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cutiekaijumuseum · 6 months ago

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A little trivia for those that just got introduced to Ultraman thanks to Ultraman Rising

You know that part where baby kaiju Emi is shown a kids cartoon with an earworm of a song?

That cartoon is real!! It's called Kaiju Step Wandabada and it stars cute kid versions of different monsters from different Ultraman series (mostly the original from 1966 wich Rising is also based on). The opening shown in the movie is in stop-motion while the cartoon itself is in 2D.

The Ultraman heroes don't appear in person, but bizarrely enough they seem to exist as fictional superheroes in-universe, with the kaiju kids having toys and dolls of them. It's no surprise Emi liked it so much! She would be right at home in this show!

The episodes are 5 minutes long, there are two seasons of 26 episodes each for a total of 52. The official Tsurubaya channel has the first episodes of both seasons uploaded...

youtube

...but the rest were sadly only up for a limited time cuz gotta sell the dvds. What is officially available online right now is a series of educational shorts.

Some years ago Marvel Comics got the rights to make Ultraman comics and made a mini-series called "The Rise of Ultraman" (no relation), and these Kaiju Step designs got to appear as part of in-universe instructional videos about dealing with monsters and aliens:

So let's have a quick rundow on the little monsters and where each comes from:

Pigmon or Pig-chan is the main protagonist and new kid in town (forest). This coral-looking guy is one of the most iconic and recurring ultra monsters and the go-to kid-friendly one, as he stood out among the original set of kaiju for being friendly and heroic (as well as human-sized). He has the bad habit of dying in many of his apperences but fortunately that's not the case here.

Kanegon or Kane-chan is the second member of the protagonist trio, and the most energic and simple-minded. A coin purse monster that eats money, and usually a human kid under a curse. He actually pre-dates Ultraman, appearing in the black-and-white anthology series Ultra Q wich had monsters but not superheroes. Fortunately this one doesn't need to eat money and was born a kaiju.

Alien Dada or Dada-chan is the reliable but temperamental inventor of the trio, he dreams of building a rocket ship. One of the most iconic villains from the original 1966 Ultraman (and that's saying a lot), it's a weird alien with weird powers looking for human subjects for his weird experiments, like testing his shrinking ray. He really earns the name of a weird art movement.

Gomora or Gomo-chan is probably the most iconic ultra kaiju of all. Remember how in Ultraman Rising there is this whole sequence where the dad omniously talks about fighting him? There is a good reason for that. Gomora had the only two-parter in the original 1966 series, and was able to actually defeat Ultraman in their first figh. He's essentially Godzilla if he lived underground rather than underwater (He's even been a good guy and had a robot counterpart). Here, however, Gomora is a chill guy who's passionate about agriculture. (btw, you can also spot Gomora in Rising on a screen around an hour and eight minutes into the movie).

Red King or just Red is another iconic ultra dino, that looks like corn. In the show he's brute but well-meaning, and has a friendly sport rivalry with Kemur-chan. But in the Ultraman series he's a sadistic and murderous bully who beats up weaker monsters but gets his butt kicked rather easily by Ultraman (although more recent incarnations have have been more positive, both in his fighting ability and sometimes even becoming a loving father). (and yes, you are right, he's not red).

Jamira or Jami-chan is a passionate archeologist and fossil collector in the show, whereas in the original Ultraman he was a human astronaut that got infected by a virus. He hasn't appeared much beyond his debut... but doesn't need to, as his episode was very memorable in how sad and tragic it was. I can't imagine the target audience's whiplash seeing this cute creature one moment collecting fossils and the next having a horrible sad death. I guess one could say the same for most of the characters, but this one takes the cake.

Miclas or Mic-chan is the youngest character, a baby, and loves bugs. He was one of the "capsule monsters" from the second ultra series, Ultra Seven. Sometimes the titular ultra wouldn't be able to fight himself so he would summon up to three very loyal monsters from little capsules to do the fighting instead (or at least buy some time, they weren't very strong). One was a triceratops, another was a robot bird, but the most iconic had to be Miclas because really, what even is he? Some kind of bull toad hybrid? (By the way, fun fact, the capsule monsters were one of the inspirations for Pokemon).

King Joe (yes, that's his name) or Joe-chan is a robot controlled by alien invaders and is to Ultra Seven what Gomora is to the original Ultraman: he's the subject of a two-parter and was able to beat the hero to a pulp at first, made harder to fight by his ability to divide into three flying parts. Fortunately this Joe is very shy and very friendly.

Eleking or Ele-chan from Ultra Seven is another of the "mascot" ultra kaiju. If two ultra kaiju have to appear in anything, chances are they will be Gomora and Eleking. In fact, in Ultraman Rising you can see Eleking in a monitor right next to Gomora (around an hour and eight minutes in). It's a dinosaur-like eel monster with (of course) electric powers, and the enforcer of an all-female bug-like alien species set to conquer the earth, that are nonetheless very affectionate towards their pet-weapon dino-eel. The fact that Eleking's masters are always women may explain why the Kaiju Step one is a very femenine and elegant girl despite having King in the name, though no less dangerously electric.

Alien Guts or Guts-chan here is a very little alien bird child who can multiply into three separate individuals to cause all the destruction in their sincere attempts to help out. The original duo from Ultra Seven meanwhile are ruthless alien invaders that are infamous for freaking crucifying the aforementioned hero, leading to decades of japanese media having christian imagery for the sake of looking cool, most notably Neon Genesis Evangelion, because these birds did it first and it looked so cool.

Alien Kemur or Kemu-chan is a very agile alien that comes from the distant future of 2020 to consume humans and extend his lifespan. Here he's a friendly but competitive ninja from the present, and has a rivalry with Red King being the speed to his strenght. Like Kanegon, he pre-dates Ultraman, being from Ultra Q.

Motokureron or Kureron-chan originates from the whimsical, fairy-tale like Ultraman Taro. A kid found him as a baby and fed him until he grew to giant size, but when the kid couldn't feed him anymore he turned destructive; fortunately he was easy to pacify with food, including the kind that made him shrink. He retains his glutonny and clumsiness in Kaiju Step, often doing the bad thing (tm) so the others can teach the kids in the audience why you shouldn't do the bad thing (tm).

Nova or No-chan originates from the surprisingly dark Ultraman Leo. This creepy and bizarre ghost-like alien created a red mist that made people go crazy, and manipulated a kid with illusions of his deceased family, and under his cloth there are lots of tentacles and a scythe. So of course, in Kaiju Step she's a happy and energic little girl that loves to sing.

Mugera or Muge-chan is by far the most obscure kaiju of the cast. She's from the 2001 series Ultraman Cosmos, the one where the titular hero protects monsters instead of fighting them. Mugera is an ET-like cryptid that lives in an amusement park that only kids can see, with the ability to fix toys and heal wounds with her magic. After the amusement park closes down she phones home and the protagonists have to protect her from the goverment wich is a little too eager to shoot down the UFO that came to pick her up. In Kaiju Step she likes reading and plants.

And that was your daily dose of kaiju sugar, that may be overdose because you probably already met Emi. Cheers!

#ultraman #ultraman rising #kaiju step #kaiju #marvel comics #long post

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cloudedmoonofficial · 2 months ago

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Career paths that cats chose to pursue is a very important part of colony culture. Here's a breakdown of what each symbol means.

On the left, the phases of the moon and the stars indicate the wisdom of elders. They are revered parts of any Captain's Council.

Right, Envoy's make-up a Captain's Elite. They uphold the Captain's words and stand up for their Colony as potential leaders, so stars and claw represent their role for the colony and their votes on the Council.

Herbalists don't just care for their colony, they oversee the growth and continued health of their colony's agriculture.

Keepers are the heart of their colony, so each colony has a special symbol for their Keepers. In order, these are: Field, with the rising sun. Marsh, with the light of the moon. Oak, with a shining midday sun. And River with the setting sun.

Mentors pass down knowledge to New-Claws, who one day grow up to teach the next generation.

Rangers are the eyes and ears of the colony. Even if it's not a specialized position, a colony only functions with the work of the rangers. They hunt, they range the territory, they step in wherever they are needed.

A Captain's Second-in-Command is the cat closest to the Captain, enforcer of the Captain's decrees, and if the Captain should pass or retire, they become the new voice for the colony. The symbol also includes a symbol of their Captain, like shown below:

This is the symbol of Field Colony's Second, Forestleaf. And the symbol next to hers is Hazelfur's. Captain's get their own symbol to represent their title. Captain Hazelfur, the Reliable Earth.

Art by Snap

#tascloudedmoon #envoys #rangers #mentors #seconds #keepers #fieldcolony #Captain #Herbalists #Forestleaf #Hazelfur

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metamatar · 4 months ago

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In 1975, civilian nuclear technology was part of a worldwide strategy to bring the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC) to heel. That body’s power seemed unprecedented, given that most of its countries were historically impoverished or “backward” peoples. [...]

Many developing countries did adopt nuclear technologies, often with crucial parts of their national infrastructures relying on American and European expertise, equipment, and fuel. Rather than seeing liberation from nature, such countries faced renewed forms of dependence. Iran certainly never gained reliable access to uranium and did not become the economic miracle envisioned by Ansari back in 1975. Instead of lifting up the poorer nations of the world, the global nuclear order seemed structured in ways reminiscent of the colonial era. The most heated debates within the IAEA pitted the nuclear weapons states against the so-called LDCs—less developed countries. The agency never became a storehouse for fission products. Instead, one of its primary functions was to monitor an arms control treaty—the Treaty 4 on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. By the end of the century, the IAEA was referred to as a “watchdog,” known for its cadre of inspectors. In 2003, IAEA inspections were crucial talking points in public debates about the invasion of Iraq by the United States [...] evidence gathered over the years by the agency created for the peaceful atom was being interpreted by the United States government as justification for military intervention. [...]

Focusing only on arms control glosses over the domestic politics of nuclear programs, particularly the role of high technology as symbols of state power and legitimacy. But it also does not square with what scholars of the Cold War have been pointing out for decades—that governments, especially the United States, deployed science and technology as diplomatic tools, to achieve feats of prestige, to shape business arrangements, to conduct clandestine surveillance, or to bind countries together with technical assistance programs. Poorer countries’ dreams of modernization, of using advanced technology to escape hunger, poverty, and the constraints of nature—these were the stock-in-trade of US diplomacy. Why, then, should we imagine that the promises connected to peaceful uses of atomic energy were any less saturated with geopolitical maneuvers and manipulation? [...]

American officials in the late 1940s and early 1950s were very worried that commercial nuclear power would siphon off supplies of uranium and monazite needed for the weapons arsenal. So they explicitly played down the possibility of electricity generation from atomic energy and instead played up the importance of radioisotopes for medicine and agriculture—because such radioisotopes were byproducts of the US weapons arsenal and did not compete with it. The kinds of technologies promoted in the developing world by the United States, the USSR, and Europeans thus seemed neocolonial, keeping the former colonies as sites of resource extraction—a fact noticed, and resented, by government officials in India, Brazil, and elsewhere. Mutation plant breeding, irradiation for insect control or food sterilization, and radioisotope studies in fertilizer—these were oriented toward food and export commodities and public health, problems indistinguishable from those of the colonial era. These were not the same kinds of technologies embraced by the global North, which focused on electricity generation through nuclear reactors, often as a hedge against the rising political power of petroleum-producing states in the Middle East. By the mid-1960s and 1970s, the United States and Europe did offer nuclear reactors even to some of the most politically volatile nations, as part of an effort to ensure access to oil. Convincing petroleum suppliers of their dire future need for nuclear reactors was part of a strategy to regain geopolitical leverage. Despite the moniker “peaceful atom,” these technologies were often bundled in trade deals with fighter jets, tanks, and other military hardware [...]

