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savesharkwars · 2 months

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Blue Greenie Race

In Cabin Daily: “Try writing in a genre you've never written before, whether that's mystery, romance, fantasy, etc. 400 words minimum, and you need proof ^” Me: Ah yes, Shark Wars, the perfect Chic lit.

Genre chosen: Chick Lit. I have never written this genre, so of course I made it ‘easy’ for myself and wrote Shark Wars “Chick Lit”. I don’t even know if that’s possible, given that the series is primarily for what I can only assume are 4th grade boys with really good taste. But I tried!!!

Note: I guess this is an AU where Mari doesn’t die??? Also she’s fairly out of character, but if that’s what I have to do to do the daily right it will be that way.

Tw: Heavily implied past animal death

Words: 1,628

(Fic and end notes under the cut.)

Mari flipped her tail. The effervescent green water that surrounded her felt warm against her scales. She knashed her teeth together happily. It was good to be home. But she felt a heaviness in her chest as she looked around at the familiar coral spires of her home. Many of her friends weren't able to feel that warmth, at least not without a twinge of multicolored sparkles courtesy of death.

So many amazing fins and flippers had been lost in the battle… So many wonderful fish she would never know the names of. So many wonderful fish that would never see their homes again. She felt water rush through her gills. To make it worse, Barklay had stayed behind in the Atlantis, appointed leader by the shark that was swimming right next to her. Barklay had been a good friend, and even though he had promised to come visit whenever he could, Coral Shiver was simply so far away from the Atlantis.

At least she had Gray.

The young megalodon was around her age, but you wouldn’t guess that just by looking at him. His blue flanks stretched on for at least double her own body length, and his tail wasn’t even included in that equation! But despite this, Gray was her friend …and nothing more. (Even if she sometimes wondered if they could be.)

She flicked her tail in an annoyed sort of way. Trying (and failing) to push the embarrassing thoughts away. Thankfully her face wasn’t all that red, so when Gray looked back at her in confusion, she didn’t seem all that suspicious. She smiled at him somewhat awkwardly, fighting to keep the blush off her face. “Just got a bit of greenie tangled in my fins,” she lied, “That’s all.”

Gray glanced around them, clearly not seeing any of the mysterious greenie that she spoke of, but took her answer anyway. “We can swim up a bit if you want,” he offered, lifting a tailstroke upward, “The greenie probably wouldn’t be a problem that way.”

Mari stared at him, not sure if him going along with her very obvious lie was worse or better than what would have happened if he had caught her on it. “Uh..” she said, flicking her fins to join him, “Sure. Thank you.”

Gray grinned and turned away from her, his gills rippled. “You’re welcome,” He said, “That’s what friends are for, right?”

“Yep!” She said, fighting for her very life to drag her eyes away from the sharpness of his teeth and the piercing blue of his eyes, “For sure!”

Gray laughed at that, and she found herself giggling along as well. In fact, this momentary joy carried her on light fins all the way back to the center of the Coral Shiver homewaters. Distracted by the new -yet familiar- sight of the telltale coral spires and short blue greenie, she gasped.

“I thought Hocuu destroyed this area?!” She exclaimed, shooting her gaze around herself in instinctive worry, “How-?”

“How’s it all here?” Gray echoed, looking around in the same way she was, “I guess the spell wore off after he died…”

Mari found herself smiling, reminded again of how that terrible frilled shark had failed out of their lives forever. (Privately, she hoped that he was somewhere in the Sparkle Blue, getting beat up by Takiza all over again.) Of course, the memory of what he did was horrific, but the fact that he was really gone made it a bit better.

“When we get to the Sparkle Blue,” she said absentmindedly, oblivious to the confusion that adorned Gray’s face at the suggestion of their deaths, “Will you help be chase Hocuu into whatever darkness exists there?”

After a moment of pondering the question, Gray finally spoke (and she was glad when a laugh bit at the edges of his words), “Of course! Maybe we can have a makeshift Tuna Run… with him as the tuna!”

