#hyper-evolved human offspring

[star-trek-likes-vs-dislikes]

How about the salamander babies from Voyager?

[bestanimal]

Round 3 - Mammalia - Carnivora

(Sources - 1, 2, 3, 4)

Our next order of mammals is Carnivora, mammals specialized primarily in eating meat. A diverse order, Carnivora contains the living families Canidae (“dogs”), Ursidae (“bears”), Phocidae (“earless seals”), Otariidae (“eared seals”), Odobenidae (“Walrus”), Mephitidae (“skunks” and “stink badgers”), Ailuridae (“Red Panda”), Procyonidae (“raccoons”, “coatis”, “ringtails”, “kinkajous”, and kin), Mustelidae (“weasels”, “badgers”, “otters”, “Wolverine”, and kin), Nandiniidae (“African Palm Civet”), Viverridae (“civets”, “genets”, “Binturong”, and kin), Herpestidae (“mongooses”), Eupleridae (“Malagasy mongooses”), Hyaenidae (“hyenas”), Prionodontidae (“Asiatic linsangs”), and Felidae (“cats”).

As the sixth largest order of mammals, Carnivora is very diverse and exhibits a wide array of body plans, varying greatly in size and shape. They usually have large, conical, thick, stress-resistant canine teeth. Most species have eyes on the front of their face, pointing forward. They often have a very well-developed sense of smell. Some carnivorans have retractile or semi-retractile claws. Carnivora is separated into two suborders, Caniformia and Feliformia, with Caniforms containing canids and their relatives and Feliforms containing felids and their relatives. (Yes, even in taxonomy, there is a dichotomy between cats and dogs.) Caniforms have longer jaws and more teeth, with less specialized carnassial teeth. They also tend more towards omnivory and opportunistic feeding, while the feliforms, other than the viverrids, are more specialized for eating meat. Some carnivorans have secondarily evolved mainly herbivorous diets. They exist in almost every habitat, from the polar North to hyper-arid deserts to marine seas.

Male carnivorans are usually larger than females. Some species are social while others are solitary. Some species only meet to mate, some form family groups organized around a breeding pair, and some involve a single male or males leading a harem of females and their young. Carnivores usually invest a lot into their young, teaching and raising them to adulthood.

Carnivoramorpha as a whole first appeared in the Paleocene of North America about 60 million years ago, as small marten-like or civet-like predators of insects, lizards, and other small vertebrates. Feliforms and Caniforms split around the Middle Eocene, about 42 million years ago. The precursors to the living feliforms remained forest-dwelling, arboreal or semi-arboreal ambush hunters, while the caniform precursors were more mobile, opportunistic hunters.

Propaganda under the cut:

Canids tend to live as monogamous pairs. Wolves (Canis lupus), Coyotes (Canis latrans), African Wild Dogs (Lycaon pictus), and Dholes (Cuon alpinus) live in groups that include a breeding pair and their offspring. Wolves may even live in extended family groups. Living in family groups allows these animals to work together to take down prey larger than themselves.

The Domestic Dog (Canis familiaris) was the first species to be domesticated by humans, from the Wolf (Canis lupus), more than 30,000 ago when humans were still hunter-gatherers. Domestic Dogs have evolved alongside humans, adapting to better understand and communicate with us, read human body language and expressions, and smell human emotions. Both dogs and humans release oxytocin while spending quality time together, a sign of a strong social bond. Over 340 breeds of Domestic Dog have been selectively bred for tasks such as hunting, herding, pulling loads, detecting a variety of scents, protection, and companionship, with various breeds also filling roles in therapy, aiding disabled people, and assisting police and the military.

According to the Creation Myths of the Serer People, jackals were the first animals on Earth, and the first intelligent beings before humans, and will be the last. In some stories, the jackal is sent to Earth by Roog as a messenger, and in others as a fallen prophet for disobeying the laws of the divine. The movements of the jackal are carefully observed, because the animal is viewed as a seer who came from the transcendence and maintains links with it. Although believed to be rejected by the other animals and deprived of its original intelligence, it is still respected because it dared to resist the supreme being who still keeps it alive.

The Polar Bear (Ursus maritimus) is the largest land carnivore, with adult males weighing 300–800 kg (660–1,760 lb) and being 200–250 cm (6.6–8.2 ft) long. Females are smaller at 180–200 cm (5.9–6.6 ft) with a weight of 150–300 kg (330–660 lb). Adults may stand 130–160 cm (4.3–5.2 ft) tall at the shoulder. The largest Polar Bear on record, reportedly weighing 1,002 kg (2,209 lb), was a male shot at Kotzebue Sound in northwestern Alaska in 1960.

The word “panda” derives from the Nepali word “ponya”, which means “ball of the foot” and “claws”. The Nepali word for the endangered Red Panda (Ailurus fulgens) is "nigalya ponya", which has been translated as "bamboo-footed", due to the animal’s adapted wrist bone which allows it to grip bamboo. When the Red Panda was first described in 1825, it was named an English shortening of this name: “panda.” For more than 40 years the Red Panda was known as simply the panda: the one and only panda. However, when the vulnerable Giant Panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) was described in 1869, it was also given the name panda. Historically, there was much debate over the taxonomic positions of these two species, as they were both carnivorans that had adapted to a very specific diet of mostly bamboo. However, we know today that the Giant Panda is indeed a bear and not closely related to the Red Panda, which is the only living member of its own family.

The endangered Giant Otter (Pteronura brasiliensis) is a semi-aquatic predator of north-central South America, and is capable of bringing down animals as tough as a small caiman. Giant Otters live in extended family groups, and are highly social with each other, but extremely territorial of other groups. Battles between groups sometimes break out at the boundaries between territories.

Weasels (genus Mustela) have a behavior called the “weasel war dance”, which consists of a frenzied series of hops sideways and backwards, often accompanied by an arched back and a frizzed-out tail. The weasel war dance happens when the animal is excited or happy, and often occurs after they have caught or killed their prey, or are playing.

Ferrets (Mustela furo) were domesticated from the European Polecat (Mustela putorius) around 2,500 years ago. The Romans used ferrets to hunt rabbits, rodents, and moles, as they are specifically adapted to squeeze into holes after prey. Genghis Khan, ruler of the Mongol Empire, is recorded as using an army of ferrets in a gigantic hunt in 1221 that aimed to purge an entire region of wild animals.

The smallest carnivoran is the Least Weasel (Mustela nivalis). Average body length (not counting the tail) in males is 130 to 260 mm (5 to 10.2 in), while females average 114 to 204 mm (4.5 to 8 in). Males weigh 36 to 250 g (1.3 to 8.8 oz), while females weigh 29 to 117 g (1 to 4.1 oz). Despite their diminutive size, Least Weasels are still effective predators, and can take on prey up to the size of a rabbit.

The North American Black-footed Ferret (Mustela nigripes) declined throughout the 20th century, primarily as a result of declines of its main prey, Prairie Dogs (genus Cynomys). In 1979, it was declared extinct. However, a small wild population was discovered in Meeteetse, Wyoming in 1981! A captive breeding program was launched, using these ferrets, and a reintroduction campaign was put into play. Today, over 200 mature individuals are in the wild across 18 populations, with four self-sustaining populations in South Dakota, Arizona, and Wyoming. In 2008, the Black-footed Ferret’s IUCN status was changed from “extinct in the wild” to “endangered”. In February 2021, the first successful clone of a Black-footed Ferret, a female named Elizabeth Ann, was introduced to the public. She was cloned using frozen cells from Willa, a female Black-footed Ferret who died in the 1980s and had no living descendants. This exciting development opened the doors to a new option for introducing much-needed genetic diversity into the captive breeding population. Elizabeth Ann could not breed herself, due to a condition unrelated to the cloning process, but in 2024, two new Black-Footed Ferret clones, Noreen and Antonia, were also cloned from Willa’s frozen cells. Antonia has since birthed a male and female kit, and Noreen is waiting for a suitable match.

The Honey Badger (Mellivora capensis) is famous for its strength, ferocity, and toughness. It is known for being able to fearlessly fight back when cornered, sometimes even dissuading Lions (Panthera leo) and Spotted Hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) from attacking it. It often raids beehives in search of honey and larvae, and is unbothered by bee stings, which have trouble penetrating its thick skin. They have been observed to kill and eat Black Mambas (Dendroaspis polylepis). They are also highly intelligent, and have been observed manipulating tools and performing complex problem-solving. Despite all this, they are only dangerous to humans if provoked, and most of their reputation comes from their willingness to defend themselves.

There are three species of raccoon, and the small, critically endangered Cozumel Raccoon (Procyon pygmaeus) is the rarest of them. It is native only to Cozumel Island off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. It is estimated there are only around 192 mature individuals left in the world.

Walruses (Odobenus rosmarus) have powerful, mobile lips that they can use to generate high-powered suction. They do this to feed on one of their favorite prey items: clams. A Walrus can suck the meat out of a clam by sealing its powerful lips to the animal’s shell and withdrawing its piston-like tongue rapidly into its mouth, creating a vacuum. They can also use their mobile lips to whistle in the same way humans do!

The Baikal Seal (Pusa sibirica) is the only species of exclusively freshwater seal. They are native only to Lake Baikal in Siberia, Russia. The most recognizable characteristic of the Baikal Seal is its large, dark eyes. Lake Baikal is the deepest lake in the world, and has varying levels of light intensity. The seal’s large eyes allow it to take in as much light as possible in this environment.

The African Palm Civet (Nandinia binotata) is the most genetically isolated Carnivoran, being the only species within its whole superfamily.

The Jaguar (Panthera onca) employs an unusual killing method: it bites directly through the skull of mammalian prey, between the ears, to deliver a fatal blow to the brain. It does this with a powerful bite force of 1,500 PSI. This bite also allows it to pierce the shells of turtles and the osteoderms of caimans.

When Cecil the male African Lion (Panthera leo leo) was killed in July 2015 by Walter Palmer, an American recreational big-game trophy hunter, there was international uproar and a change in the atmosphere regarding trophy hunting. There was also worry amongst the scientists who had been studying Cecil’s pride that his cubs were now in danger. When one or more new male Lions replace a previous male(s) associated with a pride, they often kill any existing young cubs, to ensure that only their bloodline is produced going forward. However, Cecil had formed a partnership with another male lion named Jericho. When Cecil was killed, Jericho took over the pride but did not kill Cecil’s cubs, and also protected them from any rivals.

The Domestic Cat (Felis catus) was domesticated from the African Wildcat (Felis lybica) about 10,000 years ago. Ancient Egyptians revered the Domestic Cat, and families would take their dead cats to the sacred city of Bubastis, where they were embalmed and buried in sacred repositories. Cats eventually replaced Ferrets as the pest-controlling housepet of choice in Ancient Greece and Rome, as they were considered more pleasant to keep around the house. Like dogs, they have adapted to live alongside us, evolving new vocalizations, body language, and behaviors specifically for communicating with humans, and generally becoming a social species (the African Wildcat is typically solitary and territorial). Today, there are over 41 breeds of Domestic Cat, and they are kept mainly for companionship and pest control. Unfortunately, they have also become one of the most abandoned pets.

The Cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) is regarded as the fastest-running land animal. It is capable of running at 93 to 104 km/h (58 to 65 mph) in a sprint.

The Asian Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) is threatened by poaching and the illegal wildlife trade in Indonesia. They are captured for use in the production of kopi luwak. Kopi luwak, also known as civet coffee, is a coffee that consists of partially digested coffee cherries, which have been eaten and defecated by the Asian Palm Civet. The cherries are fermented as they pass through a civet's intestines, and after being defecated with other fecal matter, they are collected. What was once a traditional drink, made from coffee cherries collected from civet feces in the wild, has become increasingly commercialized due to international demand and curiosity. Now, to meet demand, Asian Palm Civets are captured, kept in battery cages, and forcefed nothing but coffee cherries. The civets in kopi luwak farms are kept in abysmal conditions which include isolation, poor diet, small cages, and a high mortality rate. Kopi luwak is one of the most expensive coffees in the world, with retail prices reaching US$100 per kilogram (2.2 lbs) for farmed beans and US$1,300 per kilogram for wild-collected beans.

