#proto worms

[ironcladfoundry]

For the MynameisByf ultimate lore video, I drew nearly every race from the lore of Destiny. So enjoy some headcanons.

The Precursors

The Lubraeans

The proto worms

The Krill

Kaharn Atol

The Ammonite

The Qugu

The Noesis

The Ahslid

The Ecumine

[thefirstknife]

One more thing. In the cutscene, when Eris starts chanting and "invokes the Worm gods," we hear her say three words:

"Akka... Xita... Sel..."

Obviously Akka and Xita are Worm gods. New Worm god just dropped??? We've never before heard the name "Sel." The only pattern I'm seeing in these being invoked is that Akka and Xita are dead. So maybe Sel is another, some forgotten Worm god that's died a long time ago. Or maybe it's just a word in the incantation, but that's a strange placement for it here with two other Worms.

[prekladatelsky-orisek]

Great post overall but obligatory reminder that Finnish and Swedish are not related.

I keep being amused by how modern languages that are related to each other have elements that feel "archaic" compared to each other, just by having retained different features of their common ancestors. My psych clinic's coat rack had the sign "we are not responsible of any clothing/valuables left here" in both finnish and swedish, and I chuckled a little since the swedish "vi ansvar inte" is so similar word-for-word to saying "we answer not [for the thing]", like hehehhe medieval-ass phrasing language, before I recalled that hold on, the word for "to be responsible for" is the same damn word as "to answer/to reply" in finnish.

We answer not for your stolen coat or phone.

[vintagerpg]

Squares will tell you that the first punk rock band was the Sex Pistols, formed in 1975, but this is hardly a settled matter among punk enthusiasts, who will cite the Ramones, the Saints, Television, the New York Dolls, the Electric Eels, Death, the Stooges, MC5, the Sonics and sundry garage bands stretching ever-further back down the timeline as the true progenitors of the form. When you believe it all started with the Pistols and one of these other acts hits your ears, you can feel the ground shift under your feet. Barony (1990) is kind of like that for TTRPGS.

The folder contains three booklets. The core rules are called Conrad’s Fantasy, though I’ve no idea who Conrad is. In fact, I have a hell of a hard time reading these rules. They’re just…dense and amateurish, full of asides and often just plain unclear. Despite this, I can still see the outline of a completely different kind of “free-style” game for 1990, one focused on storytelling rather than dice rolling and laying out ideas decades ahead of their time. There are no hit points, for instance; rather, characters have a stack of keywords they lose as they take damage (very much like Goblinville, for instance). Skills are checked by rolling 2d8, but there are degrees of success. Weapons aren’t defined, but rather combat tests the way a character uses them. The magic system is free-form, similar to Ars Magica, where players pick a law of reality to break and, anticipating Mage, work to prevent Reality from blowing back on them. Two booklets are devoted to generating games — one for scenarios, the other encounters — using Tarot cards; a third system in the core book uses Tarot to resolve epic combat against dragons (and I can’t help but compare all this Tarot stuff to the recently released His Majesty the Worm).

The result is…curious. It’s strange to read because it seems like 21st century RPGs owe many of their idea to Barony. But like proto-punk, I am not sure that is actually the case — Barony is not often cited and proved damnably difficult to find. Rather, I think these things maybe work in cycles, and that similarly minded designers arrive at the same conclusions sometimes, even if those times are on different points in the timeline. It’s still an amazing read. Er, well, it would have been, at least, if they’d hired an editor.

[theyonagoda]

Let's give it up for early Cambrian-era proto-fish!!!!

They look like worms on a string.

[bogleech]

question about the arthropod ancestors, if they didn’t evolve to have the legs at the head yet then what did their mouths look like? do we know?

Yeah! Those basal soft tube proto-bugs include Anomalocaris, Opabinia, various less popular Cambrian sea worms, AND today's fully living observable velvet worms! A typical lobopod mouth is just a fleshy iris, with hardened protrusions inside to function as "teeth" when necessary

Melvyn yeo's velvet worm photos go viral a lot for how adorable they are but they're hiding a facial sphincter with knives in it:

It's the same kind of mouth a lot of other soft-bodied animals evolved, such as polychaete worms and gastropods

When you're mostly meat with no jointed skeletal structure, you can still bite things by evolving a straightforward round hole reinforcing some of the inner tissues until they become a beak or some nice fangs

[professional-jaywalker]

Vermin

a short essay about being bug hearted, and killing bugs.