By the close of the century, two competing environmental narratives were plainly in use. One was critical of atomic energy, drawing on scientific disputes about the public health effects of radiation, the experience of nuclear accidents such as Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986), or the egregious stories of public health injustice—including negligence in protecting uranium miners or the wanton destruction and contamination of indigenous peoples’ homelands. In contrast was the narrative favored by most governments, depicting nuclear technology in a messianic role, promising not only abundant food, water, and electricity, but also an end to atmospheric pollution and climate change. [...]

As other scholars have noted, the IAEA tried to maintain a reputation of being primarily a technical body, devoid of politics. But it had numerous political uses. For example, it was a forum for intelligence gathering, as routinely noted by American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents. It also outmaneuvered the World Health Organization and Food and Agriculture Organization in the early 1960s and was able to assert an authoritative voice playing down public health dangers from atomic energy. Further, it provided a vehicle for countries to stay engaged in atomic energy affairs even if they did not sign on to the non-proliferation treaty—India, Pakistan, and Israel most notably. It provided apartheid-era South Africa with a means of participating in international affairs when other bodies ousted it because of its blatantly racist policies. By the same token, it gave the Americans and Europeans political cover for continuing to engage with South Africa, an important uranium supplier.

Introduction to The Wretched Atom, Jacob Hamlin

#jacob hamlin #nuclear power #readings

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serpentface · 6 months ago

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TRADITIONAL FOODS OF THE HIGHLANDS

The Highlands or 'Greathill' is a region in the central north-northwestern territory claimed by (but almost entirely uncontrolled by) the Wardi Empire. They are inhabited by a network of peoples collectively referred to as the Hill Tribes, who are not a unified or monolithic group but share ancestry, similar means of subsistence, and a common traditional diet.

The highlands are regionally unique for their altitude and relatively cool temperatures (and is the only part of the region that can expect snow on a yearly basis, with some of the highest peaks receiving snowfall year-round). The climate is overall dry, though the rivers are usually well fed by high altitude rains and snowmelt, and the river valleys are wet enough year-round to sustain woodlands and more delicate agriculture.

Most vegetables can only reliably farmed in the river valleys, and these key regions are typically under the control of specific clans or tribes who dominate intra-Highlands trade networks. Those living outside of the river valleys have only occasional access to most farmed vegetables, and foraging is an important supplement to the core diet. Hardier crops are grown on terraced slopes, and the vast majority of the landscape is used as grazing pasture.

The regional cuisine revolves around grain (especially barley and most often taken in the form of bread), meat, cheese, milk, and yogurt. The flavoring stands in stark contrast to the surrounding Wardi cuisines, traditionally being only lightly seasoned (few spices are natively available) and mostly reliant on subtle herbal flavoring, though both palates are in agreement on the value of capsaicin.

Many of the Hill Tribes (or individual clans) have trade connections outside of the highlands, but food (aside from livestock) and spices are not common imports. The majority of the population have maintained traditional culinary practices that are unique among the wider region (though with some inevitable cultural cross-pollination).

Most dishes are eaten by hand out of serving plates and bowls, with spoons used for some soups and porridges. Almost every meal is served with flatbread, which is torn off and used to collect and eat the rest of the food. It is considered good manners to save a piece of bread for last, which will be used to soak up any remaining juices after a plate is cleaned (not doing so is a mild insult to the cook).

Tea is an important part of the daily routine, and is served alongside each meal. Traditional teas in this region are exclusively herbal and consumed for both taste and medicinal purposes, and none are caffeinated (though one has a stimulant effect). Tea is by far the most popular edible import in trade with the broader Imperial Wardi region (along with salt), with imports of tea leaves being desirable and having become quite popular in the last century.

Staple foods:

Barley- the absolute most important staple grain. Most barley grown in the region is a strain that better tolerates the highland’s regionally unique combination of seasonal cold, dry climate, and high altitudes.

Wheat- more delicate than barley and not as widely grown, but a key crop in the more fertile river valleys

Kulys- a native hardy, spiny plant that stores water in its trunk and is tolerant to dry and cold seasons. Its young stalks are edible, but the fruits and flowers are of greater regional importance. The flowers are used for a lightly sweet herbal tea, and the fruits are a important to the diet and usually eaten on their own.

Amaranth- a species of amaranth is regionally native and domesticated, with seeds eaten whole or ground into flour and leaves being used for green vegetables.

Squash- grown only in the river valleys and a key item in trade within the highlands. Squashes are found nowhere else on this side of the Viper seaway, and were likely brought along overseas by the original migrant population.

Chili peppers- several strains are grown in the region (ranging from very mild to chiltepin levels of capsaicin) and mostly used to create spicy yogurt sauces and to flavor stronger dishes.

Wild onion- a region-specific onion species, tolerant of harsh growing traditions but difficult to propagate, mostly foraged.

Magah- a farmed. potato-esque tuber, more strongly flavored and bitter than potatoes.

Dairy products- dairy is foundational to the diet and used to create a variety of yogurts, creams, butters, and cheeses, and milk is often consumed on its own. Cattle and horse milk is preferred, khait will be opportunistically milked but have much lower yields.

Cattle- Cattle are of utmost and absolute importance to the diet (in the form of meat and milk) and overall lifestyle. Wealth is primarily measured in the size of cattle herds. The native landrace of cattle is well accommodated to altitude and seasonal cold, though many breeds have been obtained in trade.

Horses- (the small, three toed kind) They are of secondary importance to cattle in terms of livestock, used for meat, wool, and milk.

Taarn- a type of pheasant native to the region that has been domesticated for meat, fares best in river valleys.

Honey- Beekeeping is a well established practice, and honey is the sweetener of choice and highly valued. Bee larvae are also sometimes roasted and eaten.

Bread- made with wheat, amaranth, or barley flower (or all three), a part of most meals. A type of flatbread is used as a base to scoop up other parts of the meal.

Wild game:

gazelle, antelope, hippegalga, and deer.

aurochs (sometimes found in the low river valleys and foothills)

crocodiles (mainly found in the Erubin river valley)

ducks and geese

unkata (a genera of cassowary sized flightless birds, a smaller subspecies of which can be found here as a grazer)

grynaig (a native species of pidgeon which nests among boulders)

piispiispi (a lagomorph that can be found at high altitudes, somewhat resembles a marmot. The name is onomatopoeia based on their shrill calls)

fish (especially trout), frogs, freshwater mussels, and crayfish from the rivers.

Native fruits: wild plum, dirrucag (a shrub that produces small fruits, roughly comparable to autumn olive), wild rose hips (used for tea and jams).

Other vegetables (cultivated and wild): cabbage, onions, garlic, carrots, rapeseed, peas, wild amaranth, mustard greens, nettles (the latter two also being regionally unknown and likely brought in the original migration).

Herbs/spices: relatively few spices are natively produced. Fennel is reliably grown. A type of sumac can be obtained in the river valleys, and a couple native sages and mints can be found throughout the region.

Alcohol: murre (a relatively strong (8-10% abv) alcoholic beverage made with fermented fruit and horsemilk), mead, kulys wine, and a few wheat and barley ales.

Teas/non-alcoholic beverages:

-Kulys flower tea (a mildly sweet herbal tea with nuanced, delicate flavors, usually consumed on its own without a meal)

-Brolge tea (a bitter tea made with the brulge leaf, which has a mild stimulant effect (comparable to coca in composition, but a different kind of plant) and is often consumed in the mornings. (This plant is known as bruljenum in Imperial Wardin))

-Floral tea (tea made with a variety of edible wildflowers, with plum and rose flower being especially favored, and rosehips added for tartness. Often served with milk)

-Nettle tea (favored as a soothing evening tea for its rich, earthy flavor)

-Mint tea (it's mint tea)

-Roasted barley tea (an everyday staple, often taken with milk or butter and honey, or mixed with herbal ingredients).

-Honey-garlic tea (usually uses roasted barley as a base, boiled together with garlic that has been fermented with honey. Preferred by herders for a warming effect on cold nights).

-Green tea (the preferred untreated variant of imported tea leaves)

-Fermented tea (a combination of imported tea leaves and a native preference for fermentation)

-A sour fermented horsemilk beverage, best taken with salt and/or honey.

-a fermented cowsmilk and yogurt beverage, taken with mint.

-A beverage made with mead, extra honey, hot peppers, and chopped garlic boiled together. Consumed for its warming qualities and to treat colds.

Examples of Dishes:

-flatbread (the base of most meals, made with wheat, barley, and/or amaranth flour. Assume that most non-grain based foods described here are served along or atop it)

-a spicy yogurt sauce made with finely chopped hot peppers, sometimes garlic

-a sour yogurt sauce made with sage, mint, or fennel.

-A type of thick dumpling, stuffed with a variety of foods (beef or horse, wild game, onions, fennel, magah, cheese, etc) and used as a common element of meals. Most comparable in shape to a pierogi.

-fried or baked dough balls with cheese and herbs

-taarn pheasant with a butter and plum or dirrucag sauce.

-beef stock soup with dumplings, onion, and curd cheeses

-beef or horse tartare with melted butter. Sometimes eaten on its own, sometimes sprinkled with herbs or topped in a spicy yogurt sauce.

-wheat or barley porridge with milk, yogurt, or butter, sometimes sweetened with honey.

-broth made with beef trotters and lightly flavored with herbs, often used as a base for other dishes but usually sipped.

-savory barley porridge cooked in beef or horse stock (often as a base for meat dishes)

-cheese, beer, and meat stock soup, often with peas, onions, magah, barley, and/or amaranth.

-yogurt, mint and fennel soup

-plain yogurt with mint and honey

-a mildly sweet porridge made with mashed squash, barley, and milk

-sweet snacks made with amaranth seeds, honey, and dried fruit.

-piispiispi stuffed with herbs and onions and roasted

-mashed magah, basic dish of thoroughly cooked magah, mashed with butter, cream, or yogurt.

-boiled, minced magah with minced meat, mild peppers, and fennel, best topped with a sour yogurt sauce.

-mustard and other wild greens, usually cooked down with butter or beef fat and mixed with onions

-an absolute litany of cheeses, often made with delicate herbs or strong peppers. Soft cheeses are generally favored and most widely used in cooking, hard cheeses are eaten on the go.

-Beef or horse testicles, usually cooked in a butter sauce as part of a larger meal. (most commonly obtained as a byproduct of gelding, in which case it is thought to uniquely boost fertility in ways that testicles obtained in slaughter do not)

-a mild pastry stuffed with soft cheese and topped with honey

-a nettle soup and onion soup, best taken in a fish or shellfish broth for enhanced umami flavor.

-Cow head that has been de-haired and de-brained, smoked, and slowly cooked with herbs and vegetables until tender. This is eaten at wedding celebration- the husband's family will have slaughtered the cow as a bride price. The husband and wife are given the choice, fatty cuts, the marrying families share the rest of the meat, and the broth is sipped by all guests.

