#analog migration

[lottiecrabie]

lots of writers have left tumblr recently but ur the one who’s been the knife in my heart💔

we are all migrating birds. one goes and we all follow✊

[sarshles-cheescake-li]

Link Click, internet slang, and Chinese culture

On the Chinese internet, there's a nickname for Link Click called Shiguang Daidaoren, meaning "the blade-bringers of time" instead of "the managers of time," the original title. Calling something "blade" is Chinese internet slang for something being angsty; whether it be derivative content or the originals themselves. Another meme is that Link Click isn't zhiyu (治愈，healing), which it is tagged as on Bilibili, but zhiyu (致郁，causing depression).

Link Click, especially its first season, is a deeply emotional and sentimental show. And it's a shame that so much of it gets not so much lost in literal, linguistic translation as much as it does in cultural, contextual translation. Many people can understand Emma's pain of being away from her parents in a new city, working a difficult job. But watching the scrolling comments on Bilibili, you get the cultural context of it -- the massive migration patterns within China from rural to urban, the children growing up and having to shed their local fangyan (方言) or, less formally, tuhua (土话)("speech of the locations" and "old-fashioned words," respectively) in exchange for Beijing Mandarin. This massive nation, nearly twice the population of Europe and only about 6% smaller in terms of area, is so diverse as to have created (what is close to) an immigrant experience for its citizens entirely within its borders. You visit your parents on Chunjie (春节）, lunar/Chinese new year, on packed trains during the largest singular human migration event on Earth, annually. And when you get home, you are faced with something different from the cities you now live in -- everything from the buildings to the furniture to the clothes they wear. I hadn't realized how deeply I missed the gaudy, garish mianao (棉袄，coats) and mianbei (棉被，cotton blankets) until I saw familiar shades of too-bright burgundy in the hands of Emma's parents. The concept of this original-home, laojia (老家, old-home) is so strongly baked into our lives that every time I meet another Chinese person, I cannot but help but ask them 你老家哪儿啊? Where is your original-home? And even though I know nothing about Chinese geography, every time I hear the answer, a little piece slots into place nonetheless.

In slang, if something made you cry or otherwise feel an emotion you weren't expecting to feel, you refer to it as pofang (破防，breaking defences). And maybe it says something that an expression of human emotion is viewed as a failure in some defences, but that's introspection for another time. Watching on Bilibili, with its hundreds of comments scrolling by "My defences have been breached" and sobbing onomatopoeia, people in the comments saying that they miss their mothers and fathers -- I, too, miss my family. When Cheng Xiaoshi, in Chen Xiao's body, tried to speak his host body's local variation and came up with butchered dongbeihua (东北话, words of the east-north), I nearly fell out of my chair. It was the sound of home, of my grandmother telling us to hush around noon because our neighbours were napping and my grandfather showing me how to play spider solitaire.

Cheng Xiaoshi's breakdown in episode 5 hits hard for its vulnerability. "I'm scared of the dark" has the same literal meaning as "我怕黑," sure, but there is something devastatingly childlike in that three-syllable declaration of fear. Where English so often derives meaning from complexity, from winding metaphors and beautiful prose, Chinese can derive breathtaking meaning from less breath than it takes to say the word analogy. 我怕黑 is stripped of any grown-up pretenses of control or dignity. It is the barest this statement can be: I. Scared. Darkness.

And what he says following, too. 我害怕一个人. Longer yet no less potent. Alone, or lonely, has many translations in Chinese. 孤独. 寂寞. 孤单. 单独. Many more synonyms for all the different ways you can be lonely. But 一个人 is, once again, an almost child-like way of saying it. Before you have the vocabulary to express these complex emotions, 一个人 is a perfectly working expression. Translating it character-by-character, it means one singular person. It is something you say when you've been left behind. When you've been made to face everything by yourself. When the world is so, so, big, and you are just one singular person, with no companions to stand with you.

And, ah, Li Tianxi's Chinese nickname, 小希. It is the last character of her full name, with a "little" shoved right in front. It is an affectionate way to call someone younger than you. It is different from Xixi, its English rendition, because a repetition of the last character is a more generalized, affectionate nickname, whereas diminutives are almost always reserved for someone younger than you, when used in real life. The diminutive says don't be scared. I'm here now. I'll handle it.

There are endless details in Link Click that make everything about it seem a little bit more like home. The word 面馆 which means something a little, subtly different than "restaurant" or "noodles shop," a difference lost without the context of the phrase 下馆子 and the way adults say it with the gladness of once-children who only ate meat on new years. The "honorifics" as English calls them, to me more of just -- ingrained parts of someone's name. Within the snap of Mandarin syllables there is meaning and memory in every character. Jie, mei, di, ge, lao, da, xiao -- they are more than their literal meanings. They are a relationship, a promise.

Perhaps I am overthinking this, awkwardly Chinese as I am: too localized to be considered first-generation, too stubbornly attached to relate to second-generation. Maybe these linguistic subtleties only exist and matter in my mind, a writer of both languages (though I must say, my Chinese prose leaves… much to be desired) with a knack for pedantics. Regardless, I hope other Chinese fans of this show share this feeling. And surely, other people will, too. All the rural children who left home to pursue higher education and opportunities in faraway cities; the raised-in-poverty who spent their childhoods dreaming of buying their family new coats; the speakers of languages long since abandoned by their childhood friends. What a delight it is to see yourself in stories, neither exception nor abnormality but a norm. What a joy it is to be one of one point four billion.

[robsheridan]

recombinance (2004). Early works with DV data corruption, 20 years ago. As I mentioned in a recent post about NIN’s 2002 And All That Could Have Been DVD, I became during the creation of that film fascinated with the aesthetics of Y2K-era consumer digital video. I was drawn to the uniquely chunky corruption blocks that occurred on lightly-damaged DV tapes, how they were sparse and sometimes gentle in nature.

