Hi! It's me again (I'm transferring to a bachelor's in biology this fall and I love the science that goes into the series so I love that you're exploring this)
Do either of them have hoarding instincts or dietary preferences or are they pretty much human in that regard?
They'd possibly be born with baby teeth, at least in Haze/Hazel's case, would that change anything? (Hazel would probably fit better because Falin is half French on her father's side from what I remember from the Adventurer's Bible and it feels even that they'd both get to name a kid but that's just my opinion)
Haru with his mouth full: Checkit!! Blegh!!
Haize: Gross. Good job, Haru, you're a natural hunter!
Welcome back to part 10,000 of me talking about my silly ocs. Hi. hello. Thank you sooo much for coming back with more biology questions for these two hehehe >:]c
Diet Preferences?
These two are quite the oddballs. Haru is an insectivore by simple dragon nature while Haize is a carnivore by hers, though their elven and tallman sides balance them out to be closer to omnivores! Light dragons commonly eat bugs as they're the easiest prey to attract when ur big and flashy though this keeps them very lithe and they typically have more slender builds, though the proteins do help a lot. Conversely, red dragons being mostly carnivores results in their larger build and their obvious frequency to be the most dominant and persevering dragon species- y'know. Because they murk the other ones due to their weaker diets and builds.
Haru started to eat bugs right around the time it was warm enough for him to go outdoors without getting sick, I imagine he would've eaten a butterfly or a dragonfly much to Marcille's horror. Like that vine of the pug eating the butterfly with his owner screaming no! Backtracking a bit though to give some cool facts about baby light dragons because I decide the lore. I'm making them weird half mammal half bird-lizards because I think the variety is cool but this also means that - up until baby light dragons can open their eyes and properly attempt to hunt - they drink milk from their parents! (Whether or not this is crop milk like birds produce is entirely up to the reader's imagination, I will not judge but I will choose either one if asked)
So up until he started going outside, Haru was perfectly content just drinking milk like any other baby- Haize was not. Unlike Haru she was born with baby fangs!! Just little milk teeth to help her get a headstart for the world and such, but she grew hungrier for something more diverse than milk very quickly. Red dragons, unlike light dragons, don't do the whole milk thing so Haize was only partially satiated due to being part elf and tallman but the minute she was allowed to eat soft meats she basically refused to go back. So just imagine like a 1 year old eating various lunch meats for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Honestly it was probably for the best, Haize's fangs bit into Marcille a lot and they were worried she might grow a taste for blood if she kept accidentally nicking her mom while trying to eat. She probably would have and it would've been a really bad habit to get rid of because she hadn't developed that big girl brain to be like "Hey maybe drinking blood isn't super cool."
All in all, the Touden-Donato sibs have slightly preferenced diets! Though Haize prefers meats, nectar, and citrus fruits while Haru prefers bugs, ground vegetables, citrus fruits, and any/all milk based desserts (he just really likes them). God if these kids ever got their hands on sorbet it would be a disaster, Falin and Marcille would literally spend a week trying to explain why they cant have ice cream for every meal and have to deal with whining dragonets the whole time.
2. Hoarding Instincts
They do have hoarding instincts! Though this is one of those things that differs from dragon to dragon on how they react with it. Light dragons tend to go for the flashiest treasures to make themselves more appealing and alluring, naturally they like the attention they draw in just from an instinctual standard. They frequently discard rusted, unpolished, or just not as eyecatching treasure all the time. They really just arent particular about the whole thing unless they see you have an interest in something they were previously disinterested in- then they're smug assholes who see their treasure as still having some renewed value. So essentially Envy = Worthy to them, but they arent extremely vain creatures despite their hoarding preference and are actually particularly generous within reason. It's very common for light dragons to gift their young, mates, or siblings with treasures from their own hoards or that they've taken for themselves to gift. Typically though the gifting of treasure is to help younger dragons start their own hoard and have an idea of what to go for when out and about for themselves.