I think one of the most cruel thing to love might be invertebrates. Insects. Arachnid. Worms. Pest. With any other animal, it is seen as unreasonable to want to eradicate. Some insects do manage to earn human's favors, bees (but only the useful ones), moths and butterflies (but only the cute ones), and if you're facing a true bug lover, beetles and dragonflies and perhaps even spiders and centipedes and scorpions. But not all, and it's still simply reasonable, to hate even seeing them.

I've loved bugs since I was a kid. I think it felt wrong not to, because people didn't like them, and people didn't like me. I don't think I've ever understood what in how they move felt less alive for people than a puppy. Still now I love bugs. I love mosquitos and I love botflies and I love hornets and tiny annoying ants that crawl through the windows and cockroaches and the wasp that stung me on the thumb when I accidentally grabbed a stick she was resting on when I was 9.

You cannot possibly live a human life without killing countless things. It's impossible. The most vegan, most peaceful human, refusing to walk on grass to not harm the grasshopper that didn't jump fast enough, will not be able to live a life without killing an insect even accidentally. It's something I have thought about a lot overall. I'm not vegan. I've thought about it. It would make sense, I don't see a lot of difference between my own flesh and the flesh I eat. But somehow it feels even more insulting, to be something that kills, and to pretend I don't. I eat insects, too. I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly how I feel about it all.

Maybe it makes me an hypocrite, to be so perturbed about the way people treat insects when I still eat meat. But it's, I think, in the end, the fracture between someone seeing a dead cow, and a dead fly. Most people wouldn't have the courage to kill a cow. They would feel guilt. In fact, a lot of people already hide the fact that meat is flesh and is, strictly speaking, part of a cadaver. People who refuse to eat a fish with the head. Pork, not pig. Beef, not cow. I hate that too. But insects ? People kill a fly without even thinking about it. It's annoying, then it's dead. A dead fly doesn't elicit guilt.

People expect me to be the same. Even knowing I love insects, it's seen as amusing that I acknowledge them as more than a mindless automaton, and, if I can, if it costs me nothing, avoid killing them. I have killed countless insects. I've had to, purposefully, many many many times. But it is, in fact, killing. I just want to be allowed to recognize that.

I work in a lab, on ants. We dissected more than a hundred, ovaries, poison gland, brains, understanding how they work, how differentiation happens and how they communicate it. Reconstructing brains to evaluate changes in different structures, measuring how many proto-egg each individual has post-dissection and correlation to dominance, reading articles and articles about theory.

These specific ants like shallow humid grooves for their nest. Today we tested a large foraging arena, brightly lit for the cameras, dry, wide, open, empty. Ants panic after being picked up even with the least harmful tools we have. When in an unfamiliar space, we've had them in the past run until they died of exhaustion, unable to find the entry of the nest to hide. Two of them were placed in the foraging arena to test the cameras, test if we could read the tags they have on their back. Again and again, they like to follow the walls, possibly because it feels less exposed. And again and again, they stop, groom each other, and calm down if they meet, huddled into each other.

I can't claim to know what's going on in ants brain, whether they feel things similarly to us. But it's hard not to project.

Ant tagged 16, and ant tagged 12, close, unmoving.

[insirisarts]

Poppy Avn Characters pt.1

Ok I have everything for the first three characters down so here we go :).

Please note that these guys were made for my fanfiction of the au "Science Time with Dr. Pine" Which has mostly been expanded on by @aroace-get-out-of-my-face. This is in no way meant to impose on them or disregard their ideas for the au, I'm just doing my best with what we have so far.

I did my best to copy the GF style. But in actual artwork I make, I'll probably go closer to my usual style.

The other three will hopefully be done tomorrow.

Character info under the read more, in order from left to right.

Name, Age, Place of Birth-

Eliane Lopes (Eli): 16, Brazil-

Mainly works as a puppeteer until they start doing more human acting, then she works as an older sister figure for the puppets that are children. For the adult puppets (i.e. Dr. Pine), she works as an assistant to connect watchers to the topic. Her mom comes on set sometimes early on to see what exactly her daughter does for work (and starts to bring lunch too when they worm their way into her heart), then eventually joins and plays a role in teaching how to begin learning new languages. She will eventually act as a primary parental figure. 

As Eli gets older, and comes into her own, she will take on a more active role as she gets more experience from the others (Stan also teaches her how to pick-pocket and lock-pick because of course he did). Kind of becomes a proto-Wendy/Soos, where she gets taken under Stans’ wing and they develop a familial relationship, her mom also kinda takes in Stan in the same way and also teaches him to cook.

