#it’s interesting to do research on species that are more obscure than things like cats or horses

[charcoaldustonmyfingers]

Leo skeletal anatomy! Click for better quality :)

The way most turtles actually fit into their shells is because their arms and legs are shaped to fit into the loose skin around the openings for their limbs, but on account of their human proportions, I just suspend my disbelief as to how mutant turtles could fit in their shells without the odd configuration to their organs that real turtles have. Real turtles have flat lungs that sit widely along their carapace, which is weird but cool. Turtles shed their scutes (the large flat scales on their shells and plastron) about once a year or if the scutes are damaged. The scutes have barely any skin between them and the bone, which is why turtle skeletons usually have the scutes on still, though they can pop off. The rest of the skin sheds regularly though, instead of in large patches.

For the brothers’, their respiration is much more human than turtle. Therefore, their lungs need to expand and contract with their diaphragm rather than just with their movement, so therefore they must have some flexibility to their chest. Some turtles, like box turtles, already have hinged plastrons, and softshell shells are mostly cartilage, so it’s not too far off to assume that there’s a bit of cartilage just to the upper plastral bones of the hard shelled brothers to give their humanoid lungs room to breathe.

Poor Leo. After the movie, one could assume he’s got a couple broken bones. It kind of made me morbidly curious as to how to describe injuries on a character whose skeletal structure is quite different from a human’s for my own writing!

Feel free to use as reference or disregard, these are just my own little speculations :)

[General][Raph][Donnie][Mikey][Splinter]

[dingoat]

So, a whole two people had an interest in my thoughts on cathar in Star Wars and purring, which I guess is enough to prompt me to try and put some of them into proper words. I do want to preface this by saying my own personal thoughts and feelings on these matters are very much my own personal thoughts and feelings, coming from my particular areas of interest and professional knowledge, and have absolutely no bearing on how much I enjoy other people's takes/characters, or how willing I am to interact or depict other people's takes/characters! Everyone approaches these things differently and frankly I have no interest in nor take any pleasure from raining on other folks' parade or telling them how to write/design/depict their own characters. Mostly, I want to reassure people that it is in fact completely okay to have completely different ideas to the more popular fandom headcanons, it is absolutely fine to disagree, and it is very not cool to try and force a single way as the 'best' or 'most correct'. I also, personally, have way more respect for people who will readily admit that they imagine a character/species a certain way purely because it viscerally appeals to them- they dig the aesthetic, they just think it's cool/cute/neat, etc- rather than those who dream up a feature and use ham fisted imperfect science to try and justify it.

If you like your cathar to purr simply because you think it's lovely, you go and do you, I love and respect you for it, and my words going forward here and now are simply not for you. I'm not here to fight or argue or try to convince you otherwise, I have no interest in discourse! There are just facets of world building and character design that I know I feel differently about than most people and I'm making myself vulnerable here by sharing some of them.

(I am also going to talk about a little more than purring.)

So! A little bit of background on me and where I'm coming from.

Animals are my life, I have studied them academically and work with them professionally and have lived and breathed animals since my very earliest memories. I am fascinated by form and function, by taxonomy and natural selection and adaptation to environments, by behaviour and cognition, and I am deeply committed to conservation efforts. All of these interests are what inform and guide the way I think about fiction, they are what I enjoy about made-up species, sometimes I think long and deep, and sometimes I just have gut responses. (Also, most of you here wouldn't know me from a bar of soap and I don't expect you to believe anything I say simply because 'I said so'. I could be lying about my life experience! If any of my talking points are of genuine interest to you I encourage you, I implore you to research further on your own!)

Now!

Cathar!

Cathar are just one of many many many 'space cat people' that hang out in Star Wars land. I was first introduced to the greater Star Wars universe through a tabletop RPG and I found myself RAVENOUS for lore, to know what was out there, to help expand and flesh out our character's adventures with as much delicious and beautiful variety as possible. I love this stuff. I dig the obscure aliens, I love the nonhumans, and because of my interest in real world animals, yes, the animal-analogue aliens have always been particular favourites.

Star Wars has lots, and lots, and lots of cat people, and visually they vary from very-animal (fluffy, four-limbed Cor) to basically-human (hi, Cathar, hi, new-canon Zygerrians), with a bunch of in-betweens at varying levels of cattyness and a few novel features here and there. To me, applying every variation of 'earth felid' to every species of 'sapient feline' in the Star Wars universe is just kind of boring and scientifically improbable in a way that (personally) irks me. If Cathar are the only space-cats you think of and utilise in your corner of fandom, I can see why you might enjoy making them as wonderfully varied as all the wild and domestic cats we have around us, but I just don't feel the need. I am far more interested in seeing some-features-here, some-features-there. These guys more like tigers. These more like domestic turkish vans. These ones more like lynx but WHAT IF theyr'e from an ocean world?? I have fun with that. I don't need a tiger-cathar and a siamese-cathar and a lynx-cathar and a margay-cathar. I have way more space cats to play with, and where canon/legends falls short, I'll make my own thank you very much.

So, coming from this angle alone, I actively don't want to stuff my cathar full of every variant of earth-cat behaviours and abilities. I have literally no need to make cathar, arguably one of the most humanoid cat-people Star Wars has to offer, capable of purring. To me, they're physiologically pretty much human with some mild, superficial feline facial features and fuzzy bodies. Human mouths, lips, tongues, throat, speech capability. I don't think they meow or prrp or hiss or purr (at least, no better or with any different reason than a human might mimic these sounds), I even struggle to visualise them 'perking' their ears, and if I want a character that I can write with those more catlike tendencies, I'll pick something that isn't a cathar! (And if I want a tail, I'll write them as a farghul or something. I don't need my cathar to have tails, and the function and variety of tails is another thing vastly misunderstood and misrepresented in popular fiction, but that's a whole other essay.)

We've also got the whole thing where roaring and purring are mutually exclusive sounds. No cat species can both roar and purr, and it is a distinction in the hyoid bone (that supports the tongue/larynx) that makes a cat capable of one or the other. Some big cats might have little rumbles/growls that can sound a bit like a purr, but it's really not the same thing. Hollywood messes this up all the time, look at every cartoon lion and tiger out there, and while it's totally within your right to headcanon some cathar-specific vocal apparatus that allows for both, I simply prefer neither, because the unique position of this bone in humans is apparently the foundation of our ability to speak. I look at a human-proportioned head, and I imagine human equivalent vocal abilities (so yes, I'd imagine the same for zabraks, @gran-maul-seizure ). I might write a togorian capable of roaring, or a trianii capable of purring, as both are significantly more alien than a cathar in my eyes.

