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chimaerakitten · 5 months

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Malaria, Sickle-Cell, and Dragons in the Temeraire Universe

so I've been thinking about sickle cell all day because of the very cool real-life FDA crispr treatment approval news, and also I'm just about done rereading empire of ivory so thusly it is time to write the sickle cell/malaria/dragons/benefits of human-dragon mutualism breakdown I mentioned ages ago.

Standard disclaimer that I am not in fact anywhere near an expert on this, this is mostly recall from ANTH 102/215 classes I took five years ago, the info is very simplified and possibly somewhat out of date. I'm doing some quick checks and I write this but only enough to make this an appropriate fantasy novel fandom post, not enough to make it actually reliably informative. I do have a couple citations, but mostly for the parts I'm lifting straight out of a class assignment I wrote, and they're a short documentary hosted on YouTube and the textbook for the class. also none of my links are live because I want this fandom post to actually show up in the fandom tag lol.

second disclaimer is I'm starting at the basic obvious stuff because I genuinely have no idea how much most people know about this and better safe than confusing.

Intro and Background

So the first thing to know about any of this is that human genetics for the most part to not operate on mendelian inheritance. So the punnet squares in high school biology that did human hair or eye color as basic dominant/recessive one-gene traits were totally lying to you. Like they're a teaching tool for a very simple model that works well enough but they're not accurate. Most human phenotypes are way way more complicated genetically than that.

That said, there are exceptions. Mendelian traits (Characteristics that are influenced by alles at only one genetic locus) do exist in humans, a number of them being related to genetic diseases. The list in the ANTH 102 notes I just dug up was: Wet (dominant) or dry Earwax; Albinism; Brachydactyly (dominant); Blood type (ABO, not the positive/negative part); Hereditary breast-ovarian cancer syndrome (BRCA-1, BRCA-2, unknown genes); Huntington’s disease; Lactase persistence (dominant); and Sickle-cell disease (recessive).

So the sickle cell punnet square looks like this for two parents who both have one copy of the sickle cell gene:

Sickle cell is a very painful and life threatening disease, (That's why the FDA approving a crispr treatment for it allowing patients to be their own bone marrow donors is very exciting.) and from an evolutionary perspective, one that very often prevents people from reproducing. It's also not strictly dominant/recessive, in that people heterozygous for sickle cell can have some symptoms like the possibility a sickle-cell crisis triggered in low-oxygen situations (high altitudes, intense exercise, etc).

So one might think that Sickle cell would be a vanishingly rare disease, since having it can be deadly and even having the trait can in some cases cause problems. Only it's not rare by genetically inherited disease standards, not at all.

And to make a long story very short, the reason is malaria.

Malaria

People who are heterozygous (possessing one sickle cell gene and one normal gene) for sickle cell anemia are resistant to malaria. In areas of the world without a high incidence of malaria historically, there is a strong selection against the sickle cell gene, (Biointeractive Malaria and Sickle Cell Anemia, 9:33) but in areas with malaria, both having sickle cell disease (homozygous HbSS) and not having the trait at all (homozygous HbAA) are selected against. People with sickle cell were historically less likely to reproduce, and people who were not resistant to malaria were more likely to die of malaria and also not reproduce. Because being heterozygous with sickle cell is selected for, the gene persists in the population.

The implications of that are best summed up from this map that I just stole from Britannica.com:

I dunno if the percentages on that second one are accurate tbh, other infographic maps I'm looking at give different ranges. but sill, you get the gist about how common it is in equatorial Africa. In the modern United States Black children are much much more likely to be born with sickle cell than white children—the genes don't just go away when the threat of malaria is removed. (And yeah, that's a historical consequence of the slave trade.)

There's some other stuff wrapped up in here too about bio-cultural evolution: There's indications that malaria was not a “significant problem until humans abandoned food foraging for farming” (Haviland, W. A., Prins, H. E., Walrath, D., & McBride, B.). Humans cleared away the forest, which had kept the soil absorbent. Without the vegetation, more water built up on the surface, forming stagnant puddles which were a perfect environment for malaria-causing mosquitoes to thrive, thus creating the conditions for sickle cell anemia to be advantageous. Farming creates caloric surplus which is great for humans, but it also changes the environment in ways that can be detrimental. Malaria is one way, creating the conditions for other epidemic diseases to thrive is another, etc. etc.

But if you've read this far you're probably going "Chi, you promised this would be a fandom post but so far this has been a serious and kind of sad post about disease. when are you going to get to the dragons?"

The Dragons

So the first time malaria comes up in the Temeraire books is in Throne of Jade, when a bunch of the sailors on the Allegiance come down with "malarial Fevers."

Jane, I must ask you to forgive the long gap in this Letter, and the few hasty Words that are all by which I can amend the same now. I have not had Leisure to take up my pen these three weeks—since we passed out of Banka Strait we have been much afflicted by malarial Fevers. I have escaped sickness myself, and most of my men, for which Keynes opines we must be grateful to Temeraire, believing that the heat of his body in some wise dispels the Miasmas which cause the ague, and our close association thus affords some protection. But we have been spared only to increase of Labor: Captain Riley has been confined to his bed since almost the very first, and Lord Purbeck falling ill, I have stood watch in turn with the ship’s third and fourth lieutenants, Franks and Beckett. Both are willing young men, and Franks does his best, but is by no means yet prepared for the Duty of overseeing so vast a Ship as the Allegiance, nor to maintain discipline among her Crew—stammers, I am sorry to say, which explains his seeming Rudeness at table, which I had earlier remarked upon.

I do not know enough about what people thought about malaria in the 19th century to be 100% sure that this is actually malaria, but I think Novik wouldn't want to confuse her readers by calling something malarial that isn't you know..malaria. So I'm going to assume thats what it is. Google is not giving me figures on malaria survival rates before modern medicines for it which is driving me kind of nuts and means I can't say how lucky Riley and Purbeck were to survive with apparently no complications, but that's not the point here anyway. The point is the comment about the aviators not getting sick.

And not only (mostly) not getting sick, but not getting sick even though they aren't actually always near Temeraire. Laurence for example has been working watch shifts near constantly because he's the only one left on the ship who knows what he's doing. That means probably less read & cuddle time than is normal for him and Temeraire, and yet—no malaria.