In some countries, the African Civet (Civettictis civetta) (image 4) is threatened by capture for the perfume industry, as its pheromone civetone is often used as a natural musk. The Calvin Klein-brand male cologne Obsession utilizes synthetic civetone, making the cologne highly attractive to feliforms. Obsession is sometimes used in the field to attract wild cats to camera traps, and is also used in zoos and sanctuaries as scent enrichment.

Mongooses (family Herpestidae) are one of at least four known mammalian taxa with mutations in the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor that protect against snake venom. This makes them fierce and effective predators of venomous snakes.

The Spotted Hyena (Crocuta crocuta) lives in large clans which can consist of up to 80 individuals. These clans are typically led by females, though they can occasionally co-dominate with a male. Clans are run by a matriarch, and her youngest female cub will become the new matriarch when she passes. When a male co-dominates with a female or is otherwise able to lead, this is because the male was born to the matriarch of the clan and has taken the rank directly below his mother.

The Aardwolf (Proteles cristatus) is a small, basal hyena that mainly eats termites. Like other animals adapted for eating termites, it has a long, sticky tongue.

Carnivorans usually occupy a very important part of the ecosystem, and most apex predators are carnivorans. Apex predators can be considered ecosystem engineers, due to the huge impact they have on their environment. One of the most famous examples of this was the reintroduction of Wolves (Canis lupus) in Yellowstone National Park. In 1884, the state of Montana instituted a bounty on Wolves: one dollar per Wolf killed. Wolves were considered a “menace” to Yellowstone’s wildlife, and more concerted efforts mounted to exterminate them. The Elk (Cervus canadensis) population began to explode, and they grazed their way across the landscape, killing young brush and trees. As early as the 1930s, scientists were alarmed by the degradation and were worried about erosion and plants dying off. By the 1970s, there were no resident populations of Wolves in Yellowstone, and Wolves had been almost completely eradicated in the lower 48 states. In 1974, the Wolf was listed in the endangered species act.

Starting in January 1995, Wolves from Canada began to be relocated to Yellowstone National Park. In the years that followed, wolves brought the Elk population down and their presence protected the open valleys from overgrazing, as the fear of predators kept the herds on the move. Willows (genus Salix) began to grow larger, with an increase in size of 1,500% by 2020. With the foliage returning to the park, Beavers (Castor canadensis), Lynxes (Felis lynx canadensis), Wolverines (Gulo gulo) (image 1), and many other formerly reduced species began to rebound. Beaver colonies have grown from 1 in 1995 to 19 by 2015 with four active dams in use. The dams build wetland ecosystems, used by millions of other species. This is an enduring example of a Trophic Cascade: a powerful indirect interaction that can control entire ecosystems, occurring when a trophic level in a food web is removed or added.

Even though domestic carnivorans like the Domestic Dog, Domestic Cat, and to a lesser extent, the Ferret, are some of the most popular pets in the world, most wild carnivorans have been, and still are, unfairly demonized. Many species have been overhunted, resulting in extirpation in some areas. Even early “conservationists” did not understand the value of predators, considering it a boon to the ecosystem to wipe them out entirely. Bounties are still placed on carnivorans today, and many ranchers and farmers push to have them completely wiped out to protect their livestock. If you cross the border of Yellowstone into a nearby town, you must be ready to hear all about how Wolves are evil creatures who kill for pleasure, and are going to kill all the precious Elk. It is a constant uphill battle to reintroduce carnivorans who may have been extirpated from their historical ranges. Yet in some places, humans have learned to coexist with these important parts of the ecosystem. One of the best ways to support carnivorans is through ecotourism. Locals tend to see more value in the predators they have to share space with when visitors are both excited about and bringing in tourism revenue because of these animals.

[dakusan]

Hiii!!! Holy hell I love your Vampire!SKZ Lore ❤️❤️. I come back to reread everything when I get bored (I need help, I'm addicted. Maybe rehab or a psych ward lmao). I read your answer to that anon who asked about Vamp!Channie's baby (and it got me giggling and kicking my feet like a schoolgirl w/ a crush). Now it got me thinking, can vampires have kids? Especially with humans? Or do they need to be turned into vampires? I've read a few stories here and there (read: Wattpad), and one said, yes humans can; other one said, humans can't. So now I don't know what to think. From what I think, I don't believe that vampires can actually have kids. Especially not the turned ones. Maybe abnormals can but not turned ones (idk what to think about the normals). I mean, if you get turned, you practically become an undead; you die and then you get reanimated. If you die, all your organs die too and that includes your reproductive system. Do vampires even have DNA? 🤔🤔 And if they can, who do you think would be the best dad? And who would end up as girl-dads, attending tea parties and getting stickers put on their faces or maybe boy-dads who just end up troubling their mother? Sorry I rambled 😅😅 I just had an entire overthinking sesh before asking you. This was a lurking question I had ever since reading about vampires (can you tell I've lost precious sleep over this?) -XOXO (P.s.: If you don't already have a 🌹 anon, can I take it? If not, can you suggest one? Love ya! And keep sinning to turn us into sinners ❤️❤️)

WELCOME, 🌹ANON. You may now consider yourself officially rose-branded and kissed by crimson chaos

Now onto your deliciously feral question:

Can vampires have kids? Especially with humans? What happens? Do they need to be turned? Do they even have DNA??

Let’s answer this scientifically, biologically, and with enough unhinged magic logic to make your bones ache.

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CAN VAMPIRES HAVE BABIES? (Blood Lore Edition: Science, Magic, & Soulmate-Sex™)

Short answer: YES — but only under specific conditions.

Long answer? Buckle the hell up.

✦ NORMAL VAMPIRES

Normals were either born vampires or turned so early their biology adapted. Their hearts still beat. Their blood still flows. They don’t rot—they evolve.

🌙 Reproduction? Possible. ❤️ But only with their soulmate. 🔗 The soulmate bond activates dormant fertility genes. 🧬 Normal vampire + Normal vampire = Normal baby 🧍‍♀️ Normal vampire + Human = Normal baby (in this pairing, the Normal gene is stronger)

Without the bond? No baby. The body rejects conception—it’s protective. They’re biologically immortal, so reproduction is a sacred rarity, not a necessity.

➤ Normal Vampires CAN reproduce if they’re bonded. No soulmate? No sperm that works.

✦ ABNORMAL VAMPIRES

These monsters are born, not turned. Their biology is an ancient mistake—too alive, too magic-charged, too hungry.

💥 They don’t just want to reproduce. ✨ They’re evolution's cheat code. 🧬 Abnormals are hyper fertile with their soulmate. 🔥 Their body detects a soulmate like prey — then rewires itself for reproduction. ⚠️ But it’s not easy: their offspring is dangerous from conception.

💣 THE BABY BOMB (Abnormal Pregnancy)

Especially with a human mate, this pregnancy is insane:

7–8 month gestation

In utero power surges

Maternal biology rewrite (immune system, hormones, magic sensitivity)

Psychic bonding during second trimester

Painful, near-deadly delivery

High likelihood of mutation if emotional sync is broken

Vampire dad must stay magically linked to human partner at all times — think: constant blood-sharing, dreamwalking, even psychic sex anchoring during later months. Otherwise, the fetus implodes the mother’s system by accident.

➤ Abnormal + Human = Abnormal baby. (pray you survive the birth.) ➤ Abnormal + Abnormal = Ultimate Abnormal baby.

✦ BLOODLINE MATH ✦

Let’s do the breakdown:

Abnormal + Abnormal = Abnormal Abnormal + Normal = Abnormal (abnormal gene is stronger) Abnormal + Human = Abnormal (abnormal gene is stronger) Normal + Normal = Normal Normal + Human = Normal (normal gene here is stronger)

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✦ THE SOULMATE BOND ✦

What is a soulmate in this universe? It's not just romance. It's not just sex. It’s a biological-mystical key that fits one lock only — you.

In this universe, a soulmate is the only person who can override a vampire’s monstrous core.

✦ HOW DOES A VAMPIRE KNOW THEY FOUND THEIR SOULMATE?

It hits like instinct + magic + a nervous breakdown:

Scent lock. They catch your scent once and it seizes their lungs.

Magic hum. Their powers pulse and pull toward you — shadows shift, blood reacts, magic flickers.

Blood response. First taste = psychic flash. It’s not just your flavour — it’s your entire emotional record.

Mirror effect. Their reflection clears in antique mirrors. Your presence calms their glitching.

Control snap. They either go completely feral or eerily still around you. Either way: they are not the same after.

Dreamwalk tangle. If they accidentally enter your dreams? They can’t leave. You anchor them even in the subconscious.

✦ THE BOND — STAGES OF CONNECTION

Stage I — The Pull 🩸 They feel you before they see you. Blood sings. Skin prickles. The world sharpens around your presence.

Stage II — The Bite 🩸 First bite = flood of memory + addiction + psychic lock. If the bond is real, they taste the future.

Stage III — The Imprint 🩸 After sex + bite combo? Your bodies sync. Your nervous systems link.

Stage IV — The Bond Burn 🩸 Separation = withdrawal.

Symptoms: insomnia, blood-lust surges, hallucinations, emotional instability, magic misfire.

Severe bonds? They physically weaken without you.

Stage V — The Lock (optional but irreversible) 🩸 If they drink from your heart (your chest, closest to your soul)? That’s it. They are bound to you until death. 🩸 No other blood will satisfy them. No other touch will soothe them. 🩸 And you? You’ll feel it when they’re in pain. When they’re angry. When they’re turned on.

✦ WHAT HAPPENS IF A VAMPIRE LOSES THEIR SOULMATE?

🩸 Normal Vampire? Breaks emotionally. Withers slowly. Becomes dangerous to themselves and others.

🩸 Abnormal Vampire? Unravels.

Magic surges out of control.

Rage states worsen.

Their reflections distort permanently.

Eventually, they either go feral or… self-destruct.

🕯️ There are entire rituals to try and anchor Abnormals after soulmate loss. None of them work.

TLDR

✨ Soulmates are biological + magical + emotional keystones. 🧬 They stabilize magic, trigger fertility, sync blood, link minds. 🩸 Vampires can’t fake it. Can’t force it. Can’t survive losing it. 🦢 Vampires soulmates are like the Swan Soulmate Theory (I believe it's real). If the mate dies, the other dies.

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✦ VAMPIRE DNA ✦

✦ THE BASELINE: VAMPIRES DON’T FOLLOW NORMAL BIOLOGY ✦

This is where the fun starts. Forget every biology textbook you’ve ever read—vampires don’t follow those rules. Their DNA is a mangled cocktail of ancient magic, bloodlust, and divine fuckery. Vampires are not born from natural processes. Nah, they’re rewritten—every damn time they’re turned.

Their biology? Shattered and remade by the hand of magic. Cells? Alive forever, but with an appetite for chaos. Forget functional cells. These motherfuckers regenerate until the world burns.

✦ NORMAL VAMPIRE DNA ✦

Regenerative Magic: Vampires don’t die—they rewrite the rules of mortality. Any injury? Gone in an instant. They don’t age like humans. Time doesn’t decay them. Their cells? They regenerate. They never die, and they never need to. It’s like the ultimate life hack. Rechargeable bodies that never quit.

Sanguimancy Code: Vampire blood is alive. It breathes. Every drop is magic-wrapped, written into their DNA. When they bite? They’re downloading your entire life—your trauma, your memories, your darkest moments. Blood becomes their memory bank. And when they drink? They sync with you. That’s how they control you. That’s how they own you.

Enhanced Senses & Speed: Vampires don’t just hear; they feel the sound of your heartbeat from across the room. They don’t just see; they see the world like a predator, like they were built to react faster than you can blink. Their instincts are a hunter’s, honed to perfection.

Feral Mode Trigger: The rage? It’s wired into them. One wrong move and they snap. Their rage is in their genes. Their DNA fires off with an animalistic need to destroy. Bloodlust triggers the beast, and once that floodgates open, there’s no stopping it.

✦ ABNORMAL VAMPIRE DNA ✦

Born to Break: Abnormals are born with too much magic. Their DNA doesn’t evolve in neat lines. Nah, it’s a chaotic mess of god-tier power and magical overload. Their bloodline is unstable—an unstable fusion of vampire and divine traits, constantly rewriting itself, constantly tearing apart what’s “normal” to evolve into something greater—and far deadlier.

