#I was listening to some recreations of what T Rex would have actually sounded like

[black-and-yellow]

The Warning Call.

[thedawningofthehour]

So..i got to the part where Leo described that ominous sound as a trex growl and just had to know what it sounded like…would absolutely shit my pants if I heard that ever……..

So I went back and found all the videos I took inspiration from when describing Bradford's growl. So you can all hear. And fear. (headphones if you can for maximum impact)

Granted, Bradford's vocalizations are not actually dinosaur roars. He was spliced with komodo dragon DNA and his entire body is kind of...really fucked up, so there's really no animal on earth that could make that kind of sound. Leo is trying to compare it to something he knows, and it's so otherworldly and terrifying that dinosaurs is what he connects them to. But regardless.

This is actual komodo dragon vocalizations:

(Ignore the humans talking-this was the scariest example of their voices I could find) I thought of his 'speaking' voice as having this sort of...smooth terror to it. Komodo dragons are beautiful in a terrifying way, I think, and I kind of wish I'd been able to weave more dragon-ness into Bradford's design.

Dinosaurs, as you all probably know by now, were very similar to modern birds and likely would have had similar throat structures. They most likely did not 'roar' like we see them do in movies. They may have had sort of a honking sound, (imagine a goose twelve feet tall) but many of them might have done something like...this.

You would have been able to hear this sound for miles.

A few others along that line:

And not a T-Rex, but this was also similar to what I was thinking of:

If you have some time, this channel did several recreations of dinosaur sounds, and they are haunting. Some are terrifying, some are beautiful-all definitely worth a listen.

(PLEASE at least listen to the dryptosaurus, I brayed like a donkey when I first heard it)

I would also like to note that when I first listened to these videos, I had them on speaker and Angel was on my chest getting pet. I was worried that he'd be scared, but he either did not care about them in the slightest...or he whistled along with them.

So when the dinosaur wars come, we know what side he'll be on.

[sleepymarmot]

A couple of months ago, after finishing COUNTER/Weight, I spent about a week in a total hangover, relistening to scenes and having feelings. I took some notes, but procrastinated posting them, and then finally got distracted. But, a) I hate leaving things I intended for tumblr unposted, even if they have value only for me, and b) I also hate posting things out of order, and there's a big TM liveblog incoming. So, here's a bunch of really random thoughts about C/w from past me.

The gnosis virus did go nowhere huh. I was hopeful for a minute when one of the finale intros mentioned it, but that was it. What was the purpose of that arc even. [Note from present me: Lol. At least I feel better about this one!]

Oh, and the patch AuDy left never reappeared either. And the idea from the faction game that Aria's images owned by EarthHome/Petrichor transmit Rigour code… That's the flip side of the coin. On the one hand, it's really cool to see the creative process – on the other, it sometimes feels like you're listening to people write a script for the tv show, but only get to see a half of the finished product. It's fascinating to see the universe grow organically and the players to come up with new ideas and get excited about them – but that means numerous retcons, some of them not even presented as such, because the creators forgot what the previous revision was or didn't thought it was important. It's a unique feature of the medium that player choice directs the narrative and it's not bound by railroading – but that means some roads lead nowhere, and some branches dry and fall off.

It's a bit harder to make peace with something that could have easily been developed more within the existing plot of the show. How come there's a player character whose consciousness consists of three different people in various combinations, but nobody seems to be curious how that works? No PC or NPC ever asked “Which one of you is speaking right now?” or something. The final episodes made a lot of things clearer, but it still felt too little, too late. Hard not to be reminded of that gripe about certain two characters sharing one character sheet one of whom was left underdeveloped and half-forgotten… Both are very ambitious concepts that require a double amount of work from the player, so I feel bad complaining they weren't realized to full potential, but…

Speaking of L&D… I still want to know how the hell did that one engineer all by herself design 4 gods, one of which became a basis for technology that was advanced even for the civilizations 80,000 years later? This woman singlehandedly surpassed any technological achievement of humanity before and after. Who Is She

I saw a “Wake me up: before you go go / when september ends / wake me up inside” meme and thought “heh, this sounds relevant, which member of the Chime is which?” and it already made me sad, but then I realized that I'd never actually heard the september song and looked it up and. The lyrics fit so well. What the fuck. It's an old song everyone keeps joking about. Why is it appropriate for a legitimate fanmix. What. I guess the word “September” will never be the same again for me.