After everything with Ford happens Eli is saltier for a bit since she and Stan had bonded, but she gets over it fairly fast and is happy Stan could reconnect with his family. She and her mom gossip about him though.

Her main puppet is a younger one named ‘Rosie’ which, at first (season 1), is a small hand puppet with finger-controlled hands. Her main body is made of soft orange felt cloth, she wears a repurposed pink dress for dolls and has a head of red ‘hair’ made of string. She also had a round red nose and big ol’ googly eyes. The new Rosie puppet (season 2 and onward) is heavier and fuller, she is still felt, but her eyes are also now the classic felt kind too. Her body is plumped up with more padding, and she now has sticks to move her arms rather than fingers. She has a proper custom dress, along with a few other outfits for different activities. Her hair is also now proper faux hair, pressed into wild curls with a mix of string throughout the scalp (like her puppeteer).

Rosie is sweet and meant to connect to the younger audience, being the primary focus of the camera. She talks very kindly, and often is the character to reiterate the ‘lesson of the day’ at the end of segments. Otherwise, the other puppets will do their thing during their segments. Her and Dr. Pine are often paired together since they have good chemistry, they have a sweet student and teacher relationship.

-----

David Mercury: 17, NYC-

He is also a puppeteer to begin with, but when live actors start happening, he is often an extra since he’s a little camera shy as a human actor. Usually he will help with sets, moving things around, setting up lights or helping with adding details to set pieces. He doesn’t really talk about his home life. He is a big fan of rock bands like QUEEN, AC/DC and KISS.

He has an interest in the cameras early on and will often stay after hours to ask how everything works to actually make a segment look good. Otherwise, he can be found around town late into the evening. After he becomes an adult, he also starts to learn how to operate the cameras and eventually goes to college for film while working on PA on the side. He eventually becomes PA’s main cameraman. He and Eli become good friends.

When the Ford stuff is figured out, he  works with Ford to make a mini documentary about Gravity Falls; it doesn’t get released until years later after Fords’ research is published since it was primarily a passion project. He composes all of the shots and makes all of the music for it too. He did outsource to a college friend for editing though.

His primary puppet is a skinny little tube of a guy named ‘Casey’, closer to a teen in terms of a puppet kid. At the start (season 1) He is made with bright blue textured cloth, with a long pale felt nose, googly eyes and staggered segments of cut black felt cloth ‘hair’, similarly his clothes are bits of felt cut into a sort-of T-shirt. The newer Casey puppet (season 2 and onward) gets the stuffed felt treatment too. He's still a skinny thing, he just has more shape and definition, along with custom clothes as well and short fake hair.

He acts as a way of establishing the ‘situation’ for the day that the lesson is centered around. Otherwise, he mainly acts as a third man to bounce interactions off of to make things feel more natural. He has a sort of plain nasally voice and has a bit of a sarcastic streak. He is often the focus of episodes about friends or social interactions. He is usually in the main Rosie segments where they act as a duo.

-----

John Richards: 24, New Mexico-

Started as the muscle and helped with the set building, since he is such a big guy, being an ex-football player. But when Tina the Tiny T-Rex gets introduced (season 2), he plays her since her costume is so heavy. Her lines are dubbed over in post by a later hire. He looks like a massive terrifying bear, but he is actually very sweet. He and Stan are buds and both work on PA until they both retire. Even then, they stay in contact despite living in different states.

He is the guy who tackles Ford when he attacks Dr. Pine, and thusly, he isn’t very fond of Ford until after he and Stan work out their stuff. Then it’s constant teasing by making Ford join in lesson segments about family when he is featured in the show. There are so many videos of Tina doing football stuff that it causes women's football to go on the rise for a while. He takes pride in this fact as he is the oldest of 3 and his two sisters look up to him a lot.

Tina is a T-Rex done sort of in the style of Barney the Dinosaur. She has a big head with long stocky legs and small arms that are mostly controlled by the hands around the ‘biceps’ of the costume. Coincidentally, she is also mostly scientifically accurate due to the plumage of ‘feathers’ (read: fake party feathers and string) on her back, joints and tail, which were used to hide the actor better. She is a plumb-ish color on her felt ‘scaled’ parts and dark blue-ish on her ‘feathers’.

She is excitable and sporty, encouraging play and healthy activity, always trying to inspire the others to try out some form of sport or physical movement. Otherwise, she will often be the one to ask questions about the ‘lesson of the day’ and address anything that the audience might get confused on.

