#i wanted to try out drawing delta as different species

[jaevy]

delta looks a little… different… in these doodles

[trannydean-moved]

RvB Merfolk!AU

In the news that I'll be unable to get on the internet soon, I'm making sure I posted at least one more AU of mine before I have to leave. And the one I've chosen is my merfolk AU!

Basically, the RnB's, most of the major Freelancers, and the PFL AIs are different species of merfolk. Almost everyone is a different type, so that means there are a lot on unique designs for everybody! I haven't gotten to it yet, but I'm hoping to be able to draw at least some of them and maybe post them on here (preferably whe I have a phone and a better camera).

In this AU, the Freelancers have their own pod that is unusually large for the present day's standards. (Pods are what I'm calling a group of merfolk. If there's an official name for groups of merfolk then please let me know!) Due to their dwindling numbers, a pod of 3-5 is the common number, although pods will come together briefly to migrate to better feeding grounds. The Freelancer pod, however, consists of nine members, including multiple healthy adolescents. They are led by a strong leader, Carolina, with equally great co-leaders (I can't come up with a better name rn), Tex and Carolina. The pod is constantly moving, making them very hard to locate, which is their intention. It's better to stay always on the move so no one can find them.

Then we have Charon Industries, run by old multimillionaire Malcolm Hargrove. To the public, Charon Industries is a scientific research organization who research rare marine species to learn more about them to "allow humankind to understand these endangered species". Of course, that's not what they're really doing: they actually capture merpeople and other marine species to experiment on them and shit. They have public displays of species other than merpeople for the public to see, and give the excuse of "merpeople are at a higher intelligence and conscious levels than these other species and shouldn't be on public display as if they were animals themselves" so none of the public eye gets to see them. This is a good reason to not have public displays, so everyone goes along with it. But really, they don't care about the merfolk's "higher intelligence and conscious levels" and see them as animals, like every other creature they're experimenting on.

Felix, Locus, and an OC of mine known as Archer are all poachers for Charon (Sharkface would be too but he's got to be a mershark. I mean come on). There are multiple scientists who work behind the scenes, including Doyle and Kimball (who is working like CT in PFL), and several interns only working in public-friendly areas (these interns, ofc, are Chorus cadets, as well as Delaware). These interns WILL cause trouble and you WILL enjoy it.

Then there's the PFL AIs. They are all merbabies who were made in one of Charon's labs. Lots of them died days, hours, or even minutes after being created, so the only survivors are Delta, Theta, Eta, Iota, Epsilon, and Tau. They're all a recent project Charon started on, so during the present-time for the fic, they are all very little.

And then we have a merfolk sanctuary known as Longshore. It's run by Florida (who else right haha), and Freelancers like Wyoming, Utah, Georgia, the Triplets, etc. work at or with the sanctuary, along with some other Chorus kids who are mostly college/graduate school students who are volunteering for extra credit and such. And Dr. Grey is the sanctuary's doctor. She used to work for Charon years ago, but she spoke out about their unethical ways and was immediately fired and made to look like a crackpot so no one believed her. Of course, this comes back to bite Charon later, so joke's on them really haha. This sanctuary is where the RnB's are at. They'll come up later.

The Director is a scientist interested in Charon's studies, unknowing of how unethical the company is. He wants to fund them in their research, but he's heard faint rumors of how Charon is secretly awful, so he's trying to find out if these rumors have anything behind them first. So yes, he's not a complete douchebag... it was a hard decision to make but here it is.

Now, onto more of the plot. Hargrove catches wind of the Freelancer pod, and ofc he is interested. No one has seen a standalone pod as big as theirs in years. Decades. Possibly even centuries. Hargrove thinks that there's something going on with them to have as many members in it and he wants to know what it is. Like that's any of his business, but whatever. So he results to “let’s capture a few of these guys to see how different they are from other merpeople I have stored in my collection”. (Literally nothing is different, other than they're actually healthier than most of the other merfolk he's captured. He doesn’t care and just decides to keep them.)

So he sends his poachers out to search for them. It's extremely hard to do so when they're always moving and no one knows where the hell they are. It takes literal years of constant work in the field for them to find even a trace of the pod.

But unfortunately, they eventually catch up with them. They're able to capture Wash and Mich, two of the pod's adolescents. Archer realizes that these two aren't even adults, and while his partners don't care, he does care, and is not liking the fact the company has resulted to capturing young ones now. And so begins Archer's redemption arc.

Meanwhile, back in the ocean, the Freelancer pod is furious that two of their members have now been captured. Carolina immediately leads them all in the direction the poachers went. Some of the more pessimistic members (*cough* South *cough*) say that Wash and Mich are long gone, but no one is giving up. Pod members are extremely loyal to each other, and none of them are going to abandon their captured friends. They eventually meet up with Niner, a lone merperson who happens to be a great navigator, and she joins up with the pod to help look for Mich and Wash.

Then there's stuff that ends up leading to one of Charon's interns, Del, Kimball, and Archer rescuing Mich and Wash, as well as the surviving AI merbabies, and taking them to Longshore. Mich and Wash are traumatized from being separated from their pod and for everything they went through at Charon, and are immediately assigned to the Reds and Blues pod. They gradually warm up to their new pod, but obviously they are still wishing they were with the Freelancers.

The AI merbabies are each assigned to an older merperson to take care of them. Mich originally only has Tau, but all of the others (besides Epsilon) are unhappy with the merperson they were assigned to, and they all decide Mich should be the one who takes care of them. Mich is at first delighted they all like her... but then she realizes how exhausting it is to take care of a bunch of merbabies and it's stressful. At least it's a distraction from worrying about her pod...?

Eventually, Niner is able to locate the sanctuary, and in turn Mich and Wash! The whole pod is so happy to see them again :) so they try to break Mich and Wash out so that they can all leave. Mich and Wash are overjoyed to see them again! But they've got all these merbabies now and they don't know if it's safe to move them around... Carolina reassures it is (she did help raise Mich after all), but Mich and Wash aren't so sure. Eventually, the pod gets caught trying to break Mich and Wash out, and Florida does his best to explain that it's best for Mich and Wash to recover from their traumatic experiences while not having to worry about getting caught all over again. After a lot of problems and arguing, the pod decides to stay at the sanctuary.

Meanwhile, Hargrove is furious that Mich and Wash seemingly escaped. He believes someone let them out but doesn't know who, so he's now suspicious of everyone. Del, Kimball, and Archer are all trying to gather up enough evidence to convict Hargrove of all the shit he's done. It's quite difficult, however, to get cameras in or out (every employee has to go through one of those metal detector doorways that airports and stuff have every time they enter or exit the building). So there's going to be a plan involving on of the other interns and their relatives who will visit the public-friendly displays, smuggling the camera to the area the merfolk are kept, and not getting caught on surveillance cameras while capturing the evidence. They'll get the evidence to the Director, who brings the issues to the public. Hargrove will get charged for experimentation on creatures and all the other shit he's done, and uh all the scientists involved will have to go through court stuff. Idk how this sort of thing would work so I've still got to do research to get more details out of this.

Now I'm going to give descriptions on everyone in the Freelancer and Reds and Blues pods, because it's necessary and awesome, and honestly what I'm most proud of so far with this AU.

First, I'll start out with the Reds and Blues pod. Sarge is one of the longest residing residents at the sanctuary. No one other than Florida knows his story and he doesn't want to talk about it. I haven’t figured out the whole thing yet but I’m thinking that his whole pod died somehow, maybe a pack of orcas, and Sarge got injured and Florida rescued him. He's a bull shark merman, and as you would expect, has a huge temper and a liking for violence. He is not afraid to resort to violence for his first reaction to anything, especially if it's to protect his pod. Because he doesn’t want to lose this new one like he did with his previous one :) He is the leader of the Red Team portion of the Reds and Blues pod. (Sarge has insisted on a separation between the Reds and Blues since the beginning)

Grif is a laid-back koi merman who would rather be sleeping than dealing with everybody else's shit. His and Kai's parents got killed by hunters when they were kids, and they were rescued by the sanctuary soon after. He often steals other merfolk's fish snacks if they don't eat it fast enough, and is known as the ultimate food snatcher of Red Team. He isn’t the most friendly and doesn’t like to socialize like his sister does, but he is pretty close to Simmons.

Simmons is a dolphin merman and is the most skittish little booger that you've ever met. I know there's a ton of different types of dolphins, so I'll try narrowing it down to something more specific, but I wanted to go with something more than the trademark bottlenose. Anyways, he got abandoned by his parents after his tail got mostly bitten off by a shark. He washed up on a beach and was found by one of the previous volunteers. Dr. Grey was able to save him, and made a prosthetic for him, kinda like in that movie Dolphin's Tale. He's been scared of most of everything since losing most of his tail, and all of the Reds and Blues try to help him overcome his fears. Grif is the one who he becomes comfortable with first, and they have been pretty inseparable ever since.

Donut is a cuttlefish merfolk because they are so shiny!!! I think they can change color so that seems like something Donut would like. He's still pretty young, barely out of his adolescence stage, and is a peppy ray of sunshine who does his best to make everyone smile. He is the one who does his best to make sure all newcomers are happy in their new environment. He had been found as a young merkid wandering around with just Doc as his companion.

Doc is one of those bioluminescent fish you find deep in the ocean. Not necessarily an anglerfish, maybe something slightly less scary. Maybe a dragonfish? Anyway, everyone is scared of him at first, especially as he begins growing into his normally terrifying features, but he's the nicest guy you've ever met. He and Donut have been friends since they were very young, and they plan on sticking it together till the end.

I know I really should have Lopez here, but I really don't know what to put him as. Maybe a blow-fish because "passive-aggressive prickly butt hmph" but how would a blow-fish merman work??? If he got startled or angry, he would get too round to really fit along with the human portion of the body. Maybe he could just be a regular blow-fish that hangs around the sanctuary.

Church is the leader of the Blue Team portion of the Reds and Blues pod. He's definitely a shark--maybe like one of those smaller fast sharks—makos maybe? He really doesn't want to deal with anyone's shit, not now, not ever. He didn't really want to be leader of the Blues' side, but Tucker is incompetent, Kai is too young as well as incompetent, and Caboose is... no (they tried that out once and it ended in a disaster). So, the job was left up to Church. He actually found the sanctuary rather than being brought there—he had been bringing Caboose here because he wanted this guy to leave him alone and he thought the sanctuary would be the best place for him. Church just ended up staying.

Tucker is a shark merman as well—probably something calmer though, like maybe a nurse or lemon shark. He has a pup named Junior who is a shark merkid too. He had gotten separated from his pod when Junior had nearly gotten eaten by a squid in the midst of the pod migrating. By the time Junior was out of harm's way, their pod was long gone. They wandered for a long time before the sanctuary brought the two in. The two were able to fully recuperate and now Tucker is back to being his obnoxious stupid self. No one missed that.

