#all animals are adapted and developed for the specific environment they live in. just because they dont need complex communication

[inqilabi]

girl the thing you said about rape being not natural even though human males do it the same way animal males do, because humans are special and control their environment is stupid. when we were animals, when we were not modern homo sapiens do you think at some point of evolving into humans we just forgot how to rape? it just went out of our minds for a hundred thousand years? the distinction between animal and human is arbitrary, we are not that different.

If the distinction between animal and human is arbitrary, and we are simply a continuation of animal then why don't non-human animals develop the planet - create spaceships to explore other planets or can articulate how our world or universe came about? Why dont we see orcas which are by far the most intelligent mammal with complex language capabilities similar to humans, do that? Why are we the only species that can do that?

Evolution happens over millions of years, so yes you can easily evolve out of behaviors or as you put it "forget to rape" because it happens over millions of years. There's absolutely traits that "went out of our minds for a hundred thousands of years". Knuckle walking, completely gone. Being a good climber, completely gone - you have to develop this. And if you believe that rape is a biological trait, it should actually be relatively easily to believe that it can be evolved out in a species based on the environment since that's exactly how evolutionary biology works.

And not all non-human primates living even today rape. Like bonobo, one of our closest living relative, has never had an observed case of male sexual coercion. In fact, in their culture females dominate cultural relations and networks, and males grow up in this "culture' and observe and therefore learn, that they will have more mating success with grooming strategies rather than aggression. And they actually apparently get mating success by gaining support from these female networks.

And the natural experiment example of Robert Sapolsky's forest baboon troop, which DID have sexual coercion in their culture, but did not after the aggressive males all died out from eating contaminated food. In the following years, the troop developed a culture that was cooperative and they retained this culture going forward. There was no reappearance if sexual aggression thereafter.

And lastly, PR Sanday studied some 95 "primitive" cultures in society and found that 50%, half of were rape-free. These still exist today.

In all the above examples, there's a common theme of sociability for survival. This is what I was saying previously, human evolution is unique in that tool development, led to bigger brains dedicated to language and social function. Homo sapien evolution is even unique compared to other hominids in that unlike all other hominids, homo sapiens was not restricted to limited range of environment. It's both these things together that make humans unique. Early homo sapiens would have been bands of 20-30 people working together, splitting labour, cooperating, talking things through, analyzing things together to adapt to life anywhere. It's hard to imagine rape in these circumstances when rape doesn't exist in cultures and societies even today, where cooperation is required for survival.

Regardless, this a philosophical debate since we don't have evidence of whether rape was common or not prior to 10000 years ago. The only evidence we have is what i presented above, the non-human primates and ethnographic study of some cultures today. Your argument relies on the logic that since rape is biological and present in animals, it would be preserved in human evolution. I disagree with this logic, I think human evolution required this behaviour to be specifically 'evolved out' in order to survive. And it does not reappear until 10,000 years ago. And I still believe that regardless how we start, whether men are predisposed to rape biologically or not, we would be able to eliminate this when we women seize reproductive forces and address women's oppression materially. So ultimately it is possible to end it via a cultural evolution regardless of how we start. This we have plenty of examples of - i gave GDR & Long Bow as examples already of a primordial form of this. We saw lots of changes there and that wasn't even a full seizure of reproductive forces, it was only small material redistribution of resources to women that significantly reduced women's oppression.

But are you able to explain why in non-human primates and even human societies we have examples of no sexual coercion. Yes these are a small percentage because of the general and increasing development of society towards patriarchy, which would lead us to hypothesize that its likely that these rape-free cultures were more prevalent in the past prior to patriarchy. But if you believe that rape is a biological aspect, then why do these cultures not have rape. They should - since its a biological feature of evolutionary development, it should be pervasive no?

#asks #political thoughts #anthropology

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

What kind of magic exists in your world?

oh boy I have a whole lengthy document that goes into detail about my magic system lol. I'll try to giev you the simplified rundown, and while I don't want people to outright copy all my personal story ideas, I don't mind if people take inspiration from it. I like sharing my ideas!

essentially, the world is full of magical energy. it's referred to as "ambient magic". This ambient magic can affect different species in different ways, being connected to souls and usually manifesting in some form of enhanced ability by way of the nervous system. I haven't decided how much this applies to animals. It is also a matter of debate amongst magic-biologists whether people get extra powerful abilities because they are people, or if having the extra powerful magic boosts is what drove them to evolve into sapient people.

through the nervous system, pretty much every people species has experienced some boosts to their endocrine system, allowing them to have longer lifespans than their base species might usually have. This is why elves live multiple centuries. Some people species simply got a bigger endocrine system boost than others, and it seems to be shifting in recent generations, bringing some longer lived species to a shorter lifespan while the shorter lived species are gaining years. Like the ambient magic is starting to balance them out.

Outside the endocrine system boost, pretty much every people species has a bonus ability. In the sylvanids (elves, vampires, drow) it varies more. Elves have the most varied abilities, because they adapted to a wider range of environments. So one elf might have a boost to the muscular system, but another might have a boost to their immune system. Vampires and drow kept their enhancements in the endocrine system, with vampires specializing in the production of chemicals in the salivary glands and drow just going hog wild with their bizarrely specific hormones.

The orciformes/urukin (orcs, gnomes, haufin/"halflings") the boost went to the occipital lobe. they each have a different form of "vision" that aids their lifestyles. It's kinda like a species-specific form of synesthesia. Orcs can "see" the way ambient magic gathers around living things, gnomes can "see" the trace lines between things like stars and safe hand/foot holds on cliffs, and haufin can "see" by scent.

There's a lot more people species, of course, but these are the big two groups of related people. So that's a sample of how the ambient magic affects people by giving them some form of enhanced natural ability.

Outside of this, I have three methods for controlled magic. People discovered ways they can get ambient magic to do specific things.

the easiest and most mundane form is written magic. Dwarves and gnomes pioneered this. Runes and sigils carved into wood, bone, or stones/gems/metal, as well as those written with organic-based inks or blood, can make magic do a few simple things. it's used largely as a replacement for many things we might use electricity for, such as stove tops, indoor lighting, and water heating. Circular magic sigils created on flat surfaces that can be moved to break or join the lines allow people to turn them on and off.

spoken/singing magic, largely developed by elves with some unique forms developed by other groups like goblins and merfolk. this form of magic requires more careful study and focus, as a caster cannot break concentration or fumble their words/song. It's inefficient for mundane tasks, but has a much wider range of uses than any other form of magic. Controlling organic matter is a main function of this type of magic. Elves will sing trees into homes, doctors will work with a chorus to aid in medical operations.

the final and most risky method is soul magic. ambient magic is connected to souls, after all. people have developed a lot of spiritual rituals around this form of magic, so it is mostly used by religious leaders, like clerics and priests. To channel magic through one's own soul, deep meditation and a strong will are required. Many rituals involve harming one's body in some manner, always with a bone tool. This is because you can access much stronger magic if you put yourself closer to death. these rituals are usually supervised with magic singers around to ensure the soul magic user does not die. anchoring items like heavy ceremonial accessories or incense are often used as well. It is a very niche form of magic. It can be used to enhance one's personal ambient magic ability, use one's own life energy to heal another person in an emergency, and also communicate with the dead.

There are also some ways to combine the three forms of magic, though this usually just means a combination of spoken and written magic. Experimenting with magic can lead to dangerous results. There are also forbidden things, such as necromancy, soul binding, and time travel. these are all forbidden because they come with devastating side effects and don't actually work the way people want them to. there are limits to what magic can do, and trying to force it to do the impossible will always backfire.

#magic system #worldbuilding #ambient magic #soul magic #written magic #spoken magic #my writing #long post

[scriptdogtor]

Merfolk Reproduction

@cryoverkiltmilk asked over on another blog:

I have generally gone with the assumption that merfolk have a variety of reproductive methods, including live birth and external fertilization of eggs. I'd love to hear your thoughts as well!

-

There are ways to give validity to pretty much any reproductive method, and it all depends on what works best for the story you’re trying to tell. Reproduction can be as diverse as the creatures we dream up, as it’s all present in the animal kingdom. Hell, if you’re ever looking for creative repro ideas, look no further than insects. You’ll find everything and it all serves a specific purpose.

That’s why I can get opinionated about merfolk repro sometimes, because narratives forget how reproduction serves a purpose. Defaulting to “oh they’re fishes” doesn’t always enhance a narrative and can sometimes make it lose fidelity.

“Fishy” repro makes sense on the surface because...fish scales? But internal reproduction has a lot of evolutionary purposes. How a species reproduces can tell you a lot about how they live in general. We can define these specific reproductive methods which I’m borrowing from mammals:

Viviparity - live birth

Copulation - You have all read plenty on Ao3, I am sure

I’ve been meaning to make a longer post about this, but this reproductive strategy generally:

Allows for longer, safer incubation of fewer offspring

Facilitates social bonding

Takes advantage of controlled body temperatures

 Allows species to travel with developing offspring

Guarantees young will be born close to the mother and can then grow close to the mother

Selects for more viable sperm within and between individuals

Takes a lot of resources and time for the mother

Obviously not every species checks every box, but these reproductive methods select for a certain kind of strategy. Animals that invest a lot of time/resources into fewer offspring benefit from copulation and viviparity.

In contrast, animals that invest in the numbers game benefit from more external reproduction. Think of a continuum between blue whales --> songbirds --> fish --> pine trees. Each of these species succeeds for very different reasons. Blue whale sperm is not wasted irritating your allergies, but pine trees make plenty.

Again - this isn’t true for every species and there’s no law saying external reproduction can’t come with care and attention, but that’s something that might benefit from more narrative development.

Merfolk are generally made in a human image, and a very mammalian one. You’ll often see merfolk having these by default:

Hair

Breasts/nipples

Mammalian hips (I forgot the name for this, but notice how dolphins move their tails up and down and fish generally move back and forth)

Bellybuttons

Brains that work similarly to humans (I hate how we gauge animal intelligence but that’s another conversation)

Strong social connections

Offspring that stay with their families for at least a few years

Non-reproductive sexual interests

There’s more to it than this, but that’s another post. 

The other challenge you might want to address in a story is how those relatively precious gametes meet without being destroyed by saltwater. Delivering sperm is just as important, and animals have developed all sorts of ways to adapt to environments hostile to sperm. If you’ve ever taken a zoology course or have seen furry porn, you know the diversity of reproductive tracts. How these organs look impacts how they function and can tell you a lot about what gametes need to survive.

I debated how detailed to go on visual aids, but you know what? I survived a high school Zo class and you can too.

Source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Skeletal-anatomy-of-the-bottlenose-dolphin-Tursiops-truncatus-A-External-hind-limbs_fig5_265297384

Helpful article that outlines even more diversity: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/dolphin-sex-research-dalhousie-university-scientist-bottlenose-1.4084583

Honestly, if you’re looking for physical anatomy inspo, you can go pretty wild. Sexual selection goes HARD in this area and there’s a lot of room to embellish. 

Am I saying furry porn has this one down to a science? Oh, absolutely. At least sometimes.

#cryptozoology #mermaids #merfolk #merpeople #cryptoanatomy

[total-convergence]

The Nanites

The nanobots are what shaped the world of Total Convergence..?. These microscopic tools are basically just “automated cluster of molecules”, but are able to execute very complex tasks, like making small changes on an organism’s DNA with a specific goal “in mind”. This post will contain more specific information about these nanites and the lore than the original Total Convergence..? introduction video did. I suggest you watch it, it’s important for getting a glimpse of what this worldbuilding project is about.

How it all started

[Image ID: A screenshot of a few paragraphs from a fictional website of a science publisher. It appeared in the project’s intro video for a very brief moment, so I kept the design simple. Web page titled “Science Publishing'', with a green and white logo of a space probe. Rest of the text is black, with the header “First evidence of biological signature from the deep space”, authors, and two paragraphs with their respective titles. Article text is transcribed at the bottom of this post. /.End ID.]

