#apparatus for fishing

[all-out-bass-fishing]

Fully Stocked Tackle Box

Fully Stocked Tackle Box

Tackle boxes have for many years been an essential part of the anglers equipment. Fishing tackle boxes were originally made of wood or wicker and eventually some metal fishing tackle boxes were manufactured. The first plastic fishing tackle boxes were manufactured by Plano in response to the need for a product that didn’t rust.  Fishing tackle is the equipment used by anglers when fishing. Almost…

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Daily fish fact #685

Lampreys!

While some lampreys turn to a parasitic lifestyle as adults, drilling into the sides of bigger animals to feed on their flesh and blood, lamprey larvae, ammocoetes, are actually filter feeders! The lamprey larva life stage can last up to a decade, and they spend their time being half-buried in sandy substrate, consuming whatever tiny organic particles float to them. Ammocoetes' feeding rate is the slowest of any suspension-feeding animal, and due to this they require a habitat very rich in nutrients.

[crispylilworm]

“Noisy fish sex” being the a theory to explain today’s mystery sounds like the result of a Mad Libs prompt 

[kingmaximusboltagon]

triton air bubbles STRIKE AGAIN!!! i LOVE that he has this ability and i crave more use of it. im very curious over how it works!!

[svengalia]

Amongst the reeds crouched a tall gentleman with his nose buried in a radio apparatus. The tall man had long, pointy ears. "Almost like a moomintroll" thought Moomin. "Are the fishes biting?" asked Moomin politely. "I am not fishing." replied the gentleman.

- Spocktober 16: Away mission in Moominvalley

[literallymechanical]

Alessandro Volta's Electric Eels

Okay so, it turns out that your cell phone battery is a basically a homunculus of an electric fish. 

These are the same thing. Let me explain.

@fishteriously, a paleoichthyologist, told me that Alessandro Volta invented the electric battery after studying electric eels and rays.  This sounded like a fun science factoid!  I wanted to know more!  I saw the claim repeated on any number of pop science articles from the last century or so, but none that quoted from primary sources.

The voltaic pile is one of the most important inventions, ever, of all time.  Before Volta, electricity could be stored in Leyden jar capacitors, which would discharge in a single, brief burst. Volta's pile was the first method of producing a continuous electric current, which launched the modern era of electricity as we know it. His explanation for how it worked was incorrect, but it was still a massive breakthrough.

Batteries use the same principle to this day, just with different materials (e.g. cobalt oxide, graphite, and lithium salts rather than silver, zinc, and brine).

But is it a fish?

This is Volta's first schematic of a battery, or "voltaic pile" – at the time, "battery" referred to a bunch of Leyden jars linked in series, the term wouldn't come to refer to piles until later. "Z" and "A" stand for zinc and silver ("argentum"), with brine-soaked paper disks between. It does look a bit like an eel?

But is it truly?

Surely, if Volta modeled the pile after electric fishes, I’d be able to find a citation!  Wikipedia is usually a good place to start when hunting primary sources, but no luck.  No mention of fish at all.  I trust fishteriously more than wikipedia, however, so I went digging.  Looks like Volta first reported his discovery in a Letter to the Royal Society in 1800.

Found the letter!

Aw beans, it’s in French.  I haven’t studied French since high school.

BUT WAIT. WHAT WAS THAT.

Une commotion électrique? A trembling eel???

Okay so now I NEEDED to read the letter in English. I found an English-language summary published by the Royal Society, but it looks like the only English translation of the full letter was in the appendix of an out-of-print book called “Alessandro Volta and the Electric Battery.”

So I bought a used copy. Let's see what Volta has to say about this:

"To this apparatus ... I have constructed it, in its form to the natural electric organ of the torpedo or electric eel, &c, than to the Leyden flask and electric batteries [battery = linked Leyden flasks], I would wish to give the name of artificial electric organ."

Yes! The voltaic pile was explicitly modeled after electric fishes – torpedo rays and electric eels.  Fishteriously was 100% correct. Volta never even calls it a "pile," it is always "artificial electric organ." A significant portion of the letter is devoted to electric eels and torpedo rays, in fact.

But also, the rest of the letter is bonkers.

He wrote pages on painful experiments with the artificial electric organ – touching it, poking it into his eyes and ears, making other people touch it, generally just shocking the ever loving hell out of himself over and over. He routinely shocks himself so hard that he has to take breaks. And of course, he licks it.

But that's not the best part:

He says that the artificial electric organ can be turned sideways and submerged in liquid...

"...by which means these cylinders would have a pretty good resemblance to the electric eel ... they might be joined together by pliable metallic wires or screw springs, and then covered with a skin terminated by a head and tail properly formed, &c."

There you have it. One of the most important scientific discoveries of all time, and it includes a crafts project for building an authentic electric eel puppet.

In summary, next time you charge your phone, take a moment to thank the soul of the electric fish inside of it.

[plzignr]

Humans are Weird- Free Diving

When I was a kid, was taught the rule of 3, which is meant to be a general survivalist guide rule of thumb for necessities in extreme circumstances. If you haven't heard it the rule of three is as follows:

3 weeks without food

3 days without water

3 minutes without oxygen

The point being that without these things at this frequency that's probably about when you'd die without them, so prioritize them in the reverse order.