We modern readers (and Novik) know that malaria is not caused by "miasmas" but by parasites carried by mosquitos. And lo and behold when we get to Empire of Ivory we get:

Mosquitoes sang happily as dusk drew on, though they did not come very close to Temeraire; the flies were less judicious. The shapes of the trees were growing vague when Temeraire woke with a start and said, “Laurence, there is someone coming, there,” and the grass rustled on the opposite bank.

So yeah, the dragons are keeping the mosquitos away. I know fuck all about why—it's probably not heat since you know, mosquitos like warm blooded organisms, but maybe it's an oil or a chemical or some artifact of the way some of them can breathe fire that's present in all dragons or something, they're described as smelling weird a few times, so who knows. If it's a substance like an oil in their skin that could explain why the aviators don't get sick even when they're not nearby, since they could have some on them from contact, but that's just speculation. The point is not the mechanism, just that it's happening.

The Point

This whole post grew out of a throwaway comment I made about the benefits of mutualistic symbiosis with dragons from the human perspective in that one post about how the series has some interesting stuff obviously going on psychologically/biologically. The point of going in-depth on malaria and sickle cell is to show how this is really impressively solid worldbuilding in relation to the Tswana.

See, Empire of Ivory describes locations that seem like they're in modern day Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia, regions which will have had long-term problems with malaria-causing mosquitos. That's not the densest area for sickle cell, but still definitely in the region where malaria would have exerted selective pressure.

Selective pressure which, in a universe where just being around a dragon is going to drastically reduce malaria rates, is going to leave dragon-friendly populations a lot healthier than dragon-unfriendly ones. A community that has a dragon stay every night and work alongside humans during the day is going to have a lot less malaria even without the sickle cell resistance than a community which has no dragon. And considering that malaria is bad enough that sickle cell genes persist despite it also having a high chance to cause a deadly disease, whereas a dragon that's a fully prosocial member of the community is not going to cause more death and instead will probably help with defense and create more caloric surplus (at the cost of consuming most of that surplus) a dragon is just obviously the better option. From there, it's extremely easy to see how the Tswana in the series could develop such a dragon-centric culture and have it be so wildly successful. The dragons provide fertilizer, the dragons allow for fully domesticated elephants, and the dragons render malaria—one of the deadliest diseases in history—nearly a nonissue. Of course they're family.

Citations:

Biointeractive. (2014, August 26). Malaria and Sickle Cell Anemia - HHMI BioInteractive Video. Retrieved October 3, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsbhvl2nVNE

Haviland, W. A., Prins, H. E., Walrath, D., & McBride, B. (2017). Anthropology: The Human Challenge (15th ed.). Boston: Cengage Learning.

#Temeraire #it’s more bio-cultural evolution #wikipedia claims that malaria may have killed 50-60 billion people through history but I do not trust that citation AT ALL #regardless its still one of the deadliest killers ever #the kitten rambles #malaria #sickle cell anemia #Artemis if you read this I am sorry for the butchering I made of some anthropology concepts

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teethands · 1 year

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practicing drawing skirls by making other ocs into skirls. surprisingly a good excersize in ethnicity concepts and social behaviour

these two are stimulating eachothers whiskers and exposing their secondary eyelids, signs of trust, comfort, and affection. skirls tend to have a smaller circle of personal space and stand much closer to eachother when communicating.

#bonus points if you can recognize these guys #the one on the left isnt scarred- but has scar looking markings- as skirl blood or flesh is blue in color. he is also showcasing-#blue colored gauges on his lappets. gauges like that come in a variety of complex shapes- as the size and lack of bloodflow to the lappets-#give them plenty of room for modifications. gauges like these are not uncommon and theres certainly more absurd body mods in skirl culture #skirls #rorys art #spec evo #spec bio #speculative evolution #speculative biology #alien

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alienarthouse · 6 months

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A bit of a change of pace from my typical scifi spec bio, but I’ve been drawing a lot of fantasy art lately and started thinking about my goblins again.

In my D&D homebrew/original high fantasy world, Fulcire, the goblinoids (a family consisting of such species as the goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears) are distinct from the humanoids, having evolved from a different common ancestor. They are the older of the two families, having evolved somewhere between 20,000 and 70,000 years earlier. Goblins were the first of the family to evolve in their modern form, making them the oldest intelligent mortal life on the plane. They alternate between quadrupedal and bipedal stances, are opportunistic omnivores, surviving on a mix of gathering and scavenging, but never actively hunting. Before the modern age of city-building, they kept migratory paths that they traveled across over the span of several years. These days, though, they tend to live more sedentary lives in the isolation of deep wilderness, because where their’s and humanoid’s paths cross, a fight almost always seems to end up breaking out.

More fun facts below:

- As a weird quirk of their evolution, goblinoids are better able to understand large numbers as a concept than humanoids. Where the humanoid mind struggles to imagine numbers into the thousands, tens-of-thousands, and beyond, goblinoids do not. This is theorized to be due to the fact that goblinoids evolved from an animal that had a herd-like social structure, rather than a pack-like one. An individual could need to know hundreds to thousands of other people on a personal level, and those that could work in such large numbers tended to be the most successful members of the herd, eventually selecting towards this particular quirk. As a result, Goblins and goblinoids are fantastic trend-spotters, and have both a fantastic memory and a quick mind for mathematics. It’s no coincidence that their agriculture requires keeping careful track of plant and animal populations across wide tracts of land over many years, and figuring out how to manipulate them season-by-season to the benefit of both themselves, and for the local ecosystem.

- Goblin clothing and fashion is quite unique when compared to humanoid clothing. Goblins do have a taboo against nudity in most cultures, but the structure of their body means that what they must cover differs. All goblinoids are mammalian, though their breast tissue is on their stomach, not their chest. To have an exposed belly, then, is considered appropriate for men, but not women, in Goblin societies (this, of course, can vary depending on societal practices regarding nursing, but that’s a whole different topic). An exposed chest, meanwhile, is commonly considered a sign of bravery in warriors, though more often than not warriors will wear chest-plates in real combat. Everyday styles, such as an exposed chest, are designed to allow for ease of movement in both bipedal and quadrupedal stances. The classic shirt, as humans style it, tend to pull and rub at a Goblin’s shoulders, which are structured more like that of a very flexible cat than a human. A lean towards functionality does not stop Goblins from accessorizing, though, covering clothes in embroidery, beadwork, and decorating with anything that shines or makes a nice jingling sound. Patterns and motifs may stem from Goblin folklore and history, or may be adopted from other species’ cultures. Clothing style is not restricted based on sex in any case other than when it comes to nudity in a particular culture, but it is common for those with magical ability to wear styles that differ from those who do not.