-cow or horse brain, minced and fried in butter with onions and served atop mashed magah.

-blood sausage, with grain or magah and wild onions for filler.

-a spicy soup or stew made with boiled crayfish, onion, hot peppers, and cream.

-smoked trout with honey

-roasted honeycomb with larvae

#Give it up for: Another food post!!!!!!!!!#A lot of these dishes would be more of an occasional thing rather than everyday meals fyi #I snuck a less horrific variant of my evil hot toddy recipe in here. This is the established culture that would most appreciate the concept #Unfortunately there is no lore friendly Fireball #Also I came up with the honeycomb with larvae as just. a likely way to eat bee larvae? And then googled it and it's real.#Grilled as street food in Laos/Cambodia/Thailand. And oh my god it looks so fucking good like apparently the larvae have kind of a #light honey/nutty flavor and everything. Which sounds like it would be amazing with honeycomb . I need it so fucking bad.#hill tribes

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willtheweaver · 10 months ago

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A writer’s guide to forests: woodlands made by man

Forests are for the most part, the realm of nature. But what about those with a less than natural origin? Here are some woodlands that are shaped artificially.

Parks and gardens- Trees look nice, there’s no denying it. As long as there have been people who admire trees, there have been gardens and parks. Grassy meadows, neatly trimmed hedges and flower beds may get all the attention, but an accenting grove, or a rambling woodland always adds to the aesthetic. Wealthy aristocrats would import trees from far away places, while more modest landowners and public spaces grow native species. Though the results do look quite natural, they are nonetheless human creations.

Orchard- Fruit and nut bearing trees have always been favored as a reliable source of food. And so people since nearly the beginning of agriculture have been planting orchards to provide for them. Trees are planted in rows, evenly spaced apart for the ease of harvesting. Smaller orchards, those catering to families who pick their own fruit, and those that grow fairly delicate fruits still do the harvesting by hand, while many more rely on machines to do the heavy lifting.

Tree farm/ plantation- Many trees types cultivated are deciduous species, but there are some instances when conifers are preferred. Being relatively fast growing, and usually possessing a single, straight trunk, they are the ideal tree type for use as lumber and paper products. Of course, one cannot forget the need every November and December for Christmas trees.

Palm plantation- The tropics are ideal for growing oil palms. Thousands of acres are devoted to the tree, as so much of our food and other products these days relies on palm oil. This is not a good thing as the demand means that vast areas of rainforest have had to be cleared. In Indonesia, the problem is particularly evident, as the growth of palm plantations is one of the main factors behind the decline of orangutan numbers.

Coconut grove- Almost anywhere you go in the tropics will have coconut palms. Buoyant, the nut floats easily on the currents, and where it is too isolated for a coconut to reach naturally (such as Hawaii), people have brought it with them. As well as the coconuts, the palms themsevles are also used; palm fronds can be used for roofing, and the fibers are used in weaving.

Bonsai forest- The art of growing miniature trees has been practiced for centuries. Some trees are collected in the wild, harsh natural conditions causing the trees to grow slowly and stay small, but many more are shaped over many years. While many bonsai are grown singularly, groves and forests are also popular choices. These can be either monospecific, or mixed, and can be part of a larger landscape creation that includes rocks, water, and figures.

There are plenty of examples of forest areas that are man-made. Don’t feel like you have to confine your story to a natural woodland. Use what you find around you to inspire the setting and drive your characters and the plot. What happens on the earth can easily be applied to science fiction or fantasy. Put your own spin on it (maybe your characters are small and live in a bonsai forest…of course they could also be normal sized people who happen to be in a giant sized bonsai planting).

Edit: As pointed out in the comments/reblogs, I seemed to have forgotten woodlots, so I am going to include those.

Woodlot- Common areas open to members of the community include a mixture of open pastureland and forested areas. People would have their flocks and herds forage here in spring and summer, whilst they managed and harvested the trees. Trees in woodlots would not be felled, instead the branches would be cut back and allowed to regrow. The resulting growth produces straight branches that are used in constructing walls, fences, as well as firewood and charcoal. (Communal pastures and woodlots are not really thought of these days, as many areas were lost over the years due to industrialization, urbanization, and the enclosure of land by the aristocracy)

#writing #creative writing #writing guide #writing inspiration #writing prompts #worldbuilding #writer #writers #writers and poets #writing community #writer on tumblr #writeblr

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wuxiaphoenix · 15 days ago

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Worldbuilding: Cultivating Green

Aquarium snails like lettuce. They really, really like lettuce. Especially Romaine. Apparently it tends to have more calcium than other lettuces, which not only helps snails build good shells but is one reason it’s a preferred green to feed rehabilitating manatees. The fact that it floats, making it easy to grab leaves off the surface, doesn’t hurt a bit.

Greens are good for you. They are also, in some circumstances, absolutely deadly. A few things you might consider before you feed your characters a salad include plant breeding, agricultural tech, and water handling.

First, how advanced is your plant breeding? How cultivated are your varieties? Have they been bred to reduce toxicity?

Yes, toxicity. Plants evolved to be resistant to being eaten, just like animals. Only since they can’t run away, they rely on other strategies. Most plants that we can technically eat, for example grass, aren’t very nutritious. Grazing herbivores definitely chew grass, but they get most of their nutrients from digesting the microbes in their guts that can actually break down the cellulose. Like termites. Grazing herbivores also tend to browse on the tender tips of bushes and trees when they can, for more protein.

Though this has its drawbacks. Plants that are nutritious tend to be very, very toxic. Clover? Very nutritious, good grazing for animals and the occasional human - but humans at least have to eat it fresh, and it has compounds known to be abortifacient in large quantities. Milkweed? You eat very specific parts, and change out some water, to avoid the toxins that make birds seriously sick if they target a Monarch butterfly. Apple leaves and branches? Go ahead and cut fresh bits for your horse or rabbit, but take the bits away before they can wilt because cyanide. Potatoes and tomatoes? Nightshades, they can really mess you up. Only the fruit of the tomato is edible; and if you find a wild potato, or even just an unknown cross - I’m begging you, do not eat the tubers unless someone’s able to test them in a lab first. Farmers in the Andes worked for thousands of years to get our table varieties, and every seed from a cross is still a roll of the dice. Not to mention some actively if slightly-less-toxic potatoes are still grown because they’re tough enough to survive very bad conditions.

(You eat them after they’ve been freeze-dried, and you eat them with clay. Do not skip the clay. It absorbs the toxins.)

There are a very few plants that are both nutritious and nontoxic, but they’re rare. Wild cabbage, ancestor to our modern brassicas like broccoli, radish, cabbages, etc., naturally grows on limestone cliffs with basic soils high in salt and lime, where very few other things like the environment. Though extreme environments cannot be counted on to produce edible plants. Look at some of the nasty compounds that are in cactus pulp. Preferably before you try to drink it.

Second, how advanced is the local agricultural tech? What are they using for fertilizer? Organic fertilizer is often either marl (not found everywhere) or manure. Hopefully well-aged manure; hopefully not human manure. But any kind carries the risk of disease and parasites. There are ways to cut those risks; do the farmers know how?

Third, how advanced is the tech for obtaining clean water, and purifying water that might not be clean? Even the best, cleanest field might get targeted by passing birds; washing your greens before you eat them is good sense. Unless the water’s not reliable. In which case all your veggies might be stir-fry, not salad.

It’s possible all of this is just unimportant background in your story. But if your characters are in a foraging or other survival situation... these are bits to consider. They may be safest just hunting!

#creative writing #worldbuilding #survival

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wheeljack-boom · 8 months ago

Text

Entropy

The entirety of this can be found here.

I've posted numerous bits and pieces before for fun, but this is the initial piece of writing I did several years ago. Only recently have I gone back to it and decided to keep writing, despite it initially being intended as a one-shot. Originally when I wrote this years ago I was inspired by the way the 5th Doctor meets Amy Pond. Don't know why, but here we are. It was a bug I couldn't get out of my head.

No warnings. Cybertronian/Human relationships. Platonic only, but lots and lots of fluff. Human is an AFAB original character. Non-canon AU.

Like clockwork, the earth’s moon rose high into the atmosphere, a burning white disk of reflected solar energy that bathed the terran landscape in cool white light. The tidally locked piece of rock, perpetually circling the organic planet in the solar system designated 876B, was itself a consistent reminder of the passage of time. It was predictable, and observable with all the reliability of a Cybertronian energon flux. The earth’s entropy relied solely on its inhabitants and its ever-changing climate, but never its predictable partner in the black. Order, and its close approximate chaos, were two parts of the same spectrum, just as the order of the cosmos inhabited the same plane of reality as the chaos of the living, changing planet.

Chaos was the friend of the large, robotic mass now currently trying to navigate through the relative quiet and darkness of what was usually a place thrumming with life. Chaos was what he thrived on; it breathed creativity and ingenuity and change, and that was something that heralded some of the greatest scientific discoveries of order and truth. The order of the cosmos, sometimes got very dull.

Now, however, the particular bit of chaos that Wheeljack found himself in was nothing if not unsettling.

Wheeljack’s joints groaned with a subtle whir as he moved, the transformium paneling on his legs shifting and one shoulder wheel spinning slowly as he crept forward through the darkness. The Autobot scientist was suddenly very self-conscious that he was out in the open, vulnerable and undisguised in his much more conspicuous bipedal form. A collection of small buildings surrounded him, but none of them even came close to his own height, so he had to duck slightly as he crept his way through to his target: the human power station.

The surrounding landscape was only inhabited by a scattering of human agricultural settlements, so the night hours afforded Wheeljack some privacy without having to worry about being seen. It still made him uncomfortable however, as every movement he made seemed uncharacteristically loud even to his own audio receptors. Every scan he omitted could potentially be picked up by human equipment, including their own military base some miles away, but the Autobot took care to be brief. His audible presence, and to some extent his invisible presence could be easily explained away, but his visual presence was not something that the dominant organic life forms knew existed. Quite simply, if a human saw him, the probability that they would react poorly was quite high.

With this in mind, the large Autobot moved carefully in the black, mindful of the way the moon highlighted his white armor panels. His glowing blue optics were soft and searching in the dark, but were obvious markers of his presence as he awkwardly tried to retain a quiet, steady pace to his destination. He dimmed their brightness, but didn’t expect it would make much difference. He wasn’t exactly outfitted for camouflage; he wasn’t a soldier per say, but necessity never particularly cared for those details. The open night sky above him was filled with more stars than what he remembered seeing on Cybertron, but he couldn’t take the desired time to admire their scientific wonderment. Wheeljack was practically a glow stick against the inky black, illuminated with the night’s natural ambiance.

A nearby sound startled the large form, and he froze, ducking his head as the soft thrum of machinery reacted to his sudden movements. He wasn’t entirely sure what he would do if he got caught sneaking around. Current positioning was too tight to transform, unless he wanted some sort of catastrophic misalignment on his way down; wouldn’t that be fun. His only option was to duck harder, maybe make himself less obvious and a visual illusion in the darkness—human eyes weren’t always reliable unaided at night—but at roughly two dozen feet in height and made out of living metal, that wouldn’t really do much. He waited a few minutes longer, systems and venting cycles stilled until he was satisfied with the lack of movement in his immediate vicinity. His destination was so close, and a sudden urgency overcame him as he vented the air he’d been holding inside his chassis.