Chimeric DNA: Their DNA is a mishmash of pure magic, woven together with chaotic energy. Think of it as nature's biggest fuck-up—a dangerous one. Their cells don’t play nice with the laws of biology. It’s volatile. Always seeking power. Always burning.

Soulmate Sync: Finding a soulmate isn’t just a choice. It’s destiny. Their bond hits harder than any other vampire’s. When they meet their soulmate? Their DNA reacts. It syncs. Their bloodlines fuse on a genetic level. Without that bond? Abnormals deteriorate. Their magic spirals out of control. If you’re their soulmate? You own them—body, blood, and soul.

Magic Overload: The more magic they use, the more they consume. Their DNA can’t keep up. They’re powered by chaos, but if they push it too far, their bodies start to break down. Too much power and their cells begin to disintegrate. The excess magic rips them apart from the inside. They’ll burn out, or they’ll enter full-on feral mode. Once they lose control? There’s no going back.

TLDR

Normals? 🤷‍♀️ They’re like human 2.0 but with superpowers, immortality, and magic blood. They can have babies but only if they find the right person (soulmate vibes, you know?). 👀

Abnormals? 🔥 They’re wild—born with way too much magic, chaos in their veins, and are basically too hot to handle. They need a soulmate or they’ll go feral and burn everything down.

Soulmates? 🩸 The only way to fix the mess of magic and rage inside them. They’re like a magic on/off switch. No soulmate? Yeah, they self-destruct or go full beast mode. 😬

Next generation? 💀🎉 Either a cute little disaster or chaos in a baby bottle. Either way, they're gonna ruin everything.

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🍼 BEST DADS 🍼

Let’s be honest. None of them are normal. But some of them are stupid in love.

Chan – Ultimate Girl Dad. He’s doing ponytails and patching scraped knees between running a vampire empire. Knows the baby's heartbeat from across the planet. Would kill ten people and cook you pasta before dinner. Tries not to cry during lullabies.

Minho – Pretends he’s chill but literally memorized seven parenting manuals. Talks to your belly every night. Baby copies his glare at six months. Teaches them martial arts and ballet. He's both a boy and girl dad.

Changbin – A complete girl dad, always a big softie. Will be seen spoiling his daughter with little gifts while flexing his muscles and being the proudest dad in the room. Doesn't hide his fierce love but keeps it sweet and grounded.

Hyunjin – Puts stickers on his face and speaks to the baby in poetry. Cries at every milestone. Makes fashion runways out of baby blankets. Will 100% possessively growl at anyone who touches you post-birth. Mostly a boy dad, but equally spoils his little girl.

Jisung – Girl dad through and through. Obsessed with his daughter to the point where he doesn’t let anyone else hold her. Cuddles, messy hair, and playing dress-up is his vibe. Always making her laugh with silly faces and quirky dances.

Felix – You just KNOW he’s teaching the toddler how to make brownies, his signature brownies. Calls you “Darling” and the baby “Little Star.” Probably coos in multiple languages. Softest girl dad, loving with an infectious energy.

Seungmin – Deadpan dad of the year. Builds baby-proof blood ritual charms at night in silence while you're sleeping. Refers to diaper changes as “combat rounds.” Softens so hard when the baby yawns near him. He's a girl dad through and through, gentle and protective.

Jeongin – A boy dad. Super protective and intense, with a deep love for his son. Doesn’t care about gender roles—he’ll be in the kitchen baking cookies or playing catch. He’ll make sure his son grows up knowing he’s everything.

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Thank you for the absolutely deranged ask, 🌹ANON — you cracked open a rabbit hole and I crawled in willingly, teeth bared and caffeinated. This answer took me like an hour??? I don't know... it felt longer than that.

If your brain is broken now? Good. Mine was first. 🩸

Seriously though — thank you for trusting me with your chaos. You fed me, you challenged me, and now we both live in this unholy blood-baby lore dimension together. No refunds. No survivors. Only fangs. 🖤🕯️

Stay hot, haunted, and hydrated

[traegorn]

Whenever I’m feeling stressed about the political state of the US, I actually go out of my way to come here. It’s just incredibly reassuring to see levelheaded and pragmatic perspectives on things coming from someone I can trust to actually know how things work in the political machine.

Even when it’s a disagreement with the exact kind of person who caused me to feel stressed in the first place, the way you tackle it and explain things brings me a little bit of peace and makes things feel a little less insurmountable.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge (and a little bit of your peace, I know dealing with that shit so often is exhausting)

I try to look at politics pragmatically and without ego.

It's funny, I know sometimes I respond to these folks a little dickishly, but I always try to provide evidence -- and they never respond to it. They always come in hot -- and it's like, I don't go seeking them out. They come to me. They see someone promoting voting and take it as a personal attack and start out hostile.

I genuinely don't think anyone rational does that.

And we need rationality more than anything else right now.

Also thanks for stopping by so I can subject you to how I'm convinced that Dal on Star Trek Prodigy is secretly a Lizard Baby.

So Dal R'El apparently grew up in the Delta Quadrant, and they want us to believe that Dal is a human augment. We know he spent time with the Ferengi DaiMon Nandi, but we don't know exactly when he met her or where.

When Dal gets scanned by the Federation, we know that the Federation database says he's a human augment, and that his base DNA is human mixed with a whole lot of other species. But we've seen augments before, and none of them look like Dal. We don't know what supposed lab he was cooked up in.

So this is what I think happened.

Threshold takes place about eleven years before Prodigy, and while Dal appears to be like 17, we don't know for sure how old he is. I think Dal was one of the Lizard Babies left behind by Voyager. We don't know how long it takes for them to mature, or if they have other life stages. The only adults we see are Janeway and Paris, and they were only hyper-evolved humans for like a day.

Dal somehow got taken from the planet by Nandi, and grew up into the version we get to know in Prodigy.

I think Janeway was worried that one day her offspring would be found, so she took the hyper evolved DNA samples the Doctor likely kept, and faked records in the Federation Database to make them come back as Augmented Human to cover up that she technically left a bunch of baby humans on a planet in the Delta quadrant.

That's why Janeway is so protective of Dal when she meets him. She knows he's her kid. It's also why Dal's personality is a perfect balance between Janeway and Tom Paris. He is their hyper-evolved ideal.

Dal's a fuckin' Lizard Baby, I swear to god.

[karmicgold]

𝘾𝙊𝙎𝙈𝙄𝘾 𝙄𝙈𝙋𝙊𝙍𝙏𝘼𝙉𝘾𝙀 : assimilates a textual approach about ADAM WARLOCK's parcel & significance / power concentration / transgenic origination and adaptation.

𝘿𝙄𝙎𝘾𝙇𝘼𝙄𝙈𝙀𝙍 : this meta offers no importance surrounding anything scientific, other than beyond the definition of a word. most of the things described is purely hinted from out of character discussion and themed after conversation from another muse. this isn’t aimed to dispute his comic origination, rather an indulgent extension of his character and try to contextualize some things that are never clarified.

ADAM WARLOCK is the offspring of transgenic creation. since he is already confirmed to be a genetically engineered human — these yield modifications to his natural genetic makeup. this is consistent with the definition of a transgenic being, which is an organism that has had its genetic material altered through the introduction of a foreign gene or genes. this can be another motif explaining how in - tune adam is with all life that surrounds him, able to revert a beast back to it’s quad legged roots.

𝟏.   ⟢ the prime time ADAM was created was during the most recent events of scientists studying genetic engineering and successfully curating one. being a prototype, his genes mainly consisted of genes from homo sapients ( 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘀 ; 𝘄𝗶𝘀𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗻 ), and other unknown foreign factors ( 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗯𝗹𝘆 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀’ 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗵 ; 𝗯𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗿 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 ).                  / .    the WARLOCK’s genetic structure has given him bone and muscle tissue that are denser than a normal human, along with superhuman strength, stamina, durability, agility, and reflexes. his growing brain organoid houses multi-compartmental knowledge that grants him cosmic awareness. scientists perhaps didn’t expect this certain organ to mature faster than any human or organism thereof, including unworldly significance.

ADAM has showcased to evolve and presumably make use of his foreign genetic makeup to FORCE change. not through natural selection, but forcibly. recently, with every rebirth, it’s been said evolution now takes place when the universe most needs him. this acts like stimuli as adam would be considered the fastest evolving ‘species’ known to exist. maturing faster at any rate, but all must be within several weeks — years undisturbed.

𝟐.   ⟢ his body adapts to forces that endanger him. like all genetic mutations, an organism combats ways to survive longer and refute their threats. whether physically altering their bodies or the subtle change in color.ADAM is the same way. his body is constantly a hyper vigilant organic matter, aware of what’s going on externally. it’s would even forcibly protect ADAM's body from harm with force-cocooning.                  / .    there’s also passive traits his body is able to unexplainably do; like creating clothing and artifacts that act as weaponry. and due to various evolution, he no longer needs the Soul Gem's power, as he learns how to control metaphysical quantum energy, also known as magic, which gives him the ability to manipulate matter, energy, and souls, and to teleport.

𝙀𝙓𝘾𝙇𝙐𝙎𝙄𝙑𝙀 :

   ⟢    ( 𝗼𝗯𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 ) — cassette necklace : no item of empowerment or protection. classified as a cherished memento from peter j. quill, alias: star-lord, former king of 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙎𝙥𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙖𝙭 𝙀𝙢𝙥𝙞𝙧𝙚. offspring of the celestial ego and human woman from missouri, earth.                  / .    ( 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 ) tagged mental: a gift of genuine trust and affection. what humans may describe it as emotional vulnerability. stored in the WARLOCK’s subspace. ( @kingspartax ).    ⟢    ( 𝗼𝗯𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 ) — karmic staff : item of empowerment and protection. a durable weapon crafted directly from adam’s genetic material, it evolves in tandem with his body.                  / .    ( 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 ) tagged physical: harnesses and focuses metaphysical quantum magic. helps disperse it throughout his body equally without causing discomfort and over suffusing of unused energy. occasionally stored in WARLOCK’s subspace or held in hand.    ⟢    ( 𝗼𝗯𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 ) — eddie’s walkman : no item of empowerment or protection. formerly owned by the deceased eddie roberts and gifted to adam. contains a limited amount of songs stored in the tape already wedged within it.                  / .    ( 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 ) tagged mental: item is served as a preservation of eddie’s life and stored in ADAM's subspace.    ⟢    ( 𝗼𝗯𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 ) — soul gem : an item wedged upon his forehead by the high evolutionary during ADAM's discovery of self. this wrought various challenges and benefits in his life.                  / .    ( 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 ) tagged mental / physical: alters ADAM's ethical and moral behavior and values. whether for or against him. empowers his abilities further. enhanced his mind through permanent bonding. now stored in ADAM's subspace unless needed.

[puppetmaster13u]

Will add more later but like. A/B/O worlds never made sense to me. Like there’s no way, at least how most people have it, that things would evolve that way. It makes no sense, there’s no advantages of evolving to be practically useless for however long or be hyper aggressive with each other. Like even in wolves, which is what the thing was based on, aren’t like that. Wolves don’t even have ‘alphas’ or ‘omegas’, that was based off of a bunch of captive wolves that were stuck in the same enclosure, which is why they fought. Most packs are actually a pair of parents and their offspring. So really in humans it wouldn’t be like the BS stories have it as, it just doesn’t make any sense. Even in the beginning humans wouldn’t really start to evolve into castes or whatever, or we already would’ve. So what if it wasn’t a natural thing. 

So. A/B/O world, but it’s like a bacterial infection. Aka, spreads through bites, not unlike a zombie virus or rabies. ‘Betas’ are simply asymptomatic carriers. Omegas and Alphas are two strands of the infection, one slightly more outright aggressive and the other more like an ambush predator.  With it being similar to rabies, there’s also a surprisingly large miss ratio for infection. Unless it’s similar to a komodo dragon, which while does have venom also has a mouthful of bacteria. Which would increase the chance of infection should an uninfected get bitten by any of them. 

Different infections IRL can even influence the way chemicals are released in the brain, which could be a reason for some having a more irritable temperament during parts of the year. But again, a majority of ABO stories just don’t make sense and aren’t even written well or anything. Which is just annoying. I may rant more later but for now I am going to bed.