- Goblins have brightly pigmented skin, ranging from green to yellow to red, with the depth of color believed to signal good health. They may very rarely have striped or spotted patterns on their skin, but if not painted-on, this tends to be the result of an individual having some hobgoblin or bugbear ancestry, rather than a naturally occurring pattern. Compared to humanoids, they have an extended hairline, which starts lower on the forehead, extending down the neck and back, and across the shoulders. It often stops at the low-back, but it is not unheard of to have a furred tail. They range between 2.5 to 3.5 feet in height when standing bipedally, though are taller when their ears are taken into account. They are mammalian, and give birth in litters of 1-3 pups per season. Goblins have retractable claws, and their teeth fall out regularly across the seasons, though they only fall out all at once if a Goblin is in truly dire health. Lost teeth are often given as a sign of affection to family, friends, and/or lovers. While Goblins may not be religious, they are often spiritual, and keeping a loved one’s tooth is thought to help keep track of them, in life and in death. In fact, when a particularly beloved Goblin passes, when they are interred below the roots or in the hollow of a tree, they are often buried with great numbers of living Goblin’s teeth, so that they may find and recognize one another again in the world beyond.

#the gallery #goblins #d&d #spec bio #speculative biology #fantasy art #dnd art

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sol-consort · 2 months

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Do you think in reverse, any of the alien races also tried those tips on befriending humans? Aliens bragging online how they totally rizzedd up a human with ridiculous advice, humans are just like "lol silly little guys" and humor it happily.

Are we bringing the "loser high elf with a human obsession" trend in here from my other blog? Because I am fully down to making a loser friendgroup of aliens who are creeps towards humans as much as they are endlessly curious.

And yes, oh definitely yes they are bragging online about tottally rizzing up this new shiny species who stumbled their way into the stars.

A turian posting on his twitter about how he's been assigned with a human in C-SEC, how he has been studying a lot of human rituals by watching Hollywood movies and reading mammal herd behaviours, not realising humans are categorised as predetors.

It's a long thread of him describing his "successful" attempts and encounters with the human.

He followed the human to lunch and made sure to eat next to them since the extranet articles talked about the importance of eating together in human culture.

Except the human was a messy eater and the turian's food ended up getting contaminated, resulting in the turian having a coughing fit, throwing up, passing out and waking up in the emergency care.

A salarian saw this thread and left a very long comment mansplaining human behaviour and how the turian was absolutely wrong and an idiot. The two of them argued back and forth in the comments during the turian's stay in the hospital.

Resulting in the salarian claiming he could befriend a human much faster and easier than the turian's pathetic attempt. Leading the turian to daring him to post it.

So he read any books he could find about human evolution and history. Confident that he could apply them on the next human tour group coming to Sur'kesh.

Human primitives loved climbing trees, correct? And Sur'kesh has lots of trees! Their closest relatives are in apes huh? The salarian knows just what to do with this information.

Imagine with me, you're a human tourist in an alien planet, following the polite salarian guide in the front and taking pictures of the lovely view. You're having a wonderful time.

Then out of nowhere, comes another salarian who stops in front of the whole tour group. The tour guide seems confused and you wonder if this was preplanned or not.

This random salarian begins speaking to the entire group very slowly as he states the fact that there are a lot of trees around here. Asking if anyone would like to join him in climbing one as a mutual show of trust and friendship.

You raise your camera as you watch this salarian who's worked in a bio lab all his life, struggling to climb one tree and very slowly making progress. When he reaches the top, he is reminded of the fact oh, heights and gravity exist, this is so much more terrifying than he thought it would be.

Now he's stuck on the tree, and the salarian tour guide is dialing up security to both come and get him down but also kick him out before he causes a human diplomatic incident.

The salarian's terrified at the top like a scared kitten. You climbed a lot of trees as a kid, and this one isn't even that tall, so you climb up there and offer to carry the salarian down, which he enthusiastically accepts.

Everyone is taking pictures and smiling, the tour guide is relieved that an incident was avoided.

Then the salarian in your arms, reaches into his pocket says he has just the thing to thank you with, kind human.

He takes out. A banana. Offering it to you.

The pictures and videos of him doing that end up on the galactic news the next day, you get word that the human ambassador Udina wants use this incident to demand compensation and sanctions on the salarians offensive gesture to a human tourist. The salarian government is very apologetic and panicking, ready to throw credits at the problem to solve it.

But you post a video on your social media laughing it off and saying it's fine. Putting an end to the incident before it escalates.

An asari sits in her office as she looks over the latest galactic news, the salarian's pathetic attempt at befriending a human that resulted in a diplomatic incident.

She sips on her coffee, a human delicacy, as she finally decides where she wants to spend her once-a-year break.

Booking the nearest ticket to Earth, she thinks, befriending humans cannot be that hard, right?

She has seen many humans in Thessia. She even talked to one once when they asked her for directions! Sure, she never really befriended any before, but they can't be that different from all the other species. After all, an asari can get anyone wrapped around their finger if she tries hard enough.

Landing on Earth, she realises just why it was called the blue planet. The sky is very blue, almost aggressively so and the sun here hurts to look at, unlike the gentle one in Thessia.

There are so many humans around, not a sign of a single alien in sight. All of them walking with a purpose, some taking their animals to a stroll and oh wow that dog is bigger than any varren she has ever seen, how did that human tame it?

Some give her a pacing glance, and others are indifferent to her. She keeps trying to strike up a conversation but everyone just declines and say they're busy or in a hurry.

Strange, the humans on the citadel are much more friendly. An asari could walk up to a group and demand their attention just like that, why are the ones here so different?

Eventually she spots an older woman, ah yes a human Matriarch! Just perfect. She goes to the elder woman sitting on a bench while feeding the pigeons.

