#which is why I'm not naming the species in this particular post - it would be getting a little too specific on personal info for my liking | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

starflungwaddledee · 1 year ago

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a comment left by @chickenpeep77 on my post about my "realistic penguin" dedede redesigns which i thought was so interesting and compelling i wanted to give a longer reply to! hope that's okay!!

this grew much longer than i even originally expected, so under the read more it goes. i'll also break it up into some kind of sections to make it easier

topics: the joy of the unfamiliar, bird features and the Snood, is dedede officially A Penguin?, and why i like to think he is. (also i have a small meltdown about galacta knight's fkn awful canon wings.)

hard sci-fi spec bio & the joy of the unfamiliar

i'm actually super into speculative biology, and have a lot of gripes with the way aliens in soooooo many fictions or fanons or whichever are always assumed to have a firm set of recognisably familiar traits. must they be made of meat; must they have skeletons; must they pick the most difficult and dangerous method of reproduction possible in the cosmos; just because it's familiar to us? must they be stand ins for humans and animals only? i think that the real fun of speculative hard sci-fi in particular is found in doing a jaunty little dance around the unfamiliar, around all the absolutely infinite and wonderful impossible possibilities out there. so all that to say that i absolutely agree with you about this in general.

the bird "beak skin" topic

i looovvve the idea of using the skin from a bird's mask to form an entirely functional and movable feature like a beak. that would presumably make it a caruncle (and it would share space with one of the best named thing in birds, the "snood"), some of which- like the snood- are indeed movable! many birds also already have caruncles that stretch over the beak, but to have the structure made entirely from it and stretched over teeth instead is very interesting and creative! it perhaps makes it more like skin and lips over a jaw, which is a fun and bizzare visual for a birdlike. i actually think that this kind of specbio could be a fun take for captain vul, who i also just did an earth-bird redesign for. vul has no species identified; for all we know he's a bird-like alien that just happens to look much like an anthromorphic eagle. i also headcanon magolor as a bird-like alien; though he shares few visual similarities with any earth birds.

is dedede a penguin officially or just in our hearts?

(please note that i'm informed on this only from english knowledge and various wikis. if anyone has other info here i'd gladly hear otherwise!) for king dedede in particular, while he's never been officially confirmed to be a penguin there's no shortage of canon references to penguins for him across franchises and he is mistaken for a penguin by snake in smash bros brawl. now i dunno what kind of penguins mr solid snake might have seen in his adventurous life, but while i could look at dedede and think "bird-like alien" i'm not sure i would think "damn that's a penguin for sure." so i personally think that dedede is not necessarily meant to be an unfamiliar alien, or even an alien that looks a bit like a generic bird or an alien that looks like a penguin. i think he is meant to be a penguin, or at least something that was a penguin at some point. and perhaps if there were not an abundance of actual genuine honest to god unidentified and delightfully weird aliens on Popstar and in Kirby games already, i would also be more interested in seeing dedede as a more bizzare bird-like creature than a penguin. you'll note in my designs i also drew him with some dense teeth (not found in earth penguins) and- this wasn't visible- my design also has dexterous talons extended from the wrists of his flippers. if he is a penguin, he doesn't seem to be a very water bound or piscivorous one. so maybe he's a bit distanced from penguins as we know them. several steps of evolution away. but i think because i can satisfy my specbio with the others (please know i have a whole host of unnecessarily complicated and fun waddle dee biology headcanons if anyone is ever interested... and don't get me started on celestials, hahah hahaha!-) for me the most interesting speculative question for king Dedede is not "what could he be if not a penguin like we know them" but actually "how the hell did a penguin get there??". and i think forgotten land gave us some extremely cool stuff to chew on wrt that! kind of like you mentioned with your wormhole theory!

why i personally like to bring Earth Birds into my kirby work

ALL of that said... i'm just doing designs for fun! i like birds, and i like earth birds in particular. they're sadly my only exposure thus far (alien birds though, if you're out there... 👋 ) so when i get the opportunity to utilise both my interest and my knowledge on birds and the way they function here in my fanwork, i take that chance! i had the skill to draw an earth-penguin-accurate dedede so i did, for fun! i also use my knowledge of wing structures for both birds and bats (and butterflies even) to tweak how i draw the various knight's wings to be "more realistic", as if that's a metric in space. but galacta's canon styled wings are.......................... i mean i have some capital t Thoughts about that One Long Feather. and i think most people understand this to be stylisation, but maybe it is just that he's an alien! maybe they're not even feathers, maybe it's just silly putty that looks like feathers! the world is your oyster tbh.

and the wrap up.

lastly, i can see you're into specbio too and that's super exciting, and i absolutely hope none of this sounds like... negative or remotely critical at all? i completely agree with you and love what you're doing with your stuff!! i'm just excited to engage with this topic you brought up and it made me thoughtful about the way i conceptualise dedede as less alien rather than more, when my preference is indeed usually more!

these are just my personal thoughts/preferences/headcanons and i guess like... why i think HCing dedede as a relatively normal penguin is actually perhaps the most interesting (and funniest) take for me and my own enjoyment! 😂 but everybody- including yourself- should always do what is the most fun and enjoyable for you; especially in a space like creativity and fandom!

anyway.. uhm.. hwahaha wow okay. well, anyone, if you read this far, thank you! sorry for accidentally opening this can of worms i'm sure it'll happen again

#asks #king dedede #my headcanons and worldbuilding #i realised i didn't even touch on or broach the topic of magic in general. he's also immersed in magic and can vacuum-inhale. like...#there's some other things there to unpack too. but this is enough for now |D

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z-h-i-e · 2 years ago

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Get to know me better...

I have been tagged by @sallysavestheday and I aim to please. Or, at least answer the call to answer questions. ^_^

Relationship status: Smaug and I have been together since 1997 - according to the Elves, we've been married since 1998, according to the Race of Men, 2000. We're also besties, so that definitely made all the time spent together during the pandemic pretty nice.

Favorite color: I have a favorite color spectrum that includes purple, green, and gold. It slides around depending on my mood. I will also argue that glitter is one of my favorite colors.

Song stuck in your head: This precise moment? My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark/Fall Out Boy -- I've been listening to it, thinking of Finrod composing songs about the burning of the ships that become popular and this leads into Celegorm and Curufin being pissed at him later that their shoreline deeds become Noldorin pop songs without them getting any credit

Favorite food: I am a big fan of mushrooms - years ago, when I used to do impromptu Discord calls while cooking and imparting fandom and life wisdom, it ended up named 'Mushrooms in my Ramen' because that's the best way to ramen. I also like fruit; I grow several types in my yard. Shrimp, shrimp is amazing. Shrimp on pizza, shrimp and corn chowder, shrimp and grits -- just, shrimps, yes. Also poutine. I love a good poutine. I like making soups and chili the way I want them (basically, no tomatoes - tomatoes are my species enemy, they will try to kill me), so, tomato-less and meatless chili is kind of my jam. My big guilty pleasure is Chicken McNuggets. I know they're basically fried chicken goop, I will still consume them. I don't even need sauce. (But, sauce is good, so it honey with them.) Oh, and raw sweet corn. I don't know why people cook corn. It's so much better raw. (not canned cold, but fresh raw sweet corn)

Last song played: I heard Alone Again Or by The Damned when I drove home. I had only previously heard the original by Love, which I, heh, wow, unintentional pun, love. It's a song on my original Glorfindel/Erestor playlist from twenty years back, when the early shippers were jockeying for position and trying to figure those Rivendell bois out. I should teach myself to play that song. I wonder how it would sound on the balalaika... *pencils that in for a summer project* I already know the lyrics... [So the connection for me with Glorfindel and Erestor on this was the idea of Glorfindel being really friendly with everybody, but the only one he wants is Erestor, so he remains alone and waits for him during the early fourth age when the two of them are the last two remaining inhabitants of Imladris. Even though they aren't together yet, Glorfindel still uses terms of endearment for Erestor - right to his face - nothing hidden. My Erestor is such a asshole. Someday he'll do right by everyone... moving on...]

Dream Trip: I'm at a point where I hate any trip where I can't be home to sleep. Apnea diagnosis did that. So, I guess I'd like VR to catch up to a point where I can really and truly immerse and then go to...Middle-earth, of course I'm going there, or Thundera (obviously pre-explodeyness).

Last thing I Googled: I've been trying to help a friend find apartments in Milwaukee county that are not ridiculously expensive or have weird stipulations or fees attached to them. Certainly been a challenge. But the last last thing was googling Alone Again Or by The Damned so I could listen to it again but also sing along as I was writing this (yeah, that's apparently a creepy thing I do, is singing songs with unrelated lyrics while typing other words or blog posts or fanfic, so that's a thing I have going for me)

I guess that's all for now. Instead of tagging anyone in particular, I suggest that anyone who is interested in sharing please steal these questions and have at it. Or, just go and listen to Alone Again Or. It's a good song.

Love: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPbNpIG8x_s

The Damned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYVDN27CrOo

Only just realizing this now, it's not a bad Finrod pining for Amarië or Edrahil song, either... I'll have to tuck that away for later.

Your mileage may vary - if you do listen to it, I would would be interested knowing who it reminds you of.

#zhie's random thoughts and musings

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petalburg-pokemon-husbandry · 2 years ago

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Paldea Trip day 7: Wiglett

I'm not gonna lie, this post is mainly gonna be about convergent evolution. I don't think it's an unreasonable thing to look at Wiglett and Diglett and think "Oh, those must be closely related species. They've got the same big red noses and general tube-shaped bodies, so they must share a recent common ancestor." Unfortunately, you would be dead wrong. Wiglett is more closely related to tentacool than it is to Diglett. So of course then one would ask: Why the heck do they look so similar? The answer, as it turns out, is convergent evolution. (Population Evolution, not individual evolution. The terms can be confusing sometimes.) In biology, species will adapt into what we call their "niche", which is basically just the way that they go about their lives. A niche involves the time, location, food, and everything else that a species has to care about to survive. The important thing to know about right now is that species really don't like to share the same niche. If that ever happens, they'll often compete until one or both are entirely wiped out. That sort of competition isn't the only possible outcome, however. Species can also go through something called "niche partitioning", which is when their niches diverge slightly over several generations so they compete with each other less. A class example of this is small songbird pokemon, where any individual species's niche might be one specific part of one specific species of tree, such as Rookidee on the top of the shaded side of sycamore trees, wattrel on the top of the sunny side of sycamore trees, and fletchling on the bottom of sycamore trees. These sorts of niches are entirely innate, which is a remarkable thing to watch happen in real time. Now, with all of that established, let's finally get to convergent evolution. Within its niche, a species will generally adapt to be as efficient as possible at gather resources and reproducing. This will usually lead to traits evolving that are best suited to that specific niche. So, if two species were to share the same niche but in different locations - for example, diglett digging tunnels in soft soil in tepid regions and wiglett digging tunnels in soft sand in arid regions - it's entirely possible for them to adapt in the same way simply because the traits they share are what's best for that particular niche. Another really good example of this is physically powered flight. (We'll ignore psychic levitation for the sake of this post.) Flight evolved four different times across history, all of which were in completely different environments and at completely different times, and yet they all ended up extremely similar to one another. The first creatures to evolve flight were bug-type Pokemon like ancient ancestors of Yanma or Beedrill. After that were ancient flyers like Aerodactyl. Next were the aptly named flying-types such as ancestors of Pidget and Spearow, and finally mammalian flight by pokemon like Zubat and Noivern. All of these abilities to fly evolved millions of years apart from one another, and yet for the most part they've all ended up remarkably similar to one another. That is due to convergent evolution. Well, I just stayed up until 3am writing about convergent evolution. I have to go outside and start tagging Toedscool at 7am tomorrow morning. Wish me luck.