I looked up the rules for Firebrands, the game used for the finale. Oh my, challenges for the dance minigame are so overtly romantic when you see them in a list together! Imagine this cast of characters having to answer to “do you place your hand upon my elbow, shoulder, waist, or hip?” lmao. Also I didn't realize “May I?” was part of the rules for “stealing time together”. (And I found out there's a party version of that minigame with bug-themed challenges. I might have dug too deep…) "Tactical skirmish" is a really fascinating concept, I've never seen such a masochistic combat system! Really faces the player with the violence they're inflicting: sure, you can always fight on, but are you ready to live with what you'll have to do? But for it to work fully, you need a lot of non-expendable NPCs on both sides. The one with the most likeable team wins! (Like Mako did.)

I'm relistening to Three Conversations and it's pretty interesting that Ibex has a bunch perfectly lifelike android bodies, right? There is no such technology seen anywhere else. Did Righteousness develop and privatize that? Are they so complex that only a Divine would have enough computing power to successfully mimic organic life? Can Aria convince Righteousness to help her perform on stage without leaving her duties? Also, like with AuDy, I wonder how Ibex & Righteousness' consciousness works. Is it a single mind, spread across every body he has, or even anything Righteousness is running on, having a bunch of different conversations at once if he needs to? Or is the original Ibex just gone, and what's left is a personality imprint hanging on to the connection to his still living body, imitating his former self like the automated recording Cass saw wore his face? In other words, has Ibex completely fused with Righteousness, or assimilated and destroyed by it? Does he not exist anymore as an independent singular being, or does he not exist at all? Most info indicates the former, but there was also “You’re not in there anymore” “No”.

If Orth and Jace are anime fans with their Kingdom Come and Panther, then Ibex is the guy who's way too into dinosaurs or paleontology. It's as if the heads of various confessions were called Triceratops, Stegosaurus etc. and only one of them knows wtf that means, and also he compares his Divine to… Were there scavenging dinosaurs? I'm looking at an article that suggests T. Rex might have been a scavenger, so yeah he would compare Righteousness to a goddamn T. Rex.

Hey what do you think is the most thematically aproppriate part of the Hieron anime for Orth to watch alone at night during the Kingdom game. What's the best thematic parallel for when he turns off the episode and thinks he made a mistake. Do you think that he once, after a long day and a long month and maybe a long year of feeling helpless and doomed, sits down for a distraction but ends up sobbing “How could they let this happen to Mother Glory”

On Joypark, there are definitely statues of Eidolons, ancient and holy, that were repainted and repurposed as Hieron deities. Imagine a giant Greek or Roman style marble statue of Apote – and it’s painted over as Samot, with an anime face and in really bright plain colors like these “reconstructions of original coloring” that actually only use base colors so they look like cheap action figures.

I was reading Austin's top ten games of 2016 list on Waypoint and he gave first place to The Sprawl! Aww!

The Downloads folder in my phone gallery is funny bc it mostly consists of every freely available f@tt map and also that one photo of Tristan Walker (because I tried to redraw it, very unsuccessfully). I go check a map and every time am met by Ibex just. staring at me. It's unsettling

Some of the many options for how Apostolosian gender could have been presented:

Apostolosians prefer to be addressed by the most neutral available human pronoun, represented as "they" in English, because the human languages don't have anything close enough

Apostolosian pronouns are represented in English by a set of real-life common pronouns and neopronouns

There's a list of Apostolosian pronouns and they're just used in English verbatim (Really impractical because the players need a cheat sheet, but the most fair)

Humans apply human genders to Apostolosians. Apostolosians may be offended, may find it convenient, or something else

As Austin said in the post-mortem, the Eidolon system is not gender. It's represented in English by titles/honorifics/etc

Any of the above, and the creators are aware of the difference between personal pronouns, grammatical gender, and social gender