The central power grid for the immediate human population center sat before him, relatively small, but about the right size one might expect for a settlement of this size. It would do for what he needed: that being the desperately sought out energy reserves him and his fellow Autobots required to keep their shielding running. So far from home, on an alien planet, stranded and functioning at not even half capacity with a skeleton crew, they could not synthesize energon themselves. Wheeljack had developed a process—unbeknownst to a certain Prime that would highly disapprove—that could convert the electrical currents from human power grids into a slightly lower grade energon. It would do to keep them functioning and protected, but it would require more in terms of sheer volume to do the job that a fraction of naturally occurring energon could. This was a stop-gap that wouldn’t last for long, and eventually he’d have to come clean to Prime and the rest of the Ark crew that he was using human resources.

Wheeljack was one of the most brilliant Autobot scientists to ever live, possibly the only one left, and this organic planet had him scrambling for scraps and drastically understocked of supplies needed to carry out any idea he might have. He was trapped and didn’t know what else to do, but the other Autobots were looking to him for an answer. He could deal with the truth later, and Primus willing, would have enough time to come up with a means of synthesizing what they needed without stealing it from the native life forms. Until then, it was his secret, and the most they had to know was that he figured out a purely practical way to produce a lower-quality brew that could at least tie them over.

The main power conduit was just on the other side of a chain link fence. Wheeljack stopped just short of it and crouched. He didn’t even have to climb over the tiny barricade. He could just reach in and take what he needed.

This gave the Autobot pause. It felt wrong, but Wheeljack was disconcerted with how this was becoming easier to justify in the name of survival. Theft, and deception was not something the Autobots did. It was one of the many things they had fought against when trying to save their planet; when they had failed. What he was about to do was something that was typically more associated with the Decepticons, the other side of the war that had proved to be too relentless. Even the more morally reprehensible acts the Autobots had engaged in—out of necessity and against their very nature—could not even compare to the atrocities committed by the opposing faction. Driving them off their planet was not enough. Now, the lingering impact of being alone and crippled was a continuing punishment, but even then, to the Decepticons it was not enough. They followed their evacuation, lurking somewhere out in the shadows of the cosmos, waiting for one Autobot misstep that would give away their location.

Survival however, was a drive that was strong not just amongst organics, and the Autobots would not survive without energon. That much was simple. They would either go offline from malnourishment, suffer catastrophic injuries that were beyond repair without the life-giving blood of their species, or be blown apart by the Decepticons once their shielding failed and they were finally found. Energon was used for just about every component of Cybertronian life; it was little wonder that its availability and the fight to appropriate the dwindling resource would bring about their ultimate downfall. The Autobot scientist had no other choice.

Wheeljack carefully reached an arm towards the main conduit but paused. Doubt and fear nagged at him. As soon as he started syphoning power there would be no going back. Their presence would be detected, and even if the humans didn’t immediately determine what was happening, it would still open up many questions.

Their existence was probably going to be detected soon enough anyway, Wheeljack reasoned. Either the Decepticons would find this backwater planet and make themselves known, or force the Autobots to make themselves known preemptively. It was a matter of when.

Reaching back over the fence, Wheeljack sub-spaced the minute form of an energon cube. As he edged it closer to the power source, its programming cycled through the myriad of commands Wheeljack had dictated to it. It expanded as a series of bicortex nanotubes took root into the human machinery. The cube started to glow, pulsing as it grew with the energon that began to trickle into it, filtering through the anchored piping that had now weaved its way into the cracks and entry ports of the central power conduit.

There was a brief hiss, which turned into a low hum that seemed to emanate around Wheeljack, growing in intensity as the energon cube increased in mass and brightness. It was working, and as the few lights around him started to power down without the sufficient energy flow to feed them, Wheeljack felt a sense of guilt.

“Well, not like I can put it all back now...” He muttered to himself, looking at his prize. Like the ancient human story of Prometheus stealing fibre… I’m gonna be in a lot of trouble—

A sudden ping on his internal com system alerted him to an additional presence attempting to make contact. It was like a prickling into his awareness, a sudden sense of no longer being alone in his own head and it made him jump with a start. Nobody was supposed to know what he was up to, much less where he was, and if they were contacting him on his com link rather than searching him out that meant they knew he wasn’t in the Ark.

“Wheeljack.” The voice pressed. It was abrupt, and sounded very, very annoyed.

“Ratchet!” It was the Ark’s chief medical officer, which also meant Wheeljack was about to get an audio full of whatever had Ratchet’s temper up this time. It was usually him anyway, so he was used to it. Whenever Wheeljack wasn’t in Ratchet’s med-bay partially blown apart, melted, electrocuted or otherwise incapacitated in some way of his own doing, Ratchet usually found other things to get angry about.

“What are you doing?” Ratchet sighed with the typical tone of resignation, as if he was expecting Wheeljack to attempt to lie his way through this. Sadly, that had been exactly what he was about to do.

“I was uh—”

“Save it. I know what you’re doing, I’m not stupid. I’m on Teletraan-1 right now watching you syphon off that power.” Ratchet of course meant he was detecting the energy fluctuations resulting from Wheeljack’s theft on the Ark’s central monitoring system. Wheeljack hadn’t even thought of that...

“We need this more than they do. They can just build a fire or something.” Wheeljack knew the absurdity of his statement was reason enough for Ratchet’s impending incredulity but he was out of excuses. He hadn’t even thought of one to begin with.

“Primus help me, you can’t be serious.” There was an exasperated ripple that pulsed through their psychic com link. “That isn’t the point, Wheeljack. For one thing, stealing from the humans was expressly forbidden by Prime.”

“Don’t tell Optimus.” Wheeljack faltered. Not out of fear, as Optimus Prime was not the type to heavily punish his subordinates. It was shame, because then he would know that Wheeljack had let him down… No one wanted to let Optimus Prime down.

“Just get back here before someone else sees you.” Ratchet said tersely, as Wheeljack quickly retracted the now-full energon cube. It detached from the human power structure with a crackle of energy, a few errant drops of white-hot energon showering the ground as he subspaced the cube for travel.

“Alright, I’m comin’, nobody’s around for miles—” Wheeljack turned quickly, internals thrumming as he prepared to make a hasty retreat, but he froze mid-crouch. He was not alone.

Ratchet’s voice continued in his audio receptors. “Right, they may not be there now, but you know they have their own scanners and sensors, weak and understandably inferior as they may be, but they’re certainly enough to figure out that someone is stealing something—and Wheeljack are you even listening to me?”

He was listening, but Wheeljack had a far more immediate concern, offsetting Ratchet’s yammering to ambient noise. His entire body tingled with the intense need to flee, but he remained rooted to the spot.

“Wheeljack, are you still there? What are you doing? You need to get out of there.” There was a pause. “Primus, Wheeljack. Please, tell me nobody has seen you.”

“Somebody sees me.” Wheeljack responded slowly, his optics locked on the new development in front of him.

It was a small, tiny human being. It stood there, quiet and still, its optics locked on Wheeljack’s. There was an immediate hiss from within his processor as their joined com link was overcome with an exponential amount of creative expletives.

“How do you know?!”

“It’s lookin’ right at me…”

“Is it a threat?”

“I...don’t think so. No.”

“Then deal with it, and extract yourself immediately.” Ratchet severed the link, not so much out of anger, but sheer panic and necessity; self-preservation dictated that it was better to not take the chance in assuming humans couldn’t sense their link and track it to the source, but Wheeljack highly doubted that was true, at least with what he currently faced.

Ratchet’s more immediate demand of dealing with the threat was upsetting, the implied action behind it vague enough that it made Wheeljack feel queasy. The humans weren’t a threat, at least he didn’t think so, and the one that was looking at him now didn’t seem to be dangerous at all. Ratchet had megacycles more field experience than Wheeljack, however. The decisions the medic would have had to make on the battlefield were beyond Wheeljack’s desire to contemplate.

This wasn’t a battlefield however, and this did not appear to be a soldier.

It made a noise, much like a soft venting of air, but it was small-sounding and very much unthreatening if the way the small human’s optics were casually locked onto him was any indication. This didn’t stop Wheeljack from recoiling back in alarm, the noise startling him out of his frozen state and right back through the small fence and into the very power conduit he had just been stealing from.

As if things couldn’t get any worse for him, the entire structure came crashing down under his sheer weight. Whatever light or electrical device was still working with what power he’d left behind was now out, and would be for miles. The noise was staggeringly loud from cables, wires and metal panels piling on top of him as he scrambled to get upright. Eons spent on the battlefields of Cybertron had conditioned Wheeljack against his very nature to always be prepared to fight for his survival, so he’d gotten rather good at picking himself back up. Nearly offlining himself in his own lab on a daily basis certainly kept him well-practiced.

This wasn’t a Cybertron battlefield, and this wasn’t his lab, so as soon as Wheeljack was upright he quickly processed every nano-inch of his surroundings. His urgency was only matched by his concern for the human. Firstly, he feared that it had gotten hurt in such a display of uncoordinated prowess, and secondly being on his back and vulnerable meant that he was open season for anyone, human or otherwise, to drop a bomb on him.

The human thankfully had been smart enough to have scuttled out of danger, and was now peering at him from behind a nearby pillar with what Wheeljack thought he recognized as the human expression of amusement. A quick check from his memory banks told him that this human was female, rather small and underdeveloped for the species, and quite possibly not very—

—It was a child.

Wheeljack’s processor stuttered to a halt, the sudden revelation that he was standing in front of a human child fascinating, yet also very terrifying. By his estimation the female couldn’t be more than four feet tall, looking pale and somewhat disheveled in the moonlight. Human children were smaller, weaker, and mentally underdeveloped relative to their fully grown counterparts, which wasn’t saying much to begin with. That said, the sheer novelty of observing such a small human up-close was nothing compared to the trouble he was going to be in if he didn’t somehow coax the human into not seeing what she was currently seeing… and forget all about him.

The Autobot was so internally focused on figuring out how to get out of the situation that he didn’t immediately process the soft noise the human was making. It was laughter. The human was laughing at him.

This went completely counter to his expectations.

The noise was small, and quiet, but it was so non-threatening that Wheeljack instinctively lowered his guard. The small human was covering her mouth with a hand, her small dark optics just barely glimmering in the moon’s light but they revealed enough of her state-of-mind to tell Wheeljack that for whatever reason, this human child was not afraid of him.

It was then that Wheeljack realized maybe his full height was a little too much, and it also made him vulnerable to other prying eyes. He carefully picked his way out of the rubble he had created, mindful of the way he moved and how heavily he stepped. The little human didn’t seem to react, other than to remove her hand from her face, presumably the humor in the moment now gone. Wheeljack spared a glance at the flattened mess he’d made, ruminating that if he’d been able to get away with his little stunt undetected before, he certainly wasn’t going to be able to now.

“Are you a fairy?”

The soft noise made Wheeljack jerk back around, the immediate source unmistakable as the human child still standing in front of him. Her expression was one of naive wonder, and it made Wheeljack uncomfortable. Human expressions were not so different from Cybertronian, and that wasn’t an expression he often saw coming from his own crew mates when they were looking at him. It was usually terror. That was usually followed by something blowing up.

