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My one problem with "Humanity Fuck Yea" and "Humans are Space Orcs" is that in order to make humans the most specialest guys in the known universe all other aliens are either dumbed down or have literally zero culture/personality.

Like... what do you mean not a single species/culture other than humans tried cooking and clothing?? The things that let humans develop sapience in the first place (cooking) and made it possible for them to spread to every corner of our planet (clothing). Am I supposed to believe that all other planets have no different climate zones? Or that noone thought to season their food, ever?

Like... have aliens be weirded out by actual weird stuff that would realistically vary wildly between species instead of stuff that is almost fundamental if you want me to believe the other aliens to actually have some sort of cultural identity. Or even better: Have humans be weirded out by some cultural norms of the aliens!

Basically: Please flesh out your aliens beyond "is basically a computer programm designed to do every biological function as efficiently as possible"

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How The Nocturnal Bottleneck and Nipples Make Us Human

Almost every post here considers what humans do have, really. It’s a little tiring; realistically every world has its harsh environments and vicious species and a sophont to match. We probably wouldn’t be unique for our adaptability or our persistence or even adrenaline

But our evolution is fucked up as hell, to put it lightly.

Mammals went through what’s been dubbed the nocturnal bottleneck essentially since the start of the mesozoic right up until the Cretaceous ended the archosaur’s exclusive hold over the daylight. We lost a lot of things from every mammal spending most of its time in either a cramped, suffocating burrow or scrounging around in the faint hours of nighttime. Our blood cells lost their nuclei to hold more oxygen while we spent time deep underground, we lost protections against ultraviolet rays in our skin and eyes, we can’t even repair our own DNA using the light of the sun. Most aliens probably wouldn’t have such traits unless their evolution followed a very similar path to ours. They’d be able to see ultraviolet and wouldn’t have to worry about sunburn and all the wonderful privileges essentially all fish, birds, amphibians, and reptiles enjoy as we speak. 

There’s also what we gained from spending so much time in the dark.

Brown fat is only found in mammals, it’s a special type of fat which bear cells with several oil droplets and are utterly jammed with mitochondria. This lets it make heat, a lot of it, fast. We don’t even need to shiver to induce this heat generation from brown adipose tissue - factor in our downright hyperactive mitochondria, and we can warm up quickly. Sure, it doesn’t have too much use in adult humans, but it keeps our infants warm and still provides a little boost the whole run we have in this universe.

Unless aliens also went through a time where their small ancestors had to face cold nights, they’d have to produce heat the old fashioned way when chilled. Aliens might have to shiver the whole time they’re in a cold room while the human watches in confusion, quite literally unshaken, and wonders if the room is a lot colder than the thermostat set to 60 says. The aliens stare at their companion in confusion, it’s just a normal temperature to shiver at after all, how is the human sitting so still?

Our small ancestors spending all their time out foraging at night is also why we have such a good sense of touch, smell, and hearing. They were more important senses than vision (we’re lucky to have even redeveloped basic color vision, frankly) at the time and place and simply ended up continuing to serve us well. Birds and reptiles rarely have acute senses of smell and the latter especially are lucky to have acute hearing, and birds rarely have impeccable hearing themselves either. Our skin is free of scales and honed to sensitivity, and our external ears and complicated ear bones provide an immense range of hearing (from 20 all the way to 17,000 hertz!).

Aliens might not be able to pin down the chirp of a cricket or the light click of a lock being picked. The human might be the only one on board a ship that can pick out the finer sounds of the engine’s constant thrum and know the critical difference between when everything is fine and when something is wrong. The human could probably pick out the sounds of an approaching enemy’s careless footsteps - they’re only as light enough for *them* to stop hearing them, after all - and be the one to see the horrified expression (well, more on that later) on their face when we get the drop on them in spite of their perceived stealth. 

But perhaps the most versatile, convoluted, amazing, and utterly unique trait we have is right on your face this instant. Lips.

