#and they're all vampire squids btw~

[plaguedogs123]

My HC/version of Team Cyan 💙

[wellperfumedbead]

Okay but what if I wanted to ask you about vampire squids? I love autism ramblings about marine life.

:000

Okokok this is going to be very unstructured but sh

Ok so despite their name, they're not actually squid, infact they're probably closer to octopuses are in. And well, they were initially (and wrongly) classified as cirrate octopuses (like the flapjack octopus). And you can sorta see why really

So they're not squid, they're not octopuses but they are cephalopods, their own group of cephalopod of which they are the only known member. Their classification was rectified about the 1940s or 1950s. And this was in a German expedition whose purpose was to prove there was life below whatever number of metres, I can't remember how deep it was.

Anyway, they get about 30cm and live at depths around 600m-1200m (sorry idk how much that is in the imperial system). And they live in practically any the oceans in oxygen minimal zones/the oxygen minimal layer. In the OML there's very very little oxygen, like 5% oxygen or smth. That can be bc of circulation in the oceans and that water just isn't moved around as much (there's a name for those little pockets of ocean but I can't remember it). But they have blue blood that is copper based (?) and it binds oxygen really well. I don't know much about that bc I'm not much of a chemistry guy. But they also just use very little energy and have lots of surface area on their gills to absorb as much oxygen as they can.

They have remained largely unchanged for like 300 million years which is cool. In captivity they have been recorded to live for about 2 months but it's estimated they live for almost a decade in the wild.

Now they're called "the vampire squid from hell" (that's what their scientific name translates to) bc of their appearance. The red colour, the large red eyes (that are actually clear but appear blue or red in certain lighting) and the fleshy cirri (little spike things) that lines their webbing. When they are threatened they pull their webbing over their head and it makes them look scary and pointy but really the cirri is soft and squishy.

I'm gonna go back to the eyes for a second bc they are huge compared to the 'squids' body. Like pretty sure they're the biggest eyes compared to body size in any animal or smth. Really cool.

Oh and btw they do have suckers as well but only small ones on the furthest half of the arms from the body. Argh I want to talk about the arms but I want to finish talking about defence mechanisms first. ILL GET BACK TO THE ARMS!!

Ok so they have really weak muscles so their ass is not going anywhere fast, which is a problem when things are trying to eat you (things like sharks, larger cephalopods, fish, and even some diving whales). Their top speed is like 2 body lengths per second. So apart from the spines, they also have some bioluminesence up their sleeves. They have two large light organs on top of their head that kinda look like eyes and one on each end of their arm. So when they pull up their webbing around them and you look at them from the 'top' BAM suddenly you've got lots of scary eyes looking at you. Also they don't squirt ink but do squirt a sticky bioluminesent goo that either distracts the predator, or sticks to the predator so and even bigger predator comes along and eats them. I think this goo can stay glowing for about 10 minutes? I'm not sure. Im pretty sure that this is symbiotic bioluminescene tho, which is where the animal cultivates glowing bacteria to use rather that mixing all the chemicals for bioluminecense in their body themselves.

Ok ok ok arms and 'tentacles'. So they have 8 arms yeah but no tentacles. Instead they have two looonnngggg filaments that they store in little pockets in their body

You can see one there. These are like 8 times their body length and they connect directly to the 'squids' brain.

FOOD!! Unlike pretty much every other cephalopod ever, they are detrivores, which means they eat essentially garbage. Rotting organic matter known as marine snow and literal shit. They way they eat this is they catch the detritus with sticky cells on their filaments and use mucus to make it into something more easy to pass into their beak.

We don't know a whole lot about their breeding and stuff but the males pass a sperm packet to the female for storage so she can fertilise her eggs when she likes. When the babies hatch they are very teeny and don't have their webbing yet. The parents don't tend to their children at all and until they can feed themselves, they eat their egg sacs. They grow pretty slow bc there's not many nutrients and stuff available for them in the deep.

A cool thing about the babies is that when they hatch, they have one pair of swimming fins, then as they grow they develop a second pair, and then eventually they loose (its absorbed into their body, cant waste it) the first pair and just have their second pair. Sorta like we have adult and baby teeth

Another thing that sets them apart from other cephalopods is that they reproduce multiple (up to 20) times in their life, until they die. Other cephalopods usually die after the first time. This makes them iteraparous, while other cephalopods are semelparous.

Ok almost done I promise. A few more things:

-adults use their fins to swim while juveniles use propulsion

-the ICUN has not evaluated them

-they have very good balancing organs like the ones in our ears

-they can not change colour like other cephalopods bc their cromataphores are underdeveloped

THATS PRETTY MUCH ALL I KNOW SO FAR ABOUT THEM!! When I research, I like to try to exhaust every single reliable site with information about them and write it down so I dont think I missed anything too important when I first was researching them :)

Have some more pictures!!

[necroangelz]

🪽 & 💉 please。。

I'm gonna pretend this didn't take me like 2 weeks to respond to again

『 💉 』

a kin memory

as Monika from ddlc, i remember two timelines/lives! one timeline follows the canon events of the game where i was a sentient entity trapped within the game. in the other timeline, i was a human girl living in like, a normal world, except i suffered a huuuge breakdown from heavy stress. something in me snapped and i began to see the world as lifeless and flat, and i thought i was stuck in a simulation or video game of some sorts where everything and everyone was fake and i was the only real being. it was.... very hard, as you can probably guess, but with professional help and support from the other club members i got better

『 🪽 』

infodump about an oc

@yaoimurder hi squid I'm tagging uu here bc this is where i ramble about that vampire oc i mentioned ages ago, if uu remember that!!! read on if uu'd like (: my oc infodumps are very long and i mention almost EVERYTHING about them so uu can just read the basic info only lol

her name is midah she is my babygirl. she's also my first (and only) empires SMP oc and i ship her w my f/o (mythicalsausage s1)!!