Splitting cathar up into different subspecies with different abilities doesn't really work for me either (a lot of fandom intra-species variation doesn't really work for me) because there are a lot of very widespread, fundamental misunderstandings of how natural selection operates, and what leads to different species in the first place, and even what makes a species at all.

If these points don't matter to you, again, I re-iterate, that's fine. Go ham. If all you want to do is make a thousand creative variations, if you want to make a cathar for every cat-look under the sun and that's what's fun for you, please go right ahead! But these points matter to me a great deal, and so I take great enjoyment out of including them in my world building and character thoughts.

[Why do these things matter to me? Because I want to see life on our actual, real world home planet earth preserved. I believe understanding the vast variety of life is essential to fostering greater appreciation and ultimately care of our natural world. Biodiversity is essential and so poorly understood/acknowledged by the general public and it is one of my genuine missions in life to increase and improve understanding in whatever avenues I have available! Not every rabbit is created equal. You can't replace one lemur species with another and expect it to fulfil the same role in the environment, they are fundamentally different creatures. One lizard is not the same as the next, one skink is not equal to the next! People stroll down the beach and cast their eyes over a dozen different shorebirds at once and yet all they see is 'seagull' despite so so many different processes and niches and roles operating right before their eyes! If people can't recognise a sandpiper from a curlew from a crake, let alone a wood sandpiper from a marsh sandpiper from a terek sandpiper, how can they learn, how can they understand that each individual species is doing something different in the environment? That when one species goes extinct, something is irrevocably lost? Helping people understand that one species can not simply be replaced with another, no matter how superficially similar, is truly important to me. Important enough to me that it matters in my fiction as well! That I get more joy out of seeing exploration of earth felids represented across multiple unique space cat species, rather than a one-size-fits-all-cat-man!]

So, back to the space cats. To me, personally, it is most believable to imagine that cathar evolved to a certain level of intelligence, sapience, technological advancement, within a single environment, and then these abilities allowed them to expand further into more extreme environments, cross oceans, survive in hostile climates, etc. A single, distinct species, with certainly some physical variation (just like humans) but within very specific parameters (just like humans - our skin colours and body shapes vary, yes, but across predictable spectrums; we don't have spider-monkey humans and chimp humans and mandrill humans and capuchin humans and snub nosed monkey humans and pygmy marmoset humans). I imagine that when the early cathar population spread, say, from a lightly forested landscape into the snow, they did not need to evolve a fluffy coat with snow leopard patterns because it was their ability to make heavy coats out of wildlife pelts and construct shelters and build fires that allowed them to move into the snow in the first place. They didn't need to develop camouflage appropriate to the environment because they could find colours to wear, they could dye or bleach their fur, their intelligence took over and allowed them to adapt much faster than natural selection ever would. Once they hit a certain point in their species' evolution, they did not need to continue to change physiologically to adapt to environmental pressures.

Could you look at it the other way? That the cathar-predecessor spread across their home planet and adapted into various environmental niches, developed new coat colours and vocal systems before actually becoming the intelligent and self-aware spacefaring cat people we know and love? Sure! But I would argue that it is deeply, profoundly improbable that what you would wind up with is a single species! I would argue that it's profoundly improbable that each one of these environmental variants would develop to the same level of sapience at all, let alone wind up able to produce offspring together, but y'know, the idea of multiple dominant species from a common ancestor is cool and fun too. The key, here, for my own personal believability, is multiple species. If you don't care about any of this in your fiction, fine! Do what's ultimately more creatively fun for you, but own that creativity rather than misrepresent science! And if you actually do like to consider species variation and evolution from a more real-world biology perspective, I encourage you to read and think a little more deeply, go beyond the rule of cool and get to understand the sheer, magnificent, overwhelming variety and beauty of our own home a little better.

My cathar don't purr, because biodiversity matters to me.

Footnote: Slightly more sideways thoughts, I guess, but I also kind of find the trend of giving animal-esque species cutesy animal-esque tendencies to be a little rude, and it's something I prefer to write into Imperial xenophobia rather than make fact for alien species. I don't find it especially fun to consider Aric Jorgan getting distracted with a ball of yarn or being placated with a saucer of milk or grooming himself with his tongue, and especially not any implications that the behaviours might be involuntary. I imagine it's a very tiresome, disrespectful gag for human Imperial agents to give a bowl of milk to their cathar colleague, and I imagine a Republic trooper wouldn't dream of insulting their cathar counterpart in the same way.

[real-kastek]

Darkened Drabbles: Chapter 6

Human-Like

(Prompt: Noelle brings Kris and Susie to a…"Humie" convention.)

(Author Note: Pretty sure this is what they call a "crackfic". Apologies in advance for this nightmare…)

"Don't they have diseases and crap?"

You shoot a withering look at the dragoness, "Can you not even wait till I've got my back turned?"

Susie shrugs, throwing her hands up, "What? I'm not talking about you." She snickers, "Still can't figure out what you are half the time."

"S-Susie! That's not…" The antlered girl sighs quietly, "No, I believe they would all have their shots before attending."

You turn your eyes back to Noelle as she clears her throat.

"N-Not that they would need them! Or, er-" Her mouth wrinkles as she avoids your gaze, "I just mean that, um, they should all be healthy! So it's…uh, safe."

You roll your eyes, stuffing your hands into your pockets. You knew Hometown wasn't exactly the cultural center of the world, but they acted like they'd never met a human before. Noelle had known you for years now, and Susie was…around. You were a perfect example of what to expect out of your species! Red eyes, blue-skin when exposed to other realities, a consistent wardrobe. All of it was pretty typical.

"H-Here," You glance up past your hair's veil, Noelle's hands clutching a number of lanyards, "Take one of these and keep it around your neck." She quickly shoves the laminated necklace into your palms, "And I know you two must be excited, but let's all try and stay together, alright? I've been told these meet-ups can be very hectic if you become lost in the crowd."

Susie grumbles, throwing a badge limply over her head, the thin ribbon catching on her maw, "Was your idea, I got no interest in any human junk. I get enough from them already." She lightly jabs you in the ribs, smiling all the while.