And this is fairly consistent with most medical information I could find, these guidelines are a little under the 'official' times. Without oxygen is four to six minutes before brain damage, which that's fair to be conservative for potentially life saving information.

Then, I learned about free diving.

You know how we have a Frenchman who invented a self contained underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA) because he wanted to keep looking at the fish down in the ocean. Yeah so free diving is that... without SCUBA gear.

Free divers just hold their breath, and dive, down to 20 to 40 feet under water, which by the way means that they are under two atmospheres of pressure (2 atm is 33 feet for those keeping score) and then hang out and surface. Like it didn't take a Frenchman obsessed with fish to come up with a pressurized air tank apparatus for normal people to do it.

The normal average human can hold their breath between 30 to 90 seconds.

That's normal, and then most people after three to four minutes will have passed out and start to have their brain cells begin being damaged from lack of oxygen.

Do you know how long average free divers can hold their breath? Upwards of 10 minutes. That is a TEN TIMES longer breath hold than the 'average' human, with NO adverse effects!

The record breath hold is almost 25 minutes. 25 MINUTES.

That discrepancy is entirely unreasonable!

That's like saying, oh yeah, the average human can move 100 pounds (~45 Kg) with serious effort, which is like the size of a large dog, but some of them can lift 1000 pounds, which is like a fully grown moose. Keeping with this analogy for the record breath hold if it was a weight  would be the equivalent of someone saying they could lift an Elephant!

Then, and then, I looked further into it because surely these people have to have some kind of genetic quirk that allows them to be able to hold their breath PAST the, 'yeah you're probably dead zone' three times over.

But no... not really. There are some exceptions of people that have larger or more effecient spleens that let them stay down closer to twenty to twenty five minutes, but mostly, it's just getting the body used to having high C02 and low 02 levels over an extended period of time. The average person can probably reach about 5 minute breath holds within a month of training, and have no adverse effects from this. Remember that the 'average human' could only hold their breath for 30 to 90 seconds. Remember that rule of three? Remember that four minutes was 'hey the human might get brain damage' you know their most important and vital organ that their evolution invested so heavily in that it literally changed the way they breath as a species? Yeah. We're just going to break that right down by just choosing to not listen to it. And within a month, BAM literally defying death, because some people just felt like it and figured out how to do it with training instead of equipment.

Because people wanted to go into a place that is VERY MUCH NOT MEANT FOR AIR BREATHING HUMANS to either look at stuff in the NOT FOR HUMANS zone, or to eat said stuff in the again HUMANS LITERALLY SHOULDN’T BE ABLE TO BE ALIVE HERE FOR MORE THAN A COUPLE OF MINUTES ZONE.

Humans are insane, and utterly terrifying.

[villainousauthor]

The diver coughed and sputtered for a full minute, gasping for air as the sharp rocks digged into her palms.

"Aww poor human, I forgot how much your kind needs air." The melodic voice didn't sound sorry at all, and the moment she caught her breath, the diver looked at the fantastical and terrifying creature that pulled her down into the murky depths.

A mermaid. Of course, it was common knowledge that they existed, but sightings were rare. She never expected to come face to face with one during what was a normal dive.

"Why...what is this place?" She asked, voice still raspy from the salt water. Looking around, she could see she was in a cavern of some sort. An underwater cave with some chambers of air? Sunlight shone in from a crack high overhead, so she must be above sea level, but water lapped all around her feet.

The creature spoke again, and she could decided that she could put the voice and appearance of the mer as vaguely female.

"This is your new home, silly!" She looked her in the face now, noticing her inhuman appearance. She was beautiful, of course, but the diver didn't miss the sharp teeth, and the flash of a third eyelid when she blinked. She felt herself shudder.

"What do you mean? I don't understand," She sat up, moving the clinging wet hair from her face. "Why did you pull me down?"

The mermaid inched closer, pulling herself up on the bank, and the diver's eyes looked down the long expanse of her tale, noting her scales and sharp looking spines and fins. This was a dangerous creature.

"I always wanted a pet human. Your species is so fascinating! But I couldn't take just any human," She speaks with such enthusiasm, and if it wasn't for her appearance and strange lilt of her voice, the diver could almost mistake her for one of the upbeat girls she went to school with. "I saw you swimming, and you looked so pretty that it had to be you!" She finishes with a flourish, tail smacking against the water.

"I can't be a pet! I need to go back." She demands, voice desperate. "I'll just swim out of this cave."

The mermaid flashes her another sharp toothed grin. "You can try, but these caves are dark and twisty. You might run out of air before you can."

The divers frown deepens. She knows the statistics for underwater caving. She hasn't even been trained for it yet, never having thought she'd need it. Her breathing apparatus was gone too, ripped away by the mermaid as she dragged her down.

"I'll starve here," She tries reasoning, "What good of a pet am I if I'm dead?"

The mermaid brought her sharp claws up as she rested her own head in her hands. She watched as her gills fluttered. "I'll bring you food. I know you humans can eat fish, and I'm a good hunter." She says this with pride, as if trying to impress.

"Okay, but I need water. Humans will die without water." She tries countering, heart racing as the situation starts to set in.

"You're silly. There's water all around us." The mermaid giggles, her expression playful.

"Humans can't drink salt water. We need fresh water." She deadpans, trying to make this mermaid see logic.

Her lip juts out, as if this doesn't make a lick of sense. "I don't believe that. This water is perfectly fine! I live in it, and others live in it, and you humans swim in it."

