#wldnt you agree?

[erial-c]

the balance audio live reaction

(this one hurt me)

SUNSHINE IS SAFE  ???? QUESTION MARK. 

hearing brachium in pain hurts me severely  .. and then him telling min'ara that he failed  ... i'll cry ..THE SNIFFLE?? BRACHIUM NAOOWW

"mother, please" STOP IT  !!!! ERIK!!!!!

brachium is out of the death plane im going to lose it

im fucking crying  . bawling my eyes out at the reunion  . oh my god nothing could have prepared me for this

i am extremely worried about brachium attempting to "make things right" 

NAOOWW DON'T MAKE THEM FORGET THE SHIT THEY WENT THROUGH?????? brachium i am not for this that is fucked

I FUCKING KNEW BLAKE WAS GOING TO BESTIE'S PLACE  . CALLED IT !!!!!

blake once again trying to negotiate with d'deridahn  .... girl okay

bestie please be afraid of blake challenge

"the thing we agreed not to talk about, that you couldn't have me in your life if that was something we talked about" ohh cmon bestie lore  ??????!!! 

omg bestie hating the sight because of blake because he keeps telling them shit  ... yeahhh

blake raising his voice  ... me personally i wldnt have let that slide  ..

BLAKE TOLD BESTIE ABOUT THEIR DEATH   ??? thats severely fucked

ohhh i love seeing blake's openly yandere side  . i love this

DUDE  ???? WHYARE THEY MAKING OUT  !!!!! IS BESTIE INTO THIS SHIT  .

OH MY GOD  ?????? BRACHIUM. QHATTHEFUCJKKK!!!!! WHYWOULD YOU DO THAT!!!!!!!!!!!

on the other hand  . scorpius wanting to fuck blake's shit up with brachium is something i am eagerly waiting for

[i-just-want-to-destroy]

Thank you for walking study in demonology! Reading it brought me all the way back to the 2019 bnha era. Even tho im a chronic fandom hopper, every once in a while i got pulled back to the bnha fandom like a clinging abused ex gf, cause i feel like no other fandom has given me the same feels as bnha on ao3. It's probably partly because of bnha being a perfect sandbox for ficwriters, but damn you bnha writers are really sth else.

Your work is such an exquisite, heartfelt love letter to the fanfiction medium in general, and the bnha fandom in particular. I hope your pillow is always cool and your socks always come out of the washing machine in pairs.

What's your favourite part about the fic?

hi thanks so much for this ask! super appreciate the kind words :) i agree wholeheartedly i wldnt have started writing my bnha fics if not for the amazing fics ive read from this fandom.

short answer: my favorite part is the process.

super long answer:

(spoilers below fair warning)

demonology has been a learning process for me and also a very strange experience.

ive always been more of an improv writer where i dont really know where a story is going when i write it. with demonology being the way it is, you can surmise that its been a really crazy ride.

ive mentioned this before but it started as an idea of deku being just your typical satanic style exorcist, and as it is a crack fic, i did write it — at the beginning — purposefully to be nonsensical. all the made up “significant” stuff like affinity, authority, even the importance of names and all that — i didnt know what they mean and i didnt care either, i was just making them say whatever that sounded ominous and ridiculous. (often this is for the sake of comedic timing. it is crack after all.)

some comments say the fic didnt make sense, and i agree bc it didnt to me either. but then it DID start to make sense to me. whenever i started to write a new chapter id read back to whatever bullshit i did the previous chap and only then i understood what the hell the characters r talking about. if you look back to the earlier chapters there’d be a lot of foreshadowings, but they werent written to be foreshadowings at the time. its kind of foreshadowing in reverse, bc i only knew what they meant after i wrote them. i didnt know i was writing a meta multiverse time travel fic, but since i did, i had to commit and go crazy.