[unpickled-olive]

This fits into the whole social darwinist dialogue where people say "survival of the fittest" means being a selfish asshole, having big muscles, acting like an "alpha" (see point one).

In fact, we are "fittest" when we cooperate. Humans found their niche in being hyper-social creatures. You don't evolve something as complex as language to role play as an "alpha wolf" or silverback gorilla, where angry grunting will suffice.

So instead of fighting over kills, hoarding resources, killing rivals' offspring, humans tended to thrive when we were hunting and gathering in groups, coordinating resources, adopting and grandparenting.

Also, fun fact about sleep defense mechanisms: anthropologists believe our varying sleep patterns do exactly that. The fact that there are morning people and night people is all the defense we need because it guaranteed that someone would almost always be awake at some point and able to sound the alarm if there was danger:

A recent study of a modern-day hunter-gatherer tribe found that during a three-week period, there were only 18 minutes during which all of the 33 tribe members were asleep simultaneously.

In short, our sleep defense mechanism is cooperation and diversity.

Despite approximately 200,000 years of evolution, humans are still completely vulnerable while they sleep and lack any sort of defensive mechanism.

[tekknonerd]

Broke: the Voth in voyager were descended from hadrosaurs who evolved on a small island on Earth, which they never left, detected the asteroid due to hit the planet, developed space flight, and went off into the delta quadrant and evolved into the saurian species with hyper-advanced technology.

Woke: Tom's trip with Janeway in threshold actually included an element of time travel which voyager was able to detect, track, and replicate. Tom and Janeway's offspring eventually evolved into the Voth, which is why the race have so many common genetic markers with humans.

[blackwoolncrown]

The Illusion Of Separation* > Whiteness > Capitalism > Hyper-Individualism

They are all the same.

*(beginning most notably with the English subjugating the Welsh & Irish. From this first mistaking one’s own for other, and thus harm done to another as being somehow separate from harm done to the self, in a case wherein the people live in the same place and look more or less very similar, this act of separation replicated in increasing acts of other-attacking violence based on the grounds that the other people are not, in fact, truly ‘people’. If it was possible to be English and see Welsh and Irish people as subhuman, inferior, then it became increasingly plausible to these ailing minds that people who varied even more in culture, appearance or dialect were even more subhuman. However, in doing so, they assaulted the overall Culture of Humanity and like any biodiverse system of beings, this created increased disruption and death.

This delusional concept of the Dispensable Other and supremacy of the individual self is actually a symptom of a larger disorder and not the cause alone; the first cognitive omission is of that which is always seen and so taken for granted, always heard and so drowned out, always felt and so ignored: the Earth.

Those who cannot cognitively ‘see’ themselves as part of this thing too large to physically see become obsessed with trying to triangulate themselves in their now groundless reality via ever desperate acts of self-ideation, attaching to fixed conceptual identities rather than identifying as that which experiences its location on earth in the present.

They struggle forever to ascertain some manner of ‘order’ within human systems because the universe is in its own way, orderly, and so is the human mind. Yet because they cannot see the ‘order’ (to be understood here not as a hierarchy, but as a Correct Interrelation; balance) already inherent- that of the human relating to the Earth, and the human relating to all things of the Earth, this mind, with its narrow fixation on human activity as comprising the Entire World, thus projects into human society the need and addiction to control and order they feel is missing from their worldly experience.

In short, what our Earth suffers from at the hands of human societies suffering at the hands of Fascists, Capitalists, White Supremacists-- all exactly the same in ideology-- are the offspring malignant Ego. There is nothing wrong with the Ego in its place, but a person who ceases to see others as also human, as other beings as also mattering, as the Earth around them as irreplacable and central to experience, this person has placed themselves over all things, this is an Ego asserting itself in its modus operandi as over all creation.

And this mindset is nothing but an extension of our absolutely basest survival drives- the fear-motivated self-preservation mode of It’s Me Or You. This mindset is not evolved or adapted to the comfort and success it is driven like all intelligent beings to attain, and will always upset peace wherever it goes, because it fears vulnerability among all things and thus knows no real enjoyment, only thrill.

[akon-just-akon]

Oni [pt1]

[i s2g most of this relates to incoming hcs... probabaly]

If Kubo-sensei’s world can have a giant fox tribe, I’m saying it has oni. I’m sticking with the traditional Japanese portrayal (big, dumb, strong, horns, red or blue, tiger prints, clubs, etc) to a certain point then expanding it.

First of all, the traditional portrayal reflects the way oni used to be. The horns and brute strength remain, maybe with a tendency toward favoring clubs and tiger prints, but mostly they’ve evolved to be hyper-intelligent, hyper-violent organism. They are considered a threat to Soul Society and are forbidden from leaving hell. This is part of their role as punishers of sinners often portrayed in traditional Japanese oni lore. It works out anyway because an oni’s diet consists of mostly souls. The souls in hell taste horrible but there are a lot available.

Many low-level hollows migrate in herds. Most of the time they go back and forth between hell and Hueco Mundo, but certain cursed years when the borders between worlds get thinner in places, they briefly pass through both the world of the living and Soul Society. Oni use the opportunity to also pass between worlds for new human food sources by hiding within the herds. They are not supposed to ever leave hell and will be executed if caught by shinigami, but during these cursed migratory periods the shinigami have bigger problems than a few oni eating a bunch of humans (namely the bigger threat of hollows having much larger appetites.)

This is typically when oni also pair up to mate. The previous generation of oni children are usually abandoned to fend for themselves at this point or killed for a nice nutrient power boost to up the adult’s chances of winning their mating matches. They are strongly motivated to win because whichever parent loses the fight gets stuck with a child until the next mating season. Neither male or female oni attempt mating each cycle, so some offspring end up with their parental unit through multiple cycles and likewise “failures” are discarded as soon as possible. Either way, this choice is supposed to be made before exiting hell. Leaving oni children anywhere else is strictly prohibited and the punishment for this is also death.

Oni children, like larger mammals, are able to move within hours. They are born toddler-sized. No one is sure about the actual mechanism for gestation and then birth, but the dominant theory is that the womb is some kind of inter-dimensional space. Or maybe they hatch from eggs. As a counterbalance of sorts, oni children grow much slower than human/soul children before experiencing another rapid growth phase at puberty. It is not uncommon for individuals to grow from elementary school size to adult in the span of a year.

[twitchesandstitches]

Humanity 2.0 - The Humans of Crossthicc, Evolved

While they are not a dominant population within the Fleet or the larger factions as a whole, humans are nonetheless a notable species within the Fleet. The current bearer of the Matriatrix is a human, as are multiple modern heroines and champions. Humanity is, within the Fleet, gaining something of a resurgence from its historical decline and disastrous near extinctions, and the Fleet’s commitment to repopulating the multiverse and breeding with EVERYTHING in sight is bringing the last of Earth’s sapient hominids to a comeback, and the result of this is a superhuman successor branch representing most of humanity within Crossthicc; bigger, sexier, and a lot more wild than baseline humans, with everything you’d expect from this AU!

This new humans represent all the humanity of the Fleet, and are the normal for humans in general; originating in the Fleet’s fertile worlds, they also pose a notable presence within the Stingers (and have a larger population there than within the Fleet, as representing by the likes of Olivia Octavius and Lusamina), and the New Decepticon Empire of Starscream’s reign has significant human populations within it as well. All of these are largely descended from the Fleet’s human offspring, who have spread throughout the multiverse and greatly mutated thanks to their parent’s own mutations and maternally-induced transformations. When they interbred with other humans, they spread these changes as well, and so throughout the multiverse, humanity is undergoing a transformation, producing a new form of humans that are better able to survive and build a better multiverse with their brethren among the other sapient beings, and the artificial children of humanity. Enormous in stature, fantastically curvaceous, very milky, and naturally inclined to be everyone’s best friend, humanity has redefined itself.

You can think of them as Humanity 2.0; Humans, But More Awesome. To distinguish them from baselines, you might call them future humans; a deliberate step up from old school hominids! In-universe, no one has this mindset; humans as a whole are getting larger and stronger thanks to the Fleet’s human broodmothers and Wakandan descendants creating mutant offspring that are larger than their foremothers, stronger, smarter, and breed more prolifically, and with far bigger curves. Various other adaptations have resulted, some from modded alterations that brred true, and others that are random transformations that became dominant traits. Due to their far larger size than ordinary humans, they are sometimes referred to giants or ogres; because they otherwise look mostly like humans and are not physically mutated enough to really be something totally unique, this is losing popularity. They are generally more passionate, impulsive and extremely affectionate on a scale alien to baseline humans, and combined with their enormous size, this at least fits the profile of the giant/ogre mutation in sapients: greater size, more passionate attitudes, and they even have the more wild, almost feral look to fit.

Outside of the Commonwealth (which regards them as unholy abominations, and fear being replaced by them even as they are deeply attracted to them), and the Earthborn Coalition (which hasn’t been around long enough to properly integrate with them and spread the Big Human love), they are quite ubiqutious. Assume that any human born outside those groups is either one of these giants, or has traits from them!

From a strictly physical POV, humanity 2.0 look largely like very big and curvy humans; they do not have any natural mutations that make them look truly divergent from baseline humans, and most of their changes are a bit more subtle. Most obviously, though, they are extremely big; nearly twice the size of baseline humans on average, with even a small future human being over eight feet tall at minimum. Larger ones can stand over twelve, and some as tall as sixteen feet. Those identifying as men are smaller than the women, who stand twice as larger as masculine counterparts.

Their body shapes tend towards extremes; even a future human who has been completely unmodded will have an enormously curvy, thick body; not as big as Endowed women, but they come close. Breasts are bigger than H-cups as a minimum, and anything smaller is considered flat-chested; often they grow far larger, without any need for powering up, and the body is adapted to support them without need for bras. Hips tend to be at least as wide as a third of the human’s height, and they are usually thickly layered in curves. Those who develop beefy builds grow absolutely massive muscles, with biceps larger than their heads, and a tendency towards heavily defined bodies without the need for dieting or sacrificing strength. The most common body type, though, is a thick hourglass body with massive hips, enormous thighs, and wide shoulders.

They are almost universally hyper thicc, even without powering up! The average body type tends to be rather feminine; wide hips, broad thighs and slim waists are common in all sexes, and they are so voluptuous that even a skinny person has the combined body mass in one thigh or butt cheek of half a dozen humans; butts are generally at least comprise nearly a quarter of body weight, and are extremely wobbly to the touch.

Those with breasts lactate naturally, without need for mods or pregnancy, though their output is limited compared to what modding can do; smaller breast sizes can generate about several gallons of milk a day, which will tend to leak eventually; regular milking is a necessity, and is typically euphoric. Bigger breast sizes produce more milk; common modding procedures allows this milk to be universally ingested by any being, so that a human caretaker can tend to anyone.

They tend to have a slightly wild, if lovely look; hair almost uniformly grows extremely fast and long, easily mutating into thick spikes, naturally fluffy poofs, or other unique forms of hair. Nails tend to grow thick and long, forming something like claws (though are not sharp or strong enough to be claws without modding). As part of their mutations, most have no body hair at all, except for facial hair; those who DO have body hair tend to grow it very excessively, but this is rare. More subtle alterations in their body makes them incredibly flexible, allowing them to walk on all fours if desired or emulate their great ape relatives, with some even having fully prehensile toes; as a benefit, this means that that back problems or spine disorders are almost non-existent. Lips tend to grow to significant sizes, though not as much as modded hyper lip organs, and when they grow beards, they often grow extremely thickly. Teeth tend to have pronounced fangs and pointed incisors!

Additional ‘quality of life’ mutations include regenerating teeth; when teeth go bad, they fall out and more replace them. The aging process has shifted so that they live much longer on average, and age far more slowly; even elderly, they look middle aged but for notable wrinkles and grey hair, and are fully capable of bearing or siring children indefinitely.

As far as breeding goes, women gestate and give birth within three to four months, rather than nine, and some can do it even in even shorter times. They are far more fertile, giving birth in litters of nine to sixteen children at once (this has, of course, influenced human views on family), and childbirth is both extremely fast, occurring within twenty minutes or less, and the body has adapted to experience it as intensely pleasurable; even orgasmic. This has SHARPLY increased human population, and allowed them to repopulate incredibly fast. They are also now capable of interbreeding with non-humans, producing viable hybrids!