#pokemon husbandry #pokemon #pkmn #pokemon scarlet and violet

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holidaytorment · 4 months ago

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just imagine how good it would feel to read a book that's already assumed that you've internalized the lessons of books for teenagers.

fuck it. in no particular order: Books For Adults

the guns of august, barbara tuchmann. non-fiction, about the lead-up to and first month of world war 1. tuchmann's strength is in writing history in a breezy, personal way, and it is easy to see why it was awarded the pulitzer. the audiobook narrated by ian stuart is also tremendous (the other narrators i've heard are not as good). i think i've re-read this book more than any other i've read .

war and peace, leo tolstoy. historical fiction starring russian aristocrats during the napoleonic wars. jokes have been made about war and peace's length for decades and it's true, it is very long, but the thing is that it's also very, very good. if the thought of reading a long book about russian aristocracy turns you off because of whatever politics you may have then you are a coward.

the karla trilogy, john le carre. mystery/espionage, about the reveal of a traitor at the top of british intelligence (tinker, tailor, soldier, spy), a follow-up mission in hong kong (the honourable schoolboy), and the final resolution of the turmoil (smiley's people). simply fantastic pieces of writing and not at all what you should be expecting when i say that you should read these books about british spies. do not think that any james bond antics will happen here. i think i like the one-two of tinker, tailor and smiley's people (both are tied thematically a lot more to each other) but of the three the honourable schoolboy is probably the best overall. when george smiley shows up in anything i'm reading i smile.

the spy who came in from the cold, john le carre. mystery/espionage, about a mission into the heart of east germany and the personal toll of espionage. i told myself i wouldn't repeat authors but john le carre is basically my favorite author, and this is the novel that made him known worldwide.

all the president's men, carl bernstein and bob woodward. non-fiction journalism procedural, about the washington post's initial coverage of watergate. the book ends (and was published) before nixon resigned, so it might feel incomplete, but i liked the final days (by the same) as a follow-up/sequel. i also recommend the movie, jason robards gives one of the all-time great acting performances.

the game, ken dryden. non-fiction, memoir about the great montreal canadiens goalie's last season as a player, used as a framing device for a career retrospective. it's been some years since i've read it but it's still one of the all-time great books writen about sports. NOT the book that started the pick-up artist trend.

murder on the orient express, agatha christie. mystery, about the murder of a man on a train, and about finding your own peace and justice. i'd prefer not to give more details since it is a murder mystery, but there's a reason why agatha christie is a household name. and a book doesn't have to be long to be adult.

a memory called empire, arkady martine. sci-fi, about the first two weeks in the life of a new ambassador of an independent space station to the core of the galactic empire. oh and she also has to figure out the reason why her predecessor was killed. uh oh!

i got books for days. crime and punishment for me was slow until the titular crime happens about 1/5th in, and then i finished it in a week. lolita is basically unreliable narrator 101, read this book instead of hating it because you half-remember a half-read wikipedia article. last chance to see is a fantastic book by a hilarious writer about endangered species, some of which have gone extinct since publication. the right stuff, a fantastical tale of the early us space race. homage to catalonia, george orwell's memoir of fighting in the spanish civil war. ball four, jim boutan's tales of playing minor league baseball, maybe the best book about the sport ever written. i don't like tom clancy's other stuff but hunt for red october is tremendous trash. read a book written before you were born

No babe it’s so cool and hot that you always insist that fantasy books written to meet a 4th graders’ comprehension skills have more complex themes and a greater sense of praxis than anything written for adults

#sometimes the classics are classics for a reason

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faunastanza · 6 months ago

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Call Sign

Bearrings, Common A species sheet for the most blatant Pokemon ripoff I've ever seen. Min the not-a-celebi ain't nothing compared to this. Bearrings are just Ursarings. The names are even the same!

come on man

Anyway this time Neon is the one logging in to read info on the Ursarings. Their main thing is that they can astral project when they're sleeping or if they daydream really hard. They can affect the real world in their astral projection form, and can explore places that would be too dangerous for someone to travel to physically. TAL says they have an Ursaring working for them called Cozmo and Neon decides to go see him.

Seeds: War Is Hell Ch? - Call Sign

This is all technically still Seeds: War is Hell, apparently. Not Good With Kids was also a chapter of Seeds: War is Hell. I have no idea why this whole story... section? Is called War is Hell. But whatever. Call Sign is one of the last mostly coherent stories before we dive off a cliff into the really insane territory. I said mostly, note.

beholding siren (back right)

Neon has that nightmare again about Lily and a Beholding Siren where I think the siren is making Lily attack her but I'm not sure. The eye of the siren in particular seems to bother her. She wakes up and goes online to find bad posts (meaning posts that disagree with her) and tracks down the posters in real life to harrass them, to give you an idea of what Neon is like. This is also a dream however. Neon gets an email from Cozmo saying he's not in town currently but he will be in a while and he's cool with whatever.

Cozmo's a very chill and laid back dude who doesn't like being bored. He considers himself a wizard and can remember his astral dreams really well because of this, using his astral form to explore Teslic Yard. Teslic Yard is a dangerous place that's not on many maps and is hard to track down. In trying to find it, Cozmo went to a restaurant where the proprieter has some beholding siren heads on the walls as trophies. Beholding sirens have three eyes and even with their head cut off and mounted on the wall can still be alive and attack things. They can also apparently change their appearance to fit in better with people nearby them.

The proprieter says the beholding siren ate her leg, and Cozmo asks if it can regenerate since sirens are from Beholding Gorge. No idea what he means by that. Anyway he explored around Teslic Yard for a bit since he couldn't really get killed by anything until he ran into a door he couldn't open even in his astral form, which really bothered him. Before he could get in though Lily spotted him, even though most people can't see his astral form, and knocked him out, waking him up and putting him back in his own body. Cozmo keeps trying but Lily keeps finding him, and eventually Lily tracks him down in real life to ask if he wants to work for them at Teslic Yard.

i relate to you cozmo

Neon finds Cozmo and has a speech prepared for him about what she wants to do but he daydreams through it. She readies herself to read it again, and Cozmo again starts drifting off since it's boring but tells himself to focus. She wants Cozmo to go explore a place called Ever Hopeful, which is beyond the Beholding Gorge. She hopes that if she can see something for herself, she'll be able to figure it out.

She gives Cozmo some photos she has of Ever Hopeful that she got from decoding five different numbers stations into data. Strangely, TAL can't hear the signals or see the photos when Neon shows them to her. Cozmo starts heading off and runs into a quarantine line around Kadath that tells him to keep out, but he gets through the barrier anyway. He finds a weird abandoned village and hears spooky breathing on the opposite side of the wall he's walking on, and gets tripped into a noose by a ground full of eyes.

angels??

Turns out that Cozmo's died a ton of times like this without reaching Ever Hopeful and Neon is frustrated. She asks Cozmo why he keeps investigating the village even though it's obviously cursed and haunted and Cozmo just says it looks cool, he can't NOT look at it. Neon decides to reroute him around the evil village so it won't tempt him. Of note is that there's a map of the area and Ever Hopeful is very close to Heaven's Keys, a series of islands off the coast.

coincidence??

Anyway Cozmo goes through the Neckdeep Mire but also ends up dying constantly because the things in there can see him and he's not used to it. Neon says that Lily makes the trip twice a year without getting hurt, but apparently cuts around the thing in Ever Hopeful to go to Heaven's Keys. Cozmo's like then why didn't you just ask Lily to do it and Neon's like because it's DANGEROUS!! and I would've wanted to go with her myself and Cozmo's like whatever.

Cozmo gets past the mire and runs into an Undertaker forest. The Undertaker's like what the hell are you doing here and Cozmo's like eh just walking by. The Undertaker warns him away from exploring the Keys saying they're dangerous with a lot of angel-ish imagery.

maybe angels hang out there? idk

The Undertaker lets Cozmo pass through as long as he doesn't bother anyone, and he sees a bunch of people with terminal maladies hanging out and mostly having a good time. Cozmo realises it's a hospice for dying people and leaves in a funk. When he reports back to Neon he tries to leave out the stuff he saw in the Void Forest but she insists on seeing it, even though he says it'll just make her sad. And you know what, he shows their feelings to her and it makes her sad. Who would have thought?

idiot

Cozmo makes it through to Beholding Gorge and finds four booths run by four different beholding sirens, each with their third eye open and their others closed. They don't seem bothered by him at all and one with bees in her hair offers some honey to him. When he says he doesn't have any money, the siren manifests a coupon that says that favors are currency, and the honey is free to sample. Cozmo eats some and dies. Neon is extremely frustrated that Cozmo fell for such an obvious trap and he just shrugs and goes back to sleep.

He goes back to beehair Siren and tells her that her honey was really good, although it would've killed him.

i give this death honey five stars

She seems a bit puzzled by this and offers him a different type of honey, which he eats and then dies again and Neon is like GOD DAMN IT. She can't figure out why Cozmo is getting drawn to the traps, and he insists it was good honey and that the second time, the beehair siren tried to give him weaker honey, although it was still enough to kill him. He thinks they're just trying to sell their wares to him and him dying was an accident. Neon is doubtful and says that their reputation isn't because of "accidents".

Neon does a scan of all of TAL's archives for information about beholding sirens, leading to a short VN called

Subject 6

Neon logs in and her username is Kid Neon, so Dr. Neon and Kid Neon ARE the same person and not two different Neons across different "frequencies". Maybe. Who knows. She analyzes's Cozmo's dream report about the sirens he saw, of which there are six listed.

The first one has a face that looks a lot like Orobas's. The notes mention that sirens prefer crushing blows to slashing ones, since crushing blows are less likely to kill a fleeing victim. For the third one, the notes mention that sirens have a "beauty", with this one having sacrificed it in the form of its arm to make a victim look at its hypnotic flowers, which would validate her theory that sirens can control their victims. The fourth one also has a very Orobas looking face. Neon says that sirens knowingly cultivate a meek and timid appearance to appeal to their victims and are thus capable of learning what different cultures like.

suspicious

After the fourth siren, the file closes saying it's complete. Neon checks the list of sirens and only four are listed. She tries to list sirens 5 and 6, but they don't appear. She looks at siren 5's file directly and it only gives her garbled static . Neon asks TAL what's going on and TAL says she can see sirens 1-5 perfectly fine. Neon asks for a description of siren 5, and TAL gives her a description that sounds just like Orobas. Neon asks about siren 6, but TAL doesn't see a 6 on the list at all.

Neon tries to get it to display directly and gets a distorted glitchy image of what looks like Mr. 5 and the text begins to glitch out and repeat. It eventually says there are too many results and tells her to narrow it down. When Neon tries to display the list, nothing comes up at all and the messages are all lagging. She tries to display siren 6 again, but the computer lags and the entire file gets deleted.