After accidentally discovering alien life and then actually proving its existence, humanity went through several phases such as denial or celebration. But one phase was final, and that was the phase of a mass panic that resulted in various global conflicts. The panic didn’t care about an individual person, it didn’t care about its surroundings, and it definitely didn’t care about whether these aliens could actually pose a threat, whether it be directly or indirectly. The only thing it cared about was the preservation of humans, but only in the biological sense. You could even go as far and say the only thing this mindset cared about was the human DNA alone. And this is where the nanites come to play. Most inventions or ways to preserve the man weren’t as straightforward as the nanites, but the nanites were the only thing that survived. And maybe even somewhat succeeded? Their goal was to recreate the humans in case they would go extinct - humans did go extinct, and sixty million years after that, the nanites did produce a few sophonts, and quite a lot of animalistic human lookalikes. If we can call them that way - the evolutionary pressure to constantly adapt to the environment is stronger than the pressure from the nanites, resulting in bizarre combinations of human-like and animal-like characteristics (or I guess it depends on your definition of those terms). On the other hand, there are also many, many animals and sophonts that look untouched by the nanites and some of them even are. Ironically though, humanity's obsession with this invention in particular was what killed them in the first place.

How the nanites work

The nanites are deployed through water and air. They infect their host, they head right into their reproductive system where they start building copies of each other and attach themselves on the reproductive cells. In the body, they can mask themselves and hide from the host’s immune system. When there are already nanites that fully colonized the reproductive system of the host, no “new” nanites can enter. The ones that colonized the reproductive cells lay dormant until it’s time for the host to reproduce. Then they will make a tiny mutation on the developing embryo’s cells, altering its development. Then they will again migrate to its reproductive system (once it’s developed) and lay dormant until the offspring reproduces and the cycle repeats. The hosts that can live with their nanite-caused mutations pass it down to their own offspring, the ones who don’t, die. The nanites can also adapt to their host’s anatomy.

It’s interesting how a civilization this technologically advanced could go extinct because of an obsession with their microscopic biological self.

I mentioned they can hide from the host’s immune system. That is not always true, the nanites were causing many lineages to decline due to them mutating their offspring, and so some clades developed an immune system to fight the nanites. But that is a topic for another post.

[Article text transcription:

First evidence of biological signature from the deep space

Rebecca Goldstein, Yumi Rei, Nia Alto, Michael Salzmund

Abstract

Roughly five months ago, multiple of our Long Range Biosensitive Satellites (LRBSs), inteded to collect data from the surface or Earth for fast biodiversity measurements, have detected unusual signatures of supposedly biological origin from an area roughly ~170 light years away from our Sun. In this study, we run multiple tests on LRBSs to test the hypothesis that these were data coming from an extra terrestrial object possibly populated by living organisms. We have concluded that none of our software or hardware has run into known issues and the data collected on the 26th of January 2063 by Reynold et al. were, in fact, of extra terrestrial origin.

Introduction

LRBSs have been created to precisely detect, isolate and distinguish various types of biological signatures over the distance of two to three and a half thousand kilometers, and are therefore very sensitive. With increasing distance, their precision decreases exponentialy, but their ability to detect and isolate these traces decreases less significantly. 

/.End article transcription.]

#speculative evolution #worldbuilding #spec bio #spec evo #speculative fiction #scifi #writing #worldbuilding project #scifi worldbuilding #post apocalyptic

[ideahat-universe]

Good Design, Bad Design: Baldidition!

That's right, I'm doing it again. An idea so nice I'm adapting twice!

This time I'm talking about Baldi's Basics.

I believe that Baldi's Basics is the apex form of what a Slenderman style game (which is First Person Survival Horror but that's way more broad than calling it a Slenderman-like) should be.

You have a simple premise, you have a map you can eventually master to optimize your routes, you have a series of random events that you have to learn to work around and a little bit of RNG that can either screw over a run or make it a huge success.

In a lot of ways it shares the same values Buckshot Roulette has. A very simple game with a straight forward ethos on how to play it effectively combined with learning how to work around RNG or have it work in your favor.

In the end the game the will only run you a couple hours. You can play it again but not every game is meant to be played forever and for the price of free it doesn't hurt to play a game that was designed just well enough to accomplish it's assigned premise.

It's easier to see how good it is when you compare it to Slenderman.

Baldi and Slenderman are essentially the same character. The difference is that Slender doesn't have any tells or animation. Most of his outfit is black and the environment is mostly black as well with the only source of light being the flash light your character has. You gather the papers and hope not to see him.

Meanwhile Baldi is always physically on the map and doesn't magically appear ever, you can hear where he is and how fast he's moving, and he tracks you based on sight and sound.

Additionally he has counters. He can be pushed around and his hearing can be jammed with noise.

But Slenderman is an old game that broke the mold. Someone doing something better based on it's original formula is just how art is made in general. Well, how about Advanced Education?

Viktor's Advanced Education plays a lot like Baldi's Basics but, well, it does too much. It's easier to get lost in the school, the problems are harder to do and while do you do the problems Viktor can attack you. Viktor has way less tells and his main counter is much harder to use than the counters that were in Baldi's and you have to micromanage the chef (and you can still get ganked while doing that as well). It also adopts more of a creepypasta tone when Baldi's is specifically a parody of a creepypasta game.

The developer doesn't understand that what made Baldi's Basics work is that it was simple.

It may have been a Game Jam game but Baldi's Basics is what I would consider an example of

Good Design.

Hey it's Baldi's Basics again? Not Quite. It's Baldi's Basics Classic Remastered.

By the way, this is the video that inspired me to write this article but unlike Flaw Peacock's video inspiring me to write about Who's Lila out of how good it was and how it opened my mind to what exactly Who's Lila really is.

Minaxa's video left me feeling like the answer to the question posed by the title "Why did we forget about Baldi's Basics?" wasn't properly answered. He said that the answer was simple and it was. In fact it was more simple than the one he gave.

The real, most simple answer as to why later versions of Baldi's Basics go basically ignored is that everyone moved on.

Baldi's Basics v1.2.2 was a done game and a complete experience. The various iterative changes made by the creator Mystman12 were never going to be enough to keep people coming back because the core experience didn't change and it is still essentially the same game. Minaxa made it seem like it was our fault that we just didn't have the patience to wait for the game to come out in it's true form and that we are more used to rapid fire Fnaf style development.

But uh, that's not the case at all. Indie devs don't live and die on a fast development schedule. You can just look to McPig for that.

This is Pizza Tower in 2018.

And here's the first version to be released on Steam.

Pizza Tower took a long time to figure out just how much Wario it needed to emulate and how much Sonic it needed to add to really be the hit it ended up being. Are we really suggesting that the thing that sabotaged Baldi's was that the first version was too popular and that people would like Baldi's Remastered more if they didn't pay much attention to the first version of the game?

Should I even point out that people played a lot of Amanda the Adventurer and Shipwrecked64 when their demos came out and people played even more of it when the full version was released?

You understand how I find that argument flawed yes?

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Baldi's Remastered is a bad game.

The mistake he made though was not realizing that the premise of his game was simple and he really just needed to move onto the next project instead of tooling it. That's a brutal thing to say but there is such a thing as putting a game into development hell by just feature creeping a finished project.

Again, Pizza Tower in the end had a lot of reworked and cut content from the game in order to finally release it and have it be a success. If Mcpig had the same philosophy as Mystman12 does, Pizza Tower would still not be done because he'd be working on making a third and fourth gameplay mode for Pepperman and The Vigilante.

Would that have been a really efficient use of his time? It would not have been, but that's what Mystman12 is doing to the Baldi series, in his mind he thinks there's more to add to the game to make it better but that's going to be the case with literally every project you can work on. By the virtue of being unable to settle on what a Baldi's Basic's game should be, Baldi's Basics Classic Remastered (and anything after that) is

Bad Design

#video games #youtube #fandom #baldis basics #memes #Youtube

[researchdive]

In-Person Learning Market to Witness Surge in Demand Owing to Rising End-use Adoption

Anthropological and archeological theories suggest that the main difference between Man and other animals is his ability to learn and grasp new things quickly. This ability is what puts our species at the top of evolutionary charts. Our brains are wired in such a way that we quickly adapt to new surroundings, find ways to utilize the natural resources that are available in those surroundings, and create conducive conditions to survive and thrive in new environments. All these steps require careful understanding and quick learning of new things. Though the first fire lit by Man may be a sheer stroke of luck, but subsequently he learned not just to create fire but also to control it to suit his own needs. Same goes for any technology that is used today- be it smartphones or space travel. Thus, learning ability of Man is what sets us apart from other animal species.

Today, our lives have been institutionalized, meaning every step of our upbringing is perfected by a certain specific institution. In this institutionalization, schools and colleges have been entrusted with the function of educating the masses. Since time immemorial, schools have been doing this job of educating their students by imparting knowledge in-person, i.e., students attend classes in the schools they have enrolled to get formal education. The global in-person learning market figures are a testament to this very fact. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has pushed through, among many other things, a new method of education- online learning. Though online learning has been around since a fairly long time, the pandemic-induced lockdowns have made this method a go-to option.

Request an Exclusive PDF Sample of In-Person Learning Market@ https://www.researchdive.com/download-sample/8578

Pro and Cons of In-Person Learning and Online Learning

In-person learning, to state the obvious, is a real-time learning process wherein students and teachers physically take part for exchange of knowledge. Such a medium of instruction has been the primary mode of formal education before technological advancements made it possible to impart knowledge through audio-video format, with the use of internet. Though online learning is gaining ground nowadays, both these methods have their own set of pros and cons. Given here are some of these:

Pros of In-Person Learning

Dedicated environment for learning

Schools or colleges are designated places for formal education. As a result, suitable conditions are created in these institutions which help in easy exchange of knowledge and ideas. Libraries or reading rooms in schools are good examples of such dedicated surroundings, which aren’t provided in online learning methods.

Hands-on Learning

Probably the biggest advantage of in-person learning is that students are able to get hands-on learning experience which helps in their physical, emotional, cognitive, social, academic development. Practical knowledge gained from hands-on learning cannot be replaced by online learning methods.

Better community building opportunities

In-person learning present better opportunities for building trustworthy relationships not just between students but also between students and teachers. A community feeling is developed and nurtured in a much effective way in in-person learning than in online learning methods.

Cons of In-Person Learning which are addressed through Online Learning

Outreach of in-person learning is poor

Many students don’t opt for a renowned school or college just because they live in a different city or far away from where the college is located, and hence won’t be able to attend the classes. Online learning solves this problem straightaway as a stable internet connection and a smart-device which supports audio-video streaming is all that is needed for this method. Hence, online learning, in a way, has been able to cater to the educational demands of students in a much better way.

Online learning is much cheaper

Since online learning allows attending classes and lectures from your own home, it reduces the overall costs required for completing formal education. Costs related to transport or relocating to a different city in case the college is situated away from your hometown are done away with, in case of online learning modes. In-person learning, on the other hand, is expensive for every stakeholder in the education system.

Request an On-Demand Customization of In-Person Learning Market & Avail 10%OFF@ https://www.researchdive.com/request-for-customization/8578

The Bottom Line

In-person learning is a great way of ensuring that quality education reaches to each and every enrolled student. However, it too has its own disadvantages. Investing in education-related infrastructure so as to enhance the outreach of educational programs can be a great way to kick start countering the problems associated with in-person learning.

#In-Person Learning Market #In-Person Learning #Online Learning #Online Education #Education

[is-the-bug-video-cute]

i'm super freaked out by tailless whip scorpions and camel spiders, could you maybe tell me some facts that could possibly lessen that? i wanna get over it

First thing you gotta know is that arachnids are not the cool kids of the arthropod kingdom. They're massive dorks. At best, they're the anime club of the arthropod kingdom. Huge nerds, all of them. And amblypygi and solifugae have to be the dorkiest of the dorks.

Here are some basic facts about amblypygi:

Like all arachnids, they have eight legs. However, only six of them are used for walking. The last two have been converted into long whip-like sensory organs called 'antenniform legs'.