Their jaws are considerably more flexible than ordinary baselines with a suppressed gag reflex and muscle control that allows them to swallow anything they can fit into their mouths; their digestion is strong enough to consume a very wide range of food very efficiently, though they require far more food than their size alone would already suggest. They do not normally have vore capabilities, but the right mods or magical influences allow them to develop such abilities easily.

In terms of sexual adaptations, future humans tend towards extremes; the men universally have extremely large bulges that can still fit into any partner thanks to various alterations to internal structure and muscles for a limited degree of prehensile ability. Testicles often appear to be soft and malleable, swelling with sexual fluids, and are not particularly vulnerable to attack, though they are quite sensitive. Sexual stamina is seemingly limitless. Women are on average two or three times larger than the men, and their nooks tend to look pumped; enormously sensitive and capable of very precise muscular adjustments. They are apparently able to… interface with pretty much lifeform, no matter how implausible; several inch-tall Galvans, thirty foot-plus Transformers and even larger beings have been courted by future humans, without difficulty!. They seem to be deliberately trying to become everyone’s love buddy, or at least able to live in a niche on any world, with any species, and cohabit with ease.

As far as breeding goes, women gestate and give birth within three to four months, rather than nine, and some can do it even in even shorter times. They are far more fertile, giving birth in litters of nine to sixteen children at once (this has, of course, influenced human views on family), and childbirth is both extremely fast, occurring within twenty minutes or less, and the body has adapted to experience it as intensely pleasurable; even orgasmic. This has SHARPLY increased human population, and allowed them to repopulate incredibly fast. They are also now capable of interbreeding with non-humans, producing viable hybrids!

In terms of capabilities, they are genuinely superhuman, with natural inclinations to extremely high degrees of all forms of intelligence (mathematical, emotional, reasoning, and so forth) equivalent to baseline humanity’s greatest geniuses, but the ability to easily empathize with pretty much anything. On a physical level, they are extremely strong, able to lift about 20 tons with relative ease, incredibly agile and limber (contortionist-level flexibility being fairly common), and startlingly fast. (They fall short of beings that specialize in those areas, however.) They are most impressive with their stamina; future humans can survive damage as serious as getting a massive hole in their chest, or losing limbs, and eventually heal (though they cannot regenerate lost limbs or organs). They are EXTREMELY tough, but specialize in endurance as their ancestors did, to a ludicrous extremes; few non-modded beings can match a future human for raw endurance or stamina, though they can likely outfight them and do more raw damage.

This is in keeping with the Fleet mutation philosophy of improving upon your species strengths first, before plugging your weaknesses. Accordingly, while this new breed of humanity may not be able to compete one-on-one against modded foes or apex predators, they are still very stubborn and hard to put down.

Mentally, humanity’s basic profile has been heavily exaggerated; they don’t have stronger willpower, but they are VERY stubborn, to the point of being obstinate. Future humans tend to have a one-track mind, and difficulty multitasking or changing mental direction. They are VERY smart and creative, but have a hard time shifting gears. Humans in general have a reputation as being highly impulsive and anxious by sapient standards; future humans are moreso, to a neurotic degree! They’re not just impulsive, they tend to have absolutely no restraint or an internal switch that stops them from automatically following up on every random thought in their head. Their emotions are similarly exacerbated, and they tend to be inhumanly passionate; they love with all their hearts, their smallest creative projects get the effort put into great works of art, and when they are angry, they go completely berserk.

And they will bond with ANYTHING. The human tendency to pack bond with other things IS a fairly universal thing for sapients, but for future humans it is exacerbated; they form intimate bonds extremely easily and fast, and can bond with thousands of things while still considering them individuals; this makes them ideal caretakers and mates. They do tend to get emotional over random objects and concepts, though, and may cry over a really shiny rock they love now. They are more inclined towards group action than baseline humans; the description of them as a pack species is actually quite accurate, though they are not apex predators but high-grade omnivores that naturally gravitate towards the best ally in the area.

The consequence of all this is that future humans can generally be described as extremely large, incredibly thick humans who seem very emotional, are rather volatile, and tend to make anyone weak at the knees; they are doing their best to slot into the archetype of ‘friendly lovable goofballs everyone wants to be friends with’ as a conscious effort, to give their people a better image. As of now, they are the next stage of humanity’s development, and all humans should be assumed to be one of them, unless explicitly stated otherwise; all characters in the Fleet, Stingers and other ‘main character’ groups (such as Sierra, the other TD characters, the Pokemon trainers, and other human characters) should explicitly be considered to be future humans.

The primary reason for this shift, of course, is to give a variety of humans that are not monsterized or totally inhuman enough to please readers and followers that want more of that, and make them more personally interesting to me, as well as fit the themes of the AU. I don’t much like how ‘humans are space orcs’ ideas generally make humans sort of generically tough/Interesting Protagonists, so I worked to give them a specific niche sort of based off on popular psychological ideas I’ve seen floating around, and the nicest possible shift for humans as a whole to get to.

Since the implication in earlier stuff is that humans are Space Hobbits, I opted to roll with the character of that, even if they are significantly larger than that would imply. (They are genuinely giants… by human standards. 16 feet is still notably smaller than even the smaller of standard alien sizes, so we would still be smaller than them, but very thicc.) So the character of Crossthicc’s humans, at least the ones who have continued to grow and change (in a very literal way!), are represented in their gigantic bodies; they have grown as a people. The ones who insist on remaining small are stuck in the past, or unaware of alternatives.

There are treatments available to uplift baseline humans into future humans; not so much converting them into this, but making them bigger and giving them the improved traits, if desired. In general, the increased size, fecundity and milkiness will be universal, though you’ll see a lot of variation! Perhaps giant minotaur bulls and cowgirls there on one world, sasquatch analogues or another, or hyper-stacked gnomes, halflings and dwarves that still stand about seven feet high. Or just humans who happen to be very big and curvy, without the little bonuses if it doesn’t suit their interests.

Besides, don’t you just love the idea of the future humans being lovable, hyper thicc and rather excitable pack-bonding survivors?

[superplagueevolved-blog]

It's official: there ar too several games on Early Access. an endemic of them has appeared since the beginning of 2014. i would be tempted to try to to a whole round-up, however that will need a machine and an additional set of hands. to stay myself sane, i am progressing to continue finding themes, that is however I finished up losing hours to each Dead State and Plague Inc: Evolved . each ar compelling end-of-the-world games of markedly completely different designs and similar issues.

 Dead State may be a zombie survival RPG. you're the survivor of a plane crash, and you rouse during a college encircled by strangers. within the Early Access Demo (their sadly apt description), you may live per week within the lifetime of this man (Brian), limiting the sport to a number of days at the beginning of the campaign. He and therefore the different survivors got to begin creating the varsity one thing of a home, repairing the encompassing fence and gathering provides from the near city.

Dead State's college is that the hub wherever you begin to find out regarding however the planet ticks. The folks here (mother and female offspring Anita and Renee, Joel a cop, Davis a chair user, and Elaine a crash survivor) are not simply wanting to survive, however to form a home of a municipal building. Tasks embody gathering provides to prop up defences and supply water, however reproval the folks round the building additionally adds a effulgence of humanity thereto. they do not simply need planks and nails, however condiments, deodorant, and therefore the everyday things everybody takes as a right that adds to the teams morale. you will need the folks to be happy to co-operate with you on missions.

 I don't recognize what that may add up to within the grand theme of things, as this can be a sadly restricted demo, however moment-to-moment there ar some fraught fights. In town, you'll have a touch party made from the folks back at the varsity, and even that small team is place in conjunction with the standard friction of an honest zombie tale (a lean mother conflict that her medic female offspring should not be place at risk - World Health Organization does one choose?). every space may be a little sq. with a number of buildings to loot, and you wish to fret regarding potential looters and therefore the undead: breaking down a door might reveal a parcel of individuals to fight, or a house choked with zombies.

 Things then shift from wandering to turn-based: every of the 3 characters (you will select the mother or the female offspring, and there is a lawman World Health Organization tags along) contains a portion of 9 action points, and every movement and weapon takes a otherwise sized chunk off of that. My initial fights finished up a touch just like the ending of Shaun Of The Dead, with everybody close a zombie and beating it during a round-robin battle. Thinking things through created a lot of attention-grabbing fights: cacophonic the group thus I might lure a raider into a pincer of shotguns worked well, till the commotion of the gun hearth attracted zombies. Then i used to be swiping at zombies with a meat cleaver, and attempting to manoeuvre my very little team to safer ground. It all goes to hell terribly simply, and extremely will have that uncertainty of life that sensible zombie fiction has.

 But you'll see the bones gesture through Dead State's flesh: escaping to the menu leaves you prone to attack, there ar buttons that do not work, it crashes, and turns will take an extended time for the sport to calculate even with comparatively few folks on screen. There ar some UI components that go while not being explained, thus it took Pine Tree State half-hour to work out the way to leave the varsity and prolong a raid (there may be a map button on the UI that solely works if you are standing within the exit zone). however the most important drawback is brevity: this can be associate open-ended game and therefore the demo has associate end-point. i am already convinced it's going to be an honest game once it's all completed, it desires a lot of on behalf of me to suggest it to you if you would like one thing to play currently.

 Plague Inc: Evolved may be a a lot of infectious prospect. The mobile game has unfold to Early Access, and casts the player as a pandemic god up to speed of a Google map of wrongness: you begin with a lowly bacterium, and clamber through the socio-economic barriers, attempting to infect and kill as many of us as attainable.

 It's grim stuff. The beats we've return to expect from hyper-active Hollywood movies ("It's passed from goats into humans!") ar drawn within the ways in which you'll tailor your virus/bacteria. perhaps you would like it to cause coughing? Or would it not be a lot of prudent to own it carried by insects? you decide on your beginning powers and position, and begin playing with the polymer, gazing the patterns from the ports to assist sustain your virus everywhere the planet. You watch planes fly from country to country however realise your sickness is not spreading with them. you'll check your strain's capabilities, then alter however it reacts in varied climates, defrayal polymer points in line with every country's knowledge. there is a lot of charts and knowledge to assist you work out the way to build the most effective natural event.

[tenseoyong]

Daddy A-Z: Taeyong

Disclaimer: I couldn’t find the original poster this came from, but I got this from philanddanxreader, I didn’t come up with this.

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A = Announcement.- How do you tell him and the world that you’re expecting? The second the test is positive, you have to tell Taeyong, because knowing him, the first signs of pregnancy aka morning sickness, he’s ready to rush you to the ER so you might as well just spill the beans. Telling him is simple, just telling him works fine and then you can deal with the hyper Taeyong that comes after the announcement and then crying Taeyong when it hits him he’s gonna be a daddy. Telling the world, on the other hand, probably won’t happen for a while. Taeyong’s pretty private with his life, so it’ll probably be kept a secret until there’s no way to hide it. To be honest with you, it’ll probably be one of the boys that fuck up and let it slip that mommy taeyong is going to evolve into daddy Taeyong.

B = Books.- Did he read the books? We know Taeyong’s a reader, and especially in moments when he needs guidance (i.e. the book about self love that he carried around when he was getting hate) so Taeyong will 100% buy out the child development and parenthood section at the book store and uses them as step by step for being a good dad.

C = Cuddles.- Who cuddles the baby more?  Taeyong, for sure. Seeing as he says he can’t sleep without holding something, I can see Taeyong being the dad that falls asleep in the rocking chair with his offspring and just snoring away with the happy baby in his arms. Honestly, you’ll probably have to pry the baby from his hands, he’s pretty much a conjoined twin with his baby.

D = Daddy.- His reaction to being called Daddy and it setting in.  He’s already the mom of the group, so transitioning into being dad isn’t hard. But the realization that ‘holy shit this isn’t jisung....this is mine. i made this. f u c k’ wont truly set in until the baby’s born and he’s holding it and seeing the tiny human he helped make in his very hands. It’ll hit him like a bus and he’s crying and babbling about how he’s going to protect it from the world and love it with his entire heart.