She leans closer, her cold and clammy hand going to toy with a strand of the human diver's hair, and her heart jumps to her throat at the close proximity of those claws that could tear her to pieces within seconds.

"Don't worry, I'll take good care of you. We'll have so much fun together."

[beesmygod]

shelley got a "feline asthma" diagnosis, which just means mashing up a pill into her fish every day. but there was a non zero chance she would have wound up with an Apparatus

[bethanythebogwitch]

Wet Beast Wednesday: electric eel

Prepare to be jolted this Wet Beast Wednesday as we dive into the shocking world of electric eels. The fist thing to know about electric eels is that the name is a lie. Not the electric part, that's true, but the eel part. Despite appearances, electric eels are actually knifefish, a group of freshwater fish that are more closely related to catfish and piranha than to true eels.

(Image: three electric eels swimming in an aquarium. One in front is seen in profile. It is an elongates, slender, brown fish with tiny pectoral fins and a long anal fin that runs under most of the body. End ID)

There are three species of electric eel, though they are so similar to each other that they were previously classified as one species. The species are Electrophorus electricus, Electrophorus voltai, and Electrophorus varii. The main difference between the species are in the shape of the skull. All electric eels are elongated fish that are cylindrical at the front and flattened vertically at the tail. They have no pelvic or dorsal fins and the tail fin is small and fused with the anal fin, which runs across most of the body. The anal fin is the primary means of locomotion for the eels. By undulating the fin in a wavelike motion, the eel can swim forward, backward, or hover in place. The body of the eel is scaleless, instead bing covered in muddy brown skin. Electric eels grow throughout their entire lives and grow new vertebrae as they get longer. The largest species, E. electricus, can reach 2 meters (6.6 ft) long and weighs up to 20 kg (44 lbs). They are obligate air-breathers, being incapable of obtaining enough oxygen through their gills to survive. Instead, they must surface every two to ten minutes to breathe. The inside of the mouth is wrinkly and heavily vascularized, resulting in a high surface area that can absorb oxygen as long is it stay wet. The floor of the mouth can flex to draw air in and then it is forced out through the gills. Carbon dioxide is excreted through the skin. Electric eels have poor eyesight, but have electroreception and very good hearing thanks to Webers apparatus, a set of tiny bones that connect the inner ear to the swim bladder. The apparatus amplifies sounds that the ear would not be able to detect on its own.

(Image: a close-up of an electric eel's head. It is round and brown, reminiscent of a potato in texture. The mouth is located on the frond and is closes, with no visible teeth. Tje eye is very small and pale blue. Across the head are sensory pits that look like small holes. End ID)

All of the vital organs of the eels are packed into the first fifth of its body length. The rest of the body contains the electric organs. Keeping the vital organs in the front of the body isolates them from the electric organs, preventing the fish from damaging their organs while generating electricity. The electric organs take up so much more space because they need to generate very powerful electric shocks. Most fish that hunt with electricity are saltwater species as salt water conducts electricity much better than freshwater. Because electric eels are freshwater fish, they need to generate much more powerful shocks to effectively hunt other animals. E. voltai can produce a maximum recorded 860 volts of electricity, the highest of any animal. Electric eels are electroreceptive, able to sense electric fields in their surroundings. Electroreception is divided into passive (animal senses electric fields of others) and active (animal generates its own electric field and can sense distortion in that field caused by other objects or animals). Electric eels are active electroreceptors. They sense changes in their electric field using sensory pits on the head that are derived from the lateral line system that all fish have. Electric eels have three electric organs: the main organ, Sach's organ, and Hunter's organ. The main organ sits in from of the Sach's organs while the Hunter's organ sits beneath both. The organs are derived from muscles and consist of stacks of structures call electrocytes, which are made up of specialized cells. When the brain sends a signal to the electric organs to produce a shock, special ion channels pump sodium ions into the cells while different channels pump potassium out. This creates a sudden difference in electric potential, which is what generates the shock. Producing electricity is a costly process and the eels need rest and nourishment between multiple successive shocks. The main organ generates the powerful shocks used to stun prey while the Sach's organ creates weaker shocks used for active electroreception. Hunter's organ appears to support the other two.

(Image: an artistic depiction of a cross-section of an electric eels, showing the structure of the main electric organ. From there, the image is zoomed in on multiple times, showing the the structure of the electrophytes, the protein channels, and the structure of the proteins involved in generating electricity. End ID. Art by Daniel Zukowski)

Electric eels are found in northern South America and the ranges of the three species generally do not overlap. They prefer muddy bottoms or swampy areas. The terrain of their territory changes quite a bit through the year. In the wet season, water levels rise, flooding sections of forest and grassland and connecting streams and ponds. In the dry season, water levels drop and many streams and ponds are isolated. These isolated bodies of water become warm, low-oxygen areas where fish that rely on gills are at a disadvantage while air-breathing fish like the electric eels can thrive. Electric eels are nocturnal predators that detect and stun prey through their electric abilities. Their diet consists mostly of fish, but they will take just abut anything. While mostly solitary, E. varaii have been observed coordinating with each other to hunt schools of tetras. When the electric field generated by Sach's organ is disturbed by another animal, the eel will use the main organ to produce a strong shock to stun the prey. Stunning can be done from a distance, but is more effective if the eel makes contact with the other animal. An initial shock may be used to temporarily immobilize prey long enough for the eel to contact it and release a second shock. Some sources propose that the eel can use its shock to forcibly contract muscles in other animals, either immobilizing prey or forcing prey to move, making them easier to sense. Where or not this is something the eels can actually do is up for debate. Electric eels also use their shocks to deter potential predators. When feeling threatened by something on land, the eel can leap out of the water to make contact with the threat and shock it. Very few animals prey on electric eels, but known predators include caiman, alligators, and piranha.