(in retrospect i think it rly did begin with hitoshi and that cat in ch 3. i didnt even know hitoshi was the “main character” until that chapter. i didnt know that cat was schrodingers cat until i wrote ch 8.)

so u can see how crazy, nonsensical and haphazard the entire writing process of this fic is, which in return gives birth to a crazy, nonsensical and haphazard fic. until its not nonsensical anymore. somehow, there actually is a clear logic in the mechanics of the universe. the cats are schrodinger cats, the demons are maxwell demons, entropies are plotlines which are often riddled with plotholes, the hell is production hell, to be in heaven is to be canonized — and lorem ipsum is the empty blank slate state of the universe. authority actually is authority. the fic gave meaning to itself by the end of it all.

comments ask if i waited for bnha to end — i didnt. bnha ending actually fucked a past version of ch 8, now scrapped. but then it actually … made a better version? and made more sense? its weird.

i did know about some things that were going to happen though. since the first time i had izuku do the “you believe [object] exist,” i always knew i wanted it to be turned back to him (“midoriya izuku doesnt exist”). after i wrote ch 6 i also knew i wanted them to “go back to the beginning” with izuku’s “fall” on the rooftop. but i didnt know until i wrote it that hitoshi was going to choose to fall, too. i know im the author but him choosing that shocked me and i found it moving.

if i had written this “properly”, if i had planned it all with better structuring and better pacing and emotional beats and all that — this might have turned out to be a better written story, in another world. as it is right now there are a lot of flaws that it has. but it wldnt have been the same fic. if not for this fuckass writing process, it wld never have reached the form it takes as of now.

and although it was a very difficult road, i can say wholeheartedly that this strange process has been my favorite part. im doubtful ill ever experience a writing process like this again. the story kept surprising me. a part of why i wanted to finish it was because i wanted to know how it ended too—bc i wldnt know until i wrote it.

of course, at the end of it all, none of us know what their ending is. in the end the story still didnt share its secrets with me and i really really love it for it.

haha this is so long sorry i guess this fic really means a lot to me after all. but yes, thats my answer.

i would also like to thank every reader and commenter once again bc i can honestly say without the feedback and support, this would not have been finished either, or become the way that it is. man. fanfictions, huh?

[skunkes]

does anyone else think the. Demonization (???) of twitter on every other site is incredibly funny. Once saw a stupid ass post here like "hearing about twitter on tumblr is like if your friend was SHOT WITH A MILLION BULLETS and COVERED IN BLOOD every single day and you ask them whats wrong and they say NOTHING THIS IS NORMAL because thats what twitter is like its a battlefield why would you do that to yourself? :(" and its like.

Saying stuff like that or complaining about "cancel culture" and discourse on there says more about YOU than anything like 😭😭😭 so you're saying you like to start shit?? just make a private account with your closest mutuals and dont start fights its not that hard?? 😭

[leossmoonn]

list #1: [ PORTRAIT ] sender does a photoshoot of receiver

im trying to rmb if i sent this prompt in already but i dont think i have lol

mr bug boy. and i wldnt be upset if he were to be in front of the camera instead of behind🫣

You got it!

————

“I have so many pictures of me in the newspaper, though!” Peter complains. “Yeah, as Spider-Man. Not as the handsome, dorky Peter Parker,” you say. “I’m not dorky,” he frowns. You roll your eyes and take off the camera that’s around your neck. “Fine. Nerdy.”

Peter snorts, “much better.” You give him a bright smile, walking over and fixing his hair. He stares at your face, admiring you from close up. Your hands brush his hair slightly upwards, making it look more put-together than normal. You look at his face, feeling a little shy as he’s staring at you. “Do I have something on my face?” you ask. “Nope, you’re just beautiful,” he says with a silly grin. “Mm, so are you.” you lean in and peck his lips before going back to your post.

“Alright, just do a bunch of poses and I’ll just take as many pictures as I want,” you instruct. “Alright,” Peter nods. He moves around awkwardly, looking away from the camera most of the time. You sigh and lower the camera. “Peter, you have to look like you’re having fun.” “But I’m not! I mean, why am I even doing this?” he asks. “Because you agreed to be a good boyfriend and help me with my photography class, remember?” you explain. He sighs and nods, straightening himself up. “Alright, I’m ready.” You grin and put the camera up to your eyes.

He makes silly faces and weird poses, making you giggle. He jumps up in the air and does cartwheels or handstands. He flexes his biceps and even lifts his shirt up to show off his abs. You whistle and fan him off. “Be careful, Pete. It’s getting a little hot in here,” you tease. “Oh, yeah? Let me see if I can make it hotter,” he smirks. He holds his arm out and shoots his webs, then sticking to your waist. He spins you around into him. You yelp and make sure you’re camera doesn’t become broken when your body and his collide. “Peter! You’re going to — mmm!” you hum when he kisses you. You can’t help but melt into him. You hold your camera in one hand, your other hand snaking to the back of his head and into his hair. He pulls away from the kiss just as it becomes heated. Your eyes flutter open and you’re met with his silly grin again.