The woman smiles, wrinkles in her face from a life full of happiness, greeting the blue lady. The two of them sit together and have a talk, the old woman is very patient and understanding with the asari as she explains that this is just how humans are, how the ones on the citadel are a very select view who are enthusiastic about aliens.

The asair is stunned to learn that this woman is merely 78 years old, yet she holds so much wisdom and charm. They spend the entire day talking and watch the sunset together.

By the end, the old woman apologises for having to leave, saying her grandkids are visiting tonight and she must go back home. But she will be here tomorrow if the asair wants to continue the chat.

Day after day, week after week. The asair keeps meeting up with her snd talking, about nothing and everything, life and its meaning, the sky and its colours, love and its sisters.

The asari asks if the old woman has her spouse in her life still, the old woman smiles, full of melancholy as she shakes her head no.

Reading on human mating rituals, the asari starts bringing the old woman flowers, red in colour and varied in shapes. A box of sweets that the old woman kindly declines because of her blood sugar, yet the asari doesn't give up and comes the next day with a box of dark chocolate.

By the end of the month, the asari brings her final gift to the old woman. A small red box that fits perfectly into her balm. The old woman has to put her glasses back on as the asari opens the box to be able to see what's inside.

Getting on one knee, the asari opens the box to present a shiny ring inside, she asks cautiously if she'd like to come back with her to Thessia to live the rest of their lives together.

The old woman smiles, the asari grew found of her smiles, so gentle and warm. Reaching with her shakey hands, she takes the box and admires the beautiful ring inside. She chuckles with delight at the flattering implication as she puts the ring back in the box and hands it to the asari.

Patting her head, the 78 human woman tells the 600 asari woman to go find a young girl her age to marry. How she basically sees her as a granddaughter.

The asari comes back home with a newfound hatred for Earth, attempting to cope with having her heartbroken by a single human who hasn't passed their first century yet.

#☆asair #☆turians #☆salarians #☆humans

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briarandhissecretgarden · 4 months

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Drowned Thoughts

Hello!!! Here's the Drowned discussion post I was talking about before the small break, I have a few things to touch on and a new character to show off!!

Drowned in my canon can be separated into two groups, those that are the drowned people, and those that are the undead. Drowned are a complicated case because we all understand the Drowned in MC are zombies that spawn or are converted to living in the water and of course that happens in my world too!! I wouldn't deny an interesting feature like that!! I imagine water has a lot of magic within it and since its used for potions and such, a lot of magical waste from failed potion attempts or large brewing sessions culminated as pollution in some areas. Even then, I just feel like zombies are susceptible to magic and transformations especially, having a Husk variant as well. Very adaptable species.

However, I have a species of the Drowned that are people who lost their civilization to the ocean many many years ago, more so something like Atlantis, except not hidden. Their world was changed and as a result of Years of evolution, they had transformed into a water dwelling society!! Drowned are able to walk on land as they retain their legs, they are able to breathe air as they are mammals still, having both gills and lungs (though they are under developed). Drowned live primarily in undersea ruins both warm and cold ocean variants. There are differences in their cultures obviously, but they are the same species.

Drowned can form relationships and have children with other mobs as well!! This is shown through Dionysus' friend, Aries!! Who's father was a Witch and mother a Drowned.

Here's a design of her, very sketchy but the overall idea of color palette, features (aside from facial) and clothes concepts are very much that of the Warm Ocean variant drowned. Darker skin, more green hued skin, glowing/bio luminescent features as well as smaller clothes and more flowing options with gold accents!

Cold Water drowned have a more obvious lighter shade and more bluish tint to their skin along with having more wraps and such covering their bodies, they typically have more bio luminescent features and dark colored scleras!! They typically also have yellow teeth :0)

That's all I have, I'm hoping to talk more abt Aries if people are interested and to eventually make a design of a cold ocean drowned fellow :0)!!!

#minecraft oc #minecraft oc art #minecraft #minecraft ask blog #minecraft oc ask blog #mineblr #minecraft lore #minecraft theory #minecraft drowned #theory #lore

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happyia · 20 days

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Today is National Unicorn Day and I've decided to celebrate by doing a quick worldbuilding illustration. I want to slowly get into effects of magic in Axolotl Afterparty universe and how it affects animals. I already mentioned "magic scarring" on Catfolk post, but I want to get more into the topic later, mayhaps.

Anyways, here's the bulk of text from the drawing:

While magic is present thorough entire universe, neither sophonts, nor any bio-based organisms are immune to the effects of overcharge. Prolonged exposure to extreme amounts of magic alters mind and body, sometimes extending creature’s lifespan long past normal life expectancy.

“Unicorn” is a rare mutation of Borse, which causes excess of magic in the body to form physical growths, in this case a singular horn. Affected Borse will then separate from its herd, compelled to live solitarily until death.

In Catfolk culture, Unicorns are depicted as spirit-eaters, feasting on those who haunt the living. Modern theories suggest that Unicorns eat spirits to recharge magic in them.

More about Borses in my older post <3

#art #artwork #digital art #worldbuilding #speculative evolution #speculative biology #fantasy #scifi #alien species #axolotl afterparty #horse #boar #unicorn #speculative magic

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thesacredself · 11 months

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Gemini Season: Water Signs

Themes and advice for Gemini Season. Please check your sun, moon, rising, and venus and take what resonates ✨

Cancer: warmth; creativity; playful; enjoying your uniqueness; boundless energy for joy and love; beauty and art; generosity; having fun; engaging in self-expression; confidence; learning to stand in your own power; heartfelt connection to life; authenticity; being true to your creative and inspired dreams; harmony; recognising patterns that are not aligned with you; standing in integrity; making space for passion; addressing wounds or fears around putting yourself first/chasing your passions/being in a position of leadership; being eccentric; nobility in truth; child-like expression and joy; heart-centred; generosity; a love of life; love of all kinds; prioritising pleasure; chasing your dreams; putting yourself out there; working with feeling uncomfortable when chasing pleasure and different forms of love; self-care.

