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amerricanartwork · 23 days

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RW Headcanon: Know the Difference! | An Overview of Quetzalli's Slugcats

Here’s a headcanon I’ve wanted to elaborate on for a while, and today I finally felt compelled to make it real! Also, just a disclaimer I am not a huge biology nerd nor have I studied it that heavily, so I apologize if something here doesn’t make sense or if I get something wrong. I just like fantasy worldbuilding from time to time, and I always like trying to make sense of things I’m interested in!

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Basically, I’m in the crowd that interprets slugcats as mustelids rather than literal slugs. When I say this, however I don’t mean that slugcats would necessarily be classified in the actual mustelidae family, seeing as Rain World’s world is most-likely not Earth and therefore our taxonomic classifications and phylogenetic relations can’t necessarily apply. Thus, when I call them “mustelids”, I really just mean that I imagine them as some kind of weasel with all the necessary physical traits to earn that general label.

The first half of the name “slugcat”, in my headcanon, is thus not referring to any literal connection to slugs or other mollusks, but is instead derived simply from their appearance. Due to their long ears and thick tail, and because their fur and fat often squishes together in such a way that it makes their features blend together and their bodies appear more smooth (it’s the same physics as that whole “cats are liquid” idea), the general silhouette of a slugcat can easily be likened to that of a literal slug. The second half of their name is also not literal, and instead refers to their jumping and acrobatic abilities and their skill in hunting and pouncing on small prey, which is very similar to that of small cats.

Species Overview

Now to give a little more detail on slugcats themselves as a species! I headcanon them as small to medium-sized mammals most similar to Earth weasels in both their biology and their ecological niche, who originally served as cute low-maintenance pets for the Ancients and as hunters of small pests in facilities on the ground. They’re clever by nature and good at fitting through tight spaces, and later on they evolved greater jumping abilities to pounce on prey. They’re also very social creatures, who’ve taken to forming medium to large colonies primarily in and around the massive trees that thrive between the cracks in iterators’ rainstorm areas (like the one Gourmand, Survivor, and Monk’s colony lives in). Due to this social nature they also generally travel in groups of at least two, both for company and protection against tougher animals. Travel partners are usually siblings or good friends, and sometimes even whole families will journey out together to find food and other resources for the rest of the colony.

Despite being a small prey animal, slugcats have managed to get by not only due to their intelligence — the evolution of which would be seen as a rather unexpected twist of events if you asked their creators, for the Ancients found them cute but rather simple — but because of their impressive adaptability. It’s similar to that of real life red foxes and pigeons, and it allows them to survive decently well even in less ideal environments; a trait especially necessary for a world as industrialized as this one, even if its people are gone and most of the machinery is inactive. As such not all colonies live in trees; some find homes in the abandoned facilities, large underground hollows, and a few bold colonies have even claimed territories high up in iterator cities alongside scavengers. Slugcats are opportunists and masters at making the best of their surroundings, yet even beyond that they carry a certain other, “special” ability of their own that makes them as diverse as they are clever. But that’s a headcanon for another day…

Reasoning

Now for some out-of-universe explanation for this classification choice. I’ve always seen slugcats as some kind of small scurrying mammal (kind of a bias on my part, I just like mammals honestly, and they’re most familiar to me), mainly due to the way they look and move when on all fours, and their place in the game’s food chain. Originally though I saw them as rodents and compared them to mice and rats, which I still sometimes use for anatomy reference for these creatures. But one day a friend of mine saw me drawing slugcats and thought they were weird ferrets, and the more I thought about it and the more I developed personal speculative biology headcanons for slugcats, the more that label seemed the most fitting for them. It was also solidified when I did a bit more research and realized the main characteristic of rodents is their buck teeth, which just didn’t seem to fit with how I perceived slugcats. Not to mention rodents aren’t really predator animals, and slugcats’ implied natural diet and the gameplay itself does strongly imply if not confirm they have some instinctive hunting ability.

Thus, it seemed “weasel” was the best classification for these creatures, and I quite like it so far! Once again it satisfies my mammal preference, but I also just think it’s a fun idea that neither part of the “slugcat” name is literal, similar to a lot of real-life creatures named after completely different animals, including fellow weasel, the polecat. Plus, I realized recently it’s kind of ironic with how I perceive the messenger slugcats, Hunter and Spearmaster, as being like hunting or guard dogs for their creators, when weasels are exactly the kind of animal humans with their dogs would normally hunt for! It’s cute, it’s familiar, it’s fun, yet I think it still has just as much potential for some interesting speculative biology ideas as the literal slug slugcat interpretations!

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I'm so glad to finally get this out! I like seeing specbio slugcat headcanons in the RW fandom, yet I haven't seen many more in-depth takes from artists who don't take the "slugcats are literal slugs/mollusks/primarily mollusk-based" angle. Not that that's a bad headcanon of course; do what you think feels right! But once again I personally prefer slugcats being mammals, and I always look for fan-content that's as close to my personal preferences as possible. And when I can't find enough of it, I make it myself!

So hopefully this serves as a bit more of that kind of representation for the mustelid slugcat interpretation. It at least helped me develop my own idea of the species a bit more; much of that stuff in the overview part was ideas I came up with while typing this whole headcanon out!

As always, I hope you enjoy this headcanon of mine! I've still got so many ideas to develop and share, and even more coming as I continue to ponder these characters and their stories, so as long as you guys still like these Rain World headcanons of mine, they'll keep coming!

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bioethicists · 3 months

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my wife brought up a brilliant point this morning: a huge problem with the way we view psychology (a problem which is frequently exploited + used to justify a lot of just. shitty work) is that it lives in a no-man's land between "social sciences" + "natural sciences" in the collective imagination.

consider: one of the first works which spurned my interest in psychiatric abolition was durkheim's work on suicide. as a sociologist ("social scientist"), he uses pretty rigorous quantitative methods to show that suicide is much less correlated with levels of depression than it is with cultural factors (like religion, country of origin, marriage rates). however, people do not respond to the medicalization of suicide by saying "well, durkheim proved that suicide isn't a mental illness symptom, so this is unscientific"- this is obviously a drastic oversimplification of his work + it's commonly understood that sociology does not "prove" immutable social truths.

similarly, i would not comment on a study which identifies changes in t-cells over time among hiv+ patients by arguing that it didn't deeply explore the social environments or past traumas they had experienced, (even though those could have an impact on t-cell count), because i understand that is not the purpose of the research + ultimately they had to choose to control for these factors without centering them in order to obtain important medical information. "this information is meaningless because it doesn't include each patient's trauma history" would be an absurd critique.

among the general population + many self-assured researchers, psychology gets both the privilege of being a "social science" (so we can't expect it to be TOO exact; it's complicated; it's not really saying that's ALWAYS true; if it proves inaccurate that's because culture/social factors must have muddied it up; we can't really expect PROOF for most of it) as well as a "natural science" (you can't question its basic presumptions or you're a science denier; the dsm describes real things which existed even before it was written; it obviously is rooted in biology even if we haven't discovered how yet; reducing its measures to quantitative evaluation is fine + unproblematic).

my point here isn't to argue that psychology is a "social" or "natural" science, but rather that we need to rethink what work those categories actually do + whether the distinction between them is as strict or meaningful as we believe it to be. our strict dichotomies between "objectively proven truths" + "social observations which are ultimately just informed opinions" are exposed when we look at a field which seems to be uncomfortably situated within both. what kind of work might become possible if we abandoned this dichotomy, rather than bickering over whose work belongs in which club?

#tagging this b4 i start: prayers for me that this can be concise cuz i have a bunch of dead french guys to read for class #psych abolition #ok it wasnt too bad

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dogtoling · 1 month

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I know that Inkling societies mirror human ones because of plot reasons going back to Alterna, but I've really enjoyed seeing your 'convergent evolution' takes on the biology, so why not apply that same logic to something like, say, architecture? At a glance, sure, Inkopolis and the Splatlands look recognizable to us, but would for instance an inkling or octoling's home have a layout differently built for their unique needs and behavior?

Thank you! also yes this is a good point! I've been avoiding doing anything too outlandish with the architecture or much of any of the worldbuilding to be honest because we know very little about Splatoon architecture and... well, stuff like this, to begin with. And it's harder to try and change major things about the world itself than it is to work with alternative biology for a creature in my opinion; all we really know when it comes to architecture and city- and building design in Splatoon that it is very similar to those of humans, and a lot of the elements are based on modern day Japan. I doubt the developers are doing that much to differentiate the architecture from human buildings and stuff because granted it would be a ridiculous amount of thoughts and work to sculpt a society and buildings that accommodate like 500 different species MINIMUM.... there's some little things here and there, like the Giant Doorways in the Deepsea Metro, but then there's other things like the freaking escalator in Inkopolis Plaza that's literally the width of maybe 1 Inkling and no other species even fits in that. Hell, it's not even the width of TWO PEOPLE which is at least expected of escalators to my knowledge--- anyway....

my point being I don't like to make sweeping differences to human architecture when it comes to Splatoon, because whether I like it or not a LOT of their stuff is just human architecture a little bit to the left. But that doesn't mean you can't make any changes to it, and it also doesn't mean there aren't any changes, those changes just might not be as visible.