E = Empty.- Who goes to the store when you guys run out of supplies? While he’s insanely attached to the baby, he’s very adamant about helping you in any way. Need more diapers? ‘I’ll get it stay here you shouldn’t be moving.’ ‘taeyong it’s been 3 months i’m fine.’ ‘s h h h h h ‘

F = Feeding time- Who does feeding time? Reading all those books, Taeyong’s made it a mission to save feeding time for mommy-baby bonding time, so he let’s you have the reigns with feeding your child. But only with the agreement he gets to make the airplane noises for the spoon.

G = Grumpy baby. - Who is better at dealing with a grumpy baby?  Taeyong’s insanely youthful and practically a kid a heart himself, so no one can relate to a baby more than Taeyong. He’s a master at dumb faces to make the baby all smiles and giggles in 4.81 seconds. He’s like the sun baby from tellatubies to his kid. 

H = How?- how many kids does he want? Basing how close he is with his noona, I can imagine Taeyong wanting the same relationship for his kids, so I can definitely see him having two at the very least, but likely having 3+ if he can convince you on it. Especially being the leader and nct dream, he’s confident that he can handle more than one kid easily.

J = Jokes.- best dad joke?  "Did you hear about the restaurant on the moon? Nice food, no atmosphere.”

K = Kisses.- His favorite place to kiss the baby.  Taeyong is such a tummy raspberry dad, and y’all know it. It’s adorable, it’s sweet, and he gets to hear his lil mini giggling up a storm.

L = Little.- How he feels when he holds the baby for the first time. The entire world stops for him when the nurse placed his baby in his arms. Seeing the little squirmy thing that’s half him and half his love is just a punch in the face with how much he loves you and loves you even more for giving him this tiny human he’ll cherish for the rest of his days. He’s just emotional as hell, crying his eyes out, and full of love. 

M = Mommy.- what does he call you?  He just plain calls you mommy. Literally the second you gave birth, your name doesn’t exist in his mind, his name doesn’t exist. It’s just ‘mommy and daddy’.

N = Nappies.- who deals with the really bad ones?  Honestly I feel like Taeyong would pass out at the sight, but he’s very clean and lowkey a germaphobe and knowing that’s what is touching his baby is enough to make him arm himself with a pack of wipes and a face mask, and go to battle.

O = Onesies- Who likes to dress the baby in ridiculous outfits?  Taeyong is a stylish bish so he’s very picky over kid clothes, so it’ll be you that dresses the baby is dorky kiddy clothes and Taeyong’s just standing there like ‘ok i hate it......but it is cute and im mad about it’

P = Pet names- names he calls the baby.  Taeyong almost always calls his mini his ‘little sunshine’, because let’s be real, if it’s part taeyong you know that kid is going to light up a room. i know it. you know it. taeyong knows it.

Q = Questions.- How many questions does he ask the nurse?  He 100% brought a list of stuff to ask, and it’s a mile long. Even after reading the books and he know basically anything there is to know about caring and raising a kid, he needs to hear it from someone as qualified as a nurse because ‘any idiot can write a book how do i know if its wrong?! i have to ask!!’

R = Rely- what is the biggest thing you rely on each other for? Honestly it’s just support. Having a kid is horrible, and you think it’s going to be easy with two people, but no one tells you how long it takes to recover from giving birth, and it’s hard to pull your weight in the relationship. Taeyong needs assurance he’s doing everything right, and you need help with basically everything. You two balance out the stress, you get to heal, taeyong gets emotional support. 

S = Sleep duty. - who gets up when it’s really late at night?  To keep it fair, you do have the ‘it’s your turn’ system for night issues, so it bounces back and forth between you and Taeyong. But a lot of the times, if you don’t wake up on the first nudge, he just thinks you need the rest and handles business himself.

T = Trepidation.- fears as a new parent.  Taeyong’s biggest fear is he’s going to mess the kid up for life. He’s not completely sure of himself, how’s he supposed to raise and mentor another human that looks up to him for guidance? He’s just terrified that he’s going to mess up, and the kid’s going to be damaged in some bizarre way, but let’s be real, he’ll be a fantastic dad.

U = Ultra sounds.- His reactions to the ultrasounds. Instant tears. He’s immediately sobbing and eyes just glued to the blurry image of his tiny baby growing and healthy as can be. He’s gotten a billion copies of the ultrasound pictures and sends them to literally everyone. His parents, sister, every member, all the sm workers, Taeyong just wants to show the world his most proud accomplishment. 

V = Values.- what is the most important value he wants to teach your child. Being Taeyong, I’m pretty sure the thing he’ll instill in his kid most is self love and never doubting yourself. He, even as successful as he is and continues to grow, is still very self conscious and not sure of himself, and he doesn’t want that for his kids. They’re capable of anything and everything and no matter what, he’ll always love his kids and he wants them to be sure of that and themselves.

W = Water.- Who gives the babe the baths?  It’s a joint effort, because honestly you’re washing the babe, and Taeyong’s just taking pictures and videos to show the members and keep forever. He’s the embarrassing parent that takes the bath videos. 

X = X-mas- what do you guys plan for the holidays?  Holidays are always split into different sections, the week during holidays is a mess because you have to bounce from your family, to Taeyong’s family, to with the members, and parties and everything. But the holiday itself, actual Christmas morning is just between you, Taeyong and the kids. Taeyong wants to at least have a moment as a family alone.

Y = Yelling.- How many fights do the two of you get in?  Taeyong it’s pretty calm and doesn’t get agitated in the sense of it leading to actual fighting, so I imagine if any fights break out, it’s more you just yelling at him while he listens quietly and prob crying he’s not a fighter, he’s a lover.

Z = Zoo- How crazy is the house after the birth? Taeyong is sort of a neat freak, so if he can keep a dorm room with 9+ grown boys clean, he can definitely keep a house with just you, him and kids clean easily. Lucky you.

[traegorn]

Things I would like to spend my time on Tumblr talking about:

My novels

My actual play podcasts

My witchcraft podcast

My current webcomic

My OLD webcomic

How Dal on Star Trek Prodigy is actually a Lizard Baby and the whole "human augment" thing is a coverup by Janeway who planted false information in the Federation database on the off chance any of her hyper evolved offspring found her, and her later aid of Dal and his friends is partially done out of guilt for abandoning him and his siblings on a random planet.

What I'm probably going to end up talking about:

This stuff.

Someone blazed my politics post while I was asleep.

Ugh.

[ezatluba]

The northwest corner of Newark Bay is the kind of place comedians have in mind when they mock New Jersey as a cesspool. The grim industrial coast the bay shares with the Passaic River is lined with the hulks of old chemical plants that treated their surroundings like a toilet. The most infamous of these facilities produced nearly a million gallons of Agent Orange, the toxic defoliant whose extensive use during the Vietnam War has caused generations of suffering. The Agent Orange plant discharged unholy amounts of carcinogenic dioxin—so much, in fact, that New Jersey's governor declared a state of emergency in June 1983. Though the Environmental Protection Agency has announced a $1.4 billion cleanup effort, the waters closest to Newark's Ironbound neighborhood remain highly contaminated; there are few worse spots in America to go for a swim.

And yet upper Newark Bay is not devoid of life. Beneath its dull green surface teems a population of Atlantic killifish, a silvery topminnow that's common along the Eastern Seaboard. These fish are virtually indistinguishable from most other members of their species, save for their peculiar ability to thrive in conditions that are lethal to their kin. When killifish plucked from less polluted environments are exposed to dioxin levels like those in the bay, they either fail to reproduce or their offspring die before hatching; their cousins from Newark, by contrast, swim and breed happily in the noxious soup.

Eight years ago, while he was an associate professor at Louisiana State University, an environmental toxicologist named Andrew Whitehead decided to find out what makes Newark's killifish so tough. He and his research group collected sample fish from an inlet near the city's airport and began to deconstruct their genomes, sifting through millions of lines of genetic code in search of tiny quirks that might explain the creatures' immunity to the ravages of dioxin.

In late 2014, two years after having moved to UC Davis, Whitehead zeroed in on the genes linked to the aryl hydrocarbon receptor, a protein that regulates an array of cellular functions. When most adult killi­fish encounter dioxin, this receptor's signaling pathway revs to life in the hope of metabolizing the chemical invader. But try as it might, the protein can't break down the insidious substance. Instead of acting as a defense mechanism, the frustrated signaling pathway wreaks havoc during development—causing severe birth defects or death in embryos. “If you inappropriately activate this pathway when your organs are being developed, you're really hosed,” Whitehead says. But that ugly fate never befalls the Newark Bay killifish because their bodies are wise to dioxin's cunning; the genes that control their aryl hydrocarbon receptors, which have slightly different DNA sequences than those found in other killifish, lie dormant when confronted by the toxin.

As he explained in a landmark Science paper in 2016, Whitehead and his colleagues also discovered that Newark Bay's killifish are not alone in using this clever genetic tactic to survive in tainted water. He identified similarly resilient killifish in three other East Coast cities whose estuaries have been befouled by industry: New Bedford, Massachusetts; Bridgeport, Connecticut; and Portsmouth, Virginia. Since killifish never roam far from where they're born, these resistant populations must have developed the identical tweaks to their genomes without mixing with one another—or, put more plainly, the far-flung fish all evolved in remarkably similar ways in response to the same environmental pressures. This is compelling evidence in favor of the notion that evolution, that most sublime of nature's engines, is not some chaotic phenomenon but, rather, an orderly one whose outcomes we might be able to predict.

Whitehead's work on killifish is one of the signature triumphs of urban evolution, an emergent discipline devoted to figuring out why certain animals, plants, and microbes survive or even flourish no matter how much we transform their habitats. Humans rarely give much thought to the creatures that flit or crawl or skitter about our apartment blocks and strip malls, in part because we tend to dismiss them as either ordinary or less than fully wild. But we should instead marvel at how these organisms have managed to keep pace with our relentless drive to build and cluster in cities. Rather than wilt away as Homo sapiens have spread forth bearing concrete, bitumen, and steel, a select number of species have developed elegant adaptations to cope with the peculiarities of urban life: more rigid cellular membranes that may ward off heat, digestive systems that can absorb sugary garbage, altered limbs and torsos that enhance agility atop asphalt or in runoff-fattened streams.

The story that the pioneers of urban evolution are piecing together is tinged with darkness.

Whitehead and his colleagues, many of whom are at the dawn of their careers, are now beginning to pinpoint the subtle genetic changes that underlie these novel traits. Their sleuthing promises to solve a conundrum that has vexed biologists for 160 years, and in the process reveal how we might be able to manipulate evolution to make the world's cities—projected to be home to two-thirds of humanity by 2050—resilient enough to endure the catastrophes that are coming their way.

Weary as we are of despairing over the mass extinctions being caused by hyper­development, it's tempting to take comfort in the ability of some animals to shrug off our brutalization of the planet. But the story that the pioneers of urban evolution are piecing together is tinged with darkness.

When Carlen started the doctoral program at Fordham in 2015, other students had already claimed some good animals for study—rats, salamanders, coyotes—but no one had yet staked a claim to a bird. She nabbed pigeons.

Charles Darwin's place in the scientific pantheon is deservedly secure, but he made his share of blunders. One of the gravest was maintaining that the effects of natural selection, the linchpin of evolution, could not be observed in a single human lifetime. “We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapse of ages,” he wrote in On the Origin of Species in 1859. “And then so imperfect is our view into long past geological ages, that we only see that the forms of life are now different from what they formerly were.”

But soon after Darwin's death in 1882, the first wave of biologists to have grown up on his teachings took note of a curious occurrence in the realm of insects: During the second half of the 19th century, the predominant color of England's peppered moths had steadily shifted from mostly white to almost entirely black. One theory was that the bugs' wings were being tarnished by all the coal soot in the air, a result of the boom in heavy industry from London to Newcastle. But Darwin's disciples came to suspect that natural selection was at play. As England had become more urban, moths who possessed the rare mutation for black pigmentation appeared to enjoy a fitness advantage over their white peers.