Caboose is a squid merfolk, because eight arms and two tentacles means ten extra limbs to hug with! He is literally ginormous and often intimidates those who do not know him. He’s tries very hard to not hurt anyone with his suckers as he hugs them, but sometimes he forgets if he gets really excited. He was found by Church, who had been looking for someone that definitely wasn't him, and just latched onto him. Literally. Church had been the first merfolk Caboose had seen in who knows how long and Caboose would not let go of him for the first few days.

Caboose has a pet... starfish? Who looks all cute and harmless but haha watch out. Those who are mean to Caboose will get a nasty surprise. AKA slow and steady, Freckles the starfish climb up them and bite them. It has happened multiple times to Church, which pisses him off very much, and Caboose has to remind Freckles to not go after Church.

Kai is Grif's younger sister and also a koi merfolk. She's more yellow than her brother and definitely more friendly. She is a social butterfly (sea butterfly?) and likes to mingle with the other pods at the sanctuary, as well as her own. Grif says she's too young to remember their parents being killed by the hunters, but she actually does remember and is quite traumatized from it. Any mention of hunters makes her swim for cover :(

And now for the Freelancer pod! Carolina is a very strong shark merfolk. Maybe like a tiger shark? That’d be rad. She became the leader of her pod (which had been consisting of just herself, York, Mich, Tex) after her adopted mother stepped down to allow Carolina to take her place. After Carolina became leader, the pod began migrating around a lot to find lone merfolk to join them. She's a good leader and always puts her pod first. She loves her pod very much and would do anything for them. Including go through the entire ocean to find their two youngest members after they got abducted by stinky poachers.

Are otter merfolk a thing? They better be because that's what York is. If not, I'm making them a thing now. Because otters are playful as shit and like if he proposed to Carolina by giving her his favorite rock I would die (yeah I know that's a penguin thing but could it be this guy's thing too?). Also aren’t they really good with their hands? They use them to beat clams and shit with rocks so like yeah that’s cool. Otters are just awesome and it’d be cool to see York as one. Anyways he and Carolina have known each other for a looong time. Like, since they were really young and all of their parents were still alive. I'm thinking both his and Carolina's parents might've gotten abducted by poachers because why else would they feel so strongly about poachers and staying away from them?

Tex is a great white shark merperson, period. I can't think of anything better and really, I don’t need to. She was a part of Carolina's pod before parents started getting fishnapped, and was some sort of nanny except super badass. After most of the other pod members were abducted, Tex was the only one left who was old enough to lead, so she did. She also raised three moron merkids, so to keep them all safe and raise them into smart(?), healthy individuals earns her mother of the year award. Once Carolina was old enough, Tex let her take the seat as leader because it was Carolina's birthright anyways. No slaying heirs to the leadership title here! Tex is a good team player now, and she and Carolina are NOT enemies <3

Mich is the younger sibling of York, so she's a merotter as well. She was just a baby when her parents were abducted, and she was raised by the joint contributions of her older brother York, Carolina, and Tex. Who knew raising a little baby was so hard! She was an asshat baby who was very difficult to wrangle and she loved making her caretakers' lives a living hell. But she settled down a bit after Carolina became the leader and they started migrating around, because now she had more places to roam and more things to occupy her with. She tuned down even more so when they picked up Wash. Now she had a friend to mess with and she was able to redirect her mischievous spirit into something other than torturing Tex and the others—torturing Wash! Don't worry, he was okay. He helped her calm her stupid ass down, and she helped him not be such a worry wort.

Wash is a dolphin merman, I think. Maybe a smaller dolphin like a spinner? Or whatever those pretty black and white ones are called. His parents were snagged in some poacher's nets and he had to flee for his life. Carolina's pod found him soon after. He was quite traumatized and stuck in a deep shell but Mich was able to help him out. They became immediate best friends. I mean at first he was genuinely scared of her crazy… everything, but he soon realizes her intentions are well-meant and she’s not so bad.

C.T. is a young octopus mermaid who joined very soon after Wash did. She and Wash had actually been a part of the same pod before his parents had split from the pod. C.T. was very happy to reunite with Wash, and vice versa. C.T., Wash, and Mich became quite the trio because I said so. They are all just best friends. There is much chaos. When Wash and Mich get abducted, C.T. is very scared for them. She is among the most earnest to travel far and wide to find them again. She needs to get the other two members of her trio back :(

North and South are eel merfolk because I say so. They are complete opposites in all ways except one: they are extremely loyal to each other. And they both have purple eel bodies. Though North has a darker purple body and South's is more lavender. They were making it pretty okay on their own, after South had run (swam) away from their pod and North had followed. But they were happy to join Carolina's band of misfits when they came along. South wasn't too thrilled to join when she found out little nuisance creatures were there (*cough* Mich *cough*) but North loved them, so she went along with it.

Maine is an orca merman because yes big dolphin big man. He is selectively(?) mute and only talks when it's really necessary for him to do so. He had been alone for many years before Carolina's pod found him. It took him a while to once again get used to being around others, but everybody helped out with that. He eventually showed his weakness for dumb children because he often took Mich and Wash and C.T. off of York's and Carolina's and Tex's hands/fins to take them playing/exploring for hours. Everyone was very relieved for the peace and quiet.

Niner is a barracuda merperson. She joins after Mich and Wash are captured and the Freelancer pod are on high-travel mode. She had been alone for a long time and decided joining a good, strong pod like the Freelancers was a pretty good idea. Besides, she is an expert at navigating the water currents and oceans in general, so she proves to be a valuable asset to finding Mich and Wash.

Then the AI children! Delta is a sea turtle merbaby. He is definitely green and a very practical child. He is constantly questioning everyone else’s logic on everything and it can get annoying but they still love him. He was the most agreeable merbaby out of everyone, so Mich favored him over most of the other merbabies when she had to take care of all of them. All the same, she was glad to give him up to York once he came along. York was a bit perplexed about a merbaby as serious as Delta but he just went with it lmao.

Theta is an octopus merbaby. He usually stays a mixture of purple and orange and is very skittish. He is very clingy and likes to wrap his arms around the few people he is comfortable around (Mich and North mainly) when he’s scared, or just any time really. He wasn’t like the most difficult merbaby to deal with, but he was always literally hanging off of Mich’s arms so she was very happy to hand him off to North. Theta immediately bonded to North which was very good, and North loved him as well. South isn’t so keen to have this kid around but she ends up loving him too. Theta comes to love his new aunt after he realizes she isn’t as scary as she likes to act <3

Eta and Iota are twin seahorse merbabies. Eta is very scared of everything, and Iota is a very happy merbaby. Eta is yellow and Iota is blue ofc. When Eta is feeling scared, he curls his tail around Iota’s and it’s honestly really cute. Mich found it hard dealing with them because Eta was a fussy merbaby who was scared of everything, so he cried a lot. Iota did his best to comfort his twin but there’s only so much a newborn can do. Carolina wasn’t thrilled to hear if she took one, she took both, because the twins are a buy one, get one free situation. She ends up warming up to them though.

Epsilon is a type of crab merbaby because I say so (also he’s crabby haha). He is different than the other merbabies because he’s more land-abiding than the others. He’s got claws and is always willing to snap at somebody, whether he’s unhappy or not. He is assigned to Wash, and is the only merbaby besides Tau to be all right with the merperson he was originally assigned to. Wash is sort of frightened by Epsilon because he’s always snapping at everybody and has this perpetually grumpy look on his face, and honestly wished Epsilon didn’t imprint on him. But alas, Epsilon did, and Wash is the only person, mer or not, that Epsilon fully likes and snaps at the least. He looks an awful like a baby Church, which everyone wonders why the fuck he looks that way…

Tau is a squid merbaby because red!! He is a very curious child who is all into swimming off to find new things to discover. He uses all eight arms and two tentacles to touch things he probably shouldn’t. Tau was Mich’s favorite because he reminded her a bit of herself. She decided to keep him as her own after the Freelancers came and took up all of the others. Tau likes to lay on Mich’s stomach while she’s floating on top of the water like baby otters do with their moms <3 She held all of the merbabies like that and Tau seemed to take a liking to it the most.

And that's what I have so far! I love this one ngl (really I love all of my AUs) and I'm excited to draw their designs and write stuff out for it.

If anyone has suggestions about this or any of the other AUs I will be posting about, don't be afraid to send an ask or discuss it in the posts!

Tagged: @queerchorus (if anyone else wants to be tagged in my AU posts, lmk!)

[subwalls]

CONFRONTATION. || DreamSMP 

An analysis on Ranboo’s January 30th stream, meant to pick apart c!Ranboo’s complex relationship with reality and the voices in his head. This will be broken up into three (3) parts: introduction, stream analysis, and conclusion.

cw unreality, derealization, etc.

INTRODUCTION.

Before we start, I want to make clear that this is just my personal reading of the stream’s events, and as such it may not be the same as yours, and that’s okay! Critical reading is all about how one work can be viewed through a variety of lenses to yield very different conclusions, and the validation of one does not immediately mean all the others are Bad and Wrong.

We all got that? Cool.

Now, a common theory being tossed around at the moment is the idea that the entire stream was a dream (ha) or hallucination. This possibility is somewhat backed up by a few observations I will point out in the rest of this post, but for the sake of seriously dissecting this dream into truths and untruths, I will not be assuming that everything that happened was fake. I’ll delve a little deeper into why this theory doesn’t completely convince me in the conclusion, too.

STREAM ANALYSIS.

Aw yeah, here comes the frame-by-frame analysis of 41 minutes of footage.

... Well, kinda. Let’s start with a play-by-play instead of a frame-by-frame, yeah? 

At 2:45 into the stream, Ranboo starts out in the panic room, looking at the “You are fine” sign. He says that Sam told him he can visit Dream (”him”) today, and reflects on the fact that he’s no longer looking for clarity or confrontation (me, looking at the stream title: uh,) but rather to make Dream think about what he did.

“He deserves to know what he did.” (Ranboo at 3:47)

“I’m gonna tell him what those thoughts are.” (Ranboo at 3:55, which is an... interesting remark, seeing as the voice in his head that sounds like Dream has been trying to tell Ranboo what his thoughts are. But it doesn’t mean anything substantial.)

Vibe check so far? REAL. Nothing appears to be out of place in the panic room. Ranboo is nervous but keeping it together and talking himself through it. Sounds great!

After a bit of psyching himself up (and noticeably declaring his memory book to be the only one that hasn’t been tampered with), Ranboo starts towards the prison. He’s scared and doesn’t know why, but he’s gonna do it.

One thing of note is that he passes by Sam Nook’s construction site, and the place’s big map sign thing never quite loads in properly. The whole thing just stays black. Suspicious, but those maps are honestly kinda glitchy at loading in anyway because they’re entities instead of blocks. Or maybe Sam Nook’s doing some prep. (Edit: more likely is that this is a clone of the Dream SMP server for the sake of what they’re about to do to the prison, and it doesn’t have the map plugin, so all the picture maps in the world are broken.)