I filmed some soft gradients, some out-of-focus landscapes and other smooth organic surfaces, and then damaged the tapes (wrinkling the tape, applying magnets/heat, just enough to disrupt the data but still let the tape pass through), seeking the right balance where the harsh digital corruption disrupted and contradicted the soft backdrop while also at times trying to become part of it.

It’s how things felt in the post-millennium migration to all-things-digital, like our old organic analog world was fading out of focus as more of it became rapidly mass-digitized, encoded, and compressed down into tiny efficient grids that more or less replicated what we were at the expense of all the complicated gradients of humanity in between.

Harsh DV data glitches and video interlacing against soft organic textures would form much of the inspiration and methodology of my NIN With Teeth album art in the latter part of 2004 and early 2005.

You can read more about my digital glitch art processes for With Teeth, and download a full tutorial, on my Patreon.

[worldbuilding-tomfoolery]

eevee ecos

I wanted to think about "realistic" eevees and their respective ecosystems as a little thought experiment. Adaptation logic led me to some unexpected places!

I think most striking is that Flareon would probably like to live in cooler climates, so their primary habitat would probly be mountains & taigas. They would probably play a big role in fire ecology, which is so cool. (It's Firefox!)

Jolteon also surprised me. Electricity is most useful in water, so they'd probably be semiaquatic -- a freshwater dweller, like the noble electric eel! Who woulda thunk someone so opposite-looking to Vaporeon would have the closest habitat type? (obv vapon is oceans)

Some others are fairly intuitive. Leafeon gets temperate forests, can expand into subtropical & boreal if they want. Umbreon prefers caves, and can fill nocturnal niches for other habitats. Glaceon likes -- shocker -- glaciers. Tundra & polar deserts.

Espeon was the trickiest to place. There isn't really a real-world analog for Psychic type, so I focused on their physical traits instead. Espeon seems to have short fur, if any, and big ol' eyes and ears. These are good high-heat low-water adaptations, so I went with Desert & Shrubland for esp. Pokemuad-dib

Sylveon is so bright & striking I have to put them in tropical rainforests. They're like a bird of paradise. I like to think there could be lots of microvariations in color & ornaments for wild sylfs! And just imagine the potential of domesticated colors....

Interesting implication of this is that this morph would probably have the highest population among eeveelutions by far. Between the trait diversity and the sheer cover area of tropics, Sylveon may make up fully half of adult eevees!

Since tropical rainforests are considered a cradle for biodiversity, I thought it would be fitting for them to be eevees' primary birthplace. A baby can probably handle most non-extreme environments, but tropical rainforests are their main. I like to think there's an ancient supercave which hosts its own unique mini-ecosystem, where lots of eevees congregate from all over during the migration season. Here, they breed & raise their young. Once juvenile eevees are hardy enough, the adults disperse back to their home habs.

Older, un-metamorphosed eevees prefer temperate grasslands. Like rabbits :>

[jomindraws]

Finished with Superphylum Near Bilateral, here we get an instant 3 for 1 on Superhylum Deep Bilateral !!!

Superphylum Deep Bilateral

A taxa of animals possessing a hollow dorsal tube and no notochord-analogous structure in the initial stage of development; occupying the lower stratification of the aquatic biosphere.

(AN1 A3) Clade: Hadalae

A clade of deep bilaterans that contain a hydrous, pressurized, and segmented skeletal structure for integrity at intense pressures.

PHYLUM EXTRAL BEASTAE

Phylum containing an explicitly dorsal spine column that are mobile and mostly pelagic post-embryonic.

Class Cartilage Mouthed Deepbeasts

Class of deepbeasts that contain a flexible cartilage gizzard and a foremouth.

Class Nonjawed Deepbeasts

Class of deepbeasts that do not have any jaw structure and feed via suction, a non-mobile gizzard, or a muscled tongue.

Class Jawed Deepbeasts

Class of deepbeasts that contain a fixed jaw structure and at least one set of jaw-inlaid teeth.

PHYLUM ROOTED BEASTAE

Phylum containing no specified spine column orientation that are typically non-mobile and explicitly benthic post-embryonic.

Class Floorvents

Class of rooted beast that have a ring of eyes around a central tagmatic disc, and eject waste from sets of vents on the dorsal side.

Class Pelagic Rooted Eels

Class of rooted beast that affix themselves to the ocean floor during adolescence and can only move via innard ejection and peristalsis, but never move from a nest once rooted.

(AN1 A4) Clade: Abstracta

A clade of deep bilaterans that contain a porous, gas-exchanging skeletal column for integrity at intense pressures.

PHYLUM DEEP ABSTRACTIDS

Phylum containing an internal support column and an external exoskeleton that are mobile and mostly benthic for all of their life cycle.

Class Abyssal Walkers

Class of abstractids that utilize arachnid locomotion, have multiple barbed leg ends, venomous dorsal defensive spikes, and are exclusively detritivores and scavengers.

Class Color Chromids

Class of abstractids that utilize a variety of rotating and pedal forms of locomotion, contain venomous toxic plasmodial fluid, have brightly colored bioluminescent dermal layers, and consume autotrophic seafloor organisms.

On Jom'Gol, the oceans are stratified between the upper and lower stratifications. Around 2000 meters down--near the edge of the midnight zone-- exists the Bramblesheath. The Bramblesheath is a nearly 500 million year old structure that is an amalgam of various deepwater flora, mycota, and an ensemble of ancient sessile fauna such as sponges, corals, and many others. This Bramblesheath wraps around almost the entire globe (from between 1 meter in thickness to 10 meters near the equator) and forms its own self-sustaining ecosystem, taking marine snow and low-falling plankton and recycling them before outputting its own form of marine snow beneath.