Scorpio: recognising what is unhealthy for you; evolution; connecting with your soul more than your identity; inner child work; courage; removing what is not aligned; letting go, taking care of your emotional self; confronting unhappiness; finding freedom; being gentle with yourself; exploring who you are; having fun with exploring a new sense of self; trusting in your own unique offering; taking accountability for your life path and for who you are/what you need; authenticity; empowered choices; expanding your perspective/personal philosophy; reflecting on how you approach situations; choosing to live your life the way you want to; knowing what you want/stand for; an emotional adventure; exploring new ways of being/living; committing to your own growth and wellbeing; striving less; breaking away from materialism to focus on joy and compassion; self-care; knowing you will be provided for; learning to live rather than survive; forming a new identity; allowing yourself to shine; embodying your truth; embracing yourself in your entirety; changing your mindset in regards to finance and work; self-forgiveness and self-love; allowing your definition of yourself to expand and grow.

Pisces: learning more about how your childhood/family environment affected you; learning how to nurture yourself or others; breaking generational cycles; travelling back to your childhood/family home or moving out of the family home; being clear about goals; expanding your mind through books, different cultures, spiritual practices, etc.; profound awakenings; transformation; changing perspectives; knowing you have the freedom of choice; looking for a new home; recognising where you or others restrict you; a journey to find meaning; moving away from unreciprocal/unhealthy relationships and environments; exploring ancestry; profound change; exploring different facets of yourself; testing different ways to live and think; authentic self-expression; untangling the subconscious; working on inner child wounds; igniting joy and passion; self-empowerment; nobility in truth; child-like curiosity and wonder; healing karmic wounds; creating warmth and freedom in your life; experimenting with your appearance; removing egotism; prioritising your needs and values; taking accountability for yourself; doing your research into further perspectives/ways of living/being; facing your fears; tending to your emotional needs; open-heartedness; transitionary period; learning to let go; deepening your spiritual practice and understanding, particularly though self-exploration and expression.

If you liked my readings, feel free to leave a tip on my kofi 🥰 link is in my bio!

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celestie0 · 1 month

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book recs? if you read. biology books are fine as well.

hiii my dear LOL yes i do read but not that often haha. not sure what genres speak to you but i tried to give a bit of a range!!

i just finished reading "pachinko" by author min jin lee n thought it was really wonderful. it's a story that spans multiple generations from a war era to modern era so it was really interesting seeing the cultural developments, i can tell the author put a lot of research into it. i mean i was already bawling by end of the first chapter and i very rarely actually cry when i'm reading books. the minimalistic style of the writing is so lovely i think this book has most influenced my own writing style. it's a hefty n lengthy book though, but so worth the ride

this one is really popular but def worth the hype "the seven husbands of evelyn hugo"! it's about sort of a marilyn monroe type character named evelyn hugo who was a famous actress (it's all fictional though) and all of her love affairs. i love the unique voice that she has throughout the book, she keeps it super real and so those moments of vulnerability from her end up hitting hard. i so very enjoy the way taylor jenkins reid writes aaa i'm reading another one of her books rn called "one true loves" (although tbh it's not that great so far haha)

a romance i read sort of recently was "before we were strangers" by renee carlino and i liked it!! the angsttt ugh. it's a second chance romance ab two characters who met in uni and then went their separate ways and didn't reunite again until they were in their thirties i believe. i love those types of romances where ppl have had a lot of time away from one another, exploring all the growth inbetween is sm fun. tbh there were so many times i wanted to slap the shit outta both the main characters for their horrendously poor decision making lmfao but i appreciate stories like that bc they feel raw and real. def recommend!

since you mentioned bio books i'll shout out my two faves LOL:

"who we are and how we got here" by david reich. i love this book, it's a really amazing collection of geneticists research to account for all the variations in humans across the world and throughout hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. it touches on why diff demographics are more susceptible to certain illness/disease, w explanations ranging from things such as colonization & racism, social isolation and even early language development!!

"the body" by bill bryson. this one is simple n kind of functions as a lil encyclopedia for the body, including famous discoveries and tips on how to take care of yourself. i think it's both a leisure read and also really educational so i loved it. there's stuff like women's anatomy, history of insulin production and there's even a section on food/metabolism which was my fave. it's all in layman's terms so it's suitable for anyone to pick up

i got kinda carried away w this haha but i hope you enjoy reading if you do read any of them! it's overcast where i live and now i wanna curl up with a book :'')

thank you lovely for the ask <3

#celestie rec #anon #asks #bookblr #book recommendations #book review

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charseraph · 2 years

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You’ve probably answered this before, but do you have any advice for anyone wanting to make their own spec bio species? I tried making my own but I feel like they’re too humanoid of designs but that’s also what I’m most comfortable with😔

Don’t worry, I’m happy to answer! 🤲🏼

I found that finding a shape, even the most ‘unusable,’ ‘un-animal-able’ shape around you, and then replicating that shape as accurately as you can in a sinch (no streamlining! Shaky messed up lines are ENCOURAGED, living things are all imperfect squiggles, so minimize your erases and undos!) can help with silhouette ideas.

(The reason for that is that instead of deleting a ‘bad’ drawing outright, you can start anew or copy only the parts you liked, and then boom! You’ve got one drawing you’re happy with and another you’ll more likely than not return to in the future, however far.)

(A dozen fast, improvised designs can beat out a single painstakingly planned one. It seems counterintuitive that quantity can be better than quality, but that’s only if you know the quality ahead of time! When it comes to concept art, more is better at the very beginning.)

Once you’ve replicated a handful of shapes, don’t add eyes and ears. In fact, don’t draw anything you’d think of as something an animal would have. The frequent fallbacks are tails, claws, paws, toes, ears, horns, fur, wings, joints, teeth, snouts, and hexapedal, quadrupedal, and bipedal bodies with heads in the front. These things are not universal, they are just our earthly scope of our closest relatives.

Modeling an alien species after insects, birds, reptiles, or sea life will make your alien nonhuman, but still earthling. These categories won’t necessarily arise in an alien world. Evolution doesn’t produce birds as we know them, evolution takes the most convenient source material and produces something to fill the niches birds occupy, and birds happened to be that source material.