[greatwyrmgold]

(raises hand) I think the Terrible Popular Worm Fandom would have a Nazi problem. Sorry if this clashes with the tone of other Terrible Popular Worm Fandom speculation.

Worm was written at a time where white people like me and Wildbow thought of neo-Nazis as Blues Brothers villains; they're bad people who want to commit unspeakable crimes against humanity, but they're too unpopular to be an actual threat. So Wildbow was kinda sloppy with Empire 88; on paper, there are points being made about white supremacy, but most of those were still half-formed when Kaiser got axed and E88's remnants quickly faded from narrative significance.

About nine months after Worm wrapped up, GamerGate knocked over the biggest domino that lead to neo-Nazis becoming an actual political threat, and one of the proto-alt-right's big targets was online fandoms. And the Parahumans fandom already has a notable minority who see Kaiser as a kinder, more honorable villain compared to the savage ABB and fillty Merchants.

If Worm was more popular, there would be more people in its fandom. There would therefore be more Nazi sympathizers and more apolitical teens, both of whom are useful targets for the alt-right. So they'd probably poke their way into /r/parahumans (and possibly other Worm fan communities) and do their radicalization pipeline thing. Make POC and queer people and so on feel unwelcome, spread reactionary rhetoric and memes, etc.

Two specific traits of Wildbow's become relevant at this point. First, he consistently tries to support everyone Nazis hate. He's often hilariously unsuccessful, but he tries. Second, he is perhaps too involved with his fan communities.

So once Wildbow realized his community had a Nazi problem, he would almost certainly try to do something about it. I have absolutely no confidence that it would be effective.

[victoriadallonfan]

VICTORIA NEVER COMPLAINS ABOUT BACK PAIN IN HER INTERNAL MONOLOGUE AND SHE NEVER MENTIONS HAVING A HARD TIME BUYING BRAS AND OTHER FLATTERING CLOTHES

You can tell who’s a fake fan by the fact that Peri forgets that not only does Victoria do exercises to strength her core and back, but Taylor notes personal forcefields are used for chest support!

In fact I have WoG and quotes from Guts and Glory (the proto Worm story that WB claims is canon adjacent) that point to further evidence of Pericardium not just being a fake fan, but not having actually read anything about Victoria at all!

In this thesis I-

[allwormdiet]

Your recent post on Arc 8 have got me wondering if the dice roll was, on a certain level, an artifact of a Worm that never was. Like a lot of web serials, Worm is a giant first draft, so a lot of early ideas and elements that would have been sanded off in later edits remain as discordant notes. @artbyblastweave has described how you can see the traces of a campier Worm with a more conventional kitchen-sink superhero setting in the early arcs. (There's a WoG out there where Wildbow discussed how the decision on whether to include magic or not in the setting was made late in the day, which would have completely altered the entire story.) Anyway, in another WoG WB described that in his initial conception Worm would be more of an ensemble piece. Taylor would have been one of multiple protagonists exploring different aspects of the setting. In that version of Worm, Taylor would have had a smaller part in the story, so she could have been killed off and replaced while the other protagonists continued their stories. However, WB probably realized pretty quickly that he'd hit paydirt with her character, so Worm quickly became the Taylor Hebert Show. While he may have always planned to roll the dice for the Leviathan arc, settling on a single protagonist would have changed what those rolls meant for the story. (I do want to emphasize that I am not making that dumb "Worm was only good by accident!" argument. I think WB just set out wanting to write a superhero story with a bunch of details up in the air, and when he hit on something good he leaned into it. Most stories start out like this; the nature of serialized web fiction just means we're more aware of the sausage-making process than we are for most published fiction that (mostly) tucks it out of sight.)

That's an interesting line of thought, honestly.

As someone who's dabbled in serialized fiction and had not nearly as much success, either in terms of popularity (hah) or in terms of actually finishing the fucking things (hah hah), it's an outrageously difficult format to work with because you set so much of it in stone as you go along and you might not realize until too late that you've changed your mind about something, and that gets a lot harder to work with the more of it is already published.

I know that there were prior versions of Worm where the protagonist was entirely different (iirc the main one of note was centered on Glory Girl and Panacea called Guts and Glory, but I think there was at least one point where Brian was considered for the protagonist), and that even the first version of Taylor's story was scrapped some time before making Worm (Myriad?)