Because of this stratification, animal life branched off a long time ago-- near the formation of this structure-- and is so different phylogenetically that it is now its own superphylum. The Bramblesheath does allow some extremely small microorganisms and a FEW migrating species through occasionally, but for the most part everything below may as well be a different planet from everything above-- at least for the past 400 million years.

[noyzinerd]

Stiles: You and I are like the difference between a moth and a butterfly.

Stiles: The moth is definitely the furrier of the two and we can both agree that the butterfly has the more colorful wardrobe. But the moth's life is waaaay more treacherous than the butterfly's, even if the butterfly has to put in more work to fly 3,000 miles every migration period. Although, that's not very surprising. Butterflies have also been known to drink crocodile tears right from the source and suck the blood from the open wounds of apex predators, which is pretty metal, though not as metal as the Luna moth, which spends its whole life fucking anything that moves for a week straight before dying because of its lack of a mouth or anus.

Derek:

Stiles:

Stiles: I realize now that the analogy might have gotten away from me a little bit at the end there...

Derek: You don't say.

[blinddreams24]

Migration

A Mermay Prompt

Masterlist

Prev / Next

“Hey. Hey, y/n. Wake up.”

Someone was shaking your shoulder. You groaned and scooted away from them.

“…I could go without you, y’know. Do you want to see the migration or not?”

You blinked awake. “Tthhhhhe wwwhat?”

Surprisingly enough, the face that woke you was Dust, his long body reaching out of Cross’s den and possibly back into his own den. “The stingray migration. They’re coming through nearby and I figured you’d want to see.”

You perked up and nodded. You’d never seen the migration in person but it looked beautiful.

“Well, keep up then. I won’t slow down for you.” Dust warned and turned to leave.

He didn’t have to slow down. You were swimming in circles around him as he went half your speed. You happily followed without a word, Dust didn’t seem to like unnecessary noises. He had a frown stuck to his face most of the time but you doubted he was upset. Especially since he invited you to see the migration.

You left the trench.

Hesitating, you glanced bad at the trench where the others were sleeping. Were you allowed to-?

“You’re allowed to leave if you stay with me.” Dust interrupted as if reading your thoughts. “Either keep up or go back.” He steadily got further away from you. Well, his front half did. His tail was still gliding after him next to you.

You followed.

After several minutes of travel, Dust settled beside a cliff, stuffing his tail end into a cave you hadn’t seen. Dust left a space open next to him for you to settle in to wait.

You looked around at the empty ocean. “Wwwwwhere-?”

“Be patient. They’re coming.” Dust confirmed. Then he just… stared. Out into open water.

You laid down on the stone next to him and didn’t speak, not willing to break the awkward silence. You’d left so early. No one else was awake yet. Except maybe Nightmare. You weren’t entirely sure how his sleep schedule worked but he seemed to be awake every time you checked, just staring up at you when you peered into the trench. Did he just stay awake for months and then take a month long power nap?

“Have you seen a migration before?” Dust interrupted your thoughts.

Somewhat started, it took you a moment to answer. “Oh, uh, nnnnnot a ssssstinnnngrrrayy mmmmm-mmmigri…mmmiga- mmh.” You frowned.

“Migration.”

“Yyyyeah. I ssssaw birrrdsss. B-But nnnnot ssstinngrrrayyyssss. Nnnot innn persssonnnn.”

“Birds? Those things that swim in the air?”

You laughed. “Yyyeah. Thhhhey fffflyy, nnnot ssssswim.”

Dust nodded. “We’ve got a few fish that do that.”

“Fffflyinnng fffishhh.” You filled in for him. “Thhat’sss wwwhat wwwe call thhemmm.”

“I guess. They definitely have more meat on their bones than your birds do. You know they’re all fluff, right?” He accused.

You nodded. “Birrrdsss cannn’t be tooo hhhheavyyy. Ssso lesssss mmmeat.”

“That makes sense. And their fins help them fly right?”

“Wwwinnnngsss. Nnnot fffinnnnsss.”

“Wings.” He corrected himself with a nod. “They’re light weight and have wings that help them fly. What’s the sharp part of their head for?”

Wow. He was actually talking to you. “Uh, thhheyy peck. Like b-bitinnng byyy rrunnnning yyyourr ffffacccce innnto thhhinnngsss.” You giggled at your own analogy. “Thhheyyy donnn’t hhhhave teethhhh. Sssso thhheyy hhhave too defffennnd thhhemmmsssselves withhh sssommmethhhinnng elssse.”

“They’re predators?”

“Nnnot alwwwayysss. Ssssomme jussst eat berrriesss.”

“Berries?”

“……Plannnt cannnndyy.”

“Oh. So your birds can defend themselves even though they don’t eat other creatures?”

“Yyyess.”

“…Do you have other prey that do that?”

“Mmmmossst of thhhemm. I told Crrossss about cowwssss. Hhhhehehee ffflipped out.” You giggled.

Dust’s expression softened. “So that’s what he was stuttering about back then. He kept rambling about an herbivore that kills things. When Killer asked him about he only ever said ‘Cows’ with this terrified look on his face.” Dust smiled as you giggled. His eyes were half lidded as he watched the horizon, which on him looked like pure bliss. He nodded ever so slightly. “They’re here.”

You looked over at him. “Whhho’ssss-?”

A shadow fell across you.

Startled and wide eyed, you stared as a stingray flapped slowly away from you. Seconds later hundreds of stingrays started pouring over you and Dust’s cubby in a huge mass of blankets.

You thought when he’d asked if you wanted to see the migration, you were going to see it from the side at a distance. Not directly under it.