I like to think about building a species like building a robot. How does a robot know where it’s going? Light sensors, maybe. Those don’t need to be orbs, or even at the front. How do some robots move? They don’t necessarily need spines or toes or claws or tails. How is fuel acquired? Lots of earth animals happen to have a hole in the front that sucks it in and breaks it up for refinement. Does it only have to be this way?

The more you separate life from Earth and relate it more to processes, means to the goal of continuing one’s design’s existence, creating more and more alien but still feasibly alive creatures becomes easier.

Above all, it should be fun. Researching biological precedent and basis from actual animals isn’t absolutely required, because those processes are based on logic—through which you can invent (or accidentally independently replicate) your own symbioses, organs, life cycles, and body chemistries.

Earth nature is like a template: working too closely from it can make you something that’s feasible, but could be recognizably earthly. Imagination is like raw resources: difficult to refine into something that makes total sense at first (from a lack of reference and guidance), but, with the right balance of templates and shots in the dark—you can make something positively, confidently alien!

You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to of course! It’s not a rule set, and you aren’t doing anything wrong if you don’t do them. The ultimate goal is to enjoy creating, not just the end result. Your aliens should be fun for you to draw. The amount of worldbuilding you want to do is your choice alone and no one else’s. Stopping at a single species, culture, planet is perfectly OK. Don’t let guides or other worlds pressure you into making more than you’re craving to.

If you ever make any drafts, however small, I’d love to see them. I’m always down to hear about people’s alien ideas, I sometimes throw in some fan art to help out. I wish you the best of luck, fun, and ease.

#char speaks #ask #thank you for asking!#speculative biology

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earthstellar · 2 years

Photo

OK I’m gonna talk for a long time about a character almost nobody but me is interested in, but I love her so please put up with me for a minute here lol

alright, here we go:

I feel like Road Rage is absolutely among the least-utilised G1 characters ever, which sucks because I love her so much!!!

Here’s a summary of her bio from TF Wiki:

Road Rage is the bodyguard/advisor of Ambassador Crosscut.

She is well-versed in alien cultures and generally cheerful, making her a very good diplomat.

However, a chronic short-out in her vehicle mode causes her to live up to her name; in car mode, she is a snarling, swerving speed machine with little regard—if not utter contempt—for anyone else on the road with her.

Which reminds me a lot of how they handled Grimlock as he’s depicted in Cyberverse, where he’s very polite and highly intelligent in root mode, but in alt-mode he’s out there fucking shit up, lmao.

And of course, she’s visually interesting because out of all the G1 femme bots, Road Rage is a big departure from the “typical” femme bot frame type, with a far more heavy-duty feel to her compared to Chromia, Moonracer, Arcee, etc. -- Her original G1 toy was just a re-deco of Tracks.

I can’t help but wonder how much her aesthetics played a role in her never really getting that much traction in Western/English language media... Sigh.

Although Road Rage does make an appearance in IDW 2!

And she does also appear in TFA as well:

However, in both IDW 2 and TFA, her frame type/model seems to have been adjusted quite a bit, and okay fine, but I feel like the heavy weight and serious look of the original G1 design gets a little lost in the redesigns and she ends up losing a lot of personality as a result, visually speaking.

Don’t get me wrong, I totally get that adjustments for art style / modernisation to match other character models etc. is a thing that needs to happen as part of natural art evolution and so on!

No problem with that; There’s a lot of consideration that goes into any character design process, and of course, it’s Transformers so toy models need to be taken into consideration as well, lol.

But I look at the original G1 Tracks re-deco design of Road Rage, and I think that IDK, making her less brick-like doesn’t really feel quite right to me, personally. (Of course, that’s just my opinion, and the redesigns aren’t inherently bad at all!)

In TFA they also made her a bounty hunter for-justice type character, but personally, I love her original bio. Kick ass diplomatic advisor. That’s so fucking strong!!!!

It just feels so much more unique and interesting to me, although I get that with TFA they were already working with a fairly large cast of characters with lots going on etc. and you gotta do what you gotta do to make things work for the story that you are trying to tell (or the story you are already in the middle of telling, which is often the case, lmao).

I just really like the idea of this very cordial diplomat’s advisor being a fucking HUGE MASSIVE POWERHOUSE LADY and looking threatening as shit, but actually she’s very chill and is there to help!

(Until she almost runs you off the road later but hey that’s not 100% her fault, she feels bad about it, she’ll help you get to the hotel so you can get ready for the speaker’s hall event later. No worries. lmao)

But still, IDK, it would be nice to see some more non-”typical” femme bots on a more regular basis.

I love the hell out of Termagax in IDW 2, Clobber in Cyberverse, etc. and tbh please give me more femme bots who are wide as hell.

Just, give me some absolutely huge femme bots.

(If we ever see Termagax animated in anything, I will lose my shit entirely, please give us more Termagax, I love her.)

I mean, come on, the G1 Road Rage design has that prominent hood torso/chest design that evokes TFA Ratchet’s “beer belly”-- It’s right there!!! Visually, it’s doable!!!

I feel like TFA Road Rage could have still had a fair enough redesign to match the style of the series but retained a larger / heavier set frame???

(Of course, this may not have been done for whatever reasons, but we have so few fat or even just generally big lady bots, and I feel like the G1 design for Road Rage could absolutely be interpreted in subsequent art styles / toy designs as being a wider / heavier frame type???)

We don’t see a lot of huge, heavy femme bots. The ones we do see are typically neutrals or Decepticons. We could use a few more fat lady Autobots, I’m just saying! But also just more large, strong, boxy, fat, etc. femme bots in general.

Again, not dunking on the IDW 2 / TFA designs, both art styles generally kick ass, but I love the G1 design for her so much.

Look at her. She’s so fucking powerful. I feel like the subsequent redesigns don’t really capture that sense of “absolute fucking rectangle of a femme bot”, but of course they also adjusted her character bio a bit for the redesigns too, so IDK.

In TFA, we already have some big bots like Bulkhead and of course, Ratchet’s got a pretty prominent robo-gut. We know it can be done!!

And in IDW 2, we do have a bit more frame type diversity, which is always welcome. <3

It just would have been interesting to see TFA Road Rage’s original hood torso/chest worked into a similar design to Ratchet’s, with a wider set frame, broader limbs, and thicker/bigger door wings to match-- Since her G1 model could already be interpreted as being pretty big, and it might have been a fun little throwback design / nod to the original for those who were already familiar with this character.