(Image: six frames showing na electric eel in captivity responding to a perceived threat (a fake caiman head) by partially leaping out of the water and contacting the head to shock it, before returning to the water. End ID)

Electric eels breed in the dry season. Males will use their saliva to glue together mud and sand into nests where the females lay their eggs. The male then fertilizes the eggs by releasing sperm onto them. The females may lay eggs multiple times during the breeding season and can lay up to 1200 at a time. The male stays by the nest to guard the eggs and hatchlings for up to four months. The lifespan of electric eels is in question, but captive specimens can live for up to 20 years.

(Image: an electric eel resting on a pile of wood next to some rocks. End ID)

All species of electric eel are classified as least concern by the IUCN, meaning they are not at threat of extinction. Threats to them mostly consist of pollution and habitat loss. Studies of the electric properties of the eels have lead to multiple discoveries and inventions. In particular, Luigi Galvani was inspired by studies on the eels when he invented the battery. Electric eels are also important in the study of the voltage-gated sodium channel. These channels are used to generate electricity, but are also used to trigger the contraction of muscle cells in many species, including humans. It is hard to study the channels in muscle cells because they are found in very small amounts. The electric organs of the electric eel have much higher quantities of these channels, making it much easier to study them. Better understanding of voltage-gated sodium channels could lead to improvements in prostheses and medical implants.

(Image: a cartoon showing an electric eel swimming with a black cloud emerging from its tail. Threee other eels watch from the side, one commenting "Ew... I can't believe he's still running on fossil fuels". End ID. Source)

[electrificata]

With love, why do you occasionally make my dash hell by posting the same image of a reverse mermaid on the beach a billion times? Like I respect the chaos but babe….why. (props for forcing me to take a break from my endless scrolling cuz my dash is just this fish tho lol)

"The Aneristic Principle is that of APPARENT ORDER; the Eristic Principle is that of APPARENT DISORDER. Both order and disorder are man made concepts and are artificial divisions of PURE CHAOS, which is a level deeper that is the level of distinction making.

With our concept making apparatus called "mind" we look at reality through the ideas-about-reality which our cultures give us. The ideas-about- reality are mistakenly labeled "reality" and unenlightened people are forever perplexed by the fact that other people, especially other cultures, see "reality" differently. It is only the ideas-about-reality which differ. Real (capital-T True) reality is a level deeper that is the level of concept.

We look at the world through windows on which have been drawn grids (concepts). Different philosophies use different grids. A culture is a group of people with rather similar grids. Through a window we view chaos, and relate it to the points on our grid, and thereby understand it. The ORDER is in the GRID. That is the Aneristic Principle.

Western philosophy is traditionally concerned with contrasting one grid with another grid, and amending grids in hopes of finding a perfect one that will account for all reality and will, hence, (say unenlightened westerners) be True. This is illusory; it is what we Erisians call the ANERISTIC ILLUSION. Some grids can be more useful than others, some more beautiful than others, some more pleasant than others, etc., but none can be more True than any other.

DISORDER is simply unrelated information viewed through some particular grid. But, like "relation", no-relation is a concept. Male, like female, is an idea about sex. To say that male-ness is "absence of female-ness", or vice versa, is a matter of definition and metaphysically arbitrary. The artificial concept of no-relation is the ERISTIC PRINCIPLE.

The belief that "order is true" and disorder is false or somehow wrong, is the Aneristic Illusion. To say the same of disorder, is the ERISTIC ILLUSION.

The point is that (little-t) truth is a matter of definition relative to the grid one is using at the moment, and that (capital-T) Truth, metaphysical reality, is irrelevant to grids entirely. Pick a grid, and through it some chaos appears ordered and some appears disordered. Pick another grid, and the same chaos will appear differently ordered and disordered.

Reality is the original Rorschach.

Verily! So much for all that."

(Source)

[justabeewithapen]

What are your Lethal Company OC's thoughts on the items in the facilities? Any favorites? Any they dislike?

Oh boy, I am so glad you asked!!! I've put everything under a keep reading because there is a lot.

Kirby, my employee, doesn't give two craps about items. As a Xenozoologist his only concerns are observing the alien life, picking up garbage is the job of scrappers. Occasionally, if they're in his way, he'll move items to easier to reach spots, but otherwise they're entirely ignored. The only time he cares about them is when he can watch the facility life interact with them, so he might move a lamp or a noise maker into the scouting path of a Bracken just to see how they react, or prop a painting up to see if Thumpers will treat them as barriers when not actively hunting. That sort of thing! (Though he does find masks the object interesting, but I treat them more like living creatures haha)

Juno, Kirby's dog, loooves noise makers. I'd say his favorite item is the Rubber Duck because it squeaks when he chews on it. A close second would be the plastic fish, fun to chew but doesn't squeak. Things like the Toy Robot and the Teeth freak him out because they make noise unprompted which often startles him. Really, anything you'd expect a puppy to enjoy, he probably likes. Most of the objects are very new experiences for him, because 9 times out of 10 Kirby has Juno stay back in the ship when they land. He's naturally curious and adventurous, but still a puppy.

