#and frames of different anatomical structures | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

comrade-meow · 4 years

Link

The “world historical defeat” of the female sex continues apace.

Women in their tens of thousands are trafficked into sexual slavery every year. Increasing numbers of poor, black and brown women are virtually imprisoned on commercial surrogacy farms, producing babies for the benefit of rich couples. Brutalisation of women in the porn industry is feeding through into its viewers’ sex lives, with grim consequences, while teenage girls face an epidemic of sexual harassment at school and on the streets.

The frequency of female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage has shot up during the Covid-19 crisis. Domestic violence has likewise rocketed. In the UK, prosecutions are so limited that rape is virtually decriminalised. Abortion rights are under attack, from the USA to Poland. And international ‘men’s rights’ networks like ‘Men Going Their Own Way’ attract millions of viewers to videos that dehumanise and pathologise women to an extreme extent.

This is a resurgent global system of exploitation and oppression targeted on women, a reaction against the many gains of feminism. The increasingly commercial nature of many of these deeply exploitative and oppressive practices - the porn industry, for one, makes billions every year, some of it from content involving rape, child abuse, non-consensual filming and the like - drives home the desperate need for a socialist analysis that exposes the roots of these ancient but enduring patriarchal oppressions. And we need an understanding and a language that enables that analysis.

But at the same time as this shocking acceleration of anti-woman attitudes, practices and policies, the categories of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are being rapidly taken apart in response to a worldwide ‘trans rights’ movement. In a rush to embrace the new world of multiple genders, organisations and corporations as diverse as Amnesty International, Tampax, the stillbirth charity, Sands, the Harvard Medical School and many others are in a sudden rush to delete the words ‘woman’ and ‘girl’ from their vocabulary and replace them with a new, ‘inclusive’ language of ‘menstruators’, ‘gestational carriers’, ‘birthing people’, ‘cervix-havers’ and ‘people with uteruses’.

At the same time, the word ‘sex’ has progressively been replaced by the word ‘gender’, which is used to refer not only to reproductive class, but also to aspects of human life as disparate as individual psychology, personality, mannerisms, clothing choices and sexual roles. And the words ‘male’ and ‘female’, ‘man’ and ‘woman’, are being repurposed to refer not to the sexes themselves, but to aspects of psychology, personality or clothing that are traditionally associated with one or the other sex.

Is this new language - and the renaming and breaking up of the category of people formerly known as women - the tool we need for the job of dismantling the worldwide discrimination, exploitation and abuse of women that is so often focussed on the female sexual and reproductive characteristics? I would argue not. These misguided attempts to dismantle the language used to describe women’s bodies and lives does nothing to reveal or dismantle the oppression itself.

This is because the conceptual framework that is driving the change in language - and stretching and distorting the categories of man and woman into meaninglessness - is fundamentally wrong. And badly so.

Sex as fiction

The political driver behind these linguistic changes is the ‘trans rights’ movement, which bases its arguments on the most extreme and illogical aspects of queer theory. Many trans activists insist that to even question the precepts that they advance is actively hateful, even fascistic in nature - witness the social media furore when any celebrity, such as JK Rowling, dares to say that the word ‘woman’ means a female person. But it is neither hateful nor fascistic to question arguments that have neither intellectual nor political integrity.

I will quote from Judith Butler’s book Gender trouble1 - first published in 1990, and often hailed as a foundational text of queer theory - and its 1993 follow-up, Bodies that matter2, to illustrate the thinking behind the current trans activism movement. Queer theory is an unashamedly post-modernist, anti-materialist and psychoanalytic school of philosophical thought that frames sex, sexual behaviour and sexual identity (being gay, bisexual or straight) as social constructs, and takes its arguments so far that it claims that the two sexes (not just gender, but the sexes themselves) are fictional. The phenomenon of intersex is thought to prove that sex is not ‘binary’, with only two possibilities, but exists on a spectrum between male and female (I, among many others, have debunked this notion elsewhere3). But in queer theory, gender is not just “the social significance that sex assumes within a given culture”.4 Queer theory goes much further, purporting that the two sexes themselves are social constructs, like money or marriage. Thus gender replaces sex altogether: “... if gender is the social construction of sex, then it appears not only that sex is absorbed by gender, but that ‘sex’ becomes something like a fiction, perhaps a fantasy.”5

Therefore, according to queer theory, male and female are not objective realities, but ‘identities’. Everyone is required to fit into one or other of those two ‘identities’ in order to enforce reproduction through “compulsory heterosexuality”:

The category of sex belongs to a system of compulsory heterosexuality that clearly operates through a system of compulsory sexual reproduction … ‘male’ and ‘female’ exist only within the heterosexual matrix … [and protect it] from a radical critique.6

It is therefore through the power of language, and the naming of male and female, that gender oppression is created; and it is by the power of language that it can also be defeated. In order to dismantle the oppression that has resulted from this categorisation, it will be necessary to implement an “insidious and effective strategy … a thoroughgoing appropriation and redeployment of the categories of identity themselves … in order to render that category, in whatever form, permanently problematic”.7 This feat is to be achieved specifically by “depriving the … narratives of compulsory heterosexuality of their central protagonists: ‘man’ and ‘woman’”.8 The category ‘women’ is particularly promoted as being ripe to be emptied of meaning. It should be

a permanent site of contest … There can be no closure on the category and … for politically significant reasons, there ought never to be. That the category can never be descriptive is the very condition of its political efficacy.9

It is evident that the programme of queer theory is working, in the sense that it is changing and dismantling the language. But does the whole of gender oppression across history really originate in the simple naming of male and female? Because, if it does not, then this new movement is a dead end that is ultimately doomed to failure as far as challenging the structures that bear down on women’s lives.

While it is true that human thought and culture must have developed in tandem with the particulars of our species’ sexual behaviour, reproductive biology and mating systems - such as menstruation, which, although not unique to humans, is unusual among mammals - it is futile to protest that sex did not exist prior to the emergence of the human race.

Queer theory, however, rejects any understanding of human sex or gender that involves biological sciences. Our evolutionary history simply disappears in a puff of smoke:

... to install the principle of intelligibility in the very development of a body is precisely the strategy of a natural teleology that accounts for female development through the rationale of biology. On this basis, it has been argued that women ought to perform certain social functions and not others; indeed, that women ought to be fully restricted to the reproductive domain.10

For those who believe that reproduction is the only societal contribution appropriate to the class of people that possess wombs, by virtue of the fact that they possess wombs, altering the use of the word ‘woman’ cannot change that. It is the reproductive ability itself, not the words used to describe it, that the argument is based on. Nothing materially changes - moving words around will not change the position of the uterus, or its function. It is as futile as rearranging the labels on the deckchairs on the Titanic. Or like renaming the Titanic itself after it has hit the iceberg - thus, miraculously, the Titanic will not sink after all.

Many of the abuses and exploitations that oppress women target the real sexual and reproductive aspects of women’s bodies - our materiality - so a materialist analysis is essential. Can any such analysis work, when its starting point is that sex is a fiction?

Applying Occam’s Razor - accepting the simplest explanation that can account for all the facts - queer theory’s conceptual framework does not cut the mustard. If sex is a fiction invented to enforce heterosexuality and reproduction, it leaves vast swathes of the picture unexplained. An analysis worth its salt would bring together multiple, seemingly different, inexplicable or unconnected aspects of social and cultural attitudes to sex under one schema. A materialist analysis that takes into account the reality that there are two meaningful reproductive sex classes fares far better, and explains far more of the problematic - and often bizarre - social and cultural practices and attitudes around sex.

Is it not a far better explanation that people became aware of the blindingly obvious early on in human development - that there are very clearly only two reproductive roles, and that the anatomical features associated with each are astonishingly easy to identify at birth in nearly all humans? And that the possession of those distinct anatomies resulted in them being named, in the same way that other significant natural phenomena are named - because, irrespective of any relative value placed upon them, they actually exist?

Leaving aside that blatantly obvious counterargument, there is a further problem with queer theory: homosexuality just does not need to be eradicated in order to ensure reproduction. Why? Because occasional heterosexual intercourse, at the right time, during periods of female fertility, is all that is needed. A woman could sleep with a man just once or twice a month, and have it away with another woman for 20-odd nights a month, with exactly the same reproductive outcome. While it is true that there would be no reproduction if every sexual encounter was homosexual, strict heterosexuality, or anything approaching it, is not required to ensure childbearing. Likewise, a fertile man can sleep with a woman a few times a year and be almost certain to father children. And since one man can impregnate many women, significant numbers of men could be largely or exclusively homosexual without any impact on the number of children born - so why persecute and punish homosexual behaviour so severely?

The ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ argument has no basis, once examined in this light, and thus a central plank of queer theory falls easily.

Queer theory proposes that the so-called ‘complementary’ aspects of masculine and feminine behaviour have been created by culture in order to justify the compulsory pairing of male with female. Genders, including the two sexes themselves, are understood to be performative: brought into being by repeated ‘speech acts’ that, through the appearance of authority and the power of naming, actually create that which they name.

Thus, each individual assumes - or grows into, takes on and expresses - a ‘gender’ that is encouraged, promoted, and enforced by social expectations. I broadly agree that many of the observable average differences in male and female behaviour are largely culturally created, and reinforced by oft-repeated societal expectations. The fact that the expectations have to be so often stated, and sometimes violently reinforced, is testament to the fact that those differences are in no way innate, but are driven by the requirement to conform. But the origin of the expectations of ‘complementary’ male and female behaviour is not, as queer theory suggests, to counteract homosexuality and force the pairing of male with female.

The specifics of masculine and feminine behaviour do not point towards such a conclusion. Why is feminine behaviour submissive, while masculine behaviour is dominant? Why not the other way around? Why must one be dominant and the other submissive at all? Wouldn’t a hand signal do instead? How do the particular, specific manifestations of gender serve the purpose of enforcing heterosexuality and eliminating homosexuality, when many of them, such as FGM, reduce heterosexual behaviour in heterosexual women? True, any enforcement would require bullying of some kind, but why is it that so much of the bullying related to sex focuses on (heterosexual) women, and so relatively little on heterosexual men? Why is virginity in women prized but of little account in men? Why is so much actual heterosexual behaviour, that could lead to reproduction, so viciously punished? Why are women punished, humiliated, shamed far more than men for sexual promiscuity - heterosexual promiscuity? Why is it girls, not boys, who are the primary victims of child marriage practices? Why, in so many cultures, are women traditionally not allowed to own property, and children are considered the property of the father and not the mother? What answer does queer theory have to all this? None. It is not even framed as a question that needs to be answered.

Patriarchy

All of these disparate cultural practices spring sharply into focus when we understand the simple rule formulated by Friedrich Engels, the primary and founding rule of patriarchy, which exists to enforce the rights, not of men in general, but specifically of fathers: when property is private, belonging to male individuals rather than shared communally, women must bear children only to their husbands.

Why? Because the mechanics of reproduction mean that, while a woman can be certain the children she is raising are indeed her own, a man cannot - unless he knows for sure that the children’s mother cannot have slept with any other man. Thus when private property is concerned, men have a strong motivation to ensure that the children to whom they pass on their wealth are their own offspring. Herewith the origins of monogamous marriage. And with it, as an integral part (indeed as a driving force), the origins of women’s oppression - or “the world historical defeat of the female sex”, according to Engels.11

The gender rules developed in order to ensure paternity and inheritance. This simple explanation takes us a long way to understanding the specifics of how gender oppression manifests itself globally, in the enforced submission of women to men, and specifically to their husbands, and in seemingly disparate cultural values and practices that prevent women from having heterosexual sex with multiple male partners, outside of marriage, or punish them if they do.