"Susie! Aren't you at least a bit curious as to the larger world?"

"…no?"

Noelle sighs, "Well, we need to have some research component for our group projects. Ms. Alphys said we have to write about another culture for the paper, so this is the perfect opportunity!" She smiles, "It's two birds with one stone! We don't have to be stuck in a stuffy library all day, and we can finish the essay!"

You pinch the bridge of your nose, "…so, it's some kind of cultural festival?"

The doe begins clattering up the stairs, the giant convention center looming above, "Exactly! From what I understand, the event is held for a few days, all centered around humans!"

You cling to the metal bar at your side, following the excitable doe up to the glass doors, "Well…yeah. But what is it about? Like, is it a historical thing? Do humans host it? Like, you wouldn't just have a convention for weird scaly monsters that eat the gum from under desks, you need more than that."

You feel the dragoness bump into your shoulder, "…it was one time."

You smirk, "Uh-huh."

"W-Well, I'm sure we can ask around and speak with the individuals hosting the event. The advertisement even said they would have artists and traditional human…erm, outfits? I think?"

The girl's hooves clatter past, entering through the double doors, you and Susie following closely behind.

You stuff your hands in your pockets as air conditioning pours through the entrance, blasting you in the face. You shiver. Why did they need it so cold? You shake your head. Probably just too many people heating the area up. It could get pretty sweaty.

You cast your gaze out across the domed room ahead, careful to avoid bustling crowds of monsters scrambling about from stand to stand. The area was surprisingly spacious, each makeshift corridor given ample space between various tables selling kitschy trinkets. Each of the individual counters were hidden away by dark blue curtains, obscuring much from the sides despite your best efforts. You squint past a crowd of cat-like monsters, spotting a number of stands advertising 'Original Character' sketches and drawings. You lean further out, only able to note a seemingly endless collection of pins lining the table, most examples of artwork likely obscured from sight. You recoil, almost colliding with a trio of cyclopean beings, their bulbous eyes darting around as they dash past.

"…lot of, uh…monsters here." You mutter

"W-Well, yes. Perhaps humans are the ones hosting the event itself?" Noelle chatters nervously.

You meander down the tiled path, carefully weaving between bustling crowds. A din of electronic music thrums in your ears as you're suddenly assaulted by a wave of color and noise; stands in the opposing hall having no such curtains hiding their contents. You stare across the way, watching as beleaguered monsters manned each table, many scribbling wildly across thick parchment or adjusting signs for social media links. Artists lined the hallway with their work on full display, most of which were intricate depictions of humans with eye-searing neon skin tones and often times cartoonishly large eyes. The stands were being assaulted by both onlooking monsters and a DJ's set close ahead, ear-rattling bass bellowing out as a crowd awkwardly gyrating in front. Between the painful attempts at dancing, you spot a sign atop the set, simply stating, 'Lo-Fi Beats for Humies'.

"Uh…Noelle?"

"Yes, Kris?" She stared back, a calm smile lining her features, seemingly oblivious to the chaos ahead.

"I…don't think this is a cultural thing. I'm not even sure this is a…human thing." You wince, the DJ seeming to decide now was the time to turn up the volume.

The doe-eyed girl tilts her head, "What do you mean? There's art of humans, human music, I believe I even saw an area for food from your culture." She pauses, a single finger placed to her lips, "Though the meals offered may not be…accurate. I believe they're going with fun themes! Like, I saw one dish that was called 'Soul Food' I think."

You open your mouth, words failing you.

"Holy shit, you should see the stuff they got back there!"

You snap to the side; the mauve dragoness having returned in a huff.

"Man, didn't know you were into that kind of junk Noelle. Is that why you brought us here? I mean, I'm not judging, just…damn." Susie chuckles, a hint of red flushing across her scales.

"I-I'm not sure what you…"

Noelle's hooves clatter across the pale tile, speeding back over to the curtained hallway, leaning past the covers.

You begin to follow, a sudden shriek ringing out as she tumbles back into you. You barely manage to remain standing as the girl's festive sweater slams into your face. She just as quickly turns, face burning underneath her fur, hands thrown up in a panic.

"S-Sorry! I, uh…I mean, maybe we should go study somewhere-" She stutters, "Th-The library! Let's all go to the library, o-okay?!"

"Arrrrright everyone! The costume competition is about to begin! Please make your way down to room A-5 where our judges will pick out the very best personas you've got!" A loudspeaker screeches to life, drowning out the crowd's chattering, "Don't forget to adjust those eyebrows and air everything out before taking a number though. Don't want anyone passing out this year! And for those attending the '18+ Late Night Meet-Up', make sure to respect appropriate boundaries and ask before touching someone's fleshie suit! The event will be held in B-7, please have your ID ready and on hand."

Your eye twitches.

"I-I, um-" Noelle's hand twists across her lanyard, "W-Well, I'm sure that…um, maybe we could just…"

"Hey, Kris," The mauve dragoness interrupts, throwing herself between you and the panicked deer, "You humans really come in all those colors? Some of the art over there is crazy. I didn't think you could grow other arms and crap. Or have that many…" She pauses, mocking grin falling away as further heat creeps across her face, "Uh…well, like, y-ya know-"

"A-ANYWAY!" Noelle roughly pulls the dragoness to the side, Susie's eyes going wide, "I-I think we should go! N-Now…please?!"

You're frozen in place, an inferno burning across your features.

"…s-sorry Kris."

You gaze back above, barely able to face the doe-eyed girl as she stares back, "…I-I…uh, it's okay. Let's just…let's leave."

She nods quietly, eyes dancing across the crowd, "Um…where is Susie?"

"GUYS!"

You peer above the mass of attendees, spotting the violet drake waving back, a plastic, bulbous container held in her claws.

"They sell fake pecs over here!" Her fangs shine against the bright fluorescent lights above, "Well…I mean, I think they're pecs. Kinda lumpy…"

You begin scrambling past a number of attendees, intent on fetching the dragoness before your face bursts into flames. You're almost immediately stopped in your efforts as the crowd balloons in size, sweeping you off from the side and down the hall. You yelp in surprise, struggling to push past the excitable monsters. You find yourself thrown from side to side, bouncing off the surprisingly rubbery forms of those around you. You try to yell out, only for the words to die in your mouth as you peer up.

