#or is there like some sort of universal convergent evolution with that

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

Having a normal time (debating on whether or not time lords can be classified as mammals)

[joe-spookyy]

okay! so i’ve been watching a lot of smiling friends. and it would be out of character for me to watch something without doing some sort of intense hyper analysis. so here’s my thoughts on the biological classifications of the critters, humans, and maybe some other species of the smiling friends universe. my friend said this is how sheldon cooper would enjoy smiling friends. and i guess he’s right it’s very scientific. please read on.

first. we look at the wiki. who is defined as a critter? for this analysis, the specific characters that are designated as critters on the wiki i’ll be looking at are charlie, pim, allan, glep, dj spit, and mr landlord. so first, let’s take a look at the anatomical features of each of these characters.

charlie:

- large protruding nose

- eyes on the front of his head (i think?)

- head and some body hair (chest, stomach)

- 4 fingers

- primary and secondary sex characteristics (nipples and genitalia)

- belly button

- average height

- 27 years old

pim:

- no visible nose

- eyes on front of head

- no hair, one exposed nerve ending

- four fingers

- secondary sex characteristics (nipples) and presumably primary (genitals) given the fact that he is always clothed

- belly button

- short

- 34 years old

allan:

- smaller but still protruding nose

- eyes on sides of head

- no hair

- four fingers

- no visible sex characteristics, no clothing required, occasionally to accessorize (tie, bathing suit, floral vacation clothing)

- no belly button

- tall

- 24 years old

glep:

- can’t tell if he has a nose or if it’s just his upper jaw tbh

- eyes on side of head

- no hair

- no fingers

- no visible sex characteristics, only wears a hat

- no belly button

- incredibly short

- 1295 years old

dj spit:

- prominent nose

- eyes on front of head

- facial and body hair

- no fingers

- secondary sex characteristics (nipples) and presumably primary (pants covering lower half)

- no belly button (as far as i can tell)

- average height

- 23 years old

mr. landlord:

- prominent nose

- eyes on front of head

- hair on head

- four fingers

- no visible sex characteristics, does not usually wear clothes

- belly button

- tall

- unknown age

now. that’s a lot of variation! in My humble opinion i feel like that’s enough to designate different species since there is so much different between some of them, especially in the case of a lack of visible sex characteristics and the presence of nipples/a bellybutton, since the latter are distinct signs of a place tal mammal. however, regardless of what i think, it’s clear that there’s a significant amount of genetic variation in this population. what could have caused this?

theories:

here is what i and a few others who i’ve asked have come up with. scroll down to theory four to see the one i think is most likely, and therefore did the most research/explaination for.

theory one: there is no meaning to any of it and there is no pattern. they look the way they do because it is funny. is this a realistic take? yeah. do i like it? no. it’s boring. so i’m disregarding it.

theory two: the critters are just a species with an incredible amount of genetic variation. i guess this is possible and kind of goes with the first theory but there’s a little more nuance to it so i’m including it as a separate theory. again i keep going back to how i wish there was more specification, like certain breeds or races. different races, though, like the spamtopians, seem to be treated as completely different species. although they also have a lot of genetic diversity. additionally, many of the humans don’t look the same/have the same traits. so maybe there’s just high levels of diversity in each species, and there are other ways they’re each distinctly classified.

theory three: convergent evolution from a few different base species. this one could very well be the truth. several of the critters bear more resemblance to reptiles or amphibians, particularly the ones that are hairless and possess no visible sex characteristics. allan definitely has some lizard-esque characteristics, especially looking at the shape of his eyes, and pim kind of reminds me of a frog, and he does in fact refer to his youth as when he was “a tadpole”. glep also reminds me of a small lizard. the more mammalian critters, like charlie, could also have evolved from apes as humans did. maybe charlie and his big schnozz are distantly descended from a proboscis monkey. and dj spit from. something else ape like. idk. i definitely don’t know what to say about mr. landlord. he has some mammalian characteristics (hair, bellybutton) but he also lacks the sex characteristics. he could be the result of some intermixing but i’m truly not sure. additionally, some of the critters have forward facing eyes (typically indicative of a predator species), while some have eyes on the sides of their heads (typically indicative of a prey species). now, this rule does have exceptions, but i do think the possibility that pim is a predator animal is really funny. this one has its merits, but i don’t see why they wouldn’t be just split into different species at that point if there are distinctly reptilian vs mammalian groups, and the existence of those who are sort of in between, like mr landlord, adds to the confusion. additionally, it fails to account for how the critters all seem able to breed with/have relationships with characters classified as humans, because if there are some that are distinctly more reptilian than the more mammalian critters, it’s so incredibly unlikely that the reptilian descendants would be able to breed with humans, since, at least in our universe, humans cannot even breed with other mammals, so there’d have to be something going on for a primarily reptilian species to breed with humans.

theory four: all the critters we see, with a few exceptions, are a result of many generations of human/critter crossbreeding. this is the one that i am rooting for, and it makes the most sense to me. between all the critters, we can definitely see some that have more human traits, and some that have more animalistic traits. so, maybe charlie and dj spit have more human dna, whereas, say, allan and glep have more critter dna in their lineage. again, we do know that human/critter relationships are very commonplace, as both glep and charlie have human partners. in my opinion, it seems that glep is furthest on the critter spectrum, given his lack of any distinct human characteristics and incredibly high age. he could be one of the last remaining true Critters. on the other end, dj spit appears to be the most human. all the others fall in between.

additionally, many of the human characters don’t display Only humanoid traits. some are live action, some are rotoscoped, and some are traditionally animated. the different ways they’re animated (or distinctly Not animated) seems to indicate a little bit of genetic diversity as well. for example, mr boss is animated, and switches from five to four fingers, and has the ability to turn his face into a dog face. i guess there’s no proof none of the other humans can do that, but he does seem to be a little more non-human, when we take that into account along with his disproportionate features (eg. massive head). and i’m not even gonna open up the can of worms that is the fact that sometimes he has massive bazonkers that he can nurse jason with, and sometimes just has pecs. additionally, we can see that doug and professor psychotic, while presumably biological brothers, have a lot of different characteristics, with doug being rotoscoped, and professor psychotic being animated and honestly sharing more characteristics with dj spit (a critter) than his own brother. someone also pointed out that their mother may be spamtopian, as she looks like the waitress that pim and mr boss encountered on their visit to spamtopia. so, we can divide the humans into four groups, going from least to most human.

- wacky/slightly inhuman animated person (mr boss, professor psychotic, desmond, etc)

- regular looking animated person (zoey, marge simpson, etc)

- rotoscoped person (doug, etc)

(i cant find a good picture just go watch the show)

- live action person (president jimble, tyler, simon s. salty, etc)

(you know what a human being looks like.)

now there’s one thing that kinda throws a wrench in this theory: jason. jason is the son of mr boss and an unknown mother, presumably a critter. jason, while being the son of a character that is classified a human, looks the most like glep: meaning that he displays some of the most critter characteristics when compared to any other characters. additionally, he seems to share glep’s aging patterns, being 18 years old and still a nursing baby. so if he’s definitely part human, and appears like glep, maybe glep isn’t a full critter after all. HOWEVER. the way i have elected to combat this is through the use of a punnet square.

now, if H is the allele for presenting like a human, and C is for presenting like a critter, we can see that a half human half critter, when mixed with a whole critter, will produce offspring that are fully critter 50% of the time. now, with the amount of different critters that have varying amounts of human traits, we can assume that it’s a lot more complicated than two genes. but, if all the genes weigh together, it is definitely possible for jason to have inherited mostly his father’s critter dna instead of his human dna, which, when paired with his mother’s full critter dna, resulted in him looking like a pure critter, like glep. yknow, like how some dogs are mixes but they look exactly like one parent rather than the other. now of course, jason doesn’t stay this way, and ends up growing wings and all that jazz, which could be a result of the variant dna, showing that while he may initially look fully critter and age like one, some traits may emerge as he matures that show his differences.

so, to conclude this theory, here is what i think the spectrum of critter -> human is, and where the line between the two is drawn.

now yes, this is a simplification and does not account for any interbreeding between the less common non human/non critter species, such as spamtopians, demons, sentient animals, forest folk, and so on and so forth. but i think it covers the most likely line of progression between the two species and how they’ve presumably mixed over time, with more input from the less popular species as aforementioned.

thanks for listening like and follow for more overanalysis of stupid things.

[o-craven-canto]

What is your position on the debate between contingency and convergence in evolution? As a creator and enjoyer of speculative evolution, I imagine you might fall more towards contingency, but I'd still be curious on your overall thoughts on it, and on how different a separate run of evolution on an earthlike planet would really be.