How do men, individually and collectively, stop - or attempt to stop - their wives from sleeping with other men? Promises are not enough, as we know. How do you stop anyone from doing something they want to, from expressing their own desires? You bully them. You humiliate, threaten, harass, attack and perhaps - occasionally - even murder them. In these multiple ways you seek to enforce compliance, through assuming social dominance and forcing social submissiveness and subordination. Society and culture evolve around these values, and develop in ways that satisfy the needs and desires of the socially dominant group. Meanwhile members of that socially submissive group are discouraged from banding together (they might mount a revolution), and learn to adapt their own behaviour to avoid harm. And, since conflict is costly, disruptive and traumatic, both groups develop strategies to signal their social position, to defuse and avoid conflict and possible injury, with social rules and expectations developing around these behaviours.

The global hallmarks of masculinity and femininity would be recognised in any other primate species as the unmistakable signs of social dominance and social subordination. Socially dominant primates (and other mammals, plus many other vertebrates) make themselves large, take up space, monopolise resources. These are the core components of masculine behaviour. Subordinate animals drop or avert the gaze, make themselves small, move out of the way, and surrender resources. These are typical feminine behaviours. In primates, attending to the needs of the dominant members of the group, by grooming, is also characteristic of social subordinates. In humans, grooming as such has been replaced by a far broader suite of behaviours that involve serving the needs of the dominant class.

Gendered behaviours and the social values attached to each sex reflect this pattern worldwide. Societies globally and throughout time promote and encourage these masculine and feminine behaviours - better understood as dominant and subordinate behaviours - as appropriate to men and women respectively. Western cultures are no exception.

The enactment of dominance (‘masculinity’) and subordinance (‘femininity’) can be understood as partly learned and partly innate. Innate, in the sense that the expression of these behavioural patterns is an instinctive response to a felt social situation, or social position - anyone will signal submissiveness in the presence of a threatening social dominant who is likely to escalate dangerously if challenged. Thus, nearly everyone signals submissiveness extremely effectively, and unconsciously, as soon as they have a gun pointed at their heads. And it is hard not to display these behaviours, when we feel ourselves to be in the presence of a socially dominant or subordinate individual or group.

So femininity is a stylised display of primate submissiveness - a behavioural strategy that reduces or avoids conflict by reliably signalling submission to social dominants. Members of either sex, when they find themselves towards the bottom of any social hierarchy, deploy different, but similarly ritualised and reliable, submissive gestures. Examples include bowing, curtseying, kneeling or prostration before monarchs; the doffing of caps with downcast eyes and slumping shoulders in the workplace; and the kneeling and bowing (in prayer) that is such a large part of patriarchal organised religions. It is easy to recognise such gestures as signals of submission to social superiors, and they should be opposed as manifestations of social hierarchies that need to be abolished as an implicit part of the project for universal liberation. Neither the bowing and scraping of the dispossessed nor the arrogance and high-handedness of the wealthy should be welcomed or celebrated. It is time to apply the same approach when it comes to gender.

Moving beyond their instinctive component, the specifics of so-called ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ behaviour are learned and then practised until they become habitual; and sometimes deployed consciously and strategically. People do what other people do; children start to mimic others around them, especially those they perceive to be like themselves, at a very young age, perfecting gestures, postures and vocal tones that may be cultural or, within each culture, gendered. Learned and practised from a young age, it is no wonder that these behaviours can feel like a natural part of a person’s core being - especially when they also incorporate an instinctive response that is deployed after rapidly gauging the level of threat posed by others. In addition, both sexes are explicitly taught to behave as expected - and so the dominance of males and the subordination of females is reinforced and perpetuated from one generation to another.

Anything that undermines the position of men as dominant and female as subordinate is a threat to the established order. Thus the second rule of patriarchy: men must not act like women, and women must not act like men.

This explains why homosexuality, cross-dressing and other forms of refusal to conform to gendered expectations are persecuted in many societies. For men to start acting ‘like women’, either sexually or socially – ie, submissively, which has come to include being penetrated sexually - would be to undermine and threaten the superior role of all men. Similarly, for a woman to act ‘like a man’ is a shocking insurrection - she must be kept down, and such behaviour has to be punished and made taboo. Since clothing and other behaviours are cultural markers that help to distinguish between the two sexes, cross-dressing breaks this law very blatantly. And further, to allow cross-dressing potentially allows the mixing of the sexes in ways that could undermine paternity rights.

On this reading, then, the persecution of homosexuality, cross-dressing and all other forms of gender non-conformity originated secondarily from the enforcement not of compulsory heterosexuality, but of compulsory monogamy for women in the interests of ensuring paternity rights. This is an important distinction, for, while it accepts that gendered behaviours and values are cultural, it acknowledges the material existence of the two sexes as a real and significant phenomenon, with powerful influences on societal development.

Combating oppression

Understanding and placing ourselves as animals with real, material, biologically sexed bodies - rather than the smoke-and-mirrors erasure of sex and materiality itself that queer theory promotes - gives us a far more powerful tool to understand and combat the oppression of women, and homosexual and transsexual or transgender people, than queer theory’s baseless speculations ever can.

It explains not only the different social and cultural values and expectations around men and women, but it also explains many of the specifics of what they are and why the expectations are so strongly hierarchical. Women must be submissive to men (‘feminine’) because they must be controlled - from the male perspective, in order to bear children fathered by the man who controls them. From their own point of view, they must allow themselves to be controlled, and teach each other to be controlled, in order to avoid injury or worse. It also explains widespread cultural practices that control the sexual lives and reproduction of women - from FGM to child marriage, to taboos around female virginity and pregnancy outside of marriage. These things happen because sex is observable, and real, and known from birth. At birth, it is in nearly all cases blatantly obvious whether a person can be reasonably expected to be capable of bearing a child, or of inseminating a woman, and it is on this basis that the two sexes exist as classes. To suggest otherwise is to enter the realm of absolute fantasy, or at least of extreme idealism, which indeed queer theory does, since “to ‘concede’ the undeniability of ‘sex’ or its ‘materiality’ is always to concede some version of ‘sex’, some formation of ‘materiality’.”12

The current queer theory-led trans movement seeks to dismantle the second law of patriarchy - men must not act like women, women must not act like men. We do indeed need a movement against sex-based oppression that acknowledges and unites against that law. We need to work towards a world where qualities like strength, assertiveness, caring and gentleness are rewarded, encouraged and promoted in both sexes rather than mocked and punished when they are exhibited by the ‘wrong’ sex; where it is impossible for men to act ‘like women’, or women to act ‘like men’, because gendered expectations attached to each sex no longer exist and anyone can, without censure or even mild surprise, be an engineer or a carer, be logical or emotional or wear a dress or make-up or high heels or a tie or cut their hair short, irrespective of their sex. But to pretend that the sexes themselves do not exist is a nonsense. And it is a dangerous nonsense, when it obscures and denies the existing power relations between men and women.

Female oppression is not an inevitable consequence of the differences between male and female bodies. Yes, the fact that men are bigger and stronger on average can make it easier for them to establish social dominance through direct physical threat; while the risk of being left literally holding the baby and having to provide for it can put women in an economically vulnerable position, where social subordination is a likely outcome. But under different material conditions - and a different value system - there is no reason why we cannot shed these destructive, dysfunctional habits of gender that oppress and limit our humanity.

There is nothing inherent in being a man that makes men oppress women - it is their position in society that allows them to do it, and rewards women who collude with them. Power is the ability to harm without being harmed yourself, and therefore, with sufficient motivation, many people when they have power will use it to cause harm. Currently, men very frequently have that power in relation to women, and so they use it, resulting in very many harms. When, within any given social grouping or class, men occupy a position of power with respect to women, it is not an inevitable effect of human biology: it is a position gifted by property, by wealth, by tradition and by law.

We must seek to rebalance power to prevent harm. That involves, among many other things, abolishing both masculinity and femininity - no progressive cause should support or perpetuate a social system in which dominance is encouraged in one group, while social submissiveness is promoted in others. It is absolutely contrary to all ideas of human dignity and liberation. How could any liberatory movement adopt a position that posits an innate, inescapable hierarchical system at the heart of human nature, with close to 50% of humanity born inescapably into a submissive role?

But in today’s gender debate, the position of queer theory-inspired trans activists is exactly that. For them, to be a ‘woman’ is not to be female, but to be ‘feminine’- in other words, to be a ‘woman’ is to be submissive. It is here that we begin to see the true social regressiveness of this supposedly liberatory movement. For, while it is understood that biology does not determine the gender of trans people, the flipside of that argument is that most people’s gender is indeed innate, as social conservatives have always thought. Why? Because, according to trans activism, most people are ‘cis’ - they ‘identify’ as the gender they were born into. If 1% are trans, then 99% are cis; perhaps being trans is more common, especially if it includes the non-binary category, but still the vast majority of people are cis. So, since most people born with female reproductive systems are ‘cis’ women, they are supposedly innately feminine, which is to say, innately submissive, subordinate, and servile. Meanwhile a similar proportion of people born with male reproductive systems are considered to be ‘cis’ men: innately masculine, and therefore born into a socially dominant role. It is likely that many activists and well-meaning people on the sidelines of this debate have not thought it through far enough to understand that this is the logical and necessary conclusion of their arguments.

While most trans activists avoid definitions like the plague, such a conclusion is borne out by the attempts of some to redefine ‘woman’ and ‘female’. Definitions of ‘woman’ include such gems as: “a person who acts in accordance with traditional gender roles assigned to the female sex” and “anyone that culturally identifies and presents as the combination of stereotypes and cultural norms we define as feminine” or “adhering to social norms of femininity, such as being nurturing, caring, social, emotional, vulnerable and concerned with appearance”. And femaleness is “a universal sex defined by self-negation … I’ll define as female any psychic operation in which the self is sacrificed to make room for the desires of another … [The] barest essentials [of femaleness are] an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes.”13

This is what we are fighting. It is why we are fighting. We refuse to submit.

#Anglo.txt

8 notes · View notes

thecreaturecodex · 5 years

Text

Wechselbalg

“White Hair” © Jakub Javora, accessed at his ArtStation here

[Commissioned by @wannabedemonlord. Alien hybrids are such a staple of UFO lore that I had to get around to them sooner or later. The name is a German term for “changeling”, which seems appropriate, considering that aliens and fey are different modalities for similar stories. Take that as Passport to Magonia literal-existence-of-alternate-dimensions or folkloric analysis, as you see fit. Also, the original image is animated, so if you click the link above, be aware before you scare the crap out of yourself the way I did then she turns and smiles at you.]

Wechselbalg CR ½ N Humanoid This person looks almost human, but their forehead is just a little too broad, their eyes a little too large, their nose a little too small. Their skin and hair are pale.

Wechselbalgs are the results of experiments conducted by creatures from beyond. The inscrutable creatures known as grays are notorious in certain circles for their abductions and experiments. Much of this research involves the anatomy and reproductive physiology of humanoids. Wechselbalgs are sometimes born of humans that are the subject of gray experimentation, and they are believed to be hybrids between human and gray essence, in a sense.

