#or like straight up oil like idk how do you find out blood colour for fictional aliens

[whatudottu]

Me, remembering that pill bugs can filter heavy metals from soil:

My brain: You know what this means, don’t you?

Me: What-

My brain: You can make talpaedans part pill bug-

Me, working on amperi headcanons: Wait LET ME FINI-

I’ve gone over a few times that I like to think that talpaedans are techno-organic, less so being silicon or silicone based beings but being an integration of organic carbon materials and the more industrialised physiology of being a walking talking construction equipment. I have also previously made use of the whole ‘machine’ aspect of their natural biology to not only consider them as burrowers, but also as ant-like burrowers with haplodiplody, this form of sex-determination system being used to expand the combinations of construction equipment that an individual talpaedan might have, but also as a basis of which I form the sociopolitical building of talpaedan cities, in which case we have large city state colonies of ant inspired pangolins recreating feudalism Europe of the 10th-13th century.

But up - until this point - there was not quite a lot of circumstances that would allow for actual metallic components to not only present itself biologically but also do so naturally, so with the heavy metal eating pill bug there’s a source of extra inspiration. Oniscidae (apparently the more accurate name for pill bugs/rollie pollies and literally any name under the sun) can remove arsenic (which is actually a metalloid), cadmium, lead, and depending on sources also mercury from the soil; additional metals that can be extracted from soil are copper and zinc. The pill bug in question would crystallise these ions in their gut and create spherical deposits within them, but since we are not talking about the isopod alone surely it isn’t too much of a stretch to the idea that perhaps talpaedans can use these deposits within themselves to feed into the development of their most notable features, their built in equipment?

Assuming that Poiana Lüncas has these metals and that talpaedans would in fact filter for them, in real world human employed Earth uses of these metals can indeed be of fine use. Both arsenic and cadmium can be used as alloys and zinc specifically can galvanise other metals such as iron to prevent rusting, very significant indeed in industry, notably especially with large amounts of zinc can be used in hardware industries. Copper has a very notable use in electronics and wiring of which motors are included, let alone more refined wiring in TVs and radio. And argueably the more infamous of these metals (at least to a standard ‘basic’ level of understanding) we have mercury and lead, the former being used in many different industries for it’s ability to measure the change in temperature and pressure, and the latter for some solders, gasoline/petroleum and wonderfully hazardous cosmetic items that uninformed humanity has come to be harmed by.

ngl, spent a bit of time trying to find an oxygen-carrier of these metals that can feasibly make black blood but i literally do not know if the colour of oxides is in any way relevant to how oxygen-carrier bloodcells would actually be coloured as i’m not a chemist

But in highlighting these metals, I am not simply looking to see if a techno-organic talpaedan can have galvanised armour nor if they come built in with blood pressure monitors. No no no, I am saying more than what talpaedans eat but also what metals can talpaedans have easy access to in the development of technology, and how one might say that actually interacts with the ant-psychology of utterly fucking despising other colony.

Well-

Let’s say that google might be a little concerned about me learning about elements used in the construction of ammunition and radiation protection ehek-!

With the earth tilling that many developing talpaedans need to incorporate necessary metals into their diet, depending on the availabilty of said metals they may be an over abundance for food alone; especially with the pressure of competition of resources in combination with a general disdain for anything extracolonial, a factor that may lead to an escalation of tech development. There is an inherent baseline for technology in talpaedans that would already give their industrialisation a boost, in addition to the materials that may vary on quantity based on the region, colony size, and general population needs. Before long there are city states reinforcing their own barriers and expanding their borders for more and more materials - to consume and to create - to in fact increase and increase the tension between colonies so loud to the point pressure spills like a broken thermometer spills mercury and conflicts arise.

And when everything boils over do they realise that many have to balance the act of raising young and building more weapons, the factor that may in fact be the tipping point to realise that the colonies with the most resources are not only a threat but a threat that can overwhelm on the technological scale and the population number. In spite of how many colonies may indeed hate each other, it is more than worth it to them to compromise and in fact LIVE rather than be caught between the suddenly unveiling superpowers of the world that had previously lay unknown thanks to willful ignorance. Decimation of land is significantly reduced from cataclysmic to catastrophic as entire colonies are rased and in fact dug out into craters, many war-era alliances held to the modern day of Poiana Lüncas. A tithing - remnants of the treaties formed at the peak of desperation - of the youngest generation of adult men stands as both tradition and of appeasement, a colony trade and marriage across many different colonial alliances as a symbol of what had to be done before, sharing resources and rearing while the soldiers fought to live.

And all of this because they got a pill bug diet see this is why ants aren’t allowed to have materials for megaton bombs smh 😞

[aikainkauna]

Five things meme thing

Christ, I’m bored and probably suicidally stupid to post ANYTHING personal on this website but fuckit. Too bored. Here you go.