The main function of these whips is to detect prey - when the amblypygi has detected prey it'll "lasso" the prey with its whips and pull it closer so it can actually grab it with its pedipalps.

Cave-dwelling amblypygi, which are non-territorial, also swing their whips around to make sure they aren't too closer to others. They're very neatly organized in the caves where they live because they all maintain the exact same distance to each other.

Some species are territorial, but what this really means is that they'll engage in ritualistic fencing matches that are meant to show off how strong they are. No one gets hurt in these fights because amblypygi are wimps.

When amblypygi mate, there isn't really any danger that the male will be eaten, unlike with spiders. But he still needs to convince the female to mate with him, so what he'll do is gentle scratch her pedipalps with his. If she's receptive, she'll let him grab her pedipalp, which he'll then "kiss" with his chelicera, before she'll let him mate with her.

The female carries her eggs around until they hatch. If she lives in a drier part of the world, she'll create a sort of pouch to protect her eggs from drying out. So amblypygi are basically marsupials.

When baby amblypygi hatch, their legs haven't fully developed and they can't walk. Their mom will carry them around for 1-2 weeks until they're old enough to walk.

And some basic facts about solifuges:

Most solifuges are adapted to a really specific environment - the desert. This means that, when placed anywhere other than the desert, they're extremely fragile. They're some of the most fragile arachnids you'll find.

Solifuges have these weird organs on their hind-most pair of legs called malleoli or racquets. No one knows what they're there for, but they gain more of them when they molt. They also have suction cups on their pedipalps.

Solifuges are a taxonomic mystery. Most species have at least 5 synonyms to their binomial name and every year some species are moved to different genuses and other species are lumped together and other species are split in two and it's just a mess. No one knows what's going on with these animals.

They're also a behavioral and ecological mystery, really. For some reason there are several reports of solifuges furiously attacking ants even though they don't particularly like to eat ants.

What we do know about solifuges is that they're really territorial, even when mating. If a male wants to mate without getting eaten, he'll have to induce tonic immobility in the female by gentle massaging her with his pedipalps. When she's sufficiently "hypnotized" to not want to eat him, he'll lay her on her side and do the deed.

Solifuge moms are good moms. They don't have the anatomy to carry around their babies, so instead they dig deep protective burrows where they wait for the eggs to hatch. They'll furiously attack any intruder that might hurt their babies.

Hexisopus is the best genus.

#ask #fun facts

[bookish-enneagram]

Anakin Skywalker | Sexual Type Nine | Full Profile

Basic Fear: Of loss and separation; of annihilation

Basic Desire: To maintain their inner stability and peace of mind

Superego Message: "You are good or okay as long as those around you are good or okay."

Focus of Attention: on others, on what is going on in the environment, and on avoiding conflict and achieving harmony.

Passion: Sloth

Anakin lived a life that was entirely for other people. Specifically those close to him; his mother, Obi-Wan, Padme, Chancellor Palpatine, Ashoka, and eventually Luke. Anakin was known for how much he loved and cared for these individuals, and in reality he merged with them and their needs. All Nines need to merge with something on account of their passion, which I will explain. Unlike a Self-Preservation Nine, who merges with physical comforts and routines, or a Social Nine who merges with the group, Anakin merges with specific individuals, like a classic Sexual, or One-to-One Nine.

We will start by acknowledging his greatest fear, and what drove him to the Dark Side; his fear of loss. Anakin had this fear going back to when he was a child. His mother was his whole life and, like any child, it pained him to leave her, telling her he’d come back for her. This sense of loss extended to Obi-Wan, Palpatine, Ashoka, and Padme. We see in the Revenge of the Sith novelization, which I highly recommend, how much he worries about Obi-Wan and Palpatine. With Padme, it’s much more obvious. He was willing to do anything, even monstrous things, to avoid losing her. This was a product of his disintegration to Six.

To start this section out, not all Nines disintegrating to Six will commit mass genocide and kill children. Rather this is a fictional event. However, the causes behind the action are definitely from his disintegration. At the beginning of Revenge of the Sith, he is at Level 4 of type Nine’s Levels of Development. He is accommodating to his friends and the Jedi council and somewhat lacks a will of his own, which we will discuss more later.

When he has the dream about Padme, he starts freaking out and goes into frantic action. The only way he’s okay is if she’s okay. It is unbelievably accurately stated in this excerpt by Don Richard Riso:

“At Level 4, Nines are busy accommodating themselves to the wishes and expectations of others. They put their own agendas on the “back burner” and comply with other people’s demands in order to reduce the possibility of conflicts. When circumstances cause their anxieties to increase, they may well go to Six and engage in lots of “organizational activity.” Like average Sixes, they attempt to stabilize their environment and their relationships in order to make them safer. They may get into intensive periods of work, investing their time and energy in activities they believe will enhance their security, and thus their peace of mind. These actions are guided not by positive intention, however, but by anxiety. They also begin to identify more strongly with protectors, supporters, groups, or ideas that increase their self-confidence and give them a feeling of purpose and direction.”

He works so hard to prevent Padme’s death, so far as joining the Sith, to enhance his security and peace of mind by having the power to keep her alive. It’s all guided by a sense of anxiety fueled by a fear of loss. Now, regarding his self-confidence. I believe what looked like arrogance near the end of the movie was part of his move to Six. He began to identify more with Palpatine and his beliefs and less with the Jedi. This gave him purpose and direction by giving him a sense of justification for all that was being done. As if he was doing the right thing. “The Jedi are evil”, “I’ve brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new empire”, and “if you’re not with me, you’re my enemy” are some examples of this self-confidence. You could say he even merged with Darth Vader.

Another extremely important thing to mention which I vaguely mentioned earlier is the Passion of the Nine. The Passion is one of the most important things in finding a person or character’s Enneagram type. For Anakin, the Passion is Sloth. This may seem odd, considering he is a human. But Sloth in this regard is an inattention to self, not the animal. Now, this plays out in various ways depending on the subtype, whether Sexual, Social, or Self-Preservation. For Anakin, a Sexual type, his attention is focused on close relationships, as I said earlier. He completely merges with those close to him and they become his focus of attention, not his own wants or needs. He does seem more willful and assertive than a classic Sexual Nine, but that is due to his Eight wing, which conflicts with the Nine in that it gives Nines with an Eight wing more of an instinctual drive, as stated below:

“Nines with an Eight-wing are more sensual and instinctive than the Nines with a One-wing, and tend to operate more on feelings and hunches. They tend to embody more the easygoing demeanor associated with Nines, but also give the impression of being more “physical,” more grounded. This is one of the most difficult subtypes to understand because the component types are in such diametrical opposition to each other.”

Darth Vader. The typing is exactly the same and I will tell you why. Nothing has changed about him. He just has no one, no purpose. He deteriorates to an extremely unhealthy Nine, specifically Level 9, and it takes him finding out about Luke to bring him back. Some lines from Riso about Level 9 Nines below:

“They disintegrate as persons into the most extreme state of dissociation from who they are. As we have seen, their receptive orientation to life has facilitated their flight from self-awareness. Now, they completely flee from themselves. In most cases, neurotic Nines unconsciously abandon themselves as whole persons, reinvesting consciousness into various fragments of themselves, each of which may represent an aspect of the self which has been repressed and denied and undeveloped. Memories, dreamlike trances, and emotional reactions seem to come and go at random. It is as though the very structure of the personality has come “unglued” or broken apart, and only its constituents remain to interact with the environment. To abandon themselves as persons, retreating into complete dissociation and fragmenting their personalities, is a “solution” of sorts, because then it is not really they who live but someone else through whom they can live. We have seen that average Nines tend to live through the other; now we see that they live through the other-self, the fragments of the self which are little more than the disconnected identifications and relationships with significant others from the Nine’s past. The core self has been so traumatized that it is as though in a dream without a dreamer. This can hardly be called living. Furthermore, because one of the subpersonalities can do harm to other people or to itself, this is neither a safe nor truly adaptive way to live. Moreover, Nines who so feared losing or separating from others have not only psychologically done so, they have also separated from and lost themselves.”

As well as:

“Unhealthy Nines with an Eight-wing are capable of violence with little concern about the consequences of their actions. Aggressions and id impulses are strong in people of this subtype, and when they are emotionally unstable, there is little ego strength left to regulate these forces.”

Basically, Vader lost who he was. It isn’t him, he’s broken and dissociated from his true self; the helpful, caring friend, mentor, and husband. His whole outlook changes when he finds out about Luke. He is given purpose again. He tries to have him join him and have them rule the galaxy as father and son. His last act is saving the son that brought him back to the light, and all of this makes him a pretty damn good character all around.

#star wars #darth vader #anakin skywalker #enneagram #enneagram 9

[chaoticevilbean]

Voltron Humans are Weird 4/?

"What the heck, Coran?" Lance's shout echoed through the hallways. When more, less coherent shouts continued from the Blue Paladin, probably directed at Coran, the other Paladins followed the noise curiously.

In the middle of the medbay, laying on the floor, Lance was struggling to get Coran's hands off of his leg. The Altean seemed to be trying to drag the boy into a healing pod, only stopped by the death grip the human had on a nearby table. It was definitely a good thing all the tables were magnetized to the floor to avoid movement.

"Coran, I told you, I'm fine!" Lance screamed at the alien. "I don't need a healing pod!"

"You shouted gibberish and didn't react to something shocking!" Coran countered. "For you, that's all that is needed to warrant at least a scan!"

"That was one time! We were in the middle of a battle!"

"You didn't come in afterwards!"

"REFUGEES NEED IT MORE THAN ME!"

"YOU ARE A PALADIN! YOU ARE DEFINITELY IMPORTANT ENOUGH AND YOU WERE DEFINITELY INJURED ENOUGH TO WARRANT PRIORITY!"

"GUYS!" Shiro hollered over the two of them. The duo froze, staring at the Black Paladin. Both seemed extremely hopeful that he would support their side of the argument. "What is going on? Lance first, mostly because this might be another 'humans can do weird things'."

"Coran and I were just cleaning the healing pods, and you're not supposed to keep using one of the rags if it gets to a certain level of dirty. So, I'm over here," Lance pointed to the left-most side, "Coran's over there," he pointed to the right, "and he's got the bucket we're supposed to put the rags in when they're done. And I just finished my rag, and I don't want to walk all the way over there, then all the way back, just to put it in the bucket. So I ball it up, toss it into the bucket from where I'm sitting, and shout, 'Kobe!' Coran turns right as this happens, and his eyes went all wide, then the next thing I know, he's tackling me and demanding I go into the healing pod."

"Coran, what's your side of the story?"

"Why aren't you questioning his side?" Coran asked instead.

"What d'you mean?"

"He claims to have thrown something from there to there and hit his target," the Altean gestured as he spoke, "and says he shouted some form of gibberish as he did, and you aren't challenging it."

"Well, sure, it's a bit hard to believe someone made that shot, but Lance has good aim. And 'Kobe' is what some people shout when they throw and make the shot. It isn't that strange."

"So Lance has been trained in throwing?"

"... I'm beginning to think this is something that has to do with us being humans and you being Altean."

"What is this about throwing?" Allura walked into the room, pausing to give both Coran and Lance an appraising look.

"OF COURSE!" Pidge yelled suddenly. The entire group turned to stare at her, confused. Seeing this, she launched into an explanation.

"We've already learned that humans are a lot different than most aliens, maybe all. We have high tolerances to things that are considered deadly, we adapt to new environments and temperatures with ease, we literally consider living with other predators that aren't sentient to be completely normal. It would make sense that Alteans..." Pidge paused for the drama, "...are like primates." Lance, Hunk, and Keith all let out noises of understanding, though Shiro, Allura, and Coran remained confused. Lance clicked his tongue, ignoring the weird looks he got from his alien peers, and instead started his own explanation.

