#but living as an animal for decades. centuries? depending on your timeline? and living with those animal instincts | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

script-a-world · 3 years

Note

hi, any advice on timeline and era etc stuff? I have dyscalculia so numbers and measurements are meaningless to me and it’s really difficult to figure out how much time should lapse (on a large scale; time periods, millennia, eras, etc, not stuff like in one persons lifespan) between eras and events, especially in regards to political n social n technological etc changes

Feral: That depends. There isn’t one answer. You’re asking for longer time periods than a generation or a lifetime, but for scale, take what’s happening now. How many calamities, major political events, social trends, and changes in technology (and how we interact with it) have happened in the year 2020? Since the year 2016? Since 2008? Since 2001? How are they grouped together or spaced apart? And these are all working on each other. In the USA where I live, the 9/11 attacks absolutely have a direct causal effect with the politics that led to the 2016 election (actually before that a Supreme Court decision in the 2000 election also had an impact on that result), and the results of the 2016 election impacted how COVID has been handled this year. That’s 20 years, so when we’re looking at longer timeframes, we scale up. We see gaps and groupings and there just isn’t a specific “oh every decade/score/century, these types of events happen.”

To quote a particularly relevant introduction on Wikipedia:

This results in descriptive abstractions that provide convenient terms for periods of time with relatively stable characteristics. However, determining the precise beginning and ending to any ‘period’ is often arbitrary, since it has changed over time over the course of history.

To the extent that history is continuous and not generalized, all systems of periodization are more or less arbitrary. Yet without named periods, however clumsy or imprecise, past time would be nothing more than scattered events without a framework to help us understand them.

Eras, of the non-geological or -cosmological sort, or time periods are culturally determined, completely variable in length, and often overlap. For example, the beginning of the Victorian Era, 64 years, (defined by Victoria’s rule of England) of the Anglo-influenced world overlapped with the Antebellum Era, 78 years, (defined by political and social tensions in the lead up to the American Civil War) of the United States, which is also part of the Anglo-influenced world, and then following the end of the Antebellum Era, was the American Civil War, 4 years, and then the Reconstruction Era, 14 years (the first 2 of which are within the Civil War), which are both fully contained within the Victorian Era. Typically, when you are trying to think about eras, think about political rulership, wars, and large scale trends like artistic styles. It may also be helpful to familiarize yourself with the Three-Age System, which can be applied individually on cultures, rather describing trends for the whole world.

What it really comes down to when we think of eras and time periods is almost like a type of pareidolia. People see groupings of like things happening and put this grouping into a bubble of time, which kinda doesn’t actually exist in objective reality and is more or less a group hallucination on a massive scale. It calls to mind what Zeno’s arrow might have actually been trying to describe - not to say that this paradox is infallible, but it’s an interesting thought exercise, especially once you get into the quantum Zeno effect.

Now that I have fully diverged from the question at hand, we’ll get back to it. Let’s look at one technology type and how much time elapses between developments as well as some tie-in technological, social, and political forces that may be acting on the developments or that the developments might be acting on. I’ll also note how this technology traverses the eras of history as I find that looking at one discrete set over time is easier than just trying to look at the big picture. Let’s look at the history of printing.

(With hopes that it will be easier for you to conceptualize, I will use simplified (aka rounded up/down) timeframes written numerically rather than spelled out or via terms like decade or century so at the very least you can compare length of numbers. I’m also going to link as many Wikipedia articles as I can - I like Wikipedia for this because of its incredible cross-indexing and how it strings relevant articles together into a series, often chronologically. If the numbers are still challenging for you, I will summarize without at the end.)

5,520 years ago, the very first form of printing we know about is done with cylinders rolled over wet clay in Sumer in 3500 BCE, the beginning of the Early Bronze Age.

3,700 years later, woodblock printing is developed in China somewhere around 200 CE/AD, just after the end of the Pax Romana in Europe.

700 years later, the next development of printing is movable type, which is developed in China in 1040. 26 years later, on the other side of the world, in 1066 is the Battle of Hastings and the establishment of the Norman Era of rulership in England, in another 20 years, in 1086, the Domesday Book is hand written in 2 volumes: 1 is 764 8”x15” pages, the other 900 8”x11” pages.

400 years later gives us the Gutenburg printing press that is developed in Germany (at the time in the Holy Roman Empire) in 1440. This is during the Renaissance Era; it’s also the Era of Humanism, and often called the Early Modern Period. Martin Luther will write the 95 Theses less than 80 years later and start the Protestant Reformation, largely thanks to the ability for the theses to be easily copied by the printing press and spread quickly.

75 years later we have etching in 1515. 90 years later, the first weekly “true” newspaper, the Relation, begins printing in 1604.