Neon asks TAL for backups but she doesn't have any. The computer then reboots despite her telling it to stop, then installs new drivers in spite of her telling it to stop, then starts throwing up a ton of errors at her in general.

looks familiar

There's a brief glimpse of a plant with an eye before Neon's CYBEREYES overheat and she loses all the data. Chip says it'll try to restore it while she takes a break.

Back with Cozmo, he's gone through and tested all the sirens' wares. All of them are normal things like incense, ointment, or fabric dye that have some kind of magical effect on them that makes them lethal. Cozmo thinks that none of that is intentional and it's because they're using stuff in the gorge to make their wares and all the stuff in the gorge is toxic or cursed. Meanwhile Jupet asks Neon to read them a story and she mentions that Shizu and "Papa" are busy, which is the first we've heard of Jupet's dad.

All the booths disappear abruptly and beehair siren shows Cozmo a big tree where they apparently all live before also disappearing. In the background, a ghostly Orobas is peeking around. What??

???

Cozmo goes up the tree and finds all the sirens around a table, apparently waiting for him. They talk amongst themselves but Cozmo can't understand it, then set up a sort of summoning circle thing on the table. It goes up in flames and inside is a pawprint, which Cozmo thinks is for him and that they're asking him for his help. He sticks his paw on the pawprint and there's kind of an explosion noise. He decides to leave before Neon gets on his case but finds out suddenly that he's trapped in the room and can't phase through the walls or anything while the sirens leer at him.

Neon gets a report that the dream log for Cozmo has ended but no data has come back from him, and then gets a report that multiple lifeforms are in his room. Neon goes to check it out and finds his room has a bunch of bees that hung out in beehair siren's bee hair, and incense that one of the sirens was selling that smells really nice (and is deadly), and then passes out.

We cut back abruptly to Neon and Lily where we last saw them at the end of Draft 6 where they were both exploring Teslic Yard. They're in the same room but on a different frequency, or at a different time? It's hard to say, but the floor has dead bees on it. Lily says they're shays, or fairy bees, and are meant to bring good luck. Lily and Neon go exploring a bit and Lily finds their old quarters and says they're empty, but Neon finds Jupet's old room that still has all their old stuff in it. Unsurprisingly, Lily is upset and starts crying because she'll never see her Jupet again, OOPS.

Lily says that something happened in the room that makes her sad, but she can't place what it is. There's a fairy circle in the middle of the room that looks dead, and Lily says that fairy circles can show up where fairies die, especially if heavy magic is involved, and says that necropossums (like Biff) are a type of fairy. Neon looks sad at this - later someone implies that Jupet is a possum, so maybe that's why?

Lily says she's starting to remember that Teslic Yard was almost empty and TAL lent Jupet a finger puppet, then the doll disappeared and Jupet died and never woke up, then corrects and says "we" found out that Jupet was using the doll in Hellside, which was what Jupet was doing before the shift happened. Meanwhile there's a pic of Andre on the wall just kinda watching and only Lily seems to notice he's there. She tells Neon to leave her alone for a bit.

andre's face first got cracked in try try again, before that it was fine

She addresses Andre by his full title and asks why his face isn't split in half, to which he says he's a "vintage rendition" untouched by the cosmos. He says he's Beleth's boss "this time" and when Lily asks if he can ask Beleth to come to Teslic Yard, he says that's not a good idea. If Beleth doesn't rescue Median so she can end the epidemic, it'd be disastrous. Lily says "ANOTHER epidemic?" and Andre says it's the first one, as it always is, and that a lot of details are interchangable but not that one, nor the bit about Beleth saving Median.

Meanwhile, Neon asks Chip if they ever reached Ever Hopeful, to which Chip says yes, but when Neon asks for more details Chip refuses to say. Lily and Neon decide to head for Neon's old office, although Lily's taken Andre's picture with her, which I don't think ever comes back in the future.

Back with Cozmo and the sirens, Cozmo says that it wasn't a summoning circle they made but a fairy circle. The sirens aren't interested in fighting with him however, and are staring at a shadow of Orobas at the head of the table. When the sirens look with their normal eyes, she disappears, but if they look with their third eyes, she appears. Cozmo wonders if their stares are what's keeping her in existence, or at least as close to existence as she is at the moment.

Cozmo makes as if to attack them, but the sirens :( at him and he backs off, to which they :) at him (although Orobas is perpetually :) and has no eyes while this is going on).

i think the sirens are cute tbh

The sirens ask Cozmo for a favor, and he eventually figures out that they want him to find Orobas. The sirens themselves can't leave to go look because they get attacked whenever any other people see them. The sirens start telepathically communicating with him, but they can only say a few vague words, mostly "favor" and "see". Cozmo decides they're offering him a favor, seeing, in exchange for him finding Orobas, and agrees.

Meanwhile, Neon wakes up and blames herself for the sirens taking Cozmo and vows that she'll find and rescue him. She says sirens may keep their victims alive for several days if they're sufficiently "desired" so she might still have some time. She decides to head out to find him by following his trail she got from his logs.

Neon decides to take a shortcut and go by the haunted village so she can get to the sirens faster. Chip says this is a bad idea but she's confident she can just ignore the village.

those three lines again

She does not ignore the village. She starts getting haunted by spooky breathing and tries to drive away but keeps looping back to the village. Each time she comes back to the village it looks a little more angel-y. Someone tries to get into her vehicle and she floors it. When she asks Chip if it can sense anything, it says everything's normal, which Neon says has precedent since it was the same case with TAL. The breathing comes back and Neon flips out and drives into a tree.

Current Neon wakes up in present time still thinking she's in Cozmo time, so there's some overlap going on. She says that she and Jupet made the scrapgoat pointy thing that's been following them around (its name is Static), and when she asks where the goat was made since it wasn't Teslic Yard, it says that only Jupet can access that info.

pointy

They make it to the building and Lily flirts with Neon a bit more who blows up at her to stop making fun of her and to stop pretending that Neon's useful or needed or she likes her. Lily apologizes and Neon asks her how much she remembers. Lily says that she doesn't remember very much, but she remembers enough to be happy they're both here. Lily says she'll knock off the flirting and Neon thinks about how she doesn't want that, so she tells Lily it's okay in so many words and flirts back to Lily's delight.

Anyway back in Cozmo time, Neon gets away from the village and makes it to the Void Forest. She asks the Undertakers where Cozmo is and they say they're pretty sure he's in trouble and it's her fault and to gtfo. She tries to drive through anyway and they punt her out lol.

She drives along a beach instead and ends up triggering some kind of... boulder throwing traps that sense motion? So she just has to sit and wait for nightfall. While she's waiting she starts thinking about Cozmo and whether or not she actually wanted to rescue him or if she just wanted to go to Ever Hopeful herself and used him to figure out how to do it.

Neon wonders aloud if Cozmo already found Ever Hopeful and didn't tell her. Chip thinks that's ridiculous. The art starts getting kind of sketchy and weird and Neon gets really paranoid, saying that Cozmo had an agenda and can't be trusted, and he wanted Ever Hopeful for himself. Chip is like what the hell are you talking about while Neon keeps going on about how Cozmo tricked them and all the siren stuff was probably just lies and that he must have tricked them out here to die.

get used to crossed out text like this, soon it will be endless

The borders get eyes and angel-y and start reaching out to block out Chip's protests, making it instead sound like Chip also thinks they should head to Ever Hopeful, since she knows that's where Cozmo will be.

Meanwhile, Cozmo is in his real form and he finds Neon's car but it's empty. He's distraught at the realization that Neon must have come here looking for him. He shifts to his astral form and tells himself that everything will be fine if he can just find her before anything else gets to her and he'll help her go home. He heads off to find her and gets stopped by three beholding sirens who run security around Ever Hopeful, apparently. They scan him saying he has a "soul split" and identify him as Cozmo, saying his status is "beautiful" lol. He makes as if to zap them and they tell him to knock it off or they'll give him a tranquilizing bite. He asks them where Neon is, and they say "Error 651" and say that it's restricted information, and that he has to visit the admissions office and update his profile information to lift the restrictions. When he asks how, they tell him to just head to the admissions office, while one siren says that his soul status is "no longer connected". They also say that permissions are null while on campus until his profile is up to date. They say his soul status qualifies for paid testing and asks if he wants to apply and he refuses. They warn him that an infection is present on inner campus grounds (hey, remember Schoolyard Disease?) and ask if he wants an escort, and he says it's fine and that he remembers the way, and he thinks Neon does too.

Cozmo wonders what they were trying to do here as he finds the main school building, and says that they didn't want to remember. He says that now it's okay though, and that "now, I'm me" and he can remember and things will be okay. He remembers that they were looking for something and they found themselves. He says it used to be so boring, but now it's okay because this time he's himself, and "I won't have to be you, too, ever again". No idea what any of that means.

Call Sign: Cozmo (actually says Neon but it's crossed out) goes to School

I hear you out there going nnOOOO NOT BELETH GOES TO SCHOOL AGAIN and yup, we're going to school again. This arc was really holding together pretty well up until this point, huh? Well all things come to an end.

Cozmo (who has many stars over his head) heads into the school and it's in the detailed greyscale world, a lot like the one seen in the Mr. 5 video where Andre and Mr. 5 bickered back in Try Try again. He overhears someone making a presentation to their esteemed colleagues, saying that they have not only the honor of showing their greatest achievement, but demonstrating it as well. The voice goes on to say it's Static, that pointy goat thing, and that it's the highest marriage of logical science-based reasoning and the spiritual enlightened mind. Meanwhile, Cozmo walks by some barely boarded up doors and runs into Chip. Chip leads Cozmo through a door that leads into a trippy angel place with eyes and flowers all over.

The eyes with eyelashes/petals imagery comes up a lot with this particular... thing

The voice says that with Static they no longer have to fear death. since instead of death there will be countless beginnings. Cozmo goes through another even deeper door and ends up in that same classroom again with the same scribbly shadow people. The teacher gives the same spiel they always do about introducting yourself. Cozmo says he's looking for Dr. Neon and he could only find "this one part" of her, meaning Chip (Chip has a piece of Neon's soul). He doesn't see her in the classroom and is worried he won't see her anywhere. The scribbly shadow people now have weepy eyes for heads as the teacher asks Cozmo to tell them more about himself.

Cozmo says that he thinks he's lost, and that he was supposed to find a building but "we broke it apart a long time ago". He says it was an accident, but he thinks Neon will be annoyed anyway. He asks if they've seen her and says he's scared she won't be able to find herself and also scared that she will, and says it was his fault for taking too long. He says he needs to take her home, but nobody's with her and nobody's here.

The teacher asks if anyone else has any other questions, and a broken TV thing that sort of looks like AmdTV says something about how there's "no hope for us" without self-sacrifice. Cozmo again asks if anyone has seen Neon, since all he can see are the parts of her that she wants to forget. It abruptly cuts to him in the scribbly black and white angel world in the same classroom. There's a shot of a headless Neon on the blackboard as Speckle, that mole with the buckets, comes in yet again to throw paint on the walls. Cozmo asks if it thinks that'll really help, since it never has before.

Cozmo spots Chip and Chip turns and flies through a black and white doorway under all the paint on the walls. Cozmo says that's the wrong way and follows, asking what's to be gained by revisiting your pain. He finds Neon finally who has an angel thing on her shoulders that's holding onto her horns (remember when Neon said that she thought her horns would help her control robots better?). Cozmo asks her (or maybe the angel) what good there is in dwelling on her suffering.

flower angel, three lines

Neon asks why Cozmo thinks she has a choice (she calls him a demon), and why he thinks she can get it out of her head. She then says it's okay and that she'll free herself of those shackles and walks into a big tower with the three lines on it by a row of shadow people. Neon says this can't continue and can't stand, that she'll fix it and fix herself, and that she'll annihiliate these wretched feelings, even if that means annihilating herself.