“Did you get me shooting the web on camera?” he asks. “Nope because you webbed me in,” you say. “My bad. Here, take them again then. I bet all your classmates will love this,” he says. You laugh and shake your head. “Such a dork.”

[bad-genshin-impact-ideas]

the review bombing is still a bad thing i agree but most people are more upset abt the way mihoyo handles the criticism about the rewards, not the rewards themselves. if you say anything abt it on hoyolab its a 20 year ban and they wldnt let people change signatures again ,, not saying its deserved but they were kinda asking for it ,, if u silence users on ur own platforms they're gonna take it elsewhere

I totally get it, but the issue that another anon told me is that it spread to non mihoyo games, and even to google classroom at some point, which i still dont think was right at all.

[bloom-louis]

+ something i haven’t seen ppl talk ab that much is like. yes we don’t wanna support the wizard books bc they continue to give her a platform yes i agree but… even without that… why would you… want to????? like i cldnt read those books now bc all the words came out of her. all the characters came out of her. they are all speaking terf words. y’know. and the hypocrisy of saying this now isn’t lost on me when Jewish people + people of color have been for YEARS saying how shitty they are & not receiving this amt of attention but like. idk it’s not too late to stop engaging with them!!! bc literally why would u want to if every word the characters are saying are the words of a racist antisemitic transphobe! every one! i wld love to think harry potter wldnt call me names but actually harry potter is the invention of a transphobe!!!!!!!!! ugh

[laurelnose]

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!!

[ging-pegger]

hcs on u and ging? only if ur comfortable tho!!

omg yea yea :] i always feel silly writing this stuff but 😍 today im feeling a little bold so here r a few

Im really big on the whole grumpy guy who only has a soft spot for me cliche so 🤪 i project that heavily onto what I'd expect our relationship to be

mmm i know he doesn't rlly like to work w others they kinda get in his way alot but !! I like 2 think he'd make an exception for me <3

i wld accompany him on his little adventures nd make sure he was taking care of himself!!

ging gets rlly busy and forgets selfcare alot, nd i think that having me around wld help him alot, even if i ended up having 2 be the one who does some of the stuff for him

w that being said there wld be a strong level of intimacy (that doesn't involve sex 💀💀) between the two of us :] i think we wld just have a rlly close bond nfskslskalkaoala

LOTS OF CUDDLES AKAKKQKA i know he doesnt come off this way but im telling you this man LOVES personal attention, so cuddling would b an absolute must :]

Being completely honest i don't think ging would actually want to get married and I'm fine w that bc i don't really want to either.

I wld be completely fine living in a less than average apartment w a couple of catz w him. A quiet average life seems abt fitting for the two of us tbh !!

i think we can all agree ging can't cook to save his life. He probably survived off charred grilled cheese and cup noodles 💀💀 but it just so happens that along with my many other talents 😈😈 i am great at cooking

Our apartment would probably be messy as hell i am a very scattered person and he just seems like the type to not give a fuck BYE

So I've mentioned before that i hc that ging can play the guitar and bcs i want to learn how , i think that he wld teach me <3 jsajaka hehe

We would make spontaneous shopping trips and buy the stupidest stuff IM TELLING YOU 🤚💀

Ironic pet names as jokes. We come up w the stupidest string of those dumbass nicknames (like snookums and pookie💀💀💀) to see who can come up w the most outlandish / stupid one . [ i say ironic because pet names are horrid + ging wld definitely agree w me. I think hed find it funny to mock them ]

No over the top dates !! Just stayin in n watching movies ,,, maybe a hike or stargazing . But usually they wld consist of getting take out , watching a movie & cuddling :]

running my hands thru his hair >>>>>>

forehead kisses !! From both partiez !! :] i think it is the superior way 2 show affection and i think ging wld rlly like them too wkslsisos

I frequently think ab bubble baths w ging (as stated previously nth sexual ! Just cuddling nd stuff :]] )

Also lol i hc ging 2 be demisexual and i myself am as well so thats why i keep clarifying that it wldnt be sexual lol 💀💀 sex isnt a big part of a relationship imo and i think ging wld look at it the same way.