130 years later we have mezzotint in 1642, which is the start of the First English Civil War, which will last for 4 years. Depending on your preference, the Age of Enlightenment either began 5 years before or 40 years later (unless you’re French).

130 years later we have aquatint in 1772. That is right at the beginning of the American Revolution: 2 years after the Boston Massacre; 1 year before the Boston Tea Party; 2 years before the Intolerable Acts and the First Continental Congress; 3 years before Patrick Henry’s “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” Speech (which is printed and shared across the colonies), Paul Revere’s Ride, and the Battle of Lexington & Concord; and finally 4 years before Thomas Paine’s Common Sense is published, the signing of the Declaration of Independence (which is printed and shared across the colonies), Nathan Hale’s execution for treason against the Crown, and Washington’s Crossing of the Delaware.

25 years later lithography is developed in 1796; the year prior Napoleon overthrows le Directoire.

40 years later we have chromolithography in 1837, the year Victoria ascends and the first electric/battery powered locomotive is invented.

5 years later is the rotary press in 1843. The First Industrial Revolution is over.

15 years later is the hectograph in 1860. 1 year later, the American Civil War begins.

15 years later is offset printing in 1875. 1 year before, the first commercial typewriter becomes available. 1 year later is Bell and Watson’s first phone call in 1876.

10 years later is hotmetal typing in 1884.

1 year later is the mimeograph in 1885. 2 years later is Black Monday. 5-10 years later the radio is invented.

20 years later is the photostat and rectigraph in 1907.

4 years later is screen printing in 1911. 3 years later WWI begins in 1914.

10 years later is the spirit duplicator in 1923. The Roaring Twenties.

2 years later is dot matrix printing in 1925. 4 years later is the Great Crash.

10 years later is xerography in 1938, the same year as the first digital computer. 1 year later WWII begins in 1939.

2 years later is spark printing in 1940. 1 year later is the Attack on Pearl Harbor.

9 years later is phototypesetting in 1949. The USSR detonates their first atomic bomb.

1 year later is inkjet printing in 1950. Truman orders the development of the hydrogen bomb. Apartheid becomes law in South Africa.

7 years later is dye-sublimation in 1957. 6 years later, Martin Luther King, Jr. gives his “I Have a Dream” Speech.

12 years later is laser printing in 1969, the summer of which is known for very Very.

3 years later is thermal printing in 1972. The break-in at the Watergate Office Building is this same year and 2 years later Nixon resigns.

14 years later is 3D printing in 1986, the year Pixar Animation is founded and the year after the beginning of the Iran-Contra Affair.

1 year later is solid ink printing in 1987. 2 years later is the invention of the World Wide Web, and the internet as we know it.

4 years later is digital printing in 1991, the same year the USSR dissolved. 2 years before, the Berlin Wall fell.

There have been no significant developments in the history of printing since 1991.

So, let’s look at some averages to help us consume this data. Printing has a history of 5,520 years. It took 3,700 years for another development to occur, and then another 700 years after that - in other words, in the first 4,400 years of printing, there were 3 developments, equalling to an average of 1 every 1,470 years. In the 400 years between 1440 and 1843, there were 7 developments (average of 1 every 57 years). In the next 100 years between 1860 and 1957, there were 14 developments (average of 1 every 7 years but with 1 year having 2 developments simultaneously). In the next 22 years between 1969 and 1991, there were 5 developments (average of 1 every 4 years).

While the general trend is that the more a technology develops, the faster it develops, a trend is not the whole picture. Consider: in the 90 years of 1796-1885, there were 6 developments, making the average 1 every 15 years. In the 85 years of 1907-1991, there were 15 developments, making the average 1 every 6 years. There has not been a development in the past 30 years! There hasn’t been this large of a gap since 1837, 180 years ago.

In general, without numbers, what I think we can see here is that sometimes a certain development, like the printing press, can usher in a new era, and sometimes reactions to what else is happening in the world can pressure someone into developing something new, but often times, most times, when you look at just one thing under microscope over time, why that thing is produced in this era but not that era has nothing to do with the eras in question. When we create time periods, we’re generally doing it after the fact. No one living under the rule of the Roman Empire in 100 CE was thinking to themselves, “ah yes, the Pax Romana, when we have peace for 200 years!”

So applying all of this to worldbuilding, I see two methods that you can use together, to create a timeline that makes sense and is useful to your storytelling.

Method the first, arbitrarily create time bubbles of various lengths - I recommend the use of index cards for this. Index card A is 7 years; card B is 150 years; card C is 47 years and so on. Then take big ideas and put those onto your cards; use inspiration from real history. “I want the War of the Roses but condensed into 7 years.” “A Mongolian Empire type expansion happens over 150 years.” “There’s a 47 year Renaissance of fascination with Ancient History.” Then take those cards, lay them out into roughly the order in which you want them to occur, maybe overlap them a little, especially if they are happening in different parts of your world. Remember that time is not actually linear and things do not happen in a linear, narrative manner in the real world, so there can be wild leaps; there can be regressions; and you don’t have to follow real world history here - though you may want to the first time as a helpful exercise. It’s also very unlikely that you will ever have to know exactly how many years are between the eras or what the interstitial eras are.