The features of a wechselbalg reflect those of both of their parent races—they tend towards proportionately large heads and eyes and small noses and mouths, but are overall human in appearance. Their hair tends to be thin, and those of any gender may be bald more readily than humans. They are often, but not always, pale in hair or skin tone or both. Detailed examination reveals strange anatomical structures such as too many or too few fingers or toes, nipples or teeth. They are slightly shorter and thinner than average than humans, rarely exceeding five and a half feet in height.

A wechselbalg may be of any alignment, and they vary in outlook and personality as humans do. They tend to be something of loners, alienated from their peers by their strange appearances. Some are driven to research their heritage, and of these some become allies of their alien parents and join them in their sinister manipulations. Others reject the cruelty of their alien forefathers, and seek to protect others from threats from beyond.

Wechselbalgs as Characters

A wechselbalg does not have racial hit dice, and advances by character class. Wechselbalg characters have the following traits Humanoid with human subtype A wechselbalg is treated as a human for the purposes of spells and effects, and can take feats with human as a prerequisite. Medium size A wechselbalg gains no bonuses and suffers no penalties for its size Normal speed A wechselbalg has a movement speed of 30 feet. +2 Dex, +2 Int, -2 Str Wechselbalgs have quick minds and nimble fingers, but have weak muscles and small frames Low-light vision Reserved A wechselbalg gains a +2 racial bonus on all saving throws against fear and emotion effects. Psychic Gift A wechselbalg gains Psychic Sensitivity as a bonus feat. Wechselbalgs with levels in a psychic class gain the Psychic Adept feat instead. A wechselbalg that takes levels in a psychic class after 1st level may trade its Psychic Sensitivity feat for Psychic Adept without penalty. Languages All wechselbalgs begin play speaking Common. A wechselbalg with an Intelligence bonus may choose any language as a bonus language, except for secret languages such as Druidic.

Wechselbalg psychic 1 CR ½ XP 200 N Medium humanoid (human) Init +2; Senses low-light vision, Perception +4 Defense AC 13, touch 13, flat-footed 10 (+2 Dex, +1 dodge) hp 8 (1d6+2) Fort +1, Ref +2, Will +2; +2 vs. emotion and fear effects Defensive Abilities reserved Offense Speed 30 ft. Melee dagger -2 (1d4-2/19-20) Ranged light crossbow +2 (1d8/19-20) Special Attacks painful reminder (+1d6, 5/day), phrenic amplification (focused force), phrenic pool (2/day) Spell-like Abilities CL 1st, concentration +4 3/day—resistance Spells CL 1st, concentration +4 1st (4/day)—mage armor, magic missile, persuasive goad (DC 14) 0th—daze (DC 13), light, prestidigitation, telekinetic projectile Discipline—Pain Statistics Str 6, Dex 14, Con 13, Int 17, Wis 10, Cha 14 Base Atk +0; CMB -2; CMD 10 Feats Dodge, Psychic Adept (B)Skills Bluff +6, Knowledge (arcana) +7, Knowledge (planes) +7, Perception +4 Sense Motive +4 Languages Aklo, Common, Draconic, Elven SQ psychic gift Ecology Environment any land or underground Organization solitary or party (2-5) Treasure NPC gear (dagger, light crossbow, other treasure)

#ufology #pathfinder 1e #gray alien #playable races #wechselbalg

61 notes · View notes

bad-comic-wings · 5 years

Photo

Fantastic Four #17 Legacy #662 Cover by Nick Bradshaw and John Rauch

First off, I want to mention that this is one of my favorite covers for the Fantastic Four, I love the composition here between Sky and Johnny, it’s such a good pose. I just wish the wings weren’t an anatomical mess. There are three main corrections I made here in my redline.

1. There should not be such a sharp bend where the “elbow” is. This whole frame is too skeletal. You should not be able to see the arm structure of a wing under the feathers, and I’m not sure what that long bone over the primaries is supposed to be. If it’s a “finger” it is much too long and would never be the leading edge of a wing. This skeletal structure is not suited to a character with bird wings. The photo below shows that even when a wing is bent or outstretched there won’t be such a sharp point where the elbow is. There is muscle and connective tissue running from the shoulder to elbow and elbow to wrist.

2. Feather layers. This will be a reoccurring point on this blog as many comic book wings do not have the correct number of feather layers or the correct size of the feather layers. Lets use that photo above, as it has a nice spread of both the back and the front of a wing. The front side (faces you) should have three main layers of feathers. The minor/lesser coverts, then greater coverts, finally the flight feathers which are typically broken into the secondaries and primaries. In the picture above we can see that the bird’s lesser and greater coverts are in tan/brown and the flights are in white tipped with black. Lesser coverts tend to follow the “outline” of the arm structure underneath. When in doubt, look at a ref for the wing type you’re trying to draw. It looks like Sky has a “passive soaring” wing shape, so that was what I used as my reference. The back side of a wing has a different number of feather layers than the front. Most wings have four to five distinct layers. These layers can be harder to spot if the bird is all one solid color. There is still a lesser covert layer, followed by a median covert layer, then the two bigger covert areas, the secondary coverts and primary coverts which cover the secondary and primary feathers. Wing backs are also where you see the alula feathers.On the picture above the alula feathers are the grey feathers just coming off of the lesser coverts near the top. They’re like little “fingers.”

The cover artist draws Sky with three feather layers, however they are not the correct shape or size. The “coverts” are far too large and the flight feathers are far too short. The feathers aren’t layered correctly either. When viewed from the front the leading edge of a feather is covered by the trailing edge. One the back it’s flipped and the leading edge covers the trailing edge.

3. This point again has to do with how the feathers are positioned. Here he’s treating the secondaries and their respective coverts as being completely separated from the primaries. While there is a distinction between where the primaries and secondaries fall, it is not that dramatic and this area should not stick out above the primaries and their coverts when the wing is outstretched.

This photo of a harris hawk is in a similar pose. You can see that the secondaries lead into the primaries, and the coverts follow the same pattern. You can also see the alula feathers poking out near the “wrist”. Neither covers the other while the wing is outstretched. In a folded wing the primaries do tuck under the secondaries, but it still would not look like the cover photo.

4. Number four is just pointing out that he drew all the feathers with pointed tips. Most feathers are actually rounded at the tips with the exceptions being the main primaries on birds with a passive soaring wing type. Usually it’s the first five primaries on this type of wing, again think of them like fingers. I know that giving wings pointed feathers is often a style thing, but since I’m pointing out anatomy errors I might as well mention this too.

#Fantastic Four #Sky #Comic Book Wings #Wing Corrections #Redline #Wings #Wing Anatomy

21 notes · View notes

helrdw0r110 · 4 years

Text

Parts of the human head

6 mm) on a healthy individual, with volumetric 3D imaging using T1 weighting without injection of gadolinium in the three normally used views, with a matrix of 320/320 pixels, using an MRI machine of 1. It is only able to do its job through the complicated interaction of several different parts. face 8. Try dragging an image to the search box. 1 and 11. Find out how to translate the parts of the human head, known as la cabeza, in Spanish. Skull is the skeleton or the bony frame of the head of human beings and other animals with backbones. smallest unit of things. The remains of Keane Mulrea… Mar 25, 2017 · The head and face parts are the top part of the human body. Obtaining Full list: Category:Items that disassemble into Head parts Calculator: Calculator:Disassembly by material/Head Mauls (Cost analysis calculator) Pickaxes (Cost analysis calculator) Cannonballs (Cost analysis calculator) Bolts and bolt tips The human head is home to all the body's major sensory organs, and the most important of these is the brain. Advanced exercises. chest Oct 15, 2018 · The study of the macroscopic morphology and function of the human body is called gross anatomy. The term "skull" collectively denotes the mandible (lower jaw bone) and the cranium (upper portion of the skull that houses the brain). A finger of Fudge is just enough to give your kids a treat ( Cadbury's advertising slogan ). (Left) Lateral and Find human head anatomy stock images in HD and millions of other royalty-free stock photos, illustrations and Part of human face model with organ system. The Human Body. Download premium images you can't human head silhouette · thinking · human body part. We provide shrunken heads to museums, medical professionals and collectors alike. This video is specially designed for kids learning Spanish as a second language. It is semisolid, which aids in the movement of the cell organs to other places. head 2. Content is limited in breadth, but goes into good depth on multicultural An Arizona body donation facility is being sued after the FBI reportedly found buckets full of body parts, male genitalia in a cooler, and heads and bodies of different people sewn together. A head for business and a body for sin. 6 (59 votes) Parts of the body. study of the parts of the body. The hair bulb forms Label and color the parts of the head This is a free, printable activity worksheet on labelling and coloring objects for preschools, kindergartens and first graders. In this quiz, see how well you can name different body parts. The five vital organs essential for human survival are the brain, heart, kidneys, liver and lungs. Find high-quality Human Head stock illustrations from Getty Images. 26 words related to human head: human, human being, homo, man, head, caput, bullethead, bonce by the Editors of Publications International, Ltd. Can you describe someone that you know? Average: 3. The human brain is the central organ of the nervous system, located in the head of the human being and protected by the skull. Through interviews and public records The warmest parts of the human body are the head, chest and armpits, according to the Journal Gazette of Fort Wayne, Ind. Are you searching for a list of human body parts? Then, you have clicked on the right page. 0 lb). The main organ The human head is an anatomical unit that consists of the skull, hyoid bone and cervical vertebrae. At 2% of our body weight, humans have the largest brain of all vertebrates relative to body size. The Channel (Also Illustrated by the red lines) This is the scoop of the lacrosse head where you attach the top of the mesh by utilizing a top string. Examples of organs include the eyes, heart, lungs, liver, and stomach. ankle back belly bottom breast calf elbow finger foot forearm hand head knee lower leg neck shoulder thigh thumb toe upper arm wrist. Example: She cut her hair Hair is simple in structure, but has important functions in social functioning. . Wait a few seconds for questions to load. i think it is gruesome and totally immoral, some of the bread looked like rotten human legs and for anybody to want to eat something like that is insane. But how much do you actually know about your own body? We've got 16 tidbits that may surprise you. Our large collection of science worksheets are a great study tool for all ages. 602– Superficial lymph glands and lymphatic vessels of head and neck. Giving the body its shape is the skeleton, which is composed of cartilage and bone. Shoulder, elbow, wrist and hand. Apr 29, 2005 · Scientists create animals that are part-human What if a human mind somehow got trapped inside a sheep’s head? The “idea that human neuronal cells might participate in 'higher order' brain Jan 19, 2014 · The human form looks complicated at first glance, but if you reduce it to basic shapes it’s actually fairly straightforward in terms of construction. Following picture contains all 26 Dec 2019 We explain the different parts of the brain, their structures, and how they nervous system—the main part of two that make up the human nervous system. My hair has grown out and most of the feeling has come back to my head, although they severed the nerve there. (Grades 3-7) Download royalty-free Girl body parts. Forehead Mar 17, 2017 · To draw the human head accurately and to develop a lifelike representation, first become familiar with the basic proportions. Start the Countdown. In general, the human body can be divided into 3 main anatomical areas: head, torso, and limbs. 23000+ Vectors, Stock Photos & PSD files. Face – She had a beautiful face. Human head . It mainly focuses on the 5 most important exterior aspects of Naming parts of the human head in Spanish. A hair follicle anchors each hair into the skin. Cerebral edema: Swelling of the brain tissue in response to injury or electrolyte imbalances. Download and print Turtle Diary's Parts of Human Face worksheet. The pelvis can be represented either as an oval (oriented horizontally) or a squat cylinder. Your The human body is made up of a head, neck, torso, two arms and two legs. Vector illustration. The human head is an anatomical unit that consists of the skull, hyoid bone and cervical vertebrae. Human hand. The brain has three main parts: the cerebrum, cerebellum and brainstem. 27 Jul 2019 Buckets full of body parts. A vast array of aspects concerning the human body have been comprehended; however, there are facets that await a treatment for thorough analysis. Let’s explore the human body parts located outside the body! head [hed] 1. A foot in both camps. Jan 08, 2018 · So enjoy more than a dozen tips on drawing the human head from one of our favorite artists Paul Leveille and then see about further embarking on a portraiture voyage with the sketches and insights from Everett Raymond Kinstler, a seasoned expert whose book, Impressions and Observations, is a must-have for learning artists. 1. Two arms and a leg were reportedly found in the bag in 17 Nov 2017 'A full head swap between brain dead organ donors is the next stage. Body parts - exercises Lower intermediate Intermediate - exercises Advanced - exercises Home. We’ll use a succession of golden ratios to create a golden ruler to understand design in the face: The head forms a golden rectangle with the […] Human Body Diagram Human Body Parts Anatomy Organs Human Anatomy And Physiology Intestines Anatomy Human Anatomy Female Abdominal Aorta Cardio Medical Terminology The abdomen is an essential area of the body and has been divided into 9 regions. 26 Jul 2019 'Like Frankenstein': Woman's head attached to man's body found lying next to bucket of human parts in lab. Heads, bodies, and genitalia of different people sewn together and hung up on a wall. The average human heart beats around 100,000 times every day. These anatomical bits and pieces include a decapitated head, brains, pigtails and hair clippings, teeth, a hand, a finger, a thumb, a leg, entire skeletons, and even a penis. Axial slices through the human head, showing brain anatomy - SS234508 Axial slices through a man's head. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock. Angiography (brain angiogram Mar 08, 2018 · Human Body Parts List. How to use head in a sentence. Find human body parts stock images in HD and millions of other royalty-free stock photos, illustrations and vectors in the Shutterstock collection. Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero is set to perform a two-part human head transplant procedure he dubs HEAVEN (“head anastomosis venture”) and Gemini (the subsequent spinal cord fusion). The human body is made up of around 37 trillion cells. back 4. Picture of Internal Organs. 6