It'd be easy to believe that there's some version of the story very early on where Taylor or a proto-Taylor bites the dust, you get that even with more major productions; Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad was gonna die in the first season and they changed that mid-filming. All I can really say is that I'm glad as fucking hell that Wildbow realized that Taylor was a bullseye protag choice.

Now if only he would stop putting her in all of these horrible situations

[ducktracy]

Do you think the best plot twist from a looney toons cartoons/movies was the ending from "Duck-Amuk", or is there a better plot twist then that?

what i wouldn't GIVE to be able to see Duck Amuck with fresh eyes again!! i love Duck Amuck a lot but it's unfortunately one of those Chuck Jones shorts where i've been exposed to it so much that the twist ending has no real surprise effect on me anymore. it's a great ending though, especially compared to something like Rabbit Rampage (i just forgot the title and sat there for 15 seconds going "what was it?? Rebel Rabbit? no! Rhapsody Rabbit? no!! r.. Redrawn Rabbit???" which probably speaks to.. something) whose ending is just completely illogical and lame. in the words of the immortal proto-Fudd, "I DON'T BELIEVE IT"

BUT! to answer your question. this is probably one i'll come back to because i was kicking myself that i missed. there's a lot of great twist endings out there, but one of my favorites is probably Hare Brush, in that it's revealed that Elmer has been acting like a rabbit through entire cartoon NOT because he's having a psychotic break, like the story establishes it as, but so he can get away with tax evasion. maybe hits harder having seen the entire cartoon but it's great, i love Arthur Q. Bryan's line read here

before i remembered this though i almost answered with the ending to Quentin Quail. it's not so much a twist ending so much as it is a "wtf" ending but there are few things funnier to me on this earth than the Baby Snooks caricature refusing to eat a worm--in which this cartoon is all about her poor father killing himself trying to get said worm for her to eat--because it looks too much like Frank Sinatra. took my breath away the first time i saw it. this is my exact sense of humor and i feel so vindicated that this 78 year old cartoon could jump across generations and appeal so personally to me specifically

[mysteryevolution]

5, for the hatchling ask game? (could also be taken as a free space to share hearthian specbio headcanons if you'd like :D )

Oh. Oh boy! Thank you for the ask because this is gonna be fun! Long rant incoming, so I'll go ahead and put this all below a read more.

Prepare to learn about nictating membranes, gills, brachial hearts, scale coloration/patterns, why I think Hearthians have four eyes, and how those eyes function. Not quite in that exact order.

Eyes, Color Vision, and Nictating Membranes -

So, the reason some aquatic organisms on earth developed four eyes or mechanisms adjacent to four eyes (such as split pupils) was to see above and below water at the same time. This is likely the same reason Hearthians evolutionarily have four eyes. (If you don’t already know about them, check out some photos of anableps, also called the “four-eyed fish.” A lot of my science for this post was inspired by anableps .)

Proto-Hearthians are mentioned to have resided in pools of water within caves, and it’s likely that those pools contained debris that could be stirred up by movement, such as a loose sediment, and they would need a way to protect their eyes while retaining visual acuity. Hence, Hearthians have a nictitating membrane: not quite a third eyelid! But kind of. It's close. It's there to help with underwater navigation via not letting silt directly hit the eyeball.

Additionally, a Hearthian’s top eyes and bottom eyes have different color receptors. One of the best colors for penetrating murky/lower visibility water is yellow light. As such, their lower eyes, which are meant to spend more time below water, contain red and green color receptors to create the illusion of yellow by mixing the two light wavelengths! The top eyes contain blue and green color receptors, and their brains essentially piecemeal the information from both sets of eyes to create “true color” vision. 

(This means not only is Gossan’s depth perception messed up, so is their color vision. Or it’s at least somewhat skewed, unfortunately for them. Oops?)

Gills, Three Hearts, and a Little Bit of Metamorphosis -

Hearthians have gills along their sides/ribs. And you may be thinking, hey? Doesn’t Hatchling drown in the game if they jump into water? Why would you give them gills? That's weird.

Yes. But by all appearances, Hearthians are amphibious, and it would make sense that Hatchling would know how to swim. Hatchling clearly does not, but that's a whole different can of worms. Of course, amphibians on Earth don’t retain gills unless they remain in their larval form, such as axolotls, but I have to have a little fun deviating from Earth norms when it comes to aliens. We (I) slap neoteny on things here (in my headcanons). 

Graphite “the worst amphibian on the entire planet” is an outlier and should not be included in data. The fact they drown so quickly, however, inclines me to believe that to remain game accurate, I must account for why the gills…are so very bad at their job. (It's either that or Graphite/Hatchling specifically just forgets how breathing works. Let me be real here, they would.)