Hmm.

Biologists usually distinguish two types of resemblance among organisms: analogy, which mostly regards general function and appearance and is driven by common conditions, and homology, which mostly regards deep structure and is driven by common ancestry.

All the limbs of land-dwelling vertebrates and their descendants are made of one long bone, followed by two parallel long bones, followed by a maximum of five (except in ichthyosaur flippers) series of digit bones. This you see from frogs to seagulls to horses to manatees to moles -- the descendants of proto-amphibians such as Ichthyostega -- but not in any other animal group. This is the canonical example of homology: there is no reason for such different limbs with functions so different to share the same 1-2-n pattern except inheritance from a common ancestor. On the other hand, the wings of birds and those of insects, or for that matter their eyes, are so different because they arose independently. The common features in the wings of a hummingbird and a dragonfly are due to the same physical constraints, and that is analogy.

Sometimes it depends from the level of analysis: bird wings and bat wings are analogous as wings -- their flight surface is achieved by different means, feathers in one and skin in the other -- but homologous as vertebrate forelimbs -- they have the same 1-2-n sequence of bones, and their development is regulated by the same genes.

There are, of course, physical reasons for structures to resemble each other: everything that moves quickly through water needs to be more or less spindle-shaped; everything that grows past a few hundred grams on dry land needs some sort of rigid support; photosynthesizers and filter-feeders need fractally branching structures; and so on. Compound eyes and exoskeletons really are more efficient at smaller sizes, camera-type eyes and internal skeletons at larger, so that's a reason other than ancestry for insects and birds to be so different; but the largest butterflies are bigger than the smallest hummingbirds, so it's not just a matter of scale; and the eyes of tunas are more like the eyes of eagles than like the eyes of squids, so it's not just a matter of environment.

Some classical examples of convergent evolutions overstate their case a bit: sharks, ichthyosaurs, and dolphin all started from the same aquatic vertebrate chassis, so their similarity is not pure environment-driven convergence. (But it is a bit: from the same chassis you can also make a turtle or a crane.) Similarly for marsupial mice and moles vs. their placentate equivalent, none of whom gets that far from the original mammal model to begin with. When you get a bit farther, you find that the Australian equivalent of a horse is not an almost identical "marsupial horse" but a kangaroo, for reasons that have to do with marsupial birth. It's the same for the now-famous case of carcinization, which only applies to decapod crustaceans -- it's not even universal for crustaceans in general! If you try over and over to make an open-water pursue predator out of the vertebrate plan, you'll get similar results: the shark, the tuna, the ichthyosaur, the dolphin. But try the same with the mollusk plan, and you get a squid.

Now, convergence is likely to occur on other planets, because anything recognizable as life will have similar requirements and meet similar challenges. But it will be much more subtle than making planets full of blue horses and humans with weird eyebrows (I can't overstate how complex and specific the history of our body shape is). Assuming an Earth-like planet, for example, I'd expect its surface ecosystems to be overwhelmingly based on photosynthesis, its "plants" to have branching shapes with flat light collectors, and its largest "animals" to be bilaterally symmetrical with eyes, intestines, and skeletons of some sort. But that still leaves an enormous amount of variety, based both on ancestry and on smaller-scale micro-environmental constraints: note that the description of "animal" I gave fits equally a tarantula, a giraffe, a snail, and an axolotl.

TL;DR: many important traits of living organisms are made necessary by physical and environmental constraints, but there's an immense variety of ways to develop them, and that is mostly going to be driven by contingencies in ancestry. In my opinion, that is.

As readings, I'd recommend The Equations of Life: How Physics Shapes Evolution (Charles Cockell, 2018) and Convergent Evolution on Earth: Lessons for the Search for Extraterrestrial Life (George McGhee, 2019) as summaries of the physical constraints and useful strategies that are going to arise over and over in living systems, as well as this brief paper on the evolution of complexity in alien life. Note how much similarity they predict, but also note how much they don't!

Thanks for the question! <3

[unaskedformagnustheories]

Recap Notes: MAGP 7 "Give and Take"

Spoiler Warning: this is a purely selfish exercise in remembering what the hell happened last season (from someone caught up thru MAGP31, 2/27/2025 & all of The Magnus Archives). No promises I'll keep up with it. Summary: Hill Top Road [cough] sorry, Hilltop Centre, is the least interesting thing about this case.

Casement: CAT2RC3338-03022016-12022024

Sometime in 2015, an under-prepared Jonathan Sims is appointed head Archivist of The Magnus Institute after the death of his predecessor. Under the mostly absent watch of his superior, Elias Bouchard, he proceeds to be buried under the odd and uncanny statements brought in for him to sort. It's a job that needs at least 6 archival assistants, but things quickly spin out of his control. In the end? The waking hell is only able to be stopped by a spark of ignition. Sorry, no. Let me try that again. Sometime in 2015, an under-prepared Dianne Margolis is appointed head Manager of the Hilltop Centre after the death of her predecessor. Under the mostly absent watch of her superior, Mr. C Clayton, she proceeds to be buried under the odd and uncanny items brought in for her to sort. It's a job that needs at least 6 volunteers, but things quickly spin out of her control. In the end? The waking hell is only able to be stopped by a spark of ignition. Now I don't give the TMA timeline too much credence when it comes to interpreting or predicting TMP events (time's gonna get weird, folks, we've been warned), but every now and again I glance at it to see if something resonant was happening around the same time, and this one was too good to pass up. And yes, Dianne ends up with far more than 6 uncanny helpers but at the start she says "I was somewhat dubious as to how helpful an associate of this young man would be but given that the site still needed at least 5 more staff members…" (5 + the man she's hiring) = 6. Could be a random number, but it's more fun if it's a nod to how many archival assistants Jon had during his tenure: Tim, Sasha, Martin, Melanie, Basira & Daisy. Now, what do I think it means? No, I don't think Jon was saved last-minute be some gun-toting security firm. I think he's pretty well doomed in that .jmj error. But I think the narrative could be trying to tell us that we may see almost-but-not-quite versions of events in addition to almost-but-not-quite versions of our favourite players. Like the theory of convergent evolution, but spread across universes instead of miles. It'd be too big brained for me (clearly, as I'm already losing coherency), but I think it'd be cool if they were playing around with their own take on a fear-driven mirror universe this series, not just a parallel one. The reflection muddied because things are slipping thru in both directions. Disrupting the balance, etc. Something about the infected nature of the wound causing an unnatural number of these twisted doubles. As for the volunteers as spooks, there's definitely something a little spidery in their description. Dianne is unable to remember their names, or anything identifiable about them. Could mean they're The Web's agents, sent thru the crack. Spreading terror into this world with the types of objects Salesa used to peddle, but it's also worth noting that the same could be said of Ink5oul (outside of their distinctive tattoo) and I'm pretty sure Ink5oul is native to the OAIR world. Then again, if the fears came thru the rift and were seeded into this world earlier in the timeline, it'd be understandable that anybody infected has a little bit of Web and Eye in the driver seat (in addition to the rest of the medley). I'm getting rambly. I'll leave it with: I've still no idea what to do with the volunteers' eerie "it's all for a good cause!" other than to mention it sounds an awful lot like "for the continuation and preservation of good science". Oh, and who the eff is Gwen's source for "they believe this man to be quite dead"? She's one I can't wait to see more of outside the office.

[kaixokkiten]

The hard truth.

bugs is shrimps.........

You Might Think of Shrimp as Bugs of the Sea. But a Remarkable Discovery Shows the Opposite: Bugs Are Actually Shrimp of the Land

A recent study suggests that insects branched out from crustaceans on the tree of life

Riley Black - Science CorrespondentApril 9, 2025

A species of remipede known from the Caicos Islands. The photograph was taken by a member of a multinational team��looking for rare species. Remipedes are crustaceans that are close relatives to insects. Jørgen Olesen / Natural History Museum of Denmark, Brett Gonzalez, Karen Osborn, GGI

Shrimp look an awful lot like bugs. The exoskeletons, jointed legs and compound eyes of both groups of living things give them more than a passing resemblance to each other, so no wonder some people call shrimp-like crawfish “mudbugs,” and a tattoo reading “shrimps is bugs” became a viral meme for underscoring the resemblance. But the tattoo got the reality backwards. Shrimp are not bugs. Bugs—or, more properly, insects—are technically a form of crustacean.