Pop-up, my jester, is a lot like Juno in the fact that he only really cares about objects that are fun to chew, and a lot like Kirby in the fact he doesn't care about them 90% of the time. I think he'd like things like Whoopie cushions and air horns because he enjoys being obnoxious, but most of the time his main goal is murder(tm). He does have a vague understanding of what items employees like, so he'll move them in places to attempt to set "traps". Because he is so small it means he can't really do that with engines or axels or cash registers, and also that you could trap him in a room by barricading it with those. Even once he has popped he can't really pick them up.

Dizy, my nutcracker, really doesn't care about objects. If they're along his path he'll usually kick them out of the way, but not pay them much mind otherwise. The only exception would be the Apparatus and the Lamp. Both of them produce a lot of light which makes his vision even blurrier and hurts his eyes, so if he comes across them on his patrol he'll shoot them until they stop glowing. He's managed to kill an employee at least once through this method, tracking the big painful spot (the lamp they were carrying) to aim his shot. Finally, Bean, my Bracken! Bean likes objects that are reflective or glow, showing a preference towards mostly metal ones. In her hidey hole she has many many cans of all sorts, which is how she got her name! Though they're reflective things like mirrors are less attractive to her, same with things like the robot which make noise. I'd say her least favorite object would be the paintings, as they leave her very frustrated. They're so pretty out in the light but as soon as she gets them into her dark hole they're not pretty anymore!

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Daily fish fact #717

Bicolour parrotfish!

Like other parrotfish, the teeth of the bicolour parrotfish are interwoven and fused together into a strong beak, which the parrotfish will scrape algae off of rocks and chew coral with. Parrotfishes can have up to a thousand teeth, and they're set in fifteen rows. When a row of teeth wears out, another row is ready to replace it, a bit like in sharks! Parrotfish also have a pharyngeal apparatus for grinding down bits of coral further into a fine sand.

Parrotfish teeth are a marvel! I have written about their second-strongest-in-the-world teeth in a bigger post too :) Below are the teeth of a bridled parrotfish.

[transmutationisms]

pleaaase share any and all thoughts you might have on as i lay dying by william faulkner if you're willing, i'd appreciate your analysis on any topic dealing with it. I recently had to read it for class and kept thinking "tumblr user transmutationisms would probably find this very interesting" and when I search your blog i see its one of your fav novels! personally am interested with the treatment of darl and what is considered "sane" vs. "insane" as well as addie and how her death is handled.

yeah this book made me so insane when i first encountered it lmao. i was always surprised by people who read it and thought that darl had genuinely or intrinsically 'gone insane' or even that he was in some kind of decline throughout the book. i thought what faulkner was doing with him was very different.

i'd posit there are basically 2 main mechanisms by which darl comes to be regarded as insane. one is the construal of criminal action as prima facie pathological. in darl's case it's specifically criminal action against his mother's body (so, the violation of a blood tie that is so important it has guided the entire novel) and ofc the barn burning has a more general sort of antisocial effect as well. so, the designation of insanity follows not because darl's action shows some kind of intrinsic breakdown or loss of lucidity, but because it puts him outside the bounds of accepted familial and social behaviours. so, in that sense there's a very straightforward connection between the social mores, the criminal code based on them, and the invocation of insanity to preserve the dichotomy between 'sane' and 'criminal', ofc with the asylum then appearing as another arm of the carceral / criminal apparatus.

in addition, though, faulkner's work is generally marked by an interest in the sort of social breakdown and decline that articulates along family lines. which is to say: although i wouldn't attribute to him the same degree of evolutionary-hereditarian degeneracy theory as, like, zola, there is certainly a repeated interest throughout faulkner's work in the family as a site of inherited social and economic decline. i don't think the point here is to write anse as insane, per se, or as passing on a discrete malady to darl, but parentage matters (cf. jewel's illegitimacy) and in the same way that anse is antisocial, illogical, and frequently illegible to the surrounding characters, darl by the end of the book has come to occupy a similar socially marginal position. darl is ofc punished more violently for his transgression; anse's chapters convey pretty clearly his outsider position and complete inability to make sense of the world on linguistic-logical terms, but darl escalates this when he burns the barn because he's breaking a rule that has more external social ramifications than, say, anse's biblical exegesis about snakes and trees and whatever.

broadly and kind of annoyingly you could say the novel is investigating the relationship between consciousness and language, or at least feeling and language. the words are "a shape to fill a lack", vardaman's fish chapter sort of sums up the failings therein, &c. so, anse and darl are interesting to counterpose in this respect because the disconnect between their inner worlds and linguistic abilities are very different. darl is the most linguistically adept narrator in the book, yet by the end he's committed an act so illegible to the state and to his community that he's declared insane for it. anse, on the other hand, is motivated by what is in certain ways a very clear and simple moral code (he is driven primarily throughout the novel by the desire to bury addie and then take care of his own material needs re: teeth and a new wife), but he's not really able to communicate this directly in narration, which makes his chapters some of my favs to re-read. with anse the stream-of-consciousness is continually hinting at and around what he's trying to convey; with darl there are certainly things he's capable of expressing clearly and directly in language, and so the effect (for me) is to surprise you when it's revealed that darl, too, is on a kind of margin of social logic.