I mean, her original frame type was based on Tracks, and look at how they redesigned Tracks for TFA. Not a super big guy or anything lol, but it’s clear they played around with this frame type redesign concept in at least a couple ways.

So IDK!!!! I just love the original G1 Road Rage, and while I’m not dunking on the later redesigns of the character, I feel like it would be really cool to see a big lady bot in an interesting role like diplomatic advisor.

TL;DR: PLEASE GIVE ME THE FAT GOD TIER DIPLOMATIC ADVISOR VERSION OF ROAD RAGE, SHE IS LARGE AND SMART AND I LOVE HER.

#tf road rage #tfa #idw 2 #transformers #long post #maccadam #maccadams #transformers animated #g1 #transformers g1 #tf g1 #idw transformers

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revenant-coining · 1 year

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hello! i am unsure if you do name rqs, but since we have a headmate with a japanese name and arent bodily japanese, would love some help! (image below is her!)

shey'd like a theme of vulture culture and science (specifically biology!!) thank you if you do this and your blog makes me go happy stim every time ya post!! if ya need more images she is yoko (ink theory) from splatoon!

here ya go:

Vulture Culture:

Vul / Vult / Vultu

Vultur (Latin for vulture)

Cul / Cultu

Col / Coll / Colle

Pre / Preser

Serva (latin for preserve)

Calva (latin for skull)

Ossis (latin for bone)

Science / Biology:

Bio (biology)

Vi / Vit / Vita / Vital

Bot / Botan (botany)

Con / Concer (conservation)

Eco (ecology)

Evo / Evolu (evolution)

Gen / Gene (genetics)

Mari / Marine (marine biology)

Med / Medi / Medici (medicine)

Mic / Micro (microbiology)

Mol / Molec (molecular biology)

Phy / Phys / Physi / Physio (physiology)

Zoo / Zool / Zoolo (zoology)

#also thank youuuu :]#captain1sh #name list #🪼 requests #🪼 creations #category: name lists #category: lists

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rf-times · 2 years

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Have you read The evolutionary origins of patriarchy by Barbara Smuts

Just read it, here are my thoughts and some quotes I thought were interesting:

If anyone's interested, I found it here (it's just 17 pages)

TLDR: Her hypotheses are interesting and I think can work within feminist analysis: That ecologically based (though she mentions there is not enough research into why prehistoric humans were patrilocal) patrilocality dispersed women from their kin, that males learned to form male-male bonds against women, that men gained control over resources, that women can benefit reproductively or socially from actions that increase male control. She explains her points well and does not suggest essentialism or determinism as resulting from evolution or the idea that men are biologically programmed to control women and that women are biologically programmed to be subordinate. Discusses the wide variety of ways men behave within cultures and saying that this isn't the result of different genes.

"Elimination of the common misconception that adaptive explanations imply genetic determinism allows one to appreciate that, far from being "fixed" traits, many adaptations are exquisitely sensitive to environmental variation. Behavioral adaptations, in particular, often represent flexible responses to variable environments (West-Eberhard 1987). Humans are especially sensitive to both past experience and the present environment because natural selection favored the evolution of brains that specialize in flexible responsiveness to the extremely diverse and variable conditions in which humans live."

I find it an interesting article, for the way it describes for instance evolutionary traits not necessarily meaning fixed, immutable traits and her emphasis on the environment's importance when considering evolutionary behaviour.

One of my main gripes with classic evolutionary biology is the whole 'Women are choosy and vulnerable and need male resources and protection for their young, while men have all the power and it is in their best interests to just go around fertilising women. This conflict is mitigated by men offering resources and protection to women when they father children.' because it usually results in claiming marriage and paternity is ultimately to women's benefit and stuff like that and that it is the alternative, men being sexually coercive, that is the threat. When evol biologists talk about "fixing evolutionary based rape" they always end up talking about the latter and ignoring that their very conception of women being inherently vulnerable and men inherently with power and connections, and women being forced to bear children for men willing to expend those resources, is coercive as well. Like the whole "patriarchy happened because men's interests overrode women's" is still very much ignoring that many evol psych/bios' definitions of men and women's "interests" coinciding is literally patriarchy.

"In rhesus monkeys, discussed earlier, females form strong, life-long bonds with their female kin, and females cooperate to protect their female relatives against male aggression (e.g.,Chapais 1981)."

It makes me interested to see how much research on this has been done in the intevening years. The last thing I read on evol psych written recently (and by a respected scholar) was the most misogynistic bullshit I had ever seen which was arguing that women evolved against becoming engineers.

"Nevertheless, it is likely that the important female contribution to subsistence in most foraging and simple farming economies (Schlegel and Barry 1986) allowed females to retain some economic power and placed limits on male control over women. However, with the advent of intensive agriculture and animal husbandry, women, by-and-large, lost control over the fruits of their labors (Lerner 1986; Sacks 1975; Schlegel and Barry 1986). Foraging and nomadic slash-and-bum horticulture require vast areas of land and mobile females, making it more difficult for men to control women's resource base and to restrict women's movements. However, when women's labor is restricted to a relatively small plot of land, as in intensive agriculture, or is restricted primarily to the house-hold compound, as in animal husbandry, it is easier for men to control both the resource-base upon which women depend for subsistence and women's daily movements."

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peaceofthespirit · 2 years

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hi! u did specify so u like. deffo didnt do anything wrong but still, would u mind calling ppl who take the bible literally "biblical literalists" or smth instead of "orthodox"? for obvious reasons lmao id rather my religion not be associated with a different meaning, and clarifying with "russian orthodox" also sucks because. uh. other obvious reasons why parts of eastern europe wouldnt want to have to define a part of their cultural identity as russian

ty a lot! again i understand the way u used orthodox there makes sense in context and everything just. yk specifically re: christianity it would b nice if u tried not to in the future😭

I mean, I don't personally care for using the word in that sense (for the reasons you said, Orthodoxy is its own tradition, and one that I do admire a lot btw!), but I'm referring to people I've encountered on twitter who are Anglican and all have "inclusive orthodox" in their bios, which is why I tried to explain it (in at least one of my posts) to avoid confusion. Idk if "Biblical Literalists" is quite the right word to describe them either because (as pointed out in a twitter thread that I shared on here), a lot of them don't take the Hebrew Bible literally (they believe in evolution, see the stories as allegorical, etc) but take the new testament literally AND see the creeds (at "face value") as the one correct interpretation/summation of the new testament. I know some people talk about "Capital O" Orthodox and lowercase "orthodox," but that gets confusing when online we often don't capitalize in general...