"In the Garrison, we had an entire biology unit dedicated to the fact that humans are extremely unique compared to Earth animals. One of the biggest discussion topics was the one about how primates, our closest biological counterparts, can't throw things very well. But humans..." Lance stopped, jerking his leg from Coran's grasp, and stood. He grabbed a small roll of bandages, then turned sharply.

"Catch!" Hunk caught the roll, tossing it to Shiro quickly. The leader snatched it from the air on reflex, chucking it at Keith's head, who then lobbed it at Pidge. The motions quickly escalated into a game of hot potato, though there was no timer. Lance almost dropped the bandages when Hunk faked throwing it at Shiro again, before instead flinging it towards his buddy. The Cuban caught it with his foot, bouncing it up into his hands and launching it back at his bro.

The Alteans watched on, frozen in abject shock. They had been so sure that most of the Paladins had never completed their training, but here they saw that the humans could throw with extreme speed and precision. If it was something they all could do, then it was no wonder Shiro didn't question Lance's accuracy.

"When did you all learn to throw?"

"Two! Booyah!" Lance cheered as he flung the roll into the bin where it was meant to be.

"You are very skilled for having learned two decaphoebs ago. Or rather, less than two, given your strange times," Coran praised. The humans shared weird looks with each other, preparing themselves for what was about to happen.

"Um, Coran," the Blue Paladin began. "I didn't learn two decaphoebs or two years ago."

"Then what did you mean by two?" Allura inquired, curiosity piqued.

"I learned when I was two years old."

"You learned... how to throw... with speed and accuracy... at less than two decaphoebs old?"

"Yep. It's a little early, but my brothers wanted me to start practicing so I could join some sports when I grew up. Probably why I'm the sharpshooter now."

"How do you say that so casually?" Allura demanded. "It takes decaphoebs of experience to learn to throw with even a little accuracy. Alteans and Galrans can throw with some speed because of our strength, but even then, we cannot throw much more than a few meters. Coran can throw due to practicing since he began his training, but he misses a quarter of the time."

"Well, humans have the natural ability to throw with a bit of speed and accuracy, and we have a lot of activities that are based on that fact. Sports like basketball, baseball, football, ultimate frisbee, all of them require being able to throw. I learned to throw better at a younger age, but things like a simple game of catch is pretty simple. What we just did was easy because we aren't that far from each other and there are only so many directions that we'll aim for." Hunk shrugged as he finished his answer. He had been the most involved in that unit of the Garrison.

"You all can throw because of biology? Not training?"

"I mean, if we want to throw better, we still have to practice, but yeah, that's the basics of it all. Watch. Lance, go long!" Hunk tugged off his shoe, waited for his bro to reach a certain spot, then hurled it through the air. With a small jump, the Cuban caught the shoe and threw it at the ground.

"WOOHOO! I LOVE THIS DAY!"

"Lance enjoys catching and throwing things more than a lot of activities. Do it enough and he's basically a dog. I once literally played a game of fetch with him because he was having a depressed day. Perked right up and I could barely keep up for the rest of the day."

"Perhaps we should include throwing in our training, then," Coran suggested. The next moment, the Altean was receiving a hug from behind as Lance laughed ecstatically.

"¡Gracias, gracias, gracias!"

"What?"

"He's saying thank you. Lance, let go and I'll find a stick for you."

"Puedo ser humano, pero mi alma es un perro."

"Si hermano. Now let go of Coran." Lance did so, racing out of the room with Hunk trailing afterwards. Pidge and Keith followed, wanting to see if their comrade would actually play fetch with a stick, and Shiro hesitated before tagging along, not keen on an actual injury happening.

"Coran, I believe it is yet again time to update the guide."

"Indeed."

Humans have the ability to throw with amazing speed and accuracy, developed from a young age. They are born with a larger natural aptitude for throwing, and improve upon it as they mature. If the word 'Kobe' is heard, assume that a Terran has thrown an object and most likely hit their target. Some humans enjoy throwing and catching objects more than is considered usual. These humans are likely to be more proficient at throwing, and should be given many opportunities to practice their skills.

Terrans also sometimes participate in competitive games called 'sports' or simple recreational games called 'catch'. These are based off their throwing abilities, and often including passing a specific item between players via throwing. Do not get directly between two or more players, as, while humans will often change their targets, they may be attempting a pass at that moment and the speed at which they throw could cause physical harm. Do not distract a player for this same reason.

Both Alteans and Galrans would need to train for over twenty decaphoebs to be at the same skill level as many mature humans are naturally. For an example of this, a clip is included of the Paladins of Voltron, who are all Terran, playing a game of 'catch'.

#voltron #vld #voltron oneshots #humans are weird #humans are space orcs #humans are weird oneshots #earth is space australia #oneshots

[theramseyloft]

I revere pigeons. Their care and history is my special interest and they occupy my mind almost all the time. The knowledge that someone is deliberately hurting and neglecting ones they've stolen from caring, safer environments and people that were concerned for their wellbeing has me crying. Imagine being so empty as a person, to go so far as to injure a pigeon for imaginary internet points and attention.

I have been trying to work up the energy to write a post about this for weeks.

Christmas eve of 2018, my business page was contacted by some one looking for birds. 

In January 2019, he let slip that he was a minor, and that his parents were adamantly opposed to him having birds.

Minors whose parents are not fully supportive of their choice of pet are a hard no in my screening process. He kept asking questions as if preparing to care for birds he expected me to sell or adopt to him, and every time, I would ask to speak to his legal guardian. He did everything he could, from telling me his mom would call me later, to eventually calling my personal phone in the middle of the night to try and coerce me into sneaking him birds under the cover of darkness. I got to the point where I would only answer his questions about available birds with "Have your legal guardian ask me." About this time, Palomacy's head, Elizabeth, came to me privately to warn me not to adopt to him. I know she thinks breeders will do anything for a sale, but my screening process for babies I have hatched is every bit as strict as my screening process for rescues. I told her I had no plans to. But confessed that I’d had a troubled history of using rescue as a coping mechanism for an abusive home situation when I was in college, and felt obligated to mentor him. I was also taken in by the charming 'enthusiastic teen who really wants to learn' facade that he's so artfully developed. So, when he used a different name to get into the Small Scale Rescue and House Pet/Therapy pigeon discord servers, and let slip who he was by accident, I was content to let him stay, hoping that the information we share would help him develop into a better care taker. But more and more red flags started popping up.

One pigeon’s bare neck, claimed to have been a wonky molt, but inflamed and bristling with filoplumes (The avian equivalent of whiskers;thin hair like feathers that also fall out during that heavy a molt)

The same bird claimed to have eaten playdough and thrown it up, in a photo with a cage full of green, moldy poop. (Where did the bird get playdough? Why was it allowed to get far enough to swallow it?)

The same bird claimed to have coins and chunks of carrot pulled out of his crop (things a pigeon can’t physically swallow unaided)

In every progressive photo, the feathers are thinner and more bedraggled and the bird himself was losing weight.

That pigeon mysteriously vanished, only got him to get two more, and mention nonchallantly after the fact that “Oh, puff died last week.”

His new pet pigeons, who supposedly lived in their own room in his house, got out while he was moving a couch.

He got, and promptly lost two other rescue birds from the rescue I posted about late in the summer that was shut down by her city and urgently needed homes for their birds.

When told Great Lakes Pigeon Rescue was going to be warned about adopting to him, this is what he posted on my education server:

He had his eye on a bird of mine (Frito), talking him down like he was undesirable or unadoptable, and reasoning that I’d have a hard time finding a home for him because of his bad personality.

Frito washed from therapy training due to INTENSE dislike of his harness.

That, and that he had developed a strong independent streak and prefered the company of other birds to people were the first things I told Brysen when he asked after that specific bird.

In one channel of the server, he would be talking to me about how he didn’t mind Frito just being a pretty house bird and would be ok if he never warmed up to being handled...

While, in another, he would be posting harnesses, asking if they would work for Frito, and asking other residents how to make an independent bird get used to being handled.

When I called him on it, he came into my DMs with this mess:

(The turn around in tone in the 12 hours I was too angry to respond is almost funny..)

Remember that rescue from earlier?

These are screenshots of her conversation with him (used with permission) about the birds that were lost, sent to the person in charge of Palomacy, where he was an active member on their platform at the time, to warn that he was preying on rescues to get more birds:

This conversation clearly illustrates that he was using us and Palomacy only to adapt the way he preys on rescues.

There is a reason he preys on rescues. We are hopeful for people to improve. So he expects infinite chances from us. And he expects that a correctly worded apology will erase any consequences. He preys on pigeons because there are no laws in the US concerning their welfare. Despite being domestic animals (the pigeons brought by Europeans to North America had been domesticated for thousands of years, and there were no natives of the same species or even in the Columba genus to mix back with); Pigeons are under the jurisdiction of the Department of Natural Resources, which governs wildlife, and legally classifies them as an invasive pest. The Department of Agriculture is the one that presides over domestic animals and investigates animal cruelty. They may only act for the welfare of pigeons under the specific circumstance of the pigeons in question being meat breeds bred for squab intended for human consumption via restaurants. In any other instance, killing a pigeon by any means, including torture, is legally equivalent to pest control. There are no legal consequences for it.

After I blocked and banned him, it came to light through several sources in personal contact with him that he maimed, killed, and discarded 25 birds that we know of, and he is still trying to get more.

Several people who denied him birds shared screen shots with us proving that they were also sexually harassed and threatened with sexual violence by him.

Several of the people who came to us told us that they had also tried to warn Palomacy, but their comments were immediately erased.

Brysen was allowed to continue to speak openly on their platform with no consequences, allowing him to truthfully say that he was being mentored by Palomacy to lull smaller rescues into a false sense of security and convince them to give him birds.

They had two articles on their website about what a wonderful young rescuer he was, only taken down after they tried to claim I had doxxed an innocent child, and it was pointed out to them that their public articles had his full current address, date and place of birth, and a photo of him in front of his house. I had beef enough with the organization before this that I will not go into on this post, but I am disgusted by the way Elizabeth silenced her own admins and community members from warning other rescues and individuals and tried to shut the rescue up who sent the above screen shots when she came forward about the birds he tricked her into bringing to Ga who were immediately killed. And then blamed her for their deaths. @tutu.pigeon brought me those screen shots the day after I banned him and one of my server mods took it upon themself to be a voice for his other victims by creating the Instagram @exposing_helluva_duv What ever respect I might have had for Palomacy is permanently destroyed.

You cannot call yourself a rescue if you cover for a serial abuser, actively prevent his victims from warning the rest of their community, and then blame those victims for having been taken advantage of.

The harm that that, combined with everything else I have beef with, has done so out weighs any good that I can no longer, in good conscience, attempt to put aside our differences and meet in the middle.

I’m not gonna waste the energy to start any shit, and I don’t think any one else should either. 

But I’m done trying to be any degree of supportive to them.

Gonna put my energy into encouraging more small shelters so there are better options.

[destiny-smasher]

Life is Strange: True Colors

Leading up to the release of Episode 1 of TellTale's The Walking Dead game, I was working freelance for GameRevolution at the time, lived in the area, and had the chance to play a build of the game to write a preview on it. I remember comparing it to Mass Effect because, at the time, there just...weren't games of that subgenre. Of course, by now we've seen an explosion of this type of game - the 'narrative/choice-driven game,' spearheaded and even oversaturated by Telltale to their own demise.

Out of all of the games that have come from that initial boom, Life is Strange by DontNod was and still is the most influential on my life, but I also have always harbored really conflicted feelings about it - especially with how it resolved its narrative. Hell, if you're reading this, you're probably aware that I spent a few years of my life creating a sequel fanstory which I even adapted a chunk of into visual novel format. Hundreds of thousands of words, days and days of life spent essentially trying to process and reconcile my conflicted feelings about this game's conclusion(s). Since then, I've been experimenting with interactive fiction and am currently developing my own original visual novel using everything I've learned from both creating and playing games in this genre. It's a subgenre of game I have a lot of interest and passion for because, when handled well, it can allow a player to sort of co-direct a guided narrative experience in a way that's unique compared to strictly linear cinematic experiences but still have a curated, focused sense of story.