And that’s not even touching the core problem of what the concept of gender in a futuristic, techonologically advanced society would look like. Yes, I'm complaining about this for the third time but I'm just. So tired of native English speakers' takes on gendered language. They could have made Apostolosian gender look like anything and they made it look like that fucking mess... God, I really hope TM is good enough to make me forget and forgive the experience of listening to “he... sorry, they” for 100 hours. [Note from present me: Well… mostly]

Here’s my take on this: eidolons in Apostolosian language are absurdly broad noun classes with associated classifiers (which fits both the idea that they’re gender but not actually, and that each of them is a patron to several unrelated aspects of life) Apostolosian: the word “(Apo)thesa” is used to refer to people who follow the corresponding eidolon, as well as for counting buildings, heavy machinery, military units, specific strategies and tactics, log entries, historical documents and chronicles, history textbooks and monographs, and eras :) Human: what the fuck

Very critical, imaginative worldbuilding in which 80,000+ years into the future humanity somehow has 21st century gender and 21st century capitalism! TBH, I find any sci-fi set in the far future inherently silly – we can’t really imagine the future technogy and its effect on society. But it feels like C/w barely even tried, and to hear it boast about “critical worldbuilding” is kinda strange. I assumed that meant they build the world critically, not that they recreate modern society or some aspect of it and criticize that! It’s just another Star Trek then! And it was already clear right during the setup when they said “We don’t want Star Trek aliens” and immediately created Apostolosians.

I haven't seen a single piece of fanart with Taako and Mako. Come on, does nobody want to see these two next to each other! Especially considering the outfits artists like to put Taako in!

I really don't understand how and why people do fandom activities on Twitter and Discord where the creators also have accounts. It gives me so much secondhand embarrassment. I can barely peek at Twitter posts before running away. Old-fashioned opinion apparently but I strongly believe the main fandom space and the interaction-with-original-creators space should be separate. I need a space where I can voice my opinions, especially negative ones, with complete freedom. I need to be able to say exactly what's on my mind. But I wouldn't want any of the people on the podcast to read something unfiltered like my complaints above. Being in the same space as the source content creators obliges any decent person to be diplomatic and constructive. And the creators, in turn, need a space where they don't come across complete randos yelling at them about something they said in a podcast three years ago. I'm already feeling uncomfortable because hearing to strangers pour their hearts out for hundreds of hours gives me way too much insight on who they are as people. Of course, nothing’s stopping them from lurking on Tumblr or AO3 and even reading this very post, but a platform where they have official accounts is still a different thing! I even feel uncomfortable talking about the podcast creators using their first names so much. To my ear, referring to a total stranger by first name, especially if it's a shortened form, sounds so rude! I'm not their friend, I don't have that right! But, of course, writing something like “Mr Walker” in my liveblogs would have been even weirder, nobody does that...

Is it a common experience to not even think about fanfiction after listening to Hieron, but going straight to AO3 after C/w? I feel like since Hieron is still a work in progress, writing/reading about it is stepping on the GM&players' toes, and C/w is finished so it's like they gave us the keys to the playground, it's the fandom's turn now. This story has so much blanks and they must be filled! In one of the early episodes they joked that something cute they said would encourage people to ship Mako/Cass and I was like "Bold of you to assume they aren't already" and, indeed, I was right and it's the most popular C/w ship on AO3. Too bad I’m so indifferent to it…

It’s a shame we never had a full scene with Ariadne or even learned what they were up to during the finale.

I still don't understand how Ibex went from “evil CEO” to “leader of a proletarian revolution”, these sound like completely opposite concepts to me

I probably have talked about this too much and have pretty much given up on ever getting a clear picture due to all of these reimaginings but… Righteousness and Voice… Ibex takes Righteousness out of Mako but he still has Voice, that was pretty much openly stated, correct? So how does that work? I’m guessing Righteousness is hidden somewhere in Voice’s code. But if so:

Did Maryland know? On the one hand, she’s too competent not to. On the other, why would she ever allow or accept that?

How did Righteousness not get corrupted by Rigour too? Maybe it did, but broke off the connection with the rest of itself to contain the damage? Or maybe, on the contrary, it kept in contact and was sending intel to Ibex the whole time? But in that case he would have provided more help in the finale.