They were…humans? No, not humans, anything but. They were human-shaped, designed, varied in color and limb count. Their eyes were the size of dinner plates, eyebrows awkwardly stapled in distressing angles, their mouths hung open with a single tongue lolling out. You wince, mind screaming out against the maddening sight. They were monsters? Humans? Monsters in horrific facsimiles of your own kind?

…personas?

You fight past the sweeping crowd, managing to escape to an open booth. You brush off every bit of your sweater and face, hoping what you witnessed could be cleansed in the process.

"K-Kris…?!"

You shake away from the feeling, eyes locking onto the table at your side. You wince, wishing you hadn't. Dozens of hand-drawn images lined the booth, pinned against nearly every surface, depicting humans in a dizzying assortment. Neon green men in business suits, a single woman with four additional arms dressed in a chef's outfit, and even a number of human teachers having what appeared to be a calm discussion around a table.

You tilt your head. Alright, that one could be worse. The shading was pretty good.

"I-I, uh…I mean, I don't think you should be in this section Kri-" The artist pauses, "U-Um, kid! This is an adult's only section!"

You stare back at the monster stationed before you, his face obscured by a bulbous human head, rainbow-colored hair falling down from its scalp. He attempts to shoo you away, waving fluffy white arms in front of you.

"S-Sorry, I-" You stutter.

"There they are, told ya it'd be fine."

"Oh thank goodness. I thought you may have been trampled in that crowd." Noelle clatters up to you, her breath ragged, "C-Can we please leave? Now? Before another wave comes through?"

"I dunno, they got some pretty cool stuff here. Dude back there said I could have these for free."

You watch as Susie shoves her hand in a thin plastic bag, pulling out a black headband. You grit your teeth, noticing rounded human ears attached to each side of the band, now forming tightly to the dragoness' maw.

Your eyes narrow, "…that's offensive."

"Nah, it's fashion." Susie grins proudly.

"A-All of you are too young to be here! You need to leave, o-or…or I'll call security!"

You turn back, the artist at the table rising up from his seat.

"…they even have security in this kind of joint?" Susie mutters, casually digging a claw into the rubber earhole.

"I-I'm serious! You need to go already!"

You feel Noelle tug on the back of your sweater, pushing past you, "S-Sorry! We were just leaving." She turns to you, "Let's go, before we get in trou-"

"AZZY! Come on, get in your suit already! They're already starting to pull numbers for judging!"

A breathless voice calls from your side, barely registering in your mind. You freeze, slowly turning your head towards the fuzzy white monster before you. You tilt your head, watching as they sink back into their chair.

"…don't tell mom."

[rainbowrider1290]

Part 3 of my take on a genshin impact circus AU: Bennett, Fischl, and Razor as a beast-taming trio. Backstory under the cut.

Benny:

Bennett was adopted into a research team of zoologists (what in canon would be the adventurer’s guild). The ones that go out into the world and get their hands dirty in studying animals. He loved interacting with the animals, and though research was interesting, he always spent more time with the animal caretakers and vets than with the researchers so he’s extremely acquainted with their habits, how to feed them, when to keep them in captivity versus the wild, and how to regulate their environment properly when in captivity. He has this knack for interacting with them, even the big ones.

As for how he got into the circus: Well first off he got wind of how poorly these animals are treated in some circuses and got into the circuses for the caretaking purposes. He would hop from circus to circus to take care of the animals and show the performers how to Not Harm Them (like tigers jumping through hoops on fire??? Nuh-uh. Whips, tight collars, and muzzles? We don’t do that here). He certifies himself as a vet after a while of this.

More time passes and he realizes this is a bigger problem than can be solved by himself. He’s been kicked out of a few places and for a while had terrible luck finding work because some of his previous employers didn’t want to spend the extra resources on animal care (lacking funds and lacking planning for it) and spread word of a legal liability of a vet.

Aether and Lumine catch word of this and track him down to a little animal clinic where he works as an intern. They offer him a spot in their circus bc they’ve been wanting to introduce animals into the mix but want to plan correctly (like how many animals they can support properly). Long story short, Bennett gets into the circus and works with Yanfei to actually become a legal liability to the circuses not treating animals correctly, and he himself will take as many of those animals as he can into his corner of the circus and send the rest to his dads (since circus animals tend to be rare breeds and his dads have a branch of research on captive animals). And finally he can take care of his animals and show the world that you don’t have to harm animals for a good show. Mostly big ones like elephants, big cats, and camels.

He’ll do shows more like synchronizing movements between the animals and tricks like they do with marine animals. They do have cages for transport but they’re spacious and they take frequent breaks for physical activity. Benny will only take the animals that have been domesticated their whole lives and will send the ones fit to live in the wild to his dads to set free.

Fischl:

Fischl was born into the circus life and was that kid who would stop people from killing bugs, take them in a glass container, and set them outside. She regularly patches up the birds with broken wings she finds outside.

Def spent more time outside hanging with the birds than with the people in the circus, since birds aren’t technically a circus animal. Oz is an old old vulture (or falcon, I haven’t decided yet. If anyone can pinpoint his species please let me know) that has taken a liking to Fischl and so no matter where her circus goes, she sees Oz there to hang and bring her injured birds.

She once asked if birds could be circus animals and was told that they tried but it didn’t work out. She gets into reading the obscure materials on birds as circus animals and deduces that they just weren’t taking care of them right. She brings up this idea to the circus manager and essentially gets the door slammed in her face. The last time she asks about it, it’s to her parents and is told to find something realistic to do in the circus and forget about the birds.

From then she sees all the other kids her age in the circus training to be in the show in some way or another and hears what they say about her “head in the clouds”. So she starts training with different branches of the circus (gymnastics-based, death-defying stunts, fire, etc.) and she... genuinely considers leaving to pursue another profession.

Then as her circus is about to get on the road, she catches wind of a circus performing in the town they’re just about to leave. One that uses animals, and since her circus never used animals due to lacking funding, she goes for a night out of curiosity and on the off-chance that they use birds. She noticed that this wasn’t anything like she’d heard about or read about circus animals, so she sends them a letter addressed to the person running the animal part of the show asking about birds in the circus.