Some random things I've thought about: Modern housing in Inkadia has VERY strong windows. Glass in general is very strong in urban environments, especially buildings near Turf War areas for obvious reasons... you don't want people Super Jumping through your window nor your window blasted to smithereens by a Trizooka shot that missed.

In apartment buildings, if there are mail slots on the doors, there's a container on the other side. Prevents people from slinking into your house through the mail slot. Apparently this is a common thing to have in Japan? We just have mail slots or postboxes out in the yard or lobby.

Also to prevent people from slinking into your house: residential buildings have dense grates, nets or spikes in their ventilation shafts. In some older buildings and non-residentials, these might be missing. But without things like this, any Inkling (typically) can just fit straight through a pipe as long as their beak fits in it, so you would end up having guests you maybe don't want.

Quickly about apartments; they're actually a very popular form of living not just for cost-cutting and because there's a fuck ton of residents in Inkadia, but because inkfish are mostly very social and do better surrounded with lots of people living in close quarters. The two most popular types of apartments are single-person ones that are basically just a single-room hole, and bigger apartments that have several small rooms and a community area that are meant for a whole school of squid (usually a friend group) to live in. People who live in the single-person apartments typically just go home to sleep and maybe cook or something... unless you're an introverted squid, or not a squid at all, and just settle for very little when it comes to space.

Inklings ALWAYS have some type of direct heating in their houses, from space heaters to a kotatsu to heated blankets to sun lamps. This is because Inklings are mostly cold-blooded and become very sluggish if their body temperature falls too much (for example from lack of physical activity or from cold room temperature), so there's a focus on keeping one's living quarters comfortably warm. Most lamps marketed for inkfish are actually heat lamps to the point where finding a lamp that Doesn't Make The Room Hot if it's on for too long is kind of hard.

Inklings are pretty vulnerable to dry air due to their thin skin and dependence on humidity to keep them thoroughly hydrated. As a result, you'll find air humidifiers in like, every house. In some AC units, a humidifier function is included. From a human perspective, the average Inkling apartment feels warm and humid - but to them it feels just normal. Due to the relatively high humidity, it's pretty common for electrical outlets to have covers for when they're not in use.

It's common for Octarian homes to have "sleeping holes" or "dens" carved into the wall. These haven't really become trendy in Inkopolis yet, but they probably will. It's also quite common for inkfish homes to have stacked furniture and interior made in layers - because they can fit in very tight spaces in swim form, maze-like interiors are still fully usable to most inkfish. Though it's rarer to find people who actually want to deal with the clutter.

Most Inkopolis bathrooms have a combined shower-bath. Inkfish showers come with a shower head that only really lets mist through on the default setting. (You're expected to test this BEFORE you take your first shower and replace it if necessary because you don't want to get into the tub and then find out it's a normal cross-species shower head on fucking Jet Mode.) Bathtubs are mainly used for re-absorbing moisture and soaking in ink rather than cleaning (because inkfish don't do very well with actual baths).

Most flooring is specifically made to be ink-resistant and non-absorptive. The combined humidity of the air and the ink that inkfish naturally get everywhere would ruin wooden floors IMMEDIATELY.

Toilets usually have a flap or gate blocking the drain that flips open when it's flushed. There are too many historical cases of people falling into toilets and just fucking dying or going missing forever because it's difficult to get out. (Mostly kids, but also people who fell asleep or too far into thought and just slinked into there. The world is full of danger when you can fit into any gap.) also lots of people accidentally laying eggs there which for obvious reasons is REALLY BAD if there's nothing to catch those.

All modern apartment buildings are required to have elevators. I'm pretty sure this is also just a real-life requirement nowadays. A lot of older buildings in Inkopolis don't have any, though... and while Super Jumping on street level is usually prohibited, most apartments have roof access, so a lot of people still jump between work/hobbies and their house. It is A LOT faster than dealing with traffic or walking (but it's also mostly illegal).

uh probably more things. My brain is empty now but hopefully that's some kind of inspiring ty for asking!

#mailbox #squidthoughts

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dballzposting · 2 months

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There's really no plainer way to put it but that Goku's love language is fighting.

As in, that's how he communicates, that's how he expresses himself, that's how he comes to understand, that's how he bonds; the pattern of empassioned push-into and push-back. The resistance and deflection, the purposeful direction, the pinpoint strikes.

It's really not a tug-and-pull yin-and-yang dance between two people, as much as it is that each party is BOTH yin and yang. They enter with their own completed prerogatives, and they have a physical argument to test their stance. Each party has their choice of tactic, their own rhythm of when to roll aside and when to spin and strike back and when to dig their heels in and block.

It's because he's a Saiyan and also because of his upbringing. He grew up with the rhythm of the wilderness, where everything is self-defending and self-righteous; and where everything communicates through subtle fights, those inter-organismic interactions, all utilizing the basic moves of offense, defense, or avoidance.

Different animals utilize different techniques, habits, forces of nature; they fall in different niches in the environment. The rabbit does not want to be preyed on, but if he is caught, he is able to accept this inevitability of present reality with grace; the tiger does not want to be caught, and if he is, he'll size you up and make sure you're worth it before rolling over.

It's driven by instinct and biology, but from Goku's budding perspective, it was no different from how warriors learn and adapt and have the volition to utilize different techniques.

The only other person he knew was his Grandfather, who was one of the best martial artists on Earth at the time, and thus: Goku's early bonding behaviors were ruled by the training he did with his grandpa. This also informed his general understanding of the world at large.

Once Goku started on his epic swag adventure and met new people, he had the capacity to love them all, and he continues to fight for them. But the way he loves his friends is maybe not what people have in their head when they think of deep bonding. He loves them, in a sturdy and firm way, in a "of course I do" way, as upfront and practical as any other observation of the natural world.

It's not deep, raw, or passionate; it's not vulnerable, it's not sustaining, it's not supporting; it's not messy or emotional, it's not blood-red or heart-pink ... Goku just stands with a perfectly straight spine, perfectly secure, and he loves his friends, that's all there is to it! He has fun with them, he enjoys their company, he worries for their well-being ... And he will easily go years and years without ever seeing them. When he does see them, he just picks up where they left off like no time had passed at all.

My point is that Goku doesn't NEED his friends, he does not need to see them or to be with them or to feel their support. You know how humans are social animals and need to interact with others in order to stay healthy and functioning; and you know how Goku isn't a human!

He's a Saiyan, so it's by nature, but it also very much has to do with his lived isolation during his formative years. His roots of stability are in boundless nature, the art of fighting, and confidence in his own body; not in the presence of a community.

When he DOES bond deep with people, as in connect on an intimate level, it's in the context of fighting. That's how he understands them and makes himself understood! Through the language of technique, through the specific combinations of offense, defense, and avoidance.

He routinely makes friends with people whom he originally fights as an opposing party, such as the case with Yamucha, Tenshinhan, Yajirobe, Vegeta ... And he makes a habit out of mercy and requesting teamwork with everyone he fights.

He doesn't take fight to be only an aggressive thing, and he takes to friendly sparring or methodical training really well - thinking very fondly of Master Roshi, Master Korin, Popo, King Kai - and having a DELIGHTFUL time with Krillin when they trained close in their younger days.

Of course, fighting CAN be a purely angry, aggressive thing. But he's always ready to let it Not Be, too. Except in the cases of righteous, seething anger (his battles with the biggest bads who have done much to hurt his friends, planet, and order of the universe), Goku loves it when an opponent wants to hang around and fight again.

It's like how predator animals play with each other by tussling for fun. It's not just when in the pursuit of food do those animals utilize predator behaviors, but it's ALL the time, because they have been endowed by nature to be Of A Certain Make & Model because it helps them to survive, and it's just who they are always. They notice certain things, make certain things out to be important, they are intrigued by certain things, they like to move in certain ways - it's everything about all of them that puts them in their ecological niche.