Up until this point, I've regarded Night in the Woods as probably the singular best game of this style, with others like Oxenfree and The Wolf Among Us as other high marks. I've never actually put any Life is Strange game quite up there - none of them have reached that benchmark for me, personally. Until now, anyway.

But now, I can finally add a new game to that top tier, cream of the crop list. Life is Strange: True Colors is just damn good. I'm an incredibly critical person as it is - and that critique usually comes from a place of love - so you can imagine this series has been really hard to for me given that I love it, and yet have never truly loved any actual full entry in it. I have so many personal issues, quibbles, qualms, and frustration with Life is Strange: with every individual game, with how it has been handled by its publisher (my biggest issue at this point, actually), with how it has seemingly been taken away from its original development studio, with how it chooses to resolve its narratives...

But with True Colors, all of those issues get brushed aside long enough for me to appreciate just how fucking well designed it is for this style of game. I can appreciate how the development team, while still clearly being 'indie' compared to other dev teams working under Square-Enix, were able to make such smart decisions in how to design and execute this game. Taken on its own merits, apart from its branding, True Colors is absolutely worth playing if you enjoy these 'telltale' style games. Compared to the rest of the series, I would argue it's the best one so far, easily. I had a lot of misgivings and doubts going in, and in retrospect, those are mostly Square-Enix's fault. Deck Nine, when given the freedom to make their own original game in the same vein as the previous three, fucking nailed it as much as I feel like they could, given the kinds of limitations I presume they were working within.

I'm someone who agonizes every single time there is news for Life is Strange as a series - someone who essentially had to drop out of the fandom over infighting, then dropped out of even being exposed to the official social media channels for it later on (I specifically have the Square-Enix controlled channels muted). I adore Max and Chloe, and as a duo, as a couple, they are one of my top favorites not just in gaming, but in general. They elevated the original game to be something more than the sum of its parts for me. And while I have enjoyed seeing what DontNod has made since, it's always been their attention to detail in environmental craftsmanship, in tone and atmosphere, which has caught my interest. They're good at creating characters with layers, but imo they've never nailed a narrative arc. They've never really hit that sweet spot that makes a story truly resonate with me. Deck Nine's previous outing, Before the Storm, was all over the place, trying to mimic DontNod while trying to do its own things - trying to dig deeper into concepts DontNod deliberately left open for interpretation while also being limited in what it could do as a prequel.

But with True Colors, those awkward shackles are (mostly) off. They have told their own original story, keeping in tone and concept with previous Life is Strange games, and yet this also feels distinctly different in other ways.

Yes, protagonist Alex Chen is older than previous characters, and most of the characters in True Colors are young adults, as opposed to teenagers. Yes, she has a supernatural ability. And yes, the game is essentially a linear story with some freedom in how much to poke around at the environment and interact with objects/characters, with the primary mechanic being making choices which influence elements of how the story plays out. None of this is new to the genre, or even Life is Strange. But the execution was clearly planned out, focused, and designed with more caution and care than games like this typically get.

A smaller dev team working with a budget has to make calls on how to allocate that budget. With True Colors, you will experience much fewer locales and environments than you will in Life is Strange 2. Fewer locations than even Life is Strange 1, by my count. But this reinforces the game's theming. I suspect the biggest hit to the game's budget was investing in its voice acting (nothing new for this series) but specifically in the motion capture and facial animation.

You have a game about a protagonist trying to fit in to a small, tightly knit community. She can read the aura of people's emotions and even read their minds a little. And the game's budget and design take full advantage of this. You spend your time in a small main street/park area, a handful of indoor shops, your single room apartment. It fits within a tighter budget, but it reinforces the themes the game is going for. Your interactions with characters are heightened with subtle facial cues and microexpressions, which also reinforces the mechanic and theming regarding reading, accepting, and processing emotions. And you get to make some choices that influence elements of this - influenced by the town, influenced by the emotions of those around you, which reinforce the main plot of trying to navigate a new life in a small town community.

When I think about these types of games, the conclusion is always a big deal. In a way, it shouldn't be, because I usually feel it's about the journey, not the destination. And as an example, I actually really dislike the ending of the original Life is Strange. I think it's a lot of bullshit in many ways. The setpiece is amazing and epic, sure, but the actual storytelling going on is...really hollow for me. Yes, the game does subtly foreshadow in a number of ways that this is the big choice it's leading up to, but the game never actually makes sense of it. And the problem is, if your experience is going to end on a big ol' THIS or THAT kind of moment, it needs to make sense or the whole thing will fall apart as soon as the credits are rolling and the audience spends a moment to think about what just happened. When you look at the end of Season 1 of Telltale's The Walking Dead, it's not powerful just because of what choice you're given, but because through the entire final episode, we know the stakes - we know what is going to ultimately happen, and we know the end of the story is fast approaching. All of the cards are on the table by the time we get to that final scene, and it works so well because we know why it's happening, and it is an appropriate thematic climax that embodies the theming of the entire season. It works mechanically, narratively, and thematically, and 'just makes sense.'

The ending of Life is Strange 1 doesn't do that, if you ask me. The ending of most games in this genre don't really hit that mark. When I get to the end of most game 'seasons' like this, even ones I enjoy, I'm typically left frustrated, confused, and empty in a way.

The ending of True Colors, on the other hand, nails everything it needs to. Handily, when compared to its peers.

If you're somehow reading this and have not played this game but intend to, now is probably where you should duck out, as I will be

discussing SPOILERS from the entire game, specifically the finale.

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Firstly, since I don't know where else to put this, some criticisms I found with the game. And honestly, they're all pretty damn minor compared to most games of this type.

Mainly, I just wish the whole Typhon thing was handled a bit more deliberately. It's a bit weird to do the 'big evil corporation' thing (especially when a big corporation like Square Enix occupies as much as or even more of the credits to this game than the people who actually MADE it?) without offering more explanation and subtlety. The game certainly makes some efforts but they're mostly small and mostly optional, like background chatter or a handful of one-off bits of documentation/etc. you can find in the environment. I feel like Diane in particular needed to be fleshed out just a little bit more to really sell us on how and why things like this happen, why corporations make decisions that cost people their happiness, security, and lives and they just get to keep on doing it. I think just a little bit that is unavoidable to the player that puts emphasis on maybe how much the town relies on the money/resources Typhon provides would've helped. Again, this is minor, but it stands out when I have so little else to critique.

I would've liked to get more insight on why Jed is the way he is. No, I don't think we really needed to learn more about his backstory, or even really his motivations. I think we get enough of that. I just think it would've been great to somehow highlight more deliberately how/why he's built up this identity overtop of what he's trying to suppress. Maybe even just having Alex internally realize, "Wait, what the hell, Jed has been hiding these emotions and my powers haven't picked up on it?" or something to that effect could have added an extra oomph to highlight how Jed seems to be coping with his emotions by masking/suppressing them. Also really minor complaint, but again...there's not much else here I can think to really improve on within the confines of what's in the game.

The game doesn't really call Alex's power into question morally. Like. Max has an entire meltdown by the end of her story, second-guessing if she's even helped anyone at all, if she has 'the right' to do so, how her powers might be affecting or expressing her own humanity and flaws...this story doesn't really get into that despite a very similar concept of manipulating others. There's like one bit in a document you can choose to read in Alex's 'nightmare' scene, but that's really it. I feel like this sentiment and how it's executed could have easily been expanded upon in just this one scene to capture what made that Max/Other Max scene do what it did in a way that would address the moral grayness of Alex's powers and how she uses them, and give players a way to express their interpretation of that. Also, very small deal, just another tidbit I would've liked to see.

When I first watched my wife play through Episode 5 (I watched her play through the game first, then I played it myself), I wasn't really feeling the surreal dreamscape stuff of Alex's flashbacks - which is weird, because if you're read my work from the past few years, you'll know I usually love that sort of shit. I think what was throwing me off was that it didn't really feel like it was tying together what the game was about up until that point, and felt almost like it was just copying what Life is Strange did with Max's nightmare sequence (minus the best part of that sequence, imo, where Max literally talks to herself).

But by the time I had seen the rest of the story, and re-experienced it myself, I think it clicked better. This is primarily a story about Alex Chen trying to build a new life for herself in a new community - a small town, a tightly knit place. Those flashbacks are specifically about Alex's past, something we only get teeny tiny tidbits of, and only really if we go looking for them. I realized after I gave myself a few days to process and play through the game myself that this was still a fantastic choice because it reinforces the plot reasons why Alex is even in the town she's in (because her father went there, and her brother in turn went there looking for him), and it reinforces the theme of Alex coming to accept her own emotions and confront them (as expressed through how the flashbacks are played out and the discussions she has with the image of Gabe in her mind, which is really just...another part of herself trying to get her to process things).

By the time Alex escapes the mines and returns to the Black Lantern, all of the cards are on the table. By that point, we as the audience know everything we need to. Everything makes sense - aside from arguably why Jed has done what he has done, but put a pin in that for a sec. We may not know why Alex has the powers she does, but we have at least been given context for how they manifested - as a coping mechanism of living a life inbetween the cracks of society, an unstable youth after her family fell apart around her (and oof, trust me, I can relate with this in some degree, though not in exactly the same ways). And unlike Max's Rewind power, the story and plot doesn't put this to Alex's throat, like it's all on her to make some big choice because she is the way she is, or like she's done something wrong by pursuing what she cares about (in this case, the truth, closure, and understanding).

When Alex confronts Jed in front of all of the primary supporting characters, it does everything it needs to.

Mechanically: it gives players choices for how to express their interpretation of events, and how Alex is processing them; it also, even more importantly, uses the 'council' as a way of expressing how the other characters have reacted to the choices the player has made throughout the game, and contributes to how this climax feels. We're given a 'big choice' at the end of the interaction that doesn't actually change the plot, or even the scene, really (it just affects like one line of dialogue Alex says right then) and yet BOTH choices work so well as a conclusion, it's literally up to your interpretation and it gives you an in-game way to express that.

Thematically: the use of the council reinforces the game's focus on community; and the way the presentation of the scene stays locked in on Alex and Jed's expressions reinforces its focus on emotion - not to mention that the entire scene also acts as a way to showcase how Alex has come to accept, understand, and process her own emotions while Jed, even THEN, right fucking at the moment of his demise, is trying to mask his emotions, to hide them and suppress them and forget them (something the game has already expressed subtly by way of his negative emotions which would give him away NOT being visible to Alex even despite her power).

Narratively: we are given a confrontation that makes sense and feels edifying to see play out after everything we've experienced and learned. We see Alex use her powers in a new and exciting way that further builds the empowering mood the climax is going for and adds a cinematic drama to it. No matter what decisions the player makes, Alex has agency in her own climax, we experience her making a decision, using her power, asserting herself now that she has gone through the growth this narrative has put her through. Alex gets to resolve her shit, gets to have her moment to really shine and experience the end of a character arc in this narrative.

Without taking extra time to design the game around these pillars, the finale wouldn't be so strong. If they didn't give us enough opportunities to interact with the townspeople, their presence in the end wouldn't matter, but everyone who has a say in the council is someone we get an entire scene (at least one) dedicated to interacting with them and their emotions. If they didn't implement choices in the scene itself, it would still be powerful but we wouldn't feel as involved, it'd be more passive. If they didn't showcase Alex's power, we might be left underwhelmed, but they do so in a way that actually works in the context through how they have chosen to present it, while also just tonally heightening the climax by having this drastic lighting going on. If they didn't have the council involved, we'd lose the theming of community. If they didn't have the foil of Alex/Jed and how they have each processed their emotions, we'd miss that key component. And if we didn't have such detailed facial animations, the presentation just wouldn't be as effective.

