,” Brenden fired back.

Jngyi tried to remember that these were children, mentally unformed and unable to refrain from stubbornness and stupidity. “It is not just me. You’re saying the galaxy is wrong. You’re saying that you four know more than every species, human included, who’s tried to live there before. Even you must see how-“

Millie cut in. “What if they are?”

Jngyi paused to let the eager child’s words register. “What if what? What if the entire galaxy is wrong? How can you ask that?”

“You always teach us that the galaxy is always changing and it’s important to adapt. Well, what if this is another change just waiting to happen? What if they’re wrong?” Millie reasoned.

Jngyi shook his head. “It’s not the same thing. I’m sorry, but you’ve failed this assignment.”

Brenden started to say something, but Rene spoke up faster.

“Will you please read the report before making a final decision? You might change your mind.”

“Fine. I will read the report. But tomorrow the grade will be submitted.”

The four humans left Jngyi to read in quiet.

Jngyi put off reading the report until after dinner. He regretted that decision when he reached page two and had to start contacting other experts. Jngyi knew some earth history, but floating gardens and sun shades and buoyant cities were beyond his working knowledge. Certainly his students had done their research.

By the time the four humans regrouped in his class, Jngyi had a virtual group of his own. Experts in survival, plant growth, microbiology, construction, watercraft, and climate all watched the students enter the class. Each expert had their own copy of the report, along with their own research on the planet itself.

“Prof J, what’s going on here?” Brenden asked.

“Your plan is insane, arduous, possibly nugatory, but it may be viable all the same. I’ve gathered together some experts to question your tactics. If they agree that this could work, they will add their expanded knowledge to your concepts and we will submit this to the terraformation council for further review. If you do well today, this could well allow all four of you entrance to whichever field of study you desire after basic schooling.”

Jngyi motioned for the children to sit down at their seats. Each desk had their report and a pad to pull up more research during the debate.

“If you need a moment to ready yourself, please take it. We begin in fifteen minutes.”

——————————————

Deidre, the expert human on the terraformation committee, looked up from her itinerary. “Hey Kleri, why is Ganix on the schedule for the next meeting? I thought this planet had been deemed unlivable a long time ago?”

Aide Kleri nodded. “Yes Madam Deidre, you are correct.”

“Has something changed?”

“Apparently some teenage humans received the planet as a homework assignment.”

Deidre laughed, cutting off whatever else Aide Kleri would have said. Kleri waited until Deidre calmed down.

���Madam Deidre, why is that funny?”

“Because Kleri, there is nothing worse than a human teenager with a good idea.”

[entwinedmoon]

Cold Boys and Cannibalism

With today’s news concerning the identification of James Fitzjames’s remains—and the fact that those remains show signs of cannibalism—I have been thinking a lot about how those final, desperate days of the Franklin Expedition went down. But I’ve been thinking about those days in a particular light, one influenced by another special interest of mine: the Andes flight disaster.

The Andes flight disaster—aka the crash of the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, aka That Time In 1972 When A Uruguayan Rugby Team Was On A Plane That Crashed Into The Andes And They Had To Eat Their Dead Friends In Order To Survive—has long been a casual interest of mine. But earlier this year I watched the movie Society of the Snow, based on the book by the same name, and that kicked this interest into a full-blown hyper-fixation. I’ve been reading every book about it I can get my hands on, and I’m constantly trying to steer conversations towards mentioning it (“It’s a cold night tonight…but not nearly as cold as what the survivors of the Fairchild 571 had to endure on that mountain…”).

The Andes flight disaster has several similarities with the Franklin Expedition. They were stranded in the middle of nowhere, they had to endure freezing temperatures, and when the food ran out, they resorted to eating the flesh of their dead companions. There are also some major differences, of course, such as the Franklin Expedition being a purposeful exercise in exploration whereas the Andes flight disaster was an accident, and instead of highly trained members of the Royal Navy who followed a strict chain of command, the passengers on the F-571 were mostly pampered, upper-class, well-educated men in their late teens to mid-twenties, along with some friends and family, and there wasn’t an obvious leader or authority after the crash. But one of the main differences is that, unlike the Franklin Expedition, there were survivors of the Andes flight disaster.

Sixteen men survived 72 days on top of a mountain in the Andes, suffering through brutal temperatures, altitude sickness, starvation, an avalanche, and watching their close friends—and sometimes even their family—die. They were only saved when two of those survivors—Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa—hiked ten days through the Andes to get help. When they were found, no one could believe it. These men had been written off as dead shortly after the crash. Despite only 16 out of 45 people making it out alive, their survival was hailed as a miracle. When they returned to Uruguay, they were treated like heroes.