Inside the tower there's a distorted looking TAL that seems to be morphing or fighting against an angel going "aaaaaaaa". TAL and the flower angel keep sort of morphing and distorting into each other, and someone says they want to forget and pleads someone else to let them do so, and someone says they can't, and they go back and forth about it for a bit. The one voice says that they want to stop thinking about it and they can't and they can't get it out of their head and that no one's listening to it anyway.

The thing continues morphing around and the one voice begs for death and for the other one to let them be forgotten and stop existing, and the other voice continues to say they cannot. The TALangel thing gets huge and screams while Cozmo looks on, and it keeps screaming and finally Cozmo holds out his arms and says "O divine Pole Star, let me help you as I have helped myself!"

those three lines again

Neon seems to appear again and says that the idea of Cozmo helping her is laughable, that she knows everything about him and that he's just a speck. Cozmo, in mole form, says "not anymore" and addresses her as the Pole Star. She says that he's wrong and she knows the most important thing about him, which is that he left her behind, as they all do (remember that myth Calliope told ages ago?), and that's everything she needs to know. She says that he wanted to see (while looking a lot like the Masked Sun), and Cozmo says he did want to see, and she says that "see he will".

Prologue I-?: Paranoia Damn! Prologue 1! Maybe we'll finally be done with all these prologues!! Probably not though.

i'm out of here says mole cozmo

This opens with a shot of five people in the dark greyscale world. Lily, Neon, Cozmo, and two others, one of which I THINK is one of Neon's siblings (Xenon) and the other I think is Jupet's dad Sylvan. It cuts to a shot of buildings with the narration saying "we found knowledge", and the transitions between images in this video are glitchy now. There's a shot of a device that looks very similar to the device in the very first Seeds Prologue. The narration says they received a signal from a dead world, and within that signal was all the information they needed to rescue "her" from that world, and that it was as simple as opening a door.

oh snap! three lines again! doors! flower face! it's all coming together!!!

When this glitches to the next slide, it leaves the words "hidden among the heavens" and "it was opening her". Using that knowledge, the narration says "she was bound and put to use" with a shot of TAL, along with some screens along side her that show the stage from Try Try Again and other suspicious things. It says she painted portraits of familiar worlds they didn't know, and even if they didn't listen to her, it still would have stayed with them, with shots of little angel things going through doors TAL is opening. The glitch transition this time keeps the words "perfect worlds".

It says they felt the trauma as one, each old memory breathing life into it anew, until there was no way to forget it. There are shots of the Troupe during this and Cozmo sitting at a play watching that plant eye thing Neon caught that glimpse of before in Subject 6.

thanks for coming to my show uwu

This time the words stuck on the transition are "trauma memory breathing life into soul". It has a shot of Neon cutting up Static although they look a bit loopy and weird and angel-y, saying that "we" mutilate ourselves to distract ourselves from truths we don't want to face, which this transition leaving "we mutilate truths". It has a shot of what might be Mr. 5 with narration saying that we mutilate ourselves compulsively wondering if anyone will see, and then it has a shot of Jupet looking at a broken Static lying across the floor, with, "we mutilate ourselves in the vain hope that someone notices we are lost". The implication here being that Neon really did cut up Static for her presentation and Jupet was less than pleased.

It has a shot of the three lined Masked Sun flower thing stabbing the angel flower thing, I think, with the text that we mutilate ourselves to hide the proof that we survived. It then has Mr. 5-like imagery saying they slice and slice but all they do is dirty the knife, although there's some Masked Sun imagery in there as well.

Ow!! My eye!! I wish I had hands!!

I'm just going to post the image here because that line with a ball on top (the key) is going to become surprisingly relevant later. The pronouns have shifted now from we to I, and it says that they shut each door they find, but still are repulsed that they're still themselves.

We cut to the flower angel looking thing sitting on a stage in front of mole Cozmo (there's actually a second chair with that line key up above in it), asking Cozmo if he liked the play and thinks they're good in a very needy and intense way. Cozmo hesitates and the flower angel immediately accuses him of hating it and hating them and that he wants to beat the angel to death. Mole Cozmo has a little line under his eye and it makes him constantly look like he's o_o at all this dialogue which is kind of hilarious.

When it transitions, it leaves the words, "I get it, you hate me, hated it, hate me until there's nothing left". Cozmo just stands there while the angel goes on about how he must have hated it, almost as much as the angel wants to hurt Cozmo until he hates them almost as much as it hates itself.

Cozmo finally says that he didn't hate it, and the video glitches to add "liar" on top of him. The angel looks more Neon-like now and asks if he thinks she's stupid (a glitch adds "stupid" on top of her), and he says he didn't say that (glitch puts "a liar" on top of him), so then she accuses him of being a liar. The scene transition has "stupid" repeated over and over.

The angel says if he didn't think she was stupid, then she wouldn't feel like this, and "i was stupid" repeats on the transition. The angel keeps distorting, this time kind of into that key shape, going on about how if he didn't think she was ugly and garbage and trash and so on then she wouldn't feel like this. The glitches on the transition rephrase some of it to "I was pathetic/useless/a waste of space" and "then I would feel disgusting", then to "i FEEL like I was pathetic" etc.

Cozmo says he didn't say any of that, and the angel (in "key" form) asks why he didn't like her story. He says he didn't say he didn't like it and the key's like yes you did, and when he asks her to remind him when, she's all wow am I supposed to remember every bad thing you've ever said? Glitches kick in to change the dialogue again, having Cozmo say that she's thoughtless while the angel asks why he doesn't like her, to which he repeats that he doesn't like her, and she says that she likes him, and he goes "nonononono" while the key goes "wow, you expect me to like my story?"

subtle

Abruptly it cuts back to Neon and Cozmo in their more normal forms, still in greyscale, with Cozmo saying of course he doesn't expect her to remember, although the glitches add "I don't care" to the end of his dialogue. Neon gets super aggro and tells him to take accountability for the effect his words have on others and calls him a bunch of names. The glitching changes Neon's dialogue to "words have effects on others", "i have a miserable life", and replaces a whole bunch of her text with just "excuses" over and over.

pretty rich coming from neon

Cozmo, back in mole form, turns around and heads to the door. Key Angel freaks out and begs him not to go and leave her (them? it? I don't know what pronouns to use for this thing) again. The glitches fill the panel of him looking at her with "leave me", then the one of him heading for the door with "wait why are you leaving", and then adds "stupid" over the key angel and "a liar" over Cozmo as he reaches the door.

It goes back to details with the flower angel reaching and grabbing Cozmo, begging him to stay and asking him why he's punishing her. Glitches change the dialogue just to "you are punishing me" with stupid and liar over Cozmo and the angel again. Cozmo tells her to let him go, but the angel refuses, saying she's scared he'll never come back and he'll just tell everyone how bad she is. Glitches change the dialogue to just "i'm so scared" and adds "I know I'm bad" at the bottom.

Cozmo says she's not bad and he never thought she was bad, but he needs to get help and if she doesn't let him that'll be bad. Glitches repeat "help me" over Cozmo. The eye in the center of the flower has the three line face usually associated with the Masked Sun, and there's the pit that Beleth and company keep jumping down.

people love that hole The angel asks if Cozmo will come back, repeating "come back" a few times via glitches. Cozmo says he'll come back, but he can't stay forever. The angel makes him promise he'll come back, and he does. The glitches repeat "you promise" over the whole screen.

If you got the feeling that a lot of that was just Glip venting about their own personal insecurities and their struggles with relationships with others then we are in agreement! Get ready for a lot of that from now on!

Back to normal comic pages, we check back in with Lily and Neon in present time, where Neon asks Lily to promise that they'll get through whatever happens together. Neon gets a call from one of her siblings, which confuses Chip, and then it turns out that a frequency shift made Neon have four siblings instead of one. Neon freaks out about it although Lily thinks it's neat that frequency shifts can do that. Anyway, Krypto is the sibling that called Neon to brag about a mystery door they just opened. Neon brags about the door she just opened with Lily in retaliation and they bicker. Krypto mentions that Chip has Neon's soul, or at least a part of it, and says that Neon doesn't even have an "extra life" so... some kind of Krypto thing I assume.

Neon grumbles about the call and Chip mentions that she still goes by Kid Neon here so... still the same?? I don't know. Lily flirts with her some more and Neon is all doki doki about it. They hold hands and get ready to enter the door. AND THAT'S THE END OF CALL SIGN BYE

#floraverse

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blueflower-sprite · 9 months ago

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New OC ! Based on Grizzlyofthesea's post

Before I start presenting my OC, please, here's the link for the original poster of the idea, and if it's tempt you, pick you're OC name on they're post, and don't hesitate to share (with link to the original post) :

https://www.tumblr.com/grizzlyofthesea/749158031070298112/monster-high-oc-idea?source=share

Results - S for Mystery (First Name), Jun for Der, and S for Chilling (All Last Names).

Mystery Der Chilling

PARENTS - The Cold Invisibles Presences.

AGE – 15.

PRONOUNS – She / They. (Her species tends to use the ''they'' pronouns when they are in they're most ethereal state. As she is in a more ''material state'' in this biography, she will go with the first).

ORIENTATION – I don't know yet.

PHILOSOPHY - ''- The more invisible you are, the most they will learn to fear you're name... So please, don't be a coward and a bully, and learn to show yourself. ''.

ORIGINS – We are litterally the embodiment of ''don't freaking go there'' in paranormal linguo. Yes, we are the Cold Spot in the Room after you failed you're diplomatic genius of a method on the Ouija Board....Otherwise, I'm from Oregon.

KILLER STYLE – Veil, many veils, and more veils ! With boreal colours, which give a touch of chillness into my fashion sense !

FREAKY FLAW – It's difficult for me to enter a room without asking the others if they're are okay with me to be there. That's why I like to talk with ice and frost monsters like Abbey : my Presence ''thing'' don't do anything unpleasant to them.

FAVORITE COLOR – Dawn pink and Artic blue.

FAVORITE FOOD – I feed on the fear and warmth of others, but I would never prefer this to a wonderful smurf blue smoothie !

BIGGEST PET PEEVE – When someone ask me if I truly exist. You know, being non-binary sometimes doesn't mean that all society should ask you to un-unalive you're existence like that ! It's so rude...

FAVORITE ACTIVITY - I like playing simple and relaxed board games. It's a particular bonding opportunity, because victory and defeat always unit monsters and ghouls. My favorite is the Ouija...

PET – I have a invisible White Raven named Neverwhite. He's kinda shy, so please, don't be too loud when he is here.

FAVORITE SUBJECT – Invisibles Sciences of the Earth. There is such many secrets to understand from our world, even some my family doesn't know about it !

LEAST FAVORITE SUBJECTS – I dislike Swimming. I just... don't really like the water's temperature, and some around me tends to say the same when I'm in their swimming group...

FUTURE DREAM – Maybe going to some far away countries and collect artifacts, before founding a family ? Frankly, I don't really know....