She whipped around to see him, previously unaware of the possibility of the idea. (She did have to admit that it sounded quite good though.) Gray only laughed, clearly encouraged by the expression on the thresher's face. “Or maybe we could make him into our royal food seasoner…”

Now it was her turn to laugh. “Gray,” she asked, “Why would you need a royal food seasoner in the Sparkle Blue? And what makes you think that he wouldn’t take the chance to poison us?”

“Why not?” Gray asked giggling like a pup, “If we’re lucky it will be a while before we even know what the Sparkle Blue is like. Why not fantasize about embarrassing Hocuu?”

She had to agree with that, but slapped him with the back of her tail anyway. Just like a megalodon, that idea right there. (She didn’t say the words out loud, but for some reason, she felt like Gray knew what she was thinking. Panicked for a moment, she wondered if mind reading was among the powers that Takiza had taught him, before she remembered that it most certainly was NOT and she was totally fine.)

She flicked her tail and sped a bit ahead of him, shaking off the worry with a breath of fresh seawater. “Let’s race to the blue greenie!” She yelled, looking back over her fin at his slightly surprised face. But as his eyes shifted from confused to determined, she felt her heart beat an urchin’s spine faster, “It’ll be fun!” She added, trying to mask the expression that she was sure was on her face, “On the count of three?” She paused, silently asking if that was okay.

Gray nodded and swam to match her. “One,” he said, staring at the blue greenie with a little bit too much concentration.

“Two,” Mari echoed, flipping her fins a few times to stretch them.

“Three!” They said together, speeding off in the direction of the blue greenie. Thresher sharks were very fast without even trying, so Mari was surprised when Gray began to plow ahead of her. (And yes it was ‘plowing’, you don’t get to have that thick of a tail and not be accused of plowing through the water.)

She grit her teeth and sped up her tail strokes, fighting to pull ahead of Gray against the current which she (only now) realized was against her. (Gray was a bigger shark, so it didn’t affect him as much.) In no time at all though, she was ahead of him, speeding at nearly ten tail strokes per second towards the “finish line”.

She reached it in no time at all, and immediately had to pull upward so as not to get tangled in the greenie as soon as she touched it. Flipping over in the water, she watched as Gray reached the greenie, crashing right though it and scarring more than one colorful fish into the ocean around them.

Ignoring the fact that her gills were definitely working harder than normal, Mari laughed. “Slow as always, huh Gray?” She teased, swimming over to him and running her tail along his spine (sort of like the way a mother shark would).

Gray spat some sand out of his mouth and wheeled around to look at her. He was grinning (sharp teeth shining in a way that sent a shiver down Mari’s own spine). “Not as slow as you!” He said, clearly ignoring the fact that he had lost. …but not by very much, “I really scared you when I pulled ahead!”

Mari rolled her eyes and swam a few tail strokes away. “Sure,” she responded playfully, “And that greenie really scared you when you swam nose first into the sand.”

Gray swam after her and Mari was shocked to note that the distance that had taken her three tailstokes only took him one. “Well, I guess the real winner here is the greenie then.” He said, jokingly, “Because if I scared you, and it scared me, that makes it the scariest.”

“We were going for the fastest,” she laughed, “And the greenie is definitely the loser there.”

Gray nodded seriously, as if this was in any way a conversation that deserved such a reaction. “And that makes you second place.” he said, and Mari didn’t even care that the sarcasm wasn’t very evident. (Something about his voice was just… very pretty there.) But Gray looked a little bit sad about his joke, and before she could even say anything back, he added, “And me in third.”

“Doesn’t that just put me in first then?” She laughed, swimming back towards the center of the coral circle, “If you're in third and the greenie’s in last?”

“Well-” Gray started, cutting himself off with a giggle, “I didn’t want you to be in first, and I didn’t win, so you’re in second place.”

Mari rolled her eyes and tried to ignore the way that Gray was making her heart soar. “That’s just like a megalon,” she said, out loud this time.

Gray laughed, “And it’s just like a thresher to beat me in a race,” he paused for a moment, before continuing with an even softer voice than he had been speaking with originally, “I am quite fast for a shark as, uh, big cartilage as I am.”

She felt her heart soar as she grinned, “I believe that! You really did get ahead of me for a moment there.”