I'll make sure that if I mention them again like that I'll phrase it more like "so called 'inclusive orthodox' Anglicans/Protestants" in quotations and explain. And yeah I really do think that we need a better word or term to describe them, I'll try to come up with a good alternative!

Sometimes I like to refer to them as just "progressives", as opposed to unorthodox/heterodox, but that term is really broad and some of them reject that term and some unorthodox people embrace it so idk.

I will say too, that if you ever want to avoid having to call it "Russian" Orthodox if someone is confused, you could always say "Eastern Orthodox" or "Oriental Orthodox" or "[Insert Culture Here] Orthodox" and I think people generally will understand what you mean? Or I would hope so...

Thank you for pointing that out!

#ask #progressive christian

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ibiverse · 2 years

Text

general / ibiverse

What is the ibiverse? Why, it's the universe ib and friends live in! It's got spaceships, it's got magic, it's got loads of cool locations and cultures and histories. It's a big place, spanning about a dozen main star systems and thousands of years of history, beginning on a planet Earth not too unlike our own. I hope to use this setting to tell lots of stories and explore lots of ideas. It's a work in progress and probably always will be, but I hope you enjoy what I have so far!

History overview

The stellar compulsion

Long before ib's time, beginning about 2 billion seconds or 100 years into the digital epoch (DE), humans were compelled by some inexplicable force or vibe or mass hysteria to build sleeper-colony ships and send them to 60 or 70 nearby star systems. In retrospect historians call this the "stellar compulsion" but at the time it seemed like a dizzying array of different pressures and systems and cold conflicts that were hard to understand as a single trend.

These ships were powered by a magical technology that allows for hydrogen-hydrogen fusion that produces minimal neutron radiation, but also produces particles called "ennuions" or "ennuinos" that negatively impact human minds.

The solution, they thought, was to simply pilot ships with big dumb computers while the passengers were held in an enchanted stasis. But it turned out the ennuinos effected the flight computers too, and as a result, only 6 of the 70ish ships would successfully reach their destinations. Two of them would eventually become starfaring civilizations of their own, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

The ennuionic fusion drives were so dangerous that the ships could only be launched from the Moon, and a lot of infrastructure had to be put in place to build and launch them. By the time the last one launched around 8 billion seconds or 250 years DE, over a million people lived on the Moon.

After the compulsion

The sheer amount of resources and lack of payoff of the sleeper ships led to divisions and the overall collapse of Earth's global space industry, leaving the moon an isolated but independent and high-tech society.

The environmental damage to earth was also significant, and the planet had to essentially be terraformed back from the brink of uninhabitability. A few factors were working in the biosphere's favor here.

First, the Portal to Hell had opened shortly after the last starship launch, providing nearly limitless clean energy to power earth's civilizations.

Second, the use of "petrosoul", the decomposed and concentrated interpersonal bonds of long-dead organisms, for bio-modification enabled the rapid evolution of crops, ecosystems, and even humans themselves into a more self-sustaining biosphere.

Children of the Moon

Meanwhile, the Moonlings were doing exciting things too. They constructed a space elevator from the moon's surface to one of the lagrange points, enabling the launch of vast space stations, solar-sail ships to explore and inhabit the inner planets, city-sized colony ships to the asteroids and outer planets, etc.

Superintelligent rats emerged in space in this period, and due to their small size they were capable of carrying space cargo more efficiently than humans or even robots. The formation of the space rats' guild is a key event of this period of Moonling expansion.

The moon became a high-tech superstate while the asteroids remain something of a frontier where the most megalomaniacal people can seek fame and fortune. A sort of feudal system emerged, where warlords ultimately subservient to the moon and the guild fight for control over asteroids.

Enabling the powers of these warlords was goo, a highly sought after fluid that they could suspend themselves in to completely isolate themselves from their senses and hone their skills of charisma and manipulation. Goo was a strategic resource more prized than the most powerful weapons, so the warlords don't trust the guilds to ship it, instead paying human crews heartily to fly for their own feudal fleets. Spaceflight is one of the primary routes out of the tenant-servitude that the vast majority of asteroid-dwellers are born into.

The Earthling Space Rennaissance

After about a century cut off from outer space, some entities on earth had regrouped and amassed the resources to explore space once again. This time, however, they had to compete with an entrenched political structure wherein someone claims exclusive rights to just about every rock out there. But with better computers, miniaturization, and bio-modification, the new earthling spacecraft were able to make a dent in the standing order of the feudal system. One earthling pilot with hyper-attuned senses, wired into a self-repairing ship, could pose a match for a battleship crewed by twenty or more beltling spacers.

As the earthlings shove their way into control over asteroids, the powers of the old system had to either adapt or move out, and they do a little of both!

The rapidly changing asteroid belt is the society where, around 10 billion seconds or about 400 years DE is the time of ib and the other intrepid spacefarers of the courier ship Ancient Hand. They seek better lives for themselves and their communities, and hope to create opportunities for spacefaring culture to express itself. This quest shared by billions of workers across the solar system will lead to some incredible things in coming centuries.

The many moons of the totally-not-jupiter and totally-not-saturn planets, settled by offshoots of the moon and belt cultures, became the new home to those who weren't willing to adapt to an asteroid belt with earthlings. many no longer saw earthlings as humans, since earthlings embraced genetic modification and they hadn't. They develop insular cultures within their planet-systems. They also made huge advances in cybernetics, so in the outer planets there were spaceships with human brains, giant cyborg space serpents that slithered around the rings of totally-not-saturn devouring passers by, etc. Things get even weirder the further out you go into the solar system.

OK but what about the colony ships?

The six surviving colony ships had meanwhile started their own human, or more generally "abterrestrial" civilizations. They developed in wildly different ways from one another.

#ibiverse #ibiversehistory

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