That being said, Haru is a greedly little fucker who wants every single new treasure possible, fuck you. He's very grateful for being part elf and tallman because he's aware that he can make his beautiful treasures last long if he polishes, dusts, and cleans them! So his hoard isn't too huge if only because he's good at maintaining things. Still, if he sees something he tends to want it and is often reprimanded for trying to steal shiny gems, jewels, or artifacts just because he likes them- as Haru often gets tired with his new finds extremely quickly if they begin to bore him or don't compare to his other treasures. When it comes to his hoarding he essentially has the dragon equivalent to having eyes bigger than your stomach.
Haize, however, has your more traditional dragon's hoard of miscellanous treasures, artifacts, coins from birthdays, and prized family gifts. Much of her hoard consists of trinkets Haru grew bored with but that she still saw interest in and wanted to give renewed purpose, she isn't nearly as picky but is very curious and likes to inspect an item before taking it in. She'll often let Haru have a treasure knowing that he'll get tired of it within the hour- though she has been known to assert her place as the eldest sibling if there is a gift for her she particularly wants and Haru usually shies off. Haize doesn't assert herself as the eldest often so he knows it's business if she does for things like food or treasure. Haru keeps her hoard partially in and around the her nest as well as the family nest in Falin and Marcille's room! Her nest in the guardian is where she keeps most of her baby clothes, toys, trinkets, and cloths/blankets. She just feels they're safest there and prefers to sleep near them <3.
Also, fun tid bits on how dragons train their kids to gain treasure!: Typically young dragons get the urge to grab and snatch at shiny things as soon as they're able to crawl around functionally and protect themselves- which is pretty early due to them being predators of a mythical variety- so they'll often try and steal treasure from their parent's hoard! Older dragons use this as stealth training for their young and will often guard their treasure, sitting stop or nearby and continuously removing their children until they manage to sneak by successfully to take a trinket. Typically the larger/shiner/whatever is more impressive for the type of dragon you are is what is most rewarded for by parents but they do punish thinking a bit too big. It's good to know your limits! better to have 5 gold coins than 5 gold bricks you cant carry.
so Falin was very often having to train Haru and haize to amass their own treasures which was much easier for Haize due to her slinky and stealthy body allowing for quicker and quieter movement! Haru had to learn to fight, due to his regular baby limbs and range of movement, which didnt really work because he's so itty bitty but the thought was appreciated by Falin, learning to stand your ground is good too!
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Differences of the WoY visual style between the pilot and the final show (Along some other stuff) (Part 1)
So a crap-ton of cartoon show bibles and pilots surfaced recently, which is kind of fucking cool, and it included stuff from Wander over Yonder, which is way fucking cooler.
First thing I did was over-analyze the show's visual style and I figure I should put my findings somewhere, so here you go! In a chronological order, it's easier that way (and builds suspense for the real good stuff, ooohooooh (in a spooky ghost voice)).
The first shot alone already brings forth some differences. As far as I know, the show never illustrates space like this, entirely black with just a couple of stars to break the void. There's usually some blue star dust or something, kinda like this:
The skullship was planned to be 3D-animated apparently, instead of being drawn in the same style as the backgrounds. This allows for WAY more complex movements, since it's easier to pull off.
We then get to take a looksie inside of the ship... this isn't like ANYTHING in the show.
We do see control rooms on occasion, but not one like this. It's a circular room with rows of watchdogs on the wall, watching monitors, circulating the middle where Hater sits on his throne. The railings on its support carry Peepers and his cockpit. Two watchdogs control the ship (I think) at the front. That blue goop at the top might be the ship's brain (you can also already see some animation errors in the front, peep their grabbers).
There ain't ever been a color palette inside the ship like this, they usually opt for red and black rather than red and white. This might have been their solution to making the characters native to Hater pop out against the background before deciding to just substitute black for purple.
There's still bright locations within the skullship, but they're non-threatening ones, like the food court.
Commander Peepers and the watchdogs have designs that, while closer to their final versions than the pitch bible (or whatever that cover of that graphic novel was supposed to be), carry some traits still worth pointing out (well, so does everything here, but pshhhshshhhshh).
SHINY
COLLARS
Puffy collars around necks, wrists and ankles.
Detailed irises.