Wheeljack switched his speech codex to English, rapidly filing through data banks searching for an appropriate dialect; the North American continent, United States of America, New York City—large population center and common stereotype in human popular culture. Their current coordinates were on the opposite end of the continent, but it would do because he probably needed to say something. Communicating with her in Cybertronian would not have been productive as she wouldn’t understand it.

“A fairy?” He checked the local knowledge bank—the Internet—for the definition of the word. Once he was able to ascertain the visual representation of a typical mythological creature that went by that designation, he found himself perplexed.

“Duh. You have wings.” The child’s reply pulled Wheeljack out of his internal research and brought his focus back onto her. She was pointing at something behind him, and the frankness of her voice gave the Autobot the impression that she thought this was something that should have been obvious. It dawned on him that this human child was actually giving him attitude.

Wheeljack made a show of looking where she was pointing, at first not getting her meaning until it occurred to him what she was so focused on. She was talking about his rotary fins, purely sensory-net but freely rotating from his body. They most certainly were not wings…

“Oh these?” Wheeljack replied, the soft blue illumination from the venting panels on the sides of his face blinking with each syllable of English he spoke. “They’re not wings, but highly-sensitive neuro-net transmitters that—” Wheeljack was about two-thirds of the way through his highly detailed explanation before he realized that the human was definitely not listening, and more likely that she didn’t even know what he was talking about. She now seemed more distracted by his blinking then anything else.

“Alright, they’re wings. You got me. I’m not a fairy though.”

He took care to keep his voice low and unthreatening, not wanting to scare the small human away. It was probably better to humor the child rather than outright run away and leave her with questions… that she would later go to the much more mentally capable adults to answer…

“Oh.” The little human pursed her lips, then proceeded to point at one of the venting panels on the side of his head. “Why are your ears so big? And why do they do that when you talk?” She looked genuinely interested in him, and that made him even more uncomfortable. That was on top of the mild annoyance he was beginning to feel at having to explain his anatomy to her.

A microsecond scan revealed she was referring to audio receptors. She had actually mistaken a very important component used to consistently filter heat from his advanced processor for audio receptors. He hadn’t modified audio receptors to indicate his speech after the accident that left his face catastrophically damaged. That was simply ABSURD. “These ain’t ears.” Wheeljack jabbed a thumb in the general direction of one of his panels, optics narrowed slightly until he saw the somewhat incredulous look on the human’s small face. He softened somewhat, reminding himself that he was not trying to match wits with a juvenile human. She was clearly harmless and probably lonely; what else would a single human out all by herself be feeling? Primus, he was lonely, and he was surrounded by Autobots most of the time. Perhaps now was an opportunity to gather field intel on the indigenous life forms. It was kind of nice talking to someone that wasn’t afraid of him for a change.

What harm would there be in talking to her, for just a little while?

Wheeljack lowered his height, crouching down as low as his armor plates would allow in front of the female child. “You want to know a secret?” She didn’t even flinch, but even so Wheeljack kept his distance for safety’s sake. Who knew what sort of biological pathogens she carried. Biomechanical beings weren’t completely immune from purely biological ailments, although he doubted anything she carried would pose a threat to him. The girl nodded, eagerly.

“They’re actually motion trackers,” Wheeljack lied. “And they’re so big so I can track humans like you for miles.” Alright, I’ll play along.

“Well, I found you, so they must be broken. You should get them fixed.”

“Maybe I wanted you to find me.” That obviously wasn’t true—quite the opposite in fact—but he’d kind of walked right into that one. After all, this human child had managed to catch him completely unawares, and the mess around him was the proof of that.

“Lying is bad.” Clearly, she was sharper than he was giving her credit for too. Maybe human children weren’t as stupid as he initially thought.

Wheeljack allowed himself a sly smile with what was left of his mouth behind his battle mask. It was something she couldn’t see, unless she understood the shifting of his optical lids. “You’re clever. I like you. But what are you doing out here all by yourself little...female?” He hazarded gently, unsure of what exactly he should call her. He only realized he’d made an error in judgment when her face scrunched up into something close to indignation.

“I’m a girl,” she corrected pointedly, but then for the first time her small dark optics shifted around carefully and she began to appear uncomfortable. She began to sway, as if unsure of what to do with her own body, and actually looked sad. “I ran away…”

Wheeljack struggled internally with how to process this information. Part of him didn’t want to become any more involved in her life when he shouldn’t even be talking to her. But the other part, the deeply fascinated scientist that had to know, had to know. “Okay… why did you run away?” That’s… generally a bad thing, right? The irony in the fact that it was exactly something he had done when he needed to get away from the Ark and just think was not exactly lost on him...

She didn’t say anything at first, staring awkwardly at the ground. Wheeljack tilted his head, the illumination produced from his panels when he posed the inquiry highlighting the red, blotched hue on her skin and the moisture beneath her optics. He wasn’t sure what that meant, the biological and psychological links escaping him. He thought better than to ask her, and she probably wouldn’t know how to respond anyhow. It was reasonable enough to assume that she had been distressed before blundering into him—or probably still was but he was enough of a distraction for her to temporarily forget about it.

“It’s okay, you can trust me.” For a moment the girl was entranced in the light that rapidly flashed in-time with his words when he finally spoke. She raised one hand, holding it out in front of her and watched as the blue light illuminated her skin.

“My mommy is sick, and daddy got angry with me because I broke the radio. But he’s just upset because mommy is upset…” The little girl was looking around again, clearly unsure of herself in this situation. “It was already broken, I was just trying to fix it…” She mumbled, the sound so quiet. Wheeljack had absolutely no idea what to say, and thought about offering a personal anecdote until something she said caught his interest.

“Tryin’ to fix a radio, huh? That’s quite a big job for something your size.” Wheeljack was actually mildly impressed. Imagine a human small as this one was, actually trying to fix primitive, illogical human machinery without proper training…

“No,” she finally replied, almost indifferently. ”I fixed daddy’s Internet when he didn’t know what to do, and that was way harder.” She spoke as if this was just daily routine for her, and fascinating as this was, Wheeljack had to keep the conversation moving. He was on a time-table, and needed to wrap this up.

“Well, then maybe you shouldn’t have run away little girl… he might need you to help him with that radio thing. Besides, it’s dangerous out here.” Wheeljack did his best to sound soft, but authoritative, internally wincing at how awkward it sounded coming out of his mouth. “How did you even get in here anyway?”

“I heard something and wanted to see what it was, so I came in through that hole in the fence… same way you did,” she said, motioning towards the way she’d presumably come.

“Ah, I’m a little big for a hole in the fence little one. This is no place for a human like you to be all alone.”

“You’re all by yourself,” the little girl retorted, looking snarky again. “Did you run away as well?” She looked shocked. “Did you kill somebody?”

“What…? No!”

“Are you doing crime?”

“Do I look like a Decepticon to you?” Wheeljack put his head in his hands, growing exasperated, and starting to feel mildly guilty because technically...

“What’s a...De-cep-ti-con?” It didn’t take a moment to spot the look of confusion on her face and he realized what he’d blurted out. She cocked her head as she spelled the word out slowly, ensuring she got the pronunciation right. “Are they bad? They sound bad.”

“Look, human girl, I—yes. They are bad. If you see one, and I hope to Primus you never do, I—”

“Primus? What’s that?”

Wheeljack found himself staring blankly at her, struggling to think of a way to describe to her what Cybertronians considered a God of sorts; not quite a god or a creator, but something more transcendent, yet tangible at the same time—why was he even contemplating telling her about such things that she surely wouldn’t understand? He’d committed a crime, gotten found out by Ratchet, and was now accidentally revealing top secret and deeply personal information to a tiny human girl. This was not a good night for Wheeljack.

“My name is Allison, by the way.” The human girl was looking up at him expectantly, and Wheeljack suddenly realized he had just dug himself into a very deep hole. Primus… don’t tell me your name… don’t make this harder than it already is…

“Look, little g—Allison.” Wheeljack vented air, underestimating the strength of it as it kicked up the loose strands of organic fiber on her head in a gust of heated wind. She seemed thoroughly overjoyed by this oddity. “I’m out here all by myself cause my friends can’t know I’m here. It’s a surprise… so this is our little secret, got it? You never saw me here.” Wheeljack saw an opportunity and ran with it, and the little girl named Allison nodded enthusiastically. Although, she still had a look of expectation in her eyes, and Wheeljack realized he better get it over with.

“Okay, fine. I’ve already revealed all my other secrets. My name is Wheeljack,” he said, pointing at the broadside of his chest where his Autobot insignia was. “I’m an Autobot.”

“Oh! I know what a wheeljack is. It’s that thing that fixes wheels on cars. What’s an Auto-bot? Is that like a Decepticon?” Allison looked perplexed, but genuinely interested, and he realized she would have no idea what an Autobot was. That was obvious when she seemed to stumble over the word, sounding it out in two chunks, much like she had done with Decepticon.

“No!” Wheeljack answered that one a lot faster and more indignant than he probably should have. “Autobot means I’m a good guy. Decepticons are nothing like we are.” Well that sounded ludicrous, but he didn’t know what else to say.

Allison seemed to think about it for a moment. “Okay. I trust you because you sound funny.” Wheeljack didn’t know what to make of what she’d said and whether or not it was a compliment, but he couldn’t respond before Allison followed up with another question. “What do you do, Wheeljack?”

“What do I...do?”

“Yeah. Like...what’s your job?”

“I’m a scientist. An engineer, specifically, and it’s not just a job, it’s more important than that. I help my friends stay safe by inventing useful equipment.” Wheeljack knew he was being a little loose with the word “safe.” Not all of them fit that description. “Though, I have been known to occasionally dabble in biomechanics. I recently finished writing a technical spec on the Tersial III replication and induction plate—”

“That’s neat,” Allison interjected, changing the subject. “Can I ask you something else?”

Wheeljack shrugged, sad to hear the young human wasn’t as excited about his proposed model for improving the wingspan of Tersial III quadrupeds. “Okay, sure. What is it?”

“Why do you talk funny?” This was the second time Allison had raised the issue of his voice. The question was nothing if not direct, and it then occurred to Wheeljack that he had likely made an error in judgment when picking the dialect that he did. He should have paid more attention to how she spoke.

“What’s wrong with it?” He cocked his head, now curious as to what about his choice was apparently so offensive. Instead, Allison laughed, betraying the idea that it was not so much offensive, but different.

“You sound like you’re from one of the shows my daddy likes to watch, dummy.”

Wheeljack didn’t know what a dummy was, but he assumed it wasn’t a good thing. “Doesn’t everybody talk like that around here?”

“No!” She was laughing at him again, and Wheeljack was getting frustrated. This shouldn’t have been that complicated—how many stupid dialects were there on this rock?!

“Look, I underestimated the linguistic diversity amongst your species. I didn’t realize accent was divided up by zone on this planet. It makes no sense—” He saw her expression start to go wide and realized he was losing her again. “Anyway, that was more than a question, that was two. Now it’s my turn to ask you one.”

“Okay fine.” The girl huffed, looking mildly startled and confused by his abrupt rant. Instead of the question he’d been intending to ask—that being what is the purpose of all that organic fiber on her head—Wheeljack opted for something a little more friendly. He was talking to a child, a fact of which he kept forgetting.

“Can you guess where I’m from?”