As the prison comes into view, he continues talking to himself (he’s never been to prison, apparently; he’s been inside Pandora’s Vault before, but not as a prisoner). He thinks about the fact that he could get rid of Dream if he wanted to, but no, he couldn’t. 

The prison entrance portal is actually already lit. Ranboo isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do but eventually hits the button.

After quite a bit of waiting, Sam eventually greets him (13:32) and invites him to step into the portal. Ranboo goes through the portal and appears in a warped forest biome.

This is incredibly suspicious. The prison’s nether portal is supposed to be a customized portal in six (6) layers of obsidian that floats over a sea of lava. In fact—and I will come back to fix this if I’m mistaken—I’m pretty sure the portal resides in the fringes of a basalt delta, not a warped forest. You can see a bit of a basalt delta poking over the warped fungi in the distance, but Ranboo is very clearly in the wrong spot. 

So why the warped forest, the wrong biome and the wrong portal? It probably has something to do with the fact that Ranboo is part enderman, and enderman live in the warped forest. With the End forbidden and unknown (seeing as Techno and Phil had no idea what an End Portal was), the warped forest is likely the closest thing endermen as a species can call home in the Dream SMP.

Anyway. This is the earliest instance of either a brief hallucination or Ranboo losing his connection to reality altogether.

Ranboo goes through the portal when instructed to by Sam and properly appears in the prison’s interior portal, facing Sam at his warden’s... desk thing. Sam has Mining Fatigue right now, by the way, as seen by the particles. Ranboo is then teleported to Sam (14:20) for some reason (maybe because, behind the scenes, he was in a duped prison portal in order to make the warped forest thing happen), appearing to be inside Sam’s space before he moves back out. They do not acknowledge this.

Sam does the same series of questions to Ranboo that he did to Tommy. Ranboo says that he has not come to the prison before or even spoke to Dream before, and expresses to Sam his desire to bring his memory book along. Sam agrees on the condition that he holds onto it during the way there.

Side note: Ranboo does not get Mining Fatigue until he’s already inside the prison and being questioned. (14:47) This is quite different from the timing when Tommy got Mining Fatigue in his visit, but considering the fact that we don’t know the placement of the elder guardians or even how many there are, this could just be natural variation...

Anyway, Ranboo does the same thing we saw Tommy do with the locker and the examinations and whatever, except that Sam is... more cordial. Nicer. This is vaguely suspicious, but he’s been a little softer since his encounter with the Crimson and he has a clear soft spot for the kids. Tommy also is very different from the clearly nervous Ranboo (Sam points out that Ranboo is nervous later on, around 20:01, so he definitely noticed), so he could have just been being nice to the poor traumatized kid... Or maybe this is just a Sam constructed from Ranboo’s memories of a nice person, and not the real one. It’s not very clear but could be swayed in either direction.

One odd thing—Ranboo took quite a bit to die to the harming potions, and I feel like Tommy died faster, but I’ll have to check. It’s as though Ranboo got Harming I instead of Harming II? Sam even comments that it “took a minute” (19:12). Also, Ranboo loses his levels in this process, so, uh, if his next stream he appears with levels, that means there’s something happening that we ain’t seeing.

A skeleton dies somewhere offscreen lmao.

Ranboo is immediately re-inflicted with Mining Fatigue every time he dies, by the way, so they’re definitely within range of the elder guardians.

Ranboo endures the water section of the trip and it sucked but he seems about the same level of nervous as before, so. Sam takes the time to reassure him and give him the memory book at the last step before the cell itself.

“He [Dream] shouldn’t misbehave, he knows what happens when he does.” (Sam at 25:23, he still got that bit of ruthless warden in him.)

Vibe check again—this prison, physically speaking? Seems real. It’s possible that Ranboo could be drawing on memories from his other self, but considering that he has never been to the prison before, the fact that the prison is the exact same as the real prison that Tommy went to seems to indicate that this is a real experience. 

Ranboo’s Mining Fatigue gets refreshed, so looks like the elder guardians reach here too. Dream has the Mining Fatigue particles as soon as he comes into view. (Only pointing this out because it notably took Dream a long time to get Mining Fatigue back when Tommy visited him.)

A weird sound happens at 27:31. Not sure what that’s about.

The lava curtain comes back down, and Ranboo turns around to see Dream. His screen shakes a bit as he turns, which could be anything from lag (there’s a lot of lava moving right now) to nerves (both in-character and out). (Edit: confirmed in the chill stream following that he was just nervous, and feeling his character’s nervousness.) First thing of note, here: the item frame holding the clock on the wall is transparent. This is a texture pack thing, presumably—could be the same thing that fucked up the construction site’s map sign earlier, maybe it’s even just the texture pack that some members of the SMP have installed for the chess thing—but it’s still something to notice. 

Dream greets Ranboo with quite a bit of joy and energy, and says it’s not a surprise for Ranboo to visit, and altogether makes numerous implications that he and Ranboo’s other self have been conversing a lot in the times that Ranboo doesn’t remember. 

“We’re best friends, right?” (Dream at 28:19, and I better not see any serious remarks about gaslighting here Dream is actually telling the truth, he just has not realized that this Ranboo doesn’t remember their conversations.)

“I’ve probably talked to you more than I’ve talked to anybody on the entire server.” (Dream at 28:27, indignant at Ranboo’s claim that they’ve barely talked, which. Yeah. I mean this whole thing could be a lie or fake but... I don’t know, I’m not convinced.)

Ranboo, whose understanding of his relationship to Dream is very different from Dream’s apparent understanding of their relationship, claims that Dream is just trying to scare him. Dream sounds confused and asks, “Why are you acting different?” (28:45) so he’s definitely not had dealings with this (awake?) Ranboo, but rather the... other set of memories.

“Ooooh.” (Dream at 28:56, which I think marks the moment he realizes that this is the other Ranboo, and it isn’t the one that he normally speaks with.)

Dream continues to say that he’s glad that Ranboo’s come to visit, that Ranboo’s been a great helping hand, and Ranboo immediately accuses him of somehow knowing about the whole panic room situation, and after Ranboo declares that he’s not going to let Dream trick him into thinking that he did those things—

“But you did do those things.” (Voice at 29:36)

Voice is always fake; it’s not “real” (audible by anyone else), and it’s not Dream.

Kudos to cc!Dream, by the way, his tone audibly changes when he switches into Ranboo’s Voice. This, I believe, is the turning point of the stream. The Voice returns, marked by the tone difference from c!Dream and also by the constant referral to Dream in the third person. 

Now, here’s the interesting thing. The Voice claims that the reason why it went away is because Dream was put in prison and thus they haven’t been talking as much, which leads to Ranboo forgetting how Dream sounds like and thus robbing Voice of that, well, voice. (29:58) The implication here is that the reason behind Dream’s voice being the Voice of the “other” in Ranboo’s head is because the other just talks to Dream a lot. 

Ranboo questions the third person thing, asking if he’s gone insane in prison, and there’s a pause, and then Dream says, “You’re right, you’re right. Yes, yes, there’s not much to do here.” (30:20) The tone shift is a little more subtle here, but the way Dream responded—it’s like he was responding to something else. “Have you gone insane” doesn’t usually lead to “You’re right”, because that’s a question, not a statement. 

We’re real again, folks. But only briefly. Actually, it sounds like real Dream has been talking to someone while Ranboo was talking with his Voice, and when Ranboo heard him again, he was mid-conversation. Dream may have been speaking with that other Ranboo and we as the audience and Ranboo simply couldn’t hear.

Dream apparently doesn’t like his clock (30:32), and then prompts Ranboo to see what he’s been writing. In suspiciously good timing, we hear the elder guardian’s curse go off again to refresh Mining Fatigue, and then Dream hands Ranboo a book.

Here, the unreality really sets in.

The book is named Do not read. (30:47) It is a precise copy of Ranboo’s memory book, and when Ranboo checks Dream’s chest full of books, they are all named Do not read. and have the same contents. What appears to be real Dream invites him to look through them, and as Ranboo panics over this, what appears to be the Voice rather than c!Dream tells Ranboo that he needs “to face the truth” (31:18).

Ranboo says the truth is that Dream is a terrible person who hurt others.

The Voice says the truth is that Ranboo helped “me”. (31:35) Now, I can’t tell if this is a slip of the tongue on cc!Dream’s part or on the Voice’s part, but he does correct himself and say “Dream” after, so take that how you will. 

At this point, the Dream on the screen’s body language starts to match up with the Voice (moving while it talks), and the Voice claims “I’m not even Dream,” which lines up with its prior claims that it is just another part of Ranboo. 

Ranboo tries to rationalize the situation, assuming that the real Dream is speaking right now, but the Voice refers to Ranboos memories in the first person (“I know what I went through because I’m you,” 32:01), reinforces the fact that “you” (Ranboo) use to talk with Dream every day, and the only reason the Voice stopped happening is because he couldn’t picture Dream’s voice after not speaking with him since Dream went to prison. 

“He [Dream] would tell you [Ranboo] things to do. You were like his little... servant.” (Voice at 32:24)

Ranboo refuses this, the Voice continues to insist that he did help Dream, Ranboo asks why he doesn’t remember, and Voice says that he does; the Voice remembers, and the Voice is Ranboo. 

And then the Voice says, “I’m not even real,” and the Dream on screen vanishes. 

We don’t see a logout message on screen, but Ranboo isn’t in f1, so Dream probably either /tp’d somewhere OR switched to spectator mode. Ranboo suddenly gets the Nausea effect, panics and looks at the chest and says that he got rid of the voice, but the obsidian starts falling (gravity applied to the cell, hope they have a backup of the server to rollback to or let themselves use creative lmao) which unveils some details in the Pandora’s Vault inner chamber that I’d love to dissect but not now, and then Ranboo "hits the ground too hard” and dies.

Of note: Ranboo’s death screen is not vanilla. The word “Died” is capitalized where it shouldn’t be, and even though Ranboo lost his levels dying on the way in, his score is 206810. I bet that’s a code for something but I have no idea what for.

(I typed 206810 into my search bar and got a hex code for green. Yeah. Darker than what you’d associate with Dream, but... green.)

And then we have morse code crown and smiley that’s supposed to say “not free yet” or something but apparently there’s other translations because cc!Ranboo might’ve hecked it up a little bit. Oops.

But yeah, there you go! That’s the stream.

Not once does Ranboo press tab, by the way. Something makes me think that that might be because they’re not on the real Dream SMP—also to, you know, avoid having to rebuild the prison.

CONCLUSION.

I do think the prison visit is real at first. Ranboo falls in and out of contact with reality, and the warped forest is definitely fishy, but the layout of the prison is too precisely accurate to be wholeheartedly dreamed up. He’s never been there before, after all, and Sam doesn’t correct him—which could mean that Sam is fake and Ranboo is drawing on those other memories, but we never see Ranboo use memories he doesn’t have, he just acts on emotions and feelings that his other self seems to have.