[CONTINUED VIA LINK]

#update #gore //#this is really weird honestly so ask to tag #long post //#{ ic }

4 notes · View notes

jonhoel · 4 years

Text

Barthes and the semiology of Poujadism

Pierre Poujade was elevated from human-interest piece to political celebrity in the 1950s. His influence was widespread in France, but in greater Europe and the United States as well. He appeared on the front cover of TIME magazine in March of 1956, painted by Boris Artzybasheff, and situated among the likes of Khruschev and Eisenhower. Given the still reigning popularity of then-French President Charles de Gaulle, a beloved war hero and conservative nationalist, the choice to feature Poujade upon the glossy New York magazine, speaks to his reach at the time. Poujade went from being an unremarked bookstore owner to leading his own political body Union de Défense des Commerçants et Artisans that went on to successfully secure positions of political power in the elections of 1956. However, Poujade and his movement are emblematic of the false consciousness of such movements, of what Susan Sontag often called “received ideas”—the mentality of the petit bourgeois. In this post I examine the breadth of Poujade’s populist movement, its decline and foreseen reemergence. I incorporate Roland Barthes’ criticisms and considerations of myth on the right and apply that lens to the Poujadists. While Poujade himself has been dead for more than fifteen years, his legacy persists in an era of political unrest in France. I argue the Barthes’ mythologized Poujade is still alive and well, embodied within surviving right-wing populist ideologues like Poujade’s prodigy Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter Marine Le Pen.

Poujade, in his first autobiography, Vous L’Avait Dit, describes the Poudjadist movement with a prime objective standard for far-right populist endeavors, and one not far from that of Minister Farrakhan: do-for-self. Poudjadism’s doctrine focuses on perspective, targeting the working-class: “not the ‘man’ of the philosophers, but living men; not an abstraction of men, but men who are quite real” (3). Poudjade asserts that the needs of the individual have been so co-opted by liberal rhetoric that to advocate for individualism is a positively revolutionary idea. (3).

Barthes, as both a public intellectual and an individual is a staunch opponent of Poujadism on principle. He designs two separate arguments against Poujadism in his assessment of the movement. His first analysis focuses on how the media operates to disseminate particular connotative ethics, classificatory indexes, and shades of representation. Together they constitute the dominant subclass of a culture, through an elucidation of ideology with a Gramscian slant. Dominant social forces always strive to frame other cultures and perspectives within their own horizons of thought. Thus, Barthes concludes, in the face of both residual and embryonic forms of dissent and disaffection, hegemony becomes actively secure. It is in this framework that movements like Poudjadism perform ideological labor through media in the selective construction of the cultural lexicon (the mythologies that Barthes’ anatomizes). Barthes’ second analysis focuses on Poujade’s staunch anti-intellectualist stance, and he dismantles the way Poujade defines and utilizes ‘the intellectual’ as a mythic being. Barthes concludes Poujade’s vision of society cannot do without ‘the intellectual’ because the intellectual embodies an unavoidable necessity in the formula that society must adhere to in the proposals Poujade himself puts forth (214-215).

In the first of his two essays on Poujade, Barthes focuses on the clichés and language of the man, how his speeches and writing reveals its projected intentions:

**Poujade’s language shows, once more, that the whole petit bourgeois mythology implies the refusal of alterity, the negation of the different, the happiness of identity, and the exaltation of the similar. In general, this equational reduction of the world prepares an expansionist phase in which the “identity” of human phenomena quickly establishes a “nature” and thereupon a “universality.” Monsieur Poujade is not yet at the point of defining common sense as the general philosophy of humanity; it is still, in his eyes, a class virtue, already given, it is true, as a universal reinvigorant. And this is precisely what is sinister in Poujadism: that it has laid claim from the start to a mythological truth and posited culture as a disease, which is the specific symptom of all fascisms (94-95). **

The steps from Poujadism to fascism are not difficult to conjure in one’s mind. There is no inherent value in the dialogized cult-of-the-self that spans from Poujade to Le Pen and Trump—and there is certainly no meaningful culture without collectivity, without communal altruism. The danger of this Randian radical individualism Poujade posits comes from its abandonment of history through the radicalized mythologizing of itself: the individualizing of history. From Marx we learn that ideology “boils down to either an erroneous conception of history or to a complete abstraction from it” (German Ideology) and Barthes agrees with Marx(1), as his myth semiology confirms. “Myth deprives the object of which it speaks of all History. […] We can see all the disturbing things, which this felicitous figure removes from sight: both determinism and freedom. […] This miraculous evaporation of history is another form of a concept common to most bourgeois myths: the irresponsibility of man” (264-265).

Poujadism’s ahistorical conceptualizing of the “common man” is an extremely self conscious conception—the man propelled himself from a small-business owner to a self-aggrandized politician in an exponential time period. Barthes analogies Poujade’s intellect as a weight system, whereupon Poujade and his conception of the common man has a weight, the ‘normal’ intellect a person ought to have, is compared to that of the intellectual, which Poujade often sees as a polytechnican or professor, whose intellect is excessive and wasteful by comparison (208). Barthes suggests that the primary tenet of Poujadism is “That no one look at us” (212), a tenet that he suggests in relation to the resentment of the intellectual’s habits of observation, leading to the self-consciousness from the working man.

Barthes’ condemnation of Poujade—mostly in his second of the two essays on Poujade in Mythologies—highlights Poujade’s anti-intellectualism feels inconsequential as an argument. His objections and arguments of Poujade are more effective when they directly attack his language, a language Barthes decrees as objectionable, participating in a loathsome petit bourgeois mythology (94). This is the petit bourgeois mythology that Barthes expands upon heavily in “Myth on the Right,” the penultimate section of “Myth Today.” Barthes recognizes the Bourgeois ideology of the right that constructs and manipulates socio-historic objects into hegemonic devices. The project of this mythologizing seems to be essentiality, a scaling of essences. He continuously refers to this as the ‘bourgeois psuedophysis’, an “insidious and inflexible demand that all men recognize themselves in this image, eternal yet bearing a date, which was built of them, one day at a time” (270-271). This is a mythology far afield from the one Barthes declares, “Hides nothing,” earlier on in the essay (120). Barthes is frequently making the argument against submerged or latent meaning. Barthes’ mythologies demonstrate an aim of the structuralist mechanism: structuralism demonstrates how meaning is not a designation of the sign itself, but that the meaning comes from the sign’s difference from the other signs.

We can read Barthes’ mythologized depiction of Poujade with the descriptions Barthes’ gives us in “Myth on the Right,” applications of its insidious legacies. Poujadism takes on mythological proportions as a joint out of time, “infinity, like every negativity, which solicits myth infinitely” (262). Stuart Hall writes of Barthes’ semiology, in conversation with Levi-Strauss, and the dialogue between a sociolinguistic signification and its ideology:

[It is] from linguistics rather than from anthropology that Barthes derived the impetus for his work in semiology. […] Unlike Levi-Strauss, Barthes retained the concept of “ideology” as distinct from the general concept of culture, but it was the latter which constituted the proper object of “the science of signs.” Ideologies were only the particular (uses) of particular signification systems in a culture, which the dominant classes appropriated for the perpetuation of their dominance. […] Barthes’ contribution on “Myth Today”—despite its tentative nature—remains one of the few seminal treatments of the relationship between signification and ideology in what might be called the first phase of semiotics. Lacan made the break with the first phase of semiology and with its directly Levi-Straussean impetus (134-135).

Barthes’ semiology comes from Saussure, not from Levi-Strauss, who, unlike Barthes and Saussure, takes after Freud with his structuralism—although according to Hall, Levi-Strauss’ consideration of plotting the indices of cultural was central for Barthes elsewhere (140). With Barthes’ lens of that dialectic of signification and ideology, we can begin to underline the legacy of Poujade and how his rhetoric has remained effective for far-right ideologues.

In modern French politics, the Socialist Party members, and even the centrist La République En Marche Party members commonly use the phrase Poujadisme as a pejorative characterization for ideologies that embellish radical anti-establishment themes. This newer ideological sense of _Poujadisme _is one that antagonizes identity-focused liberal or leftist French political systems even when the anti-tax or anti-intellectual aspects of the original Poujadist rhetoric are absent. This is the mythologizing effect of sociolinguistic trends over time. Whereupon any organized argument is disregarded and what remains is the essence of the thing, the epistemic violence of Imperial nationalism at work. Even after the late 1960s, when Poujadism as a movement declined in both electoral strength and general membership, the enduring Poujadists saw themselves (according to Sean Fitzgerald) as an enduring force, biding their time to strike when anti-modernist rhetoric peaked in the public discourse again (190). Poujade himself, before his death, attempted to distance himself from Jean-Marie Le Pen, but Le Pen was irrevocably linked to Poujadism, having won a seat in the National Assembly in 1956 a time when Poujadism was in its prime, and Le Pen a proud advocate. If anything, the subsequent rise of Marine Le Pen and The National Front to significant political control confirms that the prospect of a Neo-Poujadist comeback is ever imminent, compounded in the disillusionment with La République leadership that will only continue to strengthen the populist arguments of the far-right in France.