EXAMPLE: Think about how cats are wired to recognize the visual pattern of a snake and to respond quickly, and that's why they sometimes swat at bananas. Or how they hiss, a behavior that emulates the sound of a snake, but they don't know that, they just get angry and hiss. Or how their eyes and brain are designed to notice and follow Movement, and they find this A.) Important and B.) Intriguing; they often orient toward it. This intrigue is selected for because the movement could be food, but, to the lived experience of the animal, it's also just fun. Cats will play with inanimate objects and rodents all the same.

For comparison, non-predatory birds are wired to find importance in things like color and size and shape when it comes to finding food - and they AVOID movement, taking flight away from rather than orienting toward it like the cat.

Another detail about predatory animals: when hunting, they require the element of resistance to stimulate their predatory instincts. This has the advantage of steering the animal away from already-dead-and-possibly-contaminated prey, and toward still-alive-and-delicious prey. This is why the freeze response works in deterring predators; because when the prey isn't moving and fighting back, the predator doesn't feel stimulated enough to hunt. Who knows what animals feel, but the lived experience may be a sort of disgust or repulsion; a definitive avoidance.

At any rate, cats find a lack of movement and a lack of resistance Boring, which is why your cat loves to chase the string toy you just yanked away from her, and why she gets bored when you stop.

My ultimate point is that that's what Goku is like, as a Saiyan, as a mountain boy, as himself.

It's no surprise that his ONLY goal in life is fight. So it's not bizarre to think that through this is how he comprehends and connects with others.

Since this is the case: I honestly think, that on some level, he has loved every opponent he has ever faced. Even Freeza, who introduced him to the purest and most earnest form of righteous rage - Goku hated him more than he had ever hated anybody; but I think that he still loved him as the living, fighting being he was. It's an undercurrent of love that comes with the territory whenever Goku fights, whenever his body gets to move and express himself in that way; and that LOVE I think is the source of his strength. Fighting for anger or other corrosive emotions dirty your soul in the long-term. Goku loves to fight, and has loved deeply every opponent, even if only at the most basic and required level - but he loved, and he loves, and that's why he's the greatest. It's an expansive, nurturing, positive force that he brings into the world.

He loved his grandfather. He loves Roshi and Krillin and all the rest. He loves his sons, and he bonds with them when he trains them, because it's through this that he comes to understand their deepest ways; and he's honored to do so, and he's proud of them beyond measure.

Chichi has long since been out of the ring, but I think that the most vivid memories that Goku has of her are when she is yanking on his ear or slapping him for his ignorance. Like how the cat attaches importance to patterns of movement, Goku attaches importance to such physical engagement; and he retains those impressions for longer.

What he has with Vegeta is the realest shit right down to their bones and shared Saiyan physiology, and it's imperative that they continue to fight each other for forever.

So I guess my point is that if you want to bond with Goku: you'll have to come at him a bit, and offer meaningful contact, and when he comes at you, never roll over like a possum - actively resist, dodge, and strike back.

#dballz posting

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catboybiologist · 5 months

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Are you comfortable with questions about your journey to HRT?

Like, mentally how you took the leap of faith from femboy to needing something more / different. Asking for, uh, *a friend*, yeah 👀

Holy shit, this got long. This springboarded me into a massive writing about how my life influenced my personal gender philosophy, and is probably more than you bargained for. But I hope it's helpful in some way! I actually had a similar conversation recently with an NB, not on HRT friend of mine. What's the jump that makes you want to do HRT?

I don't think my experience parallels that of a lot of people's - everyone's is unique. But I do think there are good takeaways from my thoughts on this. Now that I have an Adderall prescription and my quarter is about to end, I've started writing some kind of more cited and developed essay or video essay, but that's random future stuff. This post itself is gonna be a little rambling, and a little personal. Sorry!

Vaguely, I think that the *push* to start HRT was a distinct force from tearing down the internal barriers associated with HRT, if that makes any sense. For many people, I think they have some sense of a mild preference of the gender they would "want" to be, but it doesn't bother them enough to actually break down the barriers to transition. For me, breaking those barriers, both internal and external, was as important as the motivations to transition themselves.

One of the major barriers in people's heads, often without them realizing it, is some kind of inherent belief in the "sanctity" of their body. For many people, "permanent changes" are terrifying, "unnatural", and even if they don't have medical risks, intrinsically *feel* like a medical risk they're taking on some level. It's an offshoot of purity culture in a weird way- it's the same root as a fear of psychiatric medicine making you "not you". Much of this is intrinsically religious, but a lot is actually not. I had a little bit of this growing up. Being raised atheist certainly helped in this regard, even though it was still a queerphobic slavic atheism.

The tiny bit of this I did have was sanctity of my mind, which internally, I still viewed as a separate entity from my body. This was 100% incited by crushing academic pressure, which influenced how I think and my own morality in a lot of unexpected ways. I grew up in a kind of infamously high pressure education area. It sounds unrelated, but it's really not. My mind, academics, and thinking kind of got put on a pedestal on my mind. My personal image of myself was basically a detached orb of thoughts and public speaking. I had 0 connection to my body. But since my mind was everything, both psychiatric medication and HRT were these vile things that could alter how I think and my mood! Gasp!

The final, crushing blow to both of these mentalities was studying biology. And WOW there's so much I could say about how studying biology has influenced how I think about this idea, which I want to talk about a lot more outside of the scope of just a tumblr post. But to summarize- it's not even about finding a biological "reason" for transness. It's about how I saw a living thing as a detailed, dynamic, intricate, constantly changing system that is as much a function of its environment as it is any intrinsic factors. And this includes the mind. So since I'm a shambling mass of chemicals anyways..... Why not be a shambling mass of slightly different chemicals?

The "detached orb" image isn't entirely accurate, though. Because, from an early age, I did have a self image that made me happy. And it was a female one. I shoved this deeply out of my mind in shame, leaving behind the "orb". This was my "push", as I called it before. In addition to a weird separation between my mind and my body, an additional factor contributed to my detachment- a growing distress around developing male traits during puberty, which coincided in the worst ways with academic pressure during teen and preteen years. Looking back, I now recognize this as dysphoria. I don't think my dysphoria was ever as extreme as many other people. But this is why I'm emphasizing taking down barriers as much as the weight of dysphoria itself. It has always been easy to distract from my dysphoria, but it's always been my "resting state" without realizing it.

Linked a bit to the second point is also how I felt shame about exploring any aspect of my life other than academic and professional achievement. Being raised in a high pressure environment means that any exploration of my queer identity felt like a distraction from the "real" things I should be focusing on. The final thing that tore this down, which I don't recommend for ANYONE, was an almost traumatic set of events during the pandemic/my masters degree that made me have a wake up call. I wasn't structuring anything in my life for my own happiness. Going through that made me realize I was going to continue being miserable unless I changed that. So... I started taking the idea of transitioning to actually work on my happiness very seriously.

Being a femboy was actually how I tried to reconcile these things in my head. It was my attempt to "compartmentalize"- allow myself to gently indulge in gender nonconformity and the happiness associated with it, while still not making the "commitment" to fully transition. It helps that most of my existence as a femboy was crossdressing during the height of the pandemic- spending hours on analysis and writing while living alone during my MS, wearing femme outfits while I did it. And of course, taking pics to kick off this whole online persona. I also kind of liked the idea of cis gender nonconformity as a concept, and still do. I love how femboys fuck with gender, and I wanted a slice of that for myself. It wasn't enough long term, and my new commitment to happiness overcame my desire to compartmentalize.

The final barriers were practical. By the end of my masters in 2022, I knew I wanted to transition, I just needed to get my social and financial shit together. Cue moving to my PhD university, becoming active in the queer community here, having an accepting professional environment... and yeah. Here I am. Still gotta socially transition outside of my queer circles, but now, I even have a plan for that. I still got a long way to go, but for the first time, I feel like I'm going in the right direction. And I'm very, very happy.

A lot of this is not applicable to everyone. It's mostly my personal experience. But if there is one thing that I think should apply to everyone here, it's this: kill bioessentialism in your mind. Kill the concept of complete sanctity of your mind and body. Break the barriers and then let yourself move freely across the new landscape you've opened up. At the very least, you'll come out with a more healthy relationship with your cis identity. And at best, you'll find a new part of you that needed to be found.

The other thing I think is broadly applicable is this: when initially figuring things out, stop thinking about what you "are", and start thinking about what you want. Would it make you happy to grow breasts, curves, have a femme face, estrogen regulated emotions, and other transfemme HRT changes? Because those are the actual, physical effects of HRT. If the answer is yes, start it. There's no reason not to. Your identity can come later. You deserve to be happy *for the explicit purpose of being happy*. You don't need to validate that desire through some other random factor.

This got WAAAYYYY too long, but if you have any questions, please, please ask!!!!

