#narrative ecologies

[panicinthestudio]

They Didn't Make Dire Wolves, They Made Something…Else, April 8, 2025

TL;DW: 1. Dire wolves are probably not that closely related to gray wolves, though Colossal says that's not true, they haven't produced anything to back that up. 2. Dire wolf-like animals will never be ecologically important to our current world because they ecosystems they existed inside of do not exist anymore. 3. Collossal's goal isn't de-extinction, is creating new species to fill in niches left behind by extinct species, which is an idea worthy of debate! But it's not what you think of when you hear "de-extinction." 4. There's lots of really cool science here, which does include maybe kinda creating the frist large mammalian synthetic species.

Fixing my Direwolf Mistake, April 11, 2025

This has been an interesting journey...there is obviously something to like about de-extinction hype, which is that we're talking about the biodiversity crisis, which is absolutely great, because usually we do not! Is lying about making direwolves worth that? I dunno, maybe! Probably even!!

[shelter-wood]

wheres that post about stories being the authors thinly veiled special interest bc its all i can think of as i talk about the forest while my protag is just standing there like

[yakulmybestfriend]

if I have to consume one more piece of media today about the impending downfall of earth due to overpopulation/climate change/etc I think I may just have to drink windex til I keel over

[notwiselybuttoowell]

I feel like cliffs have so much to offer

[bsahely]

FROM CRISIS TO COHERENCE: A Regenerative Reframing of the MAHA Assessment Through the Lenses of Coherence Theory, TATi Grammar, and Life-Value Onto-Axiology | ChatGPT4o

[Download Full Document (PDF)] The Make Our Children Healthy Again (MAHA) Assessment presents a stark and urgent diagnosis: America’s children are the sickest generation in modern history, burdened by rising rates of obesity, diabetes, allergies, neurodevelopmental disorders, and psychosocial distress. Four primary drivers are identified — ultra-processed foods, environmental toxins, digital…

[russellmoreton]

Pathway : Layered Landscape by Russell Moreton Via Flickr: "Thus we cover the universe with drawings we have lived. These need only to be tonalized on the mode of our inner space." Gaston Bachelard. The Poetics of Space.

[snekdood]

the worst thing about that poly relationship i was vaguing about- is how willing i was to let any and all romance fall to the side for their little romance plot to be fullfilled and very "story book" or whatever, was literally trying to push him to be more romantic with the meta, I was already falling out of love with the dude involved anyways bc he just was not capable of being what I needed, I was perfectly content JUST being friends but nah. even thats too much of a threat. theres still too much of a possibility of him conceivably leaving that person for me or some shit I guess, even though I DONT FUCKING WANT HIM LIKE THAT ANYMORE.

[dadaonice]

Royal Chambers by Wang & Söderström. 2023

[legendary-ai-stories]

"Post-Apocalyptic Halloween: The Ruined Earth Reveals Its Darkest Mask"

“In a sinister and shocking revelation of the events of the past 24 hours, the earth has revealed its darkest mask as it recalls scenes from the hit video game ‘Nier: Automata.’ Our cities, once roaring with life, now lie in ruin as if they were the exception that had become the rule in this gothic Halloween scenario. The raindrops hitting the bare roofs of abandoned buildings echo like…

[epicdogymoment]

OHHHHHHH wait i realised what mrbeast is edited like. its literally just how reality tv is edited. everything is the same

[delicatelysublimeforester]

Wings of Wonder

Wings of Wonder: Celebrating World Migratory Bird Day 2024 As we navigate the critical juncture of climate change and biodiversity loss, the call to action resounds louder than ever. One essential step in this conservation journey is the creation of a biodiversity inventory, a collective effort to illuminate the richness of our urban wildlife and fortify measures for their…

[requinoesis]

After noticing patterns over the years, I created this list with 13 points to score the level of stereotypes about sharks present in a work. I believe that most of these stereotypes have their main origin in the film Jaws (1975).

With the scarcity of works that explore other creative approaches to sharks, beyond the “man-eating ” narrative, Jaws ended up consolidating itself as the greatest source of inspiration and creative reference for many productions to this day. This was called “The Jaws Effect”. 🩸🦈

I've noticed that certain patterns in the creative world repeat themselves to the point of being tedious, which bothers me. Not because they're bad, but because in many cases they're harmful. With these points, I hope to show sharks in a new light.