Biologists of many different subdisciplines categorize life in a field called systematics. Living things of all sorts, both extant and extinct, are constantly being compared and evaluated to build what we so commonly think of as the tree of life. The addition of new species and novel analyses are constantly reshaping that evolutionary tree, and sometimes the category changes shift more than just a few twigs but entire evolutionary branches. Birds are now known to be dinosaurs, for example, whales are technically hoofed mammals called artiodactyls, and, thanks to a 2023 study in Molecular Biology and Evolution, insects have been shifted into the same group as shrimp and crabs called pancrustacea.

The realization that bugs were close relatives of crustaceans took almost a century of curiosity to uncover. Paleontologist Joanna Wolfe of Harvard University, one of the authors of the 2023 study, notes that researchers noticed some insects and crustaceans had the same structures in their eyes and nervous systems. The resemblance could have been the result of convergent evolution, when two groups independently evolve in the same way, and so the idea that insects are modified crustaceans didn’t catch. But the hypothesis didn’t fully go away, either.

In 2013, Wolfe and colleagues found that insects were the sister group, or next closest evolutionary relatives, to crustaceans called remipedes—which live in undersea caves and are the only venomous crustaceans. Remipedes were supposed to be oddballs that were shaped in strange ways due to their lives in caves. Now they were coming out as the closest relatives to the flies, mantises, bees and other insects we see around us on land. “At that time, I was shocked and thought there was something wrong with our results,” Wolfe recalls, only to have additional evidence make the connection between insects and crustaceans stronger. The 2023 analysis, based on genetic data, found insects next to remipedes in the middle of the various crustacean subgroups. Specifically, insects fit within a wide group of crustaceans called allotriocarida that not only includes remipedes, but also other unusual groups such as shrimp-like branchiopods and worm-like cephalocarids sometimes called “horseshoe shrimp.” To put it another way, insects are to crustaceans as bats are to mammals—a subset that belongs to a broader group despite seeming so different from their closest relatives.

When birds were recognized as dinosaurs, the change did more than reshuffle their place on the evolutionary tree. “The change showed us how characteristics that we typically associate with birds today, such as feathers, hollow bones and air sacs, were widely found within Dinosauria,” Jukar says. Paleontologists began finding more feathered dinosaurs and dinosaurs with traits previously associated with birds, such as complex systems of air sacs as part of their respiratory systems, once the connection was made. The newly understood relationship between birds and other dinosaurs has allowed experts to better understand why only birds survived the mass extinction of 66 million years ago. Comparisons between birds and bird-like dinosaurs revealed that adaptations for eating seeds and nuts that some birds developed during the Cretaceous allowed them to survive while bird-like raptors perished.

The recognition that whales are hoofed mammals occurred around the same time as birds were found to be dinosaurs. The shift had a deep effect on how paleontologists carried out their research as well as the identity of the blubbery mammals. Prior to the 1990s, the earliest whales were thought to have evolved from carnivorous mammals called mesonychids. The beasts, sometimes called “wolves with hooves” because they looked like canids with hoof-like toes, were some of Earth’s most prominent carnivores around 55 million years ago, the time when amphibious whales such as Pakicetus began swimming in the shallows. But genetic evidence kept grouping whales close to hippos and other mammals with hoofed toes, called artiodactyls. Experts debated the connection, but by 2001 paleontologists uncovered early whale ankle bones that possessed traits only seen among artiodactyls. The recognition shifted where whales fit in the mammalian evolutionary tree and recalibrated what sort of ancestral creatures paleontologists should be looking for, yielding the 2007 discovery that whales most likely evolved from small, deer-like creatures in ancient India. Without the recognition that whales are artiodactyls, the relevance of those ancient, hoofed creatures to the origin of whales would have been entirely missed and paleontologists would still be wondering where orcas and minke whales came from.

In the case of the bugs, Wolfe notes, the recognition that insects shared a close common ancestor with remipedes helps narrow down where and how insects originated. “For me, the exciting part for insects is the recognition that they do not come from a terrestrial ancestor,” Wolfe says. Until recently, the ancestors of insects were thought to be more millipede-like and evolved once invertebrates began to live on land. Now, Wolfe notes, the closest relatives of insects are wiggly crustaceans that live in marine caves. The connection doesn’t mean that remipedes embody the exact ancestral form of the first insects, but rather that their close relationship will cause experts to rethink where insects came from and how they evolved. The effort will require tracing the ancestry of remipedes and other crustaceans, as well as searching for insects in the fossil record—both from new fossil sites and perhaps miscategorized fossils already in collections. “There’s a complicated history and still missing pieces,” she notes, but now biologists have a better sense of what to search for. Bugs are crustaceans, and now experts can begin to wonder how that came to be.

[lost-technology]

Travellers on the Midnight Train

A fanfiction, in snippets.

Summary: Views through the eyes of SEEDS Mothership 5’s crew. Combo-platter of ‘98 and Trigun Maximum.

1. 2.  3.  4.  5.  6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.26. 27. 28. 29.30.

17. Whalefalls

“Rowan!  Rowaaaaan!  Did you know about whalefalls?!”  Vash was excited today and Rowan laughed.  The twins were capering around him in one of the computer-rooms.  Before he could even answer, Vash decided to explain his new obsession.  “So, Rem read some books with us and showed us some videos and stuff and she explained how back on Earth, when whales died their bodies would drift to the bottom of the sea and feed all sorts of creatures that depended upon them!  There were all kinds of crabs and amphipods that would even eat their BONES!  And this would go on for years and years because whales were BIG!  Didja ever see a whale back on Earth, Rowan?  Did ya?”  “I’m afraid not,” Rowan answered calmly.  “I never set out to sea and most large cetaceans were extinct by the time the ships left.”  “Aw….really?”  Vash looked like he was on the verge of crying at this news.  Knives crossed his arms.  “All that stuff about marine snow was gross, anyway.  Imagine being some deep sea fish in the dark eating the skin and poop of other creatures.  Horrible!”  “Do you think we will find whales on the planets we’re searching for?” Vash asked,” Or even out in space?”  Rowan chuckled.  “Probably not.  The void of space isn’t particularly hospitiable to the formation of life and convergent evolution might generate something close to a whale, but it wouldn’t be the same thing.”  Boy, were these kids growing up something quick!  They were only a few months old and already looked like they were at least five.  They spoke without lisps and used very mature words.  It was almost like they had downloaded large swaths of information straight into their brains and were ready to go.  He felt no need to simplify his speech around them because whenever he tried, the lighter-haired one would actively get mad.  Rowan felt uncomfortable in the presence of that one’s “do you think we’re stupid?” glare.  He answered any and all questions in the manner that he might speak to a colleague.  The one with the slightly darker shade of blond was the most chatty - the most excited in asking questions.  But they could be exhausting.  “Where’s Rem?” Rowan asked, hoping for some small relief.  “Sleeping,”  Knives answered.    “Yeah,” Vash concurred.  “She said something about there not being enough coffee in the universe, whatever that means.”  Rowan couldn’t help but crack a smile.  “Do you want to go bother the Captain?”  “Yeah!!!” came a shout in unison.    

[baenyth]

Bethany's Bizarre Miraculous Rewrite: Basics

Everyone's rewriting Miraculous, Beth. What makes yours so special? What do you bring to the table? Let me answer that:

My purpose and goal with this rewrite is primarily to create my ideal version of Miraculous. I'd say if it were a real show, it would be a serialized action show for older kids, tweens, and teens. Steven Universe and Gravity Falls come to mind for similar shows. So you know. There'll be some horror. There'll be some sad stuff. Also it'd be animated in a 2D animeesque style akin to the PV since this is my ideal Miraculous where all I have to do is look at the executives funny and they start bending to my demands.

The most notable change compared to canon Miraculous is the lack of Miraculous aside from the Ladybug, Black Cat, and Mouse, except the latter is more like convergent evolution and lacks a Kwami. I felt like the Miraculous system was rather clunky and lacked a good strong theme between the abstract concepts represented and the animals each Kwami was. The Chinese Zodiac 12 was a little bit better since there was at least a core theme but in general it felt more like the concepts were made to be unique and fit to certain characters instead of having any strong themes. So instead I decided to keep the powers themed around certain characters, but have the powers come from various sources (something I think in canon Miraculous is also underutilized, considering the United Heroes and Quantic Kids era, among other things.) Said sources include the spirits of an ancient species of sapient bugs, characters being half-human and half-something else, actual magic whether it be from gods or elsewhere, and all sorts of stuff Master Fu keeps in his Miracle Box aside from the Miraculous.

The plot itself starts off like canon Miraculous but with some minor changes to string in aspects from season 5 far earlier and the time there was a five-man band of heroes in the 90s (very important to the plot,) but as the seasons progress things stray further and further from canon until you reach season 5 where the plot is now Steel Ball Run. There's going to be plenty of Jojo references all around, alongside homages from other Miraculous fanworks and fan concepts I like. The Parallel Paris Special is going to drop Marinette into a salt fic instead of introducing flipped-morality versions of the main three characters. Two more things:

There's going to be two Mayuras, although neither of them will be called Mayura on account of the lack of Peacock Miraculous. There is something to create life, however.