Ryan/Steph are a little bit like, in this awkward sideline spot during the climax? Steph always supports you, and Ryan supports you or doubts you conditionally, which is unsurprising but also ties into the themes of Ryan having grown up woven into this community, and Steph being once an outsider who has found a place within it. They're still there, either way, which is important. The only relevant characters who aren't present are more supporting characters like Riley, Ethan, and Mac. Ethan being the only one of those who gets an entire 'super emotions' scene, but that also marks the end of his arc and role in the story, so...it's fine. Mac and Riley are less important and younger, as well, and have their own side story stuff you have more direct influence on, too.

But damn, ya'll, this climax just works so well. It especially stands out to me given just how rarely I experience a conclusion/climax that feels this rewarding.

And then after that we get a wonderful montage of a theoretical life Alex might live on to experience. Her actions don't overthrow a conglomerate billionaire company. She doesn't even save a town, really. If the entire council thinks you're full of shit, Jed still confesses either way - because it's not up to the council whether he does this, it's because of Alex, regardless of player choice. Honestly, even after a playthrough where I made most choices differently from my wife, there weren't really many changes to that montage at the end. It'd have been great if it felt more meaningfully different, but maybe it can be. Even if not, the design intent is there and the execution still works. It's a really nice way to end the story, especially since it's not even a literal montage but one Alex imagines - again, her processing what she's gone through, what she desires, expressed externally for us to see it. And for once, the actual final 'big decision' in a game of this type manages to be organic, make sense, and feel good and appropriate either way. You choose to either have Alex stay in Haven Springs and continue building her life there, or you can choose to have her leave and try to be an indie musician, with the events of the game being yet another chunk of her life to deal with and move on from (I haven't really touched on it, but music, especially as a way to express and process emotions, is a recurring thing, much like photography was in the original game, or Sean's illustrations in LiS2). For once, a climactic 'pick your ending' decision that doesn't feel shitty. It's pretty rare for this genre, honestly.

I could - and already have, and likely will - have so much more to say about this game and its details, but I really wanted to focus on touching upon a main element that has left me impressed: the way the entire game feels designed. It feels intentionally constructed but in a way that reinforces what it is trying to express as a story. It's not just trying to make people cry for the sake of 'emotions.' It is a game literally about emotions and it comes to a conclusion in a way that is clearly saying something positive and empowering about empathy and self-acceptance.

Storytelling is a craft, like any other, and it entails deliberate choices and decisions that can objectively contribute to how effective a story is for its intended audience.

A good story isn't something you find, after all.

It's something you build.

#Life is Strange True Colors #Life is Strange #Haven Springs #alex chen #lis true colors

[theriodont]

Snakes

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by snakes. I loved their slinky, slithery movements and bone-defying flexibility -- and I was also endlessly frustrated by my inability to tell whether they had very long legless bodies or just very long tails attached to a skull, or what.

(For the record, they’re mostly body, with short necks and tails. You can tell by looking at where the ribs are in a skeleton.)

As major reptile groups go, snakes are a very recent development -- they’re younger by far than lizards, crocodiles or turtles, having only emerged late in the Cretaceous. They've been around for less than birds or mammals have, too -- and there’s a reason for that, as it’s thought that snakes arose in part in response to arrival of mammals.

The precise origin and development of snakes isn’t extremely well-documented, because snake skeletons are fragile and easily destroyed and so don’t turn up too often in the fossil record. What we do know is that the first snakes were relatives of the early monitor lizards, as monitors are the snakes’ closest living relatives, and probably resembled them.

Reasonably well-preserved snake fossils start appearing in the tail end of the Cretaceous, only a very short time before the famous extinction. These creatures still had vestigial limbs, often reduced to a single hind pair, and were burrowers (this in part counteracts the fragility of their skeletons, as burrowing animals are typically in an excellent spot to become buried and preserved and tend to be well-represented in the fossil record -- there’s nothing quite so nice in paleontology as a self-burying fossil). It’s not that clear what their ancestors were like, but they were probably something not too different from the modern-day earless monitor, another burrowing species.

That burrowing habit, specifically, is quite likely what caused the snakes’ leglessness. Burrows, as a rule, are cramped spaces -- digging is tiring work, so most animals make tunnels just wide enough for their bodies. This in turn means it’s a good thing to have a compact body, because it cuts down on how much dirt you have to move. Burrowing mammals, like gophers or ferrets, achieve this by having short, powerful limbs and low profiles, keeping their legs tucked against their chests when moving and essentially turning themselves into furry little tubes. They can do this because their high metabolisms allow them to support themselves on legs kept erect beneath their bodies, a stance that requires a lot of energy to maintain.

Lizards, with lower metabolisms, cannot do this, and keep their legs in a sprawled position. This is a problem for burrowing lizards, because it drastically widens their profiles -- and in turn forces them to either waste a lot of energy in digging wider tunnels or deal with cramped, tight conditions and toes that smack against tunnel walls with every step. The early snakes couldn’t pull their legs underneath themselves, so they did the next best thing -- they got rid of them altogether.

This of course begs another question -- if lizards has so much going against them in a tunneling lifestyle, why did they adopt it begin with? There are a number of possible answers, and it’s likely that they all played a factor. Burrows offer shelter from predators, weather extremes and temperature fluctuations, to begin with, and these would all have benefited a lizard capable of heading underground. However, the late Jurassic and the Cretaceous also saw a new clade of animals come along that was characterized by, among other things, extensive burrowing habits and a tendency to feature on the menus of modern-day snakes.

                                      “I don’t like where this is going...”

Where the prey goes, predators follow -- and a sudden boom in tunneling prey followed by a boom in tunneling predators is probably not coincidental. Even if the early mammals weren’t the reason those early lizards headed underground to begin with, they certainly encouraged them to stay there.

Later snake species left their tunneling origins fairly early and adapted to a variety of different environments, but their burrow-dwelling origins likely did a lot to save their hides during the end-Cretaceous extinction. Burrowing animals tend to do comparatively well during such events, as the ability to retreat underground lets them ride out the brunt of climate and temperature extremes.

Having a diet that mostly consisted of another widely-surviving group probably didn’t hurt much, either.

After the metaphorical dust settled, snakes did fairly well for themselves. They colonized most terrestrial habitats in fairly short order, and some reached gigantic sizes -- Titanoboa, a genus that arose five million years after the dinosaurs died out, is thought to have reached or exceeded thirteen meters (nearly forty-three feet) in length. The origin of snake venom isn’t really all too clear, but probably happened in the early Cenozoic as well. This was a major development for snakes, as it made them much more efficient predators -- earlier species had relied on physically subduing their prey, which was both less likely to successfully kill their prey and more likely to get them injured.

Snakes also developed very specialized organ arrangements to suit their lifestyles, although to rarity of preserved soft tissues makes these difficult to trace and time. Their organs are thin and elongated, and snakes have only one working lung, the right one -- in many cases, the left lung is entirely absent.

                    A slow-worm, which is neither a snake nor a worm.

The basic snake body plan is evidently a very successful ones for their lifestyle, because multiple families of lizards developed into it independently of either true snakes or each other. Most, like the ancestral proto-snakes, are either burrow-dwellers or live in thick undergrowth. Very few are as specialized as true snakes, however -- many have vestigial limbs, whether stubby legs or simply claws, and almost all retain two functional lungs.

Amateurs.

#palaeoblr #PaleoTalk #snakes #evolution #lizards

[ae0nx]

FRUITS BASKET S3 EPISODE 8 RECAP AKA THE KYORU CHRONICLES PART 2 (plus a quick recap of eps 3-7)

aaaaaaAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!! I gotta get it out of me otherwise I won't be able to concentrate on work and I will be scrolling through the tag till the day I die. Everything from episode 3 of Season 3 literally hit me like an avalanche - literally cos I marathoned 3-7 over the weekend which I wouldn't advise unless you want an accelerated heartbeat - and I'm starting to realise... maybe I just wasn't ready for season 3. Despite asking for it, haha. Not gonna put as many screencaps for this one cos tumblr editing bay be trippin and I just don't have time nor emotional energy to be fighting with the picture uploads, sorry lol

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Episodes 3 - 7

I spoke before about how (despite my feelings about the characters) the English dub VAs for Akito and Shigure pair up really well audibly. And I think I feel the same way about both Yuki and Machi's English VAs! They both have the same soft spoken yet scratchy element to their voices almost like they are holding slightly back. Although, I'd argue that Yuki has been losing the element of slightly holding back as the anime has gone on which I wonder if the same would be included for Machi's performance?

I really like the presentation of Machi's trauma through her family's expectations to be perfect and how physical it is? How Yuki kind of encourages her to let it out in a healthy way? (Btw the whole chalk breaking scene in the meeting was SO FUCKING SMOOTH. YUKI IS A NERD BUT HE IS SO EFFORTLESSLY COOL A LOT OF THE TIME)

The age gap between Isuzu and Haru for sure isn't the worst age gap in this anime/manga but it's still a bit... hmm...

Episode 4:

In all seriousness, I know Akito deserves some sympathy but it doesn't change the fact that I still see her as a villain. Hurt people hurt people but it doesn't mean they should get away with it, I was honestly pleased Haru got that big confrontation with Akito to tell her WHAT'S WHAT but it was also somewhat... merciful?

Hiro's growth has been so beautiful to see, him realising there are bigger things than him from the event with Rin to his relationship with Kisa to then the birth of his little sister.

Kureno choosing to get his hands a little dirtier and paying the ultimate price for it (as far as we know so far in the anime lol) was great, he is the moon side of Tohru's sunshine.

Shigure... I still don't really get him and Akito's relationship. It's clear he's waiting for Akito to grow the fuck up but at the same time he's not creating an environment for her to grow and develop. He's decided to go with the 'tough love' route which I'm still deciding whether I like it or not tbh. Sometimes it feels necessary, at other times it feels shitty. I respect that he knows he's a scumbag and I don't deny that there are people out there who take revelry in the fact that they are awful but at the same time, him remaining unchanging despite everything feels... unrealistic. But considering throughout this story he doesn't seem affected by trauma, it's understandable, I guess?

Also... that scene where Shigure ponders about whether he should've been with Tohru is THE creepiest creeper shit he's EVER done in this series. No. 🙅🏾‍♀️

Momiji is best bunny boi regardless of how tall and 'manly' he becomes. 🐰His scene with Akito was so authentically him and he really did that shit. We love him. <3

I love the way that the curse breaking should (on surface) be a happy event considering all the trauma the zodiac went through because of it but it's presented mostly as loss as well as happiness. It's the realness of getting out of a bad relationship

Shigure basically laying it out to Tohru how Kyo means nothing in a very taunting way was an excellently painful scene and I choose violence. It was heartbreaking seeing how worthless they all saw Kyo compared to how Tohru saw him but... by this point I was just living in the pain so 🤷🏾‍♀️

The story visually showing how Isuzu is more willing to be soft after her whole ordeal through her fashion choices (e.g. the pastels, the cardigans) was really nice. And Haru being happy about Isuzu making friends with Tohru was cute!

It was nice we saw that Kazuma was still wary about whether Tohru loved Kyo for the right reasons, you'd assume after everything Kazuma would love Tohru as a match for Kyo but he's so emotionally intelligent and also just a protective Dad! Yay, good parenting!

Tohru's confession to loving Kyo was amazing however I still adore Kyo's confession a little bit more. Just a bit. Lol. However, if you add the moment later in episode 8 it trumps it completely. Ethereal goddess.

Kyo and Tohru's grandfather having a scene together was great and nice

Now that I think about it, I wish there was more a visual link in the story between Tohru adapting her speech to imitate her Dad and Momiji adopting his Mum's German accent. Albeit for slightly different reasons, it just adds to the unique connection Tohru and Momiji have. In short, I'm seeing this ship with my third eye now. I get it lol

I don't wanna screencap the scene where Kyo is haunted by both his deceased mother and deceased Kyoko and potentially deceased Tohru because it's the stuff of nightmares. But, it was a wonderfully done scene. You definitely understand fully and clearly why Kyo buried all of that trauma under his hatred for Yuki (I CAN'T WAIT FOR EPISODE 9, YOU GUISE!)