Lips in most animals are a simple seal to hold in the mouth’s moisture and protect the teeth, even if they’re supple they’re NEVER muscular except in mammals, and we have only one thing to thank for it; milk and nipples. Lips evolved exclusively to allow babies to suckle, it required a vacuum to be created in the mouth, and with no other animal having anything like a nipple it never happened in other animals. Many animals make milk, to be frank, but no other animal has nipples.

Your cheeks and lips are a marvel among tetrapods, no other animal can suck like mammals can. Aliens wouldn’t have straws or even be able to sip from the edge of a glass, they’d have to have a proboscis or simply tilt the whole thing back. Aliens likely won’t have woodwind instruments or balloons you can blow into. We take so much about our lips for granted. Hell, our muscular faces are vital for expressions, we’re probably absolute facial contortionists among a cast of creatures with mandibles and beaks and expressionless scaly maws. Aliens might find us ridiculously easy to read, if anything, compared to their own kind (all the better to deceive them) - or perhaps they’d find us hard to decipher anyways, with our lack of color-changing skin or erectable crests of bright feathers. Baring teeth might not be seen as a sign of aggression in most of the universe, smiling would be all too distinctly human. 

Perhaps with how infectious we are sometimes, that’s what we’d contribute to the universe; others might have to make do with opening their mouths just enough to show their teeth or splaying their innumerable mouthparts with just the right curve, but perhaps we’d teach the galaxy to smile, one ally at a time. 

Wouldn’t that be amazing?

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Animatic commission for @agrove101

The concept was wonderful as are you my friend!

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Excuse me, Lieutenant Kitsuragi, but what the fuck

or on ko-fi:

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Oops made more

And I'm still french, so it's still a lot of french music sorry not sorry

Album names and side by side comparison below vvv

MEGA BBL (Theodora) - Nautolan

(Also !!! can't recommend her music video for "FASHION DESIGNA" enough, it's insanely good- 1920s cinema with striking graphic elements and split screens and whimsical green screens- it came out like 3 days ago and I've not been able to think of anything else, I've been irrevocably changed djdjdj no one is doing it like her)

Tribal King (Di-meh, Legendes Industries) - Massiff and corellian hound

.Raw (Laylow) - Kaleesh

Lowlife Princess: Noir (Bibi) - Chiss

Bimbocore (Scene Queen) - Wookie

Problems (Bluejuice) - Trodatome and human

Extendo (Vladimir Cauchemar, SCH, Unkown T) - Human tie fighter pilot

ELOWI (Yamê) - Human x wing pilot

Alligator Bites Never Heal (Doechii) - Human and boga

Secret Dreams and Forbidden Fire (Bonnie Tyler) - Rodian

PS : some albums I love from beginning to end, some other I love *one* song then when I go to listen to the rest I'm struck by the realization it was an outlier and the rest is not so great- anyway "vitriol" is a great song duigbcgicd

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Okay, Kiki definitely is into whatever Namari is putting on the table, deffo lesbo.

But ! Senshi shown very much struggling with masculinity (to dwarven standards) and such, like what role he could have in the life of others and shit. And imo that's much more of a Queer experience, this feeling of inadequacy

Masterpost

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“i’m not the same as who i was before [x] thing happened to me” does it help to know that you would not have stayed that person regardless

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there's a p common attitude in fandom spaces (fandom in general, not a specific one) that's like "why care about canon, or the characters being ooc? we're here to play with the dolls any way we like" and as much as i obviously am a person who thinks about canon a lot in theory i'm into that. in practice though when popular fanon takes things in a wildly different direction from canon so often it's in the service of taking something that was originally canonically weird and interesting and making it blander. it's flattening a complex character into a broad archetype i've seen a million times before, it's taking two characters with a complicated canonical relationship and writing them in a way where you could find-and-replace the names with any other popular migratory slash fandom pairing and the fic would make as much if not more sense. if you're going to break away from canon at least do something interesting? don't make it less weird? i feel like i'm watching someone take a really beautiful expensive cut of wagyu steak and grind it into hamburger to cook it well done and cover it in ketchup

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are you lost, little lamb?

And a Mithrun without the bells and whistles!