There were so many of them.

It was beautiful.

Genuine tinkling laughter broke you from your reverie. Dust was laughing at you, his sockets wrinkling in mirth, those two gems in his sockets glittering at you.

“Wwwhat?” You asked.

“You look so dumb. Like a guppy seeing coral for the first time.”

You gasped, offended. “I’mmmm nnnnnot a guppyyy!”

“Are too. You explore and poke at everything, you have this dumb fascinated look when you see something new, and you can’t even speak properly yet. Guppy.” Dust concluded.

“Mmnnotaguppy…” You grumbled.

Dust leaned against you. “You’re pouting. It doesn’t help your case.” His weight pushed you against the stone. “Now shush. Watch the migration.”

You didn’t mind his touch. Eels were naturally sociable with friends and touch is a common way to show affection.

Sitting there, watching the stingray migration with Dust, you realized something.

You enjoyed this.

Living in a whole new environment had been a scary thought before. But, relaxing like this?

You could get used to this.

[tarisbackyard]

Controversial take, but if a fantasy setting does not have anything that can be seen as analogous to the Catholic Church, there is a high chance it doesn't actually classify as medieval? Like, it can't be stressed enough how much the vibes of the middle ages are a direct result of the influence of the church on an infinite amount of levels. There's of course other factors, but this one gets overlooked all the damn time.

Real fucking tired of folks who are clearly not familiar with European history throwing this kind of terminology around. Y'all annoying.

Some very rough guidelines for pinpointing your vaguely European fantasy settings:

Low tech and no widespread organised religious institution? Themes of bygone golden ages? Everyone is a warrior on some level out of necessity? — Late antiquity or migration period (Example: Lord of the Rings)

Low tech and the inescapable influence of a widespread organised religion? Small kingdoms and the longing for spiritual salvation? Holy wars? Warriors are their own social cast and wear lots of armor or are shabby outlaws? — Medieval (Example: A Song of Ice and Fire)

Some tech but no/primitive firearms? Religion is heavily decentralised? Warriors are some type of soldier or mercenary, known for their questionable morals? — Renaissance (Example: Forgotten Realms)

Big poofy dresses and heavy themes of classism and industrialisation? Warriors are soldiers or law enforcement, if they are mentioned at all? — Baroque or later (Example: Discworld)

Like, we are talking a timespan of roughly 1500 years here.

[runawaycarouselhorse]

“Plank houses are good houses for people in cold climates with lots of tall trees(...) only people who don't need to migrate spend the time and effort to build these large permanent homes(...) only coastal tribes, who make their living by fishing, made houses like these.”

Iris at Opelucid Academy was ostracized for her "strange" behaviour like splashing around in the fountain or picking fruits from the trees to eat... she also had trouble studying from books, as it seems she mostly learned through an oral tradition in her village from the Old Matriarch/Village Elder before that.

There's a scene in the fishing competition episode where Iris gets very, very bored waiting for a Water type to bite at her lure, so she just pulls up her sleeves, sheds a layer, and quickly and easily catches a Water type Pokemon on her own!

The Pokemon world is a fantasy one, but with analogous regions/countries to our world and the American region we're shown (Unova, largely based on New York, but blended with other aspects of the U.S., too, so we also see the Resort Desert, where in the anime, an abandoned mining town built during the Gold Rush is also shown… which would help explain the reservations....)

Both past (Champion Alder) and current (Champion Iris) Champions are Native--although Iris looks very different from the rest of the people in her village, so she's likely mixed... we'll likely never know because she seems to be a half-wild orphan, all her flashbacks of her life before Opelucid Academy are either among the forest Pokemon, with her childhood friend Shobu/Shannon, or with the Old Village Elder who taught her.

Alder is most obviously inspired by Natives of the Great Plains, who relied heavily on the buffalo (American bison)... unlike how cruelly they were whittled down in number in reality to starve the Natives, they still exist in the wild in great numbers in the Pokemon world, which tends to portray humans working towards a more utopic world, aiming for harmony with nature, having learned from past mistakes and wars

Satoshi Tajiri, after all, made the games to preserve the memory of the lost natural landscape of his youth which was paved over. Environmentalism and love of nature is at the heart of it (even if cynical fake fans see it as overglorified cockfighting because they do not see the trainer-Pokemon bond as more like coaches and athletes, do not see the Pokemon as highly sentient, or do not understand how they are shown in the anime to be very proud and battle for sport, often refusing to be captured unless a trainer first defeats them in battle and shows their strength & worthiness to train them).

As you travel from your idyllic hometown, you see more polluted cities, that create new monsters or alter existing ones through their pollution (Muk, Trubbish, Corsola->Cursola [a happy Water type becoming a sad Ghost type, bleached coral],) some species are hunted/poached to near-extinction (like the gentle Lapras), others were chased out of hospitable land by humans and forced to adapt and likely ultimately failed/went extinct (Zoroark->Hisuian Zoroark)...

As this lovely review by Tama Hero of the Red & Blue games describes: “The game asks you to be curious, learn, grow, & discover: that adults aren’t always right, even in positions of authority; learn how to be better than the adults that raised you; learn from their mistakes and maybe go on to make better decisions as you inherit this ruined earth.”"

Sources: "The Ultimate Game Freak" TIME Magazine interview with Satoshi Tajiri. https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2040095,00.html http://native-languages.org/houses.htm Also: Drawings of Chinook Plankhouse by a Chinook Tribal Councilman. http://publichistorypdx.org/projects/chinook/river-chinook-plankhouse/

[rrcraft-and-lore]

The Celtic Goddess Danu - the Mother Goddess, the goddess of and manifest divine waters. The waters that fell from heaven to create the sacred river, Danuvis or the Danube.