Method the second, list all the major historical events, inventions, etc that you want/need to have happened. Start with what directly impacts your main characters and plot. “MC’s great-grandfather is humiliatingly defeated in battle, casting a pall of embarrassment across the generations following and ultimately putting the MC in the position that she starts in.” “The first great wizard codifies the 10 Laws of the Important Magical Order that the MC is trying to earn her place in.” Put these in an order that makes sense to you, keeping in mind that it’s not going to be a perfect progression. Again, you don’t need to know how many years there are between each event, but if great-grandpa was the last in a very long line of family members allowed to be in the Important Magical Order, then that IMO had to be founded first, and there would probably be some events between these two.

Then, when you have your two timelines, one of era/time periods and one of events, graft them together. You may have to shift some things to make it work, but consider the “feeling” or theme of the eras and what events make sense in relation to those feelings. Additionally would this event be more suited to happening when the era is new and is finding itself or when the era is solidly on course or is it an event that would completely shatter the illusion of the era and usher in a new one? Does it make sense for your great wizard to be codifying her laws in the expansion of an empire, or during a period of relative peace and prosperity in an established empire, or before empires were a thing in this world and few traveled far from home?

Tex: I’ve found that historically important events are caused for roughly two reasons - one, an invention that others capitalize on for an exponential growth into other inventions/social uses, and two, someone got sick of someone else’s crap and did something about it. Natural disasters will happen with enough frequency to be noted (see: the Little Ice Age, the Black Death, and the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa), although there’s little prediction for them because of the lack of observable build up in activity.

To pull from Feral’s timeline of examples, writing is popularly attributed to being invented in Sumer, 5,520 years ago - it’s our oldest found example, at any rate, though I’ve learned to never say never on archaeological discoveries.

What prompted this invention? Things rarely occur out of the blue, and rarely without interaction from other domains - where could writing have come from? Maybe art? What about from the creation of a tool, a reuse of certain skill sets? Something else we haven’t thought of yet?

So that’s one half of the question. But what about the other half - what did people around the inventor (multiple inventors?) think of this new thing? Deliberately associating a particular sound with a particular object - even a 2D object like pressing shapes into a piece of clay - and then standardizing it, is no mean feat. How did this agreement even happen? Were there arguments about how to do these graphemes, how best to shape them? What about which phoneme to each?

I doubt Sumerian cuneiform was created in a day, and likewise I doubt that language popped into existence on a whim. To keep pulling from this example, language composition has a strong effect on how we interact with our environment (University of Missouri-St Louis Libraries), but it conversely is also deeply affected by the environment its users create (Nature).

Because of this, I think it’s easier to work from a different angle - figure out what your major events are, and what eras you’re covering. If these major events also define an era, that’s even better! Working out how long everything each thing takes is ultimately a bunch of minor details, so it’s up to you how much your plot actively needs them, rather than decoration to your story meant to amuse you more than your audience.

#pylons #time #eras #timelines #Anonymous

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laurelnose · 3 years

Note

Very New to your blog and the posts are probably way old but I saw you do Witcher Biology (??) rants sometimes and Id love to hear your take, if you have one, on what monsters (namely "naturally occurring" ones like draconids and insectoids) contribute to the ecosystem if anything and whether or not they should be hunted into extinction. I was discussing it w/ a friend last night after dealing with Iocaste, the last silver basilisk, and now its smthn I'm Invested in

re monster ecosystems: I just figure theyve probably found a niche in the world by now and can eat anything smaller incl. humans but because theyve got no natural predators aside from eachother and arent hunted by anything but witchers , monsters are just breeding and eating and wldnt that damage the land? or have they made their own like, circle of life or whatever ? Ive little knowledge on the subject as a whole but the whole thing intrigues me

hi & extremely belated welcome, anon! my apologies for the length of time you’ve been waiting for this answer; I had to think carefully about how I wanted to respond to this ask, because: there’s a lot going on here. also, because I am a disaster, I ended up posting it to ao3 first while I was avoiding tumblr for a spell and then completely forgot to come back. oops. i’m sorry!! This one’s about 5000 words long, which is a lot for tumblr, so reading on AO3 may be preferable.

The two main thrusts of your first ask (how do monsters interact with the ecosystem and should they be eradicated from the Continent) are questions of invasion ecology, the study of non-native/invasive species and their effects on the environment. Monsters, having arrived on the Continent about 1200 years ago during the Conjunction of Spheres from entirely alien dimensions, are indeed technically non-native species!

