#macromia

[joleneghoul]

The Hunt for Rip Hunter!, Batman Brave and The Bold

[nawtminervaonmars]

Little Dragonfly — wire sculpture by me !

this was my first student show! I had a great time seeing all of my peers work and my mom really enjoyed the show too (yay!)

[actiontheshiningstar]

TIME! TIME! TIME! SEE WHAT'S BECOME OF ME!

art of @joleneghoul 's wonderful OC, Macromia Mosaic!

[platycryptus]

Empty larval exuvium of one of my favorite dragonflies, the River Cruiser (Macromia illinoiensis).

The naiads of cruiser dragonflies are easily recognized by their long legs.

[nunoxaviermoreira]

B55A5630 海神弓蜓 Macromia clio by 賞景者 Jeff Lin 攝於關西. Taken in Taiwan. https://flic.kr/p/2jww3TE

[wapiti3]

Splendid Cruiser, Shining Macromia Dragonfly, or even, shall we call it too... the Shadow Cruiser

Rui Miguel Felix photographer

[whichchick]

A while ago, I posted the list of odonates I *should* find in my county.  It’s here, if you want to go look at it, but I’m thinking it’s an unambitious list because it had like six things missing from it when I first looked at it.  If a comprehensive list is missing ten percent of the things (was missing 6 but had 53), then it is not a very good list.  The list is now 59 because I am over here improving the scientific record with proof.  (Pix or it didn’t happen!)  

Thing is, the odonatacentral.org county level checklists, generated from Actual County Observation Records, suck. They're better if you live in a county with a major land-grant university (Centre County, PA, home of Penn State, comes to mind), a flashy and substantial water feature (Raystown Lake, Huntington County, PA, I am looking directly at you), or a couple of state parks. But if you live in plain old Greater Rednecklandia, the county records for your county probably suck and the more Greater Rednecklandia you are, the worse the records are likely to be. As a consequence of the paucity of the scholarly record, the procedurally generated county level checklists from over at OC... suck.  (Science needs more boots on the ground, is the real problem.)

The OC county checklists are better than nothing, but they are not as good as they COULD be.  So wah wah, my county list from OC is not particularly great because whiny amateur me half-assedly proved it wrong in a month or so. Could there be a better county list? Certainly!  

I want a better county list because observers see, a lot of the time, only the things that we are looking for.  (That video with the gorilla suit person amongst the basketball players comes to mind) Basically, an insufficient checklist might lead someone to not look for or recognize stuff that could totally be out there.  Totally.  Like in McElligot’s Pool.  

So, the current science-y records over at OC for my county (Fulton County, PA) are shittastic and I whine a lot.  Fulton County is a rural county with very few people (less than 20K residents).  It lacks universities, fancy water features, or any other reasons for the presence of a gung-ho odonate observation force.  The records for my abutting counties (Bedford, Huntington, Franklin in PA, Washington in MD) are fuller.  I feel like the records for “possibly available in Fulton County” would be more informed if I included in the “possibles” list all the stuff found in neighboring counties.  Odonates do fly, after all, and if my own county is poorly surveyed, maybe... maybe I should be looking for more things than are on the official list.

So, I’ve gone and done that -- pulled the species checklists for the above listed counties from odonatacentral, thrown them into a text file, and pushed them through assorted linux command-line script filters to generate some information that might be useful to me in terms of What To Look For and How Likely Finding Them Might Be.

Methodology:  Pull the county checklists off of odonatacentral, paste into a flat text file on the dumbest text editor you can find, using “paste as plain text”.  You’ll get entries that look like this:

Aeshna canadensis Canada Darner

Aeshna constricta Lance-tipped Darner

(etc)

These need to be cleaned up and made all one line, which I did with shell scripting.  I am THE WORLD’S SHITTIEST SHELL SCRIPTER, just putting that out there right now.  I do not shell script for a living any more than I chase the odonates around for a living.

Here’s what I did:

cat fivecounties.txt | xargs -n3 -d'\n' > test1.txt

(In english:  read file fivecounties.txt, which is the plaintext paste file of all the county checklists, go through and take out the newline character three times (one for after scientific name, one for after common name, one for blank line), throw the result in new file called test1.txt)

Your output should look like this:

Aeshna canadensis  Canada Darner Aeshna constricta  Lance-tipped Darner

(One line per species, no blank lines)

Next, I sorted the file:

sort test1.txt > test2.txt

Output should look like this:

Aeshna canadensis  Canada Darner Aeshna canadensis  Canada Darner Aeshna constricta  Lance-tipped Darner Aeshna constricta  Lance-tipped Darner Aeshna tuberculifera  Black-tipped Darner Aeshna tuberculifera  Black-tipped Darner...