Allison looked blank for a moment, presumably trying to come up with an answer to his question. He had to stop himself from being abrupt with her. Perhaps if her experience with him was a pleasant one she was more inclined to trust him and do what he asked—that being: don’t breathe a word of this to anyone.

After a moment she shook her head, unable to even hazard a guess as to where he was from. So he pointed skyward, thinking she would get the point. But she didn’t.

“You’re from up?” In a shocking turn of events, she’d directed her optics in the vague direction of where he was pointing, looking at nothing and everything as if there was something very specific she was going to see. He probably should have felt guilty teasing a human child like this, but Wheeljack admitted to himself that this was actually a rather fun little exercise.

“Further.”

“The moon?”

“Even further!”

She thought for a while. “The sun? Pluto? A satellite?”

“No; that’s not a planet; and now you’re just guessing. The correct answer is I am from Cybertron.”

“Cybertron.” She repeated the word slowly like she did all the other ones. If anything she seemed very careful about learning new words. Primitive, but respectful. “I don’t think we have any place called Cybertron in our solar system. That must mean it’s pretty far.”

“Your deductive reasoning is correct. It is very far. Farther than you can travel in your lifetime, little one. Think of your solar system. Now think of another solar system, one that just looks like a tiny star in your sky, but it’s actually two stars! Closer than you might think, eh? Cybertron is a lonely planet that sits in the middle of Alpha Centauri, undetectable by your human technology.” He didn’t even realize that he started gesturing passionately until it was too late. “That’s where I’m from.”

Something dawned on her then, and her eyes widened. Something close to absolute joy spread across her face as something clearly now had her excited, making Wheeljack wonder if he should have just kept that detail to himself; he’d been trying to make conversation.

“You’re an alien!” Allison declared happily, clapping her small hands together in a show of positive acceptance as she put the pieces together. She was definitely smarter than he was giving her credit for, and was now practically lit up with such a revelation.

Something broke loose from within the Autobot and for a moment his perception dulled. There was an internal distraction at the edge of his awareness and he couldn’t place what it was. He lost focus and several barriers in his coding fell down all at once, unlocking a cache of programming that had been put away a very long time ago. There was a stirring of something in his spark that he hadn’t felt in eons: something warm and nurturing; he was actually starting to enjoy talking to the little human named Allison. He was afraid he was starting to care.

Whatever was happening, it was because of this girl, actually enamored and happy to be in his presence. She wanted to be around him. Autobots tended to avoid him when they could, not out of hate, but a general unease in his presence. Decepticons wanted to capture him and use him. Primus, he was lonely.

But he had to go. He couldn’t linger. If anything, his presence in her life was a danger not only to her, but to himself and the other Autobots that despite everything he still cared for. Needing to care for a human life was a liability he couldn’t risk, and there was no way he was going to let a human, much less a human child, get caught in Decepticon crosshairs. It wasn’t even his place. She needed to be back with her own parental units.

“Heh, okay, but remember, this is our secret okay?” Wheeljack leaned forward, trying to emphasis the point as gently as he could while cutting into her excitement. She nodded her understanding, but he had to make sure. “You promise?”

“Yeah, yeah!” Allison said, and she did something that Wheeljack was not expecting. She reached up and touched his face. It was such a soft, barely perceptible touch, right on the planes of his battle mask but it was enough to nearly make him rear back. It was a reaction that for sure didn’t match the level of threat she presented so it made no sense, but neither did what he actually did. He froze. He stopped moving as if the small hand on his face was going to cut him should he so much as shift in place. It was the first time he really looked the young human in her optics, and she didn’t so much as flinch as she returned his direct stare. His optics were neither unsettling or threatening to her. It was just a purely natural connection, unyielding without learned bias or mistrust.

He hadn’t even realized he’d been in arms reach, small as she was, which meant he’d really let his guard down. That frightened the large Autobot more than anything. His first time interacting with a human and he’d completely opened himself up to any number of attacks.

An attack—

Suddenly Wheeljack reared up, head snapping in the direction beyond Allison to something in the distance. He heard something approach—a vehicle, not one of his own, and he suddenly knew he had to go. Their time together was over. He looked down at Allison with a sad sense of finality that she wouldn’t be able to understand. She looked distraught, hand still hovering precariously above her head where his face had just been moments before. It was obvious she didn’t hear what he had.

“I’m sorry Allison. I have to go.”

“Why?” She sounded sad.

“Someone’s coming. Nobody else can see me, so I have to go.” He started to retreat, forcing himself to crouch back from her faster than she could catch up to him. Something tugged at his spark as the little human called after him, something Wheeljack wasn’t willing to spare another nanosecond thinking about in that moment. He had to transform, and for that he needed room.

What if it’s someone that means to do Allison harm… do humans hurt the offspring of other humans? Sadly Wheeljack knew the answer to that question. They had access to global news, and had been monitoring it for some time. I can’t be seen… but I can’t just leave her here. Maybe I can just hang back until this person passes… Pit, why did he care?

Wheeljack was thinking through how we was going to appear nonchalant as a white drag car just hanging around this ruined power station with a human child standing there, when the approaching human vehicle slowed. He heard an adult male’s voice calling Allison’s name, and thankfully Wheeljack reasoned this laid all his concerns to rest. He could leave content in knowing that her father had come to retrieve her. She finally heard it too, and she looked back in a manner which implied recognition. This gave Wheeljack the needed opportunity to leap back from her and transform into his vehicular form, the sound of which drew the girl’s attention back to him for enough time to see what he had become. It wouldn’t matter, because he’d be gone by the time her father arrived.

He couldn’t linger, a pang of guilt settling on his spark long enough to make him hesitate as he retreated but he knew he had to move on. It would be better for Allison to move on as well, so the sooner he disappeared, the better.

How wrong he was.

#transformers #wheeljack #fanfic #transformers fanfiction #transformers x oc #maccadam #transformers x reader #transformers au

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scarfacemarston · 2 months ago

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Abigail Roberts Fluff Alphabet M-Z.

This is hella long so I had to split it up. Please think about "liking" and reblogging! This took a long time. Feel free to request more Abigail things!

M: Mornings (How are mornings spent with them?)

Abigail is an early riser. She's one of the first people awake at camp, and it's the same at Pronghorn and Beecher's Hope. However, she would prefer not to speak until she's had her coffee. From there, she sets breakfast for everyone and starts her morning chores. She admits it's boring. Modern Au has her helping Jack for school. She drops him off, but she sometimes takes him to the bus once he's old enough. From there, she worked on the ranch or the garden before moving on to even more house chores.

However, I can see a partner, John, trying to convince her to sleep in with cuddles. It sometimes works, but she knows she's basically the one in charge in the morning. Having Jack, she knows she doesn't really have a choice but to get up early—Canon and modern.

Night (How are nights spent with them?)

She goes to bed EARLY. She knows she's an old lady for it. She wants to be in bed by ten. She will go out with friends if she can find a babysitter, but that's rare. She's usually tired from working since 6:00 /7:00 a.m. Plus, finding a babysitter is hard. However, she's always happy to have company over to watch TV with her, play cards, or work on a craft. She'll watch cooking shows, knit, and the occasional movie with Jack. Sometimes she'll watch "Fixing" shows with John - She's lost, but he's happy. She also loves to read. Sometimes it's agricultural or ranching magazines, sometimes it's a mystery novel.

Canon, it's knitting, listening to Jack read, sitting by the fire and singing, and really not much else.

O: Open (When would they start revealing things about themselves? Do they say everything all at once or wait a while to reveal things slowly?)

Abigail is absolutely not an open book. She is quiet but polite and even friendly. She is definitely the mom friend of the group, whether she likes it or not. She is the type that appears extroverted but truly isn't. Part of her feels it is her duty to look out for those who need someone. She is reliable and intelligent, and it's why people, like even MOLLY, come to her for advice. Despite this, she reveals very little about herself. She was even careful around Sadie, but in time, she began to let people in. She is only so secretive because of the numerous people who have hurt or disappointed her in the past. Hosea is the only one who truly knows and understands her.

P: Patience (How easily angered are they?)

This is a tricky one. She seems easily angered, but remember the YEARS she put up with John being nasty. That was at least four years, and it was tumultuous with reuniting and then John leaving, reuniting, John leaving, and so on. Of course, she's going to be sensitive to whatever he does.

However, Abigail HERSELF is patient in that she never truly gives up on him in the main story. It's why she doesn't take Hosea's advice to leave. The epilogue is different because that was an additional several years of putting up with John's attics. It was, again, desperation.

She also has a lot of patience with Jack, which anyone with children knows can be very difficult. She deals with many things thrown at her but stays quiet most of the time to avoid making a fuss. TLDR: Unless she is truly triggered, like with John or Grimshaw, she can be cool-headed—even with Micah.

Q: Quizzes (How much would they remember about you? Do they remember every detail in passing, or do they kind of forget? )

Abigail remembers everything, including things you wouldn't want her to remember. She is meticulous in remembering things like dates and coordinates, directions to travel somewhere, or orders to take on a heist. Drink orders at the dive bar she works at in a Modern Au details about patrons like who will grab asses, who tips well, who tips like shit.

When she was a sex worker, she'd remember who to avoid servicing if she could, when she needed to avoid someone, if someone had a particular fetish, etc. She'll remember everything down to the littlest detail because it's her perfectionism. She does not have a photographic memory, but she strives for this. She lived in a time where someone had to be quiet and bide their time just in case their safety called on it. (Ex, knowing dirt on someone, knowing when to be quiet, knowing where to be, how to avoid something)

Modern au: But in a lighter sense, she won't forget a birthday, or a dance recital, a baseball game, Jack's projects or tests, and if you have university or a job, she'd help you as well. If it's Sadie, this includes her contracts and her borderline outlaw activities. Unfortunately, Abigail hates remembering those because it reminds her of the danger Sadie could be in. She wishes Sadie could just put the guns away and help out on the ranch, but she knows it's not that easy.

Now, she does need to look at agendas and sheets occasionally to refresh her mind, especially if things get chaotic, but she has a huge memory bank.

Remember (What is their favorite moment in your relationship?)

She would love for John or a reader to take her out of home, out of town, and they drive somewhere to get a nice view. I was thinking, as sappy as it might sound - a sunrise because Abigail is usually up for those, but if the reader or John aren't usually morning people, that's a bonus as it would show they're sacrificing her sleep for Abigail. (Of course, Abigail isn't always happy to be woken up at that time, and it's dark, but she's perfectly fine - if not tired - afterward. Something like getting coffee and breakfast afterward would make it even better. But she'd also enjoy a sunset in a flower meadow and a meal, whether it's a picnic or somewhere cute to eat where she can enjoy her meal and people-watch. She loves quiet moments best, but someone taking her out on the town like John did in the epilogue would also be special to her.

S: Security (How protective are they? How would they protect you? How would they like to be protected?)

One of my favorite scenes in the entire game is when Dutch is talking about leaving John behind, and she tries to march towards him----John just barely holds her back. I think that says it right there. She is NOT afraid to speak up. She's strategic in how and when she does so, but she will call someone out if they dare harm someone she loves. She also knows how to punch, use a knife, and shoot a gun.

As for her, she just wants someone to back her up when she's figuratively being beaten down by the others. She'll claim she doesn't need the help, but it means the world to her for anyone who tried.

T: Try (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, and gifts?)