Benny’s response boils down to “well it’d be a little complicated but what’d you have in mind?” so they start exchanging letters and the next time the two circuses are near each other, she goes on over and brings all her letters after a show and sees how gentle Bennett is with the animals. They get to talking and Benny takes her to meet the animals, telling her about how he does things while she tells him about how she’d go about introducing birds to a circus.

Aether and Lumine hear about this and before she knows it, Fischl’s being told to get her birds ready, she has an audition in a month (spoiler alert: she passes). Her act is made up of all kinds of birds. Very few of them are housed on the circus for very long since she’s never liked the idea of birds in cages. The birds she uses are all the injured ones in the process of rehabilitation brought to her by Oz. She also keeps the ones that won’t fly again or never learned to find food despite her and Oz doing their best to socialize them. Those that don’t perform are excellent at taking care of the newbies and overall helping Fischl out. 

At any given point she’ll be seen with about 3-5 birds of different sizes on her and she’ll always smell a bit like worms and seeds of various kinds. She expands on her first-aid abilities from watching Bennett, and in turn offers knowledge on birds and how to deal with smaller animals with different bone structures, metabolisms, and cardiovascular systems.

Razor:

Razor’s story is a lot simpler. Backstory is essentially the same as in canon, except he doesn’t meet Lisa right away, and spends a little more time with Varka learning to read and write at the most basic level and fight hand-to-hand. Instead of an abyss mage attacking them, it’s a group of hunters. During this fight, a lot of the wolves are gravely injured but he takes one of them and runs into town looking for help.

After a show, Bennett and Fischl are on their way to see Bennett’s dads to take some birds that can’t handle the circus life but also aren’t fit to be free. They happen to be in the town where Bennett trained to be a vet and they stop by the clinic to say hello. Inside they see a boy dressed in rags and covered in dirt cradling an unconscious wolf pup, trying to get the attention of one of the clerks. One of the clerks tries to help him but the communication barrier is not helping them and the boy seems distressed on top of that, pointing and growling with the word “help” thrown in here and there, so Bennett steps in bc he knows some of these people in the clinic.

Bennett comes in and he and Fischl follow him out to where the rest of the pack is. Fischl brings her birds bc they’re her babies in case anyone was wondering. They perform first aid the best they can given the conditions, and manage to save a good chunk of the wolves, but a good chunk of them still die.

The pack splits up into two. On the one hand, the older wolves take whoever’s still alive and resume their activities in the forest. On the other, Razor has this opportunity to go and find out whether he’s a human or a wolf, and the little wolf pup he brought to the clinic goes with him because she’s too injured to go with the others. Same for a few other wolves.

So they go and the only place they have to stay is the circus bc Bennett and Fischl want to monitor the wolves a little more, so they spend the night. Next morning, Razor gives Fischl and Bennett a basket of meat, berries, and seeds to feed their respective animals and they realize Razor has some valuable skills, so he ends up staying upon receiving the OK from Lumine and Aether and telling Lisa and Ningguang for administrative purposes.

Because wolves inherently do not do well with loud noises and circus settings, Razor is very off-put by the idea of performance. Not to mention that he himself probs wouldn’t feel comfortable in the performance setting, so he sticks to the background (even learning the basics of tech) and gets really good at gathering resources from food for the animals to helping Oz bring back injured birds and track other injured animals. He and Oz interact a lot, which helps his friendship with Fischl as he was initially closer to Bennett.

His relationship with Lisa after a while can be summarized as “focus up you little monsters. not you Razor. You’re an angel and we’re thrilled you’re here”

[skruttet]

I flicked through the Tuula Karjalainen book and read bits and pieces of it already and there’s this one section about homosexuality in it that I found really interesting so I thought I’d post it here, even though it’s a bit long oops, in case any of y’all were interested in reading it! Like, I never knew Tove had a gay cousin whom Tove was supportive of in terms of her lesbian identity and whose partner wrote a dissertation on Tove’s books?? So fascinating! Also was not expecting the sentence “The Hattifatteners resemble a wandering flock of penises or condoms”; usually they’re referred to more subtly with words like ‘phallic’ but not here xD

OPEN AND CLOSED

Many researchers have looked for references to homosexuality in Tove’s writings. Although she did not talk about it in public, she made no attempt to conceal it either, and her relationship with Tuulikki Pietilä was known to everyone. The two women took part in official state events such as the President’s Independence Day ball, where they were clearly the first to attend the event officially as a lesbian couple. Their relationship was so open and obvious it was that it was not newsworthy. It was hard to build a scandal on something that everyone knew - even the press, which liked to chase stories of that kind.

Psychological explanations of various kinds often have a chapter of their own in the analyses of Tove’s books, and sometimes unusual views have been expressed. The Swedish scholar Barbro K. Gustafsson earned her doctorate in 1992 from Uppsala University’s Theological Faculty with a dissertation on Tove’s books for adults. She made a special study of The Doll’s House, Sun City, ‘The Great Journey’ and Fair Play, and although her thesis also covered the Moomin stories, they were dealt with more briefly.

Perhaps surprisingly, Tove agreed to be interviewed by Gustafsson during her research work, and even participated in it actively by attending Gustafsson’s dissertation defence. The fact that Tove was prepared to do this may partly be explained by a family connection: Gustafsson was the partner of Tove’s beloved cousin Kerstin. When Kerstin, from a religious family, had realised that she was lesbian, Tove had been extremely supportive. Tove and her friends also helped Kerstin with many issues related to her lesbian identity.

Tove refused to give any public interviews about the dissertation defence, and did not want to talk about her private life or relationships. She returned to Finland as soon as the defence and the celebrations for Gustafsson’s Ph.D. were over, though she did issue a press release. In it she followed convention, thanking Gustafsson for the clarity of her book and her extensive knowledge of the subject - she had, Tove thought, succeeded in uncovering a rarely explored area of the unconscious. She also said that though much was written about authors, it was perhaps best done after their death, if at all. As if to soften the blow, she stressed the degree of trust between herself and Gustafsson. She said that following the progress of the research had been like an adventure, and that it had almost allowed her to see herself as a pioneer.

In her study, Gustafsson focuses on a dream that Tove had in the 1930s and found strangely threatening. In it she had seen large, black, wolf-like dogs on a seashore at sunset. A psychologist had explained to her that the dream was about repressed drives and forbidden sensuality.