REPUTATION AT MONSTER HIGH – I'm kinda invisible in my high school. So I'm doing my best to socialize, despite the fact that some don't want to be in my mere aura when they remember that I'm unliving right there...

FRIENDS – I don't really have some, but frost and winter monsters are friendly to me, so I hope one of them will become my BFF one day.

Here's the chilling Mystery (yes admit, I wanted to do this pun... No, I will not apologize for that). She's not a Monstersona, but more a OC that I created for fun with a base (again, I encourage you to see the original post). Thank you if you have read this post to the end !

#monster high #monster high oc #monster high g1 #monster high gen 1

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startistdoodles · 2 years ago

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Hello! I've been seeing your Kirby OC posts and it got me inspired to try making my own OC. However I wanted to ask you if there are any particular tips or guidelines you have on how exactly to go about making an OC?

I'm happy to hear I could inspire you!! I'm the kind of person who really encourages making an OC however you like with no hard rules, but I would be happy to offer tips as to how you can make them look more convincing and fit into the world!

This applies not just to Kirby but to any media that you want to make a fan design for. I use these tips when I design Fakémon and my other fan OCs as well! Knowing the property's design conventions can help you if you want your OC to fit in more seamlessly with other characters.

Since the subject is a Kirby OC, I will use my own as an example.

Prisma Knight follows the very basic design conventions of Kirby, since I wanted her to be the same species.

They both have: -A round body -Nubby arms -Big, round feet -Cheeks and feet that are a different color than the main body -Eyes that are an accent color

Conventions help with the consistency of character design, but they don't have to strictly be adhered to. Feel free to experiment and break conventions to help your OC stand out!

Next, because I wanted to make her a knight, I went ahead and looked at the designs for the preexisting knights and made some observations based on their conventions as well:

Once that's done it's time to move onto to the secondary design elements. I wanted Prisma to have an icy elemental design to her with a bit of mirror thrown in, so I took inspiration from those copy abilities:

I really liked the colors of these designs, so it was at this stage I decided to go for a primarily blue and purple pallete with some white and gold in there as accents.

With this in mind, I went ahead and looked for a color palette that I could take inspiration from:

By then I had a pretty good idea of all the conventions, so I made some sketches!! Ideally during this step it's good to make many different sketches exploring various ideas, but I'm the kinda person who erases and redraws parts of my initial sketch so know that there were different designs before I reached this one, haha:

All the while I was thinking of her story in my head which mostly stemmed from questions pertaining to certain design elements I chose:

Why does she have an elaborate mask? Because she's royalty.

How did she become a knight turned royalty? She left the life of a soldier behind her.

Why did she stop being a soldier? She was ashamed of a foolish mistake and fled.

What was that foolish mistake? She challenged someone stronger than her and lost her wings in the process.

And thus, Prisma was born!! Her name actually came to me before I even fully designed her (which about NEVER happens for me lol) and it was the inspiration for her using ice and mirror magic in the first place.

Anyways, I hope this helped! Just have fun with it and enjoy the creation process :D

#ask #anon #kirby #kirby oc #long post #you can boil it down to basically just: use a lot of references of other characters while also adding in new things!#that way your character can fit in while simultaneously standing out #this got a bit wordy so do let me know if theres anything you want me to clear up haha

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redux-iterum · 2 years ago

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Another question about human cat interact, if you don’t mind - since people are aware of the clans, do (some) cat owners keep their beloved pets indoor only? Related, how do you think clans would react to seeing a catio?

And a question about WindClan’s carnivore language they speak - I think it might have been called Fang? Can any cat learn it if they wish, or do most other clans not have interest? Have cats taught bits of it to each other at gatherings, like apprentices maybe? What’s the usual relation between WindClan and other species? (Do any non cat critters ever decide like, there’s a bunch of weird cats living there, too much trouble, etc)

And has any super paranoid cat ever seen a wildlife death, like a fox/badger/etc killed a cat or caused something hardship for clan, and decided WindClan was at fault since they can speak to them? (Yes that’s a huge no logic leap but not every cat follows logic esp when they want someone to blame)

Good number of questions here!

There are plenty of people who are indoor-only owners. There is a somewhat relevant indoor cat in Burning Hearts, but I'll leave off any further details. There are cats who can be trusted to stay in the neighborhood, and there are some who wander. Just like real cats!

A catio... I don't think the Clans would think of it being anything beyond a tease to the kittypet who lives in it. Sure, you're outside, but you're still attached to a house. That's balls, man. You should've gotten out while you had the chance.

The language's most common name is Fang, correct! Pretty much any animal can learn it - it's designed to be pronounceable by every type of creature who has reason to speak it, and it's a very simple tongue mostly comprised of nouns and verbs. Cats tend to know it the least, population-wise, but that's just because cats are extremely self-centered creatures that think they're too good for everyone else to learn some plebeian language (at least, that's the running idea among more wild meat-eaters). There are cats sprinkled around the other Clans that know a word or two, with most of their lexicon being "stop", "go away", and "peace". They can also know the word for "cousin", which is just a general, very useful term meant to extend a hand in friendship, but being friends with a fox...disgusting! No thank you!

WindClan in particular is very friendly with outside animals. They take great care to keep up a good relationship, which I will be posting more about this Wednesday.

I'm certain there's been instances of suspicion and accusations of WindClan getting help from other predators in a war. WindClan always denies them, of course. I guess you'd have to ask the predators why they showed up at such a convenient time to help their moor-friends.

#ask #anonymous #i speak #windclan #outsiders #other animals #fang #language #kittypets

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tuiliel · 2 years ago

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Hey, I stumbled upon your fae posts and I’ve been reading through them! I’d love your take on a question that’s been on my mind. You mention meeting fae originally England and described a spirit that seems similar to a germanic wood wife — do you feel that every kind of fae & land spirit is present in every place (ex Dryads just being the Greek description for Fänggen tree faeries), or do you think these spirits are distinct and different? Maybe some of these spirits traveled the world as humans have traveled it? You seen very fae-versed and I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I think it's a little of both? There may well be beings that exist everywhere and have dozens of names, but a lot of the beings I've encountered do seem inclined to represent themselves (to me, at least) as being "from" a particular part of the world or to folklore of a particular region or culture. I think there's a certain about of cultural symbiosis that happens in relation to nearby human populations.

There are definitely other people's folkloric and anecdotal accounts of beings traveling with their human "family" (brownies, for one), and I think it's reasonable to assume that certain Otherworldly beings might be around anywhere there's a sizable human population from the culture that has lore about them.

But I think when classifying these beings, it's a lot more important to focus on describing their culture and their attitudes (especially attitudes towards humans) than it is similar to any kind of delineation of "species". Your two examples are both "tree spirits", sure, but even for species of tree frog there are dozens, and if all of those frogs were also sapient and functionally immortal, would populations in distant places be the "same thing"? I don't think we can classify Otherworldly beings the way we classify species of animals, or even hominids. These are beings known for glamour and shape shifting - they will show me what they wish me to see, and I'm not arrogant enough to think that's always the Absolute Truth of them. And this is borne out in folklore - sometimes, the same being is called elf or demon or imp interchangeably, depending on how they're acting. "Demon" when malevolent towards humans, "imp" for mischief and mayhem, and "elf" is more neutral, capable of either help or harm. There's evidence that this is how early medieval people understood the distinctions between etins/jotnar and elves, also. It's descriptive, not absolute.

I'm my own dealings, since part of my first contact is to introduce myself/my context, and explain that I'll do my best to treat them as expected in the culture/folklore they represent themselves as, when they give me something to work with there we've at least established a baseline, a foundation on which we can build a relationship.

For example - if they present themselves as Daoine Sidhe, I'll give offerings of milk and honey, mead and baked goods, and unsalted butter. If they claim to be Alfar, that's much the same but also apples and oatmeal. The rules of etiquette are slightly different, too - never say "Thank you" to the Sidhe; that matters less to the Alfar. Iron wards off both of those, so its presence is rude, but silver or gold wards off some beings who don't mind iron. It's a lot of stuff to learn and I've not mastered it all (it's a lifetime's work, but I've got a decent library and a good eye for trustworthy resources, at this point), but that's why I ask them what I should call them - what kind of a being they wish to be understood as, and what name I should give to their local group, were I to refer to it.

It's also less rude to the human cultures that have created the bodies of folklore, I think - we have to remember that we exist in that context as well. Appropriation can be a serious concern, especially when voices within a culture are drowned out by people speaking over them.

Generally... I don't think it's helpful to collapse deities down to their main roles and ignore all the stories that point out their differences, and I don't think that's helpful with Otherworldly beings, either. So whether they're the same "species" or not, I'd give Dryads clean water, diluted wine, and olive oil. I've not met anyone who called themselves Fänggen, but I think I'd probably try offerings made of grain, first, or possibly milk. I'm not sure they'd appreciate a libation of olive oil.

Does that make sense? How they present themselves tells me a little about their expectations, their likes and dislikes, and their sensibilities. I'm a witch looking to create relationships, not a scientist trying to answer questions that might be unanswerable.

#fae #witchcraft #my path #my craft #my writing

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laurelnose · 4 years ago

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Very New to your blog and the posts are probably way old but I saw you do Witcher Biology (??) rants sometimes and Id love to hear your take, if you have one, on what monsters (namely "naturally occurring" ones like draconids and insectoids) contribute to the ecosystem if anything and whether or not they should be hunted into extinction. I was discussing it w/ a friend last night after dealing with Iocaste, the last silver basilisk, and now its smthn I'm Invested in

re monster ecosystems: I just figure theyve probably found a niche in the world by now and can eat anything smaller incl. humans but because theyve got no natural predators aside from eachother and arent hunted by anything but witchers , monsters are just breeding and eating and wldnt that damage the land? or have they made their own like, circle of life or whatever ? Ive little knowledge on the subject as a whole but the whole thing intrigues me

hi & extremely belated welcome, anon! my apologies for the length of time you’ve been waiting for this answer; I had to think carefully about how I wanted to respond to this ask, because: there’s a lot going on here. also, because I am a disaster, I ended up posting it to ao3 first while I was avoiding tumblr for a spell and then completely forgot to come back. oops. i’m sorry!! This one’s about 5000 words long, which is a lot for tumblr, so reading on AO3 may be preferable.

The two main thrusts of your first ask (how do monsters interact with the ecosystem and should they be eradicated from the Continent) are questions of invasion ecology, the study of non-native/invasive species and their effects on the environment. Monsters, having arrived on the Continent about 1200 years ago during the Conjunction of Spheres from entirely alien dimensions, are indeed technically non-native species!

However, invasion ecology is…somewhat controversial, to say the least—there are a lot of invasive species, who have a lot of different & complex impacts, and a lot of different ideas about what we might do about any of this, and it’s basically all arguing all the time, so I wasn’t really sure how I wanted to approach the topic. Not to mention that for reasons I couldn’t initially put my finger on, it seemed wrong to apply theories of invasion ecology to the Witcher monsters. We’ll get into it! There are also a couple of common misconceptions/oversimplifications of how ecology works in your second ask which I want to unpack. Hopefully I pulled this together into something that makes sense, and feel free to ask me for clarification!

Some important background facts:

Species have always been moving to and “invading” new places on their own; humans and globalization have accelerated this process into a Big Problem, as the sheer number of invasive species being introduced all over the globe strains ecosystems already under pressure, but “native ranges” are always shifting, sometimes more dramatically than you might expect. If you go far enough back in time, all species are “non-native”.