 (All like kinds grouped together and this is not a big enough text file for it to matter what mechanism linux uses for sorting.  Does Not Matter.)

Then I did 

cat test2.txt | uniq -c > test3.txt 

for an output like this...

     2 Aeshna canadensis  Canada Darner      2 Aeshna constricta  Lance-tipped Darner      3 Aeshna tuberculifera  Black-tipped Darner

Finally, I picked out the ones I wanted (by number) and formatted them for easy pasting in tumblr, an effort which took about eight tries and a lot of google because I freaking SUCK at sed.  sed hates me.  I did each iteration (1 through 5) seperately because I am no coder.

cat test3.txt | grep '5' | sed -e s/[[:space:]]*5[[:space:]]*//g  > 5counts.txt

for an output of: 

Anax junius  Common Green Darner Argia fumipennis  Variable Dancer Arigomphus villosipes  Unicorn Clubtail...

So what did we get?

STUFF IN ALL FIVE COUNTIES (my county of Fulton plus the ones around it:  Bedford, Huntington, Franklin in PA and Washington in MD), ones I do not have a verified photo record of are bolded:

Anax junius  Common Green Darner (I can’t catch them.  We have ‘em.) Argia fumipennis  Variable Dancer Arigomphus villosipes  Unicorn Clubtail Calopteryx maculata  Ebony Jewelwing Celithemis elisa  Calico Pennant Dromogomphus spinosus  Black-shouldered Spinyleg Enallagma aspersum  Azure Bluet Enallagma civile  Familiar Bluet Enallagma signatum  Orange Bluet Epitheca cynosura  Common Baskettail Epitheca princeps  Prince Baskettail Erythemis simplicicollis  Eastern Pondhawk Hagenius brevistylus  Dragonhunter Ischnura posita  Fragile Forktail Ischnura verticalis  Eastern Forktail Libellula cyanea  Spangled Skimmer Libellula incesta  Slaty Skimmer Libellula luctuosa  Widow Skimmer Libellula pulchella  Twelve-spotted Skimmer Macromia illinoiensis  Swift River Cruiser Pachydiplax longipennis  Blue Dasher Perithemis tenera  Eastern Amberwing Phanogomphus lividus  Ashy Clubtail Plathemis lydia  Common Whitetail Sympetrum rubicundulum  Ruby Meadowhawk Sympetrum semicinctum  Band-winged Meadowhawk Sympetrum vicinum  Autumn Meadowhawk

These All-Five-Counties odonates are the guys I should be able to find in my county.  The official list says they’re here and they are also in all the bordering counties.  I should make more of an effort on these because they’re probably here.

Next, I have four-out-of-five. These are likely but not 100%.  Bolded the ones I do not have and probably I should read up for better stalking of these jobbies.  Lurking in the usual hangouts, etc.

Aeshna umbrosa  Shadow Darner Argia apicalis  Blue-fronted Dancer Argia sedula  Blue-ringed Dancer Argia translata  Dusky Dancer Basiaeschna janata  Springtime Darner Boyeria vinosa  Fawn Darner Calopteryx angustipennis  Appalachian Jewelwing Chromagrion conditum  Aurora Damsel Didymops transversa  Stream Cruiser Enallagma basidens  Double-striped Bluet Enallagma divagans  Turquoise Bluet Enallagma exsulans  Stream Bluet Enallagma geminatum  Skimming Bluet Enallagma hageni  Hagen's Bluet Epiaeschna heros  Swamp Darner Hetaerina americana  American Rubyspot Lestes rectangularis  Slender Spreadwing Leucorrhinia intacta  Dot-tailed Whiteface    Libellula semifasciata  Painted Skimmer Phanogomphus exilis  Lancet Clubtail

And three out of five.  Maybes but worth looking at if I have the appropriate habitat.  Need to up my darner game.  I’ve bolded what I don’t have.