Five things in my bag:

This would be a rucksack.

-A red folder with all kinds of medical texts from my various illnesses, so I have them on hand if a doctor/nurse/disabled services social worker wants to look. They often do.

-Ginger candy (I prefer the Indonesian Ting Ting Jahe brand, the ones with the checquered ends on the wrappers). I'm not a candy person and extremely intolerant to carbs, but they're for nausea and one has only 3 g of carbs. Nausea happens often with my medications and also saves me from passing out if I have to have a blood test taken--I have a neurological glitch where I'm hypersensitive to touch and feel pain approximately 1392579515893 times more intensely than most people and I can go unconscious from pain with blood tests, gyn visits etc. so that stuff comes in handy. The touch sensitivity is only useful during sex...

-A packet of Amma's Rose incense sticks. As much as I want to support her charities, the incenses from her ashram aren't that great. They're not bad-smelling or anything, but not what I want from incense either; I've had better (usually prefer good old Auroshikha). The scent is pleasant when not burned, so I keep a packet in my rucksack for the fragrance.

-Splenda tablets, imported from the UK. You can't get sucralose here as tabletop sweetener for some reason (even if it can't be banned since I have seen it listed as a sweetener in squash etc.), and I way prefer it to the metallic-tasting Hermesetas that's usually the only available non-carby sweetener in cafes and restaurants. Or worse, fucking stevia (yeah, I really like that sickening aftertaste that lasts TWO DAYS from just one cup of coffee). Splenda is basically the only sweetener that doesn't taste awful to my mouth.

-Painkillers and benzos for emergencies.

Five things in my bedroom

-8 framed pictures/posters/prints of Conrad Veidt. Mostly Jaffar, but there's one Torsten, one Baroudi and that goddamn lounging-seductively-onna-sofa sex panther postcard. I still look at Jaffar's eyes every day and cry out "HOW?!?" and the Jaffar/Pwinzezz onna ship poster facing my bed is great for looking at during a fap if I have trouble focusing on the visuals of my fantasy.

-An old spice rack, probably Russian because it's too pretty to be Finnish, that now serves as a cabinet for my essential oils and attars. The rack has little colourful tealights and pictures of Shiva, the triple Devi, Krishna hugged by Yasoda, Kali's yantra blessed by Amma, and Ganesha on it (my proper altar is in the living room, but I like to keep my homies close) and a little red lantern dangling from it. Peacock feathers also dangle from it.

-Aromatherapy lamp/diffuser thing on my windowsill with more tealights and my most-used essential oil bottles (camphor, rosemary, patchouli, rose, jasmine, ylang ylang, eucalyptus, star anise) beside it because fuck getting them from the cabinet several times a day.

-Many pillows and cushions on the bed. I only sleep with one, but I use the rest for supporting my bent left leg when I'm wanking. Feels way better when I can keep at least one of my legs up-ish to add pressure/muscle tone to/tighten my vag. It's not that I'm loose down there (smaller than average, actually, which gives my gyn and my sex toy reviewing contact woman problems when we have to figure out how to and what can reach the deepest/best spots down there), but bloody hell, the pillow lift feels different. You wouldn't think it made much of a difference, but whenever I have to fap in a bed without support for at least one leg (or am being done by a guy!), I definitely notice it. ("What are you doing, building a pillow fort?" "Feels better for both of us if I get just one more cushion... hang on...")

-Noki's urn on my bedside table. It has a little holder for a tealight on the top, and I light a candle there for her every day. When I light the candle, I kiss the urn and say "Hello, Floofen." It's the phrase @versaphile always used whenever she saw Noki during our video chats, and when I first showed her the urn and was crying my eyes out (funnily enough, I am crying now), she just exclaimed "Hello, Floofen!" and it was just so warm and wonderful--and exactly what I needed to hear, then. So now I say it every time. And when the candle goes out, I say to myself and/or Dolores: "Noki's gone to sleep." (And Doli has just showed up. Sadly, I don't think she's one of those cats who picks up on human emotions and comes to comfort us when we're sad, though. She probably just wants noms or entertainment, as usual, but it's a nice coincidence anyway.)

Five things I've always wanted to do

Christ, thinking of these makes me depressed because these always involve... people and things that can go wrong. So I try not to have dreams about things, because it's nigh impossible for anything to feel perfect for me. And then I get deeply upset. My brain's just not wired for that kind of thing. But let's try.

-If not find a good male lover, at least afford a really fucking good daddy dom escort who can give me a proper hard thrashing and fucking. A really good, hard seeing-to from time to time. But to be perfect or even satisfying, he (and anyone else/everyone else sleeping with me) would have to be fucking psychic, so no can do. Jaffar's always going to be better. It's always Jaffar.