[sparkylurkdragon]

Really the only problem I have with Dave the Diver so far is minor biology flubs. Some of it just seems to be translation issues so I'm not too bothered, and I suspect some of it is going to turn out to be weird sci-fi/fantasy nonsense so I'm very not bothered (it's noted that the fish in the Great Blue Hole are unusually aggressive and the story seems to be pointing towards giving an explanation of either The Ancients Fucked Up or a Nefarious Organization Is Doing Experiments, possibly both, and also one of the bosses was a giant boxing mantis shrimp so something is going on, therefore I'll forgive the aggressive thresher sharks) but some of it...

Well, for example, the cetaceans opening their mouths to vocalize and some of the actual vocalizations. Cetaceans vocalize through a complicated apparatus connected to their blowholes, so don't actually open their mouths to make sounds. In many species opening their mouths is a threat display, since they don't have lips to speak of so open mouth = showing off teeth.

And the bottlenoses make that damn Flipper kookaburra sound, which is not at all what dolphins actually sound like, though they do have some appropriate whistling and clicking as well.

On the one hand it's just minor things that I notice because I'm a zoology nerd who loves cetaceans in particular, but on the other hand I'm reminded of this radio series that I read about a while ago. The name escapes me, but it was set in rural England, and the producers had to learn up on What Farm Animals Sound Like because they kept getting letters from farmers about things like "that's not this chicken breed, it's that chicken breed" and "That's not the sound of a frightened horse. That is the sound of a horny horse. It made this supposedly-tense sequence really funny."

What I'm saying is that if you make a thing that will appeal to [x] people you will probably get nitpicks about the thing that [x] people are passionate about/know a lot about. To be clear, these are extremely minor nitpicks and I'm really enjoying the game.

[cryptidsofwakemoor]

Chapter 7 - Chillin

With the arrival of winter comes new challenges. Now armed with a blanket and pillow to help fend off the cold, Matchstick has started to make a daily trek to the mysterious fish person's house since it's the only reliable source of food... even though he still has no idea why they're leaving food out for him, or if he should even really be trusting it, but hey- beggars can't be choosers, right?

~*~

Mystic

That evening was the fastest Matchstick had ever fallen asleep. The apparatus that hooked him up to the facility wall couldn't compare to the comfort of this plush square of softness.

Time passes.

The weather gets colder.

The miracle cloth rectangle and square of cloud fluff made it bearable, though. He could sleep on the soft dirt of the den floor, wrapped in the blanket and resting his head on the pillow. The best damn sleeps of his whole life. Nightmares didn't come back to torment him when he slept with the soft stuff cocooning him. Must be some kinda magic.

And every day, he'd find a platter of food waiting for him on the steps of that house with the 'bird' feeders. It wasn't always the same food, but it was tastier than 'birdseed' and the sticky syrup from the cylinders.

He saw the fish-looking lady only occasionally, ducking in and out of their house to leave the plates of food, or heading out in their blue 'truck' to go god knows where. He saw the silver forest beast even less, the only signs of its presence being the fresh hole it dug into the earth a short distance away from his current hideout. It didn't leave any other gifts for him, either. Where had it gone?

Spooky

His breath was visible all the time now, even when he was calm. He noticed the people in town, in the times he ventured close, were starting to wear more and more stuff. And more noticeably, something seemed to be wrong with the trees? They were changing colors to something more red and brownish, and they were... shedding. A lot. The entire entrance of his den was getting crunchier and crunchier as the wind kept blowing the tree bits in. He would be lying if he said it wasn't fun to go bulldozing through piles of it, though.

Still, despite his naturally high temperature, the cold wasn't very pleasant. It seemed like the only time he was comfortable was when he was safely tucked away with the nesting stuff the silver beast had given him... So he started taking them with him whenever he ventured out.

He didn't have clothes like the people in town, save for the now VERY ratty and worn form-fitting shorts he'd been outfitted with at the lab... but the cloth rectangle was closest thing he had besides that, especially if he pulled it around his shoulders and over his head. At the very least it helped keep in his body heat and made him feel a little safer in regards to how easily a camera drone might spot him. The bad weather seemed to bring fewer of those, and it probably helped that he didn't actually enter the town in a while. He didn't have to, not when that one building with the pond had food out every day. It may not have filled him up entirely, but the feeling like he was going to die didn't crop up like it did when his food sources were less... certain?

...Part of him still wasn't sure about it, but he'd been going there daily for a while now, and still no ambush of any kind, save for the one time that person leapt out of the pond.

It was weird. He didn't know them, but he'd sort of gotten used to the routine with them. He knew when the food would be left out. Sometimes he'd arrive a little early and hide, watching from the safety of the trees until they went back inside, but it wasn't like they tried to look for him.

....Still had no idea what to do with those little metal things, when those were there. They almost looked like they could be some kind of weaponry- a blunted knife of some sort and a little four-pronged pokey thing- but they seemed kinda flimsy, and probably wouldn't be more effective in combat than the abilities he already had at his disposal... Not really worth the extra effort of carrying with him, so he left it be. Was it a sign of concern to want to arm someone...?