So, the moments that are “real” are Ranboo walking to the prison, through the prison, and the first part of his talk with Dream. He clips back into reality just in time for Dream to show him a book, which immediately pops Ranboo back into the land of hallucinations, because there’s no way Dream has so many copies of the real memory book when he’s been isolated in his cell this entire time. The warped forest was probably a hallucination born of Ranboo’s enderman (sleepwalking) half being nervous, since Ranboo said he was nervous but couldn’t pinpoint why; it was probably that other side. Still don’t know why he’d be nervous though, when it seems like Dream’s happy to see him. 

The room caving in and Dream disappearing are fake. I think it’s symbolic of the other side forcing Ranboo to black out in order to have a conversation with Dream that isn’t being interrupted by the awake self. Who knows where and how Ranboo is going to wake up next time, honestly. Or even if he’ll remember the visit at all.

Oh, and I really doubt this costed a canon life. There’s some very funky implications if it does, but I’ll only get into that if we get a confirmed life lost.

Again, the Voice is not Dream but instead is the side of Ranboo that actually remembers the supposedly “bad” things he did at Dream’s behest. Interestingly, Dream calls them besties, but the Voice sounds almost... scornful and refers to Ranboo as Dream’s little servant. Sure tells you how fucked up c!Dream’s definition of a friend is, huh?

Speaking of c!Dream, here’s an interesting thought: sleepwalking Ranboo only speaks Ender, as shown by his attempts to communicate with Philza. So, assuming that sleepwalking Ranboo is the “other” Ranboo that remembers things, he probably couldn’t have visited the prison, because he couldn’t organize a visit time with Sam, because that would require speaking Player.

However. He used to speak with Dream on a regular basis.

Which means Dream speaks (or at least understands) Ender. This would also explain why the Voice manifests as Dream’s; it’s the only other voice that understands the tongue it uses.

I’ve got a lot of thoughts about Pandora’s Vault because we got a little sneak peek at some of the redstone behind those obsidian walls when the room started caving in, but that’s for later. Hope this was helpful to... I dunno, anyone? I’ll probably come back and add/edit things as needed.

[falkenscreen]

Star Trek: Voyager

Yes this show ended some time ago; that doesn’t mean that it’s not still underrated.

A relative late convert to Star Trek, this author committed to traversing the Delta Quadrant having finished The Original Series, The Next Generation, Discovery & Picard to date. Deep Space Nine is next; like the Doctor I don’t know anything about this ‘Dominion’ but they seem important and we’ll get there.

Having now finished Voyager, here’s the (spoiler-filled) thoughts of someone who came to the bridge afresh and savoured the light-hearted nature of the show. Yes TNG demanded more attention and the episodes herein that do are generally better, but for relaxed, semi-serialised adventure Voyager is a high point.

We’ll start with the negative and get to the fun stuff.

From the get-go there was a jarring disconnect between the premise and goals of the show. If a ship more advanced than any in the region is travelling really fast in one direction they’re not going to keep running into the same people; better begetting a saga poised for episodic rather than serialised fiction. The writers and audience were evidently a little tired at this point of TNG’s slavish devotion to wrapping everything up in 40-odd minutes so wanted to try variations on a theme; it was the right approach for the time accompanied by a smart premise that didn’t match.

And a stellar premise it was only set to be buoyed by the Federation-Marquis dynamic. Also partly squandered, corresponding grounds for strong tension and stories were left by the wayside – characterised by Chakotay’s ill-established, apparently immediate and seemingly endless trust in Janeway; together major failings of the show.

On continuity, and just so it’s out of the way; no they don’t show it but it’s clear the crew just manufactured more photon torpedoes like they did so much else.

Commencing with one of the best episodes, there is rarely a subsequent moment as character-defining as Janeway destroying the array. Don’t get me wrong, Kate Mulgrew is great, but she alike Kirk and Picard are, as fleshed out as they become, for stretches bare variations on a tired theme; young headstrong hotshot dedicates their life to the stars to become a reasoned, seasoned Commander. ‘Tapestry’ did it best and there was no need to explore this further.

Voyager had a general problem with characters that took several seasons to grow; it was a long time before Neelix stopped being grating and his earnestness became endearing. There is too very little you can relay about Tuvak beyond his being a Vulcan and a little sardonic, or Harry besides his yearning for advancement or Chakotay aside his membership of the Marquis and focus on his cultural background.

The stand-out worst episode of the entire show was Chakotay finding out that the Sky Spirits central to his people’s religion were actually from the Delta Quadrant; you can garner Robert Beltran’s clear ambivalence (at best) to such material. This author is aware of the significant tension between the actor and others on set; I can understand the frustration at a lead cast member belittling the series in public but the directions and emphasis the character took in later seasons was something else, as were the music cues whenever his or some others’ cultures came up.

Star Trek, and notably The Original Series, is often (but not always) shrewd for both telling stories addressing the place of culture, religion and community in people’s lives while not overly if at all drawing attention to particular characters’ backgrounds. To Beltran’s credit, he only made the disaffection perceptible on screen in the episodes that were of poor taste, as opposed to the ones that were just bad. There are many lousy episodes of The Original Series but what near always makes it enjoyable is Shatner et al’s absolute commitment to the bit. One of the very worst episodes of Voyager is the one where Harry is lead to believe that he’s actually from a planet in the Delta Quadrant full of attractive women; yet no one in Star Trek ever needs to look bored reading their lines. There are good ones and bad ones and we’re along for the whole ride.

There’s also that one where Tom and the Captain turn into salamanders, start life on a random planet and somehow transform back into their usual selves with these shenanigans never brought up again. Yeah that was awful but it was preceded by a generally decent few acts centred on exceeding warp limits; reputation aside it wasn’t quite down there.

On Alpha Quadrant folks being in the Delta Quadrant, as much as I missed the Klingons they did not need to rock up latently and near the very end; there were plenty of better ways to give B’Elanna an arc. One of the more interesting characters, she offered a variation on Worf’s overwhelming pride as a Klingon, though she barely got enough episodes to shine and these were predominantly featured much later on. And when the show stopped pretending Tom was the cocky pilot we’ve seen dozens of times before he too managed to get a whole lot more interesting.

It would have made a lot more sense for McNeill to just directly continue his character from TNG’s ‘The First Duty;’ alas.

Also welcome were the insights into the Borg; even if they became a lot less eerie it was great to learn that much more about them, though nothing, save the introduction of Seven, bettered the recuperating drones who were the ship’s first Borg encounter. The Borg children were also very funny (the related Voyager pick-ups in Picard were excellent) and should have stayed on the ship longer so Seven could say more things like “fun will now commence;” she can only say “Naomi Wildman” deadpan, as good as it was, so many times.

Heralded by such a superb actress, Seven and the Doctor thrillingly shared dual arcs akin but distinct to Data’s and each other’s, permitting us to relish their gradual growth and revel in their leaps forward. Seven’s narrowing down of eligible crewmen, unlike Chakotay’s later courting, was a particular highlight, as was her month of isolation when the crew were in stasis and the one where the Doctor overtook her node.

The Doctor however emerges the best character, far and above all others save the near as interesting Seven. Picardo’s charisma and stage presence, well-befitting an exaggeratedly humanistic, bombastic piece of programming, only propelled the most relatable arcs in the series; his desire to fit in and, as any, make a contribution. The Doctor’s opening number in ‘Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy,’ but one occasion where Picardo’s vocal abilities were graciously integrated into the series, by this author’s judgement is the funniest sequence in seven seasons.

‘Message in a Bottle’ with the Doctor centre was too among the very best of the series. Mining any opportunity for comedy we can nonetheless be grateful, alike TNG, that they kept the bald jokes to about one per season.

As asides, it was lovely to see Reginald Barclay return and realise his aspirations in one of the best and most heart-warming episodes of the saga, while the singular and very obvious inspiration one episode draws from Predator proved amusing for just being so unabashed.  

‘Scorpion’ was amazing as was anything to do with Species 8472. Captain Proton, acknowledging the entire franchise’s schlocky roots, was a definite recurring highlight, with Mulgrew in one installment clearly having no end of fun alike the cast’s enjoyable turns in late 90’s Los Angeles alongside Sarah Silverman. Speaking of guest stars, seeing The Rock was a nice surprise though with hindsight they may never have cast him given Star Trek shrewdly chose to not have celebrity appearances overshadow the show. But hey, they can’t see the future; at least cleverly opting to obscure Jason Alexander in piles of costuming.

‘Year of Hell’ is good, but the premise befitted an entire season and alike the lacklustre finale nothing really matters (with some well-executed exceptions) if you can just go back in or erase time. There were many, many episodes that shouldn’t have been contained within forty minutes and deserved longer-form devotion, ala ‘30 Days.’ ‘Timeless’was a much better (and unusually technically-focused) variation on the aforementioned themes and it was fun to catch Geordi, as it was Deanna and especially Sulu. ‘The Omega Directive’ was cool; ‘The Thaw’ was great.

The fable-esque nature of the franchise has always been enjoyable and digestible given the show is partially aimed at kids, though there are episodes where it’s just a little too direct, and characters take a little too much pause. ‘Alice,’ the one where Tom almost cheats with his ship as an overly obvious parallel about why you shouldn’t have sex with other people if you have a girlfriend, if a good lesson, in execution was a tad much.

On reflection this author was surprised to discover some of the least generally favoured episodes, among them the Fairhaven double. It may be my great personal affection for Ireland but it makes perfect sense that given the time available this sort of world would be created and characters might pursue holo-relationships, a theme underexplored in Voyager yet still covered to great effect. The established technical deficiencies of holo-technology in such regular use should not come as a surprise when they recur.  

The one where Kes comes back was actually a later highlight; her character was never very well handled and no it wasn’t that blast off into the sunset but sometimes old friends lose their way and it’s the job of old friends to set them on the right path.

Most surprising was the dislike directed at ‘Tuvix.’ The difference between Voyager and much heavier sci-fi is that herein characters make a lot of decisions that are hard, not ones that are difficult. The destruction of the array was devastating but not morally questionable within the confines of the show. As a tangent, you could argue that had Janeway made the decision to return to the Alpha Quadrant at the beginning of the series that it would have been the morally correct decision given that, as we see in ‘Hope and Fear,’ another highlight, the ship would not otherwise have been a factor in much disorder and destruction. The show was not however so expansive philosophically as to greatly tread such ground as the franchise otherwise managed in the likes of ‘City on the Edge of Forever.’

In ‘Tuvix’ Janeway, a figure, like Chakotay, who often shifted characterisation to fit the requirements of any given story, was faced with a difficult decision with no easy moral out nor ethically unquestionable approach. It was a refreshing change and correspondingly dark denouement to boot apparent in the likes of ‘Latent Image,’ another fine instalment with the Doctor.