(1)_ The departure here of Barthes from Marx and Engels here is that Barthes’ myth is itself an ideology particular only to the petit bourgeois. Myth is the operation of ideology relevant to the variety of culture that Barthes is interested in excoriating as his subject. The inversion he suggests is one where the petit bourgeois comes to be a synecdoche of culture—the French petit bourgeois for Barthes, the key demographic for controlling the country. This is why he is so apprehensive about Poujade, as a symbolic petit bourgeois populist.

Bibliography

Artzybasheff, Boris. Cover image, painted. TIME Magazine, Vol. LXVII No. 12. March 19,1956.

Barthes, Roland._ Mythologies_. Translated by Richard Howard and Annette Lavers, Hill and Wang, a Division of Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2013.

Fitzgerald, Sean. “The Anti-Modern Rhetoric of Le Mouvement Poujade.”_ The Review of _Politics, vol. 32, no. 2, 1970, pp. 167–190.

Hall, Stuart. “The Hinterland of Science: Ideology and the Sociology of Knowledge.”_ Essential _Essays: Foundations of Cultural Studies, Duke University Press, 2018, pp. 111–142.

Marx, Karl. “The German Ideology.” The Portable Karl Marx. Translated Eugene Kamenka, Penguin, 1985, pp. 171–183.

Poujade, Pierre. Vous l’avait dit! Fraternité Française, 1958.

Shields, James G. “An Enigma Still: Poujadism Fifty Years On.” French Politics,_ Culture & _Society, vol. 22, no. 1, 2004.

#barthes #roland barthes #semiology #french politics #stuart hall #cultural studies #poujade #poujadism #german ideology

1 note · View note

twitchesandstitches · 5 years

Text

Polypa and Konyyl Fight Comm

Commission of hyper muscle-gut Polypa fighting against a similarily beefy Konyyl!

----

Music thudded out from the hive block; the deep thudding of drum-bugs bred for resonance and volume echoed loud, and the blood pumped faster, harder in tune with the music. Trolls were, by nature, inclined towards passion and bouts of fierce emotion by far more intense than most other aliens. Floating in the private lanes of those with a fledgling interest in xenopsychology (a discipline doomed to die, with the genocidal ambitions of the Condesce’s constant expansion, but ever heiress was a possibility for transformation and you never knew your luck in future ages) was a bit of writing about an alien met by a surprising number of trolls, and the unknown writer mused that perhaps this alien’s shocking lack of emotional extremes indicated that trolls had deeper feelings than they suspected.

Through alien eyes, trolls had seen that they felt deeply, fiercely. They saw some vague chance for kinder things to flow, as odd and even counterproductive though it was, but trolls did have other needs that an alien probably would not understand.

The thrill of claw biting into chitin; the crash of horns (ill designed for this purpose, better suited for the balancing of psionic humours, but then since when did anatomical use factor into the troll impulse to just RIP AND TEAR?), even the snarl of teeth biting into flesh and spilling blood onto the floor.

Trolls were not, by nature, murderers. They believed they were but, as the man on the moon might say with his fingers crossed, it was amazing how far you could bend a people and still have them believe everything they did was their own idea. But trolls were a passionate people, a fierce people… and violence was a need. There was a reason that fierce rivalries and the regulated spilling of blood was a kismessitude tradition.

And every urge finds an outlet in the properly organized parts of the world. And here was one such place. The hive block was a large one, but it was bigger underground, the upper part a facade to avoid too much attention. If the Proper Authorities knew about it, they didn’t much care. The Condesce, and those who understood her ways, was known to smile upon the practice. “BEATIN’ THE SHIT OUT OF EACH OTHER IS FUN AS HELL,” she had said, once. Perhaps this was a sign she approved. Perhaps it wasn’t, and she was speaking about the general practice of relief duels.

The hiveblock was mostly a disguise, a shell set over trap doors and a small arrangement of puzzles to weed out the unworthy. It was mainly for effect, and to satisfy the troll instinct to maintain security. They weren’t exactly territorial, no more than any highly social species like them, but psychologically, trolls were most comfortable when there were clearly defined boundaries between who should be there, and who would be kept away. It crossed the social boundaries of caste, and even as security theater, it soothed people and allowed them to embrace the revelry without a little voice in the back of their mind being anxious.

A lot of this had been a big concern for Polypa when she had made the decision to join the underground fighting ring (literally, at that, metaphors generally being tangled with puns in troll naming structure). Fighting was not an easy adjustment for her, not when she had been an assassin for all her adult life. She was skilled at ending life as quickly and dispassionately as possible, discreetly if possible. The showmanship of battle was not an easy thing to learn.

But then, as Tegiri had noted, she would be able to satisfy her urges more easily, make even more money than as an assassin, and completely legitimately.

That last bit had been spoken as if an afterthought. Almost a dance between them, or plausible deniability to make him comfortable with her job; he pretended he didn’t know that she assassinated political figures in ways heretical to proper society, and she made sure he didn’t have to deal with it. Joining the fights was a good way to pleasure her belly, find a living that was easy on both her and Tegiri, and generally made her feel happier about things.

She didn’t expect to find a rival, but life had lots of happy surprises, like Tegiri.

Beneath the ground, in a space large enough to accommodate even the largest of trolls, a deep chamber plunged downwards, the squared-off steps descending downwards, in an effect similar to an inverted pyramid. Most of this space was filled by a gladiator ring, the circular platform surrounded by a translucent cage made of transparent resins, so the contestants could tear at one another without being able to flee as instinct might demand. Various mechanical ingenuities built into the floor would allow tools, trick weapons, or surprise obstacles to be brought in, though tonight’s match would have none of that.

A spiral arrangement looped around it, rows and rows of seats suitable to house any troll, from smaller rusts who crowded together like pudgy terrorscales, to being filled by enormous motherly bluebloods or purples, and every shade in between. They were not quite off-spectrum, but many of these trolls were close; some of them had forearms and claws so large they would need specialty weapons. Others had grown prehensile tails, curling around them, and still others kicked legs swelled into sharp hooves.

Mutations were often grounds for culling, but not always. If a mutation did not actually impede a troll, or made them more dangerous in some exotic, intriguing way, there were allowances for that. The underground fights very much demonstrated the notion.

Above the audience seats now filled to max capacity was a small balcony overlooking the ring, the onlookers present to dictate the flow of audience thrill and steer it if it got too intense. A bit like an auspistice, but for a group.

In this bench sat two trolls: Tegiri and Azdaja, sitting across from one another, weapons at the reader in case they decided the other was showing too much favoritism. Given that they were quadrantmates with both the combatants, that was likely. Tegiri frowned as Azdaja, his eyes were a bright teal, his chitin dense and little hooks sticking out, and despite his much broader frame, he was shorter than Azdaja, who smiled cooly. Azdaja, he was a goldblood, his eyes blazing with the power of his bloodline, emanating confidence and coolness where Tegiri was neutral, almost a void of a troll.

Tegiri tapped a fat bug linked by blood-cord to the speakers, and aloud he declared the beginning of the battle. “Welcome, my friends, my fellow worshipers of blood and might, welcome!” The crowd cheered as his resonant voice echoed, made deeper by the mike-bug’s effect. “I do hope you prepared yourselves for truly astounding feats of power and skill beyond that of any other troll, for it is upon us all!”

Azdaja spoke up. His voice was more smooth, brimming with a kind of sexual magnetism that was not so much commanding as charismatic. “All of us are different, in our own ways. Those of us strong enough to survive and serve our Empress, we have proven that we are different enough to serve ably! And our battlers tonight…” He wiggled his eyebrows meaningfully. Tegiri made a ‘tch!’ noise, baring his fangs. Azdaja just grinned, letting the tension between them mount, and feed into the same tension of the area. The crowd was hungry. “They are so very, very special indeed~!”

Both trolls stood up as two very… very large figures appeared in the shadows. Azdaja declared, “I bid you, raise your horns in surrender, for our fighters are here!” The audience, from the most lowly rustblood to the most endowed purpleblood, slowly stood up with a crashing of seats and clinking of floor resin, and as if a single mass offering themselves up to a fearsome goddess, they raised their heads up, horns away and exposing the vulnerable spot between jaw and thorax. It was so easy to kill a troll by going for the throat, to expose it, willingly, was a great act of vulnerability, and carried so much significance.

The fighters, both of them, gave the rumble of approval. The audience sat down, and though it was all just part of the ceremony, it still had the audience’s bloodpumps going, their faces varying shades of black or gray tinged now with their blood color, at simply being in a state where their idols, the warriors battling in their name, could have descended upon them but chose not to. It was a thrill, a dangerous one, and yet they loved it all the same.

There, away from each other there and getting prepped, the fighters gazed at each other, eyes both the same shade of olive green; one significantly higher, the other straining to look past her own heaving doom globes. Several attendants (smaller trolls, selected for their thinness even if that was a VERY relative thing among trolls), carefully adorned them with their battle garments, affixing the blood-colored banners and had them extend legs out for the boots, and the other clothing of the trade.

Polypa waited as the bandages were fully applied over her face by several trolls standing upon her enormous shoulders, and she was such a massive giantess of a troll (whispered by some not afraid to be labeled heretics that she was fuchsia-sized) that her shoulders qualified as scaffolding; the trolls looked barely a couple feet tall compared to her despite being of average height for their castes, and their stance-digits sand deeply into the thick muscles of her shoulders as though they were stepladders.

She was, by any metric, a mutant. Everything she ate was converted into more body mass, more muscle power, and possibly she was channeling her latent psionic abilities into that mass as well, as the bluebloods did.

Sometimes, Polypa suspected that the only reason she hadn’t been culled was that her transformation into this hulk had only been discovered after she had fully transitioned, and her strength was just too useful. The Empire regarded useful mutants, or ones strong enough to survive despite the odds, to be worth keeping around and adding to the genepool.

Only one of her eyes was left exposed as they were done, staring ominously across the audience. A few swooned. Polypa’s face, and the terrible burn scars some suggested she had inflicted on herself for the hell of it, were covered in bandages, but that didn’t quite do more than obscure her absolutely massive lips (puckered, it seemed, and inviting), and somehow her face veins were even larger. Thicker across than a grown trolls hands, wider around than her horns, and carrying valuable body-engorging chemicals right with her blood. They pushed out against the bandages, pulsing faintly, faster or slower depending on how worked up she was, and some enterprising technician had worked out a counter to determine the intensity of the fight by measuring how fast those veins were pulsing; if you could see them contracting and pushing out over and over, then you had a real damn fight on your hands!

It was difficult to imagine anyone giving her a fight like that. Even adorned in the fabrics of the ring, it could do little to hide Polypa’s body. An enormously muscular titaness, her muscles were impossibly defined, and deeply rigid, almost blocky where they were tensed. Her biceps alone were several times larger than her head, seemingly too big for any normal troll to contain them in her body, and her apparent frame was made mostly of her hyper-sized muscles. Her doom globes were hardly small, easily larger than her head, though compared to her various other assets and muscles, her bustline just seemed… mostly irrelevant.