🩸1 - Great White Shark Popularized by the Jaws movie, the Great white shark has become the dominant archetype in the representation of sharks in fiction. Often, works choose to use this shark or a generic gray version of imprecise anatomy, with no defined species. However, there are over 400 species of shark, and very few are explored creatively.

🩸2 - Man-eater The persistent idea that sharks have humans as a natural part of their diet is one of the most widespread stereotypes. Although there are reports of incidents, most attacks are isolated and often by mistake. Any animal, including humans, could turn to unexpected sources of food in a situation of desperation or starvation.

🩸3 - Forced Behavior It's common to see sharks portrayed with distorted or exaggerated behaviors that don't match their nature just to cause tension, such as:

Hunting small fish, ignoring the fact that sharks avoid expending energy on low-energy prey.

Abandoning easy prey just to arbitrarily chase the protagonist.

Going crazy at the smell of blood.

Showing a wild and constant hunger.

Obsessively pursuing a single prey.

Making aggressive shark species known for being peaceful or timid.

Attacking and destroying objects, structures or vessels with disproportionate fury just to reach someone.

🩸4 - Monstrous appearance It's common to see sharks' appearance exaggerated to intensify visual fear, making them look like monsters rather than real animals:

A gaping mouth, with huge, crooked teeth that are constantly stained with blood.

Menacing, demonic red, black empty and soulless eyes.

Body covered in grotesque scars, exposed wounds and even weapons embedded in the skin.

A disproportionate figure, with pointed shapes, a swollen or deformed body.

Bizarre mutations that completely alter their anatomy.

Technological modifications to make them more weapon-like, emphasizing the idea of the "Killing Machine".

🩸5 - Shark de-characterization Especially in children's works, in order to be accepted by the public or the other characters in the plot, the shark is often forced to change its identity. It is transformed into a “domesticated” version, such as:

Becoming a vegetarian or a toothless shark, losing its ecological role as a predator.

Taking on exaggeratedly “funny” behavior, becoming a caricature.

Having its behavior and appearance altered to look more like a dolphin or other friendly shape, excluding striking features such as prominent fins, visible gills or a fusiform snout.

Choose to portray a specific species of shark because it seems more “friendly” to the public, such as the whale shark.

🩸6 - Limited Nature The representation of sharks in fiction is usually limited to sensationalist aspects, such as the power of their bite, the old phrase that they "smell a drop of blood in 2 million liters of water", or things like "killers from the womb".

However, sharks have some very interesting characteristics that are little explored creatively:

Acute hearing, capable of picking up sounds more than a kilometer away in the ocean.

Their electroreception, which allows them to perceive tiny electrical impulses emitted by living prey and even sense the electromagnetic field around them.

Possible link between their migrations and the lunar phases.

Incredible healing capacity and immune resistance.

Skin made up of denticles made of the same material as our teeth.

They constantly change their teeth.

Longevity and they never stop growing.

Many fish such as rémoras and pilot fish depend on and live alongside sharks.

Sensitive to pressure changes and can even predict hurricanes and tropical storms.

🩸7 - Red Presence Striking presence of red, either with the presence of blood or the color present in the design. This emphasis on red reinforces the shark's direct association with violence, danger and death, contributing to the construction of the “bloodthirsty monster” stereotype.

🩸8 - Dark Music It is common for sharks to be associated with tense, dark and threatening soundtracks whenever they appear on the scene. More often than not, I notice that when sharks are mentioned in song lyrics, it is to express some sort of comparison to some negative stereotype.

🩸9 - Threatening setting Scenarios with sharks are almost always represented in a gloomy, dark, desaturated way, empty of marine life. The environment is treated as a dangerous place by nature, shipwrecks, dark caves, areas full of garbage, explosive mines or the inhospitable depths of the sea

🩸10 - Masculinization The theme involving sharks has always been very masculine. Shark characters are rarely female, while the human characters who interact with these animals, scientists, hunters, divers or specialists, are almost always white men. Women and minorities almost never occupy central or specialized roles in these narratives.

🩸11 - Villainization Sharks are often portrayed as villains by default, carrying negative and caricatured stereotypes, for example:

Gangster or mobster

Aggressor or school bully

Criminal or loan shark

Brutish idiot or dumb henchman

Corrupt politician or authoritarian fascist figure

Indomitable monster or irrational beast

Recurring enemy, obstacle or final boss in video games

🩸12 - Objectification Sharks are often treated as mere resources or utilitarian objects in fiction. They are represented as trophies, rewards, collectibles or consumables, as if they existed only to be hunted, exhibited or eaten.