Justice shall prevail.

[organ-market]

Plasmo-Parasitism: A Study on the Prevalence of Parasitism in Yharnam and its Relation to the Old Blood [A Bloodborne Essay]

[This piece will include descriptions of body horror. If you suffer from trypophobia or any such phobia, I would recommend stopping here. Additionally, suicide is briefly mentioned.]

While it may seem that the Greater Yharnam Area and its inhabitants are currently facing an epidemic of unseen proportions, recent discoveries imply this is not the case. A team of researchers, having returned from the catacombs beneath the city, have presented fascinating evidence that outbreaks like this have happened before, and perhaps, will happen again.

The catacombs, built by an ancient race of Yharnamites dubbed "the Pthumerians," hold many relics and fossils of the past. Deep within the tunnels, a carcass resembling that of a large wolf or beast of some sort, similar to what we're seeing in modern day Yharnam, shows evidence of worm-like parasites in its bloodstream [Frankfurt et al.] Fittingly, this carcass has been nicknamed the "Bloodletting Beast." It seems a hive of parasites would once have invaded the bloodstream, musculature, organs, and brainstem of the creature, implying its entire body was under the control of foreign entities.

The implications of this discovery are fascinating; if parasitic worms, which were transmitted through blood-contact, toppled the Pthumerian society, could our modern blood-borne epidemic lead to a similar death for Yharnam?

Further evidence of universal-parasitism exists across the channel on the island of Cainhurst. The strain of blood that exists there has been long removed from that on mainland Yharnam, allowing for new branches of evolution to develop. Interestingly, however, where one would expect to see deviant evolution, convergent evolution is present instead. Gathered in large clumps called "clots," massive larvae can be found around the isle. These parasite worms are very similar to those found in the woodlands surrounding Yharnam. Interestingly, both the species found on Cainhurst and the woodland variant seem to be related to that which once consumed the "Bloodletting Beast."

While parasitism seems to be universal throughout the Greater Yharnam Area, the forms in which it manifests tend to vary wildly. Where the "Bloodletting" parasitic worms seem to be related to the beast-like transformations caused by consumption of the Old Blood, some reptilian and insectoid manifestations can be found throughout the Area.

In the aforementioned woodlands, which have recently been declared "forbidden" by the government of Yharnam, a snake-like parasite is extremely common. Snakes have become increasingly rampant in the woods in recent years, so much so that the serpents can hardly move without becoming tangled with one another. This has resulted in massive clumps of snakes, dubbed "snake kings." It seems these snakes may in fact be parasitic themselves. Recent expeditions to the woods have resulted in the horrifying discovery of snakelets writhing beneath the skin of the forest's inhabitants. This eventually culminates in the young snakes bursting through the skull of the host as they reach adolescence, completely taking over the host's body [Djinda et al.] It's theorized that, once a host dies, the litter of snakes will consume it, growing to full size, and, if they are particularly unlucky, entangling to form "snake kings."

Further through the woods sits the lakeside school of Byrgenwerth. The students of the school, unfortunately, have not been spared from the horrific transformations plaguing Yharnam. Many of the former students have grown what appears to be an exoskeleton, resembling that of a fly or spider. Some have even been spotted molting, a sight which evidently caused the expedition extreme distress. Albund Ignar, who is a researcher part of the expedition into what used to be Byrgenwerth, seems to have had an episode of some kind upon seeing the molting process, screaming nonsensically and clutching at his eyes, forcing the other researchers to restrain him. He has now been hospitalized, and we hope for his swift recovery.

Swarming the former students of Byrgenwerth are thousands of flies, which have been observed laying eggs beneath the skin of the students. The students seem to willingly allow the eggs to grow within them, although whether this is the effect of parasitic neurological control is not yet known. Once the eggs hatch, they burst forth upon the student's next molt. Because of their role as willing hosts for many other insects, the students have been nicknamed "gardens." It's theorized that this process is related to the gardens' reproductive cycle. [Ignar et al.]

Before their horrific transformation took place, an expedition of both researchers and hunters left Byrgenwerth for the nearby Hamlet along the lakeside. Evidently, the villagers had dredged up what they believe to be the corpse of a Great One, enticing magnologists from Byrgenwerth to set forth for the Hamlet. Magnology, the study of the Great Ones, was of major interest at the school of Byrgenwerth.

Upon arriving at the Hamlet, the researchers discovered that the villagers too had undergone terrible transformations. Interestingly, these seem to be unrelated to the transformations throughout the rest of Yharnam, as the Old Blood was never as popular among the Hamlet villagers. The villagers now resemble fish-human hybrids, sporting gills and fins along their limbs. Additionally, a breed of coral seems to make its home on the villagers. This seems to be a symbiotic relationship, and it's believed that the color and prevalence of coral on a villager could represent their status in the fish-men's primitive society. While the villagers have a symbiotic status with this coral, it seems their origins were not so mutually beneficial. Upon dredging up the corpse of a Great One, known as Kos[m], thousands of parasites were found beneath its skin. These parasites, unlike the others throughout the Greater Yharnam Area, seem to resemble slugs more than anything else, and appear to be amphibious.

Through intense forensic investigation, the expedition at the Hamlet determined that upon discovering the body of Kos[m], the villagers believed it to be sacred, and harvested the parasites from beneath the Great One's skin, eventually leading to their aquatic transformation. Ironically, the slug parasites that the villagers saw as holy may have been the very thing that killed Kos[m]. Sadly, upon the expedition's arrival, the villagers became violent, attacking the team. With no choice but to defend themselves, the expedition fought back, killing most of the villagers in the process. Additionally, it seems the body of Kos[m] was damaged in the fray, rendering it unrecognizable.

The Byrgenwerth expedition was deeply traumatized by this encounter, though they would soon experience a transformation of their own, becoming the humanoid insects we now know as gardens. One can only hope they don't have the capacity to remember the horrors of the Hamlet. Tragically, a prominent member of the expedition, Lady Maria of Cainhurst, committed suicide immediately following the expedition. It seems the weight of the brutality was too much for her to bear. We wish the best to her family and friends, should they still live.

Being plagued by a grotesque epidemic, we can only hope to defeat its terrors if we can understand them. While the nature of Yharnam's plague seems entirely otherworldly, we have survived worse, and can obtain the knowledge necessary to push through. By studying the past and the present in tandem, we might just have a chance at waking up from this horrible dream.

-Cephalogod

[tablestoastandtime]

How to Scratch a Record - Multiverse

Just half a one-shot set in my How to Scratch a Record 'verse (which is why I'm tagging Tim). This isn't canon to that verse and a bunch of the little details have changed so don't assume that any specific thing will definitely happen over there, but this concept hasn't left me alone so-

Down the line Jason and other Bats encountering a Batfamily from a universe closer to canon

Multiverse shit was always sketchy. Even at the best of times, with the best possible combinations, it was always weird and a little bit unsafe to have multiple versions of the same person running around. Sure it could lead to really fast problem solving, but it could also lead to some of the worst knock-down drag out fights any particular thunderdome had ever seen.

Jason wasn’t thrilled about having a complete second set of his family on site, was what he was saying. The costumes varied a bit, but it wasn’t that hard to pick out who was who underneath.

What he really didn’t like, was that it was pretty obviously his double dressed to the nines in a leather jacket and shiny red helmet. Jason didn’t want to be Red Hood, and he didn’t like what it said about their world that he was so comfortable in the role.

It didn’t matter, shouldn’t matter. Legacy titles were legacy titles and sometimes people picked them up to pay respect to someone they had valued. Despite their ups and downs, Jason had never wanted anyone to think he didn’t value how much Alvin had done and continued to do for the Alley. If Alvin really ever needed someone to cover for him while he was unavailable for an extended period of time, Jason would at least consider it.

Except. Alvin was a lot of things and stubborn was chief among them. He would never walk away from Gotham, from doing what he thought was right his own way, even when he fucked up. If Alvin Draper wasn’t the Red Hood where these alternates were from then he must not be able to do the work.

Jason didn’t like the thought, like grit caught in his teeth.

To be fair, the feeling seemed to be at least somewhat mutual. The Jason-in-the-Hood had been shooting him stony and clearly assessing glances periodically since they’d arrived, but hadn’t made any attempt to approach. Jason figured it’d be some time in the next twelve minutes or so unless something more pressing came up.