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plaguedocboi · 2 years

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Since we’re getting close to Shark Week and I’m a marine biology nerd, we’re gonna talk about sharks today.

Anyone who likes sharks probably knows about the “big three”; the three species that account for the vast majority of reported attacks on humans. These are the Great White, tiger, and bull shark.

So, what is the deadliest shark in the world? Most people would say the Great White, since it has the most attacks and fatalities on record. But, actually, it’s none of the Big Three.

It’s the oceanic whitetip.

“But how is that possible??” you may be wondering. “How can the deadliest shark in the world not even be in the top three of most reported attacks?”

Simple! It’s because if you get attacked by an oceanic whitetip, you probably won’t live long enough to report it.

Great Whites, tiger sharks, and bull sharks are all species that live and hunt in coastal waters, whereas the oceanic whitetip lives far out in the open ocean. The open ocean is essentially a desert where few things live, and any floating object will quickly become an “oasis” where fish and other animals gather. This includes ships. Living in an environment without many food options, oceanic whitetip sharks are highly intelligent, highly curious pack hunters who will attempt to eat anything they come across.

Basically, if your ship sinks far out at sea, odds are there’s going to be a pack of hungry whitetips waiting for you. And that’s why the attacks don’t get reported.

#sharks #ask to tag #marine biology

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wolflyndraws · 3 days

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ok this is 1. late and 2. Very specific but with the mer au specifically I like how dream is (basically, idk many green saltwater fish) a trout in the ocean. or just generic river fish in ocean its very cute :3 unless manatees are freshwater too and dream Is a freshwater fish then thats a first to me!!!! ive always seen saltwater mers so its nice to see freshwater mers :) and how its not just human and slap a fish tail on them theres Variety. along with how George is more. roughed up ig? dreams is more soft and theres more algae and George looks more like a betta fish (salt. water? maybe? im like 99% sure its freshwater and its domesticated :D!!!) bc of how his gills look (betta fish are also called siamese fighting fish) just realized this sounds kind of autistic Sorry im. a marine biology lover. future fish scientist if you will

Actually! Dream was a saltwater mer that moved to live in the mangroves (mangroves are usually 50/50 salt and fresh water! Dream just adapted to the environment since he moved when he was young) he’s not really based on any fish cause In my mer headcanons mermaids aren’t based on a certain fish, they just look similar from living in similar habitats altho I DO get inspo from real fish sometimes!)

And thank you! I love adding details in the skin as well as the tail cause idk I just think the features should be all over the whole body not separated by tail? Idk that just makes sense to me haha

George is actually a fun case cause he WAS inspired by bettas in the old design but the more recent ones are inspired by bream! (You can see the silver-ish scales and the fin!) but yes the tail and ear fins are still reminiscent of the betta fish inspo

And thank you sm!!! I also love it when people point out the very funny tone difference of algae moss covered cute water puppy happy mer!dream and I will bite you if you touch my man mer!george GKAJFKA it is intentional for sure as mer!gnf’s story is waayyy more angstier than mer!Dream haha

Mer Dream is mostly inspired by leafy sea dragons but most of it is just based on what if mermaids lived in kelp forests / mangroves? But if I had to choose an inspo it’d be this guy

I’m also a marine biology lover it’s been my long long hyperfix for most of my life haha

Also another fun fact my alien Gnf is also based on underwater creatures too! But mostly the deep sea ones haha

#wolflyn merman!george au #wolflyn merman!dre au #wolflyn love

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bi-ocelot · 2 years

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I just had a revelation thinking about endermen speculative biology. What if enderpearls are crystallized chorus fruit? Similar to oyster pearls.

Think about it, the only native food in the end are chorus fruit and they’re everywhere and endermen need energy so they probably eat it. But, speculating that endermen do not have typical digestive tracts and do not expel waste, then what happens after the chorus fruit is eaten? Instead of expelling waste, everything is retained to make use of every piece of energy in such a low nutrient environment. In the digestive tract the chorus fruit is drained of its teleportation properties and the fruit itself becomes basically, a raisin. After a period of time, enough secretions coat the raisin to become a pearl, much like an oyster. To which to pearl is coughed up or remains until it is shattered, and then coughed up.

The nature of the raisin pearl retains some teleportation properties and can be used by endermen as a source of teleportation when their source of energy has run out. A majority of endermen have multiple pearls at once but most shatter at death. Looting enchantments lower the risk of shattering multiple pearls.

Then to mites. Mite can be parasites or even enderman larvae (if given a lot of liberties) but in this situation mite eggs live in a dormant state as a grub within the chorus fruit and then pupates in the pearl, forcing discomfort so the pearl is expelled and hatched. So the mite is the pupating grub that is hatched too early for the full bug body (which I definitely want to draw and make a design for).

I do not know how eye’s of ender play in all this, and I’m too sleppy to figure it out. Uhhhh basically, nether and end do not mix, and when they do, bad/weird things happen.

It’s 4 am and I have two finals due within the next 24-48 hours.

#endermen #Enderman #Minecraft #mineblr #speculative biology #Minecraft lore #Minecraft worldbuilding #definitely going to wake up tomorrow like wtf was I talking about????

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cerayanay · 2 years

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Loved the Annihilation book, just saw the 2018 movie, and thoughts on the ending. Heavily spoilers, partial ending explanation.

The first moment in the movie I stopped and said “Wait, that makes no sense” is the ending when Lena walks on the beach with the glass trees. Up until this moment I followed with a ‘eldritch cosmic horror being unreality” mindset, but this moment stopped me.

Because it made no sense to me that there could be any sort of mutation that results in clear, crystalline forms. This movie hammers in that biology is being disfigured, but not non organic forms; we see the old buildings, the boats are practically untouched, old weaponry is usable. So why now with these trees? Minerals don’t have dna to mutate.

But THEN the movies goes on, and Lena is replicated with a green being. And we see the inside of the lighthouse, the underneath with that shimmer black moving WHATEVER, and the creature itself, which is an iridescent green. Then it all makes sense.

Sand is the largest source of silicon in the world, and silicon is the second most abundant element on earth. Sand is also a primary ingredient in glass. Silicon -> Sand -> Glass -> Glass trees.

This is the best photo I could get of the being underneath the lighthouse, if you’ve seen the movie you know it’s more shimmery, almost liquid, looking identical to the material on the right, which is solid silicon.

Silicon is also used in making computer chips and wafers.

Silicon wafers have a holding, greenish iridescent shimmer as well, much like the being that tries to relocate Lena at the climax.

Here’s the thing about Silicons atomic properties. Silicon has 4 valence electrons, and if you remember grade school chemistry, an unreactive, stable atom has 8. So silicon is semi stable, but would really like to bond with other atoms to achieve 8 valence electrons. This basic concept is what makes it a good semiconductor, or a material that easily allows electrons to move through it. There’s a lot more technical science that has to do with it I’ll cut out, but some elements are ‘injected’ into silicon to manipulate these properties, creating a system that allows electrons/electricity/energy to very very easily run through it. A very popular choice is phosphorous.

I couldn’t get photos of the scene, but Oscar Isaac’s human character self immolates with a PHOSPHORUS grenade. When he destroys himself, it’s a contained, rapid fire that does not spread to his surrounding and dies out fairly quickly. But when the creature is then trapped in a phosphorous blast, it doesn’t dissolve, but continuously burns. The burn doesn’t spread to the regular stone of the lighthouse, but absolutely rips through the underground area and being growing on the side of the lighthouse that the movie has us believe is a living creature, apart of the clone, or obviously at least the same substance that one (aka me) might say is silicon.

Here’s one last thing about silicone properties. The material most related to silicon on the periodic table is carbon.

All known organic life is made of carbon. Period. If it’s alive it’s carbon. Many traits responsible for why carbon makes life possible is shared with other Group 16 elements. Silicon is the closest Group 16 element to carbon. Therefore, it is hypothesized that any non-carbon based life would have to be made of silicon. Many theories and sci-fi stories play with the idea of an alien life being made of silicon is more environments that can accommodate that.

So back to my initial confusion. I was confused as to why the creature, or the shimmer, or whatever force that is responsible for the movie could make clear, crystalline, glass like trees. It’s ability was clearly stated to genetically mutate living things. But I’m arguing that somehow through sci-fi movie reasons, the creature is silicon based life, or become silicon based upon hitting the sand at the beach, then perhaps adapted into carbon based life.

After this scene, when Lena is being interrogated, she is asked ‘Was it carbon based?’ Imma say that is a very, very relevant question, and maybe the entire point of this line of questions. So cool thing the movie did, it all still makes sense.