How the gills are orientated: they run horizontally from a hand’s length below the shoulder blade to the front of the body. Pretend to draw a line vertically from where the hip bone meets the femur. That's approximately where the gill slits stop. There are two sets on either side of the body. 

These gills are not useless to the point of vestigial, per se, but they’re not the most functional organ either. There are two brachial hearts that branch off the main heart, one on the left gills and one on the right gills, (a mechanism observed in many real fish! Examples include cuttlefish - my main inspiration here - as well as hagfish (except they have four hearts), and octopi). Most real reptiles and amphibians have three chambered hearts as opposed to the mammalian four chambered heart, so the brachial heart structure used here is essentially just a more extreme version of spacing out those bits. The brachial hearts help move oxygen more efficiently into the bloodstream when it is taken in by the gills.

Gills are a remnant from the completely aquatic tadpole stage of the Hearthian lifecycle. Tadpoles have cute little webbed fingers and toes, a tail, very prominent gills, and lack of external ears. They still have internal ear canals, but sound travels much farther through water, and external ear shells aren't necessary for picking up vibrations. If anything, they'd create more drag when swimming, and that's counterproductive to survival. This stage lasts for about a year until the tadpole is ready to fully transition onto the land. They'll undergo a metamorphosis as they get closer to the one-year mark, losing most of their tails and webbing, growing proper air-breathing lungs, and developing external ears. Once they can breathe air, they're considered a hatchling.

Culturally, there's two stages to hatchlinghood: "you've still got some of your tail left" stage, and the "you no longer have a tail" stage, or, in human terms, pre-teen and teen.

Even though the gills and brachial hearts remain throughout all life stages, they don’t increase proportionally to body size once the tadpole stage is over. This means they don't have the capability to keep up with the energy demands of an adult body. The main heart is doing most of the cardiovascular work now.

Additionally, a lot of the water they might find themself swimming in isn’t oxygen rich. Breathing through gills will only provide a very meager amount of supplemental oxygen. They can, however, breathe better in cold water because of the higher concentration of dissolved oxygen available. You would think this is counterintuitive because, well, warm water is a better solute, right? And you'd be correct. But that also means warmer water contains a higher amount of CO2 than cold water, the same reason warm sodas go flat. The CO2 that couldn't dissolve before at lower temperatures suddenly can dissolve. This is not good for breathing.

When a hatchling or adult does breathe through their gills, picture it like this: you’re running, and you get a stitch in your side. You continue running while trying to breathe, and your breaths become fast and shallow. The balance of CO2 and oxygen is thrown off by breathing in this way, even though it’s a mechanism meant to try and disperse the buildup of lactic acid from your muscles. As such, you’re breathing, but you are not breathing efficiently. It can't be sustained for long. That, and in this analogy, you're breathing in a liquid, and you'd have to exhale underwater before you try breathing air again. Otherwise, you will start choking. Drowning. One of the two. It’s not the world’s best pulmonary system.

Scale Patterns and Coloration -

So, there’s this very fun form of camouflage present in many real animals called countershading. Countershading is exactly what it sounds like: two different colors working to provide protection in different environmental contexts simultaneously. Thinking mainly of birds and fish here, these organisms often have lighter bellies (ventral coloration) and darker backs (dorsal coloration). This is because when viewed from below, they are backdropped against the sky, or the top of the water column, lit by the sun, which is brighter than the rest of their surroundings. When viewed from above, they are seen backdropped against the darker colors of the ground or the depths of the waters. I think Hearthians should get lighter colored scales (off white/yellow-ish) on their tummies as a treat. 

As for scale patterns, why have patterns at all? What’s the point? There are two answers here, and I will only go into detail with the latter: attraction of mates and more camouflage!

Essentially, like many real animals, it’s likely that their spots/scale patches are a form of camouflage. And in my mind since the Hearthians all have mineral names (or names related to geological features, looking at Esker and Moraine there, lol), the naming convention stems from the idea that tadpoles are initially covered in spots to blend in with the rocky bottom of the pools they hatch in! These spots develop into more complex patterns as they age. …I also imagine their eggs look like rocks in all likelihood. Prevent predation by pretending to be rocks, y’all. No one wants to eat those. 

In short: Proto-Hearthian had spots because rocky bottom of habitat + outside pressures necessitating them = pebble-like spots on tadpoles = oooh, pretty scale patterns in modern Hearthians.