This objectification also appears in the constant presence of jaws decorating environments, teeth used as accessories, fins amputated as an ingredient, and in the display of the animal's body in a morbid way: corpses exposed, dead body hung and displayed as a trophy in harbor, parts dissected or being devoured by other creatures.

🩸13 - Death As if it weren't enough to have become a symbol of death incarnate, even in animations aimed at children, sharks almost always have the same fate: death. What's worse, their death is usually celebrated as a relief or a victory.

Impaled, butchered, set on fire, crushed, blown up, fished out or killed by another "heroic" creature, tossed about by hurricanes… In many cases, these scenes are treated with humor or graphic exaggeration, turning the destruction of the shark into a spectacle.

---

I was unsure about publishing this list as it is just personal observations from someone who loves sharks. A few people asked me for this list and said it would be worth posting, don't take it too seriously.

These stereotypes are not necessarily bad or invalid, after all, we are talking about works of fantasy and fiction. However, they could be resignified through new creative ideas that arouse feelings other than fear and terror.

Although many people's passion for sharks arose precisely from movies like Jaws and the stereotypes it popularized, it's important to remember that these same elements have been repeated almost unchanged for decades. This exhaustive repetition was largely because it was profitable, turning sharks into yet another victim of entertainment capitalism. Over time, this type of representation ended up distancing ordinary people from the reality of these animals, reinforcing fear rather than curiosity. Nowadays things are a little better, but not better enough.

The reality of sharks goes far beyond that. They are mysterious and fascinating animals, older than the first trees or dinosaurs. They have survived five mass extinctions, incredibly adapted from the abyssal depths to mangroves and freshwater rivers. They have unique senses and behaviors that are still shrouded in mystery, as well as a biology so singular that it inspires advances in science and technology. For many ancient cultures, sharks are revered as true gods of ocean balance.

I dare say that by looking after the health of the seas for millions of years, sharks made it possible for our own species to emerge from the depths of the primordial ocean. They are, in a way, guardians of our cradle of origin. And so we owe them a great deal of respect and preserve them at all costs.

To date, no creative work has managed to surpass “Jaws”. Who will be creative enough to create a new work and transform the collective imaginary of sharks from fear to fascination? 🦈✨

[headspace-hotel]

its possible to grow in your knowledge in a way that is very destructive to what you thought you knew as a writer.

plant blindness is very useful for writers because it allows them to give their settings placelessness. write stories that "could be set anywhere." I used to imagine placeless places. post-apocalyptic wastelands without trees, towns amidst long roads and cornfields.

Now I know that along the paths or in the cracks in the concrete, the weeds are growing. And a weed is an ecosystem, and an ecosystem is a Somewhere, a network of tethers to a land that is rooted in deep time. Plants are a clarification of where and when we are, and what happened, and what people did to the land, and how long ago that was, and whether they are still doing it. Everywhere is land, everywhere has ecology and geology. The omission of the plants in any setting feels like intrusive clouds of amnesia or jarring black bars censoring part of the reality.

I am conscious of the presence of land in my stories. I am conscious that the land is the ultimate progenitor of the characters, plot, and setting. I am aware that there are plants, which make the setting into a Place with a history and ongoing present.

the way I used to write is irretrievable. places are not just scenery, they are narratives of history, destruction, renewal, energy flow and cultural values. The plants are a driving force with their own agency. I can't not write about the plants!

[elodieunderglass]

Horses are often referred to as prey animals, but what are their natural predators?

Any large grassland predator in the biome, including humans! This is an interesting question, though, because it takes in the axes of time and space. "Wild" horses, the ancestor of domestic horses, are currently extremely rare. The only existing ones in a wild state are Przewalski's horses, also called the Takhi or Mongolian Wild Horses, which live on the Mongolian steppe. Their "natural predators" in that environment would include wolves and snow leopards (which are themselves endangered). However, it isn't an entirely natural setup; they were reintroduced to their native habitat after becoming essentially extinct, through an incredibly complex and fascinating recovery project. In the spacetime pocket in which Earth has wild horses, that's the current state of play: wild horses live in Mongolia and are occasionally eaten by wolves, but are being preserved fiercely for the benefit of humanity.