Detailed soles on shoes.
Those lines on their gloves that you see in your grandpa's toons.
(bugs bunny pictured flipping the bird)
This is specific to Peepers; the jagged thunder-spike on his helmet has dimension to it, as opposed to the implied dimension in his final design. Spikes on the side are also way longer here.
His eye/face emotes differently by just utilizing a black eyelid, rather than turning the hat into a pseudo-eyebrow, kinda like Double D from Ed, Edd n' Eddy.
We then get a glimpse at Hater's design...
Despite his face missing, you can already see some differences, like his arms resembling more those of an actual skeleton and packing a lot less mass. His hood is also a bit more tout and the folds surrounding it have more empathis.
Another space shot with some shapes to break up the infinite black; it's not always you see a warm color palette for space in the actual show.
Maybe here, when Wander and Sylvia stop the sun from blowing up in "The Good Deed".
When entering the city that's about to get its shit stirred by Hater, we notice that there aren't ANY other locations illustrated like this. We usually have smooth, airbrushy looking stuff, when this is more reminiscent of a comic strip, with clear lines and some hatching to indicate weight here and there. Same goes for the townsfolk, they remind me of... Krazy Kat or something. Craig McCracken has gone on record saying he drew a lot of inspiration from old comic strips, but I don't know if Krazy Kat is one of them. I just thought of it :)
The inside of the skullship looked different so this place might have had an unique artstyle to other locations we would've seen in this version of the show, but that would also be a big difference since the actual show keeps the background style consistent throughout the whole run (as far as I know).
Goes in hand with the skullship; the watchdogs are 3D-animated here, although subtly.
Different gun designs... they look more like water guns here. Big ol' TUBES. Their guns in the show are more sci-fi-esque.
Hater's logo is different, in-line with his design. Way flatter design too. Might as well take a look at his actual face now.
Well, more like next time. Just found out you can only use up to 30 images in one post. Oopsies. I'll continue this when I have the energy! I'll continue my chronological analysis/rambling and perhaps talk about the general art-style and animation at the end. Might take me a couple of more posts.
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I think I stumbled upon some kind of ichthyological forbidden knowledge. Opened up a book of names that were never meant to be read.
You've probably heard of "can-opener smoothdream", right? It's practically a meme by now.
But the thing is, it's a deep-sea fish. And deep-sea fish have historically not had English names because nobody drops them into the conversation over a hot cuppa. Sure, there's generic stuff like hatchetfish and barreleye, but when you want to refer to the actual fish you're probably saying such euphonious phrases as Diretmus argenteus, Sternoptyx diaphana, or maybe even Opisthoproctus soleatus.
So whence "can-opener smoothdream"? Certainly no non-ichthyologist has ever used that name. It's not even a direct translation of the scientific name Chaenophryne longiceps - that would be "long-headed gape-toad". Which to me is even cooler than "can-opener smoothdream".
But I digress. The "dream" bit comes from the anglerfish family Oneirodidae, from oneiros, "dream", because those marvelous fishes look like they came out of a dream (Pietsch, 2009).
Note that Pietsch (2009), more or less the anglerfish bible, uses English names at the genus level only. So Chaenophryne is the smoothhead dreamers genus but no mention is made of "can-opener smoothdreams". So no luck there.
Wikipedia, root cause of a lot of misinformation, has this to say.
"Longhead dreamer" is a far more accurate name. And in fact, despite Wikipedia prioritizing "can-opener smoothdream" (because it's funny?), the links listed use "longhead dreamer" and "smoothhead dreamer" as the name and "can-opener smoothdream" as an alternative.
So. Again. Where did "can-opener smoothdream" come from?
The answer, as it turns out, lies with McAllister (1990).
In the book A List of the Fishes of Canada, ichthyologist D. E. McAllister sought out to list every single fish known to Canadian waters, providing both an English and a French name.
And when there wasn't an English name, like for most deep-sea fishes, he arbitrarily gave them a name. And his names "differ in many instances from the widely accepted names" (Holm, 1998)
This had varying results. This is his name for one of the netdevil anglerfishes.