If you made it through this post, kudos to you! No seriously. Thank you for reading. If you want to hear my thoughts about Hearthian egg development, courtship rituals, child rearing structures, or pretty much anything else, my asks are open. I have speculative evolution-based rants for all of that stuff. Also, plants. I have so many thoughts about space plants.

[space-writes]

heyyyyy i'm here for random interesting notes/facts about claws pls + ty

(ask me about the contents of my wip folder)

i am always down to throw out random claws facts~

fun fact number one! the names of all the demons and where i stole them from:

- spider → Arachnis (adapted from arachnid) - moth → Mohden (adapted from the Old English Northumbrian mohde) - centipede → Hunterada (adapted from the proto-Germanic hundarada, hypothesised to be an early word for hundred (hunda (hundred) rada(count)) - worms → Vermeste (adapted from the name of an obsolete taxon used by carolus linnaeus and jean-baptiste lamarck for all non-arthropod invertebrates) - wasp → Guespen (adapted from Old French guespe, which became current French guêpe (wasp)) wasp took forever because all the old words for wasp that i could find initially were just. wasp. but spelt slightly different. wasps were always wasps, apparently

fun fact number two! for draft 2 i'm reworking Alice to be more Pacted (the way i kinda initially wanted her, but she didn't come out exactly right), and her new Pact stuff is very fun:

Pacted to Hunterada. Sacrificed [redacted] and gifted her [TBD] in exchange for fortune. Hunterada drops manifestations out of her, that are constantly growing inside her new organ, to be able to manipulate reality in small ways around her so she can always get what she wants (like making people passing want to come into her club, not the next one down the road; to click on her video, not ignore it; for people who buy her sludge to always avoid getting caught.)

so she's gonna be way more Pacted-looking, with weird little demonic sludgey centipedes crawling out of her skin! v excited for the extra layer of body horror it will add to the book

[aicosu]

Pathologic headcanons? You mentioned having a lot of them

So fucking many I dont know where to start? Maybe with bigger ones? Then character ones?

The Town/Kin

- I actually played much of p2 first before playing 1 and then returning to finish 2. So I have a lot of attachment to the Kin, and Boddho and their pov.

-I think that Boddho is an empty nesting eldritch mother. That she either is like... Illuvatar from Silmarillion (from what my husbands told me) where she came or grew from earth and wanted to make specificslly humans, but made the worms and brides and shabnaks first at her version of the Valor, or their job is to prepare the world for her true children (humans). even as "excess materials" shabnaks excess bones, worms excess muscle, and brides excess blood. But she didnt expect them to grow out of their need for her. Steppe life does eventually evolve towards integrating with the settlement and she resents creations who can create towers to heaven without her. Hence plague. But again, boddho creates creatures who are individually sentient. Even some of the proto kin seem rebellious. So I imagine the plague too, is sentient with its own ideas and goals. Poor boddho seems a bit immature and frustrated that yes. Eventually, even the plague and kin will want to grow and elvove without her.

-or shes already dead. Love the dead boddho theory, thanks andrey stamatin. That maybe everyone who hears boddho is just hearing her talk from centuries ago cause shes to unfathomable and eldritch creature to speak to. Neat! I think it doesnt hold up in 2, since you see her (someones?) Heart beating but cool.

-i do think the proto humans have preferences but dont know what a preference even is. Theres obviously (in p2, i know p1 was more an obvious patriachal straightfoward thing) brides who prefer townsfolk and brides who prefer the steppe. There are worms who like the city people they make friends with, and shabnaks that feel fear but aspire to grow ans meet and learn langauge.

Daniil Dankovsky

-trans daniil just makes so much damn sense to me its stupid like its perfect. At first I thought maybe he was amab and experiencing gender envy at the women in the town, coming to a conclusion he's in denial of why he favors their company or feels a sort of kinship with. To me, women are to Daniil what children are to Artemy. His bound in 1 as the uptopians is eh to me, but yet anytime he is speaking with Lara or Yulia, even Aspity, there is a understanding, condescending, even familial, protective frustration he has thats so complicated.

-to me that works so well as his journey as afab. Only child. Born to a young dead mother and a military man who didnt want much to do with him.