The Tuatha De Danaan are translated as "The Children of Danu."

There are similarities here between this Ganga and the forming of the Ganges. But more notably, Danu from Hindiusm - the primordial mother goddess of ancient/first old waters - liquid. There is also a river named Danu in Nepal.

She is the mother of the Danavas, a larger category of the Asuras - celestial/supernatural beings of god like powers, but calling them gods exactly is incorrect. Asuras and Devas are larger in some ways than that - celestial/cosmic beings of princely domains/abilities is slightly more accurate, but for all intents an purposes. There are more similarities between Celtic and Vedic/Hindu culture/myths.

Why?

Well, recent research has shown Celtic genetics shows paternal and maternal ancestry from ancient India (R-M269 deriving via R1b, and H & U haplogroups) - is it really that weird then we see echoes of the ancient Indian epics echoed throughout other parts of the world, especially with the history of Eurasian/South Asian trade, migration, and more?

There is a story well known in the South Asian stories, but let's talk about the similar Celtic one. A tale of how a hero has to build a causeway across the waters to reach his foe, and how his wife must outsmart her captor/villain.

Some Indians are already nodding their heads. We begin with the Celtic hero: Fionn mac Cumhaill, a hero who is born just after his father dies. 

Does this sound somewhat familiar?

Well, here we have Rama, born to Dasaratha, who is cursed to die soon as his son leaves him. His father dies as soon as Rama is exiled from Ayodhya. 

Finn goes on to study with poets, warriors, and hunters in the forest of Sliabdh Bladma.

Rama goes to the forest hermitage where he learns similar arts under Vasitha. 

Finn later in his youth goes on to destroy the fire breathing demon Áillen of the Tuatha (Children of Danu analogous of Aditi here btw) who destroys the capital of Tara every year on Samhain (a celebration very similar to the Indian Pitru Paksha btw) 

Rama as a teen kills the Asuras attacking the hermitage - the enemies of the Devas (children of Aditi), interestingly enough just like I've talked about in the Norse (how you have two bodies of celestial/god beings - Aesir and Vanir), the Greeks have it, there is also a flipping that happens in a lot of these ancient cultures.

Aesir and Asura come from the proto indo European asr - but in one group one is good, the other bad. However in the Iranian - Zoroastrian, there is a reverse. The Ahura (Asura) are GOOD and the Devas are bad (down to including Indra from South Asian mythology), and in the Celtic we see something similar - a flipping of roles.

Rama, Sita, and her protector Lakshmana were all in exile together in the forest. The demon king Ravana sends a golden deer to tempt/seduce and lure away Sita from Rama but it is really the demon Maricha in disguise. Sita is tricked and ends up sending her protector to Rama, leaving herself vulnerable, and thus abducted by Ravana who wishes to marry her and this leads to a war in where Rama eventually gets her back also, kidnapping of a women sparking a war? OH HI, HELEN OF TROY. HI.

Fionn meets his wife Sabadh while hunting, and guess what? She is turned into a deer by a druid she refuses to marry. She returns to her true form once in Fionn's home and they marry...only she's turned into a deer again by the druid Fear Doirich when Fionn was off at war, and Fionn must spend years searching for her. Wow. Coinky dinky dinky. 

Now to the original part of my talk here, the causeway in Ireland was built by Fionn to travel to battle a giant. Rama Setu, his causeway, was built by Rama's army so he could enter Lanka to do battle there - (Sri Lanka).

The Celts also have four major cycles of time just like the Vedic Indians did. The tricky thing here is that linguistically, PIE (proto Indo European) has been shown to be behind a lot of story/cultural influences as it spread through Europe/Asia, but...the thing that's hard to account for here is how geo-located Ramayama is in/to India, so why do specific echoes of it show up in Celtic mythology so much so?

Yay comparative mythology and echoed storytelling/beats tropes across the world.

[foone]

Hi I'm Foone Turing. I've been here a while but never really did an introduction post, so...

Hi. Yes, that's my name. I'm an asexual trans enby (they/them pronouns), I'm married, and I'm both older than you expect and younger than you expect, depending on what you know me from. I'm a writer and programmer. I'm better known on Twitter, at the moment. I'm well known for being severely ADHD and I'm also on the autism spectrum, somewhere near ultraviolet. I live near Oakland, California, USA, but I grew up on a farm in the south. I'm a furry, but I don't have a fursona yet.

I'm big into retrotech stuff, especially floppy disks. 80s and 90s PC stuff mainly, but I have a passing interest in everything else. I loves me some weird tech that you have no idea ever existed. I'm also big into analog media. VHS tapes, laserdiscs, that sort of thing.

Fandom wise, I'm a Trekie from way back, primarily in the TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT era. I haven't yet gotten into the new stuff, and I have only a passing knowledge of the original series. I'm also a big fan of Babylon 5, Red Dwarf, and Doctor Who (4th doctor, and new who doctors 9,10,11). I watch a bunch of British panel shows: HIGNFY, Mock the Week, Nevermind the Buzzcocks, 8 out of 10 cats (primarily the countdown spinoff).

I am a Big Hater on crytypocurrentseas and AI art. I used to be famously mad at the JWST, but now that it's in space and functional, I've calmed down. They just need to rename it and I'm golden.

I'm currently splitting my social media presence across three sites:

* Tumblr, obviously. Shitposting, jokes, queer stuff, and queer joke shitposts are all going here.

* mastodon: I'm putting my tech stuff here. Teardowns, building new death generators, fun historical weirdness.

* Twitter: formerly my primary platform, but now I just use it to keep in touch with people and make fun of the impending collapse of Twitter.

Stuff I do and have done after the readmore.