Holy shit thats alot laajoaiqosai im sorry </3

[monstrousproductions]

Wimsey 8 (murder must advertise)

Seeing wimsey go undercover was a blast, though the fact he went by his not at all regular middle name it's very transparently just the plot not letting him get caught out/realised sooner (I do love that one of the women in the office noticed that and other things and just- ignored it). Not surprised wimsey’s good at writing advertisements somehow.

A little disappointed at the mystery itself honstly. At some point a part of it felt so obvious that I thought it was a red herring. Definitely improved by the setting and characters and that time peter mocked someone then cartwheeled away down a corridor. Also peter being repeatedly acrobatic??!

Shame no harriet. Can’t believe Sayers refused to tell us about peter and harriet's date but then described An Entire cricket match

Love how wimsey interacts with kids; love that he’s confirmed a fun uncle

oh hell you are blasting through them!! i actually LOVE this one, it might?? be my favourite?? i agree the mystery isnt the strongest but i think it really comes through in character and also as sort of pulling on the ideas of peter's moral character and how he - and to an extent parker - have to work quite hard to walk a moral line in the work they do?

peter's acrobatics i stg the man is 40 years old in that book and hes bouncing about like a 12 year old, behold a FOOL entire

dorothy "ill never tell" sayers what a NIGHTMARE xD larkspurblue on a03 wrote a gorgeous little missing scene fic of that date, G rated, if thats of any interest. it's great craic and very cute.

also, i forgive her describing an entire cricket match bc ohhh the bit where peter's like "let's get these bastards" is just .... it occupies ... my mind......

there's a very cute short story with wimsey's nephew, i think its in 'lord peter views the body' which is a wee collection of wimsey shorts that are pretty good! i wldnt take them all as canon but theyre good craic if youre looking an extra wee wimsey fix

[luvbug724]

hiii ive been thinking abt neil running post-tkm whatre ur thoughts on that 🤨 i feel its not Too common but it comes up often enough in fandom and is always triggered in neil by something so he runs and either comes back or doesnt but i cant rlly see that happening? also similarly do u think neil would have some troubles w accepting permanence in his life? i was thinking hed def have some habits he wouldnt need anymore but w main threats gone + a life he wants to keep it wldnt be a huge issue..

WAIT my last ask when i say like permanence ex: neil panicking abt captaincy in tkm do u think hed have similar experiences later on w similar aspects of living in one place? (and this maybe triggering the need to run in turn)

holy cow first of all i got so excited when i got this ask you don’t even know. this has definitely been something that’s been sitting in the back of my mind but it was never something that bothered me enough to share online. SECOND of all, i mean absolutely no disrespect to anybody who might disagree with me on this or has written neil in this scenario-- it’s all fiction we’re all having fun here and my characterization may differ from yours and that’s fine! even if i might not be a fan of the concept i still read and support fics that include it if i like the writing :) this got very long and some people probably won’t be interested in reading it, so my response is under the cut :’)

but as for your question, anon, i completely agree with you. when i got this notification the first scene my mind went to was chapter nine of tkm right after wymack offers neil the vice captaincy. this was, probably, one of the worst sequences of events that could have possibly happened to neil: some of his most fundamental lies are exposed to his team, he’s confronted with his past, he has to reveal some truths that he never planned on saying, and now here’s his coach insisting on a future he so desperately wants but doesn’t think he’ll live long enough to have. neil should have already had a new name in a new country three months ago and instead he’s at palmetto state in the public eye right for the moriyamas and wesninskis to watch. 

and what does he do?

He didn't remember pulling it from his pocket or making the decision to dial out. He lowered it and tapped a button, thinking maybe he'd imagined things, but Andrew's name was on his display and the timer put the call at almost a minute already.

Neil put the phone back to his ear, but he couldn't find the words for the wretched feeling that was tearing away at him. In three months championships would be over. In four months he'd be dead. In five months the Foxes would be right back here for summer practices with six new faces. Neil could count his life on one hand now. On the other hand was the future he couldn't have: vice-captain, captain, Court. Neil had no right to mourn these missed chances. He'd gotten more than he deserved this year; it was selfish to ask for more.

He should be grateful for what he had, and gladder still that his death would mean something. He was going to drag his father and the Moriyamas down with him when he went, and they'd never recover from the things he said. It was justice when he'd never thought he'd get any and revenge for his mother's death. He thought he'd come to terms with it but that hollow ache was back in his chest where it had no right to be. Neil felt like he was drowning.