-I imagine him pursuing college and medical school for a year before his father dies and he drops out to transition. Ive seen other fans of transkovsky say he invented hrt himself, but if I think about how medical was approached or even philosphized about in patho or the older days I think he approached it by killing singular nerves and doing invasive surgey. They werent super great at the hormone or brain level and its just more... danils style to think to himself "i will literally kill what i dont need or want" (and then wearing uterus trophies on his neck because he cant brag out loud)

-which leads me to my other headcanon that this secret invasive self experiments and his success at splicing himself gave him a bit of cancer or a debilitating "mystical" disease he refuses as mystical. While i do love daniil being pompous about defeating death just cause hes pompous, I also love the idea that he wants all his cake and flowers. He succeeded in defeating gender, birth, orientation, and now its making him die? How unfair. How horrible. No one will steal his time at finally being himself not even death.

-thanatica I see as a mask over that research, too. Cause he can not come out and show himself off to substantiate his achievements. The medical world would be too distracted by the social ques to care that, hey, I've stopped cell generation. I've propugated cells. I've made parts of a body grow that stopped in the womb. Its a breakthrough he cant discuss so hes hauling in dead bodies and reanimating skin with the same methods or stacing off tuberculosis with the same technique hes using to stave off his death disease and it give him all this internal, unvalidated, seething frustration that he cant just scream what a fucking genuis he is. (He does anyway but without that to back him up)

-I think he joins the military for a year or two and assumes the identity of a dankovsky son. And the military stupidly, weirdly, validates him in his identity but also hardens him the way war does. The way death does when you have soldiers dying on your medical table. Then goes back and finishes his degree before opening thanatica.

-i hc Daniil as a messy bisexual. I think pre transistion he was always attracted to women actually, and that also motivated him to a smaller degree of well, why not get married to a lovely lady. Why not be the head of my household. Why not conquer society and genetics and death and enjoy things I could not myself feel comfortable to portray, but want to covet.

-you know and he gets to busy to actually finally indulge in that and then gets to town on ghorkan and meets artemy burakh and is like, wait, no, stop, this isnt the plan dammit.

-but I do think also that's complicated when it comes to sex and love. I can identify aapects or a gradient of a sexuality to him. Not necessarily demisexual, but his identity and his mind can get in the way of desires or even, that it takes a specific amount of vulnerability that he avoids. So maybe it's trauma or his being on the spectrum. So in his journey of self-discovery, maybe he's been a lot of whatever "labels." I think so much of labels and identity play into his vast acknlowdgement of philosophy too. Why talk about sex at all if we arent also talking about society and death and culture and etc (que daniil stopping his one night stand mid sentence to lecture about the differences of breeding expectations in different economic structures or population.)

-I ship daniil with Burakh mostly, (stamatins and block too at times) but I also ship him with the Marble Nest bride at the stillwater, who I guess is like a projected OC of mine. (Shes a special model, one of the only ones wearing jewelry and also one of the only kin whose sweet to daniil? She also seems critical of her own culture "weddings are a sad thing for us". I have a million headcanons and ideas for them two, who I think he names her Theralydice (thera for theraputrix the assitants to aescluipis or healers, therayl for feral or wild, and dice for custome or law as well as a common form for femininenames) Something heretically latin and inappropriate and artemy shakes him stupid for naming a bride at all- "but how will I refer to the only reasonable one burakh") but I wont bore you with all that crack.

OTHER:

Sorry this has already gotten so long so ill just list random other stuff.

-I think burakh is a man of little words not cause he's shy or reserved but because hes very smart about his town. He knows that information and gossip spread like wildfire. And stating his ideas, thoughts, plans, TO ANYONE so plainly (as dankovsky does) means in another twenty minutes 6 other people might find out and stop him. It's in his best interest to act stupid and complacent. It's the best idea to shrug at young vlad and go "idk maybe" because saying yes or no would maybe mean making an enemy.

-I think there are two eldritch horros now one. Aside from boddho i think the mistresses are hearing something else out there in the ether. Same as those whispers to peter about building the polyhedron. Boddho from this planet or not, something in that void is wanting to come in and use her or the earths power to its own end. Town on Ghorkon seems like an open battery everyone wants to suck dry. And while the kains can talk a big talk about plans for nina or simon, I wouldnt be suprised if someone or something kicked their souls out and took over for itself.

-I 1000 percent think Aspity is the first outbreak in human form if that wasn't already established. But I also dont think clara is. But I do love the idea that it's possible to do. In the same way, maybe annaAngell occupies Willows body? Hmm.

-also all yes to everyone is just actually dolls, but then wheres the fun in hc-ing the world lore???

[mossinformed]

The protonema is an algae-like stage that follows right after the spore germinates. The worm phase if you will. Proto= first, nema=thread