End credits: the reason we don’t see silicon based life is it would theoretically require an insane amount of energy to sustain. Doesn’t react with this theory but yo it’s a movie they gotta make it work somehow.

#annihilation #annihilation 2018 #southern reach trilogy #area x #natalie portman #jeff vandermeer #alex garland #movie theory #chemistry #movie details #idk man hope anyone cares #almost discussed that on Reddit but I do not like talking to those people

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dandyleyen · 1 month

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Dungeon Meshi - My Thoughts (Ch1-10)

Each section gets written out as I am reading. Keep in mind that I have finished episodes 1-12 of Cooking in Dungeon and that I have read chapters 27-31 (excluding 28.5)

Chapter 1.

I assume we’ll get info in this later on but I wonder why the country was sealed away in the first place.

“I bestow my entire kingdom upon the one who defeats the magician." - The King (presumably) I know that the anime does get into this a bit more as we go on and that a new king (or queen ?) would be crowned eventually but I wonder why it is that the king (if he is who he says he is) wants to allow his kingdom to be given away. Curious.

Side note, but I adore Laios talking about the dungeon ecosystem and food chain. Would love to seen an in-depth trophic web with different ecosystems of the dungeon. You could also include the factors that aren’t natural to the ecosystem, so like,,, the various races that go into the dungeon and how they effect the environment around them with adventuring and other things. I wonder if there are any concept maps made already for this type of thing. We’re seeing a basic food chain but I want it in depth !!

Laios is very cute, send tweet !

Chapter 2.

I do find it very sweet that Laios is asking Marcille if she wants anything specific to eat.

Laios is such a little weirdo. God, I love him. This was also the first occasion of me wanting to try one of the foods they made. The tart looks really good and I'm currently regretting reading this before dinner :|

Chapter 3.

I had it in my mind that chimeras were like a very specific animal combo, but hearing Laios calling the basilisk a chimera put that into perspective for me. Like,, yeah no that makes sense. Interesting.

Chapter 4.

Marcille and Falin on the front page :( Guys.

The episode for this was a rough watch for me because of how Marcille was getting treated tbh, and it's similar now while reading but I did feel more with the show. I get the concerns that the party has, because they need to hurry (mind you, Laios literally holds them up down the line with the painting stuff in the other level), but implying she is already being a bit of a burden by saying she'll be "more of a burden" if she collapses is,,,, not Chilchuck's best moment.

"Not being useful to anyone makes me feel so lonely..." - Marcille I liked her already leading up to this but this was one of this things that got me to latch onto her so quickly. I do appreciate that Chilchuck did initially go to apologize for having called her a burden, and that Laios pointed out that everyone was useful in the team but with different strengths. Them :(

Chapter 5.

Chilchuck fighting for his life and trying not to get his shit rocked by the traps going off is incredibly funny and I feel for him. My neurotic little guy,,, love him.

Laios wanting to take the bones home is incredibly endearing. Me too, buddy, me too.

Chapter 6.

Touden siblings flashback !! I care about them so much, you guys.

Laios looks so dejected about not being able to eat living armor,,, what a freak /pos. He isn't wrong though, if you can beat it you can probably also eat it.

Chapter 7.

MARCILLE WEARING THE ARMOR IN THE FRONT PAGE ??? Oh my god . Christ. Not even a warning ? God. Oh my god. I'm kicking my feet and giggling, y'all she is so,, . Christ.

Love that Laios got to discover something that likely no one else knew about just because he was soo hell-bent on eating different monsters.

Downside: I couldn't rock with the meal in this chapter. Too... mollusk-y. Mollusks freak me out.

Chapter 7.5.

Ohhh this is everything to me. Monster biology !! We get to learn more about how monsters are seen and spoken about in-universe. I adore this. I can't remember if the anime shows any of this section, but I think it's an incredibly fun part of the world-building. It makes it feel real.

Chapter 8.

This is incredibly nitpicky but it's a little annoying when people use "symbiotic relationship" to ONLY mean a beneficial relationship on both ends. Chilchuck asks if the vegetables act as parasites to the golems and Senshi says that it's the opposite and then proceeds to call it a symbiotic relationship because they help one another. He's not entirely wrong, but symbiotic relationships include parasitism ! Mutualism (the relationship between the golems and the vegetables), commensalism, parasitism, and competition are all symbiotic relationships. Again, incredibly nitpicky but this always bothers me.

"It's a crime to tamper with magical creatures without permission" - Marcille Girl,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, don't even talk about crimes rn when you know damn well what you're getting up to in your free time*

On another note, I love how we learn more about Senshi's motivations in staying down there and all he does to protect the ecosystem functions.

Chapter 9.

One of the first signs, to my knowledge, that the dungeon is acting strange. The red dragon itself (himself ? herself ? theirself ?) is acting a bit strangely ! We learn earlier on that red dragons aren't very mobile and the characters assume (hope, really) it would be resting after such activity, but here we learn that it's on the move and showing up closer to the orcs. The orcs have pretty much been here the longest and even they see that as odd. Makes you wonder.

The baby orc ! What a cutie. I love that the kid is the one to suggest they share the meal and that Marcille tries to smooth the situation over. I like how fuzzy the orcs are. It caught me off guard in the anime but the fur is a neat touch.

Laios not really considering the possibility of defeating the mad sorcerer and becoming king. Pretty boys are often allergic to thinking.

ALSO, Laios talking about Falin always gets to me :(

Chapter 10.

Is it even necessary to tell y'all that I immediately latched onto Kabru ? I'm transmasc, ofc I latched onto him. Same with the anime. It was funny to get invested in him only to see him and his party immediately getting their shit rocked.

We're being told again that the dungeon has been acting strangely, which is not new info to us but it does help to build a case for it. Kabru points out that he's been told about the dungeon layout changing day-by-day* and the monsters becoming more aggressive.

Ah. Marcille essentially flash-banging the group (and the bugs) is incredibly relatable. I can't do bugs. I cannot and I will not. I know the meal looks incredibly pretty, but I physically would not be able to consume it knowing that it's just,,, bugs. I don't even eat lobster and shrimp due to how bug-like they are. It's bugs !

---- *Asterisks-marked comments are marked because they are points I know that become relevant down the line because I've either seen it already or read about it already. I will wait to get there in the chronology to speak more on it, but this is my way to point out some foreshadowing that I am aware of.

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silaswritesthings · 10 months

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The beauty in a decaying world

Summary: As a survivor of an apocalypse, otherwise known as ‘the decay’, you find an abandoned hotel where, by chance, you meet a strange photographer and who states that he wants to use you as his muse to fulfil his goal of ‘appreciating the beauty of this decaying world’

Starring: Wanderer/Scaramouche

Genre: Fluff, apocalypse, Scaramouche being rude (lmao)

Warnings: None

Author’s note: I wrote this on a whim (Like i do a lot of things) and I just really like Scaramouche. Likes, comments (and feedback), reblogs and new followers will always be appreciated! I’ll be posting part 2 very soon (I may have written 5k words in one sitting by accident…)

Word count: 2459 words

Part 1, Part 2

It had been eight months since the world began what was described as its ‘decay’. This caused changes in the basic biology and behaviour patterns of plants and animals alike. These changes were, at first, small and harmless yet curious. However, the fascination with the decay was short-lived when the changes accelerated at an alarming rate. Fish started to drown in water, birds began to fall out of the sky and trees began to produce a strange gas that was like oxygen but it catalysed the changes.

The effect on humans was, to say the least, detrimental. The decay not only affected human surroundings and biology but their psyche too. It was like a virus that would eat away at a person’s mind only leaving behind the primal instincts like violence and survival. Those infected by the decay would show enhanced physical abilities. They’d last longer without food, move a bit faster than the average human being, need less sleep, have larger muscle mass and so on. Do you know what you call a human dumbed down and made stronger? A zombie.

Six months down the line, the decay was no longer known as harmless and fascinating. It was the apocalypse, one that ended humanity as you knew it and you were experiencing the aftermath of that chaos.

It was more peaceful than one would expect. The removal of intelligence from the infected humans made them very vulnerable to the other decayed creatures so the zombies were reduced quickly and the few millions of humans who survived the entire disaster were forced to find ways of surviving in a new world.

You sighed as you stepped into an abandoned hotel. Electricity was a long-forgotten thing and now you depended on a common rock that glowed a bright blue in the dark. Now, it lit up your way as you made your way through the reception area of the abandoned hotel. It was nearing sunset and the outside began to darken, you had no intention of spending the night outside without knowing what creatures you might come across.

You chose a room on the ground floor, because god forbid you go upstairs and get ambushed by human-sized spiders upstairs (they tended to stay on high ground), and used the keycard you had raided from the front desk to open the door. You made sure to close it behind you.