As he continued to joke, Mari felt her focus waning. She wanted to listen, she really did, but that was sometimes hard when her best friend was also one that she wanted to rule a Shiver with. Not as a royal line, but as a combined leading force. Together. For as long as the Big Blue would let them, she wanted to be together.

Uhhh... if anyone read this I hope you liked it.

#implied animal death #shark wars #fanfic #mari sw #gray sw #sweetrougeshipping #my post

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ashedink · 2 years

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Swanosaurus

Ahem so I saw a beautiful video of a swan and got all inspired and flashed back to a thought/theory I had

Anyways the Sail has always baffled folks. Is it for thermoregulation? Sexual selection? Threat displays? How does it fit into the new discovery? Spino has gone back and forth between terrestrial and semiaquatic, between biped and quadruped (or just “how could it have been a biped with center of gravity so far forward”) and when the new skeletal find was announced the eel-like tail answered a million questions and raised a million more.

I should bring up I am not a palentologist, I’m not even a paleoartist, I am just an ADHD gremlin with a Special Interest in dinosaurs and drawing. I mostly dabble in fantasy art, and you bet looking at dinosaur bones inspires me.

And I ended up on the concept of Spinosaurus, as a surface-level semiaquatic cruising predator. I remember reading a theory at one point that Spinos might have basically been dinostorks, wading through shallows with their neck held in a tight s-curve, waiting to strike, and while the foot-to-body ratio doesn’t look like a wading animal to me it got me thinking later.

So the thought goes that where the purpose of the sail likely started as sexual display, or maybe extra fat storage or temperature regulation, it ended up co-opted into their semiaquatic lifestyle by serving a few important purposes:

1. When cruising on the surface the sail provids negative buoyancy, keeping the eel tail, limbs, and chest right at that sweet spot just below the waters surface. This would allow it to swim by slowly undulating its tail while not having to move much else, minimizing water disturbances and also putting the disturbances there are several meters behind its main weapon. This allows it to camouflage its advance whilst also peering down into mostly-still water to pick out its prey.

2. When diving, acting as a stabilizing surface for powerful tailstrokes. Basically as the head lunges forward in its strike, it is throwing their center of gravity forward with the chest and spine following. Momentum does half the work and the tail does the rest, propelling the spino forward with strong side-to-side tailstrokes. Here the sail provides a large flat vertical surface area for the force of the tail and the water to push against, keeping it locked into a straight trajectory for short bursts of speed. Which would be useless against smaller, more agile fish, but effective against bulky, slow-swimming giants that rely more on size or stealth to keep them safe.

3. Breaking up the creature’s shadow and outline. I don’t actually think Spinos were the color of mute swans, but I do think it’s worth taking into account how much a high sail breaks up a creature’s silhouette and would make it harder for fish, who have their own shit to worry about to pick the predator out of the Rorschach test. Depending on the facing of the dinosaur and the angle of the sun they would always be casting a different shadow, and most of them would look like “longish blob with stuff on top.”

4. Going back to the surface-dwelling-cruising behavior, this could potentially grant spinosaurus a great way to rest. Not having to exclusively lay down on land to take power naps lowers its odds of confrontation with other dinos. I’m sure it had competition in the water as well, but by picking areas too shallow for its aquatic competitors and too mucky/soft for its terrestrial ones it might have been set up for the best of both worlds. Probably still had to come to land for longer rests, though, as many semiaquatic creatures will do.

5. This is more of a minor/silly party of the whole think pie but the new shape of Spino’s sailback , specifically the smooth round front of it got me thinking, “If I were spino I would constantly be laying my head back on that, just propping up my big old toothnoggin on my sail while cruising along.” And, well, it was a silly thought at first, but animals rest on their own bones all the time. Ever been sitting down and popped your ankle/foot up over your knees, or crossed your arms because you were thinking, propped your head up on your hand with your elbow on your desk, etc. What I’m saying is, lazy sleepy spino napping on its own bones.

All in all it was just an excuse to hyperfixate on digitally painting a dinosaur for an evening. Honestly it’d be kinda neat to hear what actual professionals and paleoartists have to think of it.

#spinosaurus #dinosaur #my art #journal entry #digital painting #spino

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