We see in the epilogue that Abigail definitely tries to make things special for John sometimes. She'll buy him a new shirt, and she'll make his favorite food. She seems to decorate the place extra nicely and genuinely just wants to spend time with him. For Jack, she wants each birthday to be as special as possible since she feels she can't give him much. She'll make cinnamon rolls or French toast in the morning. She always saves money to buy him a new book or takes him to the bookstore, bakes a cake, and gives him the few gifts she and John could buy or make him. She'll try to buy something affordable from the catalog, with John giving suggestions on what he THINKS Jack might like……..it doesn't always work, but he tries. In the modern au, she'll take him to an arcade with his friends. (YES, THEY EXIST STILL.) That, or the movies and some restaurant. Needless to say, she puts a lot of time and effort into dates, anniversaries, and gifts.

U: Ugly (What would be a bad habit of theirs?)

She worries and paces so much I bet she could make a mark on a wooden floor. I'd also say that maybe checking in on people is too much. Some people like Jack and John think it's bossy and nosy, but she's trying to help for the most part. If it's Jack or John………or Uncle, she's trying to make sure they're behaving.

On a lesser scale, she either seems to have great posture or really bad posture, but there is no in-between, it seems. Finally, her squinting at the sun really damages her eyes, causing her pain. She also worries way too much to the point she can't sleep and if she can't sleep, she gets grumpy and sometimes snaps at people, but she tries to hold it in and does busy work instead. The other is messing up dinner. No matter how hard she tries, she just can't get it right. Sometimes, it burns; sometimes, she seasons it too much, others not enough. Sometimes, she experiments. Yeah, not great for her.

V: Vanity (How concerned are they with their looks?)

She knows she's beautiful, but she doesn't bother putting much effort into her looks. In canon, she wears the same outfit for years. She also wears a simple bun and a braid at night. She could be curling her hair or wearing it up like the other ladies, but she doesn't. I thought she wore the lightest makeup, but I don't believe it at the end of the day, and she wouldn't waste the little money she had on it. Modern Au is just as beautiful but doesn't spend a lot of time on her looks, either. She wears her hair naturally. Mostly in a bun or braid, but she is more likely to wear it down here. She wears light makeup. Eyeshadow, eyeliner, lipstick and foundation. She goes for a more natural look, but red lipstick looks stunning. She doesn't bother with beauty trends, just what she feels comfortable with. She is also less fashionable than Molly. She cares about being comfortable and "age-appropriate." Meaning she doesn't dress like a "mom," but she's not wild either.

W: Whole (Would they feel incomplete without you?)Whole (Would they feel incomplete without you?)

Abigail learned this lesson after all the hell she was put through with John. Her heart felt incomplete, but she never would admit it, even when L.H. Arthur would point it out. She resigned herself to being alone. She felt no one would ever love a single mother, especially one with her past. She had given up on love. Could she be pulled out of that mindset? Yes, but it would take someone very special. IMHO, a woman would have better luck with this. (Granted, women can be super judgmental.)

X: Xtra (A random headcanon for them)

I hc Abigail as demisexual. I think part of it is being born with it, and some of it might have been experiences she's had and discovered herself. I say that as someone who is the same. However, I do not say she is demisexual because I am. I truly believe she has the characteristics of someone who is demisexual. I think canon is more likely, given her past and how protective she is of her sexuality in all forms. I think she truly needs a bond and to feel safe. She might find someone attractive, but it's not something she truly feels until she gets to know someone - then it clicks that she cares for them. Did it happen with John? No, I hc that was love at first sight, but I think that she discovered this after the events with John, and she has remained that way ever since. It's why someone like Sadie makes sense for those who ship her with them. They have a strong foundational friendship. I picture it would be the same with any OC. It's a hc I am very passionate about.

No Y

Zzz (What is a sleep habit of theirs?)

Abigail hates sleeping on her back anymore. Sleeping outside on the ground for so many years has really messed with her back. She's a side sleeper now, but she sometimes rolls onto her back anyway.

#red dead redemption 2 #van der linde gang #rdr 2 #abigail marston #abigail roberts #abigail marston x reader #abigail roberts x reader #sadie adler #sadigail #john marston #jack marston #john marston x abigail marston

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sbjnirmalproducts1997 · 2 days ago

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yamayuandadu · 1 year ago

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Ishkur, Baal, and others: a guide to the weather gods of Mesopotamia and ancient Syria

I received an ask recently which was difficult to answer in the conventional way: Is there any difference between Adad, Hadad, Ugaritic Baal, and Ishkur? What aspects would be specific to each? Was Dagan said to be the father of Ugaritic Baal or Hadad? Also, what sources would you recommend on the subject? After much consideration and multiple failed attempts to write a short response I decided to present the information in the form of a proper article. You can find it under the cut.

Recommended reading I’ll reverse the usual formula and start with literature recommendations. The most comprehensive treatment of this matter is quite literally a 1000+ pages long monograph, Daniel Schwemer’s Die Wettergottgestalten Mesopotamiens und Nordsyriens im Zeitalter der Keilschriftkulturen. Materialien und Studien nach den schriftlichen Quellen. It’s available for free, and remains reliable basically 99% of the time. I am aware reading hundreds of dense pages of academic German might be a bit much, but luckily the same author effectively wrote a two part abridged edition in English, The Storm-Gods of the Ancient Near East: Summary, Synthesis, Recent Studies. It is similarly available for free, see here for part 1 and here for part 2. Other literature which is worth checking out, and which I also utilized here, includes Lluís Feliu’s monograph The God Dagan in Bronze Age Syria and his article Two brides for two gods. The case of Šala and Šalaš; Alfonso Archi’s Hadda of Ḫalab and his Temple in the Ebla Period; and Shana Zaia’s Adad in Assyria: Royal Authority in the Neo-Assyrian Period. Furthermore, a new desertion which seems relevant was published recently, Albert Dietz’s Der Wettergott im Bild: diachrone Analyse eines altorientalischen Göttertypus im 3. und 2. Jahrtausend v. Chr., but I did not have the opportunity to read it yet. To properly answer the rest of the questions, the historical and environmental context of the worship of weather deities has to be addressed first. Ishkur in Mesopotamia in the Uruk and Early Dynastic periods At the dawn of recorded history, in lower Mesopotamia weather gods did not enjoy particular prominence. This has a lot to do with the environment - the importance of weather deities typically stems from reliance on rainfall in agriculture. As through a solid chunk of Mesopotamia irrigation mattered more, there was no real need for a major weather deity to arise. Canals were often handled by local tutelary gods, for example Shara in Umma. The oldest attested weather deity in Mesopotamia is Ishkur, who pretty clearly already worshiped in the Uruk period, but his importance was comparatively minor. His two main spheres of influence were seemingly providing water for land which was not irrigated (for example the steppe) and presiding over the destructive side of the weather - not just heavy rainfall, but also dust storms. Ishkur was also the main god of the city of Karkar, which has not yet been located with certainty, but presumably is to be found close to Adab on the banks of the Tigris. The fact that the logogram read as “storm” also represented this toponym in the Uruk period already is how it was possible to establish that the city was already a cult center of Ishkur at this time, and presumably earlier. The same logogram was also used to represent Ishkur’s name, for obvious reasons. However, the etymology of his proper name is unknown. It might be a Sumerian word which fell out of use before the start of recorded history otherwise, or it might come from a substrate language; this is ultimately irrelevant and has no real bearing on the tangible early history of this god. In addition to Karkar Ishkur was worshiped in nearby Adab and even further south in Lagash, but that’s about it for the earliest sources. Worth noting that for example in Ur there was virtually no cult of any weather deity until the late third millennium BCE, and even then, in the Ur III period it was of no interest to rulers. We also do not know much about the circle of deities associated with him. Based on later evidence it is presumed that his wife might have been the goddess Medimsha (“possessing beautiful limbs”), and god lists indicate his sukkal (attendant deity) was the deified lightning, Nimgir, but that’s about it. Adad ("Hadda") in early Syrian sources

The situation was diametrically different in upper Mesopotamia and across northern Syria. In these regions agriculture did depend on rainfall, which naturally meant weather gods were present in many local pantheons for as long as evidence is available. The best early sources we have are the texts from Ebla, which are roughly contemporary with the Early Dynastic sources mentioned in the previous paragraphs. The Eblaites evidently recognized Aleppo as the cult center of a weather god, who they referred to as Adad - or rather by a cognate of this name, which can be romanized as something like “Hadda” or "'Adda", but you get the point. It’s a derivative of the root *hdd, “to thunder”, which appears in some capacity in virtually every single language from the Semitic family. The Akkadian spelling, which is firmly Adad, seemingly reflects the weakening of the h present in Eblaite and later in a number of other languages (Ugaritic, Aramaic etc) into a glottal stop. Despite the root *hdd itself appearing in languages spoken as far south as Ethiopia, weather gods with names derived from it were seemingly initially basically restricted to northern Syria and upper Mesopotamia. Therefore, this is another piece of evidence indicating there is hardly such a thing as a “Semitic pantheon”; languages are not religions. It is not possible to tell when his cult was originally established, and claims linking any neolithic object with worship of weather gods require a healthy dose of skepticism. What is clear is that he was already well established by the third millennium BCE. Interestingly, despite Adad’s high status in the Eblaite pantheon, his original cult center, Aleppo, was hardly a political power in its own right in the third millennium BCE. In that regard he resembles many of the other major members of the local pantheon, like Hadabal (formerly read as Nidakul; no etymological relation to Adad or Baal) or Dagan, whose cult centers likewise did not form kingdoms in their own right .

A map of ancient Syria, showing the location of Ebla, Aleppo, Mari and other nearby cities (wikimedia commons)

All we can tell about the associations between Adad and other deities in the Ebla-Aleppo area is that he definitely had a wife, Halabatu, possibly to be understood as “she of Aleppo”. This name likely later morphed into better known Hebat. There’s no real evidence for a link between Adad and Dagan at this point in time, and Alfonso Archi went as far as arguing Dagan was not yet regarded as a senior, fatherly figure in the third millennium BCE, but this is ultimately speculative. Adad was also worshiped midway between Ebla and lower Mesopotamia, in Mari. Local scribes were the first people on record to associate him with Ishkur, and utilized the logographic writing of the latter’s name to represent the former. Curiously in Ebla this convention was entirely unknown, even though in other cases logograms borrowed from Mesopotamia did see some usage in a similar context. Adad and Ishkur in Mesopotamia through third and second millennia BCE In the Sargonic period Adad started to spread to new areas. He is well attested as far east as Gasur (later Nuzi) near modern Kirkuk. Since no comparable evidence is available for the Early Dynastic period, it can be safely assumed that he was restricted to western areas earlier. However, how exactly his cult entered the east and the south remains poorly understood. A major development for Adad in Mesopotamia was the merge between him and Ishkur. Presumably it started developing right as the southern scribal culture started to expand into areas where Adad was worshiped, like Mari. The details of this process are poorly known, but by the Ur III period Adad and Ishkur were effectively the same god in Mesopotamia. The worship of Adad was subsequently promoted by kings of the Isin and Larsa dynasties, and by the Old Babylonian period he was recognized as a major deity. He acquired some new roles, being invoked as a god of justice and divination - perhaps these offset the environmental factors responsible for Ishkur’s lack of popularity? However, many sources also indicate that even as a weather god he was recognized in a positive, rather than exclusively destructive role, acting as a bringer of abundance. He also came to be known as the "canal inspector of the gods", ie. as a god of irrigation. Adad's family in lower Mesopotamia