Sticking in front of her, raised up on a throne, was her proudest feature, her biggest crowd draw, and the source of her mass. Polypa’s stomach was a gigantic orb, distended and swelled into a ball shape hanging out before her, but it was not soft at all. Abs lined it, as clearly defined as the muscles on the rest of her, so that it seemed to be a rounded distortion of a hyper beefy troll of Polypa’s dimensions. It was just so big; it easily dwarfed Polypa, a round behemoth of a musclegut, and she could probably have fit several dozens of her attendants into it without difficulty.

As they climbed up it, sliding up and down, affixing bits of cloth here and there, or just slowly making their way down the ladder of abdominals, Polypa twisted and seethed. She was good at hiding it, but even a bolted down ladder suggests a lot of tension if it strains a certain amount, and for such a controlled troll’s hips to bump that much, or for those huge lips to be clamping down on noises that sounded a lot like sensual moans, and all from the slightest brush against her massive… incredibly sensitive belly…

Even just the air moving against her belly aroused her. Her gut, and especially the sub-dermal chitin, was one big erogenous zone. Putting any layers over it was just out of the question. She would never cover up her pride, but touching it like that was just going to overload her pleasure perceptions.

Polypa shivered, instinctively crossing her legs together, door-sized thigh muscles striking against one another with an audible bang. By sheer luck, it resonated with the background music and the noise sank into the crowd yells, and the beat came louder, pulsing with the animal battlelust of the crowd.

She gazed across at her foe. Polypa shivered, not exactly in dread. With her fighting style, this would be hard…

Because her foe was like her.

Both fighters advanced to the ring, and even at a distance, it was clear that her rival was just as mutated as her; they were both within acceptable parameters by Imperial law, on the basis they could absolutely fuck things up. The floor shook as their gigantic bodies advanced, and thighs wider around than some trolls were tall smacked together as they ascended the stairs. Skintight costumes, flame-bright for Polypa and clashing shades for her rival, clung tightly to their gigantic bodies, highlighting the bouncing, dense bulk of rumblespheres bigger around than entire doors, backsides even larger to counterbalance their enormous bodies.

On paper, their mutation was a simple; incredibly efficient metabolism and nutrition absorption. A simple thing, it seemed, until you considered how fast someone might grow if they converted every single thing they ate into raw biomass, right into their body. And some other mutations went into it; hyper muscle growth, some unusual flux of hormones governing rumblesphere and chairbuster development, something to do with latent psionics...

That was the science, at least. The results were a lot more impressive than it sounded.

Polypa’s opponent slowed just as she did, and they wound up paused paused in midstep, their the slopes of their engorged bellies protruding right into the right already. Polypa couldn’t shake how similar they were; maybe it just some coincidence in the genetics, or even some common ancestor from ages in the past, but they had both mutated in such a similar way, and it was refreshing to have a competitor who could keep up with her, and a bit worrying that she might have… well, a real rival on her hands.

Tall spiky horns rose up over a wild mane of hair, and gazing up at her was a somewhat smaller troll with broad, lovely features. Konyyl Okimaw caught her eye and gazed levelly, and Polypa was struck by how big she was.

Not heightwise, by her standards. Polypa was a giantess among trolls, and Konyyl’s head barely came up to her neckline, her horns just barely as high up as Polypa’s own horns. Konyyl wasn’t as wide as her, either, Polypa was simply carrying too much developed muscle mass. But Konyyl was curvy in a way Polypa wasn’t, her huge muscles nearly swallowed up in her plump, strongfat build, softness brimming at every angle. Her thighs were round, her belly a smooth expanse of inviting bulkiness.

And the rumblespheres so close to popping out of that costume were almost twice the size of Polypa’s. Polypa wasn’t really threatened by that, beyond a vague sense of ‘damn, wish I was that stacked’, but it was unusual to be around anyone more developed than her, no matter which way it was. And her hips! Her butt; it was so big and spilling out so much that even from the front, Polypa could see hints of it.

Her own backside, slabs on slabs of solid meat swelling out, wasn’t quite as large, proportionate to her own body. It was a battle of beef versus thickness. And Polypa felt trepidation at the thought of all that body mass slamming into her so very sensitive belly, and some excitement too.

Both professionally, and… less so.

She tried to move forwards and direct all eyes to her again and her stomach smacked into the doorway, bending the metal effortlessly away from her. Her skin sang at the touch, heat pulsing down right to her hips. She felt her bulge swell, the cup built into her suit giving her some modesty, and the veins on her face swelled so much her hair was pushed out of the way. Her belly pushed, to and fro, and her lips clamped against a lusty growl when the doorway broke apart around her. Her belly hit the ground and it was harder still to keep her composure: every scrape against the ground sang like fire in her loins, the whisper of air was a sensual pressure she didn’t want to stop. Every impact, every little motion of her gut and every touch against it felt so good.

God, she loved how sensitive her muscle gut was. And it was so hard to fight with it and keep her composure. It was almost enough to let her forget that her moirail, Tegiri, had gotten into some kind of an technicalities argument that was now close to a full on brawl with Azdaja up there. The shouts and argument rising up there, and absolutely unscripted, did manage to get her attention off the pleasures of her body. Embarrassment ensued, and Polypa realized that Azdaja was presently trying to duel Tegiri right on the spot.

Rather than, well, focus on their own fight.

Polypa’s blinked her visible eye. She shared an embarrassed glance with her rival, but it seemed mostly wasted. Konyyl Okimaw, perhaps the only troll alive on Alternia capable of keeping up with her, was grinning up, apparently pleased at the incensed shouts in the announcer booth: “NO, FUCK YOU, BEEF BEATS ROUND!” - “YOU IGNORANT BUFFOON, SQUISHY DEFLECTS THINGS HARDNESS WON’T” and so on.

Konyyl flexed, drawing the crowd to her body, and Polypa seethed; her rival, it seemed, had a knack for showmanship that really did not come naturally to Polypa. She raised an arm several feet across and flexed, impressive biceps rising up, though barely half the size of Polypa’s they still dwarfed Konyyl’s arm. The crowd hooted, cheered and in a few cases almost fainted from big sexy overload as Konyyl’s massive doom-globes shifted on her round gut. They were nearly twice the size of Polypa’s, despite the height difference, and though Polypa considered that Konyyl’s own gigantic belly was too round to really be impressive (not when it didn’t even have a single visible muscle on it), she was certainly stacked, front and back.

Konyyl turned, her butt wobbling and rising up nearly to her waist, perhaps half as big as her belly (and that was saying something). “Hey! Who wants to see a real throwdown!” she bellowed. She throw a bit of her hips out so her soft stomach and massive rumblespheres rocked in exactly the right way to hit the primal ‘fuck yes’ button of troll psychology.

The crowd screamed, applauding and in a few cases getting so enthusiastic they headbutted one another. In the booth, Azdaja and Tegiri paused in their argument and got up to hurriedly resume their seats.

Attention turned to Polypa, and she became acutely aware that she was the star of the show, so to speak. She coughed, awkwardly. Her enormous lips, denting her bandages, worked in an awkward expression that she was very glad was not visible; it would have gone so poorly with her fighting persona of an unshakable, cool badass. She raised a massive arm nearly as thick around as Konyyl herself, so dense with muscle that the act of moving it generated enough energy to power a house for a few days. “Uh. Yay? Fight stuff and… stuff?”

The crowd stared. Polypa stared blankly. Konyyl covered her face, groaning.

In the booth, Azdaja leaned over to Tegiri. Dropping the persona, he quietly said, “So. She’s the ‘best in the business’, huh?”

Tegiri sniffed disdainfully. “Polypa is the finest fighter alive. At no point is being able to work a crowd actually a part of that skill set.”

Azdaja looked like he wanted to scof, but he considered this. “Hrm. Fair enough, I suppose.” More loudly, and into his mike-bug, he said, “Are you ready, fighters!”

Polypa recognized a cue when she saw one. She kept her arm raised up and, struck by a sudden inspiration, extended a claw in a rude gesture. Konyyl’s true reaction of mild indifference was quickly turned into stage-show outrage, and her massive rumblespheres inflated to amplify the roar she screamed out.

Polypa, in turn, flexed. Muscles on muscles, each weighing nearly a hundred pounds, they swelled up, crowding out Polypa’s insuffiicent frame, and arched up over Polypa’s fist, and the crowd leaned in, even the ones who were supporting her gaping in awe at how much muscle there was, the promise of savage power. And then, she amped it up; Polypa did a secondary flex without dropping the first one, and other muscles bunched up, getting even bigger and beefier. She raised all this up, and crashed bicep against forearm, with so much force that there was a mighty thunderclap

No, an impact, a shockwave that made a crater where she stood, and blasted down the entrance into the ring. In anticipation of this sort of thing, a door slid out of the ground behind her so there would be no fleeing. Her massive musclegut forced the doorway into a crumpled mess, so that the new door was entirely a formality. She did her best not to coo with delight, and her hyper muscular thighs concealed the sudden swelling of her nook.

Konyyl charged in from her side, leading with her gut, and given her endowments, and the size of her stomach, she was briefly only visible to Polypa as an advancing mass of belly topped by rumblespheres and a snarling face. Polypa felt a bit of smugness that Konyyl wasn’t quite big enough to bust her doorway.

“Fighters,” Tegiri said sonorously; as a tealblood, it was his prerogative to perform these kind of ceremonies. “Tap your horns!”

Polypa took the initiative, slamming her belly on the ground and making the arena shake, and sending her body quivering in pleasure. She lowered her head, fat veins pulsing slowly, and her pointed horns were angled downwards. Konyyl glowered, fully aware that Polypa was dictating the terms of this battle with such a little gesture, but she rose up to it. She slammed her own gut on the ground and springboarded herself up, to Polypa’s amusement, her own rumblespheres squishing deep with some distant sloshing sounds, and her spiked horns were pushed into a tap against Polypa’s.

The loud click was a signal.

“Begin!” Tegiri boomed.

The crowd went hushed as both Polypa and Konyyl stared at one another, tension ramping up between them, the two fighters waiting for the other to make a move to take advantage of, but Polypa had never been terribly patient and all her skills in battle lay in being the first to take a solid move, to make that move count. She lunged, and the crowd shouted in awe, a few people in front seats even shrieking in fear; Polypa had jumped straight upwards, almost vault clear to the ceiling, and nothing is quite so terrifying as seeing something that big, moving so fast, and then-

Well, coming right down.

Polypa descended, belly first, and Konyyl dragged herself out of the way as Polypa pressed right down, the arena quaking and the caged ring shaking. She pulled herself out, quickly turning her drawn out moan (ground clinging so deliciously to her stomach as she hauled it out) into a fierce yell, and it went even better when she shook off some rubble and caught it with her other hand. All in a single, smooth motion that was almost visual poetry.

“Ah, an excellent use of her signature high rising gut press,” Tegiri observed. “A devastating moves, and I have no doubt that anyone else but someone like Okimaw would have been turned to blood and splatter beneath it!”

Azdaja smirked as Polypa swung the chunk of rubble as a club. Konyyl caught it, headbutted it and smashed it into little pieces, and charged right through the dust, another vicious headbutt catching Polypa in the right rumblesphere. “Unfortunately, Konyyl is far too quick for that. Give her credit, because,” he laughed, a quick and escalating chuckle. “It takes a special troll to be able to use your horns in battle like that!”