Unfortunately, some members of the press were far more interested in painting these survivors as deranged savages. The rescue team had leaked photographs showing partially eaten body parts strewn around the wrecked airplane where the men had taken shelter. However, during a press conference on their return home, the survivors did not shy away from the truth. They admitted that they had only survived thanks to eating the flesh of those who had died. One of the survivors, Pancho Delgado, compared their eating of human flesh for physical salvation to the eating of Christ’s body for spiritual salvation. The largely Catholic country of Uruguay embraced this comparison.

The book Alive, written by Piers Paul Read using extensive interviews with the survivors taken shortly after their rescue, goes into some detail about the cannibalism that took place. It is not a book for the faint of heart. But even though the survivors have been very open about what they did, they still have attempted to distance themselves from this ultimate taboo by insisting that what they did wasn’t technically cannibalism but “anthropophagy.” Anthropophagy is the eating of human flesh, which the Andes survivors certainly did engage in, but they also very much did cannibalism. Survival cannibalism is the consumption of a member of your own species in order to survive, which is exactly what happened in the Andes—and what happened in the Arctic with the Franklin Expedition.

Every book I've read about the Andes flight disaster—Alive, Society of the Snow, and the several memoirs written by the survivors (14 of whom are still alive today)—all tell of the moment when the survivors decided they would eat the dead in order to live. Around the tenth day, after an agonizing and disappointing wait for someone to find them, several of the survivors spoke up. They had all been holding out hope that they would be rescued—their small food supply, mostly made up of snacks, candy, and alcohol, dwindling rapidly despite strict rationing—but it had become painfully clear that there would be no rescuers. No one was coming for them. And they had no food. They could only survive if they walked out, but they could only do that if they had the strength to do so. They needed to eat. There was only one way.

Some of the people who had survived the crash resisted the idea, while others fully supported it. Many put forth arguments for or against. Some said that they had a moral obligation to stay alive, and letting themselves die was wrong. Roberto Canessa, one of the two men who would later walk through the mountains to find help, was a nineteen-year-old medical student, and he emphasized the scientific side of things, explaining how they needed proteins to survive or their bodies would begin to break down. The religious explanation later used by Pancho Delgado at the press conference was actually first mentioned by one of the other survivors on that fateful day, Pedro Algorta.

I’m currently reading Algorta’s memoir, Into the Mountains. Early on in the book he too discusses that meeting of the survivors wherein they made the decision to eat the dead. He mentions the religious argument he had used. But he goes on to say that argument was merely an excuse and not the true reason he had supported cannibalizing the victims of the crash. He said that it was the emptiness of his stomach that had persuaded him. As he put it, “I was hungry and I wanted to live.”

When I read that line, my mind immediately went to the scene in AMC’s The Terror, where Lt. Hodgson spoke to Goodsir, telling him a story from his childhood about how he had once taken communion with his Catholic aunts, connecting it with the cannibalism Hodgson and Hickey’s mutineers had committed. He ended his speech with almost the exact same words used by Pedro Algorta, “I’m hungry and I want to live.”

I’m not sure if the Andes flight disaster influenced any aspect of this scene or not, but that sentiment shared by both the real-life Pedro Algorta and the fictionalized version of Lt. Hodgson is something vital to note when it comes to thinking about the cannibalism committed both by the Andes survivors and the Franklin Expedition.

Sure, it was around the tenth day in the Andes that they first cut into the body of someone they had once called a friend. But many of the survivors had already been thinking about eating the bodies for days. Nando Parrado, after waking up from a three-day coma to discover his mother had died in the crash and his sister was dying from severe internal injuries, was determined to walk out of the mountains to see his father again, even if it was the last thing he did. One day he was talking to fellow survivor Carlitos Páez about how they had run out of food. Nando told him he would not give in without a fight, and that if he had to, he would eat the pilot. Many others had similar thoughts, some keeping it to themselves while others discussed it among small groups of trusted friends. That conversation on the tenth day was merely a formality—they had already realized there was only one way to survive.