[Image ID: The first photo is a digital illustration of the character Mithrun, from the anime Dungeon Meshi. He is painted from the shoulders up in muted greens and purples, with his white hair fanning out behind him in an arc, luminous. It looks almost like a court portrait. His left eye stares impassively at the viewer. Cracks spread across the whole image, like glass that has been shattered. The cracks originate over Mithrun's right eye, where a large chunk of glass is gone, and from behind the image a yellow goat's eye is staring out.

The second image is the same as the first, without the cracks or goat's eye covering the portrait. It is just Mithrun, looking at the viewer, a curled lock of white hair obscuring his right eye from view. End ID]

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More Ged

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fun behaviors to give dragons that aren't feline/canine based

cause as much as i love dragons purring and roaring i wish there was just more variety in how they would act

clacking their teeth together to show contentedness/happiness (budgies)

using tails as a defensive weapon in a whip like fashion (iguana)

twitching to express that they're not a threat to members of their species (hognose snake)

feeling calm when eyes are hooded/covered (birds of prey)

head bobbing as a threat display (anoles/bearded dragons)

flattening neck or sides to appear bigger (snakes/lizards)

mantling over food to protect it from hatchmates (birds of prey)

wiggling neck as a courting maneuver (budgies)

audibly grinding teeth as a warning (macaques)

maintained eye contact as a challenge (gorillas)

pounding wings against sides as a threat (gorillas)

slapping other dragons with their claws when their personal bubble is invaded (seals)

hoards used as a site to impress mates (birds of paradise)

snorting when undergoing heightened stress (horses)

making repeated loud noises with surroundings to establish territory (woodpeckers)

loud constant arguments with other dragons when roosting (bats)

building lairs that cause a domino effect of change in the land around them (beavers)

slapping their tails against the ground/water as a warning (beavers)

wiggling tail tip to attract prey (various animals)

wiggling tail tip as a warning (snakes)

plucking or scraping off scales as a sign of stress (parrots)

raising spines/frills as a response to danger and carrying on with their usual business as they believe they're protected (lionfish)

and im not saying canine and feline behaviors are wrong or bad to give a dragon (people wouldn't write dragons with those behaviors if they weren't fun in the first place!) but i feel for creatures that are mythological giant winged lizards that you can do more and get experimental with it. often the more unfamiliar behavior the more dragony the dragon feels

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A wraithknight and her sister

A moment of peace for sisters only united for war.

characters belong to @irreverentarchon Godbless u for adopting her🙏🙏🙏🙏

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Currently rereading Wizard of Earthsea

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My 2023 adaptation of a scene from the fourth Earthsea book, Tehanu, now with alt text!

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wow! your understanding of this character is so. . . Unique! just wondering by the way but when was the last time you directly interacted with the source media

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No way out

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ok i've been called a sex freak tranny too i get where you're coming from but like also please be more careful with extremely vague posts about Problematic Kinks

no. people's openness about what two consenting adults can do in private has no bearing on how likely they are to be child abusers or close ranks about child abusers & thinking there is some correlation is a sign that your stance on sexual abuse is mediated more by disgust reaction and aesthetic associations than by structural analysis. there is a pretty hard and obvious line between not condemming consensual sex acts between adults and being a pedophile and thinking that it's some sort of spectrum or slippery slope there imo speaks poorly to your conceptualization of why SA is a bad thing.

people love to say that X or Y kink Normalizes Abuse, but, like, actually think about communities where sexual abuse is 'normalized' in society. is the problem with the catholic church that it's too pro-kink? is the problem with US professional gymnastics that it's too pro-kink? is the problem with the amish that they're too pro-kink? was the problem with the british entertainment industry in the 1970s that it was too pro-kink? is the problem with the prison system that it's too pro-kink? &c. &c. &c.

sexual abuse doesn't happen because people are degenerate perverts and everyone is too accepting of that, sexual abuse happens because society is full of institutions that give adults structural power over children and men structural power over women. giving credence to the former, even in the form of thinking you have to be "super careful" about perverts, is a straightforwardly reactionary position.