If Akito is a villain, Ren is the final boss. Although, with her type of villainy... I feel like I can kind of enjoy a bit more. She reminds me of a Greek God in the ways she master manipulates people and her desperation for control and power (I just read 'Mythos' by Stephen Fry, it's a great read lol)

It lowkey feels like every female character who's comfortable in expressing their sexuality in this story is punished in some way for it... this is an incomplete thought

Shigure as a child feeling like they should all be pitied is so... mature... I feel like I need more of an explanation for why Shigure is the way he is

Akito's ego death with Kureno? Amazing. I loved that she was at least aware enough to realise how Kureno had been coddling her all this time but again... doesn't excuse her crimes

But anyways...

EPISODE 8

Honestly? I really don't have much to say about this episode besides 3-5 points I wanna get out of my head. It's not a bad thing at all, it's just that there's still a lot left to play out from this 'arc' and this season in general that I wanna complete my thoughts on.

But I'll start with this:

Lol, isn't it funny?! Isn't it heart-wrenchingly funny how the relationship between Kyo and Tohru has kinda reverted back to how they were at the start of the series? The coldness of Kyo at the beginning of this episode (and throughout) was a bit of a gut punch considering all the light and fluffy moments that we've gotten between the two since the True Form arc.

Talking about the True Form arc, I feel like this episode is somewhat a repeat of the same emotions, same trials of the True Form arc. Kyo still 'runs away like he always has' but this time we get him being the most honest and confrontational with his own emotions and trauma than he ever has been during the course of this whole story. While trusting someone (Tohru specifically) for the first time with the whole truth of his story! He always seems to move one step forward and then three steps backwards and while it's a tad bit frustrating, it feels very... real. I'll probably complete my feelings how this arc reflects the True Form arc when we finish this section of the story in future episode(s).

Considering the fact that 80% of this episode is Jerry Jewell monologuing as Kyo and I never got bored really just sells his performance. Kyo was being incredibly cold this episode and yet the range of emotions through his performance made it feel understandable enough for you to empathise with it.

BrattyKid!Kyo to lighten the mood 😹I still wish he and Hiro had more of a relationship, I feel like they could have taught each other a lot. Well... mostly Kyo teaching Hiro tbh

Kyo rejecting Kyoka for her honesty and kindness and then later rejecting Tohru? Oh... kid...

Wow, I felt so good about that whole episode of Kid!Yuki helping Kid!Tohru get home and then it's slightly soured knowing KID!KYO was running about the streets alllll night into the morning?!?! I really did feel Kyo's frustration at not getting that win to actually do something right. And the irony of that being linked to him being unable to save Kyoka from the oncoming car?

Honestly, I don't know what my feelings are on Kyo being unable to save Kyoka. I don't even know what my feelings are on Tohru pretty much pushing that aside in favour of her feelings for Kyo. It's... complicated and I've been mulling it over in my head for the last 10+ years hahah However, if I was in Tohru's position I think I'd eventually come to a point where it feels like it's too late to really do anything about how bad I'd feel about it. Kyo's intentions weren't horrid, if anything he was just being a scared kid and he's allowed to be that. I just wish Tohru had a bit more time to evaluate it but considering she knew her mother well and assumes that wouldn't have been the full scope of what she had said, I don't have much of a problem with it in general

Lol, I love when Tohru gets a 'FUCK YOU, I LOVE YOU' moment with Kyo. 😂Another reflected scene from the True Form arc... only thing is that this time... it doesn't quite work. 😕

(Again, I love how all of these reflections are resolved in later occurences in response to the duality but I'll get to it next week when it shows hopefully)

Laura Bailey only had a few sentences in this episode but she killed it as always. Comparing her performance in 2001 to now is just... growth!

Ok, so Yuki automatically gets Best Boi in this episode for meddling and chasing after KYO of all people. Showing how he's personally done with hating Kyo. Realising Kyo is pretty much the only person who'll make his mother happy. I think he also lowkey wants to understand Kyo? But, we'll get to that next week.

....Oh yeah, Akito is there.

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In total, I liked this episode even though it has me anxious for the next one. We finally get the full picture of why Kyo is the way he is! Ahhhh - a weight off all our chests, I'm sure. I kinda don't like that they put the ending theme at the end of these episodes - the joyfulness doesn't really match up with the intense theme? But, that's just a minor gripe. And hey, maybe they just want the audience to know... it's all gonna be okay :)

See you next week!!!

#fruits basket #furuba #fruits basket season 3 #fruits basket 2021

[kanohivolitakk]

Some ramblings about Memory and why I’m happy it wasn’t canonized

Honestly the more I think about the story, the happier I am that Memory (a winner of the Memories of the Dead canonization contest) was never officially canonized. And Im saying this as someone who absolutely adores Nidhiki as a character and would've liked to see more content of him, especially one that explores his psyche in a nuanced manner.

Before we go on a few disclaimers. First off, yes, I'm aware that Memory is fan-made and that some people see critiquing fanfics as bad, at the very least unless the author personally requested it. And I completely understand that sentiment given that fanfics are hobbies and the writers may not always want critique on stuff they worked on for personal fun and passion. Thing is, Memory was not only submitted to a canonization contest, but was one of the winners. The only reason it (and the other winners of the contest) weren't canonized was because Greg wasn't allowed to visit BZPower anymore (or had it to do with LEGO quitting Bionicle g1 completely in preparation for g2, don't remember tbh). In other words, Memory was this close getting canonized, and was only left out due to external circumstances. That makes criticizing Memory fair game in my opinion.

Secondly: I actually like Memory as a story. It's well written, explores Nidhikis character in an interesting way and has a really interesting theme of how some individuals are forced into roles they didn't want to by circumstance. I think it fills in gaps from the lore nicely (especially the ending). And not only does the story use Mimic (a Dark Hunter I desperately wish was used in canon) it characterizes and uses him rather well. Him acting as a pararell/comparasion to Nidhiki is a solid way to showcase the storys central theme. All in all, it's a solid story in vacuum. Even as part of the larger Bionicle mythos I do like some elements of it and have adopted them into my headcanonverse.

That being said, I have one major issue with the story specifically regarding how it relates to the greater Bionicle canon. And that is, giving Nidhiki a "my original teammates were killed by Dark Hunters and now I desire revenge" type of backstory doesn't work for his character and arguably makes him less interesting.

First off, I understand why the writer chose to do this decision, to paint Nidhiki in a more sympathetic light. In canon, Nidhiki isn't really a sympathetic character (or at the very least wasn't intended to be one, ymmv whether or not he can be seen as one). He is selfish and his reason for betraying toa Mangai boils down to desire for glory and self-preservation. So wanting to give Nidhiki a more sympathetic backstory in order for the reader to understand why he is like that and thus sympathizing with him makes sense especially given how Bionicle doesn’t really have that many sympathetic villains to begin with and Nidhiki is one of the few who could easily be written in a more sympathetic light without making his character worse thanks to his backstory being rather tragic and there being a few hints of him being a more sympathetic character than the canon presents.

Thing is, by giving Nidhiki a desire of wanting revenge against Dark Hunters, I feel the writer misses a major part of Nidhikis character, one that could be easily expanded on to make him a more sympathetic and understandable character: his pragmatic opportunism born out of survival instinct.

Nidhiki is largely driven by pragmatism and self-preservation, by making actions that benefit him. This sense of pragmatism most likely comes from him coming from Tren Krom Peninsula: a harsh climate where you had to be pragmatic in order to survive. Pretty much everything from his characterization boils down to this survival instinct, this desire to survive taught by harsh living conditions. This is the core of his characterization and something worth keeping in mind  both when trying to understand him and writing him. And while the writer of   Memory does understand this to some extent, I feel they only saw it as part of his character rather than the main core of his characterization and driving force of his actions.

While Nidhiki loosing his teammates does add more fuel into him not trusting anyone and developing this pragmatic mindset (something Memory does pretty good job showcasing), I also feel that it's kinda unnecessary. It feels as if it exists as this big push, this big traumatic event that shaped Nidhiki's mindset into this pragmatic self-survival we see in canon and I just...don't feel that suits him. It makes more sense if rather than one big traumatic event that made him what he was it was a series of smaller events, it was him living in a place with a certain mental climate that forced a certain mindset just so he could survive.

The backstory also feels that like it exists largely to give Nidhiki a history with and grudge against the Dark Hunters which just...doesn't make sense at all when you give more context into canon. Like, if Nidhiki had a grudge against them I doubt he would've interacted with Lariska the way he did in BOADH let alone agreed to betray his team, no matter how good opportunity it felt like. Well at least it gives him one more reason to despise TSO and his organization and that’s always a plus if you ask me.

However,the main reason I don't really like this is because it feels kinda cliche and makes Nidhiki less interesting than he could be. Like, it feels that the easiest way to make your audience to sympathize with a villain is to give them a tragic backstory of them loosing a loved one that made them bitter and cynical. It just feels like a cop-out, an easy shorthand. It feels such "been there done that" and does more harm than good for Nidhikis characterization, feels like its there to make him more sympathetic through tried and true means than actually trying to understand him and what makes him tick, and building up a more sympathetic portrayal from there.

What makes this all worse is that I do think you could make Nidhiki a more sympathetic character without resorting to cliche tools like that. And thats by focusing on expanding on whats already there: his desire for survival and self-preservation. While it does make him rather selfish, its also what makes him understandable and (for lack of better term) real. While we want to talk about how self-righteous and good we are, truth is that desire for self-preservation and survival is a driving force that can override (or at the very least heavily affect) our moral compass, especially if you come from a traumatic upbringing. And like I said, the harsh survival of the fittest nature of T.K Peninsula certainly was that kind of place where Nidhiki was essentially forced to adapt a certain mindset. It’d be cool to see him slowly develop this mindset from the environment he grew up in, to have whatever potential goodness and optism he once had be eroded through him having to come in terms with the messed up nature of the world. it would’ve made him much more interesting, sympathetic and tragic character than he is in canon, all while feeling unique

That being said, I understand why the writer did the way they did. Like I said, Nidhiki isn’t exactly the most sympathetic character in canon, and wanting to give him a backstory that’s easy to sympathize with is an easy and good way to do that. It’s also worth pointing out that Memory was an oneshot, so the writer didn’t have time to go through everything Nidhiki went through before becoming part of Toa Mangai and as such, it’s easy to understand why the writer choose to give one big event that changed his mindset. I also dont think giving Nidhiki revenge motive is inherently bad (I mean its basically canon he wanted revenge against Lhikan), nor is making him more emotional and not just a pragmatic opportunist (if anything making him emotional is more than welcome in this house). But I feel that Memory just kinda, changes his character in such a drastic way that didn't sit with me, at least not completely. It kinda makes him an archetypical "I'm aloof and refuse to work with others because I lost my friends against these villains" type of character. Not only is that rather cliche that's also not what Nidhiki is like...He's more interesting as an opportunist who became such due to the harsh nature of Tren Krom Peninsula rather than your archetypical edgy shonen anime rival whos aloof because tragic backstory murder.

So yeah, Memory is a good story but I’m happy it isn’t canon because while it was an interesting take of my favorite Bionicle character, it being canon would’ve done more harm than good for his characterization as whole I feel. Also you can make a character sympathetic without having to resort to “they saw someone close to them die and desire revenge because of that”, especially when it doesn’t fit to that characters characterization as whole.

#kirika talks #bionicle #nidhiki #kirikas bionicle meta

[whatudottu]

Alright so, today I learnt that Arburian Pelarotas have fur (it’s all the white, though it’s short), so aside from that cursed bit of information, I wanna talk about them, their survival and also in part Vulpinic Tortugans.

So, first off all, let’s acknowledge the obvious. Arburia has been destroyed by The Great One, which would’ve killed anything living on its surface, but unlike humans, surely the Pelarota are aware of interplanetary shenanigans, right? Official word is, the universe is huge and there must be some Arburian Pelarota around still, especially enough that even the worshippers aren’t all that shocked to still see one.