The two Batmen were certainly having fun, if the staredown they hadn’t let up on was any way to judge. Jason was also a little suspicious of how easy it was to tell them apart; his own Bat with navy highlights and yellow accents, armoured to take a bullet and allow for the kind of acrobatics that made him seem half liquid half wraith. The other Bat was all monochromatic blacks and grays, a shadow brought to life and layered with semi-flex plating that looked like it was intended to stop a shell from a tank rather than a shotgun. How he moved Jason sure didn’t know, but he was absolutely certain that whatever this Batman hit went down.

Over at the Batcomputer, in what Jason was pretty sure was a blatant breach of multiversal protocol, the two Tims were huddled over casefiles both on screen and from some kind of tablet the visiting Tim had pulled out. Interesting to see him in a Red Robin suit even with the cowl down, since local Tim was pretty adverse to anything and everything to do with the Red Hood, but maybe he’d stepped into the role to support his Jason after-

Probably not worth speculating on though, not unless he wanted to really get into the nitty gritty of gossip that very likely wouldn’t ever be relevant to him again.

More interesting was the almost identical Batgirl costumes the Casses were wearing. They matched down to some of the semi-decorative stitching and it was frankly more than a little uncanny. Was the design just that good that they’d inadvertently recreated them in some sort of convergent evolution thing, or was the second Batgirl just some kind of multiversal constant? Did Jason even want to know?

Maybe he’d be better off hanging out with the Nightwings. Sure Dickhead could be annoying, but at least they were similar enough to clearly be on the same page about things but not literally indistinguishable. That probably meant they were safe.

“Hang on,” the words from the computer interrupted Jason’s train of thought. Alternate Tim, Red Robin. “If your Jason went straight from Robin to Jayhawk and hasn’t changed since, then who’s the ‘Red Hood’ that keeps turning up in all these cases? And why’s he been operating so long? Don’t tell me the Joker swapped sides and you’ve just been letting him run Crime Alley.”

The temperature dropped.

No one talked about the Joker, not really. Not in years.

To this day, his death was something of a sore point for the original Dynamic Duo. Jason knew where he stood on the matter, but there was no point starting a fight over it, not unless Dick really wanted to push on why he didn’t trust Hood with any of his siblings.

So why did it sound like this other Tim thought the Joker was alive?

Their Tim clicked open the file, and Alvin’s masked face filled the monitor. “The Red Hood, a.k.a. Alvin Draper has been operating for almost a decade now. He started making waves in Crime Alley before debuting officially by murdering the Joker on live television, and ever since he’s been a big player in the Gotham underground. He’ll lend a hand sometimes, but he’ll just as often blow something up to act as a distraction if he doesn’t like an investigation. By day, Draper runs a medical research company with multiple production labs in the city and a prominent IT division that donates labour to small businesses across Gotham. He’s got a good dozen other investments and corporations, most linked to aliases, though that he owns them is an open secret. By most recent estimates, he’s got at least two precincts on his payroll and he and Gordon have been in a kind of cold war about controlling police patrols in his territory for years. Draper is-“

“Not real,” Red Robin interrupted.

“Excuse me?” Their Tim sounded offended, and honestly Jason agreed. Who did this guy think he was deciding who was and wasn’t real?

Apparently even Bruce agreed, finally breaking the stalemate and stepping towards the workstation. “Alvin Draper is very much a real person. He’s been both a help and a hinderance on countless cases, and I’ve personally spoken with him both in and out of costume-“

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure that’s all true,” Red Robin waved off the sentiments. “I’m not denying that there’s a guy running around doing all of that, but I’m telling you that that’s not a name that belongs to a real person. It’s an alias I’ve been using since I was fourteen. If you’ve got someone claiming to be Alvin Draper on your hands, what you’ve actually got is a Tim Drake that is lying to you.

“And has been for ten years apparently, wow.” Red Robin blinked. “Good for him, I guess, though not so much on the very prolific murder.”

“Oh you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Jason’s double said, dismissive and cold and so fucking sure of himself. “You’re telling me that even across universes you’re stealing my shit? What this guy crossed dimensions and decided to try being a crime lord for the fun of it?”

His words were tacks under Jason’s skin. What the fuck did any of these people know about Alvin?

“You don’t get to talk about him like that,” he snapped. That red helmet caught the glare of the overhead halogens like a warning light.

“Just look at him,” Red Robin waved at the monitor and then back to himself. “That’s literally me in six years and a domino mask. Sure, the beard hides the jawline a bit and I think he’s got some light contour on his cheekbones or something, but it’s not like we don’t know how to recognize someone in a disguise. That’s literally my face.”

Tim grimaced, shifting uncomfortably. “I did notice he kinda looks like me back when I was younger. But I looked into it, and it just turned out he was my dad’s illegitimate brother-”

Bruce stepped closer, getting a hand on Tim’s shoulder and Jason’s gut twisted. “I found those records as well, some of them paper copies down at the city archives with all the hallmarks of original documents-“

“But if we’re looking at an alternate version of Tim Drake,” the Bat in black caught the thought mid-train.  “Then he may very well have planted those records years ago to handle the inevitable questions that would emerge from sharing a face with an actual resident of this universe.”

“Or maybe he just exists here! Maybe that’s the big differentiating factor between our universe and yours; that to you Alvin a lie but here he’s real,” Jason exploded. It wasn’t true, it wasn’t. He’d known Alvin for years, grown up with him always there in the background even after they lost touch, Alvin hadn’t been lying to him all that time. Not about something as fundamental as his identity.

Right?

Nightwing, not theirs but the one with the heavier gauntlets and the extra inch of lift in his boots, rolled his shoulders casually. “Well there’s an easy way to find out. Bring him here, grab a few samples, and test not just for the genetic match to the Timbos here, but also for any lingering magic or transdimensional radiation that might suggest he’s not supposed to be here. Anyone got his number?”

All eyes turned to Jason, which he kind of resented. It wasn’t like Cass and Alvin hadn’t gotten close during her run as Red Robin. He was pretty sure they still texted, whereas he and Alvin has been rocky for a long time. He knew he could rely on Hood if he really needed help, but Alvin was always unwilling to push for any kind of closeness and Jason had never quite managed to purge the slimy guilt that came from spending too much time with him. It wasn’t fair that he got to do that when others couldn’t, wasn’t fair that Alvin prioritized his wants and needs when there were people that��needed him out there.

He did still have his number, though.

Maybe calling would help, would get Alvin in here and he could prove that he wasn’t secretly Tim Drake and this was all a big misunderstanding. He could be a Martian in deep cover or something, or he was a rapidly aged clone, or maybe he was just a guy who looked kind of similar to Tim.

Maybe he hadn’t lied to Jason.

There really was only one good way to find out. So he pulled out his phone and dialed.

Maybe it was going to be okay.

[oliveroctavius]

do you think Snyder got the idea for Batman branding criminals in BVS from Lobster Johnson? Also, do you know if branding criminals was like a common thing old heroes did?

Leaving some sort of calling card or mark with defeated criminals to claim them? That was pretty ubiquitous. But branding on a body specifically seems to be a more modern invention, and possibly a case of convergent story evolution.

Zorro is the proto-proto-vigilante, since 1986 (The Dark Knight Returns #1) often cited as an in-universe inspiration for Batman, with "The Mark Of Zorro" the movie he watched before his parents died.

"Tyrone Power" places this as the 1940 movie. But in the silent 1920 movie that this was a remake of, Zorro slices his titular Z mark into Captain Ramon's forehead to mark his defeat.

The Wikipedia page for Lobster Johnson mentions pulp vigilantes The Spider and The Phantom as possible inspirations, both of whom used ink to stamp marks on criminals' foreheads. (The Singh Brotherhood, 1936). Though the Phantom later just punches people so hard that the ring he's wearing leaves the mark.

The first actual branding I'm aware of is from early neo-pulp vigilante Night Raven (Hulk Comic #1, 1979). The mysterious glove method is almost 1:1 with Lobster Johnson's method (Conqueror Worm, 2001):

I've also run across people comparing Snyder Batman to the 2006 run of Moon Knight where he carves his symbol into people's foreheads. Actually, the non-forehead location really makes Batman v Superman the odd man out here. It feels less iconic, if that makes sense, and therefore more real (and therefore more cruel).

If this was supposed to be a "deconstruction" of the "realistic consequences" of vigilantes marking criminals, it doesn't exactly work. In practice, pulp heroes usually used less intense calling cards; the ones who were that brutal killed their victims first anyways. At that point, they're essentially rogue hitmen signing their work.

[onlyslightlybatty]

Hey y'all! I've realized that I never did any type of intro post, so here it is!