However, invasion ecology is…somewhat controversial, to say the least—there are a lot of invasive species, who have a lot of different & complex impacts, and a lot of different ideas about what we might do about any of this, and it’s basically all arguing all the time, so I wasn’t really sure how I wanted to approach the topic. Not to mention that for reasons I couldn’t initially put my finger on, it seemed wrong to apply theories of invasion ecology to the Witcher monsters. We’ll get into it! There are also a couple of common misconceptions/oversimplifications of how ecology works in your second ask which I want to unpack. Hopefully I pulled this together into something that makes sense, and feel free to ask me for clarification!

Some important background facts:

Species have always been moving to and “invading” new places on their own; humans and globalization have accelerated this process into a Big Problem, as the sheer number of invasive species being introduced all over the globe strains ecosystems already under pressure, but “native ranges” are always shifting, sometimes more dramatically than you might expect. If you go far enough back in time, all species are “non-native”.

Because of this, the very definition of “invasive species” is hotly contested. This is why you’ll hear dozens of terms like introduced species, injurious species, naturalized species, non-native species, etc.; these all have slightly different connotations, but all refer to a species that did not originate in a particular location.

An introduced species is usually classified as “invasive” as opposed to “non-native” or “naturalized” if its presence significantly alters the ecosystem it invades; some people define this more narrowly as a species that causes harm to an ecosystem. “Harm” can take a lot of different forms, as every non-native species interacts differently with the ecosystem they were introduced to.

Aside from various potential impacts to human economic activity, most forms of ecological harm by introduced species involve the decline of native species, by a variety of mechanisms; invaders might eat natives, outcompete them for food, interbreed with them, carry novel pathogens, etc. Invasive species are primarily a threat to biodiversity.

Now, here’s my Hot Take:

The Conjunction of Spheres is analogous to real-life ecological cataclysms such as the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, and thus monsters are not invasive species.

The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event saw the extinction of 75% of all species on Earth after the Chicxulub asteroid hit, including the non-avian dinosaurs. The Earth has had several disasters like this, of varying severity—the Great Oxidation Event killed almost literally everything on Earth except for the cyanobacteria who caused it. These cataclysmic extinction events completely upended existing ecosystems, altering habitats beyond recognition and leaving swathes of niches emptied of life that the survivors could evolve to exploit.

The most recent Conjunction of Spheres on the Continent is supposed to have thrown everyone living on the planet at the time into chaos and darkness; it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the interpenetration of multiple spheres caused mass extinction of species living in the pre-Conjunction environment, similar to Chicxulub or the GOE!

But Socks, you might say, evolution works on a massive timescale! It took millions of years to fill the niches left open by Chicxulub, but it’s only been 1200 years since the Conjunction of Spheres! And you are absolutely right*, but the Conjunction of Spheres canonically came pre-loaded with new species. We actually have no proof that any of the animals we see originated on the Continent: if humans are a post-Conjunction phenomenon, why not also dogs? Why not bears? Who’s to say any of those were actually there before-hand? (The elves, I guess, but as they have not, actually, said so, there’s no proof!!)

* FTR, 1200 years is a shockingly short period of time to go from cataclysm that plunged the world into darkness and chaos to functioning medieval-era society considering how long it actually took humanity to build 13 century Europe (horses had been domesticated for at least 3000 years by that time), even if we’re not assuming that most of the ecosystem was destroyed, so, my timeline concerns here are minimal, lmfao. TIMELINE WHAT TIMELINE.

…and actually now that I think about it the three options for the origin of dogs are a) elves or dwarves domesticated them, b) humans brought dogs with them during the Conjunction, or c) dogs have existed for less than 1200 years, and I refuse to accept that dogs are practically a new invention in the witcherverse, wtf.

Anyways: we really have no idea which species are truly “native” to the Continent, or what the physical environment was like prior to the Conjunction. While monsters are not native to the Continent, monsters are also not invasive—there cannot be decline of pre-Conjunction biodiversity or harm to the pre-Conjunction ecosystem because there is no pre-Conjunction ecosystem anymore.

should monsters be hunted to extinction?

So, the thing is, I think we should try to eradicate invasive species from non-native ranges if we can; the biggest problem with that is feasibility, not morality. It’s much more difficult than one might think to eradicate an invasive species once it’s established, and we have to be very careful that the methods we choose don’t have other impacts, but invasive species are a huge threat to the biodiversity of Earth! If monsters are invasive species, then the answer is yes, they should be eradicated from the places they are not native to.

(Notably, on Earth this kind of eradication is not the same thing as extinction; it would be a local extinction, or extirpation, where the species is totally wiped out in the places it invaded but still exists in its native range. This does get way more complicated if the invasive is already extinct in its native range.)