Meanwhile, we do have things like Dartmoor ponies in England and mustangs in North America and Brumbies in Australia. Dartmoor ponies aren't eaten by anything and are considered feral in the sense that they're domestic animals that live wild, but more or less on purpose, with the moor being treated as a common for keeping ponies on, and the nominal owners can just grab one if they want one at any time. Mustangs are accidental colonists of the American West. They are preyed on by wolves, cougars, and other local large predators, but are not wild. they are feral because they're all descendants of European horses and honestly, if we aren't being sentimental about it, they're invasive.

North America has not had a native population of horses since humans arrived on the continent. The facts are often associated. It is commonly held that humans, upon arriving in America, ate the native horses all up. The typical line goes that "when the first humans populated North America, they were so greedy and invasive that they overhunted most of the local large mammals to extinction". but I personally - and in an unhinged I'm-allowed-to-randomly-hold-ONE-fringe-belief-that-I-Made-up-Myself way - don't like that narrative, and there might be evidence in oral myths indicating that First Nations people at least remembered contact with horses prior to European colonisation. At any rate, there aren't wild horses on that side of the planet any more. The mustang - the most classic "wild horse" in imagination - is not wild, but is currently preyed on by everything that WOULD have eaten the OG native horses of America, minus the large predators that have gone extinct since then (sabre-toothed tigers). Whether mustangs are a nice reintroduction that adds a missing element of Horf to the landscape, or agents of ecological devastation, is kind of up in the air. But they are regularly and routinely preyed upon by the same "natural predators" as the wild cousins would have been, albeit in lower numbers. Take-home message: to visualise how interactions of wild horses with predators and the environment would have looked, mustangs are a very good model.

Going back to the "time" element, human interaction has really decreased a lot of the "natural predators" of horses; they were once preyed on by a larger variety, diversity, and number of animals. In the pocket of spacetime when wild horses were common and had a large range, there also used to be a lot more things like hyenas in Europe and Asia. Here's a diagram showing the "prey animals" and "predators" of Pleistocene Europe. Horses are on the bottom shelf on the far right, at a lower opacity, to show they're "prey animals". You can see that there was a greater diversity of predator types, while today there are usually just Your Local Wolf and Your Local Big Cat.

But this diagram puts "people" as "prey animals" - and humans are traditionally The Natural Predators of horses. Looking at that diagram, you can see that the common, smallish-but-not-too-small herd animal, whose defenses are Having Friends and Being Fast, is a delicious-looking proposition. The spectacular depictions of cave horses in Lascaux are showing our kin, but they're also showing our food.

There is a very important Middle Pleistocene site at a lake in Germany called Schöningen 13II-4, with hominin remains dating back to 300,000 years ago (!!!!!) and it's called the Spear Horizon (for the incredibly well-preserved evidence of spears) but a common nickname is the Horse Butchery Site. One of the most ancient preservations of hominin behaviour, culture, skill, tool-making - their/our priorities, their/our methodology, their/our view of the world - is a narrative of eating horse meat. And the hominins at the Horse Butchery Site did it in a way that seems quite rapacious. Entire family groups of horses, coming to the lake to drink, would be butchered at once: Persistent predators: Zooarchaeological evidence for specialized horse hunting at Schöningen 13II-4 - ScienceDirect It seems like the hominins were killing a lot of horses and not using a lot of the meat, because they wanted fat, and horses don't have much of that.

At any rate, human-shaped people and horse-shaped horses have a very, VERY long history of us eating them. WE are their natural predators. And it makes sense. Humans and Equines are all social animals of relatively small sizes and have interacted with each other for an extremely long time. We have observed them, we know them, we grew up together. For quite a lot of that history, we had a simple relationship; we ate them. Now we much prefer to ride them.

Horses have not entirely forgotten this, but appear to have largely forgiven it.

[bsahely]

Lines of Regenerative Intelligence: A Coherence-Based Framework for Human Development and Evolution | ChatGPT4o

[Download Full Document (PDF)] As humanity faces a global meta-crisis of meaning, health, ecological collapse, and institutional breakdown, a new model of development is needed — one that aligns the flourishing of individuals, cultures, and the planet through a common grammar of coherence. This white paper introduces a coherence-centered reframing of developmental intelligence, drawing together…

[russellmoreton]

Speculative Narratives 1 by Russell Moreton