Neil found his voice at last, but the best he had was, "Come and get me from the stadium.”

andrew grounds him, comes for him, and makes sure that neil can’t run. but this was just one very extreme situation, so here’s how i think his future may play out: no matter how much neil wants to go, he needs to stay even more. and, unlike the above situation, neil now has explicit permission (a command, even) to stay with the foxes, to stay with his family. i think he will be fine for a long while until there comes a moment where he realizes that he’s here to stay and he has a home and he has the foxes and he has andrew and it’s honestly a toss up as to how he would react. the first option would be that it’s overwhelming in a very, very good way and nothing much changes. the second option (which seems way more in character for neil) is instead: he panics, and he needs something to keep him tethered to psu. he might seek out andrew like he did in canon or he might try to hide it to not worry him, but i’d place my bets on somewhere in the middle where he makes sure andrew knows whats going on but tries to downplay its importance. 

anyways, i wrote all this before i even checked with nora’s ec to see if she’s said anything in a similar context and she DID and and it was pretty much compliant with my ideas which i am very happy about:

“He’s more likely to walk away or tell Neil to get over it or look right past whatever existential/psychological crisis Neil is having. Neil’s grumpiness after a loss are brushed aside unimportant, and his aggravation over uncooperative teammates is nothing to pity him for. 

But once in a long while Neil will hit a ledge he has to be pulled back from, and that’s what Andrew does. Like in Baltimore, when Neil is trying to say Do you want me to go, and Andrew catches hold and tells him Stay. This is how Andrew comforts: by being a stabilizing force, an anchor to keep Neil at home, a place to rest his weight and his secrets. Honestly, that’s what Neil needs.” (Andrew comforting Neil)

“Impatience kind of worked in Baltimore, but I guess it’s not a one-size-fits-all kind of ordeal. Forced eye contact and Look at me and a ruder calm down right now. ((Thanks Andrew, really sympathetic of you)) Andrew gives Neil the weight to connect him to the real world: a hand on the back of his neck or fingers hooked in the collar of his shirt to drag Neil home to him.” (Andrew re: Neil’s panic attacks)

now, as for neil adjusting to just a plain stationary life, i think he’d adjust relatively easily. his entire life was fitting in which i don’t think he’d have a big problem with, but the new element of how he’s not pretending anymore, he’s just neil josten, might throw him off a little bit. there’s likely going to be some habits he picked up that he can’t shake and some associations (alcohol isn’t for fun, it’s an anesthetic is one that comes to mind) that he never quite gets rid of but despite how much might get thrown at him, after everything he survived freshman year it’d take a fucking lot to push him to his breaking point.

[universallywriting]

I found your Connie meta re: future, and I whole heartedly agree. I believe the biggest problem suf had were the time constraints, which also related to how Godzilla Steven was handled (the entire ep felt like only 2mins n didn't really live upto it's buildup) maybe if they have delved into Connie's life and why exactly she was so obsessed with college (idk this study frenzy seems more like a distraction) than maybe Connie's character wldnt feel so flat?

I wanted to address this one, because I’m seeing this a lot in response to criticism of the show, even though I’m trying not to become a huge meta discussion blog. So, if I’m not answering your ask, that’s probably why, lol. I don’t wanna write nothing but essays forever.

They were told they only have twenty episodes from the beginning, so this isn’t a matter of studio meddling meaning they suddenly had to fit more content than they thought they would. This was a bonus series. This is the best opportunity you could have as a show writer to tell a satisfying, well paced story.

They knew from the start time was limited and they chose to spend their time where they did. They chose to have episodes like Bluebird and A Very Special Episode knowing they had to build Steven to that Kaiju Breakdown. They could have spent one of those episodes on Connie’s life, but they didn’t want to. In Why So Blue? they choose to give Lapis’s character another wrap up instead of having another episode post-Kaiju devoted to healing.

It’s not a matter of time. It’s a matter or priority. They had things they wanted to talk about, and they talked about it. They felt that it was enough time to devote to Steven going worm, or Steven recovering, and I disagree.

It feels like people talk about this stuff like every episode is set in stone and already made, so what else could they have done? But, like... they could have done everything different with the three and a half hours they were given. Everything you see on your screen is a choice the writers made, not some inevitability that had to occur that they did their best with (though that is true with the boarders so, like, be nicer to them lol).