However, I have just outlined a possibility that would make it plausible for monsters not to be invasive species. Let me also outline why I prefer this interpretation. Here is a book conversation between the sorcerer Dorregaray of Vole and Geralt:

“Our world is in equilibrium. The annihilation, the killing, of any creatures that inhabit this world upsets that equilibrium. And a lack of equilibrium brings closer extinction; extinction and the end of the world as we know it. … Every species has its own natural enemies, every one is the natural enemy of other species. That also includes humans. The extermination of the natural enemies of humans, which you dedicate yourself to, and which one can begin to observe, threatens the degeneration of the race.”

“Do you know what, sorcerer?” Geralt said, annoyed. “One day, take yourself to a mother whose child has been devoured by a basilisk, and tell her she ought to be glad, because thanks to that the human race has escaped degeneration. See what she says to you.”

–The Bounds of Reason, ch. 6

This is a, uh, incredibly unsubtle reference to a debate that has been ongoing for decades; Geralt’s stance here is one of the key arguments in opposition to wolf and bear reintroduction. What do we do about large predators that may pose a threat to humans? How do we balance preservation of the ecosystem with the safety of people who have to coexist with these predators?

I can’t fully agree with Geralt, because large predators are integral to the ecosystem, which I value for its own sake and because humans depend on healthy ecosystems. But I can’t fully agree with Dorregaray either, because Geralt is right: human life is valuable and worthy of protecting. This is an issue that India has been running into in the past ten years; as their tiger conservation efforts yield fruit, people become more likely to encounter tigers, and thus more likely to have a bad encounter with a tiger. It’s become a political struggle as rural people who have to actually live with the possibility of a tiger attack come into conflict with urban conservationists who just really want to preserve tigers (& in some incidents, some of those conservationists have been Western, which is a whole additional level of fuckery). The fact is, there isn’t a good answer to this yet! We certainly should not drive tigers, wolves, or any other large predator to extinction, but we also have to figure out a way to keep people safe. It’s something humanity still has to wrestle with.

Under this framing, which CDPR reinforced when they chose to have the Count di Salvaress defend Iocaste as an endangered species while making significant provisions to minimize the damage she could do to human life, there’s far too much baggage attached for me to say yes, monsters should be hunted into extinction. If you’re going to make monsters analogous to wolves, of course I do not think we should get rid of monsters entirely!

And frankly, Geralt doesn’t think so either, despite his hardline stance about monsters that eat humans. Sapkowski isn’t exactly an anti-conservationist; though Dorregaray is shown as out of touch in this passage, at another point the narrative sides with him calling Philippa out on exterminating a species of ermine for her fur collar, and it’s consistently put forth that Geralt’s best quality is that he doesn’t want to perform violence for the sake of it or destroy things without cause, and one of the representations of that is that he refuses to kill endangered species even at cost to himself:

“What should I say about you, who rejects a lucrative proposition every other day? You won’t kill hirikkas, because they’re an endangered species, or mecopterans, because they’re harmless, or night spirits, because they’re sweet, or dragons, because your code forbids it.”

–Eternal Flame, ch. 2

If monsters and other post-Conjunction creatures are invasive species, the nuance in this conversation is flattened, and Geralt’s refusal to kill mecopterans and hirikkas becomes a flaw rather than a virtue. Boring! I also think that one of the strongest themes in the witcherverse is the idea of all monsters being human ills; wraiths are manifestations of hatred, necrophages multiply because of human bloodshed, cursed ones are created out of malice, mages like Alzur and Idarran of Ulivo go out of their way to straight-up create monsters from scratch*, etc. Iocaste attacks humans and takes livestock because the traditional prey of the silver basilisk, roe deer, has been extirpated by human destruction of their habitat. The aeschna in Blood of Elves attacks humans because humans have altered and polluted the flow of the Pontar, hunting the aeschna’s previous food (seals) to extinction. The true monster is the actions of humans. Monsters that appeared unbidden from another dimension into a previously functional ecosystem to invade and cause problems undermines this theme; monsters that are integrated into the ecosystem and subject to the same social and ecological forces as other animals supports it.

* Idarran’s “idr” monsters from Season of Storms absolutely should be eradicated. Did the world not have enough man-eating arthropods, Idarran? Did you really have to mutate horrible new ones and release them in populated areas?? Mages are a scourge, lmfao

Additionally, one of the biggest reasons I felt like I couldn’t actually apply invasion ecology to monsters was that, whether you accept my Conjunction theory as sufficient biological justification for this or not, monsters just don’t really behave like invasive species. It’s hard to explain this because the setting is pretty brief about its ecological details, but aside from the fact that the narrative frames them like just part of the ecosystem of the world, there are never any details like “that type of flower doesn’t exist anymore because giant centipede tunneling destroyed the soil they needed to grow in.” When monsters are the aggressors, their victims are always humans, not the environment or other animals, and again monsters are themselves often treated as victims of human actions.