(I'm on mobile now but I'll get back to this on the desktop and add more links)

* I run lettuce.wtf, a webcam showing a lettuce to see if it will outlast Twitter. (My money is literally on the lettuce)

* my long running site The Death Generator: a tool for making fake video game screenshots, with user supplied dialogue.

* I run some Twitter bots, one of which is more popular than me, and all of which will need to be migrated soon: Gay Cats, WinIcons, Print Shop Deluxe, and Every Clue Line.

* I got Microsoft 3D Movie Maker open sourced

* I got rickrolled so hard that it ended up on national TV

* I ran doom on a pregnancy test

* I have made many horrible and weird keyboards. Keyboards with hair, keyboards which write poetry, keyboards that take 5 hours to say "hello world", keyboards with randomly placed keys, keyboards with 7 toggle switches instead of buttons, and many more.

* I tear down random electronics and try to figure out and explain how they work. (originally on Twitter, but moving over to mastodon now)

* I pissed off the FBI on more than one occasion. They tried to get me fired, they delayed my wedding by over a month, and they mentioned my 4chan nickname in a federal trial.

* I used to work for 4chan. I was a moderator and coder, I created /rs/ and /r9k/, and I convinced moot to destroy the original politics board (for obvious reasons). Things went further to shit after I left, but I am still glad I left. Oh and I also inadvertently prevented the creation of the 4chan dating/meet up site by being too ADHD to actually complete development of it. You're welcome.

* I ran a windows 95 machine for the maximum amount of time. There's a bug where it crashes after 49.7 days of uptime, so I let it happen. I livestreamed the end on YouTube.

* I've done exhibits at the Vintage Computer Festival on the history of floppy disks and optical discs.

* I've worked with the Video Game History Foundation (and others) to preserve old games and game development resources (source code and such). I'm big into archival!

* I wrote a really famous Twitter thread about the surprising way our vision works, which is still circulating in screenshots (including on Tumblr!) something like 5-6 years later.

* I made my old apartment play the Zelda Ocarina of Time shop music when you walked I the door.

* I run the Tumblr animefloppies, collecting screenshots and GIFs of floppy disks in anime.

* I run several other sub-tumblrs for collecting weird things, but I'll have to link them later.

* I am technically a speedrunner. I did the TAS of Duke Nukem 1, episode 1, and a joke speedrun of Solar Winds, where I beat the game by ignoring every single possible objective and just flying to the end, which takes over an hour.

* I used to make games. Some of them are available for download.

* but it still do, too: I'm working on a (currently unnamed) game about managing a dairy farm. Both the developers have ADHD. This is going to take forever before it comes out, if it ever does.

* I'm currently working on three books. Two are compilations of stuff previously twitterized, one is a novel:

- Always Screaming Forever: non-fiction, stories about my career in the tech industry and various other tech/science/history stuff I love ranting about.

- The Other Side of Screaming: fiction. My short stories.

- Mundane Kaya Sona (placeholder title): a linguist gets pulled into an FBI investigation into a car crash. An unknown language leads to the discovery of a wizard living in a forest in Oregon, and an interdimensional plot to smuggle nuclear weapons to another world, and break a cold war stalemate we (the planet earth) didn't realize we were in. I've been working on the setting for this story since I was about 7 years old, and I'm excited to finally get it out of my head and into yours.

* I'm probably forgetting like 5-10 major things I've done but ADHD is a hell of a drug. I'll add more as they come to me.

[phoenixtakaramono]

Re: Where to Read the Four Butchlander Threadfics on Twitter & Status Update about Them

Whelp, guess what, everyone? Your girl’s Twitter account got shadowbanned for the first time. And pretty much the threadfics are inaccessible until the ban gets lifted. (Let’s hope everything’s back to normal soon. 😭)

The threadfics in question (M3GAN-inspired AU, Fix-It AU, and Sugar Baby AU are the long WIPs; the Vampire & Lycan Hunter AU is the only one complete):

And like I was somewhat expecting, with my account currently submerged in the ether (fingers crossed nothing’s affected and everything’s back to normal once I’m back so we can return to our regular schedule threadfic updates on Twitter), another person’s reached out to me about it:

The Asks in question:

These threadfics were always intended to exist on Twitter as the first draft prototypes where I can write spontaneously and see what works, what doesn’t, and make them reader-interactive so pretty much my readers influence important story decisions for whichever threadfic it is. Then if I were to migrate these threadfics over to AO3, the intention was always to flesh them out more and polish them up, maybe change a couple story elements so there’s a point of difference between what’s on AO3 versus what’s on my Twitter (as an analogy, think of an author’s original webnovel version they uploaded on their website versus the professional light novel version they’ve polished up for publication) to keep it fresh. This migration was supposed to happen after all four chapters of Truce are complete and the only Butchlander fic I have left on AO3 that would still be ongoing would be The Name of the Game, which frees up my workload.

So currently, where we are right now, I am seriously considering moving up the schedule if, after 1 week (10/29/23), my account on Twitter is still Shazamed. I have heard shadowbans range from 2-3 days, to 3-5 days where it’s best if I don’t use the app in this duration of time, before escalating to Twitter Support if it persists. Same goes if my account is restored and I still get shadowbanned in the future for updating any of these 3 long threadfics.

Because, at that point, I might as well just port them over to AO3 if this keeps happening and save myself the headache. But this will have to be tested out. If I see it is truly unsustainable due to Twitter’s current unfriendliness to 🔞 threadfics (😒 …it used to be an ultra friendly platform for such, till you showed up El0n Musk), then I’ll just stop writing 🔞 threadfics all together.