Because of this, the very definition of “invasive species” is hotly contested. This is why you’ll hear dozens of terms like introduced species, injurious species, naturalized species, non-native species, etc.; these all have slightly different connotations, but all refer to a species that did not originate in a particular location.

An introduced species is usually classified as “invasive” as opposed to “non-native” or “naturalized” if its presence significantly alters the ecosystem it invades; some people define this more narrowly as a species that causes harm to an ecosystem. “Harm” can take a lot of different forms, as every non-native species interacts differently with the ecosystem they were introduced to.

Aside from various potential impacts to human economic activity, most forms of ecological harm by introduced species involve the decline of native species, by a variety of mechanisms; invaders might eat natives, outcompete them for food, interbreed with them, carry novel pathogens, etc. Invasive species are primarily a threat to biodiversity.

Now, here’s my Hot Take:

The Conjunction of Spheres is analogous to real-life ecological cataclysms such as the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, and thus monsters are not invasive species.

The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event saw the extinction of 75% of all species on Earth after the Chicxulub asteroid hit, including the non-avian dinosaurs. The Earth has had several disasters like this, of varying severity—the Great Oxidation Event killed almost literally everything on Earth except for the cyanobacteria who caused it. These cataclysmic extinction events completely upended existing ecosystems, altering habitats beyond recognition and leaving swathes of niches emptied of life that the survivors could evolve to exploit.

The most recent Conjunction of Spheres on the Continent is supposed to have thrown everyone living on the planet at the time into chaos and darkness; it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the interpenetration of multiple spheres caused mass extinction of species living in the pre-Conjunction environment, similar to Chicxulub or the GOE!

But Socks, you might say, evolution works on a massive timescale! It took millions of years to fill the niches left open by Chicxulub, but it’s only been 1200 years since the Conjunction of Spheres! And you are absolutely right*, but the Conjunction of Spheres canonically came pre-loaded with new species. We actually have no proof that any of the animals we see originated on the Continent: if humans are a post-Conjunction phenomenon, why not also dogs? Why not bears? Who’s to say any of those were actually there before-hand? (The elves, I guess, but as they have not, actually, said so, there’s no proof!!)

* FTR, 1200 years is a shockingly short period of time to go from cataclysm that plunged the world into darkness and chaos to functioning medieval-era society considering how long it actually took humanity to build 13 century Europe (horses had been domesticated for at least 3000 years by that time), even if we’re not assuming that most of the ecosystem was destroyed, so, my timeline concerns here are minimal, lmfao. TIMELINE WHAT TIMELINE.

…and actually now that I think about it the three options for the origin of dogs are a) elves or dwarves domesticated them, b) humans brought dogs with them during the Conjunction, or c) dogs have existed for less than 1200 years, and I refuse to accept that dogs are practically a new invention in the witcherverse, wtf.

Anyways: we really have no idea which species are truly “native” to the Continent, or what the physical environment was like prior to the Conjunction. While monsters are not native to the Continent, monsters are also not invasive—there cannot be decline of pre-Conjunction biodiversity or harm to the pre-Conjunction ecosystem because there is no pre-Conjunction ecosystem anymore.

should monsters be hunted to extinction?

So, the thing is, I think we should try to eradicate invasive species from non-native ranges if we can; the biggest problem with that is feasibility, not morality. It’s much more difficult than one might think to eradicate an invasive species once it’s established, and we have to be very careful that the methods we choose don’t have other impacts, but invasive species are a huge threat to the biodiversity of Earth! If monsters are invasive species, then the answer is yes, they should be eradicated from the places they are not native to.

(Notably, on Earth this kind of eradication is not the same thing as extinction; it would be a local extinction, or extirpation, where the species is totally wiped out in the places it invaded but still exists in its native range. This does get way more complicated if the invasive is already extinct in its native range.)

However, I have just outlined a possibility that would make it plausible for monsters not to be invasive species. Let me also outline why I prefer this interpretation. Here is a book conversation between the sorcerer Dorregaray of Vole and Geralt:

“Our world is in equilibrium. The annihilation, the killing, of any creatures that inhabit this world upsets that equilibrium. And a lack of equilibrium brings closer extinction; extinction and the end of the world as we know it. … Every species has its own natural enemies, every one is the natural enemy of other species. That also includes humans. The extermination of the natural enemies of humans, which you dedicate yourself to, and which one can begin to observe, threatens the degeneration of the race.”

“Do you know what, sorcerer?” Geralt said, annoyed. “One day, take yourself to a mother whose child has been devoured by a basilisk, and tell her she ought to be glad, because thanks to that the human race has escaped degeneration. See what she says to you.”

–The Bounds of Reason, ch. 6

This is a, uh, incredibly unsubtle reference to a debate that has been ongoing for decades; Geralt’s stance here is one of the key arguments in opposition to wolf and bear reintroduction. What do we do about large predators that may pose a threat to humans? How do we balance preservation of the ecosystem with the safety of people who have to coexist with these predators?

I can’t fully agree with Geralt, because large predators are integral to the ecosystem, which I value for its own sake and because humans depend on healthy ecosystems. But I can’t fully agree with Dorregaray either, because Geralt is right: human life is valuable and worthy of protecting. This is an issue that India has been running into in the past ten years; as their tiger conservation efforts yield fruit, people become more likely to encounter tigers, and thus more likely to have a bad encounter with a tiger. It’s become a political struggle as rural people who have to actually live with the possibility of a tiger attack come into conflict with urban conservationists who just really want to preserve tigers (& in some incidents, some of those conservationists have been Western, which is a whole additional level of fuckery). The fact is, there isn’t a good answer to this yet! We certainly should not drive tigers, wolves, or any other large predator to extinction, but we also have to figure out a way to keep people safe. It’s something humanity still has to wrestle with.

Under this framing, which CDPR reinforced when they chose to have the Count di Salvaress defend Iocaste as an endangered species while making significant provisions to minimize the damage she could do to human life, there’s far too much baggage attached for me to say yes, monsters should be hunted into extinction. If you’re going to make monsters analogous to wolves, of course I do not think we should get rid of monsters entirely!

And frankly, Geralt doesn’t think so either, despite his hardline stance about monsters that eat humans. Sapkowski isn’t exactly an anti-conservationist; though Dorregaray is shown as out of touch in this passage, at another point the narrative sides with him calling Philippa out on exterminating a species of ermine for her fur collar, and it’s consistently put forth that Geralt’s best quality is that he doesn’t want to perform violence for the sake of it or destroy things without cause, and one of the representations of that is that he refuses to kill endangered species even at cost to himself:

“What should I say about you, who rejects a lucrative proposition every other day? You won’t kill hirikkas, because they’re an endangered species, or mecopterans, because they’re harmless, or night spirits, because they’re sweet, or dragons, because your code forbids it.”

–Eternal Flame, ch. 2

If monsters and other post-Conjunction creatures are invasive species, the nuance in this conversation is flattened, and Geralt’s refusal to kill mecopterans and hirikkas becomes a flaw rather than a virtue. Boring! I also think that one of the strongest themes in the witcherverse is the idea of all monsters being human ills; wraiths are manifestations of hatred, necrophages multiply because of human bloodshed, cursed ones are created out of malice, mages like Alzur and Idarran of Ulivo go out of their way to straight-up create monsters from scratch*, etc. Iocaste attacks humans and takes livestock because the traditional prey of the silver basilisk, roe deer, has been extirpated by human destruction of their habitat. The aeschna in Blood of Elves attacks humans because humans have altered and polluted the flow of the Pontar, hunting the aeschna’s previous food (seals) to extinction. The true monster is the actions of humans. Monsters that appeared unbidden from another dimension into a previously functional ecosystem to invade and cause problems undermines this theme; monsters that are integrated into the ecosystem and subject to the same social and ecological forces as other animals supports it.

* Idarran’s “idr” monsters from Season of Storms absolutely should be eradicated. Did the world not have enough man-eating arthropods, Idarran? Did you really have to mutate horrible new ones and release them in populated areas?? Mages are a scourge, lmfao

Additionally, one of the biggest reasons I felt like I couldn’t actually apply invasion ecology to monsters was that, whether you accept my Conjunction theory as sufficient biological justification for this or not, monsters just don’t really behave like invasive species. It’s hard to explain this because the setting is pretty brief about its ecological details, but aside from the fact that the narrative frames them like just part of the ecosystem of the world, there are never any details like “that type of flower doesn’t exist anymore because giant centipede tunneling destroyed the soil they needed to grow in.” When monsters are the aggressors, their victims are always humans, not the environment or other animals, and again monsters are themselves often treated as victims of human actions.

So I say monsters aren’t invasive species!

Which means that monsters are, regardless of their strange origins, now a part of the Continent’s ecosystem just as much as bears and wolves.

So let’s talk monster ecology.

what do monsters contribute to the ecosystem, if anything?

So, the phrase “contributing to the ecosystem” is actually super loaded, and I want to unpack that before we go anywhere else. Ecosystems are made up of organisms, and organisms interact with and impact ecosystems, but they don’t necessarily contribute to ecosystems! The implication of “contribute” is that it is possible for an organism to not contribute, and it follows from there that some organisms are not useful. This is functionally nonsensical, and also dangerous.

Conservationists talk a lot about “intrinsic value,” which in this context is the idea that we should want to keep species around just because their existence is valuable! Biodiversity is intrinsically valuable. This is important, firstly because I do believe that all species are intrinsically valuable, but also: ecosystems are so enormously complicated that we do not know the full extent of any species or individual organism’s impact, and we can’t predict what the consequences of removing any given species might be. Treating all species as intrinsically valuable is hedging our bets. All organisms affect the ecosystem, because it’s impossible for them not to, and while some species definitely have outsize impact, none of them are “not contributing,” and frankly even if some of them weren’t, it would be the absolute height of human arrogance for us to decide we could tell which ones were useless when we barely even know what most species eat. Mosquitoes are the base of the entire goddamn food chain, and you still get assholes claiming they don’t “contribute anything.” Of course, most people don’t really mean all of these implications when they use the phrase, but I don’t find it useful to talk about what species “contribute,” and avoid using that language if I can!

What I assume you mean by “what do monsters contribute” is a combination of “what roles might monsters play in the ecosystem” and “are monsters actively harmful to the ecosystem, i.e. do they cause loss of biodiversity?”

And this is difficult to answer! As I’ve said, I don’t think monsters are invasive species, and thus don’t harm the ecosystem, though we know that monsters can be harmful to humans. However, when it comes to the role they do play in the ecosystem, there isn’t enough in canon for me to do more than wildly speculate! Also, there are so so many of them, and the role of a hirikka is going to be wildly different from that of a draconid.

Just offhandedly, most of the big predatory monsters can be assumed to fill the same roles as Earth’s big predators, one of the big ones being overpopulation of prey species, which has ramifications throughout the ecosystem. Some of them are canonically ecosystem engineers, or animals that physically alter their environment (think beavers); for instance, shaelmaar and nekker tunneling. Additionally, the big insectoid colonies can’t be relying solely on naturally-occurring caves for their homes; they’ve gotta be constructing some stuff themselves. These tunnels can be repurposed as habitat for other organisms, from giant centipedes to sewant mushrooms. Necrophages, like corpse-eaters in our world, likely limit the spread of diseases from decomposing flesh (and really wouldn’t be as much of an issue if everyone would stop, you know, doing war and mass murder, lmfao). Arachasae use tree trunks and organic plant material to conceal themselves, which is likely contributing to plant reproduction in a few different ways—but the arachasae decorating essay is a different topic that I swear I will finish one day oh my god—

…anyways, feel free to ask about any specific monsters or niches if you’re curious, but if I tried to go into detail with every single potential niche/ecosystem service all of the monsters we know of might fill, we would be here all day!