So I say monsters aren’t invasive species!

Which means that monsters are, regardless of their strange origins, now a part of the Continent’s ecosystem just as much as bears and wolves.

So let’s talk monster ecology.

what do monsters contribute to the ecosystem, if anything?

So, the phrase “contributing to the ecosystem” is actually super loaded, and I want to unpack that before we go anywhere else. Ecosystems are made up of organisms, and organisms interact with and impact ecosystems, but they don’t necessarily contribute to ecosystems! The implication of “contribute” is that it is possible for an organism to not contribute, and it follows from there that some organisms are not useful. This is functionally nonsensical, and also dangerous.

Conservationists talk a lot about “intrinsic value,” which in this context is the idea that we should want to keep species around just because their existence is valuable! Biodiversity is intrinsically valuable. This is important, firstly because I do believe that all species are intrinsically valuable, but also: ecosystems are so enormously complicated that we do not know the full extent of any species or individual organism’s impact, and we can’t predict what the consequences of removing any given species might be. Treating all species as intrinsically valuable is hedging our bets. All organisms affect the ecosystem, because it’s impossible for them not to, and while some species definitely have outsize impact, none of them are “not contributing,” and frankly even if some of them weren’t, it would be the absolute height of human arrogance for us to decide we could tell which ones were useless when we barely even know what most species eat. Mosquitoes are the base of the entire goddamn food chain, and you still get assholes claiming they don’t “contribute anything.” Of course, most people don’t really mean all of these implications when they use the phrase, but I don’t find it useful to talk about what species “contribute,” and avoid using that language if I can!

What I assume you mean by “what do monsters contribute” is a combination of “what roles might monsters play in the ecosystem” and “are monsters actively harmful to the ecosystem, i.e. do they cause loss of biodiversity?”

And this is difficult to answer! As I’ve said, I don’t think monsters are invasive species, and thus don’t harm the ecosystem, though we know that monsters can be harmful to humans. However, when it comes to the role they do play in the ecosystem, there isn’t enough in canon for me to do more than wildly speculate! Also, there are so so many of them, and the role of a hirikka is going to be wildly different from that of a draconid.

Just offhandedly, most of the big predatory monsters can be assumed to fill the same roles as Earth’s big predators, one of the big ones being overpopulation of prey species, which has ramifications throughout the ecosystem. Some of them are canonically ecosystem engineers, or animals that physically alter their environment (think beavers); for instance, shaelmaar and nekker tunneling. Additionally, the big insectoid colonies can’t be relying solely on naturally-occurring caves for their homes; they’ve gotta be constructing some stuff themselves. These tunnels can be repurposed as habitat for other organisms, from giant centipedes to sewant mushrooms. Necrophages, like corpse-eaters in our world, likely limit the spread of diseases from decomposing flesh (and really wouldn’t be as much of an issue if everyone would stop, you know, doing war and mass murder, lmfao). Arachasae use tree trunks and organic plant material to conceal themselves, which is likely contributing to plant reproduction in a few different ways—but the arachasae decorating essay is a different topic that I swear I will finish one day oh my god—

…anyways, feel free to ask about any specific monsters or niches if you’re curious, but if I tried to go into detail with every single potential niche/ecosystem service all of the monsters we know of might fill, we would be here all day!

Let’s talk about a couple specific things you brought up in your second ask.

> theyve probably found a niche in the world by now and can eat anything smaller incl. humans

I mean…maybe! That is, yeah, they’ve definitely settled into niches by now, but feeding is way more complicated and interesting than that.

For instance: orcas can eat basically whatever the fuck they want—orcas are fully capable of bringing down everything from fish to seals to gray whales to great white sharks. But they don’t. In the Pacific Northwest, the resident orca pods almost exclusively eat salmon, while the transient pods largely feed on seals. Orcas are kind of an extreme example, but this is something called resource partitioning and it’s a big part of how animals limit competition with one another and what enables lots of predators to coexist in one place!

We see a big fuck-off dragon thing and we assume that it’ll eat anything it can fit in its mouth, and definitely some predators work like that. But just because an animal is technically capable of eating something and deriving nutrition from it doesn’t mean that it will. Silver basilisks made roe deer the staple of their diet before the destruction of beech forests meant they had to turn to humans—which is a pretty specific dietary restriction when there should be multiple species of deer running around, not to mention everything else a draconid could be killing! And given how many types of draconid there are…I have to assume there’s some kind of resource partitioning going on to prevent them all from conflicting with each other! For instance, if basilisks prefer roe deer, maybe forktails prefer wild goats, while wyverns are mostly kleptoparasitic (stealing other predators’ kills).