The one thing I will have to say, though, is being a very detail-oriented multi-fandom writer who’s trying to be fair by adhering to the update schedule, for any new content, updates will be slow. Unlike Twitter where I can churn out 25 tweets at a time per update, you’ll be looking at weeks or months per chapter update on AO3 since three of them will be turned into genuine long stories. Quicker updates depend on how much content already exist on Twitter to be adapted from before the time of migration! Let’s see how it goes! ✌️

[mtgpocketrealm]

Ula, Emi, Kozi the False Gods

Card: Shrine of the Forsaken Gods

Credit: Daniel Ljunggren

The shortened names of three Eldrazi Titans, believed to be three gods...which they are analogous to in power funnily enough. They warp the world, minds, and life around them and those who witness their horrid spawn long enough will all go mad. Some forms of madness result in self-termination, others inane ramblings, and the final form is that of worship.

The werewolves and some humans ended up succumbing to the last, primarily due to only witnessing the brushes of the Titan's shadows against the plane. The werewolves succumbed out of desperation and hunger and were quickly conscripted wherever possible. Whenever a new lineage appeared on the realm, a few would splinter off out of curiosity, and subsequently warp and change into a visage of that lineage.

The human's faith however was not born of desperation, but fear, awe. These mighty creatures held a unilateral adaptation to avoid death in some manner. Something which was highly respected, and due to the unnatural and effective means employed by the Eldrazi, they became paragons of survival within these desolate wastelands...which were made all the harsher by the very beings they now worship.

They see the Remnant left by the True Eldrazi as lifelong armor, tools, and weapons, which they mold and shape by feeding it mana. The specific variety of remnant that they use is indicative of the god or gods they follow. In a usually literal sense, following in the wake of the Eldrazi as they migrate, though they aren't following the Eldrazi themselves, no, they follow the Howlpacks, the Eldrazi Werewolves. Rites of Passage include the cultivation of armor and/or armaments and slaying one of the Horrors that are created by the Howlpacks. Releasing the soul of one who did not survive as a consequence is a common belief. Those who have something to prove may seek to slay a member of the Howlpack itself (though they will be hunted in return upon success). Those who are great, or perhaps insane, seek to slay one of the Eldrazi themselves. A small vestige of god, the 'God's Titan' as it were, in return for what effectively amounts to bragging rights and universal respect across the realm. Even the Realmsoul seemed to have a strange reverence for any humans who could manage such a feat based on the descriptions of one such battle.

This may seem like a heretical action, killing your god, but for the faithful, there is no higher form of worship. Not only are you surviving the wasteland, you thrive more than the beings who make it, you are so capable of finding the resources required that you can simply remove their source. It is strange admittedly, but it is their belief.

They also have 'The Pilgrimage', where a believer(s) travels from their home ring, underground, to the Realmsoul. Trading information about their gods and their adversaries (the Howlpacks) to the Realmsoul for mana crystals, food, water, and occasionally clothing. The Realmsoul admitted to starting that tradition when the Realm was far smaller since its view of where the Eldrazi are is 'blurred'. A condition that has apparently only gotten worse overtime. One of these individuals or groups will go on this pilgrimage once every three or four months, though, as the distance has increased, so too has the time between the Pilgrimages.

Beyond those general beliefs, the right of passage, and the pilgrimage, they have few unified beliefs. Some believe in prayer, some believe in rituals such as regular fasting or sacrificing a portion of their food to the path of their god, and some believe in worship through regular warfare with the Howlpacks. They are scattered groups who only come together when pilgrimages align. And though conflicts of 'how' to worship can arise in these times, the Realmsoul is quick to prevent these situations from becoming violent. Primarily by way of threatening to give them less resources.

Ula is the god of Endurance

'The Titans of Ula tower over mountains, and when felled, they come back to walk again.'

Card: Deathless Behemoth

Credit: Jason Felix

The Howlpacks that follow behind them are known as the Howlpacks of Corrupting Hunger. Hairless bodies of smooth flesh, ribs outside of their flesh, and featureless bone-like faceplates. Relentlessly hunting down any source of mana that they can sense. They possess one to three tentacle-like tails and long sharp claws. Their legs have smoothed, becoming difficult to truly identify them as such rather than as two more tails. It should be noted, that they are blind and deaf, but they have some way of 'sniffing out' mana, be it souls or crystals. Their conversion rate of human corpses to Eldrazi Horrors is abysmal, generally, they annihilate the corpses they feast upon rather than letting them change.

Emi is the goddess of Persistence

'The Titans of Emi do not seem to deserve the monicker, but they survive. Stabbed, Burned, Hacked, Flayed, they will continue. It will melt away, yet it will remain.'

Card: Eternal Scourge

Credit: Winona Nelson

The Howlpacks that follow behind them are known as the Howlpacks of Whispering Lies. Sineous bodies with patches of hair, they speak, sing, and whisper with many voices all at once. This sound changes the perception of any animal nearby, it makes them see things and hear things. As it turns out, it causes random activity within the brain of its victims, but it can focus the ability to seemingly disappear, much like a telepath could. Those with sufficient willpower can fight off this effect, albeit temporarily. Their conversion rate of human corpses to Eldrazi Horrors is nearly 100%, generally, they only consume the vocal cords of their victims, adding their voice to the choir.

Kozi is the god of Resilience

'The Titans of Kozi do not come back from death, they do not avoid pain, they simply refuse to die. They grow ever stronger, ever larger. They are what we hope to become, uncaring of the desolate reality around us.'

Card: Walker of the Wastes

Credit: Joseph Meehan

The Howlpacks that follow behind them are known as the Howlpacks of a Thousand Witnesses. Carapace-encased bodies with an obsidian-like mantis blade on their forearms. They have eyes not on their heads but on their shoulders, hips, pecks, the small of their back, between their shoulder blades, on the sides of their elbows and knees, and the back of their three-fingered hands. Space around them distorts minorly as they move, which makes ranged weapons significantly less effective against them as well as creating strange reflections of the Horrors they had once created appear around them. Though they can harm an unwary hunter, they are still illusions, and disrupting them sufficiently can get rid of them.