It wasn't until the 1950s that Oxford University's Bernard Kettlewell conducted a legendary experiment that demonstrated why the black moths had evolved much faster than Darwin thought possible. Over a three-year period, Kettlewell tracked the fates of hundreds of marked moths that he released in two English forests, one by the pristine southwest coast, the other near the polluted metropolis of Birmingham. In the Birmingham woods—a stand-in for the industry-ravaged landscape of the Victorian era—black moths avoided predation by birds because they blended into the soot-stained trees; the white moths, by contrast, were easy to spot and thus became snacks for sparrows. The opposite occurred in the coastal woods: The black moths stood out when they alighted on the light-colored trees and were gobbled up.

Kettlewell's experiment on “industrial melanism” became a staple of high school biology textbooks because it succinctly illustrates how species can, when subjected to intense environmental pressures, evolve in a matter of years rather than over millennia. But the next few generations of evolutionary biologists were less attracted to hives of human commotion like Birmingham. Researchers raised on episodes of Wild Kingdom and the books of Jane Goodall gravitated toward fieldwork in remote places populated by animals they'd never otherwise encounter. Their mentors encouraged them to go abroad because they knew that faculty hiring committees were wowed by the exotic. The road to a tenure-track job ran through the jungles of the Amazon, not the parking lots of Houston or Columbus, Ohio.

For the first chunk of his career in evolutionary biology, Jason Munshi-South harbored all the standard romantic notions about which projects he should pursue. He studied the mating habits of tree shrews in Borneo and the demographics of elephants in Gabon, while earning his PhD from the University of Maryland and doing a postdoc at the Smithsonian. But in 2007, Munshi-South became an assistant professor at Baruch College in New York City, shortly after which his first child was born—two events that curtailed his globe-trotting. Restless, he looked for ways to scratch his fieldwork itch within range of the subway. His search for convenient subjects led him to study the white-footed mice that have colonized New York's parks.

Munshi-South and his assistants trapped scores of live mice and clipped off bits of their tails to get genetic material. Financial constraints and the state of technology at the time meant Munshi-South couldn't sequence the animals' entire genomes. Instead he used a shortcut called transcriptome analysis, which centers on the messenger RNA molecules that carry DNA's instructions for protein synthesis into cells. Since only the crucial bits of an organism's DNA get written into messenger RNA, researchers can work backward to infer, with impressive precision, the composition of the genes where it originated.

Munshi-South found there was scant gene flow between New York's various white-footed mouse populations—mice from the Bronx showed no signs of having recently mated with mice from Manhattan. Of greater note, however, were the sharp genetic differences between city mice and their country relatives: The city mice had conspicuous alterations in genes linked to metabolism, immune response, and detoxification. (“Linked,” of course, is a word that oversimplifies the relationship: Traits are usually the product of a complex stew of interactions among genes and with the environment.)

As he sorted through the possible reasons for these changes, which included the need to tolerate a certain type of poisonous fungus, Munshi-South came to realize that his side project was destined to become his life's work. He was now enamored with the idea that urban cauldrons of noise, heat, and filth are not only as authentically “natural” as any other habitat but also the perfect venues in which to observe evolution at its fastest and most inventive. A bearded and slightly cherubic man, Munshi-South speaks engagingly about his epiphany despite the notable softness of his voice. “For most organisms, cities are incredibly stressful,” he says. “So you'd expect that the evolutionary responses would have to be pretty strong for them to exist in that environment.”

Scores of evolutionary biologists are now investigating how city-dwelling creatures have adapted to life among buildings, traffic, and discarded Big Macs. These are some of the most intriguing urban evolution studies to have emerged in recent years.

Munshi-South next turned his attention to Rattus norvegicus, the brown rat, an especially reviled New York City inhabitant. Though the rodents have been darting around America since colonial times, Munshi-South was stunned by how ­little was known about the genetic reasons for their success. “There was a golden age of rat research in Baltimore in the '40s and '50s, out of Johns Hopkins, which was mostly done in the interest of public health,” he says. “They did things we wouldn't be allowed to do, like they'd go catch 50 rats from one place and dump them in another place and see what happened. And that would basically cause a rat war.” But no one in recent years had spent much time pondering whether rats might be evolving in sync with the cities where they abound.

Not long after moving to Fordham University in the Bronx in 2013, Munshi-South started setting traps in New York's dingiest nooks: subway platforms, storm drains, and the grease-slicked pavement outside pizza joints. (Unlike white-footed mice, brown rats tend to be too vicious to be collected alive.) In just a few years, the genetic tools at his disposal had become exponentially more advanced. It was now possible to sequence the whole genomes of individual rats for a reasonable price, and he could compare his results to a Rattus norvegicus reference genome that had been compiled as part of a federally funded project. Munshi-South and his collaborators found evidence that the genes controlling the olfactory sensors of New York's rats have been dramatically transformed by natural selection. The researchers believe the alterations in the genes' DNA sequences are linked to the rats' ability to navigate New York's subterranean passages, which are bathed in an ever-shifting barrage of smells.

The concept of rats evolving quickly enough to handle whatever humans throw their way has captivated the general public, and Munshi-South has become his field's preeminent evangelist—the scientist likeliest to pop up in a panel discussion to explain how cities are shaking up the genetics of wildlife with astonishing swiftness. But he's only the most visible member of a community of researchers, each focused on an animal usually thought of as mundane.

So when Munshi-South coauthored a 2017 Science review paper entitled “Evolution of Life in Urban Environments,” he was able to list more than 100 recent and ongoing projects involving a range of city-dwelling organisms: moths that shed their species' fatal attraction to artificial lights, finches able to communicate above the din of traffic, swans that possess a genetic variant that makes them less nervous around humans.

When I asked Munshi-South why urban evolution is suddenly hot, I expected him to cite the proliferation of accessible DNA-sequencing technologies—an obvious boon to smaller, more unconventional labs like his that struggle for funding. But his primary explanation was more of a downer: He sees a kind of resignation to a dark environmental future, especially among younger biologists who have no memory of more idealistic days and who see little point in examining any instances of evolution that aren't driven primarily by human activity. “I don't want to call it capitulation,” he says, “but it's kind of reconciling with our changed world.”

Jason Munshi-South, who has studied the adaptations of city rats and mice, has become the preeminent evangelist in the field of urban evolution.

On a pleasantly bright morning last February, Elizabeth Carlen took me to the northern Bronx to catch pigeons. A Californian who's now a doctoral candidate in Munshi-South's lab at Fordham, Carlen has spent the past four years studying the genetics of one of New York's most common birds. It is a line of research that requires her to trap hundreds of pigeons and collect samples of their blood.

Carlen and I camped out by a triangular patch of asphalt along West Kingsbridge Road, across the street from a check-­cashing store and a carnicería. Whenever a flock of pigeons alighted to peck at the stale bread crumbs that elderly locals leave on the pavement, Carlen would fire her ­flashlight-shaped net gun at the throng. A few birds would inevitably become entangled in the nylon net, and Carlen would kneel down to untangle them one by one before drawing a vial's worth of blood from a vein between their toes. Once each needle prick had clotted, she would let the pigeon flap away toward the eaves of an abandoned red-brick armory.

On several occasions, the loud thwump of the net's deployment startled passersby. In one instance a bemused woman pushing a cart filled with groceries came over to ask—with more than a hint of suspicion—what on earth we were doing. Carlen had a disarming reply at the ready: “I'm a scientist and I'm trying to find out how New York pigeons are evolving.” She then invited her inquisitor to hold and release a pigeon who'd already provided a blood sample. An ecstatic grin spread across the woman's face as she cradled the docile bird in her hands; as Carlen would later note, people tend to feel a sort of primal joy when given the rare opportunity to handle wildlife.

As she drove us north on I-87 with a sizable amount of pigeon blood in her trunk, Carlen recounted the roots of her obsession with the oft-disparaged “rat with wings.” Her love for biology dates back to early childhood, when she was enthralled by the brittle stars and hermit crabs she saw in Baja California's tide pools during family camping trips. But she didn't have a clear sense of how to turn her passion into a lifelong career until April 2012, five years after she'd obtained her bachelor's degree from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. It was then that she heard Jason Munshi-South discuss his research on the public radio show Science Friday. By the time the episode ended, Carlen had decided that urban evolution was her calling—a way to explore the ingenious ways in which nature refuses to be squelched by human dominance.

Carlen went back to school to pursue a master's in biology, with the express goal of gaining the technological chops necessary to join Munshi-South's lab. When she started the doctoral program at Fordham in 2015, she was required to pick a New York City animal as her specialty. Munshi-South's other students had already nabbed some good ones—the rats, the salamanders, the coyotes who lurk around the rim of Queens. But no one had yet staked a claim to a bird.

A bit of work has been done on the evolutionary adaptations of urban pigeons, but the field was mostly wide open for someone like Carlen. “Basic things, like what a pigeon's range is, how long they live—people probably assume we know all that already, but we don't,” said Carlen, now 35, who was wearing an I STAND WITH REFUGEES T-shirt beneath her coat, along with frayed black pants she doesn't mind getting blotched with droppings. She added that she's even had trouble finding preserved pigeons in the archives of natural history museums, complicating her efforts to compare today's birds to those of decades past.

After stopping in a casino parking lot to harvest blood from a few last pigeons, Carlen and I headed toward Fordham's biological research station, located on a bucolic former estate in the suburban town of Armonk. That is where Carlen sequences the DNA in the blood samples by a employing a technique called ddRAD, which uses a special enzyme to isolate the most revealing portions of an organism's genome. Carlen's priority at the moment is to sketch out how the myriad Columba liviapopulations found between Washington, DC, and Boston are related—essentially 23andMe for the Northeast Corridor's feral pigeons.

Her long-term goal, however, is to divine the birds' recent genetic adaptations. One mystery she's eager to solve is whether urban pigeons have lately evolved the means to process refined sugar without suffering health consequences—a trait that would explain their ability to subsist on diets rich in discarded cookies and doughnuts. (Carlen has already used off-the-shelf blood glucose monitors to determine that, against her expectations, New York pigeons who feast on sweets do not suffer from hyperglycemia.)

“If you can't pick up a dead raccoon for your best friend, what kind of friend are you?”

As we rounded an uphill curve near the field station's entrance, Carlen hit her Subaru's brakes and glanced back through the rear window at an enticing slab of roadkill. “Should I go back and get it for Kristin?” she asked. “I mean, if you can't pick up a dead raccoon for your best friend, what kind of friend are you?”

The friend she had in mind is Kristin Winchell, a 35-year-old postdoc at Washington University in St. Louis and one of urban evolution's foremost stars. She and Carlen, who first met at an academic conference five years ago, rarely see each other in person but text multiple times every day. Along with Lindsay Miles, who studies milkweed insects in Toronto, they also coedit Life in the City, the flagship blog of the urban evolution movement, which highlights discoveries being made by young researchers. And whenever Carlen comes across potentially useful roadkill, she scoops it up and freezes it for Winchell to eventually sequence. (The “trash panda” by the field station turned out to be too smooshed to be of value, so she left it.)

Kristin Winchell studies lizards that are native to Puerto Rico. “People didn't think animals could adapt on human time scales,” she says. “So people are excited that some animals are dealing with what we're doing to them.”

As a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Winchell chose to focus on Anolis cristatellus, a lizard species native to Puerto Rico. She collected lizards in both unspoiled forests and from the densely populated neighborhoods of San Juan, Arecibo, and Mayagüez. She quickly noticed that every city lizard had significantly longer limbs and larger toe pads than their forest-dwelling counterparts—morphological differences that, unlike the majority of urban adaptations, can be seen with the naked eye.

To test how these differences affect locomotion, Winchell built a series of straight, 1.5-meter racetracks. The tracks were made from common Puerto Rican building materials such as painted concrete and aluminum sheeting. She then unleashed the lizards on these surfaces, and the city natives beat the country bumpkins without fail. The morphological changes had clearly made the city lizards consistently faster sprinters—a crucial fitness edge in urban environments, where the reptiles are vulnerable to feral cats and heat while skittering across wide-open expanses.

The lizard races may have been clever, but they didn't prove that the city lizards had actually evolved. Before even running the races, Winchell developed a way to show that the changes had a genetic component and were therefore heritable. Adaptations can often be the result of plasticity—the capacity of individual animals to change in response to stimuli during their lifetimes, yet remain unaltered at the genetic level. (Think of bodybuilders who manage to develop improbable physiques by subjecting their muscles to stress; their offspring do not inherit that appearance.)