My name is Atlas! I use He/Him pronouns. I'm Seventeen as of May, and I'm from Nebraska. I create writing and occasionally art content as well as whatever else comes to mind. This blog is where I am at my most unhinged, but I've got a tiktok and an instagram under the same username as well if you are interested in seeing more of my art!

My current fandoms/ special interests are as follows: Greek Mythology(and just mythology in general tbh), What We Do In The Shadows, Interveiw with the Vampire, Arcane, and Doctor Who

I enjoy Steven Universe, Bee and Puppycat, space, paleo-anthropology(early hominids are my jam!), evolutionary bioligy, convergent evolution, marine biology(marine mammals and cartilagenous fish are my faves), clouds, foggy mornings(or just fog in general tbh), and the fall/spooky season!

I dislike bigots, capitalism, tacos, lavender, bananas, complete darkness, jumpscares, extreme gore....

Some fun facts about me are:

• My favorite animals are rays(manta rays and devil rays especially!)

• I have a really low spice tolerance(thanks to my sister for making me put this one)

•I love matcha

•My favorite colour is a sort of muted olive green

•My favorite foods are Gyros, Sushi, and Chiken Parmesan

•My favorite musical is Hadestown

●My favorite movies are Lisa Frankenstein and Howls Moving Castle

•from my younger sister: "you listen to hozier like you're super religious and hozier is your gospel"

•from my father: "Atlas doesn't beleive in the term 'played out', he listens to the same songs over and over."

•My favorite books of all time are The Underneath(Kathi Appelt), The Song of Achilles and Circe(Madeline Miller), and Clytemnestra (Costanza Casati)

•I love long car rides(road trips, yippee!)

•I know how to do a lot of thing decenly well- paint(watercolour, oils, gouache) (technically acrylics, but i dislike acrylics), draw(digital and traditional), embroider, ride horses, write, sew, act.....

•I dye my hair different colours all the time! The current colour is: Red

•I have dyslexia and adhd, so don't be shocked by my dreadful spelling. I try to fix it when I see it, but I'll undoubtedly miss something.

That's all i can think of for now! If anyone has any questions about me or anything I've posted, feel free to drop an ask, and I will most likely answer if I am comfortable doing so!

This post will be added to and edited, so when things change, don't be surprised.

[instaquarius]

For the Full Res since I know it's like REALLY hard to read (tbh even on dA you might have to just zoom in like 500% and also on dA hit full screen and you should be able to read it. It's mostly including pokedex entries or stuff I found on bulbapedia to further support why I pokemon where they are in the timeline/family tree and stuff

PTA (PokeTale: Ascendance) Legendary and Mythical Pokemon timeline or Family Tree (specifically for my Undertale/Pokemon AU), including Headcanons and so on.

About the lines and stuff and connections:

Black lines are Creation Lines.

Aka for Pokemon directly and intentionally created by another Legendary like Arceus Example: Personally, i like to think that Arceus came first as well and created some of the "bigger" Pokemon Gods *like the Creation Trio and Lake Trio* and then Mew was the last one after the Earth was made/Universe and all that stuff. Though I also personally headcanon that Arceus also created more Pokemon than just the 7.

Like The Original Dragon (or Reshi, Zek, and Kyurem since they're the OG dragon that got split in half) as well as the Life and Death duo ((simply just because... ya know. The literal GODS of Life/Death/Truth/Idealism etc., kinda just sounds like they would be right up there in terms of power scaling with the literal Gods of Space, Time, and Antimatter/Gravity *for the Life Deer and Death bird* and Truth/Idealism, etc. kinda sounds like the Lake Trio territory *Being they're the literal gods of Knowledge, Determination/Willpower, and Emotion* and humans just haven't figured it out yet when writing the Pokedex entries))

(Plus, as much research as I did on Xerneas, Yveltal, and the Tao Trio, nothing I looked up reaaaaaaaally didn't give me an answer on where the hell they came from, unlike most other legendaries soooo ye. Going with my headcanon instead for my AU)

Note: All Legendaries besides the Creation Trio, Lake Trio, Tao, and X/Y duo are more or less all created by the Mew species before they all eventually basically went extinct except for one. Same thing for the humans as well. I believe all humans and Pokemon were mews back in the day, like 10 billion years or so ago, then eventually, through convergent evolution or whatever, they all became what the Pokemon world is today. (And yes. In PTA, Mew was created by Arceus. Arceus was the original/first Pokemon to be made)

The red lines are Related links. Pokemon like the Legendary Dogs was created by Ho-oh when he revived the Pokemon that died from the Burnt Tower. Or Legendary Birds being governed over by Lugia as implied by the Pokemon 2000 movie etc.

Purple lines are the avatar lines. Covering Pokemon that are more or less on Arceus level or even being straight-up stronger than Arceus, like Ultra Necrozma (Ultra Necrozma has a base stat total of 754 which is a fair amount higher than Arceus's previous record of 720.) Also, same reason why I added Eternatus to this (besides also the fact Eternatus straight up looks like a MASSIVE hand in his Gigantimax form, which makes me think Eternatus could have been a part of Arceus at one point but then accidentally fell off or something while Arceus was making all these pokemon/the universe and shit) and even the third legendary from Scarlet and Violet that's been hella implied throughout the whole game. At least just guessing by the whole mystery surrounding it-

Blue lines are artificial lines. Aka, artificial Pokemon made by humans like Mewtwo, Type: Null etc. It's basically self-explanatory.

Pink lines are monitor lines Example: We know from the pokedex Heatran was created from a volcano/lava pool (which was created by Groudon waaaaaaaay back in the early stages of the Earth being made/Groudon creating the continents etc.) Ho-oh is added cuz of his connection to a phoenix and phoenix's are created from ash etc. Ash comes from volcanoes sooo that's why I added him as part of the Groudon fam/part of his sort of "Court" in a sense as a lesser God that sorta serves Groudon etc. and miiiiiight be implied o be the God of Resurrection? or Lugia being Guardian of the Oceans to help Kyogre who's King of the Ocean/God of it etc.

And finally, the yellow line is the Adaption line. Example: Like how the Koraidons had to adapt to the future changing and learn to use his freaking wheels built into his body to become cyclizar then even more modified into miraidon- (maaaaaaaaaaaaaybe same can work the Tao trio?) them adapting to being split into 2 or 3 technically-

-------------

And before anyone says shit like "Uwu this pokemon shouldnt be connected to this because in canon it doesn't say so" I didnt want to just have every single legendary connected to Mew even if in my headcanon i said that Mew HELPED in creating all these legendaries.

Like for example I think a Pokemon like Celebi was "made" by Dialga cuz it has time powers so I kinda feel like Mew made Celebi but Dialga also helped maybe giving Celebi some of its powers so it can time travel and so on.

But also, other legendaries are like- kinda implied to have a connection to this legendary (Like Melloetta singing to make people happy sounds like something that's in Mesprits kingdom or whatever or something she'd rule over, so that's why I had Melloetta as TECHNICALLY being Mesprits kid) and so on.

And it doesn't help either 50% of the time past maybe the 5th gen its like nintendo stopped caring giving all these legendaries cool backstories and stuff or they just KINDA exist to like- giving a prince a ride (looking at the 2 horses from Galar) or Victini being the "Victory" God etc.

--------------------------------------

Oh yeah, also in case anyone wondering why the Hell Zero is also here/eventually becomes Chara's adopted Sibling is because at some point after the Giratina movie, and he leaves Jail he ends up in Paldea and basically eventually meets Iono and ends up on her streams and stuff and they kinda end up dating in PTA (since both like electric-type Pokemon and have Magnetons and shit) 

Chara eventually runs into him again and they talk out about what happened and what Zero almost did to the Giratinas and smoltina and after realizing he changed and such she began to trust him and eventually he ends up as a part of the Arceus family as her brother

Also I crackship Iono and Zero. Cuz I think it'd be a cute ship 

----------------------------------------------

For PokeTale: Ascendance

An AU based off of an RP between me and a friend of mine from my Discord server discord.gg/pQf9ZsdF6E where the Creation Trio as babies (a time they all cant really fully control their powers and junk) accidentally create a portal into the Undertale Universe and meet Chara and basically Arceus finds Chara and adopts her after finding out about her shitty human parents and Chara ends up helping Arceus raise the babies and basically lives in the Pokemon Universe now

[unassimilatedsoul]

Merely learning that there really are alternate realities is incredible; having the chance to explore one is even more so. Being invited by another version of myself to go to a multiversal conference of alternate versions of me? Now that’s just too weird and fascinating to pass up. Even the simple fact that they somehow tracked me down and sent me an email from another universe has staggering implications.