Either way, he would go there, eat, and somewhat cautiously go check on that second burrow on the way back. Still no sign of the silver beast.

...

Soon the day came when he poked his sleepy head out of the burrow, only to see the ground covered in a layer of... dust? No, as he climbed out and it melted around him, he realized pretty quickly that it was a powdery layer of ice. How'd all this get here? He shivered a little and pulled his cloth rectangle tighter around himself. His back stung when he did, but that feeling had almost turned into background noise for him at this point, and he gave it little notice.

The icy ground and dead tree stuff turned out to be a pretty slippery combination, especially since his footsteps melted it a little and made it more wet. Eugh, it was a quick way to make this walk completely unpleasant, though it still wasn't as bad as the days where water fell from the sky. He spent as little time outside the burrow as possible during those days, but would still accumulate mud on him regardless, that would bake in his body heat and come off in chunks.

...Okay, flaking it off was kinda fun, when he was bored. Which was kind of a lot of the time...

As he walked, he glanced over at the other burrow, which remained as quiet as usual. It didn't look like anything had come out of it, otherwise there probably would've been fresh marks of that big spiny tail dragging in the icy stuff. He was starting to wonder if maybe they left, and this had only been a temporary den...

Mystic

....

crnch

shfff

scrnchhh

Something was coming this way.

thnk

A mass of the powder fell from the branches of a tree at the edge of his vision. It lands with a dull whump.

"...hrmf."

The sound of a chain link fence rattling.

scrnch

thmsh

Then- the sound of something big letting out an equally big sneeze.

Spooky

He had been crouching at the entrance of the second burrow, peering into the darkness to see if he could catch a glint of light shining off one of those armor plates, when the sound of something huge slogging and crunching through the ice jarred him from what he was doing. He stood very quickly at the huge sneeze, looking like a kid who'd just been caught with his hand in a cookie jar, and turned around to look.

To his credit, he didn't try to hide this time. He was genuinely surprised to see the huge creature after days and days... How many days was it? A lot of days.

Mystic

He's greeted by the sight of- no surprise- the big silver beast. It's shaking its head back and forth, which... is covered in the white dust, freshly fallen from the tree. Said tree is making subtle vibrations, as though-

-it just ran right into the tree, didn't it.

Shaking its head wasn't doing the trick, so the shaking increased until it traveled all the way down the length of its body and tail. The chain link fence noise returned- ah, so that was what it sounded like when it shook out that pelt of metal plates. By the time it settled, a substantial amount of the white powder had fallen from its back.

At this point, it notices him. Squinting in the bright albedo from the icy coating all around them, they regard the kid, then hang their head, letting out another big sigh.

Stepping into the clearing, the shake off their limbs one by one, like a dog. A low humming rumble passes from their throat. Was that supposed to be a greeting? It didn't sound like words, but it didn't feel hostile.

Spooky

As... kinda silly as it was to witness a huge creature, the size of the trucks he had seen at Aria, go bonking into a tree... it was hard not to still feel somewhat intimidated when it approached him. Something about being near a living creature that enormous made him feel small, and that wasn't a very common feeling for him. At least he didn't feel like he was in danger this time.

It sighed again, he was pretty sure of it. Between that and how it hung its head while trundling along, he sensed it probably wasn't a fan of the cold, or the ice on the ground. Maybe wasn't feeling its best. Made sense though, it was covered in what looked like metal, and that would get really cold when exposed to this kind of temperature.

He stood there in thought for a few moments, then walked over cautiously... and after a few moments of uncertainty, he pulled out the pillow from his makeshift blanket cloak. He'd been hugging it for additional warmth and softness, and he gently pressed it against the side of the silver beast's snoot. It was kind of dirty by this point, but it was warm, very warm, like it was fresh out of the dryer.

"Aa.. hh..."

He'd opened his mouth and sounded like he was starting to try to say something, but his voice was a weak rasp from lack of use, barely above a whisper, and it was mostly lost beneath the sound of the wind.

Mystic

The beast blinked in surprise as- of all things- the kid approached them rather than ran away. It looked even more confused when the pillow is presented.

However, once the pillow is pressed against their cold snout, the frilled ears perk up. Their eyes widen, holding this strange position of mid-shaking a limb while the odd kid in the blanket burrito holds a pillow to their muzzle.

...they let out a snort. The edges of their mouth curl up. That was definitely a smile, and perhaps a laugh.

They enjoy the warmth for a minute or so, before retracting their head. Lifting one forelimb, the silver beast gently places their thick clawed digits over the hands holding the pillow, and pushes them back towards his chest. Plopping back down onto all fours, the beast stretches its back, tail curling into a spiral as they do so. Their tongue flops out as they let out a big yawn, showing off all those big teeth before they close the mouth again, rubbing at their muzzle with the opposite hand-paw from the one that nudged the pillow back.

"Mmmrf," the beast rumbles, the thudding steps continuing once more as it crunches its way through the snow towards the hole in the ground. Crawling through the entrance, it slips down to the base of the burrow, and wraps itself up in its tail at the bottom of the den. Faint shivers run through their chilled body, and they tuck the tail closer around themselves like a pointy cinnamon bun.

Spooky

Wrapping his arms back around the pillow, he felt himself smile a little as well, watching the big creature crawl into their den and get comfortable. Sure, the pillow was small, but he still felt like he helped, if only a little bit.