Konyyl charged, and Azdaja proved right. Polypa tried to match her in kind and return the gesture, but Konyyl’s smaller sized proved an asset for once. She waved out of the way, slamming her belly out into Polypa’s as the latter tried to advance, and was slowed when the sweet shock against her gut made her hesitate. And again, when Polypa tried to swing her horns at her.

Polypa mixed a punch in there, between swings of her horns and thrusts of her belly, and between getting knocked right on the shoulder by a fist and the shockwaves from Polypa’s belly hitting her stance. Konyyl was stunned, rocking on her feet. Polypa lunged forward, caught in the moment and the pull of instinct, and made a serious error, moving in the flow of battle without thought as she did:

She forgot to adjust for her belly getting in the way.

The imposing slope of muscle and chitinous shimmers that she was so very proud of (with many images for publicity showing her cradling it, stroking it, or inviting fans to wash it with loving touches and expensive oils) had many features to recommend it. Her ability to maneuver it was not one of them.

Polypa gasped aloud as sensation overwhelmed her, her loins feeling aflame, and instead of connecting her horns against Konyyl’s, she overbalanced and smacked her face into her own rumblespheres, and the dense fat, compacted from her growth, gave her a nasty knock. It was like hitting squishy armor, the shock rebounding into her face, and the whole world spun around her.

In the back of her mind, she cried to herself: ‘shit, shit, SHIT!’ A novice error! A rookie mistake, how did she do something so damn stupid!

(Trolls, it should be noted, have many things to recommend them. Their impulse control is not one of them.)

She felt a harsh impact as a pair of horns locked against her own, and a sweet sense of rapid impacts against her gut, and a very heavy weight, almost as big as her whole body. She was suddenly tugged forward, and her senses snapped in. She looked down into cleavage bigger than her own, mashed up against her, and she worked it out. Konyyl had climbed up her body, and had shoved her own spiky horns through the hole in Polypa’s intact horn.

And was now presently punching the shit out of Polypa’s face.

“Will you- ow! I said -ow! Would you just- ow!” Every pause was punctuated by about half a dozen punches to the face. a n ordinary troll would have been lucky to survive a couple of those punches, or have their head not instantly be exploded from the force. Polypa was too strong, so heavy and dense with digested biomass that she could probably shrug off a direct artillery strike, but those punches were at least annoying, and hurt.

She was a bit more focused on how Konyyl was putting all her body weight right on Polypa’s stomach and shit that felt so good, ooh yeah, right THERE. And that certainly broke the stupor.

Konyyl swung back for another few blows, her bouffant hair blown back in a very dramatic way that would look amazing in the video replays, and her swing froze. Immense pressure locked around her arms, and she saw her forearm’s bulging muscle constrained by Polypa’s hands suddenly clamping down on her arms. The horn-colored claws growing out of Konyyl’s hands glinted, though they had been blunted for this fight. They shone with faint hints of olive blood.

Polypa noticed some faint wetness trickling down her face now. She’d actually been cut. By blunt claws. How damn strong was Konyyl, to actually do that kind of damage?

Now, Polypa did not put a whole lot of stock in the romantic notion of a rival who was strong enough and skilled enough to pose a real threat to you; she thought it was absurd, a silly thing, a romantic’s fool notion. But here and now, she grinned.

This was… fun.

With a yell, she spun and threw Konyyl into the ground, and the slightly smaller oliveblood hit it gamely enough, allowing her considerable assets and gut to soak up the damage, though she was clearly feeling it in a way that Polypa wouldn’t have. Perhaps she wasn’t quite as tough as Polypa, or Polypa’s absurd strength was overwhelming even her defenses. Either way she hit the ground and bounced, and needed a moment to pull herself back onto her feet.

Polypa’s first impulse was to press the attack, but after the horn lock incident of only a few moments ago, she backed up, her belly bouncing off the ground and up again to a steady temp in time with her steps. It didn’t seem popular with the crowd, judging from the goans and boos. Polypa rolled her eyes. Didn’t they get the concept of strategy?

Konyyl recovered, and saw an opportunity. Now that Polypa was playing it safe and not employing the same kind of one-shot brutality that had made her such an effective assassin, Konyyl sw her own opportunity to test Polypa’s skill at actual drawn out battles. Her reactions, her responses to a sudden technique; Konyyl propped herself up, ramming into Polypa’s gut. It was like hitting the side of a spaceship, from the wince on Konyyl’s part, but it made Polypa’s face veins flush and even swell, like vines blooming in moonlight.

Konyyl noticed, and rubbed her belly against those abs just right. The slow, squishy slide of her firm belly, against those hard abs that flexed in just the right way; both women had a reaction, but Konyyl was better at hiding it, and Polypa had to cover her face to stifle her arousal growls. Konyyl took opportunity of Polypa’s absent hands to push against her, forcing her into an unsteady stance.

“It does seem to be an even match tonight,” mused Tegiri, though he was hedging his bets.

“Konyyl would appear to be outclassed in raw strength and durability, always a serious disadvantage in this kind of fight,” Azdaja said. “But she’s worked out how to maneuver herself in ways that Polypa apparently can’t! Good on her, I say!”

“Yes, well, you’re biased.”

“Indeed I am!” Azdaja grinned. “You should own up to your own biases, my friend!”

Tegiri sniffed. “It is not a bias. For my part, I simply acknowledge from the facts that Polypa is objectively superior to everyone else forever.” He pointed as Polypa delivered a truly impressive punch right to Konyyl’s face that pushed her back, as surely as a gale force wind would. “Behold, the play of her muscles flexing so admirably!”

“Hrm,” Azdaja said, noncommittally.

As they continued their commentary, observing how, say, an attempted mutual belly press was a perfect execution of two unstoppable forces bouncing off each other. And the resulting flurry of punches as they remained deadlocked gut to gut. It was really just amazing how they could even keep track of the motion, because the crowd certainly couldn't. They made impressed noises, they leaned forward and watched with shock as they continued to wreck the ring and warp the cage with the shockwaves that their monstrous strength inflicted upon the world around them and a few were even pushed out of their seats BY those shockwaves. They were quite thrilled about it, too.

“And that,” Tegiri said primly as the ring cracked almost in half from Konyyl managing to lift Polypa’s massive body into the air just long enough for their combined weight to sink them both down. “Is why we sit the audience so far away-”

He was interrupted as Konyyl leaned forward, just enough, howling with exhaustion and the pain of holding up so much mass overhead, her claws sinking into the surprisingly pliable canyons of Polypa’s back muscle, and she dropped her, with gravity and technique combined into a beautiful moment of violence.

Polypa crashed down, not exactly thrown but Konyyl’s strength and her own weight made enough of an impact to give an impression. Outside, trolls on the street above were dancing away as the street itself cracked almost in two. Errant blocks rising up from the street almost claimed the legs of one or two hapless bystanders, and rubble cracked right off an unfortunate building, foundations unearthed in a single moment. And the underground ring shook far harder, and it split in two, the ground tilting slightly so that two halves were at an angle, tilting up.

The cage had been torn almost right away, and now it lay crumpled, slowly falling around them both, though they seemed oblivious to all the destruction.

From a crater, moving with such violence that she forced the halves of the ring even further apart came Polypa. Rubble fountained around her, and above her, her rising gut producing another crater just in front of her as she rose up.

Rubble fell into her cleavage. It lined her belly like some fairly sticky body paint. It felt from some new and minor tears in her tights, and she barely noticed. Her bloodpusher pumped harder, her veins flushed and contracted and pulsed out again, and it felt so good.

And as she roared and charged, she thought… that this, again, was so much fun. That fighting Konyyl was fun.

A challenge that was really, genuinely fun.

Polypa closed the distance with astounding speed, to the audible shock of the people watching, including Azdaja. “Amazing!” he said, surprised at his own delight in this turnaround. “How is she still even conscious after that impact!?”

Tegiri’s smug pride in his moirail made Polypa smile as he spoke. “You have to do better than that to even make her flinch.”

Polypa’s arms reached out for Konyyl, going for a grab, and Polypa saw that Konyyl’s back-step away, just out of reach and belly range, was slower than before. In the brief moment between pause and her darting away, circling to Polypa’s flank…

It was a slower movement. Konyyl was getting tired.

That last move must have taken so much out of her. Polypa grinned. Now, she had a plan; use that weariness against her.

Konyyl charged, and Polypa whirled around, lunging out again. She made like she was trying to pull her in for a grab, and once again, Konyyl circled narrowly out of range. In the brief moment Polypa needed to catch her balance. Konyyl was rushing at her, and threw several punches.

Konyyl’s biceps weren’t as big or developed as Polypa’s, they didn’t have quite so many tons of biomass funneled right into them, but they were still damn strong. The first three punches, Polypa was shocked to realize she could feel them pummeling into her rumblesphers. The fourth one hit hard enough that she was forced to step back. The fifth, and then the six, pushed her back.

Konyyl charged again, and Polypa swung her belly, right into her path. Still reeling from the surprisingly powerful hits, she misstepped, and Konyyl misinterpreted the stumble as getting ready for a big blow, and backed away.

Polypa caught herself. She seized the moment, readying herself, and moved forward. With a roar, she charged forwards and kicked out, her belly giving her far greater weight and stability than she could have had otherwise, and it slammed right into Konyyl’s own belly. EVen with the armoring effect of such a large gut and the shock absorbing qualities of troll fat, she still winced and slid back, almost half way down the ring.

But Polypa wasn’t done. She lunged forward, her fist grabbing Konyyl’s left horn. She pulled down, hard, and as Konyyl was put off-balance, she slammed several massive punches right into her shoulder, following with a gut slam to the side; Konyyl gasped aloud, winded by that, and Polypa grabbed her, easily lifting up even her massive frame.

Konyyl growled, getting ahold of herself, and with this level of leverage, she managed to hit Polypa with a kick heavy enough to make her drop. “You are NOT doing my own damn move on me!” She yelled, falling on Polypa gut-first. Polypa sank into the floor beneath the belly, embedded in the ground.

Konyyl got up and backed away, to the cage. Polypa rose up once again, already expecting another charge, and frowned when she saw Konyyl crouching on the wall of the cage. She tilted her head. “What are you doing?”

Konyyl grinned at her. “Mobility, chump!” She leaped, launching right like a cannonball at Polypa!

Polypa danced out of the way, swinging her belly so that the force spun her in the right direction, and her eyes widened as Konyyl hit another part of the cage, but instead of breaking through it (and thus going out of bounds), she somehow landed on it and instantly kicked out again, rebounding without losing a moment of momentum or force.

And again, right at Polypa.

This time she did hit her. Only striking a glancing blow, but it still knocked Polypa down again, hitting so much harder than any of the other blows; harder than anyone had managed her entire time here.

Polypa slowly got up, visibly winded this time, and Konyyl came right back, ricocheting almost half a dozen times again before returning for another hit. Like a cannonball, she struck her squarely and Polypa saw stars, and old wounds flaring up as Konyyl rammed into her, and bounced off once more. This time: to the ceiling, to the floor, and to the walls. Again and again, building up speed, building up momentum, building up more raw force.

All packed into that big, firm belly, like it was an artillery shell.