When it comes to the Franklin Expedition, we don’t know how that decision was made. When Fitzjames died, how long had the men around him been starving, their stomachs aching with hunger? Did the fading vestiges of the Royal Navy chain of command hold them back at all before they finally gave in to their bodies’ demands? Fitzjames was captain of the Erebus and third in command of the expedition. When Franklin died, he became second in command. There may very well have been an instance in which he became the leader of the expedition itself, depending on when Captain Crozier succumbed to the inevitable. Did his men see him as their captain still, or as merely a body, the man he was long gone and his flesh nothing more than something that could be used to prolong their own lives, same as how the Andes survivors saw the bodies of their dead friends?

As I mentioned before, the Andes survivors didn’t really have a firm authority figure. The pilot and co-pilot of the plane died in the crash, and none of them had really known those men, so they held no feelings of friendship or kind sentiment towards them. However, the rugby players did have a team captain, Marcelo Pérez del Castillo. Not everyone on board the flight was a rugby player—some were just friends or relatives of the players, others were only distantly connected and had just wanted a cheap ticket to visit Chile for a few days—but those who knew Marcelo respected him. Marcelo survived the crash but died in an avalanche that occurred sixteen days afterwards, killing eight of the survivors. The avalanche buried the plane, and the survivors were stuck inside for three days before they dug their way out. During those three days, they were cut off from the bodies of those who had died in the crash. With no other option, they were forced to feed on the eight who had died in the avalanche.

The survivors don’t like to specify which bodies they ate, out of respect for the families of those who died, but we know at least some of those who died in the avalanche were consumed. Marcelo may have been one of them. Even though he had once been the leader of the team and a friend of many of the survivors, his friends had no choice but to do what they needed to survive. And during that conversation on the tenth day, those who were still alive had vowed that their bodies could be used by the others for food if they passed away first. Marcelo had known what his body would be used for, and he had offered it up so that his friends could live.

Had Fitzjames done something similar? In AMC’s The Terror, there is a scene where he tells Crozier to give his body to the men, but that’s a fictional version of what happened. We don’t know what really happened to him, or to most of the Franklin Expedition. But it’s possible he did offer himself up, that he knew he could still be of some use even after his death. The Andes flight disaster shows us the extremes people will go to in order to survive—but also, it shows us the compassion and selflessness that can occur in those extreme situations as well. We think of cannibalism as a terrible act, but the Andes survivors also viewed it as an act of love on their parts, to have offered themselves to each other, willing to have their bodies be cut open and eaten to save their friends.

We think of what happened to Fitzjames as brutal, especially considering the cut marks on his face suggest a particularly sad desperation as the remaining men ate whatever last bits of flesh they could find. And since there were no survivors, there is no happy ending where the men came home, haunted but alive. Looking at other instances of survival cannibalism, however, what those men did is understandable. Cannibalism is seen as uncivilized—the first reports of cannibalism among the Franklin Expedition were dismissed as ludicrous and obscene by Victorian society—but in times of desperation, even the most civilized of men know that it is the only practical recourse. Fitzjames may or may not have known that his body would be used for food, but he probably would not have faulted his men for what they did. They were hungry and they wanted to live.

[thewertsearch]

The Seer relayed her terms through the generally understood argot of an assassin. The result "go," while at face value would suggest the Thief was allowed to leave, was actually the Seer's code word for the threat of death. This was obvious to everyone, including the Thief.

The Seer took her scale, and weighed the Thief's soul against the fate of her species.

While the Thief turned to fly away, making a show of claiming her prize, the Seer would stab her in the back the moment her guard was dropped.

The Thief saw her do this, and smiled, confident the scale would tip her way.

She was right.

...what?

No, seriously. What?

I was absolutely, unflinchingly convinced that Terezi was going to go through with it. Vriska's suicidal plan left her with no other options, and Gamzee's been working to erase the seeds of doubt which have started to take root in Terezi's mind, replacing them with cold-blooded tunnel vision. It felt inevitable. Inescapable. A foregone conclusion to a narrative years in the making.

Well, I guess it's go time, then. The trolls have mere minutes to evacuate their hideout - all because Terezi started to get a little too human. I'm proud of her, but this is, technically, a disaster.

[bestiarium]

The Liqimssa and the Duuga [Oromo mythology, Ethiopian mythology]!

It is said that the Oromo people – an ethnic group in Ethiopia – once lived on a wonderful mountain called Walabu (also called Ulabo). There lived a white species of cattle which was plentiful and yielded huge amounts of meat and milk, so that the people never had to sow crops or plough land. The Borana people (a subgroup among the Oromo) have a myth about a horrible, cursed beast that drove them away from this place: the Liqimssa.