Aeshna tuberculifera  Black-tipped Darner Aeshna verticalis  Green-striped Darner Argia moesta  Powdered Dancer Boyeria grafiana  Ocellated Darner Cordulegaster maculata  Twin-spotted Spiketail Cordulegaster obliqua  Arrowhead Spiketail Enallagma traviatum  Slender Bluet Enallagma vesperum  Vesper Bluet Helocordulia uhleri  Uhler's Sundragon Ladona julia  Chalk-fronted Corporal Lestes vigilax  Swamp Spreadwing Pantala flavescens  Wandering Glider Somatochlora tenebrosa  Clamp-tipped Emerald Stylogomphus albistylus  Eastern Least Clubtail Tramea carolina  Carolina Saddlebags Tramea lacerata  Black Saddlebags

Two out of five.  Here we’re going to bold and italicize what I do have.  I don’t have most of these.

Aeshna canadensis  Canada Darner Aeshna constricta  Lance-tipped Darner Amphiagrion saucium  Eastern Red Damsel Celithemis eponina  Halloween Pennant Cordulegaster bilineata  Brown Spiketail Cordulia shurtleffii  American Emerald Enallagma antennatum  Rainbow Bluet Epitheca canis  Beaverpond Baskettail Gomphaeschna furcillata  Harlequin Darner Gomphurus fraternus  Midland Clubtail Gomphurus vastus  Cobra Clubtail Hylogomphus abbreviatus  Spine-crowned Clubtail Ischnura hastata  Citrine Forktail Ladona deplanata  Blue Corporal Lanthus vernalis  Southern Pygmy Clubtail Lestes congener  Spotted Spreadwing Lestes dryas  Emerald Spreadwing Lestes forcipatus  Sweetflag Spreadwing Lestes inaequalis  Elegant Spreadwing Libellula axilena  Bar-winged Skimmer Libellula vibrans  Great Blue Skimmer Macromia alleghaniensis  Allegheny River Cruiser Nehalennia irene  Sedge Sprite Neurocordulia obsoleta  Umber Shadowdragon Ophiogomphus rupinsulensis  Rusty Snaketail Pantala hymenaea  Spot-winged Glider Phanogomphus spicatus  Dusky Clubtail Rhionaeschna mutata  Spatterdock Darner Somatochlora linearis  Mocha Emerald Stenogomphurus rogersi  Sable Clubtail Sympetrum obtrusum  White-faced Meadowhawk Tachopteryx thoreyi  Gray Petaltail

1 of 5 -- I figure this stuff is longshots but do note that the lilypad forktail, bolded and italicized below, the ONE record in the five county area -- that’s my record.  I found that.  That was me.  So possibly...  

Anax longipes  Comet Darner Archilestes grandis  Great Spreadwing Argia tibialis  Blue-tipped Dancer Calopteryx amata  Superb Jewelwing Cordulegaster diastatops  Delta-spotted Spiketail Cordulegaster erronea  Tiger Spiketail Dorocordulia libera  Racket-tailed Emerald Enallagma anna  River Bluet Enallagma annexum  Northern Bluet Enallagma carunculatum  Tule Bluet Enallagma ebrium  Marsh Bluet Gomphurus lineatifrons  Splendid Clubtail Hetaerina titia  Smoky Rubyspot Hylogomphus viridifrons  Green-faced Clubtail Ischnura kellicotti  Lilypad Forktail Lanthus parvulus  Northern Pygmy Clubtail Lestes australis  Southern Spreadwing Lestes disjunctus  Northern Spreadwing Lestes eurinus  Amber-winged Spreadwing Lestes unguiculatus  Lyre-tipped Spreadwing Leucorrhinia frigida  Frosted Whiteface Leucorrhinia hudsonica  Hudsonian Whiteface Leucorrhinia proxima  Belted Whiteface Libellula auripennis  Golden-winged Skimmer Libellula flavida  Yellow-sided Skimmer Libellula quadrimaculata  Four-spotted Skimmer Nasiaeschna pentacantha  Cyrano Darner Nehalennia gracilis  Sphagnum Sprite Neurocordulia yamaskanensis  Stygian Shadowdragon Ophiogomphus carolus  Riffle Snaketail Ophiogomphus mainensis  Maine Snaketail Phanogomphus borealis  Beaverpond Clubtail Phanogomphus descriptus  Harpoon Clubtail Phanogomphus quadricolor  Rapids Clubtail Somatochlora elongata  Ski-tipped Emerald Somatochlora walshii  Brush-tipped Emerald Stylurus laurae  Laura's Clubtail Stylurus spiniceps  Arrow Clubtail Sympetrum internum  Cherry-faced Meadowhawk

Anyway.  That’s how I buffed up my “things to look for in my area and how reasonable they are for me to be looking for them” list for dragonflies.  Seems legit to me, anyway.