‘Eye of the Needle,’ the only episode this author has watched twice to date and a deeply empathetic early high point, save ‘Balance of Terror’ is the best treatment of the guarded but necessarily relatable Romulans (I haven’t seen all the movies!). ‘The Void’ bookends the show as a later stand out while the in respects not dissimilar ‘Night’ bears one of the darkest challenges and finest, most resonant endings.

This brings us to the ‘best episode;’ one featured regularly in top ten lists but seemingly not a very favourite.

‘Blink of an Eye’ is everything that is exceptional and aspirational about Star Trek. Stranded in the stratosphere of a planet where time passes with greater rapidity, the curious presence of Voyager in the skies begins to influence the society to the point where the inhabitants develop space travel to face the spectre.

A commentary on the Prime Directive as deft as any and a relatively novel variation on both the time travel and petri dish tropes resplendent throughout sci-fi and Star Trek, the episode is also a fabulous meta-commentary on the place of the franchise in popular culture much less crude than Janeway bemoaning the Doctor’s fleeting interplanetary fans’ obsession with every aspect of his personal life. Incorporating a fair bit more science than is typically par, the astronaut’s moving decision to help them, as with his staring into the heavens as Voyager finally departs, speaks to the selfless ethos and sense of overwhelming curiosity so intrinsic to the most basic lore of Star Trek, the most beloved episodes and all that Gene Roddenberry best achieved.

It’s also an amazing meditation on first contact principles and pitfalls which unlike many episodes doesn’t borrow story bones from TNG.

A more than welcome reprieve from a pandemic, I didn’t spend as long in the Delta Quadrant as the crew but for what I did I was glad to relish with them.

Star Trek: Voyager is now streaming on Netflix

[script-a-world]

Pylon Bios (An Update, with New Pylons)

Hello, lovely followers of script-a-world!

Please allow us to introduce ourselves! We haven’t had any sort of about-the-bloggers page available before, and now that we’ve added more to the team, we’re seeking to remedy that!

First of all, we call ourselves Pylons. What the heck is a pylon? Well, outside of this blog, it’s an upright structure for holding up something, usually a cable or conduit. When this blog was started more than a year ago (whoa), the group chose the word Pylon to describe ourselves collectively, as a fun little nickname. Whee!

Without further ado, meet the Pylons (and Mods)! (in alphabetical order)

Brainstormed: Hey there, call me Brainstormed, and you can find me at @thunderin-brainstorm. Any pronouns will do. I'm a student, illustrator, and world traveler. My home is in America, but I'm rarely there for more than a month at a time, so feel free to ask where in the world I happen to be! Worldbuilding has been my hobby for quite a long time and I'd love to give you some tips and tricks that I've learned, or take your idea and turn it on its head to perhaps show you a new perspective. The many projects I've developed have been lifesavers for me, as they allowed me to harness my Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder and use it as a positive tool for creativity. Aside from drawing and daydreaming, I spend a lot of time biking, hunting for cool rocks and bones, binge reading any scholarly article that catches my eye, and memorising completely useless random facts that I spout at any given moment in lieu of remembering actual important information.

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Constablewrites: My name is Brittany, and I'm a California girl living in the Midwest. I use she/her pronouns. I've always loved stories with rich and detailed worlds, whether in movies, books, games, or something else entirely. I'm the kind of writer who will spend hours researching to confirm a minor detail. Naturally, I not only write SFF, but my recent projects have all required worldbuilding on more than one axis (like multiple types of magic, or time travel on top of historical) because i am apparently something of a masochist. I'm a walking TV Tropes index and a whiz at digging up random useful knowledge, both of which come in handy as a Pylon. Other random facts: I'm a trained actress and singer, I used to work at Disneyland on the Jungle Cruise (among other attractions), and a laptop held together with duct tape is responsible for my day job in tech support. I blog about writing as @constablewrites and about random things that amuse me as @operahousebookworm.

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Delta: Hi! I’m Delta and I can be found @dreaming-in-circles or @thedeclineofapollo (writeblr), and I love sci-fi. Like, a lot lol. I work in NEPA compliance for a civil engineering firm in the USA, and have a lot of experience with infrastructure, bureaucracies, biology, and space (for unrelated reasons). I spend a lot of time haunting the astrophysics wikipedia pages, and my current all-consuming project is a novel that is angling to be about 150,000 words (at current projections). Can’t wait to hear your questions!

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Ebonwing: Hi, I’m Ebonwing. I’m currently studying IT in university. I’m a writer and worldbuilder, and sometimes a worldbuilding writer or a writing worldbuilder. I gravitate towards fantasy, though I’m not going to say no to the occasional stint in scifi, and as I’m also a giant language nerd, I enjoy making conlangs for my creations. Other than that, I’m also an artist and indulge in any number of other crafting hobbies, and if I’m not doing any of those things, I can probably be found playing video games.

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Feral: Hi! I'm Feral, and you can find me @theferalcollection (if you enjoy feminism, socialism, or over-analyzed fiction) or on my writing blog theferalcollection.wordpress.com. I'm a Southern girl who likes fancy dresses, mint juleps, big hats, and using being-underestimated to my advantage. I work in the interior design industry and am currently in school for industrial design. I have previously earned degrees in comparative literature and theatre & drama. I'm a big nerd who really likes school. I've been world-building since before I knew it was a thing and writing almost as long. I’ve written mostly fantasy but the past couple projects have been science fiction. I'm ridiculously in love with the idea of being an astrophysicist but don't feel like learning calculus, so I just read about science a lot. My hobbies include martial arts, drinking too much coffee, and tabletop games.

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Lockea: Hello! I’m Lockea. You can find me all over the internet as @lockea or LockeaStone. I’m a leaf on the wind who currently enjoys the SoCal sunshine in Los Angeles where I work as an engineer and data scientist. I love street fashion (especially Lolita) and making jewelry. I have two kitties, Theodore and Cecelia, and I volunteer at the local animal shelter as a cat handler and adoption counselor. I know way too much about cat behavior, honestly, and will yap your ear off if you let me.

Worldbuilding wise, I have a deep affection for science fiction and I’ve consulted professional science fiction writers on developing technology and worlds through the explanation of science and engineering. My engineering specialization is extra-terrestrial  robotics, so if it has to do with space, planetary science, or robotics -- I got you. I’m also a fan of politics and really like developing political and socio-economic systems in fantasy and sci-fi worlds.

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Miri: Miri here, with my main tumblr @asylos and my writing tumblr @mirintala. I am a Canadian Pharmacy Technician by day and a small time ePublisher and gamer of many types by night. Mostly wandering around the Internet helping to organize events in the FFVII tumblr fandom (modding at @ff7central and @ffviifandomcalendar), and stumbling around within the Borderlands of Pandora. I use she/her pronouns.

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Symphony: Hey, I’m Symphony! Use whatever pronouns you feel like, any work. I’m currently living in Michigan with my fiance, and in-between jobs but I want to go to nursing school ASAP.  My favorite genres in fiction are horror, sci-fi, and really anything that holds my interest. In my own worldbuilding I've always felt myself most interested in developing societies on the macro level (politics, diet, customs, stuff like that), and the more esoteric, strange parts of my world. I like to make a place feel lived in, with secrets that may never be found and people who seek them out.

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Synth: I’m @chameleonsynthesis on Tumblr, but that’s a mouthful, so just call me Synth. Any pronouns work. Born and raised in Canada, but living in Norway as of autumn 2007. Looking back, I’ve been worldbuilding since at least the age of four (in my early thirties now, so yeah), with a predominantly science-fantasy bent. I’m of the artsy creative type, with way too many projects on the go at any given time, and enjoy long walks through Wikipedia and getting caught in TV Tropes. The best thing is when I stumble across some strange factoid that can justify aspects of my many weird alien species. Stupid Synth facts: I have dual Canadian and Norwegian citizenship. My legal name contains a letter that does not exist in the English alphabet. I can curl my tongue into a cloverleaf shape, and wiggle my ears. My day job is musical instrument repair. I play French horn in a concert band, trombone in a jazz band, and don’t practice my flute or piccolo near as much as I should. Outside of band rehearsals and my job, I volunteer at the local cat shelter, work out at a gym, and attend events at my city’s newly established makerspace.

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Tex: I'm Tex, and you can find me on tumblr @texasdreamer01. Most of my hobbies are centered around fandom and worldbuilding for it, though I also like cooking and reading up on fiction and non-fiction whenever I have the time. I'm currently studying biochemical engineering, with a slant in nanotechnology and its medical applications, so I need to know a bunch about the different types of sciences, as well as projecting for the development of future fields.

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Utuabzu: Hi, I’m Utuabzu, I previously was part of ScriptMyth (RIP) where I tended to take the lead on Mesopotamia and Egypt related asks. I’m most of the way through a Bachelor of Linguistics, e parlo italiano und ein bisschen Deutsch. I have a deep and enduring interest in the history of the ancient world, particularly the ancient Near East, and I’m also a bit of a nerd for politics, which is helpful when it comes to worldbuilding. My random 2am research binges have resulted in my knowing a lot of odd things. I enjoy travelling and experiencing other cultures, however as I am Australian this unfortunately requires flying, which I hate a great deal. I expect to one day be crushed beneath a pile of my books. It is a demise I am ok with.

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Wootzel: Hi, I’m Wootzel, or @wootzel-dragon! I use she/her pronouns. I’m a recent college grad trying to figure life out. My favorite thing about worldbuilding is making things as realistic or pseudo-realistic as possible, and finding a justification for everything. Sometimes, this is also my least favorite thing about myself, because it can make things very hard! But, it can also be really rewarding when I get things to work out in a way that I enjoy.

My other hobbies include reading lots of fanfic while neglecting physical books, starting ambitious sewing projects on a whim, and wondering where all my time goes on a daily basis. I have changed major a few times, and I am still unsure about what I want to do with my life, except that it’ll always have writing in it somewhere.

[briannaswriter]

a series of unrelated drabbles

prompt 003: space

It was beautiful out here, she thought when they first launched months ago, setting out for a trip to another planet in another galaxy in a trip very humans had attempted. Now though, the stars had lost their luster and she realized they were a bunch of novices on a foolhardy adventure to “save the world”. Sure, they had a leader at some point, somebody actually trained for this, but they lay in the medic room, still as if asleep and pale as if lacking sunlight. She couldn’t pretend to ignore that as the others did, convinced they were that this comatose would end.

She had taken to being the one to watch out for meteors. It was the only task she could be in solitude while maintaining the illusion that they were still capable of completing this mission. She was a realist though, if Alpha was dead then there would be no way to figure out where to go; Alpha was the only who knew in some idiotic move to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. What enemies? She never knew, her clearance wasn’t high enough to know why they were risking their lives out here, only that it was necessary for the survival of their species. If only she was heroic enough to accept that now as she did before time and experience had shaped her.

The hatched open, letting someone inside who stopped at the sight of her. "You know, I always figured you’d lose hope first,“ she said to the silent figure.