-Speaking of which, go visit Connie's urn again.

-...no, really, I just keep getting depressed. Therapy taught me not to do goals because of this kind of thing. I will keep my bar low so as not to slit my wrists. Like, I feel that even if I said "I want to have a nice cuppa in a minute," I'd break the mug and burn my legs from scalding tea. So let's move on.

Five things that make me happy

-Wanking. The fantasy worlds, when I really get going, are immensely complex and detailed and emotionally deeply satisfying and spiritual and wonderful. If I don't get to wank, I will lose all love, all happiness, all creativity. So that has to be the number one essential thing for not only my happiness but my sanity. And this is why I hate the (male-centric, body-centric) idea that wanking is just some pathetic rub to release pressure, or that sex=the physical act, with another person. When it's everything but that for women (biologically, not gender-essentialistily speaking) since our arousal is always dependant on the mental/emotional (which is why women read/write erotica rather than just watch porn because we want to be and need to be in the *mental* state of the characters, and that's only possible via text/imagination--and why it's fanfic in particular: we already have an emotional response to the characters. So this weird, deeply misguided trend to call that part of sexuality that’s between the ears, and all kinds of perfectly normal female sexuality "asexuality" is utter misogynist blasphemy for me--to call the *essence* of sex itself a lack of sex, just because nobody fucking asked how *women* processed sex, just some guy to whom it was all about dick in pussy! Jesus, the mental aspect is how vaginas *work!* And of course I prefer fic and wanking to “real” sex because the culture of masculinity tries to eradicate from men the very thing women need--emotional stimuli, sensitivity and empathy! How about we call the culture of defining sex through rub of flesh on flesh only not real sexuality at all because it omits emotion and humanity? How about that?)

So, yeah, wanking. It most definitely is the greatest mental, spiritual, creative pleasure for me. That's the life force, creation, poetry for me--there would not be fic, passion, fangirling for me. Take it away and I have nothing, and you will not have me.

-The whole wanking thing is so entwined with my writing that I feel like I shouldn’t mention writing separately? It’s the same creative process of the erotic. But I have so few things that make me happy that I guess I should say something like “being in full flow when the text just comes out and I’m swimming in happy OTP/unf/aaaahthespiritualinsights” feelings.

-Conrad Veidt. And his stupid fucking panther face. And his stupid fucking lady hips of infinite slink. And his eyes of vertignious skies. Etc. But that’s not separate from the above either.

-When people actually come and talk to me in my fic comments on Ao3. Honestly. Getting to have a good chat with someone who enjoyed my story basically makes my entire day. I might have woken up being completely miserable physically and/or mentally, but then checked my email and--A PERSON! ANOTHER HUMAN BEING! SOMEONE I HAVE TOUCHED THROUGH MY FIC! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! That sense of human connection (especially to someone who has no local friends and never gets out of the house) is wonderful. Especially when it’s through, well, the best and deepest and most essential part of myself--the creative/erotic/history-nerdy/spiritual/pervert/geek part. The outer world sees the frumpy gothy cat lady and doesn’t bother, but you’re talking straight to my soul there, meine sveet. So, yes, it is very happymaking indeed, and more than that. It tells me that I have indeed done something to make the world less shitty a place. 

-Honestly, there are so few things... IDK, the satisfaction of having sorted various RL things out, having Adulted successfully. Having enough money to get my prescriptions out, having a fridge full of food and having fed the cat and not being in too much pain, and being able to do something creative. If all those things happen during one day, it’s a supermega-rare day of awesomeness.

Five things I'm currently into

-Conrad Veidt

-Conrad Veidt

-Conrad Veidt

-Conrad Veidt

-Sleeping

Five things on my to-do list

-Have to nip down to the shops on my own today. In fact, it’s exactly why I am memeing--I am at once trying to wake up but also being avoidant. Aaaarrrgh. But it’s an emergency because I am running out of caffeinated beverages.

-Must send a list of synopses of all my programme items at Redemption ‘17 to Big Dave. No, I have not forgotten. Just been fucking knackered and avoidant and the con stress is crushing me. I really don’t envy those of you on the committee who are doing the REALLY hard work.

-Actually prep those programme items properly. A taste of what’s to come and why you all should come to the convention because it’s awesome:

Talk: Queering Up Het because of course you need the guy in a dress and with a strap-on up his arse while the chick goes down on another chick, talk: Villains as Liberators in fanfic, het romance in particular and what they can give to fangirls/the heroines because they’re the Other and as such, less patriarchally shitty, history item: reading out shittons of OLD PORN FROM HISTORY with @coolserpentina (she’s doing Aretino; I’m doing Abu Nuwas), panels: some swashbuckling/Old Hollywood stuff where Big Dave and I and hopefully @filmforfancy talk about OH as a slash fucking goldmine and also Basil Rathbone’s horsecock fencing skillz, and some other stuff which I’ve forgotten and my head’s exploding already.