In her thesis, Gustafsson is perhaps prone to detect elements of homosexuality too easily in very ordinary matters connected with the sea and archipelago life. She also discussed the wild animals that Tove often returned to both in the Moomin books and in her works for adults. In Moominland Midwinter the dog Sorry-oo wants to join the wolves and learn to howl like them. The story concerns the desire to leave the species into which one has been born, something that proves impossible. In The True Deceiver, the wolfhound plays a central role in the power relationship between the two women. Numerous readers have seen allusions to homosexuality in the comic strip about a little dog that falls in love with a cat. It realises that the love is wrong and becomes depressed. In the end the cat turns out to be a dog in disguise. This time the problem has a simple solution.

In Tove’s books there are repeated descriptions of people or Moominvalley creatures becoming ‘electric’, and this is clearly an important theme in her writing. The Hattifatteners resemble a wandering flock of penises or condoms - in thunderstorms they become electric, and then burn anyone who gets close to them. It is very easy to imagine that the electrification is an allegory for oestrus. The Mymble is also able to become electric - with her countless children she is the most sensual character in Moominvalley. The Whomper Toft in Moominvalley in November is the master of thunder and lightning. He lets the Creature out of a locked cupboard, and all that remains is a smell of electricity. The Creature runs away and grows even larger during thunderstorms, when lightning fills the sky, but is too big, angry and bewildered to be so big and angry. In ‘The Doll’s House’, electrification brings about a drama of jealousy between three men that leads to violence. There is a similar outcome in ‘The Great Journey’, where the mother feels the electrifying presence of her daughter’s female friend, whereupon the daughter becomes jealous.

Fair Play is a book about the relationship between two women in their seventies who are set in their ways, and their daily life together. Gustafsson uses the narrative to examine their mutual roles in the light of the old custom of categorising lesbians either as ‘femmes’ or ‘butches’, the latter having more masculine traits - a way of seeing a relationship between two women as a copy of a heterosexual one. Jonna and her prototype Tuulikki correspond to the ‘butch’ profile. Tove also portrayed Tuulikki as Moominvalley’s Too-ticky, a rather burly, masculine figure who keeps a knife in her belt.

Quoting Lord Alfred Douglas and the line of verse that was mentioned at the indecency trial of Oscar Wilde, Gustafsson writes that homosexual love is the love that does not dare speak its name. Although the time in which Tove lived was quite different from Wilde’s, there were similar prejudices and tensions in society - and, of course, they influenced her writing. Over the centuries women were not expected to write blatant erotic descriptions, but had instead to express themselves in allegorical terms. It was supposed that they did experience such feelings - and even more so when they were the result of unlawful love.

Tove’s books contain no openly erotic episodes or writing of a sexual nature and in this her writing is typical of women’s literature of her time. Sometimes it feels as though the characters in her books have to some extent been freed from sexuality. Their relationships are based more on understanding and friendship than on ardent passion, though their jealousy can sometimes take violent forms. Many things are veiled in highly metaphorical language. In the books that Tove wrote for adults, male and female couples are portrayed interchangeably without particular emphasis. In many of her books, as in her life, homosexuality was so natural that there was no need to make a fuss about it. While it was not to be denied, it was not to be given a high profile either. It was almost as though she backed out of dealing with her sexuality too openly, and in fact she forbade her biographer to write about her love affairs. Since the biography was written for children, this kind of advance censorship was possible.

In the story ‘The Great Journey’ (’Den stora resan’), two women in their seventies, Rosa and Elena, together with Rosa’s mother, live a life of humdrum joys and sorrows and work on their creative tasks. Among all three, physical love is a taboo subject. Elena asks Rosa: ‘What does she know, in any case? Nothing. She doesn’t know anything about such matters.’ The two women are unable to show their feelings for each other if Rosa’s mother is present. They plan a holiday together, but Rosa changes her mind and goes away with her mother instead. She remembers the promise she made in the nursery: ‘I’ll take you with me, I’ll steal you from Papa, we’ll go to a jungle or sail out on the Mediterranean... I’ll build you a castle where you shall be queen.’

Organisations that promoted sexual equality in Finland and the Nordic countries gave Tove awards for her pioneering work on behalf of sexual minorities, and she has certainly been an extremely important role model and author in the gay community. She had the ability to be completely open, yet at the same time quite private - as in the case of the dissertation, when she gave Gustafsson interviews and took part in the defence, but would not agree to answer questions from journalists who were interested in her private life. In relation to her lesbian identity, as shown by this very situation, she sometimes came out of the closet, and at other times she concealed the truth.

Tove’s homosexuality inspired a great many researchers and readers to look for the most varied interpretations. Perhaps her slightly sardonic attitude to this excessive interest can be seen in her song ‘Psychomania’ (’Psykofnattvisan’), written in 1963 for the revue Krasch and set to music by Erna Tauro. The song is like an obscure parody, in which psychoanalytic terms form a wild, cacophonous reality all of their own. It is as though she is drifting among people who are intently looking for something and who begin to see the signs of it everywhere. In fact, they can no longer see anything else because their heads are filled with ‘psychomania’. The song is a lengthy one, and operates on many levels. It also demonstrates that its author was familiar with the psychological terminology of the day - Tove had always been fascinated by interpretations of the human mind and she knew the terminology back to front, so well in fact that she could play with it:

I pore and pore and where I pore the symbols gather more and more I sink right through the floor into depression and tendentious apperception...

-Tove Jansson: Work and Love by Tuula Karjalainen

[ihappenedindubai-blog]

Curiosity

- Curated from Blinkist (Download the app here)

Curiosity is caused by information gaps that we want to close.

Curiosity is a result of information gaps. Put simply, information gaps are missing pieces to a puzzle. When we realise that there is something we don’t know, we then suddenly really want to find out what it is.

Storytellers of all sorts use the principle of information gaps all the time - in fact, a good story depends on it! They create information gaps, and then close them, only to open yet another, and then another; it’s how they keep us engaged in their stories, feverishly turning page after page.

But it’s not the mere absence of information that sparks curiosity. Curiosity can’t exist in a vacuum; we must first have some knowledge about the subject. The gap exists only between something we already know and something we don’t yet know, but would like to find out.

There are two types of curiosity: diversive and epistemic.