"I thought so too,” Delta said, her voice uncharacteristically steady and mature. Age and experience had reached her childhood friend too. “You used to be the one to have it, I could rely on you to pull us through – I guess it’s time to repay that favor. We’re going to make it out of here, you know that right, Zeta?"

Zeta startled her enough to let out a shaking laugh, turning her back on the glass dome to face her friend. "No, I don’t think we will. Alpha is dead, you know that right?"

A pause, then– "I do."

"He’s the only one that knew where to go. We’ve been drifting now, following his last direction, but what happens when we get there?” She didn’t need an answer to it and Delta knew it, staying quiet while Zeta paced back and forth across the room. “Nothing, we stay there and float, hoping that by the time everyone gives up, we’ve got enough fuel to get back. – and we won’t.”

“You’ve turned into a pessimist, you know? They’ve been sending messages back to HQ every hour, they’ll let us know and they’ll tell us where to go,” Delta said, crossing her arms.  

“That’s if– no!” Her cry too late as a meteor plowed into their side, sending them careening into each other. Alarms blared at the impact from below, a red light flashing from Delta’s armor that blinded them both as if their heads spinning from colliding wasn’t enough.

Her radio cried and a voice rang through, barely heard. “Zeta– what– hell– that?– Zeta–!"

Delta dragged her over to the hatch. "We’ve got to get out of here! Zeta, come on!"

Zeta wrenched her arm away, glaring at her. "This is the safest place to be, they are supposed to meet us up here when–” Another collision sent Zeta backwards, her side throbbing when it hit the railing, leaving what she knew would be a painful bruise.

“And what the hell should we do if someone is injured?” Delta demanded, rubbing her head where she had bumped it against the wheel for the hatch. She held the railing too. “We need to go check on them, don’t be stupid!"

"We just heard Beta, he’s alright!”

“There’s still more crew to check on, idiot! Not everyone is as ready to die as you are, Zeta!” Delta’s shout ended as a shriek when the ship spun out, hit once, twice, three times by smaller meteors. Below, the alarm stopped suddenly. “Oh no."

Delta went to exit and Zeta grabbed her radio, looking over in panic as Delta went to open the hatch. "Don’t!” She tackled her, knocking her over, knees pinning her legs down and using her arm to pin the rest of her and grabbed her radio again. “Beta, come in! This is Zeta, what is the status of the rest of the crew? Over."

A meteor went by in the glass, drawing her attention long enough for her friend threw her off. Zeta hugged the floor as Delta growled, "The hell you do that for?”

“Wait till we hear from Beta, you can’t just go down there if there’s a leak, idiot! You could die!"

"But–” Her friend stomped in frustration, torn between wanting to go down and realizing that Zeta was telling the truth. Satisfied that her friend wouldn’t throw a hit at her or leave the room, she sat up carefully, backing up to the railing quickly. “He hasn’t answered, we need to go, Zeta.”

An answer burst readily from Zeta’s lips before she could stop it “If he’s dead, there’s nothing we can do."

Delta glared harshly. "You give up too easily, he could just be hurt. He could need me– I mean, us."

Zeta saw her cheeks darken and narrowed her eyes accusingly. "You like him, don’t you?” There was no reply, but her friend looked away and that was answer enough. “Alright. Alright then.”

“This isn’t the place for this conversation, Zeta,” Delta pleaded, looking at her with huge eyes, moving slowly towards the hatch. Anticipating this, Zeta pushed past her and sat on it. Despite the discomfort, her friend wouldn’t be able to leave without getting past her. Delta understood this, but backed up hesitantly as though she might charge anyway.

“No, it isn’t, but you can’t leave still,” Zeta said harshly. She looked passed Delta to the glass, where the meteors passed by without hitting them. “It looks like we’re out of the collision path for now–”

Delta interrupted. “But we’re not moving."

She glared, but nodded and clicked her radio again. "Is everyone okay? This is Zeta, I’ve got Delta with me, over.” No response. Delta’s complexion had turned from red to green the longer it went with silence. “This is Zeta and Delta. Is anyone there? Over."

Still no response and for hours, they tried to communicate, passing the radio back and forth. Zeta didn’t move from the exit, even if her bottom wanted to sit on something less uncomfortable, and Delta sat as far from her as possible, holding the radio tightly, helmet discarded on the floor. Zeta felt uncomfortable by this display of emotion from her friend, very different than the one Delta had possessed prior to their mission. It was so old, like she had aged a decade, and so sad.

Unable to stand it anymore, Zeta got up, crawling over to her when her legs proved too shaky to hold her up. She set her hand over her friend’s, her voice soft. "Delta– I– We haven’t heard anything, they would have called us forever ago.” If only to shout obscenities at Zeta for not paying attention, but she didn’t mention this and she tried not to think of it either.

Delta looked up, her eyes red rimmed, and shook her head urgently. “No, they are fine, they are just trying to fix the–” She stopped suddenly, gripping Zeta’s hand, who yelped in fear. Had her friend snapped or was a meteor heading towards them again? Delta whispered as though talking to herself: “Oh, God. Oh, God.."

She didn’t move until Delta stood up, walking past Zeta, who stood staring at the floor and its patterns rather than look up. She could guess what was out there, but she didn’t dare look when it would make everything real, not when she had managed so far to walk the tightrope of calmness.

It wasn’t until Delta began to cry, great loud sobs that shook Zeta to the core, that she stood up. She turned her friend away with a sharp tug, holding her away from the sight, and keeping her from moving to look again. Delta stopped fighting, just holding her tightly, giant tears still rolling down her face and dropping onto her neck.

Zeta tried to calm her, but the words stayed lodged in her throat, lost among accusing, blank eyes that watched her from beyond the glass.

[bombcollar]

In response to the previous ask

(Previous Ask In Question)

Ohh I see! Sorry for the misunderstanding (and for your shrimps;;)

Hmm that does change things huh, I mostly agree with what you have to say about changing our in game characters into the suitable skin tone… Tho this does raises more questions like, should Nintendo exclude people from wearing an Afro in a lighter skin tone? (although it’s more to do with race I believe..?)

While there are people who may just want dress up as rider with a lighter skin tone (because they themselves are also white) I could understand that mentality; but it does feel more offensive since the player has the ability to change their skin tone in a game;; (Or perhaps the players who do this are trying to boost their self esteem in regarding to the stigma around cosplaying irl a character not of their own skin colour? Or maybe they’re background is African American but from birth have a much lighter skin tone)

Personally, as long as the player has no malicious intent in harming someone or a community in our case, I think it’s fine. Although, there is a very small number of people with darker skin avatars than I would of liked and it’s hard to tell someone’s actual intention though a video game based on their sheer appearance…

I’d admit this is quite a difficult topic, since Splatoon is targeted to all ages and I often see a lot of influential kids who mostly don’t mean to hurt anyone (since people are brought up differently and ect.)

I really don’t think Nintendo doesn’t do justice when it comes to them handing the topic around race (e.g. quote from octo expansion “…I don’t see species”, though it could just be a gag, showing that Craig Cuttlefish has a lot to learn on how to properly treat other races as you’d treat a fellow inkling)

(Sorry for the very long message ^ ^;;) I’ll be honest, I was under the impression that you may of been someone of the mindset of an exaggerated stereotype of a sjw… (so I was contemplating on whether I should send an ask at all, because I was worried about my own well being)

I read that you wanted to be more informed on racial topics and though I’m no professional, I’d still like to share these twitter threads (more to do with how to properly represent and draw someone who is ‘Black’)

Surrounding the topic on Black Hair by C Spike Trotman

Surrounding the topic on colouring darker skin by Rochelle

(NOT A THREAD but please check out Geneva Bower’s works!)

Thank you for reading this chunk full of a reply and have a lovely day Delta!

Thank you for the resources. I agree that Nintendo is not the best when it comes to racial topics. Their treatment of Marina is particularly gross, and the girl Octolings in general. I got the impression that Cuttlefish saying ‘I don’t see species’ was satire on people who claim to be race-blind and to show that he still had a ways to go in getting over his biases, but who can say for sure.

I’ve thought about it a bit since answering the ask yesterday, and we’re in agreement that it’s difficult to know someone’s intent with using a dark-skinned avatar in Splatoon. For people who cosplay characters like Rider I would certainly hope it’s just them showing their love for the character. Hopefully it’s the same with the afro as well, and people simply think it’s cute how it squishes with various headgear. I’m old enough to remember the 4chan Habbo Hotel incident and how people can misuse the afro hairstyle in video games. While I was miffed at seeing people cosplay Rider with a light skintone, it’s impossible to know the intent and all I can really do is hope they aren’t intentionally whitewashing him.

I’m concerned where you got the impression I was some sort of exaggerated sjw stereotype, because I really don’t post about social justice stuff that often, and usually it’s things like ‘shipping siblings is a bad’ and ‘don’t support pedophiles.’ I’m always willing to talk things over and listen and give my thought process, and change what I do if needed. 

[johnhardinsawyer]

No Longer Strangers

John Sawyer

Bedford Presbyterian Church

7 / 18 / 21

Ephesians 2:11-22

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

“No Longer Strangers”

(A New Harmony)

Have you seen these flags that are flown at homes and businesses and put on t-shirts and bumper stickers?  They look like American flags, but instead of being red, white, and blue, these flags are black and white.  Have you seen these flags?  Now, I’m not entirely sure what brought these white and black flags about, but someone, somewhere, is making some money selling them.  I guess some people think they look kind of cool – and, maybe they do – but I’m not entirely sure what, exactly, these flags mean to many of the people who fly and wear them.  I mean, I kind of know what these black and white flags mean, but a flag is a symbol – a powerful symbol – filled with so much meaning.  Now, I want to be careful and say that I’m not trying to make a judgment statement here about who flies which flag.  I am concerned, though, because it has begun to feel like the United States of America finds itself living under different flags – different ideologies, different forms of expressing ideas and loyalties – “United” in name, only.  There is so much dissonance and very little harmony.  We’re estranged from one another – strangers in this strange, yet beloved, land.

This is not the first time it’s been this way.  Our ideological and cultural differences can cause us to operate in different social worlds, different media worlds, different social media worlds, even different physical worlds in terms of which town or neighborhood we choose to live in  (or which town or neighborhood welcomes us in).  We might live in the same country, and we might technically be speaking the same language as our neighbors – like English – but we’re really speaking different languages about what is important, and true, and good to us.  And it is so hard for us to understand one another.  It happens between people of different races and cultures.  It happens between people of different ages, and generations, and socio-economic backgrounds, and access to technology.  It happens within families and in schools.  It even happens in the church.  

So, whether we’re talking about God, or who we voted for, or where we think the country is headed, or what we think about the complexities of race relations and the police and school curriculum and all of the historical and emotional baggage contained therein, there are so many ways that people can be so far apart on so many things.  We are strangers from one another – and, as we were taught as children, strangers can be dangerous, so. . . we stay away from one another, and the divide grows.  