Some urban evolution researchers fear that, in their rush to trumpet exciting results, fellow scientists aren't differentiating between plasticity and natural selection. “To only look at traits but not do it experimentally doesn't give you the opportunity to understand whether that trait is genetically based,” says Max Lambert, a postdoc jointly at the University of Washington and UC Berkeley, who is studying how red-legged frogs are adapting to life in polluted stormwater ponds. “And overselling the field as being all urban evolution does a disservice to getting the public to understand what evolution is.”

Mindful of the distinction between evolution and plasticity, Winchell conducted what is known as a common garden experiment. She collected adult lizards from Puerto Rico, bred them in her Boston lab, and then took eggs from both city and county lizards and hatched them in an incubator. Once the babies hatched, she distributed them to isolated cages in which the conditions were identical: Each contained a single turtle vine and a wooden rod measuring three-quarters of an inch in diameter, for example, and each was bathed in 12 hours of UV light per day. After a year of raising the lizards on live crickets dusted with vitamins, Winchell examined their legs and toes. Her measurements and observations, which she published in a 2016 paper in the journal Evolution, confirmed that the urban lizards were true products of rapid evolution.

Winchell, who intends to investigate the evolution of squirrels and raccoons in St. Louis, Boston, and New York, understands that her work might provide a rare source of hope for those anguished by depressing environmental news. “People didn't think animals could adapt on human time scales,” she says. “So people are excited that some animals are dealing with what we're doing to them.” Those survivors, though relatively few in number, possess genes that have much to tell us about how to prepare for our hostile future.

In 2016 Andrew Whitehead coauthored a seminal paper on the rapid adaptation of killifish in Newark Bay.

As the severity of the climate crisis becomes more apparent with each record-­breaking heat wave or melting slab of Arctic ice, humankind is coming to terms with the fact that much of the damage we've wrought is irreversible. That means making peace with the permanent disappearance of a fair portion of the animal kingdom: According to a May report from the United Nations, at least 1 million species are in imminent danger of extinction, including 40 percent of amphibians and a third of marine mammals. Even if all nations were to magically cooperate and take unprecedented steps to protect bio­diversity, it would be too late for thousands of species.

Like so many of their scientific peers, urban evolution researchers are grappling with the question of how their work can help us make this new environmental reality a bit less grim. On the surface, at least, their inquiries can seem largely aimed at addressing theoretical matters—notably the issue of whether the evolution of complex organisms is a replicable phenomenon, like any ordinary chemical reaction. Cities provide an accidental global network of ad hoc laboratories to test this question: Office towers the world over are fabricated from the same glass panels and steel beams, night skies are illuminated by the same artificial lights, auditory landscapes thrum with the noise of the same cars, food waste comes from the same KFCs and Subways.

This urban sameness is allowing researchers to determine whether isolated populations of the same species develop similar adaptations when placed in parallel environments. “What cities offer us is this amazingly large-scale, worldwide experiment in evolution, where you've got thousands of life-forms that are experiencing the same factors,” says Marc Johnson, who heads an evolutionary ecology lab at the University of Toronto Mississauga.

Laypeople can be forgiven for not instinctively sharing that enthusiasm, however: At first glance, settling the decades-long debate over evolution's replicability doesn't appear likely to make our post-climate-change lives any less hellish.

But in the quest to satisfy their intellectual curiosity, urban evolution researchers are also revealing the fundamental genetic attributes that make some species adept at adjusting to urban life—intelligence that could give us the power to forecast evolution's winners and losers in a world that's increasingly hot and crammed with people. When he concluded that killifish in four US cities had developed the same form of toxin resistance, for example, Andrew Whitehead ascribed the species' evolutionary success to its high degree of genetic diversity—that is, the killifish genome naturally contains an abundance of genetic information that isn't usually expressed. So the key to desensitizing the aryl hydrocarbon receptor was probably already present inside killifish DNA, and natural selection simply brought it to the fore.

“When the environment changes very rapidly, and changes in a way that poses fitness challenges, then species that are going to be able to adaptively respond to that are ones that already have the necessary genetic diversity in hand,” Whitehead says. “The environment is changing right now. You can't wait for migrants. You can't wait for new mutations.”

Urban evolution researchers are grappling with the question of how their work can help make the reality of a ravaged environment less grim.

Perhaps the greatest asset any creature can have hidden in its genome, of course, is the capacity to withstand heat. With global temperatures set to rise by as much as 9 degrees Fahrenheit by the turn of the century, the species likeliest to survive will be those that develop traits to guard against the broil. Today's cities, which are typically 2 to 5 degrees warmer than their surroundings, offer a sneak preview of how evolution will reshape wildlife on a sweltering planet.

The humble acorn ant is among the city-loving harbingers of the genetic churn that lies ahead. Two researchers at Case Western Reserve University, Sarah Diamond and Ryan Martin, have found that acorn ants they collected in both Cleveland and Knoxville, Tennessee, are able to thrive and reproduce in much warmer conditions than those from rural habitats. They hypothesize that natural selection may have favored urban ants whose genes manufacture more robust heat-shock proteins. If they can sort out the genetic markers linked to that suddenly useful trait, we may be able to tell which other species have the potential to adapt when the mercury rises and which are in danger of roasting into extinction.

Diamond hopes that evolutionary prediction will lead to smarter conservation choices. “If we know which taxa are most vulnerable to urbanization,” she says, “then we can do something about it before biodiversity might be adversely impacted.” That could involve simple things, such as building strategically situated green spaces within cities. In extreme cases, though, our only option for preserving some species may be to uproot and transport entire populations to distant lands.

There is an intriguing flip side to the idea that urban evolution research can be used to rescue species that lack the capacity to flourish in megacities: If we can identify which animals are genetically primed to adapt well to living amid glass and steel, we might be able to use that knowledge to engineer a more hospitable world for ourselves. That's because certain species, once tweaked in clever ways, have the potential to help heal the environment.

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Take oysters, whose feeding process involves filtering harmful bacteria and contaminants out of up to 50 gallons of water per day. The gelatinous mollusks were once abundant in America's urban rivers and bays, but they were largely gobbled up by shellfish lovers decades ago. By the time anyone realized it might be environmentally wise to have massive oyster beds in places like New York, it was too late for the populations to be easily revived: Underwater landscapes had been ruined by decades of dredging and dumping, as well as saturated in anthropogenic pollutants that cause fatal oyster diseases.

One solution is to toughen up oysters by tinkering with their DNA. A blunt method of doing so would be to use Crispr, the gene-­editing technology that promises to give us the power to add, delete, or scramble an animal's nucleotides at will. But such an approach remains in the realm of the hypothetical for now, and it's possible the traits we desire in our oysters—disease resistance and faster breeding cycles, for example—are too complex to be created through simple snips and splices.

Fortunately there's a more nuanced option at our immediate disposal, one that makes use of the genetic insight now being gathered by urban evolution researchers. If we can peer deep into genomes and identify the species most likely to develop the specific traits we crave, we can place those animals in environments where natural selection will do the dirty work of shaping them into long-term survivors.

“Like, we could select for oysters that are most effective at growing huge beds and filtering water and protecting us from storm surges,” Jason Munshi-South says. “We want to look for these urban-adapted genotypes and see if we can harness them to clean air and cool things down, provide some service.”

Certain urban design choices can help us nudge evolution in whatever directions we choose. It is in our best interest, for example, to encourage the proliferation of the frogs that have adapted to living in man-made ponds where both storm runoff and toxic chemicals collect. These amphibians prey on mosquitoes and other insects that can carry disease, a threat likely to increase as the world heats up. So it would be smart to establish connections between ponds where the pollution-resistant frogs are abundant and those they've yet to colonize—say, by digging narrow tunnels beneath roadways. Bats are also desirable in cities for their pest-control talents; can we encourage them to adapt to urban areas by favoring particular types of artificial light, or by making sure the sonic environment won't interfere with the way they hunt?

Granted, a certain amount of hubris is required to believe we'll soon master the wondrous mechanism that turned lone cells into whales and giraffes in a mere few billion years. But as evidenced by the terrible environmental bind we've gotten ourselves into, hubris is what Homo sapiens do best.

[twitchesandstitches]

How do some of the many alien races that cameo in your CrossThicc setting differ from their canon setting versions?

For one thing, most aliens are way, WAY bigger. Galactic average is at least 20 feet tall, with the smaller ones around 15 feet. Upper size limit would be 100 feet for especially big aliens; larger than that is reserved for mega-curvy thiccs who have gotten so powerful they expand past their limits, or completely inhuman beings adapted to live in space.

additionally, its important to note that in this AU, humans are honestly irrelevant, as a species. I’m going against the grain of sci fi and state that humans do not have any real power or influence on the setting... like, at all. Individuals do, and humans are certainly present within other organizations/societies and cultures, but the idea of humans being favored by the narrative and having dominance is not applicable here. They’re an extremely minor species of tinies, and the ones of significance are those who are using mods to remake themselves or have grown to huge size with thiccness power and are evolving into something totally new.

(I really, REALLY don’t like it when speculative fiction arbitarily makes humans THE BEST AT EVERYTHING FOREVER and constantly bends backwards to be self-congratulatory. Humans are not relevant, on their own, in this AU! They’re just sort of....... there)

Transformers are generally around the size of... combine their size ranges from G1 and the live action movies. Barring individuals or thiccness growth, they’re about that size. They’re one of the most populous species in existence; the Autobots have made a massive comeback within the Endowed Fleet, while the Decepticons have broken apart into several sub-factions that each are a thriving civilization. Female Transformers are MUCH more common than in canon, outnumering their male counterparts by a bit. They’re also EXTREMELY curvy and tend towards solid, powerful builds.

Asari are giants, ranging from thirty feet to fifty depending on which stage of their cycle they are in; matriarchs are the biggest and they get more hyper curvy as they get older, have more children, and get stronger powers. Additionally their bodies thrum with energy, to the point that they seem partly made of that energy; they look kind of eldritch. Additionally, they don’t have human-like noses!

Krogan are probably about twenty feet tall or so, and easily move on all fours. No genophage here; they’re EXTREMELY common and thriving, with a cosmopolitan and enlightened culture similar to what canon implies they might have turned into if the salarians hadn’t disrupted their cultural development. Krogan women tend to be much larger than the men, too, and afford their magic users with the same respect as biotics in canon; they speak with spirits as shamans and religious leaders.

Saiyans from Dragon Ball are more closely based on Son Wukong than we got in canon; they look more like alien monkey people; furred, with fierce and inhuman faces, pronounced fangs, and so on. The Great Ape form is an exaggeration of their normal form, a kaiju-ification. In their base forms, they’re about 14 feet tall, pint-sized powerhouses to other aliens; in Oozaru form, they’re about fifty feet tall but a LOT more wild, and its possible Oozaru is their true form, with their smaller bodies being a way to contain their wild impulses and control their power.

quarians have a symbiotic relationship with their robot offspring in the Geth; both are pretty big at forty feet tall, and the Geth tend to have very thicc fembot bodies in honor of their makers. No war here! Quarians are EXTREMELY curvy, especially in the hips or shoulders, and beneath the environment suits, they’re siialr to insects with plated, chitinous skin that is often a pale color such as light pink or off-white.

Kryptonians may be alive in well, but in decline and suffering a disaspora after the loss of their homeworld. Unlike other versions of them that make them aliens identical to humans, they are actually shapeshifter here; in Crossthicc, many aliens eventually reach a point of enlightenment and power evolution that causes them to be come universal shapeshifters, and inheriting the many powers of those who come before, along with the shapeshifting powers and innate telekinesis, is the source of their powers. In their true forms, Kryptonians likely resemble Doomsday but more pretty, curvaceous or whatnot as befits the individual, solemn and regal in appearance. The likes of Superman and Power Girl take on human form using these abilities. (Their size is personal; Superman would stay on the lower side of things, while Power Girl would be as huge as possible. 50 ft minimum, at least.)

aliens from ben 10 would look pretty muh as per canon, leaing more towards the Omniverse styles, but generally be larger (save for those that are supposed to be tiny) annd, of course, super thicc! Aliens in general should AT LEAST be as inhuman as ben 10 aliens, honestly