Also... it was weirdly kind of a relief to know they weren't gone.

Remembering why he was outside, though, he turned and walked back along the usual path he took to the food building. Curiously, as he walked along, he could see the big path in the snow the silver beast had taken to get to their den. Seemed they also walked this way. Actually... huh! He slowed a little, his eyes following the big footprints and lines where the tail dragged. It kinda looked like it swept its tail back and forth in some places, but for the most part...

He hopped from footprint to footprint as he followed that instead of the usual path, since it seemed to be running pretty parallel. It was kinda fun, though he cut it out when he slipped on some leaves and fell on his ass.

Ow.

Okay, had to be more careful walking in this stuff.

Still, it was strange... The trail was visible through most of the walk, but he lost sight of it somewhere around the time he was approaching the food building. Guess it was still a mystery where the silver beast had been... Oh well.

There was the white disc in its usual place on the steps, though the food seemed like it had been out for longer than usual. There was a very thin dust of ice on the two pieces of bread with meat and stuff in the middle that had been left out for him. No little stabby things this time, but whatever, he would've left them anyway. Maybe the person was in kind of a hurry this time.

Weird, though, their truck was still here...

Didn't look like they were inside, either. The windows were dark.

Mystic

The food, even though cold, was still delicious. It must have been sitting outside for a while. A few hours, maybe.

Sitting on the porch, wrapped in the blanket, he's able to sit back and take in the peaceful scenery. Despite the thick coat of white powder and ice on everything, the cylinders of food for the 'birds' (and ambitious fluffy rodents) were still out on their hanging hooks- with the exception of the sticky syrup ones. Those were put away somewhere he did not know. The tiny buzzing birds that used that feeder- which gave him a heart attack the first time one flew by his head- were absent once it got too cold outside.

...huh.

That was odd. There were scrape marks in the snow here, too. A lot less noticeable, due to the jumble of bird feet stamps around feeders, and snow mostly being replaced by thicker ice on the black stone path, but they were there for sure once he paid close enough attention. They looked like- scratches. Had a scuffle taken place here?

To the side of the house, on the small juncture of black path where the blue truck off-and-on rested, the scratches were deeper, and more numerous. Some wooden structure he couldn't fathom the purpose of had broken planks in the center, as though pushed by great force.

A small corner of something colorful poked out from underneath a haphazardly placed box at the side of the house.

Spooky

The pond was too frozen to drink from, so he scooped up a handful of snow into his mouth, letting it melt into water as his eyes traced the path of the scratches to the strange structure. Huh... he'd never really noticed that thing before. Mostly because there weren't any tubes by it, but the corner of something bright and colorful stood out like a beacon among all the white and gray and muted brown.

Soon, curiosity got the better of him, and the signs of damage and scrapes were concerning... He got up and moved closer to the box to investigate, too curious to just leave it be. What happened here...?

Mystic

The colorful thing was a piece of fabric, sticking out from under the edge of the box.

Removing the box entirely revealed it to be-

…a tattered shirt. It had been torn asunder, but even he would recognize this article of clothing from the shredded remains.

It was the fish lady’s shirt, the one she wore almost every day on her trips out of her house. Blue strings hung off the edges where something sharp had rent the once-whole article of clothing into many, many pieces. Most of those pieces were shoved under the box, and some were caught under the edge of the wooden porch.

Spooky

Realizing the implications of what he was looking at, he dropped the box in shock, eyes wide. The claw marks, upset snow and broken wooden structure- signs of a struggle, and now a torn piece of clothing, looking like it was hidden... And the fact that the trail seemed to lead back here...

Did the-

...Did the silver beast EAT the fish lady?!

There wasn't any blood, was the weird part, but maybe it swallowed them whole?? ...Minus the shirt? Somehow? It tore off the shirt, and then ate them?

Shit... Why didn't it just eat the food left out for him instead? It was a little cold but that's no reason to eat the person that made it!

Mystic

What was he even supposed to do, now? If the beast did eat them, his reliable food source was gone. He’d have to go back to swiping from trash cans as his primary method of scavenging. And on top of that, the bird feeders would be left empty, too- not only was he getting shorted on bird seed, but so were the birds!

If big silver animals ate people, how was one so close to town? And- why didn’t it eat him, then, when it found him trapped in that hole? Maybe he was saved by the trash smell- but then, it didn’t eat him earlier, and he was a bit less stinky now after a few rain showers. The beast never seemed hostile or territorial- or hell, even hungry.

…

Was that house just- going to be empty, now? It felt sad, in a way he couldn’t place.

Spooky

He paced anxiously in the yard as he tried to make sense of it all. If this happened- if the fish lady was... dead... there was nothing he could do about it, and that upset him even more. For the first time, he ventured up to the windows and peeked inside in hopes that he was wrong, but the place was indeed dark and empty.

...This was awful. He'd never really gotten to know this person, but... To feed random creatures outside even if they weren't people, just because they could...

Man, he didn't trust people, as a general rule... but this one seemed different. And they were gone now.

He sat on the porch for a while, staring blankly at the snow. Finally he got up, went back to the box, scooped up the tattered shirt remains, and marched all the way back to the silver beast's burrow. While it might have been a dangerous idea to confront it... It looked like he was gonna have to start risking his life for food again anyway. And he wanted some fucking answers!

~*~

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