And then, along comes today’s reading from the Letter to the Ephesians and it totally upends the tribalistic differences to which we might cling.  Because in Jesus Christ, any differences we might think are so important – any differences we might have to those around us – are wiped away and everyone is given a new identity.  The artificial barriers of thought, and feeling, and education, and money, and other things that we humans build, are dismantled.  Anything that separates us is torn down.  

The Letter to the Ephesians was likely written by someone who was close to the Apostle Paul – one of his followers, perhaps.  And the letter is written to the church at Ephesus, but it is really meant to be read by church – including ours.  

Just so you know, the ancient city of Ephesus was a port town in present-day Turkey – across the Aegean Sea from Greece.  Back in the time this letter was written, Ephesus was already well over 1,000 years old, and it was a thriving place with beautiful buildings, and a gigantic road from the harbor to the city – a first-century super-highway where eight chariots could ride side-by-side.  Ephesus had a huge amphitheater, and a library the size of our sanctuary (a rarity in the ancient world), and the temple of Artemis, which was at least four times the size of our sanctuary.[1]  In Greek mythology, Artemis was the daughter of Zeus – the goddess of the hunt.[2]  

So, in addition to the local – native – people, and the Greeks who conquered and settled the area, and the Romans who later conquered and settled the area, people from all over the known world traveled to and through Ephesus over the years, bringing other cultures and religions with them.  These included Jews from Palestine and, later on, Christians.  As you might imagine, this bustling melting pot of cultures, and races, and religions, was not without conflict.  Sound familiar?  It was like there were multiple flags flying over the same city – as many flags as there were viewpoints and loyalties.  And, apparently, there were people who thought that their way of living and practicing religion was the best way – that they were the in-crowd and everyone else was out.  There might have even been people in the church at Ephesus who felt this way about other people in the same church.  Can you imagine?  Shocking, I know, but people back then didn’t have many options in terms of churches.  It’s not like they could pack up and leave to go to the other church down the street.  There was only one church at Ephesus.

And then this letter arrives, stating that God has a different way of life, and faith, and community in mind for us.  There’s only one church, after all, so maybe we should live and work to make it so.  Now, many of the people in the church were so-called Gentiles – they were not ethnic or religious Jews, descended from one of the twelve tribes of Israel.  Instead, they were locals, of Greek, or Roman, or some other lineage, and they had heard the good news about this Palestinian Jew, Jesus Christ, and had come to believe in him.  Just prior to today’s passage, we can read the words later made famous by Martin Luther and other Reformers:  “[f]or by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God. . .” (Ephesians 2:8)  Another way of putting it is that, in the very act of coming to have faith in Jesus Christ, you and I are saved by God’s grace.  So these Gentiles in Ephesus, who have come to trust and follow Jesus, now find themselves as members of Christ’s body.  They are adopted, as we heard last week, and are given a new identity as God’s own children.

There’s only one problem, though.  They go to church with people who love Jesus, too, but who look down their noses at these Gentiles because they are not Jewish.  I mean, Jesus was Jewish, so shouldn’t everyone who loves Jesus be Jewish too – with all of the Jewish rules and regulations, including being circumcised?  To which the author of the letter to the Ephesians says, basically, “Don’t you know that God is up to something new and different for all of humanity, not just one small part of it?”

You see, there are these things that divide us as people.  Maybe it’s where we’re from, or what we believe, or who our family is, or what we’ve been taught about who we are.  And all of this makes us different from those people, whoever they may be and whatever flag they may be flying or pledging allegiance to.

But, as the author of today’s passage writes,

. . . now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.  For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. (2:13-14)

In other words, Christ Jesus bridges the divide between human beings and, through his loving sacrifice, he draws us close together and makes us one people.  No more walls.  No more hostility.  No more flags.  Only the cross of Jesus Christ.  

Can we still fly a flag?  Yes, if we need to.  Can we still love our country or our heritage?  Of course!  But, in Christ Jesus, our true country is God’s kingdom and our true heritage is built upon the loving and faithful foundation of prophets, and apostles, and Jesus, himself.

In so many ways, the dividing lines that we draw and walls we build might feel like our natural default setting as human beings, but they really go against who we truly are – who God made us to be.  As the Celtic Christian author, Philip Newell, writes:

Like never before in the history of humanity, we are becoming aware that what we do to a part we do to the whole, that the parts will not be well as long as the whole is neglected, and that the whole will not be well if the parts are neglected.  We know that it is meaningless to speak of being truly well as parents if our children are unwell.  We know that we cannot claim true wellness for our nation as long as other nations are suffering.  And we know that the human species can in no sense be considered healthy when the body of the earth is deeply infected.  Wellness is found not in isolation but in relationship. . . [The Holy] Spirit is breathing a new vision of oneness into our awareness today.  And it transcends the narrow boundaries that our nations and religions have tried to place around us.  A new and vast Pentecost is stirring in the human soul.  How will we serve it?[3]

Now, this was written ten years ago, long before Covid-19 vaccines and Delta variants, but it somehow rings quite true in the face of all that we’re facing.  We are connected to one another, even if we don’t act like it.  I find Newell’s question compelling.  The Holy Spirit “transcends the narrow boundaries that our nations and religions have tried to place around us. . .  How will we serve it?”

How will we serve the Holy Spirit in the spirit of the oneness to which God is calling us, and leading us, and perhaps dragging us against our wills as we pray with our lips for things to be on earth as they are in heaven and yet live in such a way that we would gladly have nothing to do with a neighbor who thinks or acts or lives differently from us?  

This is tough stuff, my friends, but in Christ Jesus, the God who might seem so far off from sinful and petty human beings, like you and I, brings us near.  And in Christ Jesus, the people who might seem so far off from us are brought near, too – from Mitch McConnell to Nancy Pelosi, from rainbow flags to MAGA hats, from Tucker Carlson to Bill Maher, from Black Lives Matter to Blue Lives Matter, from wherever you may be – and whatever flag you fly – and how you see the world to wherever those who are most strange to you and estranged from you are.  

How will we serve the Spirit?  By living and working and serving and loving until all people are no longer strangers.  We have our work cut out for us – whether that work takes place deep in our own hearts or out in the world, dismantling our pride and our prejudice and making us one.  Who is farthest away from you and how is the Spirit moving you to become one?  In Christ Jesus, God is creating a new humanity that embraces our very human need for one another – our need for harmony and wholeness and peace. . . even with those people who seem so far off from us.  

We have been saved by grace and this is not our own doing, but may we respond to God’s grace  by living and working for God’s harmony, and wholeness, and peace.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

-----------

[1] Watson E. Mills, ed. Mercer Dictionary of the Bible (Macon:  Mercer University Press, 1990) 255-256. James L. Blevins - “Ephesus”.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis.

[3] J. Philip Newell, A New Harmony:  The Spirit, the Earth, and the Human Soul (San Francisco:  Jossey-Bass, 2011) xiii-xiv.

[theconservativebrief]

A college student wanted to bring a hamster on a plane and then flushed it down an airport toilet after Spirit Airlines told her she wasn’t allowed to board with it. A United Airlines passenger attempted to get on a flight with a peacock. Another air traveler took a turkey on a plane. Yet another brought on a duck wearing red booties. Last winter, a dog’s teeth scraped a little girl’s head on a Southwest Airlines flight. Earlier this month, a Delta passenger complained that his seat was covered in dog feces.

These were real events that happened in America: travelers toting “emotional support animals,” claiming they need the ESAs (which are distinct from service animals trained to help those with physical disabilities) to stay calm while flying. And there are more of them out there: back in January, Delta reported that it carries around 700 service or support animals daily and has had to create a special support desk for them.

How is it legal to bring your duck on the plane? Under the federal Air Carrier Access Act, passengers are allowed to bring animals aboard by showing a letter from a mental health clinician or doctor asserting that the pet is part of their therapy. But the law is surprisingly vague about which species can come on board and gives airlines significant discretion. “You are never required to accommodate certain unusual service animals (e.g., snakes, other reptiles, ferrets, rodents, and spiders) as service animals in the cabin,” it reads.

Yet as a quick Google search will show, it’s possible to obtain these letters online for a small fee. Some passengers may very well be exploiting the law to bring pets on planes. (Delta, at least, now also requires a note from a veterinarian.) And stories about peacocks and ducks in booties on planes are increasingly leading ESAs (and their handlers) to be treated as a punchline. In the New York Times, columnist David Leonhardt called the animals a “scam” and “one of the downsides of a modern culture that too often fetishizes individual preference and expression over communal well-being.”

But before we consider these animals a national blight, we should ask: Do they actually work to help people in distress cope? What do we really know about the emotional support value of pets? It’s a question that might be on your mind this holiday traveling season, if you see these companion animals at the airport.

Molly Crossman is a psychology researcher at Yale who published a 2016 review in The Journal of Clinical Psychology of the evidence on using animals to counter psychological distress. Here’s what she found: “The clearest conclusion in the field is that we cannot yet draw clear conclusions.”

Crossman’s research is about finding ways to reduce the mental health treatment gaps in America. “Traditional models of treatment therapy and medication reach a very small proportion of the people who actually need services,” she says.

And given that one in five Americans experience mental illness in a given year, she thinks animals are an intriguing option to help more people. They could also be crucial for combating the loneliness that comes with an aging population.

I called her up to talk about how animals might be beneficial for mental health — a question that, frustratingly, doesn’t yet have a clear answer.

This interview, conducted in February, 2018, has been edited for length and clarity.

I mean, just look at this face. Martin Poole/Getty Images

Brian Resnick

Do we really need rigorous empirical evidence to know that pets bring comfort to people? Isn’t that kind of obvious? Many, many people have pets. Obviously they bring joy.

Molly Crossman

Yes. I get that question a lot. A lot. There are a few different answers.

One is that there are different standards of evidence.

So if you want to say that “my pet makes me feel good and it’s fun,” that’s great. You don’t really need lots of evidence for that.

But with these emotional support animals, we’re talking about what is essentially a prescription from doctors to people with clinically significant symptoms. When we talk about that, there are very specific standards of evidence for psychiatric and psychological treatment, and these have not met that standard.

Brian Resnick

So is there good evidence that pets reduce emotional distress?

Molly Crossman

A lot of people have this impression that [the evidence] is very well established and we really know that [animals] are beneficial. But what is surprising is that we actually don’t know that at all.

Kerrick/Getty Images

Brian Resnick

Overall, what are the strongest claims we can make about animals and mental distress?

Molly Crossman

Yeah. Well, I’ll qualify it first by saying that most of the research in this area is on dogs. There is some on horses as well, and a few studies on other species.

But in terms of the dog studies, we can say that, probably, interactions with animals don’t make stress-related symptoms worse. So that’s good.

It also seems they convey sort of small to medium reductions in stress and stress-related symptoms. That’s the strongest thing I’m willing to say.

Brian Resnick

How is the research flawed?

Molly Crossman

We actually don’t know that it’s the animals specifically that are producing these small to medium reductions in stress. It might be other components of the interventions in which they’re evaluated.