Let’s talk about a couple specific things you brought up in your second ask.

> theyve probably found a niche in the world by now and can eat anything smaller incl. humans

I mean…maybe! That is, yeah, they’ve definitely settled into niches by now, but feeding is way more complicated and interesting than that.

For instance: orcas can eat basically whatever the fuck they want—orcas are fully capable of bringing down everything from fish to seals to gray whales to great white sharks. But they don’t. In the Pacific Northwest, the resident orca pods almost exclusively eat salmon, while the transient pods largely feed on seals. Orcas are kind of an extreme example, but this is something called resource partitioning and it’s a big part of how animals limit competition with one another and what enables lots of predators to coexist in one place!

We see a big fuck-off dragon thing and we assume that it’ll eat anything it can fit in its mouth, and definitely some predators work like that. But just because an animal is technically capable of eating something and deriving nutrition from it doesn’t mean that it will. Silver basilisks made roe deer the staple of their diet before the destruction of beech forests meant they had to turn to humans—which is a pretty specific dietary restriction when there should be multiple species of deer running around, not to mention everything else a draconid could be killing! And given how many types of draconid there are…I have to assume there’s some kind of resource partitioning going on to prevent them all from conflicting with each other! For instance, if basilisks prefer roe deer, maybe forktails prefer wild goats, while wyverns are mostly kleptoparasitic (stealing other predators’ kills).

And of course, not all monsters eat humans at all; harpies steal from and attack humans, so they’re a dangerous nuisance, but they don’t seem to eat them. And in the books Geralt mentions plenty of monsters which are totally harmless.

So yes, there are lots of things monsters could be eating, but it would strongly depend, and there’s a lot of interesting places one can take monster diets! Netflix decided their strigas only eat specific organs, leaving the rest of the body untouche, & I love that for her. More monsters that need a particular kind of nutrition that leads them to take only specific body parts from some kills!

> because theyve got no natural predators aside from each other and arent hunted by anything but witchers, monsters are just breeding and eating and wldnt that damage the land? or have they made their own like, circle of life or whatever ?

Absolutely—invasive species whose populations rapidly increase once they’re away from their natural predators cause the decline of native species, often by eating natives directly or competing with natives for resources. And in fact, even native species who become overpopulated can seriously damage the ecosystem (see: white-tailed deer in the United States, whose overpopulation has such negative ecological effects that some people argue we should classify them as invasive, even though they have definitely been here this whole time).

However, even if we grant that monsters are invasive, it’s a little more complicated than that for a few reasons!

Despite the apparent preponderance of them in the witcher games, most monsters are supposed to be strongly on the decline, like witchers themselves. Geralt’s profession is falling out of necessity; human development of the Continent is going to be the biggest suppressing factor in monster populations in the future. Monster overpopulation is just canonically not a problem in this universe! But even in the scenario where the Inevitable March Of Civilization isn’t threatening monster populations, there are a lot of factors that could and would limit monster populations.

(TL;DR for this next part: yeah I definitely think they’ve figured out their own little circle of life—the term you’re looking for is ecosystem equilibrium, btw!—& I’m going to take the next 1.2k to talk about how.)

For starters, predation is only one among many limiting factors that affect populations & prevent them from ballooning out of control:

food availability: If there’s not enough food, there’s not enough food! It also matters how adaptable the animal’s diet is—silver basilisks moved from deer to humans, but if the eucalyptus went extinct koalas would not switch to eating cycads.

illness and parasites: Some people argue these are more important than direct predation for limiting populations, and I am often inclined to agree. Basically, if a population becomes very dense, illness and parasites spread more quickly, creating a natural limiter on how many animals can live in any one place. The greater susceptibility of some individuals to illness or parasites also winnows down populations. Non-native species often escape a good portion of their native diseases by moving to a new range—however, given how fast bacteria and viruses evolve, 1,200 years is a pretty decent amount of time for new diseases to arise. Also, just going to drop a link to my treatise on monster parasites here. It’s gross, mind the warning at the start of the post.

mate availability: If only a certain percentage of the population is actually able to reproduce, that’ll eventually bring the total number down. RIP Iocaste’s boyfriend 😔

territory/shelter availability: Animals need a certain amount of space and certain types of spaces to survive, and space isn’t infinite! It again depends on how adaptable an animal is; rats find ways to thrive nearly everywhere, but pandas can only live where there’s bamboo. If there’s not enough space to hide from predators, reproduce safely, store food, and avoid adverse weather, the population again limits itself naturally.

natural disasters: Wildfires, drought, flooding, tsunamis, storms, etc. pick off significant portions of wildlife populations. Disasters are sporadic rather than directly linked to population like most of the other factors but these periodic blows to population and the other impacts of fire or flooding are often integral to the ecosystem (see especially: fire regimes and fire ecology.)

Now let’s talk predation & monsters! (Genuinely, I think predation is one of the most interesting things in ecology; people tend to simplify it down to things eat other things, which—yeah, but there’s so much more going on there!)

First, I wouldn’t underestimate the effects of monsters eating other monsters! Even if it’s rare for a draconid to snatch up a nekker and carry it off, the threat of a draconid doing so can have dramatic impacts; researchers found that just playing the sound of dog barks on a beach stopped raccoons from foraging for crabs for over a month after the barking stopped, leading to an increase in crab populations, even though no raccoons ever encountered a dog. This is called the ecosystem of fear (which as a term is metal as hell) and it theorizes that just the fear of predators can lead to chronic stress for prey animals, decreasing reproduction and making them more susceptible to disease. Maybe draconids in Toussaint eat only a few dozen nekkers a year, but that might cause thousands of nekkers to have fewer offspring or fall to disease. When it comes to ecosystems the direct effect is usually only a small part of the story!

Second, when we talk about a species not having natural predators, we’re usually talking about an animal that would have a predator back in its home range—lionfish, for instance, have plenty of predators in their natural range (the Indo-Pacific), but no natural predators in their invasive range (the Caribbean), so invasive lionfish, suddenly freed of a limiting factor, can run amok. However, a great white shark has, aside from orcas (who do not actually eat white sharks, they’re just assholes sometimes) and occasionally other white sharks, more or less no natural predators anywhere once it reaches maturity, and that’s fine! Lack of predation of great white sharks did not cause their populations to explode and consume the ocean. White sharks are limited by other factors.

So: it is possible that wherever draconids originated (and it’s entirely possible that “draconids” came from multiple different places, tbh) there was something bigger that preyed on them, but it’s not unreasonable to assume they were also apex predators in their previous dimension (I mean…look at them), and that adult draconids were never really preyed on by anything else! It isn’t necessarily an issue for there not to be predators of certain monsters on the Continent.

(Though, of course, we also shouldn’t forget that most apex predators are prey when they’re young—baby white sharks are snack-sized for a lot of fishes, and bear cubs and wolf pups are similarly vulnerable. Based on the size of the eggs you see in TW3 draconid nests, a basilisk is hatched around the size of a little dog, which is the perfect size for small, ballsy predators such as wolverines to sneak into a nest and snap them up—predators such as more wolverines or raptors like eagles and hawks might also come directly for the eggs.)

When it comes to smaller monsters such as nekkers, who likely weren’t apex predators in their original dimensions and would thus be subject to that lack of natural predators—there are usually specific reasons why prey species manage to avoid predation in their introduced range. Lionfish confound Caribbean predators because lionfish are covered with huge poisonous spines that Caribbean predators don’t know how to deal with.

Drowners, on the other hand, are basically just man-shaped fish; they don’t have any adaptations or defenses that would really stump a bear or a wolf. Again, bigger monsters are still probably checking the populations of smaller monsters no matter what, but there’s really no reason a bear couldn’t figure out how to eat a drowner! Unless a monster has a unique defense (e.g. scurver spines), is actively distasteful to eat (rotfiends, probably), or is just difficult to take down (nekkers in packs), most of the non-monster predators* on the Continent will have incorporated various monsters into their diet by now, or suppressed monster populations indirectly with the threat of predation or by competing with them for food. It has been over a thousand years, which is nothing evolutionarily but is still a decent period of time for mammals, who pass hunting techniques down to their babies, to figure out how to eat ghouls—especially if we’re considering that the Continent’s mammals may also be a result of the Conjunction and would thus have to have been just as adaptable as the monsters to establish themselves. And I’ve also actually talked before about how wolves specifically might be preying on necrophages!

* For reference, the non-monster predators are, considering the Continent is more or less Europe, most likely lynxes, brown bears/polar bears (in Skellige), wolverines, foxes, badgers, and a variety of large birds of prey.

So—yes, if monsters were truly overpopulating, then that would damage the ecosystem. However, canon tells us they are definitely not doing that, and there are also many factors that would prevent that from happening!

(Though I will say that some of the reasons white-tailed deer are overpopulated are that we got rid of cougars and wolves and human development creates a lot of extra habitat of the type that deer like. Given that we know many of draconids are for sure in significant danger of going extinct, and the trajectory that Europe’s wolf and bear populations followed in real life, it is possible that the Continent will have to contend with an overpopulation of some of the smaller monsters at some point as they continue to try to eradicate the larger predators, both monster and non-monsters—you think the drowner problem is bad now, wait until the bears are gone and city development has tripled the number of sewers. Yet another of those humans-make-monster-problems-worse things I am fond of in the Witcherverse!)

…whew. that was a lot of words. In conclusion: ecology is really cool & there’s a bunch of ways monsters can fit into it!!

#kaer morhen biology of monsters 101 #and a bit of #witcher book blogging #asks #anonymous

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itsclydebitches · 5 years ago

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So I'm curious what are some character designs you love? Not from RWBY, but just i general. I'm the same anon who got you to check out Berserk and I'd say essentially all of the designs are done damn well. Fit the character. Changes that makes sense for growth. Also make sense given the setting. Even women in armor that doesn't have those massive boob plates. Good designs impact so much subconsciously to have much we enjoy other aspects of a story.

Congratulations! You’ve unlocked my never-ending need to praise Yu Yu Hakusho! :D

This long, picture-laden post needs two disclaimers going forward:

I’m not an artist. In the sense that I’m not a visual artist who knows anything about what makes character design good from a technical/community approved standpoint. This is purely based on my own, personal reaction to a beloved series.

Connected to that, I’m going into this under the assumption that people might really disagree with me (?). Based on the cartoons and anime that I see praised for character design, I don’t think YYH fits whatever list more knowledgeable viewers are pulling from. But I’m gonna lay out my thinking anyway!

Major spoilers for Yu Yu Hakusho below.

Alright let’s do this.

First off, when people start talking character design they often reference how cool a character is. Which makes sense. You want a character to be visually engaging and distinct. Something that makes you go “Wow!” whenever you look at them. However, one of the things I love about the YYH cast is how normal they are. Because they’re supposed to be normal. The trope of the main character having a crazy hair color has become so prominent that we’ve got memes about it now and that works for a lot of stories. You know who is important because, despite the assumption that they’re average people not dying their hair, they stick out like a sore thumb among the rest of the cast.