The humpback anglerfish or blackdevil anglerfish becomes a werewolf (????).
This one is just confusing.
The white-spotted lanternfish or Rafinesque's lanternfish instead becomes...
And most embarrassingly, the Mediterranean spiderfish gets saddled with something that "violates the tenet of good taste" (Holm, 1998).
This then is the original source of "can-opener smoothdream". It was invented by an ichthyologist in 1990, and has seen little to no use outside of how bizarre the name is.
Maybe McAllister's goofier names will catch on. Who knows? They certainly aren't very popular in the scientific community though.
References
Holm, E. (1998) Encyclopedia of Canadian Fishes (review). The Canadian Field-Naturalist, 112, p. 174-175.
McAllister, D. E. (1990) A List of the Fishes of Canada. National Museum of Natural Sciences, Ottawa.
Pietsch, T. W. (2009) Oceanic Anglerfishes: Extraordinary Diversity in the Deep Sea. University of California Press, Berkeley.
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Medieval Scorpions Effortpost
So yesterday I reblogged this post featuring an 11th-century depiction of the Apocalypse Locusts from Revelations, noting the following incongruity as another medieval scorpion issue:
The artist, as you can see, has interpreted "tails like scorpions" as meaning "glue cheerful-looking snakes to their butts".
Anyway, it occurred to me that the medieval scorpion thing might not be as widely known as I think it is, and that Tumblr would probably enjoy knowing about it if it isn't known already. So, finding myself unable to focus on the research I'm supposed to be doing, I decided to write about this instead. I'll just go ahead and put a cut here.
As we can see in the image above, at least one artist out there thought a "scorpion" was a type of snake. Which makes it difficult to draw "tails like scorpions", because a snake's tail is not that distinctive or menacing (maybe rattlesnakes, but they don't have those outside the Americas). So they interpreted "tails like scorpions" as "the tail looks like a whole snake complete with head".
Let me tell you. This is not a problem unique to this illustration.
See, people throughout medieval Europe were aware of scorpions. As just alluded to, they are mentioned in the Bible, and if the people producing manuscripts in medieval Europe knew one thing, it was Stuff In Bible. They're also in the Zodiac, which medieval Europe had inherited through classical sources. However, let's take a look at this map:
That's Wikipedia's map of the native range of the Scorpiones order, i.e., all scorpion species. You may notice something -- the range just stops at a certain northern latitude. Pretty much all of northern Europe is scorpion-free. If you lived in the north half of Europe, odds were good you had never seen a scorpion in your life. But if you were literate or educated at all, or you knew they were a thing, because you'd almost certainly run across them being mentioned in texts from farther south. And those texts wouldn't bother to explain what a scorpion was, of course -- everyone knows scorpions, right? When was the last time you stopped to explain What Is Spiders?
So medieval writers and artists in northern Europe were kind of stuck. There was all this scorpion imagery and metaphor in the texts they liked to work from, but they didn't really know what a scorpion was. Writers could kind of work around it (there's a lot of "oh, it's a venomous creature, moving on"), but sometimes they felt the need to break it down better. For this, of course, they'd have to refer to a bestiary -- but due to Bestiary Telephone and the persistent need of bestiary authors to turn animals into allegories, one of the only visual details you got on scorpions was that they... had a beautiful face, which they used to distract people in order to sting them.
And look. I'm not here to yuck anyone's yum, but I would say that a scorpion's face has significant aesthetic appeal only for a fairly small segment of the population. I'm sure you could get an entomologist to rhapsodize about it a bit, but your average person on the street will not be entranced by the face of a scorpion. So this did not help the medieval Europeans in figuring out how to depict scorpions. There was also some semantic confusion -- see, in some languages (such as Old and Middle English), "worm" could be a general term for very small animals of any kind. But it also could mean "serpent".* So there were some, like our artist at the top of the post, who were pretty sure a scorpion was a snake. This was probably helped along by the fact that "venomous" was one of the only things everyone knew about them, and hey, snakes are venomous. Also, Pliny the Elder had floated the idea that there were scorpions in Africa that could fly, and at least one author (13th-century monk Bartholomaeus Anglicus) therefore suggested that they had feathers. I don't see that last one coming up much, I just share it because it's funny to me.