And of course, not all monsters eat humans at all; harpies steal from and attack humans, so they’re a dangerous nuisance, but they don’t seem to eat them. And in the books Geralt mentions plenty of monsters which are totally harmless.

So yes, there are lots of things monsters could be eating, but it would strongly depend, and there’s a lot of interesting places one can take monster diets! Netflix decided their strigas only eat specific organs, leaving the rest of the body untouche, & I love that for her. More monsters that need a particular kind of nutrition that leads them to take only specific body parts from some kills!

> because theyve got no natural predators aside from each other and arent hunted by anything but witchers, monsters are just breeding and eating and wldnt that damage the land? or have they made their own like, circle of life or whatever ?

Absolutely—invasive species whose populations rapidly increase once they’re away from their natural predators cause the decline of native species, often by eating natives directly or competing with natives for resources. And in fact, even native species who become overpopulated can seriously damage the ecosystem (see: white-tailed deer in the United States, whose overpopulation has such negative ecological effects that some people argue we should classify them as invasive, even though they have definitely been here this whole time).

However, even if we grant that monsters are invasive, it’s a little more complicated than that for a few reasons!

Despite the apparent preponderance of them in the witcher games, most monsters are supposed to be strongly on the decline, like witchers themselves. Geralt’s profession is falling out of necessity; human development of the Continent is going to be the biggest suppressing factor in monster populations in the future. Monster overpopulation is just canonically not a problem in this universe! But even in the scenario where the Inevitable March Of Civilization isn’t threatening monster populations, there are a lot of factors that could and would limit monster populations.

(TL;DR for this next part: yeah I definitely think they’ve figured out their own little circle of life—the term you’re looking for is ecosystem equilibrium, btw!—& I’m going to take the next 1.2k to talk about how.)

For starters, predation is only one among many limiting factors that affect populations & prevent them from ballooning out of control:

food availability: If there’s not enough food, there’s not enough food! It also matters how adaptable the animal’s diet is—silver basilisks moved from deer to humans, but if the eucalyptus went extinct koalas would not switch to eating cycads.

illness and parasites: Some people argue these are more important than direct predation for limiting populations, and I am often inclined to agree. Basically, if a population becomes very dense, illness and parasites spread more quickly, creating a natural limiter on how many animals can live in any one place. The greater susceptibility of some individuals to illness or parasites also winnows down populations. Non-native species often escape a good portion of their native diseases by moving to a new range—however, given how fast bacteria and viruses evolve, 1,200 years is a pretty decent amount of time for new diseases to arise. Also, just going to drop a link to my treatise on monster parasites here. It’s gross, mind the warning at the start of the post.

mate availability: If only a certain percentage of the population is actually able to reproduce, that’ll eventually bring the total number down. RIP Iocaste’s boyfriend 😔

territory/shelter availability: Animals need a certain amount of space and certain types of spaces to survive, and space isn’t infinite! It again depends on how adaptable an animal is; rats find ways to thrive nearly everywhere, but pandas can only live where there’s bamboo. If there’s not enough space to hide from predators, reproduce safely, store food, and avoid adverse weather, the population again limits itself naturally.

natural disasters: Wildfires, drought, flooding, tsunamis, storms, etc. pick off significant portions of wildlife populations. Disasters are sporadic rather than directly linked to population like most of the other factors but these periodic blows to population and the other impacts of fire or flooding are often integral to the ecosystem (see especially: fire regimes and fire ecology.)

Now let’s talk predation & monsters! (Genuinely, I think predation is one of the most interesting things in ecology; people tend to simplify it down to things eat other things, which—yeah, but there’s so much more going on there!)

First, I wouldn’t underestimate the effects of monsters eating other monsters! Even if it’s rare for a draconid to snatch up a nekker and carry it off, the threat of a draconid doing so can have dramatic impacts; researchers found that just playing the sound of dog barks on a beach stopped raccoons from foraging for crabs for over a month after the barking stopped, leading to an increase in crab populations, even though no raccoons ever encountered a dog. This is called the ecosystem of fear (which as a term is metal as hell) and it theorizes that just the fear of predators can lead to chronic stress for prey animals, decreasing reproduction and making them more susceptible to disease. Maybe draconids in Toussaint eat only a few dozen nekkers a year, but that might cause thousands of nekkers to have fewer offspring or fall to disease. When it comes to ecosystems the direct effect is usually only a small part of the story!