Liqimssa was a shapeshifting monster that swallowed all humans in sight, one by one. Its name is derived from the verb ‘liqimssu’ which means ‘to swallow’. As such, its name translates to ‘the swallower’. In modern illustrations, the creature is usually depicted as a monstrous elephant, but I was unable to back this up with a source.

It is possible that the tale of the terrible, all-consuming monster that drove the people to flee their country might actually have arisen from a real historical event. It has been proposed by historians that it could refer to a conflict with people from Somali or Sidama, but there is no evidence to support these hypotheses. It has also been proposed that it might have been the armies of Amda Seyon, emperor of Ethiopia in the 14th century, who expanded his kingdom into the territory of the Oromo.

But the link between the military threat and the folktale, however likely it sounds, hasn’t been proven either. In fact, the Liqimssa might not even have been an invading army but perhaps some kind of natural disaster (like a catastrophic drought) or perhaps an epidemic. Whatever it was, it was destructive enough to inspire a folktale that survived across generations.

Among the Borana people, however, there is at least one major variant of this story: in this version, there were three great beasts, called Duuga. They could talk, like men, but they were horrible monsters. As the people of the land knew they couldn’t fight the monsters, they decided to give one human being to the Duuga to eat every day.

One day, this task fell upon three brothers. They were told to choose one brother among them and bind him to a tree for the monsters to eat. But the three siblings loved each other dearly and could not decide: ‘choose me!’, yelled the oldest brother, ‘let the monsters devour me.’ But the middle brother argued ‘choose me, so that if I die, our parents will still have their youngest and oldest sons.’

‘No,’ the youngest brother disagreed, ‘you should bind me to that tree. As the youngest sibling I was always given the best clothing and food. If I was destined to receive the best things because I was born last, then logically I should also receive the worst punishment.’

Now their time was up, the three Duuga were nearing, and the oldest brother came to a decision: ‘if all three of us have to die, we shall fight back and try to destroy these monsters!’ After this, he sat down and prayed to Waqa, the creator god. Suddenly, he gained a bright idea, and he ordered his brothers to heat two spears in a fire.

Then he approached the Duuga. The monsters were confused, as a human being had never before willingly walked towards them. They demanded to know whether he was their meal for today. ‘Yes’, the brother said, ‘but before you eat me, I want to ask you some questions.’ ‘All right then,’ said the monsters, ‘ask your questions’.

The man asked the first monster ‘what part of me will you devour?’ to which the fiend replied ‘I only drink the blood.’ ‘Then you are a fool!’ the man said. ‘Human blood is terrible, but human meat is delicious!’ and so he convinced the monster to eat his flesh. He then asked the second Duuga the same question. ‘I will eat your flesh’ it replied, which the man approved. Then he asked the third monster, and it replied ‘I will devour the bones.’ Again, the man convinced the Duuga that skeletons are terrible food and that he should eat his flesh instead.

And so his time was up and the monsters prepared to devour him. Usually, each monster only devoured one part of their prey but this time they all wanted to eat the man’s flesh. They bickered among themselves and their argument eventually erupted into a violent battle. Now that the monsters were weakened from the fight and their legs were broken, the two other brothers came running with the red-hot spears and impaled all three Duuga, killing them and finally ending the menace.

Also, the Tulama people have a variant of this tale in which the creature that drove the Oromo people away was called ‘Amma Wayyii’ which translates to ‘the giant’. As a final note: the southern Oromo people have a somewhat similar story of a creature that swallowed people. Supposedly, this monster’s territory was located to the south of the Oromo people’s land, but I am uncertain whether this tale is related to that of the Liqimssa.

Sources: Baldick, J., 1997, Black God: The Afroasiatic Roots of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions, Syracuse University Press, 184 pp. Hassen, M.,1983, The Oromo of Ethiopia, thesis submitted for the degree of PhD, University of London. Hassen, M., 2015, The Oromo and the Christian Kingdom of Ethiopia: 1300-1700, Boydell & Brewer. Grottanelli, V. L., 1972, The peopling of the horn of Africa, Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell’Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 27(3): 363-394. Andrejewski, B.W., 1962, Ideas about warfare in Borana Galla stories and fables, African language studies, III, p.127. Tuffa, T. Z., 2021, The dynamics of Tulama Oromo in the history of continuity and change, ca. 1700-1880S, submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy in the subject of history at the University of South Africa.

(image source: Criptozoologia e seres míticos)