Card Inspirations: Shrill Howler // Howling Chorus, Kozilek's Sentinel

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[elancholia]

(via) This paper (preprint) essentially argues that the Indo-European expansion into Europe was accompanied by zoonotic plagues which arose in the Steppe, to which the IEs were adjusted (gently, via "long-term continuous exposure") and the Early European Farmers (the neolithic inhabitants of Europe) were not. They analogize this to the plagues which afflicted the Americas after the arrival of Europeans, correlating it with "increased genetic turnover" (population replacement) in Europe.

(So, two instances of Indo-Europeans conquering a continent in the wake of apocalyptic plagues. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.)

Their method is to check for microbial DNA in samples of human remains. What they demonstrate, afaict, is:

a) Zoonotic diseases first appeared around the time of the IE migrations, being first detected in samples from 6,500 BP and peaking around 5,000 BP.

b) IEs are consistently more likely to be infected with zoonotic diseases than non-IEs. (This greater incidence of infection seems to persist throughout the period.) This "suggests that the cultural practices and living conditions of the former might have been more conducive to the emergence of novel zoonotic pathogens." (14)

So they don't directly demonstrate that EEFs were ultimately hit harder by these illnesses, they just say that it would make sense for IEs to have adapted to them. As far as I can tell, this is fair; they cite a paper which claims that increased disease pressure may have resulted in adaptations to multiple sclerosis in the Steppe and another which suggests a similar trend among Amerindians after the Columbian Exchange.

Things I don't know:

In a population being ravaged by epidemics, would you would expect the infection rate to remain lower than that of a (more) immune population, or would you expect the infection rates to equalize? Would you expect to see spikes in one population and a more consistent line in the other, or some other indicator of differential impact? I suppose you'd just need comparative evidence, presumably from the Americas.

As lifestyles equalized (until you're comparing an 80% IE and a 40% IE guy who live in adjacent villages in Italy 500 BC), why would the IE effect persist? Wouldn't you expect the correlation to fall over time?

Do pastoralists we can directly observe have higher rates of zoonotic disease than animal-having agriculturalists or animal-eating hunter-gatherers? That seems to have pretty direct bearing on their lifestyle hypothesis.

Is there a similar effect in other places where IEs migrated during the Bronze Age (say, India or Iran), or other places within Eurasia where agriculturalists came into contact with Steppe peoples? They have a couple of data points in Iran and Anatolia and a bunch in SE Asia (for some reason), but everything else is in Europe and central Asia/Siberia.

There's also an odd effect where the two major genetic contributors to the IE population have different effects, Caucasus hunter-gatherer descent being associated with all the zoonotic diseases and Eastern HG being associated mostly with black plague, which is sort of odd, if these are one population with similarly disease-fostering lifestyles.

[powdermelonkeg]

Look just hear me out

The very very first elves lived in the Feywild, and supposedly came around from Corellon's spilled blood in his battle with Gruumsh, the god of orcs. Back then, they could shapeshift and were extremely powerful. His favorites went on to become his pantheon, not-yet-Lolth included.

Stands to reason that since they literally came from the blood of a god, they should be something analogous to aasimar. Further proof of this: the Avariels were winged elves from way back in history.

Along came a band of Aen Elle. Notoriously world-hoppy and power-hungry, they intermingled with Corellon's blood kids in an effort to get some of their power. Corellon's bloodline loses its ability to shapeshift and become the Eladrin, not quite fey anymore (save for the ones that didn't migrate to Toril because they got steeped in the Feywild for 30k more years after that, but they're not important here).

Also notoriously xenophobic and seeing other non-elf races as beneath them, the Aen Elle back home get appalled by this and cut the elves that intermingled off. The Eladrin are disowned and disinherited by the Aen Elle.

-30k DR. The first elves come to Toril. More elves eventually settle. Etc etc, all of elven history, we now have Moon, Sun, Wood, Wild, and Drow.

Back in Witcher-world (forever mad that the planet/continent doesn't have a name) 2k years pre-Conjunction, some Aen Elle split off from the whole and eventually become the Aen Sidhe. Also post-Conjunction, Lara Dorren happens. All of Continental history here, etc etc.

ANYWAYS. The reason elves look like elves between worlds is because it's the Aen Elle's fault.

[dailyrandomwriter]

Day 683

On-site work days are still hard on me, and I’m very tired, but it doesn’t remove the fact my highlight is popping into Miles’ office to talk about stationery. I had finished last week swatching my inks, with full intention of showing Miles because he’s one of the few people who would appreciate it.

It was fascinating to get his take on both my inks and my pens. My inks, because I had bought two shades of brown and wasn’t quite sure why, and then he pointed out the lighter of the two shades looked more like a gold, and I had to admit, yea it kind of did and it didn’t occur to me. 

The other interesting thing was that he liked the writing inked by the Lumos more than the glass pen, stating it was higher quality, which was technically true. The Lumos pen ensures a more even distribution of the ink so the writing is uniform, but it does make the ink paler than if I used the glass dip pen. 

And I actually liked the deeper but uneven tones that the glass pen makes with the ink. Though this could be due to the vintage, or old time-y feel that the pen creates, which is far more my aesthetic.

The best part about that conversation was that it did eventually veer towards bullet journaling which isn’t something I normally get to talk about. I especially don’t get to talk about the ins and outs of the system that I use to put my life in order. Or for that matter, I don’t often get to tell people about my love for analog organizers because digital ones are terrible for me.

Next week, I am going to bring the journal that I’m going to be migrating into because I have run out of pages in my current journal.