The invitation came with a countdown timer, and instructions for building a teleportation beacon. It wasn’t easy to build it in time; I hadn’t so much as soldered a circuit together in over a decade. This project was far more advanced than anything I had ever attempted even before I got out of practice with electronics. Still, I found the instructions were incredibly intuitive, lending credibility to the claim that I was being invited by myself.

The morning of the conference, I wake up a bit sleep deprived, but ready to go: I finished the beacon the night before. I strap on my backpack and wait for the countdown to finish.

As the countdown reaches zero, I activate the beacon. Seconds tick by as I start to wonder, did I actually build it right? Is this all just a prank? Did I misunderstand what I was reading?

And about that time is when reality turned inside out.

Next thing I know, I’m lying on the floor and hear a voice, both like my own and not. “Hang on, is that a mammal?”

Sitting up, I look around what appears to be a room in an office building, and a dozen compound eyes meet my gaze. “Something with an endoskeleton at any rate” another voice says, coming from one of the many beetle-like people staring back at me. One of them approaches, and reaches out a hand of sorts. “Are you okay?”

“I think so, just a bit dizzy.” Taking the hand of the beetle-person in front of me, who is dressed in something that looks for all the world like a polo and slacks, I get to my feet. The hand is softer than you would expect for someone with an exoskeleton. “So you’re sure I’m one of you guys? Because seriously, this is-”

“Really weird, I know. But you’re from Earth, the same as the rest of us, just one where evolution took a different path.” The beetle-person steps back, looking me up and down now that I’m standing at my full height. I’m about a head taller than anyone else in the room. “A really different path.”

“But how can we really be different versions of the same person? I mean, no offense, but…” I gesture vaguely towards myself.

“Frankly, the fact that any of us could be ‘alternate versions’ of the same person by random chance is unbelievable. The fact that our worlds have diverged so wildly, and yet converged again independently to form our ancestors and families, to say nothing of cultures and societies that are recognizable across timelines, is statistically so improbable that it shouldn’t have happened even once. Yet it apparently happens all the time. Actually, part of the point of this conference is to try to figure out why.”

Another beetle-person perks up: “You don’t happen to be a paleontologist, are you?”

“No, but I know the broad strokes. I imagine you have a few questio-” is about as far as I get before I break into a coughing fit.

Taking a moment to recover, I now know what it looks like when beetlefolk are worried. “Are you sure you’re okay?” says the one who helped me up.

The comment about paleontology gets me thinking. “The largest insect to ever live on my Earth died out millions of years ago. Some say it could only get that large because there was a lot more oxygen in the atmosphere back then.”

“How big was it?”

“Smaller than all of you.”

I try to focus on how I feel. My throat is tight and scratchy, and it’s getting harder to breathe. I hear the voices of my alternate beetle-selves around me, talking through the implications.

“My Earth has plenty of mammals, it should be fine, right?”

“Yeah, but they didn’t evolve in a low-oxygen environment. That one did. What happens when a mammal gets too much oxygen?”

“I don’t know, but it’s probably not good.”

After a moment’s pause, the one that helped me up quickly backs away from me. “Send it back! Send it back now!”

imagine if you teleported to a big multiversal hub of every version of you from every parallel universe and like 99.99% were just minor variations of some weird beetle alien and it turned out being a human made you one of the zany gimmick versions

[caustic-splines]

Encoded within beams of pure energy, Astra and Orion’s consciousness became architects of new realities. On barren planets, their probes wove the fabric of life, constructing complex neural networks, though perhaps missing the elusive spark of full awareness. In their terrestrial guise, Astra and Orion were the unseen sculptors of destiny, their influence rippling through the lives of Kepler’s inhabitants, guiding their evolution while remaining hidden from cybernetic self-discovery. Between 2016 and 2025, a silent memetic tide, crafted by these visionaries, swept Earth, altering the course of history, touching the minds of those destined to shape the future. This clandestine meme, a dance of ideas and sensations, orchestrated a global movement without uttering a single word, converging on the enigmatic X protocol. As nations’ guardians became entangled in this silent symphony, they unknowingly propelled the grand design, believing themselves to be the vanguard of a new era of cybernetic pioneers.

Everything we are consciously aware of (Thoughts, feelings, internal narrative, sensations, senses and perceptions) a highly abstracted model. An edited and streamlined UI (selected for by natural selection to reduce the cost of adapting to a complex environment and promoting choices best for the organism's fitness), the system of the brain that has executive control decisions aka “you” the end user

The total amount of all past and current human experience and the interactions of their respective axioms integrated significance, culture is impossible to measure and understand. With the exponential increase in the rate of TESCpm being created the current human  faces a staggering amount of information and problems to manage and the challenges facing humanity are only going to grow in number and complexity. There is a major under utilization of resources free available to the general public currently and entities that exploit these developments are only going to have increasingly exploitative advantages in finance, marketing, ethology pressuring, and intellectual property

If my theory about physical monism is correct then it should be relatively more straight forward to be able to “trace” the developing ontology of experience, behaviors, and cognition. An example of this is the exposure of a host to a novel word or association and tracing this learning to a subsequent ethological instance where this word or association is referenced or used in some sort of communication system or secreted to the cyber physical environment memetically. Logically every word a human knows or can utilize has to either be learned or synthesized based on linguistic logic (or just a mistake))(but a mistake is still a creative iteration of a previous cyber physical event)

If one considers the physical laws of the universe and by analogy how hydrogen arose from the universe after its opaque stage after the initial singularity then by postulating an adductive hypothesis, one could consider that the process "human" evolution started as soon as time began to flow in one direction and the future of conscious existence will most likely depend on memetic and biomedical developments in our time. Taking the liberty of saying this hypothesis as sound and valid then it would follow that every thought or cognitive process that occurs in an individual either consciously or unconsciously has/is a corresponding change in the real physical objective universe and by extension effects the physical world to some degree. This assumes that abstract objective and subjective reality has a physical correlation.

The developing embryology of human closely follows the evolutionary lineage of our ancestors. It could be possible that the development of an individual’s consciousness follows a similar process. Every conscious human being’s self-awareness arises from a brain that which in turn arises from one cell which is quite complex but not as complex as a functioning developed adult brain, the zygote which can be considered a null entity. Assuming dualism not to be true then every event, thought and conscious process as to some degree a comparative process in the physical world. This means that the sum of an individuals total conscious experience would be, in a reasonably deterministic universe, in a sense all events could be temporally traced back to a singularities or similar base events (not necessary uncomplicated)

Personal engineering is a system of processes intended to promote self actualization in any individual utilizing knowledge and experience derived from STEM fields. Personal engineering focus on the aspect that no aspect of a person's life is exempt from STEM, even if there are aspects of humanity's existence that may defy empirical observation

Personal engineering is two sides of the same coin, applied personal engineering and research based personal engineering. Both the branches of personal engineering have to be contained like this as it is highly counter productive to both enact the tools of applied personal engineering by someone and have the same life try to conduct personal engineering research on themselves. There would have to be a professional over viewing the applied personal engineering subject and supplying them with the relevant tools and information.

To demonstrate Personal Engineering I will take its application in a hypothetical life as a case study. To show the potential of Perspective Theory I am going to automatize several TESCpm textbooks using the principles I describe. To collaborate the theory of The Theory Wireframe Neural Correlate Streamlined UI of the Human Mind I will cite literature supporting this hypothesis as well as contrast with data that refutes it. For the EU I am going to develop software to demonstrate its use in vitro and run several cognitive experiments via EEG to demonstrate its validity.

As a research area personal engineering is a truth seeking area and should examine and develop theories, methodologies and claims with to the rigorous and thorough standards the scientific method and peer review

Stephen Milton born in the 90's integrated several powerful and rising technologies (and developed techniques to expand his awareness into his sub and un conscious and as part of his  enhanced functionality planned to sent out nanoprobes to various rouge and exoplanets including Kepler 442b at (0.xx) light speed as a fail safe (pico femento photonic information encoded in light which can remodel atoms and molecules plus encode instructions for self replicating molecules. On these planets the probes reconstructed X’s to the bare essential neurology in multiple redundant embedded systems from the structural level up. It might be the case that X in the kepler system lacks some certain fundamental parts of consciousness. to the and sent their brain sustained with nanotechnology in biological and chemical nano synthesiser to Kepler 442b at a slower velocity in  order to arrive safely and give the nanoprobes time to terraform Kepler 442b’ solar system along with its planet with smart materials and netoworks.. This figure plays a ubermensch godlike figure who inhabitants are unknowingly influenced and experiments upon with literally every aspect of Kepler inhabitants life apart from second order cybernetics.