[sciencespies]

You Can Now Smell a T. Rex's Stinky Breath at Chicago's Field Museum

https://sciencespies.com/news/you-can-now-smell-a-t-rexs-stinky-breath-at-chicagos-field-museum/

You Can Now Smell a T. Rex's Stinky Breath at Chicago's Field Museum

Fossils found in the last 30 years have altered our traditional vision about Tyrannosaurus Rex. Paleontologists now suggest the dinosaur had at least some feathers and their babies could have had a lot of downy plumage. T. Rex probably speed-walked rather than ran, and their tiny arms probably weren’t useless appendages after all, instead used for grasping prey.

Many of the dinosaur’s traits remain rather fuzzy, like what color T. Rex was and what it sounded like. But a new exhibit at Chicago’s Field Museum adds another sensory detail to the mix: how T. Rex’s breath smelled.

Taking a whiff of meat-eater breath is part of Experience SUE, an addition to a private, 5,100-square-foot “suite” containing the bones of the most complete T. Rex fossil ever uncovered. The new sensory stations are designed to let visitors do more than just stare at the fearsome bones. They can touch recreated patches of the dinosaur’s skin and listen to what researchers currently suspect the dino sounded like. And then there’s the smells—yes, that’s plural.

The museum wanted to bring a vast smellscape of the Cretaceous alive, so it commissioned the development of four scents that would have been around when SUE roamed the prehistoric landscape of Hell Creek, South Dakota, where her fossil was unearthed, reports Jessica Leigh Hester at Atlas Obscura.

To create the scent of the ancient plants, Field Museum paleobotanist Az Klymiuk took a look at the plants that existed at the time, finding modern counterparts. That included broad-leaved trees that were likely similar to cypresses, redwoods, and tulip trees. Prehistoric ponds were covered with plants that resemble today’s water lettuce. The team was able to develop long-lasting modern analogues for three scent stations dedicated to Cretaceous plants, including cypress resin, ginger root and tulip trees.

“End-Cretaceous floras are pretty similar to a hardwood-dominated swampland today,” Klymiuk tells Hester. “I think of Hell Creek being similar to Northern Florida or South Carolina. It’s not an alien landscape at all.”

For the fourth station, they wanted the scent of SUE herself. At first, Hester reports, the team attempted to recreate the scent of T. Rex poo. But they soon gave up when they found most commercially available fecal scents were based on human waste. (If you desperately want to smell T. Rex’s waste, hyena poo is probably a pretty close match because like SUE, hyenas eat flesh and bone, says Meredith Whitfield, exhibit developer at the Field Museum.)

Recreating SUE’s breath, however, seemed more doable. “From anatomical studies of SUE’s teeth, we can say, ‘Well, you have the kind of anatomy that might suggest that you have some nasty raw meat decaying in your mouth,’” Whitfield tells Hester. “What did that smell like? The answer is: Bad.”

The museum contracted with a company that concocts smells, finding one scent called “decaying flesh” that fit the bill nicely. However, the scent was so foul they were worried it would make visitors physically ill. So they diluted the scent until it no longer made people gag.

The big question is, did SUE’s breath actually smell like rotting flesh? Whitfield says she doesn’t believe the metabolic functions of bacteria that break down rotting meat have changed much even over millions of years. “I have no doubt that rotting meat today smells like rotting meat in the past,” she tells Hester.

The exhibit appeals to other senses as well. According to a press release, the most recent research suggests T. Rex likely sounded like a crocodile or a heron-like bird called a bittern. For the exhibit, the team took the vocalizations of these modern creatures and scaled them up to match SUE’s body size. Visitors not only hear the low grumblings, but can also feel the vibrations when standing on certain sections of a platform.

Researchers from the Black Hills Institute of Geologic Research, which creates fossil replicas for museums, worked with Field Museum paleontologists to create patches of T. Rex skin that visitors can touch, along with skin from Triceratops and an early mammal called Didelphodon.

Luckily, the museum decided not to let visitors experience what the bite of a T. Rex felt like, which was probably even more deadly than SUE’s breath.

#News