The room looked undisturbed. The handle of the bathroom door reflected the light of the stone in your hand and the centre of the room was a bed engulfed in dark blue shadows cast by various pieces of furniture in the room. After inspecting the room you concluded that it was safe, after weeks of doing things on your own you had come to trust your skills when it comes to surveying a new environment.

You dumped your stuff on the bed and headed for the bathroom, you hadn’t bathed in what- three days? Four? It’s hard to come across an opportunity to do so under your current circumstances so you would use this bathroom to your best abilities.

You tested the shower to see if the water would run, you doubted it would, but to your surprise, it did run. Only the cold water, though, which wasn’t surprising. You haven’t had a hot bath in ages, making a fire to warm up water was always a hassle and a waste of precious time.

After taking a shower, you ignored the odd scent emitted by the water you bathed in and dressed in a fresh pair of clothes. You only owned three pairs, there was no need for the hustle to carry more.

You decided to explore the ground floor, only the ground floor, of the hotel, in case there’s anything of value to your survival you could find. With your bag now secured on your back, you opened your door and slipped the door card into your pocket before closing the door.

You entered the reception area once more, the stone in your hand lighting your way but you paused when you noticed a bunch of other stones just like yours scattered in the reception area. These stones, however, were dimmer than yours. A shadowed figure hunched by where you had gotten your room key earlier and after a moment of fiddling with something, they straightened up and turned, their body now facing you and a room keycard in their hand. You both froze.

“I was right after all.” He broke the silence. He stepped into the light emitted by the stones, “There is another human in this building.” He sounded unenthusiastic about the idea of another person being there and you shared that sentiment but you didn’t say anything. He had very sharp yet elegant features. His deep blue gaze was electric, the complete opposite of his attire which consisted of a pair of black shorts, what looked like a black turtleneck with intricate blue lines swirling around the fabric on his neck and a white zip-up hoodie. (Who wears white in the middle of an apocalypse?) However, what caught most of your attention was the camera that dangled from around his neck.

You shifted on your feet, unable to think of what to say. After all, it had been weeks since you had last seen, better yet interacted, with another human. “Who are you?”

“I’m a Wanderer of sorts.”

“Everyone is a Wanderer in a world like this.”

“Ah, but I wander not because of the need to survive but rather-“ his hand lifted to brush the camera that dangled from his neck, the lense reflecting the light of the rocks near him- “To appreciate the beauty of a decayed world.”

You furrowed your eyebrows at his eccentric nature, was every other human like this? Were you the only one who spent hours debating with yourself on what the point was of fighting to survive in this world?

“May I take pictures of you?”

“What?”

“I appreciate the beauty around me through pictures if you could not already tell.” You did not miss the sarcasm in his voice in the second half of his statement. His tone shifted into a more sincere one as he continued, “You are the first human I’ve come across in a long time and now that I have, I can have an intelligent being as my muse for once.“

“I’m not an object.”

“Did you miss the part when I called you an intelligent being?” While he spoke in a derogatory manner, his tone held some level of amusement. Was it the lack of human interaction that caused warmth to spread to your face?

“There’s nothing remarkable about how I look.” You argued.

“Being beautiful is just a matter of perspective.”

��Really?”

“Yes, nobody is born beautiful. It’s an acquired skill.” He explained as he unhooked his bag from his shoulder.

“Then teach me how to be beautiful.” He gazed at you, a thoughtful expression on his face as if he was mulling over his words. With the click of his tongue, his gaze now back on his backpack, he spoke.

“I can if you allow me to take pictures of you.”

When you concurred, the man began placing more rocks from his bag around the reception area. The entire area glowed a subtle blue hue, your amazement at how a majority of the rocks were much dimmer than what you were used to was evident. Throughout your travels, you had never seen this type of rock species dim over time or anything like that. They were always bright… How did he change that?

“Come here.” He said, your eyes flickered to where he stood, his words breaking the spell the dim rocks had cast upon you. He stood near the table you stood next to and held onto the back of a chair, which you realised was pushed back by him to make space for you to sit. You surveyed the room once more before sighing and making your way to the chair. Taking a seat under his gaze made every one of your actions feel ungraceful and unrefined. It was infuriating.

He hummed in what seemed like approval and took a few steps away from you. He knelt on one knee and brought his camera to his face, his dark hair brushing against the lens that was facing you. You remained seated, shoulders tense and fingers messing with the material of your pants because- goodness, what could you do? You were not a fashion model or anything like that and this photographer did not give you any instructions besides- well, to sit.

“Should I smile or something?” Your voice was quiet because you feared shattering the silence that had settled between you both.

“Stop moving.” His tone was cold and final. It did not help with your frigid shoulders but you sucked it up and sat still for the photographer.

After taking a few pictures, he shifted his gaze from you to his camera and scrolled through his work, his lips pursed. Your shoulders relaxed a little. Despite your nervous disposition, it was pleasant being in the presence of another human. After spending so long on your own, you had grown so used to the dull silence that came with surviving alone. Speaking of silence, you brought your attention back onto the photographer who was now seated cross-legged on the floor with a frown on his face. Your stomach churned.

“Are they… bad?” His gaze flickered to you for a moment before going back to the screen of his camera that lit up his face with its pale light. The blue of his narrowed eyes seemed to sparkle, his cheekbones more defined under the light of the camera screen. He was beautiful, you thought. The embarrassment from earlier returned tenfold at the prospect of someone wanting to capture your looks on his camera when he’s already a sight to behold himself.

“They’re not bad.” He mumbled as he fiddled with his camera. “It’s difficult to blunder pictures of people who are attractive.” You sat up.

“I thought you said being beautiful is an acquired skill?”

“You wouldn’t have allowed me to take pictures if I said otherwise.”

What could you say to that? His words alone insinuated that he was complimenting you but his tone made it sound like he was insulting you.

The photographer sighed before moving to stand up. “You really need to learn how to pose, nobody can appreciate a picture of a person staring idly into a camera.” He spoke as he walked toward where you sat, his camera around his neck once more.

“But, you did not give me any instructions.” You argued, annoyed by his words, as your eyes watched his figure draw closer until he was kneeling in front of you.

He sighed as if he was preparing to teach a rock how to calculate the area of a circle. “It can’t be considered artistic expression if I’m just telling you what to do with your body.”

His hand was very gentle when he grabbed a hold of yours and led it to the chair’s armrest. He did the same with your other hand as he asked you to relax. With the same gentle manner as before, he helped you fix your posture then helped you angle your shoulders and raise your chin. Satisfied with his work, he stepped away with a final command, “Cross your legs.” You did just that and he was back where he was before, kneeling with his camera in his hands.

The snapping of the camera was the only sound in the silent room and something about the blue hue of the rocks made the entire experience feel magical. It was odd because there was no difference between now and the previous photography session. Maybe there was a difference… maybe it’s the way Scaramouche’s eyes had a different edge to them - he took the pictures as if he enjoyed it more than he did before. Or was it the confidence that filled you through your poses? He would often tell you to ‘switch things up’ and encourage you to look at the camera from a different angle, to close your eyes or raise your left shoulder a little and so on. Whatever it was, it made a few minutes of photography feel like a lifetime of it. A lifetime of a beautiful photographer looking at you as if you were carved from marble, a Renaissance sculpture coming to life for him to appreciate. You didn’t hate it.

After a few moments that felt like forever, the photographer stopped taking pictures and- like before- sat with his legs crossed on the floor as he scrolled through the pictures. Only this time, he didn’t have a frown on his face. His lips were not upturned into a smile either, it was something in between and that was better than disappointment. His eyes seemed to hold a certain level of content in them or were you deluding yourself?

“Are they better?” Your words caused him to snap his gaze to you as if only realising you were there now.

“Considerably better. Your poses are still a bit stiff and unnatural but we will have time to work on them the next couple of days.” He explained to you before he looked back at the camera screen.

“Days?” You looked at him in surprise. He didn’t look up as he hummed, confirming that you had heard him correctly. “Does this make us travelling partners?” He ignored your question as he stood and made his way to his backpack and switched off his camera. “Can I see the pictures?”

“No.” He said with finality in his tone. “I’m going to get some rest.” He muttered as he began to pack the rocks that lit up the room back into his bag.

You furrowed your eyebrows. “That’s a little unfair.”

He rolled his eyes as he collected a bunch of rocks near the reception desk. “I will show you at the end of our collaboration. If I show you now, you’ll be satisfied and I'll be forced to be on my way-“ he said as he stuffed the rocks into his backpack, the blue of the room disappearing as he did so- “but I'm not satisfied with the pictures just yet so I’ll hold them above your head until I'm satisfied.”