[valkyriesquad]

TBH idk if it's just me but I feel it's v sketchy when I see stuff from a heathen & they say "I believe anyone drawn to the path can practice as a heathen" this part I agree with but then they go "BUT idk why they wld want to be its a v heavily ancestor based practice and their ancestors wldnt be of Scandinavian decent and they wldnt get the expirience they're looking for :/ but they can do what they want" it feels v much "I can't stop u w/o being racist but I will say this to deter you from it"

It’s not just you, greyface. That’s actually one of the things we look for as a possible red flag on blogs. 

I say “possible” because, honestly, it could easily be somebody fairly new to heathenry whose worldview is being influenced by the folkish side of it all. They do tend to be a lot more vocal and more easily seen than the universalist side. But it’s also possible to talk to that person - especially if they’re new - and teach them that it’s only ancestor-based if you want it to be. That there were plenty of PoC in the nordic countries when heathenry was more widely practiced. 

There’s a lot of other things to take into consideration, but that’s definitely something to watch out for.

--mod gwwh

[cocona]

i don't know how you feel about answering this but how do you know when a friendship is getting toxic? i have this friend who means something to me but we disagree a lot and don't really see eye to eye most of the time, we both agreed to be careful for eachother's feelings but i feel like they're not going thru with this and i think i'm not either. i want to tell them but i feel like i care more than they do?? and i hate it because being ignored shouldn't bother me as much as it does :(

if u think a relationship is getting toxic it’s most likely bc it is ! if u both stop caring abt each other’s feelings nd feel hurt by the other, nd do things u wldnt do usually bc of tht person nd feel like what ure doing isnt returned....then ure probs being used so its toxic. i mean.. a toxic relationship can take many forms but tbh as soon as a friendship exhausts u nd makes u feel bad ,, u shld rethink it

[diamondnokouzai]

i used to vent to my irl friends abt different ways ppl had insulted me & how i felt like nobody cared abt me & they jst like. agreed with the insults. or said stuff like ‘yeah if i hadnt already known you then i wldnt care abt you either’

[legobatjoker]

UM OMG ITS 3 AM AGAINN onece again told myself id b alseep at 2 at the latest and once got myself distracted w little projects <//3 yesterday it was a fun silly little vid i meant to post but even iwhen i finished it just. refused to render in the right aspect ratio so thts fun !! nd today it was. very bad first draft fanfic after watching the stolkhome ep today FHDGH listenn i have things in brain i had to get out or i wldnt have slep abyway DHDJHD anyway wanyway !! so sorry if this is short bc of tht but i rly do just wanna say that i love you so so much mx i rly do !! like omg i had sm fun vcing with you today it rly was so lovely i tihnk to tlak with you and watch cs together and hear ur voice and nd spend time tigether talking nd chatting with you it rly was so so fun and amazing i feel it rly was just like it always is spending time with you jsut like it is to know you myu bleoved becuase well you really are such a wonderful person to talk with and know and i really do feel so so greatfu that i get to know you and talk with you hear your thoughts on things and share stuff with you i really really do bc well it rly is so wonderful mx and just like to have a freind like you who is so incredible and just kind and sweet and caring to me really does mean the world to me mx and im just soso greatful for it and just !! i lvoe you so so much mx i rly do !! :'> i hope ur days been good nd tht the trip home tmrw goes well nd trht u sleep well tonight, ilusmm !! <3 💞💞💞💞🐞🦋💕💕🍊🍓🥭🌼💞💕💞🌼✨✨✨

OHHHH WAIT BOTH OF THOSE PROJECTS SOUND SOSOSOOOSO GOOD AND I AM SO EXCITED TO SEE THEM !!!!!!!! i think itse so epic that u are working on those mx !!!!!!!!!! and !! i agree that vcing was soo much funnnn as always of course and also as always you are just such a wonderful person to know peaches and i am sooo beyond goad u think the same of me bcuz i teuly do feel so lucky to know u and ur so amazing!! i love u sm gnighttt!! 💕💕💕❤️💕❤️💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕

[enchantechante]

Today Ohio signed a bill into law that will allow school personnel to carry guns to work. Do you think this will happen in your state as well?

Naaaauuuuuuurrrrrr California is the birthplace of the Black Panther Party 🙅🏾‍♀️😂

they don't want ppl in the streets w guns let alone the school bruh.

It wld get bad quick. Ca wld have to agree on how to resolve conflicts without guns so they don't things dont escalate if/when teachers carry. But by then we wldnt need guns.

We have too many hippies building a utopia so this wldnt be a good lewk