picture #1 is much more accurate to how midah looks but picture #2 includes details about midah not present in the other photo, such as her red vial necklace, flowers on her cheekbones, and silly little hat

since she's an oc for a series I'll mention stuff that some might not know about, im too lazy to explain everything though so if anyone's curious at all just ask :3

okay midah's backstory is a LIIITTLE murky bc i mainly use her for vague-daydreaming purposes. anyway shes an assassin sorceress who practices blood magic and other types of magic (such as offensive fire Magic that involves creating and manipulating white fire). i got the idea for her name from the line, "touch me, midas, make me part of your design," from my ordinary life. other than that though, her character/story doesn't have much connection to the mythology figure midas. it's just her name that's connected to him. her name is pronounced like midas without the "s", or like the name Micah.

midah is half vampire and half flower elf. i don't really have info on what a "flower elf" is exactly, i don't think i wrote down the info for that, but basically it's just. Elf type connected to Flowers. and flowers often grow on (and maybe in...) their bodies. this can be seen in the red roses that grow on midah's cheekbones. help me my brain is coming up with ideas fur this elf type as i type this but I'm too tired to really focus on that and too focused on finishing this rambles

shes brave, strong, self assured of her own capabilities, tbh for the most part she's a normal person with not much mental and emotional problems, and she cares deeply for those she loves (like a certain mythical j. sausage... aka my f/o ever) she cares deeply to the point of sacrifice but hey, anything for true love amirite... shes also usually the voice of logic and reason compared to sausage but she doesn't try to stop his antics (until his antics start getting a little... demonic.) she totally tops sausage btw. shes also older than him by a bit and she's much taller than him (she's like 7ft tall)

anyway midah isn't very affected by the sunlight BUT she does need to drink blood every now and then, otherwise she gets a bit Quirky (aggressive, uncontrollable monsterlike behavior, and also she starts feeling a lot of physical pain) blood is like a Huge thing for her. she can perform rituals using blood. she wears a vial of blood tied to a necklace for good luck. she has a special bond with the blood sheep

wait what the fuck is a blood sheep? they're creatures from empires SMP s1, particularly the mythland empire (cough cough, that's the main setting of midah's "story") basically they're just Minecraft sheep dyed red. but lorewise they're mysterious creatures who have inhabited mythland for a very long time. they exhibit erratic behavior and sometimes display aggression to other beings. their blood and guts are also very useful for rituals! the blood sheep like midah a lot. they follow her around and nuzzle her like docile farm sheep and sometimes she can communicate with them and they follow her orders. they also protect her FIERCELY against anyone

the vial midah wears around her neck is filled with the blood of a sacrificed blood sheep. she wears it for good luck but replaces it every now and then because the luck can degrade and eventually attract bad luck instead

so yeah i have a lot of different storylines i imagined for midah and ill try to go over them briefly (I'll totally not type like 6 more paragraphs)

- backstory #1 explaining how sausage and midah met: midah moves to mythland and works there as a regular farmer at first and then attempts to join the assassin's guild managed by sausage. she expresses interest in being an assassin and spy. sausage is unsure of her at first,but hes intrigued by her, so he tests her with an easy normal mission: assassinating codfather Jimmy in the empire next door and bringing back his head. yeah that's totally not, like, the beginning of a war and political feud or something. so midah sneaks to the codlands, successfully kills Jimmy, returns with his head, and gets accepted into the guild. at the beginning of this backstory she puts on this facade of a totally unassuming and regular citizen who doesn't seem to have any fighting capabilities, let alone the capability to fight with magic and perform rituals, but then time passes and more and more is revealed about her and it's like Wow she's not who she seems to be. at all. and she quits her farmer job and goes all in on the assassin gig but does other stuff on the side too. and falls in love with saus along the way LOL

- midah x saus backstory #2: they're ~ childhood friends ~ who have been separated for like more than a decade and reunite when midah moves back to mythland. (i envisioned this scene in my head actually—a few days before returning to mythland, midah sends sausage tons and tons of letters sealed within a thick envelope, talking about her plans to return to mythland and why. and also updating him on what's been going on in her life the past decade or so. then on the day she arrives in mythland, they have one of those cute cliche scenes where they run towards each other on a long path and hug each other at the middle. and they cry a bit and talk and marvel about how long its been since they last saw each other. its really sweet ugh)

in this backstory midah was actually part of one of mythland's noble families. i made up some lore where mythland used to be ruled by four noble families (among them were house sausage, which is where sausage comes from duh, and house lavendar, where midah comes from, and yea it's intentionally spelled that way). the noble families/houses went to war with each other for power over mythland and the other two houses were defeated. most members of house lavendar left of their own accord and the rest that remained renounced their noble lineage, leaving house sausage who became the ruling family of mythland. the members of house lavendar specialized in blood magic and a lot of advanced complex blood spells were created by them. hence they have connections to the blood sheep in some way.

i like the longtime friends/allies to lovers dynamic that's going on in backstory #2 (: backstory #1 is still cool in its own way, strangers to lovers is nice, getting to know each other on purpose bc uu find each other intriguing is nice, even though uu might think uur very different people at first, uu get to know the other person a bit more and uu find out things about them and uu realize uur not so different after all ^_^ i read smtg about that once, about loving each other on purpose and choosing to love each other even though uu don't have years and years of history with the other person, and uu grew up completely without them and uur roots aren't tangled with theirs. but still uu love them. and that's very beautiful

okay umm this is getting to be a lot lol i think I'll cap it here, maybe the next time someone sends a 🪽 emoji I'll do a pt2 bc i still have more to say LOL