-Remember to buy basil today. I am out of basil. I have to just, like, draw a huge conk on a piece of paper to remind me. I fucking know I’m going to forget the basil.

-Ring the damn Social Insurance Institute to find out what the fuck’s up with my disabled housing allowance. I think they’re closed down for today. And I’ll be asleep during office hours for the rest of the week. Fuck.

Five things people may not know about me

-I actually keep a list somewhere to answer THIS EXACT QUESTION on all these memes, because whenever I’m asked these, I always struggle to come up with weird random facts. And then I remember several when I’m not memeing. And guess what? I’ve lost the sodding note. *face in hands, groaning*

1. I own an oversized dildo called Ainley and used to own a big German vibrator called Heinrich (Strasser), but he died. I also have a buttplug called Claude Rains. He's very small but very powerful and leaves you gasping and very satisfied after his performances. But I think you might already know this about me.

2. Well, most of you on here probably won’t know what the fuck about my various illnesses, but Non-24 is one of the three most debilitating ones. You go to sleep one hour later each night and wake up one hour later (most people have the form where your day is a 25-hour one instead of 24 hours) and you basically cycle through an entire day in a month’s time (at the beginning of the month you woke up at 4 AM, then 5 AM, 6 AM etc. and once a month’s passed, you’re waking up at 4 AM again). There’s no way of fixing the ever-sliding sleeping rhythm, not even with the strongest of knockout pills they gave to psychosis sufferers and believe you me, N24 sufferers have *tried everything*. And you’re always in a state of extreme exhaustion and jet lag, comparable to the level of fatigue narcolepsy sufferers have. So it’s a major pain in the arse whenever I try to schedule anything, whether it’s doctors’ appointments or chats with friends, because I literally don’t know when I will be awake on Thursday next week (because forced awakenings to go out and do stuff combined with poor quality of sleep, sometimes only getting 3 hours of sleep a night, complicate the rhythm even further). And whenever it’s one of those miraculous days on which I’ve slept enough to process fic, I *will* be ficcing, lest I go fucking nuts, so I will most definitely not be sacrificing my rare chances to be happy and fulfilled to anything else. (Even Important Adult RL stuff, if it can be put off, because my sanity’s more important.) I might also actually have narcolepsy on top of that, but they haven’t prodded me enough to find out yet. So. Yeah. I’m always fucking knackered and that’s why my sense of humour and sex drive are what they are--they’re all linked in that one part of the frontal lobe, so you get a person who’s constantly fucking exhausted AND constantly getting cracky ideas brought on by sleep deprivation AND who’s constantly horny. Basically, I should have married an anaesthetist.

3. ...I think that this year, I will have been writing fanfic for 20 years (if calculated from the time I encountered actual fanficcing culture and started to take part in it). And I feel ancient. And still slip into fucking badfic. OTOH, I’ve only written longfic since 2012 or so. Thanks to that dead German arsehole.

4. I own only two pairs of what you could vaguely call trousers. One pair is made of leather and one is just a pair of slacks. Whenever I wear them, I feel like I'm in drag. I'm way more comfortable in big flouncy skirts because they don't bind my hips/thighs/legs or ride up my crotch. And several layers of skirts are much, much warmer in the winter than several layers of tights/leggings/jeans or something. And with my chronic pelvic/back pain and limited mobility, ease of movement is essential. Fuck trousers, basically.

5. There should probably be something more interesting here, but I do have to go to the shops and I’ll just leave you with this: I’m hypermobile, which makes me able to scratch my ear with my toes, but also means I sprain everything all the time, adding to all the other funky pains I’ve got all over anyway. I can tie myself into a knot even without regular yoga exercise (this is another superpower of suck that’s only useful during sex), but it also means motherfucking sciatica every time I leave the house. I sometimes even count the amount of steps I manage to take outside the house before something in my back goes *crunch* and the sciatic nerve gets trapped and each step on whatever foot’s side it happened on will be one lancing lash of pain. Yay!

So, you know. This is why I don’t meme often and publicly because it just becomes a list of my illnesses. And I find that annoying because often it just gets in the way of what people know about me--they just see the sick woman. So I’d much rather focus on what’s on the inside--the porning and the poetry and all the creative, *pleasant* stuff. I’ve got a lot to escape from, so that’s why I escape and fucking hard. So I hope that escapism in the form of fics and pics and godawful tags will help others escape as well. I know how you feel and all that.

And now I’ve got to go and buy that horseco--I mean basil.