However, normalcy is a really important part of YYH. The entire point at the start is that Yusuke is not special. He’s not unique. He’s a delinquent kid who most assume isn’t going anywhere in life. When he dies this doesn’t unlock some Super Special Backstory - you were innately amazing all along! - he just gets caught up in the plot because of a paperwork issue. The afterlife doesn’t know what to do with an asshole kid who unexpectedly saved another kid’s life so they just kind of... shuffle him around until he’s given another chance to live. Then he gets to pay back that second chance by becoming a Spirit Detective. Yeah, Yusuke is talented when it comes to fighting and spirit energy, but at the start that’s rarely emphasized outside of “He’s the best street fighter among no-name street fighters so really, it’s not impressive once you take Yusuke out of his tiny world of school parking lots and the occasional alleyway.” The takeaway is that he’s a dime-a-dozen troubled teen who got involved in the spirit world due to an impulsive act and a bunch of bureaucracy. Indeed, it’s a HUGE moment of emotional growth for Yusuke to realize that people do love him despite his supposedly average, unremarkable, and otherwise negative personality. His normal-ness - and others’ expectation that he could someday make himself great if he learns to work at it - is crucial to where Yusuke starts out. Making him visually distinct in terms of Anime Protagonist Looks would undermine a lot of that. This isn’t supposed to be a Super Special Kid Destined For Greatness. He’s just... a kid. A normal kid. A kid who has to work and learn and grow if he wants to make something of himself. So he gets black hair, brown yes, and a green school uniform. He’s pretty damn average looking.

Same with Kuwabara. Same with Keiko. Same with Atsuko. They’re just normal people going about their lives and I always appreciated that they looked the part. You can still easily tell them apart thanks to different hair colors, texture, jaw lines, and outfits, but none of them seem out of place in the average world they start out in. Which, as said, is crucial to a lot of YYH’s themes. The ones who look more visually distinct - Hiei and Botan - aren’t human. It makes sense that they wouldn’t obey these same average laws of the rest of the cast and they are our first taste of a world that, in terms of character design, will eventually get pretty wonderfully weird. They function as stepping stones.

This eventually becomes a story about the demon world and those demons wouldn’t come across as particularly scary/other if you begin the story with equally strange looking humans. Or even just “I don’t see people who look like that walking down the street” humans. Alongside many themes, there’s a contrast at work here. Yusuke stepping out into a stadium full of demons who despise him because of his species hits home when he is so clearly distinct from them. Suddenly, his normal is abnormal.

Once the ball gets rolling, Yusuke’s looks are constantly in contrast with both his environment and his inner self. He looks like a scary thug but then unexpectedly saves a life. He looks like an average human but is actually the strongest among a group of scary-looking demons. He looks like this badass spirit detective who everyone assumes with have an equally badass spirit beast but, uh...

Oh my god that’s a precious baby. By the time our cast is family and everyone accepts that Yusuke looks scarier than he actually is or ever was - once the core group is made up of not just humans but demon loving humans who are equally soft - we turn it all on its head again and reveal that Yusuke has demon blood. For the first time he looks as strange and powerful as he is. Yusuke’s normality is done away with the second he’s fully accepted his place in these worlds, throwing everything back into chaos.

Yusuke’s demon form becomes even more foreign looking when he’s being controlled by his ancestral father. The above is a Yusuke who is still Yusuke and in many respects the design reflects that: natural hair color, human body, tattoos easily covered up with a shirt. When he’s gone full Mazoku though, something dangerous, the white, wilder hair and change to his expressions ensure we read him as something feral. For the first time in the series Yusuke is truly the dangerous creature he’s pretended to be since his principal was running after him at school.

As a side-note about character costumes, we see this emphasis on normality in their outfits as well. Obviously a story like RWBY is limited by how much time/money they have for animation, but it nevertheless has an impact to see the group almost constantly in their battle gear. They’re never not the main characters of an action-fantasy show, not even while just out around town with no expectation of entering a fight.

In contrast, Yusuke and Kuwabara are often animated in everyday clothing that remind us that they’re really just teens trying to live their lives outside of this crazy nonsense. Kuwabara wasn’t even formally hired for all this! The cast wears sweaters and jackets while out and about. More formal clothes for special occasions. Jeans and t-shirts when they’re unexpectedly caught up in a fight because, you know, they’re not ready for battle every second of every day. They’re drawn like normal folks because, outside of the ring, they are.

(We’ve also got a lot of parallels between Yusuke and Kuwabara’s civilian clothing, visually reminding us that they’re far more alike than they might be willing to admit.)

Despite often changing outfits, the group maintains a basic color pallet that makes them recognizable, yet it’s also not so limited that they appear strange for sticking to one (1) color for the entire time we know them. Yusuke, like most people, is drawn to particular colors, mostly greens, yellows, and blues, so each time we see him he’s familiar while also being distinct from the last time he changed.

Hiei, as someone who initially wants nothing to do with anyone else and relies on assassin-like speed to take out his enemies, is dressed almost entirely in black. Without that bit of white in his scarf/hair you’d lose him in the shadows... which is the point.

When he opens up and actually becomes friends with the team, his color pallet starts opening up a great deal too.

And we’re shown all the little changes he starts incorporating that speak to his growth: his Jagan eye, a bandaged arm hiding his Dragon of the Darkness Flame, the necklace connecting him to Yukina.

I’ve blathered on about the outfits enough but as a quick final note: EVERYONE WEARS APPROPRIATE FIGHTING CLOTHES.

No one (even the women to my recollection) wear heels. Everything is loose-fitted and looks easy to move in. They’ve got sensible belts, bandages if they need them, and... that’s it. No unnecessary bells and whistles that distract from what’s supposed to be the story’s real draw: good fights and good characterization. Even the more elaborately styled characters (usually) look like they chose their outfits practically first and for the aesthetic after. At no point do I recall watching this show and going, “WHY would you wear that to a fight??”

Anyway, back to the designs.

The exceptions to either side of these extremes - from human normal to demon monstrous - are Genkai and Kurama, both of whom straddle the line. Genkai is someone who has pushed her spirit and body far past the norm. She’s the first human we meet who truly goes beyond that normality, even if you don’t immediately realize it. Her pink hair (such a soft color in her old age it’s not at all distracting) is a slight hint that something isn’t quite right with her. She’s obviously human... but not a normal human. Not anymore.

Those unnatural looks are emphasized in her youth when she was at the height of her power.

Genkai as a young woman has vibrantly pink hair (a bright pastel like Botan’s), a softer face, and far more emotive eyes. She looks ethereal, which fits not just her own journey to power but Togoru’s as well. Her story is intimately tied up in what that power does to the human body/soul. So Toguro starts out like this

a pretty normal looking guy who is on the far end of what the human body is naturally capable of. He’s buff as hell, but not so much that it looks unreasonable. I’ve seen body builders bigger than him. He’s the average (dehydrated...) MCU superhero. However, he ends up like this

In Togoru’s case his abnormality is explicitly presented as grotesque. Rather than giving him a cool looking characteristic that’s clearly supernatural (blue hair, an extra eye, curly horns, etc.), we’ve taken a human characteristic (muscles) and expanded them to an unnatural degree. He’s got some uncanny valley shit going on.

Paralleling Genkai, we likewise see Kurama subtly standing out among his human allies.

He’s a demon in a human’s body. By in-world logic his appearance should be just as normal as anyone else’s, but a bit of his true nature shines through. His hair is long in a style not popular in YYH’s Japan. His red is far less of a natural shade than Kuwabara’s. He carries himself with the air of someone who is ancient, because he is. His human design deliberately reflects his true demon form so when that’s finally revealed we still recognize him as Kurama.

(Same sort of work with Hiei’s demon form.)

When we look at the cast together we have an immediate, visual impression as to who is normal and who is not - and those assumptions are embedded into the story. Yusuke is someone you’d overlook in the crowd, but he’s the most powerful. Kurama is clearly other in some way, but he’s desperate to live an average, human life. Kuwabara is designed to look and move like the fool and a lot of his development (his and others’ in relation to him, really. Like Hiei) is built around respecting him despite those looks. Hiei is tiny but will kick your ass. Genkai is tinier and will kick your ass worse.

Her size combined with her age - combined with her status as Yusuke’s teacher - is a continuous reminder not to judge power by looks alone. Don’t underestimate your opponent and get overconfident (a major flaw of Yusuke’s). Know that you still have a LOT to learn about the world. That woman you assume is just a rude grandma? She’s going to break your expectations over and over and over again.

Speaking of size, that’s a major aspect of Koenma’s design as well. When Yusuke learns he’s meeting the head of the underworld he starts picturing a massive, demonic beast who (sensing a theme here) looks the part of a supernatural ruler. Seeing Koenma for the first time - an adorable toddler-like being - is an absolute shock.

It’s a gag for the audience, but it’s not just a gag. Due to his looks Yusuke is unable to take Koenma seriously, despite knowing the power he holds.

Which, even more-so than arrogance, is Yusuke’s greatest flaw throughout the series. He doesn’t take school seriously. His death seriously. Ruler of the underworld seriously. His teacher seriously, etc. Yusuke constantly acts like he doesn’t care, throwing basic respect and effort in the face of whatever authority figure is desperately trying to keep him from self-destructing. He’s on the receiving end of multiple speeches throughout the series (mostly from Genkai) that boil down to, “Care about something, dammit. Take this seriously!” and when he does it’s GREAT. It’s a moment of growth we’ve really built to in a hundred different ways, including how he reacts to others’ looks. Koenma’s design feeds directly into the primary flaw Yusuke is working to overcome. How will he go from a delinquent laughing in the face of the most powerful being to someone multiple worlds can put their trust in? Design assists with that.

When Yusuke does respect Koenma (even if he still insults/teases him because that’s just an ingrained part of Yusuke’s personality) Koenma’s appearance can change. It’s no longer serving its original function, so he evolves into a very good looking young man (with references to Tuxedo Mask to emphasize those good looks) that just... happens to still carry a pacifier.

A pacifier that is revealed as an incredibly powerful weapon that will help save the world. Again: don’t judge anyone or anything solely on their looks. They’re never precisely what you’d assume they are based on your first glance - with the exception of minor villains whose looks serve only to convey their villainy:

For everyone else, looks are complex. Two of the most different looking characters (color-wise anyway) are actually siblings, their contrasts reflecting both differing cultures and the emotional distance between them.

The scariest looking monsters are just paper-pushers. It’s the handsome humans you should watch out for.

And this is our hero, a man charged with protecting three worlds.

I could say SO MUCH MORE but this is already disgustingly long so basically YYH (I think) does a great job of:

Crafting characters that are distinct but not different for the sake of different. They always feel like they belong to their individual worlds and adhere to whatever “normal” is by those standards.

Tying character looks really closely to the show’s themes and individual growth. Which, frankly, is something I think all good character design should do.

It’s not nearly as flashy as other anime... but YYH knows what it wants to accomplish and went about it beautifully. Catch me still weeping over this show fifty years from now.

Peace ✌️

#Anonymous #YYH #Yu Yu Hakusho #mymetas #for the record #I'm not trying to hide my response or anything #(lol)#tumblr would just NOT let me put the read more anywhere else #why are you like this tumblr

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