Taking an idea from @omnipedia inspired by one of their recent asks, I believe that, when people realised that the big tick was virtually impossible to defeat (despite the fact that Cannonbolt did just that), they had issued a planetary evacuation. Where did they evac to? Their colonies of course!

But wait, colonies? Let me explain.

In doing at least a little bit of research so I don’t pull an Omniverse and retcon anything, it seems as though Arburian Pelarota’s have been referenced as being Tortugans, demonstrated in a very interesting pop-up panel in Game Over. Now you’ve probably already noted that Vulpinic Tortugans share the common name, and and I’m sure you’re aware, these species are related.

What I’m getting at here is, if there is already a distinction made between Vulpinic and Arburian Tortugans, why not have other strains of family on other colonies? Sure, perhaps each of the species themselves has a different secondary name (a new evolutionary generation you might say), but given the information we have been given, I believe the common ancestor of these colonies were Tortugans.

Moreover, the wiki (at the very least) says that these Vulpinic Tortugans are more ‘primative’ than their Arburian, and assumably other colony, relatives. I wonder, does this actually mean primative, or does this specifically mean that their lives aren’t as pristine and civilised as the colonies, not because they aren’t intelligent, but because Vulpin itself is destructive to rules and it’s people need to adapt and change faster than a city ever could.

Alrighty, let’s walk through what happened.

Tortugans, one of the earliest species to engage in not only space travel, but even space colonisation in the known universe (ironically, the reboot supports this with the state of modern Arburian education), engage on an expedition to expand their territories. Whether it’s out of need for materials, desire for more land under their grasp or out of spite and competition (almost the least likely, but who knows what evolutionary behaviours are lost or gained from generation to generation), they spread out across their solar system.

Colonies with planets of similar biospheres as Arburia (or their original planet, if it weren’t Arburia) would’ve had the most success in adapting to the environment and have settled firmly on their respective planet. However, within this same solar system, Vulpin orbits, and the colonists sent to it had it hard. Maybe they had a mentality that prevented them from turning back, maybe something something colony ship crashed or just generally had no materials to safely maintain, but regardless, they remained Vulpin bound and colony unsuccessful.

Overtime perhaps the Tortugans had perhaps attempted to make friendly with the ancestors of the Vulpimancers. Maybe some had tried and failed to domesticate these ancestors because they too fell under the belief that they were merely animals rather than their own sapient beings with their own culture. Maybe some had succeeded, working to benefit the ancestors so that they may help the stranded Tortugans. With two sapient beings working together, the troubles of the wild lessen and the rewards of cooperation become mutually beneficial.

Remember what seemed to be an off comment about Pelarota fur? Yeah, apparently that’s sensory fur and with that, they can see without eyes. Do you know who else sees without eyes? That’s right, Vulpimancers, baby! Despite the implications that Tortugans are... well, turtles, it doesn’t mean that they are reptiles (it could just very well reference their shells). And that pop-up trivia? Yeah, it described that Tortugans were made to spin, as their shells secrete a chemical that reduces friction.

This means that Vulpinic Tortugans would probably not loose the ability to roll and may perhaps increase the effectiveness of their sensory fur. Who knows, maybe convergent evolution occurs and this sect of Torgans may develop specialised sensory organs as a result of their exposure to the Vulpin environment.

Primitive in this perspective may mean that, while reverting back to more animalistic and wild behaviours, the lost colonists of Vulpin have not lost their intelligence. Whether or not they lose the ability of sight due to the pitch black of Vulpin as new sensory organs increase effectiveness or consists of more rods than cones for nocturnal viewing, the planet of Vulpin was exposed to the concept of written language, the knowledge of the universe and the interplanetary voice that Vulpimancer and earlier generations never much cared for. Of course, the Vulpinic Tortugans were the primary users of the written language, but it’s typically etched or even akin to braille so that the blind Vulpimancers can actually read it, if they so choose to.

It had only been fairly recently that Vulpin has become an interplanetary dumping ground, you know, in the scale of the universe and general planetary lifespan and everything, but while the Vulpimancers are forced to change everything that their ancestors had to be evolved to do, the Vulpinic Tortugans attempt to the best of their efforts to reverse the irreversible. The remnants of their ancestors, the broken colony ship and the failed attempts at civilisation, lay amongst the dump, but knowledge can be found to those who are determined enough to uncover it. Vulpin may never be the world that it once was, but with the help of the long since evolved Tortugans, maybe a better, different future can be made.

When did this become a fanfiction? I don’t know but that last sentence had probably had its effect lessened by this comment so, woop. Anyway, I have quite a few thoughts about Vulpimancers, Vulpin and how they both are viewed in not-so-thinly-veiled racism... speciesism? At the very least xenophobia, but you get me. They’re in the Omnitrix for a reason.

#arburian pelarota #tortugan #vulpinic tortugan #vulpimancer #vulpin #xenobiology #vaguely #xenoarchaology #also vaguely #but i mean #i googled what the study of alien culture would be #and it came with that #so it’s here #again vaguely #xeno #i wonder how many people have that filtered #headcanon #ramblings #ben 10 #woops another different order #i reference other posts and copy their tag order #but i just so happened to reference the one that almost forgot the ben 10 tag #so it’s at the end again #after my tag rambling #okay okay i’ll stop now

[extemely-thoughtful-person]

Ignihyde: Dormitory Analysis

Ah, Ignihyde. The dorm founded on the success of the King of the Underworld. Many people classify this dorm as a place for shut-ins, introverts, weebs, otakus, and internet addicts. They say that the people here rarely interact with the other dorms. And according to Cater, he says that the Shrouds who run the dorm are more mysterious than the seven wonders of NRC (not joking, he said that during chapter 5 auditions). But is it's residents all it's known for?

All dorms not only follow a patron, but also the moral that the patron represents. For example, Heartslybule's dorm patron, the Queen of Hearts, was known for her strict rules. Rules that the students under that dorm admire and follow. Octvinelle is based on the "pity" of the Sea Witch. Basically taking the opportunity when someone needs help, and helping them and yourself. Scarabia is founded by the cunning of the Sorcerer of Sand. The students in this dorm are very strategic in planning things out. Savannaclaw is known for brute strength and force, Pomefiore is known for their heavy efforts (and is currently the most analyzed dorm in the fandom), and Diasomia is known for it's elegance and talented mages.

But what is Ignihyde known for? All the residents that are shut-ins?

I hate it when this dorm is treated like a place where people can go "oh, so he's a weeb? Just toss him in with the others then." I mean, come on! You can still be a shut-in or a gamer and be in a different dorm like Octvinelle, or Diasomia (Azul's a shut-in, and Lilia's into gaming). Plus, not every student in Ignihyde is an introvert! (Ortho is an extroverted curious little thing that loves exploring and meeting new people, so...?) So, what is the backbone of this dorm? If you ended up there, it was for a reason right?

To begin, let's take a look at a different world.

There is a show I like to watch called RWBY. They are currently on their 8th volume with more episodes on the way. But for now, let's look at their world's (the world of Remnant) kingdoms.

There are four kingdoms: Vale, Vacuo, Minstrel, and the big one, Atlas. Each kingdom has it's own reputation, location, and general beliefs. Just because they don't agree with everything doesn't mean that they don't get along. Vale is about excepting things for what they are, as they seem to be a mix of all the other kingdoms. Minstrel is about art, learning, knowledge, basically elevation to a higher form of society. Vacuo is about strength, survival, being a strong individual. But Atlas is about change, adapting, thinking outside the box, being creative despite the limitations.

The locations of each kingdom influence their beliefs. Vale as in the middle of the world, in a valley surrounded by land and sea with a few surrounding islands, basically a small variety of everything. Minstrel is located in a similar terran, but they're in the east, they're environment is more asian so they have an art style heavily influenced by it's surroundings. Vacuo was built in an Owasis in the middle of a desert that was destroyed overtime, but the kingdom still remains.

Atlas was built in a tundra. A cold desolate wasteland with no life what so ever. So your probably thinking, why? Atlas is called the greatest kingdom, the most advanced kingdom because of their military power and highly developed technology. But here's the thing, they had to be the best, they had to be creative and advanced, because in a freezing wasteland with no other forms of life besides the animals of the north, they had to adapt in order to survive.

Now back to the twst verse. What does any of this have to do with Ignihyde?

I believe that the dorm shares the same moral as the kingdom of Atlas. Ignihyde is about adapting, creativity, flexible thinking in an environment with limits. How do I know?

Let's take a brief glance at the dorms locations. All of them.

Heartslybule is located somewhere lush and green, nothing to fancy, but pleasent non the less. Pomefiore is almost identical except it may have a nearby mountain terrain. Savannaclaw is on a savanna, not a lot, but some trees and bushes here and there, anything that can survive. Scarabia is similar but in a desert owasis, most plant life is native, though it could be imported. Octvinelle doesn't have plant life, but it has lots of coral underwater so that still counts. Heck, even Diasomia has thorns everywhere.

Ignihyde is underground, where nothing can grow without sunlight:

There is no life down here, as it's basically in an environment where nothing is supposed to remain. It's next to a glowing river, which is probably acidic or something. But unlike the other dorms structures and buildings, this area has limits as to what they can do with little space, hence why the dorm is built upside-down. Ignihyde's whole design was specifically crafted to exist in an impossible environment. At first I thought it was designed to scare off intruders, but I guess that's a bonus.

But it's not just about the structure, but also the students. I imagine there's a rule of nature stating that magic comes from living things, like plants, animals and people. If that's the case, then that adds another limit to the Ignihyde Dormitory: their environment is barren of magic, meaning that in this place magic is weaker and in some points, doesn't exist on it's own. You could still cast spells, sure, but it would take a lot more energy, and have less of an effect. So how do the students cope with magic limitations? They don't use magic. They use technology instead. And because it's the only thing they can use, it's been updated so much that it's centuries ahead of it's time. Which is why their dorm is so advanced. I also like to imagine that all of their stuff is powered by the river that surrounds their dorm, and that makes sense considering that the river is the only other thing in the terrain.

If you still think that adapting isn't an Ignihyde thing, then there is one more important factor that can confirm that it is. Hades himself.

In the traditional story, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades drew lots to see what part of the world they would get. Zeus got the sky, Poseidon got the Sea, and Hades got the Underworld. I imagine this also applies to the Hercules movie. Hades was basically pushed out of heaven and into the Underworld. He didn't have the same things as the other Olympians did. He didn't have any friends, there wasn't a single living thing down their, and to him, it felt like he was banished. But what he didn't do was wine and complain, sure he took it all with a grain of salt, but instead he rolled up his sleeves and made do with what little he had.

You want a messenger like Hermes or Iris who can keep you informed about what you want to know? You don't get that, but you've got the Fates! They know everything, even the future! Board out of your immortal mind cause you've got no one else who can relate to your possition to talk to? Take up boardgames to take your mind off it all instead! Need a way to keep track of souls that come in cause you can't keep track of all 5,000,000,001+ entities? Boom! Build a machine that does the counting for you! Have to get something accomplished on the surface? Send your shape shifting imps to do the job for you!

See? Basically Hades overcame the challenges of living in the Underworld because he had to adapt in order to survive. Once he was stable enough in his domain, then he let his negative energy out on the other gods by plotting to overthrow them. Sure he survived the Underworld, but he still misses Olympus.

So even the dorm patron had to adapt in order to get through his challenges. Things like creativity, and thinking outside the box are things that are admired in this dorm. Even Hades had some creative power.

So to wrap things up, Ignihyde is about adapting, creativity despite the limits, and thinking outside the box. And it's about succeeding at doing it

#twisted wonderland #twst #ignihyde #twst idia #heartslybule #savannaclaw #octvinelle #Scarabia #Pomefiore #Diasomia #rwby reference #idia shroud #ortho shroud #lilia vanrouge #azul ashengrotto #cater diamond #disney hades #hercules #Ignihyde #i did a thing #twst wonderland #twst theory #Twisted Wonderland Ignihyde