But she heard, however hard it was to even notice, Konyyl’s exhausted pants of keeping up that pace. That momentum.

If it was exhausting just keeping up with Polypa to this point, how much harder to be constantly leaping around without dropping even once?

Polypa smirked beneath her bandages.

And this time, she turned as Konyyl launched once more right at her. Polypa reacted in seconds, knowing each one counted, and the thrill of knowing she might actually lose, that it hadn’t been a certainty all along, felt like she was fighting for her life all over again. It felt… real, a deserved thing.

That maybe, she was as strong as everyone said she was.

She thrust her belly out, stance strong and rooted.

Konyyl rammed in, right on target, right into her belly, with all the accumulated force she had mustered-

There was an explosion, of sorts. Polypa barely noticed the ring effectively shatter around her. The cage falling in bits and pieces, the shouts and alarmed yells and delighted roars of the crowd, Azdaja and Tegiri’s own surprised yells (“What’s going on!? What happened!?” “A turnaround, an absolute reversal!”)...

But she had felt the recoil, absorbed harmlessly by her amazing belly. And she had felt Konyyl go right back the way she came.

She advanced as the dust cleared, and felt something just as warm as her own blood beneath her. Polypa gazed down, and below her Konyyl gazed back levelly. Polypa chuckled, tweaking at her bandages. Konyyl didn’t even blink at the hint of the gruesome burns beneath, and Polypa gave her a mental award for it. Still letting her see the scars, Polypa said, “You just can’t beat me. After I survived this? Nothing is ever gonna stop me, ever again.”

Konyyl scoffed. “I can. Watch me…!”

Polypa smirked. “Oh?” And with that, she lowered her stomach right onto Konyyl, not enough to crush her, but definitely enough to immobilize her. Konyyl’s breasts, her gut, and her muscles all strained against it, but Konyyl was simply too spent from the fight, from her risky moves, and that exhausting ricochet maneuver. If she had any energy left it all, it wasn’t enough to lift Polypa anymore.

Polypa smacked a belly big enough to fit dozens of trolls in (and had, during her assassin days), and chuckled. She said no more as the dust cleared, and the situation was revealed.

Konyyl struggled. The crowd went silent, and then cautiously began to cheer. Polypa’s name was shouted, with increasing loudness, and then more fervor.

“Polypa… Poly-PA, Poly-PA! POLY-PA!...”

The yell echoed all around the ruined ring, the chairs shouting louder. No, not shouting, they were screaming it! Tegiri had joined in the shout, assuming he hadn’t started it, and Azdaja’s distressed cries were drowned out in it.

Troll sports like this didn’t have any real concept of a referee; there would be no point. Instead, it was up to a clear loser to admit defeat, or be crushed. Konyyl did nothing, for a moment.

And then, she smacked her hand in grudging defeat on the ground.

The crowd exploded in delight as Polypa stood back, and even helped her up. “Polypa wins!” Tegiri yelled, his calm breaking into open passion, and if the crowd was exploding, he was erupting. “Polypa WINS!”

Konyyl, at least a good sport, shook her hand as heavily as she could in her current state. “You did good,” she mumbled. “Do this again. When I’m bigger.”

Polypa grinned. “When I’m bigger too. Next time, maybe we’ll wreck a city.”

Konyyl smirked, and gave Polypa’s sensitive belly a smack that was absolutely supposed to rile her up.. “Sounds fun!”

#my writing #commissions #queued #fics #twitchy!konyyl #twitchy!polypa #twitchy!homestuck #twitchy!hiveswap

6 notes · View notes

sylleboi · 5 years

Text

𝖁𝖎𝖘𝖚𝖆𝖑 𝖘𝖙𝖚𝖉𝖎𝖊𝖘 | 02/12/19

Artists and terms; at this point we should have begun this and should be able to define the terms from this brief.

Structural box sketches (Looking at human anatomy at its simplest form looking at joints and pivot point refer back to ROTOSCOPING on this.); how do we further develop them? - By trying out different stylistic features and outfits. Make a turnaround. Redraw! Moving the character.

What do we mean with fantasy quest, refer to the “detailed description”.

What is a narrative?:

It’s how a story is told. Who? It is told to an audience. The beginning, the scenario is set up. Why is a narrative different from a story? The story is a subjective opinion about what's happening, whereas the narrative is more of an objectified version of that. Jack walks up the hill; story, Jack has mental problems, narrative.

Within animation & illustration let us consider that; a narrative is how a story is constructed & organised. This means how the information is then relayed to an audience, and in what order.

𝕿𝖆𝖘𝖐:

Look at images, construct a narrative.

𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖟𝖊𝖙𝖙𝖆

After an intense bloodthirsty battle, the last warrior stands. His power immense, his life eternal.

𝕲𝖚𝖞 𝕸𝖈𝕶𝖎𝖓𝖑𝖊𝖞

The skulls of the battlefield are collected by witches of the woods, used for spiritual rituals as the fallen souls are attached indefinitely to their severed heads.

So what is narrative theory?

Exposition -> Rising action -> Climax -> Falling action -> Denouement

Exposition: This is where the characters of the story gets introduces alongside the story and plot itself. This is often the most difficult part to set up successfully, simply because you need to capture the readers/viewers/target audiences’ attention and have then clued in on what’s going on in the story, but this has to be done without completely spoiling the rest of the story. It is important to not mistake exposition and an info dump.

The characters: Who are the characters? How do you differentiate them from each other? What makes them interesting?

The setting/context: Where does the story take place? When does it take place at? What time period?

The mood: What tone is conveyed during the exposition of the story?

Rising action: This is the moment where the plot and narrative starts picking up. Rising action is usually encouraged by a key trigger, which is what tells the reader that “now things will start to take form.” This key trigger is what rolls the dice, that then causes a series of events to escalate to then set the story into motion.

Climax: A climax builds upon everything that has been introduced during the exposition and rising action. This is the moment of truth for the protagonist and the peak moment of the story. You know the plot is successful at delivering a good climax when the outer journeys and the inner goals of which the protagonist wish to complete click.

Falling action: So, what now? You’ve technically finished the story. Finishing a story after a climax or during one is what is known as a cliff-hanger. Cliff hangers work well in film series, but they don’t feel as satisfying. A way to see falling action could be as the old saying; “What goes up must come down.” Putting together any hanging threads not yet solved in the plot is done during this stage.

Denouement: Denouement (resolution) is a fancy way of saying that the story is about to come to an end. At this point, all questions are resolved and answered; letting the reader.

𝕿𝖆𝖘𝖐:

BBC animation defining the narrative, look for new terms and note them down.

All media texts tell a story. The narrative is about how a narrative unfolds

Story arc (transition from beginning to end)

stage 1

Stasis, setting up the story and meeting the protagonist, everything is normal at this point. This can be related to exposition.

Stage 2

“Trigger” that sends things in motion. creating the root for a fantasy quest to overcome and solve. This can relate to “rising action”.

Stage 3

Surprise! This moment can also be described as an obstacle of sorts.

Critical choice - high drama and stress. This reveals to the audience what kind of character they are. This is also considered part of the rising action.

Stage 4

The climax - The resolution of the conflict. The buildup of the whole story comes to this moment.

Stage 5

Reversal; character realises they're not useless. They change the character; develop them. Related to the denouement.

𝕭𝖊𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖘

Visual studies

Looking -> Doing (draw)

Repetition is incredibly important to ensure accuracy is portrayed within a study.

In the beginning, we are looking at tonal values. We are doing this with the help of skulls;

But why specifically skulls? Well, they are symbolic/iconic in the history of art. It symbolises death or a new beginning after an end within storytelling, thought in storytelling it can also symbolise a worthy trophy or token. This ties in well with the theme of narrative, world building and character creating using the theme of fantasy.

𝕿𝖆𝖘𝖐 𝖔𝖓𝖊

For this, a selection of different skulls were places on tables around the classroom. We were to select any of these to begin drawing by using the “drawing - looking” technique, ensuring that we are observing rather than drawing from our imagination. It was important for use to find a good angle; not too close to the object. If we were to sit too close to the subject, it would be more difficult to see the subject as a whole. This exercise is not focused on capturing detail, but rather it focuses on being able to capture the essence of the object/main subject. On another note, the perspective of light and angle is important in visual studies. This is what changes how your outcome is going to come out. So with all of this in mind, we began by choosing to work with either chalk or graphite, staying be loose and light while sketching.

In order, there were the three different visual studies that I did of the human skull:

In this one, I simply just focused on letting go, not focusing too much on capturing the little detail of the skull, but just making sure that I have gotten the basic shape accurate to what I was seeing before me.

For the second attempt, I changed the angle to see how the light was changing.

𝕿𝖆𝖘𝖐 𝖙𝖜𝖔

So during the first task, we took a more traditional/analogue route. During the second task, we were introduced with the ideas of expanding upon this exercise; further experimenting with mediums and techniques to see how far you can push the limit of what is possible.

I decided to try out using some felt tip markers; It’s probably the medium I am most insecure about using, so I thought it would be suitable to challenge myself.

I taped together two markers; a pink and a light green. On top of that, I tried drawing the skull in front of me (from different angles every time) but with a twist each time; sometimes I’d draw while only looking at the skull, but not down at the paper. Other times I tried drawing the skull without looking at all. It gave some interesting results;

Here are the some pictures showing the two sheets of paper at the end of the lesson and exercise:

But before the lesson ended, we went over some evaluation by looking at what everyone had created;

Pour Quoi?

Shows how you are developing drawing skills from observation (looking & doing)

Shows that you are a diverse practitioner and can embrace all media, especially through traditional approaches

Generating ideas from primary sources enables you to show higher-level approaches to research

What now?

Using these observational sketches, I can develop ideas for a character or character accessory.

I can ask myself question based upon this exercise ie. “What role could the skull play in communicating a narrative idea or theme?”

After this exercise, I decided to further have a play around with the concept of looking and drawing. I found a video of a 3D horse skull made by “handpuppe” on YouTube. Here’s a gif of the video:

Using this for reference similarly to what we did in lesson, I began drawing some of the frames at random, using the method of looking and drawing repeatedly. Below are the tree visual studies that I did, all three drawn from different angles.

I didn’t want to just leave it here. Since this counts as being primary research to some extend, I wanted to build upon that. I decided to do this by using the anatomy of the skull to draw the horse on top of it on separate layer, allowing me to get the proportions anatomically correct.

Here is the finished result of this little side experiment:

I found that this really opened my mind to understanding how useful it can be to sit down and just do some visual studying and researching. It helps to further improve one on a skill level, but also just to understand how anatomy or the form of a subject is built up. It’s not exactly a thing you actively think about on the regular, so it is very refreshing to do this kind of drawing now and then. I will be sure to try and do this more frequently for these reasons, potentially using it as a way to warm up before starting some more “serious” work.

2 notes · View notes

comrade-meow · 4 years

Link

The “world historical defeat” of the female sex continues apace.

Sex as fiction

Queer theory, however, rejects any understanding of human sex or gender that involves biological sciences. Our evolutionary history simply disappears in a puff of smoke:

The ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ argument has no basis, once examined in this light, and thus a central plank of queer theory falls easily.

Patriarchy

Combating oppression

This is what we are fighting. It is why we are fighting. We refuse to submit.

#Anglo.txt

3 notes · View notes