Curiosity is what brought humankind to the moon. Yet it’s also the force that leaves us wasting half our lives scrolling through our newsfeeds on social media. This is because not all curiosities are created equal:

Curiosity is divided into two types. The first, diversive curiosity, is little more than a craving for new input, i.e., the desire for more novelty and excitement. On the one hand, it’s what motivates our engagement in a topic in the first place. On the other hand, it can also be impulsive, superficial and difficult to resist.

Moreover, at it’s very worst, diversive curiosity becomes aimless, little more than distraction.

We’ve all succumbed to this kind of curiosity late at night on the web. Clicking on one really interesting-looking link quickly leads to clicking another, and then another. Eventually, we realize that we’ve spent the past three hours watching cat videos on YouTube, far past our bedtime.

This contrasts with epistemic curiosity, which is all about the desire to know something new. This kind of curiosity goes far deeper and takes more work to sustain. It is a conscious choice, requiring self-discipline, effort and focus.

All good scientists and artists utilize their epistemic curiosity. Take Charles Darwin, for example, who found a strange barnacle during his journey to South America. This barnacle made him so curious that he dedicated the next eight years of his life to conducting research on this single species, dissecting samples under a microscope.

We are all born with a desire to know, but this desire fades with age if we don’t nurture it.

It’s common knowledge that babies and small children are relentlessly curious about nearly everything. They point at things, babble and ask questions and they always want to know “why.”

Indeed, we’re all born with an innate desire to know. The instinctual knowledge that there are things we don’t know, but that other people do know, is incredibly powerful. This is the force that makes the inquiring minds of young children relentless: children between the ages of three and five ask around 300 questions per day!

So, if every child begins life with the same drive to learn, why do some people maintain inquiring minds while others don’t? It all boils down to their surroundings, particularly during the formative first years of life.

Studies demonstrate that children whose parents react to their pointing continue the pointing behaviour for longer and are better at acquiring language and knowledge later on.

Unfortunately, the older we become, the more our curiosity declines until we eventually reach a point at which we no longer feel we need to learn anything: a saturation point.

As adults, we have a considerable amount of knowledge that we simply don’t question, yet still heavily informs our actions.

The internet has produced a divide between the curious and the incurious.

As far as learning is concerned, the internet has proven to be both a blessing and a curse. Depending on how you approach it, the internet enables you to easily learn everything about complex topics, like the theory of relativity, plate tectonics or French history, or you can spend all day looking at cat videos and pointlessly arguing with strangers about them.

In truth, the educational potential of the internet has yet to be fully realized. According to a study by The Kaiser Foundation on the media habits of Americans, children now spend an average of ten hours per day on devices, which represents more than a 50-percent increase since 1999. However, the majority of this time is spent on entertainment, not on education.

Moreover, internet usage actually widens the gap between those who want to learn and those who don’t. There is a growing cognitive polarization, a division in our society between the curious and the incurious. The internet makes curious minds more curious, while the incurious spend their time on the internet with entertainment, thus further diminishing their interest in learning.

There are two circles: a vicious and a virtuous one. Those who already thirst for knowledge realize that there’s so much they still don’t know, which makes them even more curious and eager to know more. The opposite applies to the incurious.

This disparity in curiosity will further widen social divisions via the educational system. In schools and universities, students with a higher intellectual curiosity will be more successful, as they have the willingness and capacity to learn more. Willing to explore and finding pleasure in accumulating knowledge, these students will get better grades, better jobs and better pay.

It’s easy to blame the internet for how it encourages or hampers the development of our epistemic curiosity. However, the only person that can make you stupid is yourself: epistemic curiosity is a conscious decision, and thus so is ignorance.

The internet stifles our curiosity and creativity by making it too easy to access information.

It’s an undeniable fact that the internet has revolutionized our access to information. Everyone who has an internet connection can learn about even the most obscure things. But it’s also worth asking how this affects our learning, curiosity and creativity.

With regards to learning, the mere fact that information is easily and immediately accessible doesn’t mean we are better at accumulating knowledge. This is because the internet spoils us: knowing that the knowledge is always just a click away, we tend to not make the effort to store it in our memory.

When we casually Google the information we need and accept the first answer that pops up, that  knowledge isn’t internalized and will soon vanish. In contrast, when we really make an effort to discover something new – for instance, by going all the way to the library to find information – then the knowledge we gain is added to our long-term memory.

What’s more, Google answers our questions so precisely that it closes all information gaps. As you’ve already learned, curiosity results from information gaps and unanswered questions. But the internet has all the answers! It has all the information – there is no such thing as an information gap and thus no place for curiosity to take root.

Google’s precision also makes it less likely that the user will stumble into unknown fields of knowledge and thus discover new interests. This has considerable effects on our creativity, which is formed by the combination of separate ideas that merge into something new. Creativity relies on the random and unexpected collision of knowledge in order to make novel connections between different areas of knowledge.

Creative people and innovators always have a wide knowledge base. Take Steve Jobs, for example, whose interest in many diverse areas such as Eastern philosophy, the Bauhaus art school, business and poetry all culminated into Apple’s innovative projects and success.

Never stop asking questions.

How many questions do you ask per day? You could probably stand to ask a few more, as questions are what makes your mind hungry and inquiring. Indeed, every answer is preceded by a question.

Asking questions is essential to uncovering the information you need. Unfortunately, it’s not the kind of skill that can be easily passed on: you have to experience the power of good questions firsthand in order to improve.

However, we can help people ask more questions by leveraging the fact that question-asking seems to be contagious: several studies have shown that children who were asked more questions by their parents began to ask more questions in return.

Class, too, plays an important role in our development. Middle-class children, for instance, ask more curiosity-driven questions that start with “why” or “how,” and ask more questions in general, than working-class children.

The difference is observable as early as age two, and these children have a much higher chance of success in their education.

As adults, however, the habit of asking questions can fall by the wayside. Sometimes, we fear that asking questions will make us appear stupid, as asking questions is an admission of ignorance. Other times, we’re too busy to be inquisitive, or simply never developed the skills to ask relevant questions.

History has shown us, however, that going the convenient route and deliberately choosing ignorance over curiosity can lead to disasters. In fact, this is exactly what happened in the 2008 financial crisis:

While bankers traded highly intricate and volatile financial products, they could have easily paused at any time to question the inherent risk in their actions, but they chose not to. They were so busy reaping huge profits from their trades that they failed to learn anything more about them and thus failed to foresee the looming financial meltdown.