Frans Wiggermann's drawing of a seal impression showing a weather god and his spouse; reproduced here for educational purposes only. In lower Mesopotamia, the composite “Ishkur-Adad” kept a genealogy most likely originally developed with Ishkur in mind. His father was Anu, the sky god. The relationship between them is hardly explored in myths, though an Old Babylonian flood myth has a funny passage where, to cite Schwemer, “Adad (...) is to bring about a famine for humanity through lack of rainfall, and (...) then has to be guarded in heaven by Anu because of his corruptibility”. Alas, the audience presumably didn’t think that giving him the role of a failson was funny, and this element is absent from later flood myths. There is apparently only one source from the south which directly refers to Adad’s mother, and it places Urash in this role. This is hardly unexpected. My impression is that among online hobbyists Urash gets the least recognition of all three of Anu’s wives, but honestly prior to the “antiquarian theology” rising in late sources from Uruk, literally mere centuries before the death of cuneiform, she was -the- wife of Anu, with Ki bordering on being a non-personified concept and Antu hardly mattering. If a deity was defined as a child of Anu chances are very high Urash was the mother, basically. In the Old Babylonian period the southern version of Adad also gained a spouse, Shala, a fellow weather deity. This goddess must be categorically distinguished from Shalash known from earlier sources, who will be discussed later. We do not really know particularly well where she came from. Today the most common assumption is that her name is Hurrian and can be translated as “daughter”. This would point at origin in some part of Upper Mesopotamia. Lluis Feliu suggests that she might have originally been the spouse of the Hurrian weather god Teshub in a tradition perhaps centered on hitherto unidentified cities on the Tigris, though while plausible, this is ultimately purely speculative. Shala is very sparsely attested in Hurrian context, but to be fair most evidence we have comes from the west of the Hurrian sphere, and not from the east where she theoretically would be present. Mesopotamian god lists indicate that Shala was equated with Medimsha, presumably in a similar manner as Adad was with Ishkur. There is no independent evidence for Medimsha being Ishkur’s wife beyond texts which equate them with Adad and Shala, but the conclusion she held such a status even before the conflation is widely accepted, and I see no real reason to dispute it. Adad and Shala also had a number of children. The best attested ones are Misharu (“justice”), originally an independent god perhaps integrated into Adad’s circle because his name sounds similar to the akkadian word for wind, and Usur-amassu (“heed his - ie. Adad’s - word”). There isn’t much of a reason to discuss them in detail here since they were not weather deities; Usur-amassu is a fascinating figure though, and while initially male, they are mostly notable due to switching gender in the first millennium BCE as a new courtier of Inanna/Ishtar in Uruk, without losing the connection to her parents.

Western views on Adad’s genealogy and marital status While Shala was firmly the wife of the Mesopotamian Adad in Babylonia and Assyria, and Anu was equally firmly his father, the situation was different over in Aleppo and around it. As I mentioned before, the weather god of Aleppo already had a wife in the third millennium BCE, Halabatu. While many deities worshiped in Syria in the third millennium BCE later vanished, she remained a member of the local pantheon under the shortened name Hebat, and her position did not change. To my best knowledge the eastern limit for her recognition as the spouse of the weather god was Mari. The west is more complicated, though she pretty firmly appears in this role in Alalakh. The complex case of Ugarit will be discussed later. The different circles of associated deities make it pretty easy to separate Mesopotamian and western traditions. I would argue that a formal distinction between the Mesopotamian Adad and the “Aleppine” original is attested in the god list K 2100 (no catchier name for now), which lists “Ilhallabu”, “god of Aleppo”, among Adad’s foreign counterparts. Mari is somewhat of an oddity in that western and southern traditions pertaining to the weather god of Aleppo and the Mesopotamian Adad probably coexisted there. The Mariote kings recognized the weather god of Aleppo, but we also have some evidence that his peer from Karkar had some presence in the kingdom. For instance, Shala appears in personal names, and a seal refers to Anu as the weather god’s father. However, it is possible that a distinct western tradition regarding his parentage was followed in this area. While we do not know if Dagan was regarded as the father of the weather god of Aleppo in the third millennium BCE, it does appear that a connection between them was recognized in the Old Babylonian period. A mystery which for now cannot be solved is whether Dagan became the father of the weather god because his Hurrian counterpart Kumarbi was, or the other way around. Until more textual sources dealing with the theology of northern Syria surface it probably will remain impossible to answer this question for certain. Regardless of how the weather god came to be Dagan’s son, his mother in this situation would be Shalash. Her name is accidentally similar to Shala’s, but she has a distinct origin. In a ritual preserved in the Mari corpus but originating in Aleppo, Dagan and Shalash both appear alongside Hebat, which is generally taken as an indication they were regarded as members of one family.

Weather gods of Kumme and Arrapha in Mari (and beyond): enter Teshub

A late Bronze Age relief depicting Teshub (center left) and his wife Hebat (center right) alongside their family and court (wikimedia commons)

A further Mariote curiosity are references to weather gods of Kumme and Arrapha, to whom kings also paid respect. Both of these cities were Hurrian, and it is quite likely that the deity designated by the logogram normally read as Adad was in fact Teshub in these cases. Teshub was seemingly also starting to approach on the turf of the original weather god of Aleppo in the Old Babylonian period, as Hebat already shows up as his wife at this time. Eventually he fully replaced him, becoming the new weather god of Aleppo due to growing Hurrian cultural influence in Syria, though he did not hold this title forever. After the bronze age collapse local Luwian princes referred to the weather god of Aleppo as Tarhunza, and eventually the old name returned, with Arameans in the first millennium BCE worshiping Hadad in Aleppo. It’s worth noting a Neo-Assyrian treaty invokes the god of Aleppo separately from the Mesopotamian Adad, which indicates in this period the two were also viewed as separate. As a further Assyrian curiosity it might be worth bringing up “Adad of Kumme”, more or less the last reference to Teshub; see here for more information, in addition to Schwemer’s monograph. It is agreed the pairing Hebat with Teshub was adopted by Hurrians from northern Syria based on parallels between him and the local weather god, but it is not clear if he had a wife earlier. There is a theory that Shaushka, who in later sources firmly appears as his sister, was originally his spouse, but I will admit I do not fully get the reasoning, it’s not like anyone sensible advocates that Utu and Inanna were originally a couple. Feliu’s Shala theory strikes as much more plausible: Shaushka is firmly unmarried, Shala is firmly the wife of a weather god.

Coastal novelties, or the rise of Baal in Ugarit

Detail of the Baal stele from Ugarit (wikimedia commons).

The overlap between the weather god of Aleppo and Teshub was not the only western development in the second millennium BCE. Thai was the creation of Baal. The title designated the western weather god from the Mediterranean coast to roughly the middle Euphrates, though it only replaced the basic name, Hadad, in coastal areas. While the epithet Baal -or rather its cognates - already occurs in the third millennium BCE (for example in titles of Dagan), its use to specifically designate a distinct weather god was a novelty. While it seems the use of the title Baal to designate a god derived from Hadad was widespread on the Mediterranean coast, this phenomenon is best attested from Ugarit. Baal had the standard responsibilities of a weather deity there, but also acquired the unique role of a protector of sailors. Rather fittingly, in the Baal Cycle his enemy is the personified sea, Yam. We know there already was a myth dealing with the conflict between a weather god and the sea before in the tradition of Aleppo, but I do not think there’s any real consensus over what it entailed. I’m under the impression that since Dagan was ultimately the supreme deity, and there’s no real indication his relationship with his children was negative, it is not impossible that what unfolded was more similar to the various myths about Ninurta’s exploits, where the hero acts on behalf of his father. This is ultimately pure speculation, though. Baal was associated neither with Shala nor with Hebat. The latter was only worshiped in Ugarit as the spouse of Teshub, recognized as the god of Aleppo. Baal himself seemingly had no permanent spouse, though Ugaritic literature might point at informal links between him and Anat and/or Ashtart. Ugaritic tradition recognized Dagan as his father, in line with the views popular further inland, though the matter is pretty complicated as the supreme coastal god El could also be referred as his father. This remains a matter of heated debate, and the fact “father” was also effectively a generic honorific does not really help. Multiple nondescript minor goddesses were recognized as Baal’s daughters, though their mother is left unspecified. Pidray is by far the best attested, and a recent discovery indicates she was already worshiped by Amorites in the Old Babylonian period, presumably in relation to the weather god of Aleppo. Aramaic Ramman

The last distinct name which needs to be briefly discussed here is Ramman(u), which in Mesopotamia earlier on was primarily a title of the god Amurru, who can be best described as a divine redneck stereotype. However, in the first millennium BCE Arameans used to refer to their version of Hadad, worshiped in Damascus arguably effectively as a distinct deity. For more on this topic, which I am actually not very well-versed in, see here. Other Mesopotamian weather deities While Adad was obviously THE Mesopotamian weather god, a second figure of analogous character, Wer, was worshiped in the north and west. The origin of his name is uncertain. The first consonant behaves in wildly unpredictable ways which do not really match the phonology of any known language spoken in ancient Mesopotamia which might mean it originates in a hitherto unknown extinct substrate. Wer is relatively sparsely attested in literature, but in the Old Babylonian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh he is referenced as the master of Humbaba, something unparalleled both in earlier and later versions of Gilgamesh narratives. We never actually encounter him in the surviving fragments, but Enkidu basically hypes him up as if he was an overarching shonen antagonist:

This passage is sourced from Andrew R. George's edition.

There’s a back and forth argument in scholarship over whether Wer/Mer can be identified with Itur-Mer, the tutelary god of Mari. I personally lean towards the view that he cannot, and that the competing view is more plausible. Said alternative relies on the structure of the name, which seems to be theophoric; in the light of this peculiarity it has been argued Itur-Mer was a deified ancestor or culture hero simply bearing a theophoric name invoking Mer. For a detailed discussion of this god see here. In the Lament for Sumer and Ur, the destructive aspects of the weather are “outsourced” to a deity named Kingaludda, “director of the storm”. He is otherwise pretty much only attested in An = Anum, where he occurs far away from Adad’s section. He gets glossed as “evil god”, ilu lemnu. Another antagonistic figure related to the weather is Bilulu from the myth Inanna and Bilulu. The rainbow was deified separately from other weather phenomena under the name Manzat. She for the most part had no real connection to Adad and his circle, though it has been noted temples dedicated to Adad and Shala and to Manzat were juxtaposed in Chogha Zanbil in Elam in modern Iran. All three appear there presumably because they were worshiped in heavily Mesopotamia-influenced Susa. I wrote about her extensively in the past, both here and on wikipedia, so while she is one of my favorite minor goddesses I do not think there is a need to say more here. A mistaken assumption common in older publications and online is that Enlil, the standard head of the pantheon, was a weather god. For his character see this article and this monograph in particular. Another common mistake is interpreting gods poetically compared to storms or fighting using weather phenomena in a single myth or two as weather gods. These are just poetic topoi and there’s no real reason to assert Ninurta, Tishpak or Inanna had much to do with the weather.

#mesopotamian mythology #sumerian mythology #hurrian mythology #ugaritic mythology #mythology

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