You sighed in defeat before standing, this movement caused his eyes to flicker to you once again and he had an eyebrow raised as if daring you to argue with him. You trusted your judgement and decided to just see where this led you both. After all, it’s not every day you come across another human being, especially not one as peculiar as him.

#silaswritesthings #silas #genshin impact #genshin x you #anemo supremacy #genshin wanderer #wanderer x reader #genshin fluff #scaramouche #scaramouche is a little shit #scaramouche x reader #genshin scaramouche #scaramouche fluff #there’s no actual mentions of zombies #please don’t flop #apocalypse #romance

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honey-minded-hivemind · 16 days

Note

Another cute scene I thought of:

Kitty: what did you guys get on question 6?

Pietro: I got 7

Wanda: I got 9

Kitty: Damn, I got 42, guess I flunked this math quiz… Reader, what did you get?

Reader, with this expression 🫠: I got George Washington…

-Later-

Professor Xavier (who’s favorite student definitely isn’t reader, what are you talking about?): I got your tests back. Except for Readers, sadly your test…drowned. You get an A though

- ❤️ Anon

🤣😂😅 Oh dear... I can see that happening! But I raise you this: What if Reader actually was correct? Now that would be hilarious 😆...

• I headcanon Reader is great with things like algebra and multiplication, just maybe not word questions in math or English

• Reader is good with drawing notes, charts, and diagrams/pictures for science, biology and anatomy classes. Scarily accurate, in a way, at least compared to the other teens closer to their age

• Reader has weaker arms, but really strong legs. They're a good defense on sports teams, so they're more likely to block someone or hit/kick/strike the ball to someone else (they accidentally kicked someone in the shin, hard enough for then to fall over in agony)

• Reader is good at baking/cooking. They tend to be okay with measurements, but struggle a bit when it comes to dry vs. wet ingredients and diffent oven temperatures

• I'm going to say the campus appears similar to a boarding school: Everyone lives there, basically

• Reader does not have a roommate; they are invited to stay over with others, though... or have a few platonic yans invite themselves to stay over with Reader in their room

• The town near the school (it's a few miles out) is pretty much like a ghost town, save for a few odd individuals... There are places to go for field trips, such as a science and history museum, an aquarium, an art museum, and some landmarks/environments such as a mountain range, the beach/coast, and a few forests...

• The Town has a few places to visit, for food or clothes or movies, it's just... really, really quiet... If it weren't for the few people living there, one would think they're in the middle of nowhere...

• Is there a uniform? Not exactly? Everyone has to wear a wristband that states their name and school number, but otherwise? There isn't much of a dress code

• The campus has dorms, it has a few built-in cafes and galleries, as well as an auditorium, gymnasium, pool, garden, library, and a few other places... (Don't look beneath the /&>=# &!))... )

• The students and teachers have their own living areas and recreational rooms. Sometimes the students throw large sleepovers in one or two of their rec rooms, because no one's room is big enough to hold everyone; Reader, once they join the school, is being invited to these sleepovers almost every time

• The students, the mutants ones, have their mutations. Sometimes they have to take a day or two off, due to them (namely those who have feral mutations and instincts, those with mind-reading or telepathy, those with specific needs where their mutation has to be controlled, ex. Rogue wearing gloves, Scott wearing glasses, etc.)

• Reader has a mutation, but for some unknown reason, it isn't showing or known to the students or teachers... They've had tests done and had the feral mutants see if they can scent the X-gene from them (it causes a distinct scent), and so far Reader has passed each test... It's confusing for a lot of them...

• There is a dark secret buried beneath everything, something pulling a few characters' strings and forcing paths and actions... But this secret keeps itself hidden and unknown... What I can say, without spoiling anything, is that it's not one person who's behind it... It's several...

And these are a few fun facts to know about the 📒Mutant High🧪 AU!

(Thank you, ❤ Anon, or Bee🐝!) (Or BeaBee🐝!)

#honeycomb thoughts #platonic yandere marvel #yandere platonic marvel #platonic yandere marvel x reader #platonic yandere xmen #yandere x-men #platonic yandere #platonic yandere x reader #platonic yandere xmen evolution au #📒mutant high🧪 au

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torchship-rpg · 9 months

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Dev Diary 8 - Identities: Terrans & Lunars

Happy International Moon Day! Torchship is set 200 years after Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon, with history diverging when Alexei Leonov followed him a few days later, keeping the space race hot through moon bases, Mars, and beyond. A bit like For All Mankind, if everyone was a bit less of a complete drama queen.

In celebration of the incredibly cool feat of somehow putting boots on another world, we’re going to be focusing today’s Dev Diary on the two human Identities which descend directly from the event; the Terrans who went there and the Lunars who stayed.

Terrans

We touched on Terrans in Dev Diary 2, as an example for how even the most ‘standard’ of human identities still has a lot of interesting Traits to draw from. Still, Terrans are very much the ‘default’ human identity, being the most populous human group. They’re called Terrans because they got upset about everyone calling them Earthlings, and it had a nice symmetry with Lunars.

Even before we get into the specific sub-Identities, each Identity is divided into a bunch of subsections which dive into various details about the group; where they live, what the environment is like, and what specific biological or genetic details you might need to know. Any of these can come with Traits; the Biology one is where aliens get their signature features, and humans get the developmental and genetic distinctions that set them apart.

(As an aside, these Identity entries are big. They’re not just a couple of paragraphs, they’re thousands of words about history, culture, and biology. Sometimes I get distracted and go on for four paragraphs about the Zinovian biological and cultural concept of sex and gender. Sorry not sorry.)

For Terrans, our Biology section includes our first two Traits. As mentioned last time, 1g is unusually high for humanoid life in the setting; most other species evolved at around half to maybe three quarters of that, and the various spacers will have grown up under even less.

This means that Terrans are a great fit for the Heavyworlder trait, which is one of the Gravity traits. This gives you better tolerance for high Gs (important when you’ve got to work on your spacecraft while under thrust) in exchange for worse penalties in 0g. Compared to a spacer who could spacewalk before they could normal-walk, you’re going to come off clumsy in freefall. You also get a bonus to Physical Instrument, the cert used for basic physical strength and endurance, and do more damage in melee.

The other Terran biological Trait is Baseliner. An assumption underlying every biological Identity is that unless we say otherwise, there’s genetic engineering afoot, either ongoing or in the species' past. While some of this is awful Gattaca-style eugenics nonsense, for Torchship’s humanity this has mostly been just some tidying up. Evolution settles for a lot of ‘good-enough’ solutions, so with a little bit of targeted editing we can do stuff like prevent cells from hoarding molecules they’ll never use, or use a chemical that’s actually good at the job instead of one that the body just had lying around.

Baseliner is the Trait where we say otherwise. You pretty much can’t survive off Earth without some genetic engineering; turns out even a pretty small reduction in gravity long-term is going to be bad for your heart, nerves, muscles, bones… your everything, basically. But if you and your family have always lived on Earth, you could well have gone the last hundred years without genetic editing.

The downside is that it costs more XP to upgrade Physical Instrument and you take extra consequences from different levels of gravity, but on the upside you have an extra ten minutes in low Oxygen before consequences start setting in, and you have a higher tolerance for drugs and poisons. You might not be peak human performance, but all those redundancies can come in handy.

Once we’re done with biology, we move into the sub-Identities, which are specific regions or subcultures. Right now Terrans only have two; rural and urban. (I’ve played around with some others but I haven’t been happy with anything yet, send in your suggestions!). Urban Terrans live in the dense, futuristic megacities that dot future Earth, in communal archeologies that are like self-contained villages. Theirs is a life of beautiful buildings, abundant greenery, a different kind of library for everything, and a joyous excess of monorails. It’s everything you could have wanted from Usborne’s Book of Future Cities (1979) come to life.

Urban Terrans get recommended the following Traits; Polyglot (to get across the cosmopolitan nature of the cities), Well-Connected (to show your closeness to the Star Union’s bureaucracy), Divergent (because urban Terrans are exactly the sort of people who do recreational genetic modifications), and Communal Spirit, a trait which boosts the effectiveness of working together. This is a common Trait for many Human identities; it’s pretty much the one that models prosocial production practices in action.

The Rural Terran trait represents a much smaller proportion of the population. These are the mix of farmers, ecologists, and indigenous groups piecing the planet back together after a close brush with climate change. Outside of lithium, there’s not a lot of on-world mining anymore (space mining has made it uneconomical) so this is mostly agriculture. These communities are relatively isolated, bypassed by the high-speed trains connecting Earth’s cities; the saying goes that Mars is closer to the cities than the farms are.