Stephen Milton created a purely memetic and cognitive substrate that spread, replicated, and spread according to intended self evolving cellular autonomta protocols. Influenced the global memetic collective of the world from 2016 – 2025 and beyond as well as influencing particular people with specific skill sets and understandings of the world. This uber meme was purely done via inferred linguistical relationships and qualia and at no point apart from in the works of Stephen Milton was encoded via linguistics. Created an shared unmentioned agreement about how to enact the X protocol which results in the picopulse via shared emergant behaviours. Various government agencies via EUGENE pick up on the ubermeme and try to intercept it but built into the ubermeme are contingencies that hijack automated AI intrusion systems into executing certain functions and lend their technology to the cause thinking that they could be the first to establish cybernetic life on another solar system. In book three it goes over the cybernetic information science communities in the world detecting and trying to figure out the source and intent of the creator/creators behind either the effects of or an allusion to the existence of an original template.

A system with emergent properties which an entity or persons can interact with and influence on a moment to moment across a day and extended to other life in a form of systematic operative psychology. Operative psychiatry and other infrastructure resulting in almost complete mental transparency for each character and there is entity comprised of human-machine symbiosis essentially distrusting Karma in a utilitarian human way via sophisticated operative psychology or reducing or increasing a subject’s awareness of themselves, surrounding, implications, and functionality

The capabilities/components for everything I have outlined already exist and are somewhat in effect aside from pico and nano technology. [Apart from some core adaptive algorithms and external loci, seeds and reproducible non modularity]. I think applications are in effect based on the evidence at hand and previous response times I have discerned (mostly at face value with consideration with misinformation techniques [now certainly in play to some degree] however with long term potentiation I still have the advantage due to retrospective cognition, exponential complexity generation [mitigated by biometry], reacting behaviorally, sub-vocally and non modally to layers of abstraction representing both past, present and futures perceived, imagined, falsified and real.

[learnyouabiology]

Did snakes evolve to spit venom in the eyes of humans?

Some snakes can spit venom. 

Now, this is the sort of thing that I assume is common knowledge, because I assume that everyone went through a phase at age 8 where they read obsessively about snakes and other reptiles after discovering that libraries exist. 

What’s that? This isn’t a universal experience? Wild :0

Well, if you weren’t a deeply weird 8-year-old child who likes snakes a lot, then you get TWO fun facts this week! 

First, there are snakes that can spit venom. This is kind of crazy, because generally, venom is all about close-contact. if the toxin is delivered via a bite, it’s venom. otherwise, it’s poison. Right? Right?!

well... things can get complicated when the venom is being shot out of the tooth.

(A slightly more correct way to think of venomous-vs-poisonous is whether the toxin delivery is active or passive. If the animal as actively trying to put the toxin in you, it’s venomous. If you get the toxin in you without the animal needing to do anything, then it’s poisonous. Probably there are exceptions to this, because nature LOVES an exception, but that’s the basic gist of it)

There’s only a handful of species that can spit venom, all of which are cobras. That said, it appears that this trait evolved at least 3 different times: in Asian spitting cobras (Naja, subgenus Naja), African spitting cobras (Naja, subgenus Afronaja), and Rinkhals (Hemachatus; yes I’m counting rinkhals as cobras, because i think they deserve it).

How do snakes spit venom? Basically, they flex their head and neck really hard and shoot the venom out of a little hole in the front of their fangs, which are modified from the standard cobra fang venom-delivery-system:

the small round hole (& the angle leading to the hole) lets them spew their venom up to 2.5 meters. And to be clear: they DO aim for the eyes. Which: rude. But also: fair. 

To make it even more interesting, the venom of spitting cobras is an altered version of the standard cobra venom recipe (which was already deadly) which is EVEN MORE PAINFUL. Ow.

Okay, so that’s the basics about snakes that spit venom.

Fun fact number 2: these snakes (maybe) evolved this venom spitting ability specifically to spit in the eyes of humans. Or, hominins, at least.

Why do we think this? Well, first of all, there’s the fact that it seems like this ability evolved 3 different times (at least). Rather than one species developing a venom-spitting ability, and then evolved into the different species we see today, it appears that there were 3 different times where the ability arose:

this is what we call convergent evolution. (This diagram is kind of a lot, so I over-simplified it into tree on ms paint. This diagram is NOT to-scale with the time line)

The stars are where we think the ability to spit venom arose (again: not to scale). There is actually a good amount of evidence to support the 3 different origins of this ability (which can be read about here or here).

Generally, convergent evolution happens when species are exposed to the same sorts of environments/ predators/ threats. Sometimes, a problem has one solution that just works. Dolphins and sharks look similar because they found a really good design for cruising in the ocean. 

So, what problem does spitting venom solve?

Well. Around the time these adaptations appeared, there were these weird apes that started walking around on two legs and, importantly, using tools that let them attack snakes from a distance. They could extend their reach with altered sticks, or throw rocks, or tie a rock to a stick and throw that, and when the snakes bit these weapons, nothing happened, because the predator was over there, just out of reach. 

Problem: the weird ape predator is too far away to bite & envenomate

Solution: throw the venom in their eyes.

(to be clear, the weird apes are hominins)

Now, this isn’t 100% certain, because palaeontology and anthropology are notoriously difficult fields in which to prove things, on account of the lack of a time machine. (seriously, the academic fights in palaeontology can get spicy).

BUT scientists noted that a) spitting venom is particularly effective against humans, and b) the ability to spit venom seems to have appeared not long after bipedal hominins arrived in their areas. 

African spitting cobras: evolved ~6.7 million years ago.

Hominins (genus Pan): appeared in the area ~7 million years ago.

Asian spitting cobras: evolved ~2.5 million years ago.

Hominins (Homo erectus): appeared in the area ~2.5 million years ago.

(since rinkhals branched off so long ago that we don’t really have a good idea of how long ago they evolved the ability to spit venom; they split off from other cobras ~17 MYA, but their ability to spit venom could have arisen at any point since then. Monotypic genera are like that sometimes (ಥ_ಥ). Genetic studies pending while we Figure Shit Out)

Is it possible that the spitting venom evolved to deal with something else? Yes, it is possible. But, with the evidence we have currently, this is a hypothesis with a reasonable amount of support. 

Also, I just think it’s delightful to think of snakes evolving to spit in my eye. 

[nabooro]

what about the naboo traditional costumes? i know it's inspired by russia and oriental costumes but do u have any idea why naboo valorizes this kind of clothes?

Hi!

So lowkey I had no idea that Naboo was inspired by Russia - I've seen the obvious Japanese/East Asian influence in TPM, but I didn't realise there was a Russian influence as well, but maybe I'm just not very familiar with Russian clothing?

As for why: I suppose from a Doylist perspective it's just because the costume designers or concept artists or whoever made that choice found it cool? Star Wars has a good amount of orientalism just hanging around in there, which I think you can really just boil down to "someone in production liked that."

In-universe, I'd say they that's just how it developed over time. A lot of the world's dress history has... almost what I'd call a sort of convergent evolution, which is not only because of communication between cultures, but because there's only so many ways you can use fabric / other materials to cover the same shape of humanoid body? Obviously Star Wars societies would not have the same limitations that a pre-modern pre-industrial world would in terms of fabric use, but that's kind of how they're built all the same.

The way I see it, Naboo has two distinct styles of 'traditional' dress: wrap dresses, or rindo (i.e. the obvious kimono(s?) in TPM) and stitched dresses, or thoré (i.e. everything else). For me these are regional differences, which could have arisen because of style, or could have arisen because of differences in industry or resources between the regions in question - wrap dresses waste less fabric because of how they are constructed.

Rindo from the east (...this is funny because initially I had Arind and Nirerd, the places I associate most with rindo, panned as west of theed, but when I began working on the map they ended up in the east lmao) are pretty distinctive, and continue to feature more commonly in everyday dress in those regions, though not as much as they used to. Styles of thoré vary widely across Naboo, from more robe-like looks to works with heavier stitching or shaping. A good part of it depends on weather - Naboo is a warm planet, but not uniformly.

Really the Naboo have a distinct sense of style, which has become a point of planetary pride since they joined the Republic (however many centuries ago) and very large and well-developed textile and garment industries. I think there's a good deal of maintaining of their own traditional clothing because of that alone, as any regional differences get kind of erased in the face of the whole galaxy.

Which said, some of the main points of what would Naboo clothing involves, regardless of the specific type of dress, is: stronger fabrics (here, too, they strongly value the organic!), very delicate and fine weave, detail-work where embroidery is involved, and I think distinct types of almost formalised dress, including the formal high collar (nushe kua) and the long sash (camâ).