[joleneghoul]

always sad they stopped the booster gold series before getting to the Macromia arc. oh well. inspiration under the cut

[joleneghoul]

Lost in time? Ask your local guide for help.

[joleneghoul]

What if a dragonfly was a temporal being? Anyways meet Macromia Mosaic! She is my newest oc and one of the "villains" in Rip's lore (and by extension his whole family) that exists only in my head. OH- and she is a gardener :-]. Gardens are kinda important in my time travel stuff lol.

Text from picture under cut In case it's hard to read

Personal Data, Name: Macromia Mosaic (she/her) Height: 6’5 Weight: 190lbs Eyes: None  Hair: Green Occupation: Paradox Hunter, gardener of time. Base of Operations: The Temporal Gardens, The timestream. Enemies: Waverider, Rip Hunter & the Time Masters.

History, Macromia was created by the timestream for the same reason a riverbank requires dragonflies— to keep things tidy and keep out pesky bugs. Her main duty is to deal with paradoxes, always being able to sense when a new one buds. She handles them quickly and efficiently, though there are always a few she lets be if deemed not dangerous.The Temporal Gardens are a collection of information bastions between timestreams They’re much like a library but in the form of mutated greenery. Macromia makes sure it does not decay. She has had her fair share of run-ins with Waverider. When Waverider’s previous partner was killed, they attempted multiple times to destroy the timestream. Macromia got in the way of this every time. They eventually came to a truce, requiring Waverider to leave their original timeline and never return. Waverider now resides around a sister timeline— Though if they ever threaten the timeline again Macromia will handle it with finality. Unfortunately, It seems testing luck runs in the family. Not every paradox is dangerous but sometimes that can change over time, especially if the paradox is a hard headed Time Master.  Macromia has a new weed in the garden, Rip Hunter.

Powers/Abilities: Paradox detection, Unassisted Time travel,Quantum Energy Physiology, Energy Projection, Mental projection, Temporal Decay, Knowledge of the timestream and the navigation of it.

[joleneghoul]

girls who chew on phone wires

[joleneghoul]

Macromia Mosaic oc rambling under cut bc i love her!

She can really pick whatever form she wants to take. It's less of a choice and more a projection of how she truly feels she is (she mimics these time related heroes she sees in appearance. partly because she finds them beautiful and odd in their own ways. she views people in a light that maybe a person would see a butterfly.)

Bc of this her clothes sometimes change depending what era she is in but she doesn't really enjoy being in linear time. Shes antisocial in a way and hates leaving her garden. it feels like a horrible trip to the grocery store to her to step outside these time banks.

She doesn't really hate, she takes things in as information and acts on information rather than feeling usually. BUT She does get frustrated over time when certain time travelers or time organisms get in the way of the chaotic order of time.

It's difficult for her to put herself into the shoes of someone emotionally. saying "I did this because xyz happened to me and thats why i did it." or explaining emotional reasoning to her doesnt really get through to her on most levels but she does have a moral compass. It's confusing to her in a way.

Waverider frustrates and confuses her. lol.

she views a time loop and other time shenanigans like someone views a clogged toliet.

Her whole job is taking care of paradoxes but she sometimes sees them as helpful and will leave a paradox be (unless it grows into a problem). So she isn't strictly tied to rules of any sort. She does what she does to keep things alive and well.

[joleneghoul]

@possessedartist

Honestly nothing is set in stone yet but I was considering the possibility that she came around after Mr Mind tried to eat the multiverse. I think it'd make sense, both keeping with the bug theme and nature. Plus the idea for time gardens actually comes from 52 when Rip says this. I just went crazy with it. But also I think when she was invented doesn't matter entirely because she can time travel to any time and any timeline (as its her job) but i do think that's her source.

Now I am actually kind of on the fence as to where the timestream got the source to create Macromia.

I consider maybe she was a person once upon a time like Waverider was but I also like the idea of that being one of their differences that adds to conflict. Not the human vs non human w.o emotions trope (bc Macromia has emotions even if her face has no expressions) but instead someone from earth vs someone from and entirely different background and how that affects whats important to the other vice versa.

I also consider maybe the timestream yoinked one of those baby worms mr mind was throwing at everyone in 52 and created her that way. IDK yet :-].

[joleneghoul]

im being possessed to draw macromia in a 80s business woman pants suit

[joleneghoul]

In other news, a dragon fly has decided to multiple days in a row sit atop the stick my tomato plant is on and overlook my mini garden like a buffet, I guess.

[joleneghoul]

What if a cringe little gold gay robot and a worm had a baby? Would it be a girlboss?