Rural Terrans get these Traits suggested: Biome Specialist (representing a familiarity in whatever regional ecology you grew up in), Stiff Upper Lip (farm work tends to toughen you up), Natural Esper (a lot of psychics try to get away from the crowded cities), and Trusting, a trait that rewards you for helping others, but makes you more vulnerable to manipulation and makes it stressful to initiate violence.

Finally, at the end of each Identity is a section dedicated to how this group fits into Star Patrol, and how their presence can result in extra Traits through social interaction with other groups. Here, the privileged, ‘default’, often somewhat thoughtless Terrans are recommended the Imposing trait, which gives you some bonuses for being intimidating, but makes it a little harder to get people’s trust. It also does a decent job representing how Terrans are simply more heavily built than anyone else in the Sol system; when you’re comparing to tiny Martians and spindly Spacers, Terrans are collectively a bunch of Conans the Barbarian.

You grew up somewhere where air is free and water falls from the sky, and people are understandably sometimes hesitant to correct your ignorance because you’re three times stronger than they are. Terrans often have some growing up to do as they realise how they come off to others.

Lunars

In Torchship’s world, there have been moon bases since the early 70s, and people have lived on the moon full-time since the early 2000s. The Soviet moon base program eventually withdrew due to budget problems, leaving the ever-increasing network of American bases the sole full-time real estate on the moon. In the 2040s, Armstrong City took one look at the unfolding disaster that was the collapse of American capitalism and seceded. Playing up its neutrality, it eventually became the de jure capital of the Solar Union and, now, the Star Union, though in actuality this is mostly symbolic.

This is because living on the moon is genuinely very difficult. The gravity is just 16% of what it is on Earth, it’s airless, and there’s no atmosphere to stop the radiation. When people started living there, its only selling point at all was being closer to Earth than Mars was.

Now that people do live there, though, in a vast underground city, there turns out to be a second advantage. The Moon is very rich in mineral resources and very poor in biospheres you might destroy by aggressively mining them, and it’s incredibly cheap to get things to lunar orbit. This has ended up making the moon the industrial powerhouse of the Star Union.

Lunars are living in the most extreme conditions of any of the human Identities, which is reflected in their Biology Traits. Like Spacers, they get Freefaller, a gravity trait that is in most ways an inverse of the Heavyworlder trait. They might not actually be living in freefall, but the gravity is so low it might not make a difference. The very low gravity also means they are recommended Medical Dependency; humans simply were not meant to grow up in these conditions. Even with genetic modifications, some ongoing medical treatment for bone density or nerve issues, arising from being seven feet tall and effectively 30 pounds, is to be expected. Finally, Lunars are recommended the Wireless Brain Uplink Trait, an extension of the implanted medical monitors which were once standard on US moon bases for long-term survival.

Lunars also only have two sub-identities. The first are the Mazedwellers, those who live in Armstrong City itself. Armstrong City is built out of the subterranean mines of Luna, using the thick crust of the planet to protect against solar radiation. This makes the city a twisting, sprawling web deep under the surface, where space is at an absolute premium even beyond what Spacers experience. To live in these conditions but still contribute your industrial might to the Union, your town doubles as a factory floor, converting back and forth every day.

This gives Lunars a distinct identity in their work ethic; while everyone else can be more content working at their own pace, on Luna the faster you get the job done the faster you get your living room back. Your recommended Traits are Claustrophile (giving you a bonus in a space suit but mild agoraphobia), Driven (representing this unusual work ethic), and Shifting Gears, a trait which lets you have two sets of Personality Impulses, in this case representing the strict work-life divide that is at the centre of Lunar culture.

The other Lunar sub-identity is being a Yardworker. The Lunar Yards are the reason that humanity won the big space war; turns out running a slower-than-light multiplanetary civilisation requires an absolutely ludicrous number of spacecraft, so Lunars built an absolutely enormous and ever-expanding space station to do that with, using a giant railgun to shoot raw materials up to it and commuting every day with short-hop shuttles. In the post-FTL era, the sheer scale of the Lunar Yards means humanity can produce an almost comedic surplus. During the war, Lunars couldn’t serve in Star Patrol (see the end of the dev diary for why), so people started living on the Yards to make as many rockets as possible instead as a way of contributing.

Being a Yardworker is a prestigious job for a Lunar, and also a competitive one. Work never slows down, six shifts twenty-four hours a day. For this reason, Yardworkers share the Driven and Claustrophile Traits with their Mazedweller counterparts, as they aren’t that divergent. They gain the Voidborn trait (which gives bonuses for making repairs, cheaper upgrades to the Cosmonaut cert, and stress when your rocket is experiencing shortages) and the Cultural Tool trait, which gives you a bonus 4d6-era item you can carry atop the normal inventory. For Lunars, that’s your Yarkworker’s Marker, the thick-nibbed, vacuum-writing pen workers carry to leave each other vital notes about problems that could potentially kill them and/or draw dicks on the spaceship. The Yardworker’s Marker and all the little notes that crews would find in their spacecraft developed a mythology, which is why now it’s as much a badge of honour as a practical tool.

Finally, the Lunars in Star Patrol section touches on an important consequence of Lunar biology; being a Lunar was for life up until shockingly recently. They couldn’t even survive something as tame as Martian gravity even a few decades ago, which meant they could never visit Earth and couldn’t serve in Solar Patrol because their hearts couldn’t take the acceleration. This only changed in the past few decades in the form of an intense, and often rather painful, two-year series of treatments and acclimation.

This comes with two suggested Traits. The first is Augment, the trait we use to represent attempts at genetic engineering that go above and beyond the normal evolutionary cleanup, which can represent some of the extreme intervention and above-average effects it might have had. The other is Stiff Upper Lip, as per Rural Terrans, representing the adjusted pain tolerances you’re going to develop after undergoing something like that.

As you can see, Trait overlap is pretty common in these things, and of course these are just suggested Traits. Despite all the differences, everyone is a lot alike in most ways.

#torchship #torchship ttrpg #rpg #ttrpg #dev diary

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freakartack · 4 months

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I love your Orbulon and space bunnies are sea creatures propaganda how do you even come up with that it’s so cool‼️

Thank you!! A fun fact about me is that i am actually insane about invertebrates. So when wario presented me with two made-up invertebrates i went a little insane. I do play it kind of fast and loose with these guys so i'm sure an actual specbio enthusiast would not be impressed but i'd say 40% of my creative decisions are also based in what would be the funniest (such as making sure the polyp looks like a bowling pin)

I have hinted at this via my orbiology poster but i have an entire orbulon corkboard living in my head so here is the bulk of that iceberg

Based on orbulon's aversion to heat, big ol' sunglasses, and milky complexion, i think that he is the interstellar equivalent of a cave olm. Instead of an underground cave i think he lives on a gas giant far from his system's sun, which would be cold, dark, and have a thick atmosphere for him to "swim" through. ("What about the air pressure?" You say. "Hold your horses" I say. "It will all be worth it in the end.") This reason i think it is worth it is because my model for this is uranus, the gas giant whose atmosphere contains notable amounts of, and i cannot stress this enough, methane. Tell me a more warioware planet

I also think that his planet is predominantly blue, not just because of the youranus thing but also because whenever he gets really scared he literally turns blue. Check it out

I think this is NOT the same as blushing, but a fear response similar to cuttlefish changing color to camouflage with their environment via chromatophores in their skin. Unfortunately when orbulon is scared shitless he does a bad job of it and just defaults to his home planet color, but when he actually thinks about it he can change his color and shape to be whatever he wants (such as a pretty woman).

3. On a similar note, orbulon does not have teeth but he can shapeshift his mouth to create the facsimile of teeth. This is a cool party trick but you need to know that the fake teeth are still squishy and it's really gross.

4. Orbulon's eyes are uber-sensitive to light which is why he needs those impenetrable coke-bottle sunglasses. He also doesn't have eyelids, so during his 24-hour naps his eyes are open the whole time. Sweet dreams.

5. This is going to veer out of plain biology and into his society so i'm not going to go too deep into this but basically i think that telepathy is an integral part of intraspecies communication and that their society is very communal as a result. Think like ants with pheromones, not a hivemind in that they lose their individual identities but they're definitely less atomized than humans. They're also wildly intelligent and have canonically developed time travel technology to the point where the average person can just have a time machine built into their car. This gives a little insight into orbulon's mindset here

(I don't think he's very clever by orbulon standards)

This is getting too long and crazy so i'm going to top it off with one more thing. I know orbulon is supposed to have smooth skin but in my heart i wish he had the texture of these bad boys

#If any of this is contradicted by the new game that just came out do NOT tell me i will cry #not art

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