*English eventually resolved this by borrowing the Latin vermin for very small animals, using the specialized spelling wyrm for big impressive mythical-type serpents, and sticking with the more specific snake for normal serpents.
Some authors, like the anonymous author of the Ancrene Wisse, therefore suggested that a scorpion was a snake with a woman's face and a stinging tail. (Everyone seemed to be on the same page with regards to the fact that the sting was in the tail, which is in fact probably the most recognizable aspect of scorpions, so good job there.) However, while authors could avoid this problem, visual artists could not. And if you were illustrating a bestiary or a calendar, including a scorpion was not optional. So they had to take a shot at what this thing looked like.
And so, after this way-too-long explanation, the thing you're probably here for: inaccurate medieval drawings of scorpions. (There are of course accurate medieval drawings of scorpions, from artists who lived in the southern part of Europe and/or visited places where scorpions lived; I'm just not showing you those.) And if you find yourself wondering, "how sure are you that that's meant to be a scorpion?" -- all of these are either from bestiaries or from calendars that include zodiac illustrations.
11th-century England, MS Arundel 60. (Be honest, without the rest of this post, if I had asked you to guess what animal this was supposed to be, would you have ever guessed “scorpion”?)
12th-century Germany, "Psalter of Henry the Lion". (Looks a bit undercooked. Kind of fetal.)
12th-century France, Peter Lombard's Sententiae. (Very colorful, itsy bitsy claws, what is happening with that tail?)
12th-century England, "The Shaftesbury Psalter". (So a scorpion is some sort of wyvern with a face like a duck, correct?)
13th-century France, Thomas de Cantimpré's Liber de natura rerum. (I’d give them credit for the silhouette not being that far off, but there’s a certain bestiary style where all the animals kind of look like that. Also note how few of these have claws.)
13th-century England, "The Bodley Bestiary". (Mischievous flying squirrel impales local man’s hand, local man fails to notice.)
13th-century England, Harley MS 3244. (A scorpion is definitely either a mouse or a fish. Either way it has six legs.)
13th-century England, Harley MS 3244. (Wait, no, it’s a baby theropod, and it has two legs. (Yes, this is the same manuscript, that’s not an error, this artist did four scorpions and no two are the same.))
13th-century England, Harley MS 3244. (Actually it’s a lizard with tiny ears and it has four legs.)
13th-century England, Harley MS 3244. (Now that we’re at the big fancy illustration, I think I’ve got it — it’s like that last one, but two legs, longer ears, and a less goofy face. Also I’ve decided it’s not pink anymore, I think that was the main problem.)
13th-century England, MS Kk.4.25. (A scorpion is a flat crocodile with a bear’s head.)
13th-century England, "The Huth Psalter". (Wyvern but baby! Does not seem to be enjoying biting its own tail.)
13th-century England, MS Royal 1 D X. (This triangular-headed gentlecreature gets the award for “closest guess at correct limb configuration”. If two of those were claws, I might actually believe this artist had seen a scorpion before, or at least a picture of one.)
13th-century England, "The Westminster Psalter". (A scorpion is the offspring of a wyvern and a fawn.)
13th-century England, "The Rutland Psalter". (Too many legs! Pull back! Pull back!)
13th or 14th-century France, Bestiaire d'amour rimé. (This is very similar to the fawn-wyvern, but putting it in an actual Scene makes it even more obvious that you’re just guessing.)
14th-century Netherlands, Jacob van Maerlant's Der Naturen Bloeme. (More top-down six-legged guys that look too furry to be arthropods.)
14th-century Germany, MS Additional 22413. (That is clearly a turtle.)
14th-century France, Matfres Eymengau de Beziers's Breviari d'amor. (Who came up with that head shape and what was their deal?)
15th-century England, "Bestiary of Ann Walsh". (Screw it, a scorpion is a big lizard that glares at you for trying to make me draw things I don’t know about.)
I've spent way too much time on this now. End of post, thank you to anyone who got all the way down here.
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