It might just be people get better over time. And if you have no control group at all, you can’t say the animals were more beneficial than just people coping on their own.

In cases where [researchers] do include control groups, they’ve often been what we call “no treatment” control groups. They’re just sort of a waitlist. [With that design, it’s hard to know the benefits are directly attributable to the animals.] Is it the handlers of the animals, who often interact extensively with participants? And we know that social interaction with people is essential for mental health. So there’s all these questions about how important are the animals [in these therapies].

In our research, we’re trying to get to the point where we can say there seems to be something here specific about dogs. That it’s not the other people who are involved; not just the passage of time.

Brian Resnick

I imagine the research is also made difficult by the fact there are so many different programs that use animals to reduce distress. There are some where animals with handlers are brought to hospitals with therapies. Which is different than owning a pet and having it at home.

Molly Crossman

Yeah.

Brian Resnick

So you have reviewed a great amount of the research on using animals to reduce distress. Is there research specifically on “emotional support animals”?

Molly Crossman

They really haven’t been studied. Research on pet ownership should speak to them. But there’s very limited, if any, research on emotional support animals specifically.

Dragan Todorovic/Getty Images

Brian Resnick

So why are clinicians allowed to prescribe “emotional support animals” despite the lack of evidence?

Molly Crossman

In psychology, we don’t license treatments — we license providers. So there’s no FDA for psychotherapy. Once you’re licensed, within a certain range, you kind of have the freedom to use whichever treatment you want. And even though some treatments are considered evidence-based and some are not, there’s nobody regulating which you use.

Brian Resnick

I can see why the concept of “emotional support animal” is appealing for mental health clinicians. When I talk to clinicians in reporting, they sometimes lament how their time with patients is so limited to just a few hours of appointment. An emotional support animal is a full-time treatment.

Molly Crossman

It is extremely compelling, and I think that’s one of the draws, is this idea of full-time support.

Brian Resnick

Backing up: Do we even have good data on whether dog ownership increases well-being overall?

Molly Crossman

No. And actually, I think that’s one of the areas where the evidence is relatively weak, and that’s just because it’s a very hard question to answer. You need very, very big data sets, where you can sort of control lots and lots of variables in people’s lives. Isolating the effect of a pet in the context of all the other factors that influence a person’s mental health is so hard, so the evidence there is really, really mixed.

Brian Resnick

So most of this research is on dogs, and it’s not very conclusive. I’m guessing it’s not right to generalize to other species, like hamsters.

Molly Crossman

It’s not.

Probably different animals are good at different things. So, for example, we’ve seen just within dogs, different dogs have different personalities, and they convey slightly different effects. We start with dogs, and I think a lot of other research groups do as well, because it seems like dogs are sort of specially designed, for lack of a better word, to interact with people, to understand our social and emotional cues.

Fox Photos/Getty Images

Brian Resnick

Is there potential for harm with emotional support animals?

Molly Crossman

I do have concerns about the potential for harm, which isn’t to say that I think they’re definitely harmful. I just think it’s an important possibility, and it’s a little bit of a complicated explanation, but I’ll try.

Basically, in treatments for anxiety that work, we ask people to face their fears. We work with them to gradually approach the things they’ve avoided. These treatments work really well. They’re some of sort of the best mental health treatments that we have. A concern we have in those kinds of treatments is that people will feel like, “I can only approach this terrifying situation if they have my mom with me, or my blankie,” or whatever.

If someone who’s very afraid of heights is only able to approach heights with their emotional support dog, they might start to say, “Wow, I can do this because of Buddy.” We want you to learn you can do it, and we don’t want it to be about Buddy.

While Buddy makes the fear better in the short term, he’s making it worse in the long term. So that’s the concern, is that you’re reinforcing fear in the long term.

Brian Resnick

The animal becomes a crutch.

Molly Crossman

Exactly.

Think this turtle like flying? Getty Images/EyeEm

Brian Resnick

Could an animal be harmed as the result of supporting a person’s emotions? I could imagine emotional support tortoises hate being on airplanes.

Molly Crossman

We’re talking about treatments that involve live animals, and we have an obligation to those animals to make sure that if we’re sort of using them for our benefit, that the benefits are really being conveyed. Because, for example, being something like a service animal is hard work. Being on a plane can be stressful for an animal; these kinds of things really raise the stakes in my eyes for making sure that they work.

I think importantly, there are some species in which it’s probably not wise to be asking the questions in the first place, because [the] animals themselves are not well suited and will not enjoy doing this work, and there are risks of harm to the people and to the animals. In general, it’s a problem when people advertise benefits of interaction with species that are not domesticated, because there are risks to those interactions, and then people get upset when bad things happen.

My favorite example is [Washington University in St. Louis] brought a bear cub to their campus as part of a pet therapy program, which should be such an obviously bad idea, right? A bear?! Yeah.

But it’s not obvious, and there was this media frenzy when this happened because the bear cub attacked a bunch of students, and then there was this rabies scare. And, like, we just can’t blame the bear in that scenario. It should not have been brought to a campus to play with students. That was not a great idea.

Wouldn’t you want to know if these pups are good for decreasing distress? Let’s do the studies to find out. Catherine Ledne/Getty Images

Brian Resnick

How do we find out if dogs are beneficial?

Molly Crossman

I think to the question of does that study exist, no, because no single study is gonna tell us that. It’s an accumulation of evidence, just like in any field. So I think our group is trying to do that. There are a number of other research groups around the country trying to do this as well, and I think we’re getting there. So we have a few recent studies where we’ve shown that dogs, interacting with a dog, outweighs the effects of just kind of being exposed to it, viewing it, so the interaction is important. The effects of interaction with a dog exceed those of other common coping strategies that people use, and also exceed the effects of sort of any intervention that people are told will work.

Brian Resnick

What does the coverage of emotional support animals in the media miss?

Molly Crossman

I think what most of the media coverage misses is that the central issue here, from my perspective is, do these animals work. I don’t know how to put it in a more refined way, but do they convey the effects that we hope? I think until we answer that question, all of these other arguments [such as whether they’re a sign of a fragile American psyche] are a little bit peripheral.

From the perspective of psychologists, we should answer that question first and then worry about what it says about millennials.

Brian Resnick

In your review paper, you write, “Animals are not equipped to overhaul the limitations of the mental health care system.” What do you mean by that?

Molly Crossman

I think animals can reach lots of people outside of traditional models of treatment. Animals might bring a few extra people in because they’re appealing and can sort of facilitate entry into treatment, [but] they’re not gonna close that gap between. … Roughly 30 percent of people in need of treatment get any kind of treatment, and I would say that’s a pretty conservative estimate. Animals are not gonna take that from 30 to 100 percent. That’s just not gonna happen.

But, like I said, 70 percent, almost, of homes in the US have pets, so if pets are beneficial and we can somehow leverage those benefits, they might reach lots and lots of people that way.

Original Source -> The surprisingly weak scientific case for emotional support animals 

via The Conservative Brief

[get-out-go]

How to plan an African Safari

For many, Africa's main draw is its wildlife, notably in eastern and southern countries: It is estimated that more than 800 different species of mammals roam the continent. An easy way to watch wildlife is to book a private or group safari, known as an overland journey. Since safaris are often once-in-a-lifetime adventures, it's crucial to get it right the first time. Here's how:

Choosing the Right Safari Determine what you want out of the experience. The great wildlife migration of East Africa? The gorillas in Central Africa? Elephants or leopards? Animal watching via horseback, elephant trek, walking tour, or mountain trek? Flying between destinations, or driving? Staying at an enclosed campsite or an unfenced one? The lap of bush luxury or a minimalist bush camp?

Researching Your Options Get recommendations: "Talk to veteran safari goers," says Jennifer Lawson, who produced a TV series on Africa for National Geographic. If operators are uncomfortable providing contacts for past clients, ask them to pass along your own contact information and request a reference call. If they refuse, move on. Consult a book: Steve Krenzen, founder of the Association of Professional Safari Guides, recommends the African Safari Journal by Mark Nolting. Another expert recommendation: Lonely Planet's "Africa" series, which offers 34 Africa-related guides, including Watching Wildlife in East Africa and Trekking in East Africa. Go online: The Web has thousands of pages devoted to Africa travel.

Deciding How Long to Stay I usually recommend taking a safari that lasts at least ten days so you can experience more than one park. But don't try to do more than two countries during a two-week trip, otherwise you'll spend too much time at airports and be forced to stay overnight in big cities. Flight schedules between countries are usually only once a day, if that, and frequently don't connect conveniently.Shorter safaris are rewarding if well arranged. You can visit the Kruger National Park in three days, for instance, because it's a relatively small park. If exploring a bigger region, such as the Okavango Delta, you could easily spend eight to ten days and never be bored. Evaluating an Operator Here's what to ask a potential tour company. If you hang up the phone unsatisfied, look elsewhere. Do staff members regularly travel to Africa, especially to parts where their tours are conducted? It's a surprising—even frightening—fact that many of the agents advising clients on visiting Africa have never been there. Does the company use a variety of accommodations (camps, lodges, or hotels), or must they use ones they have contracts with? Many travellers to the African bush spend serious cash—safaris can cost $15,000 or more, though prices vary from operator to operator. So pick a flexible company that can grant your wishes. Are they open to making customized safaris based on your travel needs? Since a safari to Africa is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for most, be sure to get exactly what you want. There are hundreds of itineraries out there, but if they don't meet your criteria, then design your own. Do they accept credit cards? Some companies don't. A policy of non-acceptance of credit cards should raise a big red flag. How long has the company been in business? An indication of a solid track record is a company that's been around for at least 5 years. Is your operator willing to take you to villages that surround the park preserves? Villages can provide a memorable taste of African culture. Around some game parks (parks created in wildlife eco-systems to earn revenue from tourists), "tourist villages" are set up to imitate village life for tourists. A better bet: the real villages located farther away from the park, where you can interact with locals living their lives—not staging a performance. Does the operator use your dollars to benefit the local economy and protect the local environment? Conservation efforts in Africa are slowly improving, especially when local people receive the benefits of nature tourism. You can help by choosing safari operators that hire and train local people, support local operations such as schools and conservation programs, give you the chance to buy local crafts and other products, and take care not to harm the environment.

Traveling with a Group Some people book safaris with a private operator and some opt for a group experience. Keep groups small. The people in the first vehicle see game, while those in the vehicle behind eat dust. Go with no more than six or eight people. Booking privately does not necessarily mean greater cost. A private group of four or more can often travel with us for the same price as a group of 16 or 20.

Deciding How Far in Advance to Plan If all you want is a standard group lodge safari to Botswana or South Africa, then planning three months in advance will suffice. If, on the other hand, you want top safari camps, notable lodges, or renowned guides, book six months or more in advance. Many top specialists have most of their time already booked up 6 months or more in advance. For extra security when booking in advance, purchase trip cancellation insurance. (Check out Travel Insured.)