So, think of question-asking as a valuable skill that can be sharpened with practice, and try not to let it get dull.

Make an effort to gather knowledge – it will make you more creative and curious.

Knowledge and creativity are often perceived as two opposing poles, where the mere gathering of facts is seen as detrimental to children’s blooming creativity and curiosity. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth! In fact, it’s absolutely necessary to first accumulate a database of knowledge before any creative work can happen.

As you’ve already learned, creativity is the product of novel connections between seemingly unrelated thoughts and ideas. Consequently, the more you know, the more connections you can make.

Take William Shakespeare, for example. Historians know that he attended a classical school, where he learned all about Greek and Latin as well as the writers and thinkers of these classical cultures, such as Seneca and Cicero.

He used this broad and deep knowledge to create plays with a wide variety of themes, set in various locations and at various points in history. Romeo and Juliet, for example, took place in Verona, Italy, far away from Shakespeare’s London home.

Curiosity, just like creativity, is fuelled by knowledge and facts: the more you know about a subject, the more you discover how much is still left to uncover, which then leaves you with information gaps that in turn further ignite your curiosity.

This is why going to school is often so difficult and frustrating for children when they are young. Many fields, such as history, require context and foundational knowledge in order to be understood. But children have neither the context nor the knowledge, so it’s hard for them to sustain their curiosity.

However, it’s not enough to haphazardly learn about everything that you come across. As you’ll learn in the next blink, the ways in which you gather and store your knowledge are also important.

The modern world requires you to be both a specialist and a generalist.

There are two different ways in which you accumulate knowledge: you either learn a great deal about a few areas, thus making you a specialist, or you learn a few things in many areas, which makes you a generalist.

This distinction roots back to the ancient Greek story of the hedgehog and the fox. The fox has various clever strategies to evade his predators, while the hedgehog has only one tried-and-true trick – he hunkers down and uses his spikes for protection. As the Greek poet Archilochus puts it: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

This distinction is especially relevant to knowledge-based careers, such as software engineering or research science. To achieve success in these fields, in which the line between different areas of knowledge becomes blurred, you have to be both a hedgehog and a fox.

On the one hand, you have to learn a massive amount about one or two big things in order to give yourself a knowledge-based advantage over your competitors. On the other hand, as your work becomes more complex, it’s bound to cross over into other disciplines.

If you work in the music industry, for instance, then you also need to know about social media. Linguists, too, need a good grasp of data analysis, and football coaches need to know about psychology.

In fact, most of humankind’s great thinkers represent both the fox and the hedgehog. Take Charles Darwin, for example:

He was a specialist in biology and knew everything there was to know about the life cycles of earthworms. However, he was also interested in other disciplines, and combined seemingly unrelated knowledge, such as the theories of the economist Thomas Malthus regarding the logic of population growth, in a way that eventually enabled him to think outside of the box and lay out his groundbreaking theory of evolution.

Anything can be interesting with the right perspective.

Since 2010, something strange happens in London each year: young people come together and listen to presentations on topics often considered tremendously uninteresting, such as bus routes, electric hand dryers and the history of supermarket self-checkout machines. It’s called the Boring Conference – and yet, the attendees all seem quite entertained!

The Boring Conference is all about the mundane and overlooked phenomena in everyday life. But these things are not intrinsically boring; the Boring Conference shows that our interest in a subject has everything to do with how we approach it. In this way, anything can be interesting.

Andy Warhol surely inspired the Boring Conference’s founders. He once famously quipped that he “like[s] boring things,” and proved that boring things can actually be quite remarkable, turning one of the most ubiquitous and unremarkable objects of everyday life, a can of Campbell’s soup, into a world-renowned work of art.

If you pay close enough attention, then anything can turn out to be amazingly interesting.

When we become bored with something, we tend to fault the thing that bores us. However, the thing is not the problem. We’re the problem. We simply need to find the right perspective.

This is what the author Henry James did. On the outside, his life appears quite boring. However, he spent his whole life focused on discovering new interesting things in those ordinary experiences.

Many of his novels grew out of boring anecdotes recounted to him by his friends. He would mull over these stories for days, pondering the reasons why people behave the way they do, what they think and what their backgrounds might be. He then transformed these boring anecdotes into vivid fiction now considered to be among the best ever written.

In essence, curiosity is a choice. You choose your perspective, and thus you can choose never to be bored again.

The key message in this book:

Curiosity can be thought of as a cognitive muscle that has to be constantly nurtured and fed with new knowledge in order for it to grow and flourish. If you can master this art, then you’ll have a greater chance at being more fulfilled in your job, at school as well as in your personal life.

- Curated from Blinkist (Download the app here)

[silverarrowdreamer]

#there’s not a lot of easily digestible material I could find of turtles and how they work#it’s interesting to do research on species that are more obscure than things like cats or horses#my friend: how do you break a charcaters ribs if they don’t have any#me: good question I’m going to draw about it

yes i’m copy pasting the artist's tags they give me life shhhh ;) XD

Leo skeletal anatomy! Click for better quality :)

The way most turtles actually fit into their shells is because their arms and legs are shaped to fit into the loose skin around the openings for their limbs, but on account of their human proportions, I just suspend my disbelief as to how mutant turtles could fit in their shells without the odd configuration to their organs that real turtles have. Real turtles have flat lungs that sit widely along their carapace, which is weird but cool. Turtles shed their scutes (the large flat scales on their shells and plastron) about once a year or if the scutes are damaged. The scutes have barely any skin between them and the bone, which is why turtle skeletons usually have the scutes on still, though they can pop off. The rest of the skin sheds regularly though, instead of in large patches.

For the brothers’, their respiration is much more human than turtle. Therefore, their lungs need to expand and contract with their diaphragm rather than just with their movement, so therefore they must have some flexibility to their chest. Some turtles, like box turtles, already have hinged plastrons, and softshell shells are mostly cartilage, so it’s not too far off to assume that there’s a bit of cartilage just to the upper plastral bones of the hard shelled brothers to give their humanoid lungs room to breathe.

Poor Leo. After the movie, one could assume he’s got a couple broken bones. It kind of made me morbidly curious as to how to describe injuries on a character whose skeletal structure is quite different from a human’s for my own writing!

Feel free to use as reference or disregard, these are just my own little speculations :)

[General][Raph][Donnie][Mikey][Splinter]