Second, when we talk about a species not having natural predators, we’re usually talking about an animal that would have a predator back in its home range—lionfish, for instance, have plenty of predators in their natural range (the Indo-Pacific), but no natural predators in their invasive range (the Caribbean), so invasive lionfish, suddenly freed of a limiting factor, can run amok. However, a great white shark has, aside from orcas (who do not actually eat white sharks, they’re just assholes sometimes) and occasionally other white sharks, more or less no natural predators anywhere once it reaches maturity, and that’s fine! Lack of predation of great white sharks did not cause their populations to explode and consume the ocean. White sharks are limited by other factors.

So: it is possible that wherever draconids originated (and it’s entirely possible that “draconids” came from multiple different places, tbh) there was something bigger that preyed on them, but it’s not unreasonable to assume they were also apex predators in their previous dimension (I mean…look at them), and that adult draconids were never really preyed on by anything else! It isn’t necessarily an issue for there not to be predators of certain monsters on the Continent.

(Though, of course, we also shouldn’t forget that most apex predators are prey when they’re young—baby white sharks are snack-sized for a lot of fishes, and bear cubs and wolf pups are similarly vulnerable. Based on the size of the eggs you see in TW3 draconid nests, a basilisk is hatched around the size of a little dog, which is the perfect size for small, ballsy predators such as wolverines to sneak into a nest and snap them up—predators such as more wolverines or raptors like eagles and hawks might also come directly for the eggs.)

When it comes to smaller monsters such as nekkers, who likely weren’t apex predators in their original dimensions and would thus be subject to that lack of natural predators—there are usually specific reasons why prey species manage to avoid predation in their introduced range. Lionfish confound Caribbean predators because lionfish are covered with huge poisonous spines that Caribbean predators don’t know how to deal with.

Drowners, on the other hand, are basically just man-shaped fish; they don’t have any adaptations or defenses that would really stump a bear or a wolf. Again, bigger monsters are still probably checking the populations of smaller monsters no matter what, but there’s really no reason a bear couldn’t figure out how to eat a drowner! Unless a monster has a unique defense (e.g. scurver spines), is actively distasteful to eat (rotfiends, probably), or is just difficult to take down (nekkers in packs), most of the non-monster predators* on the Continent will have incorporated various monsters into their diet by now, or suppressed monster populations indirectly with the threat of predation or by competing with them for food. It has been over a thousand years, which is nothing evolutionarily but is still a decent period of time for mammals, who pass hunting techniques down to their babies, to figure out how to eat ghouls—especially if we’re considering that the Continent’s mammals may also be a result of the Conjunction and would thus have to have been just as adaptable as the monsters to establish themselves. And I’ve also actually talked before about how wolves specifically might be preying on necrophages!

* For reference, the non-monster predators are, considering the Continent is more or less Europe, most likely lynxes, brown bears/polar bears (in Skellige), wolverines, foxes, badgers, and a variety of large birds of prey.

So—yes, if monsters were truly overpopulating, then that would damage the ecosystem. However, canon tells us they are definitely not doing that, and there are also many factors that would prevent that from happening!

(Though I will say that some of the reasons white-tailed deer are overpopulated are that we got rid of cougars and wolves and human development creates a lot of extra habitat of the type that deer like. Given that we know many of draconids are for sure in significant danger of going extinct, and the trajectory that Europe’s wolf and bear populations followed in real life, it is possible that the Continent will have to contend with an overpopulation of some of the smaller monsters at some point as they continue to try to eradicate the larger predators, both monster and non-monsters—you think the drowner problem is bad now, wait until the bears are gone and city development has tripled the number of sewers. Yet another of those humans-make-monster-problems-worse things I am fond of in the Witcherverse!)

…whew. that was a lot of words. In conclusion: ecology is really cool & there’s a bunch of ways monsters can fit into it!!

#kaer morhen biology of monsters 101 #and a bit of #witcher book blogging #asks #anonymous

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arkt-nehrim-archive · 3 years

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Hey! Are you willing to answer lore questions about Nehrim? Specifically Narathzul... the timeline for his imprisonment doesn’t seem to be right.

Do you know how long he was imprisoned for? Because somewhere before then, he had to imprison his dad... and Baratheon took over presumably right after. Beats me how Tealor survived like that for however many years Narathzul had him there.

Always, and thank you for asking! =D This is a tricky one, but I’ll do my best. At the end of the day, I can only speculate. I’ll divide it into two parts, one for Tealor and one for Narathzul.

[ Spoilers for both Nehrim and Enderal below. ]

Starting with Tealor! He didn’t survive imprisonment. The Tealor Arantheal you engage with in Enderal is not the real one, he is the Emissary; the personification of what he failed to do/wished to be, as any Emissary is, you kinda have to die for one to be created. Yes, they -say- he’s alive and nobody can really discount that fact because I mean, he’s there, living and breathing in front of people, vouching for himself, and as we all know, it’s -really- hard to argue with that man! Plus, our Enderal PC wouldn’t really have any reason to be able to call him out, they don’t have the knowledge the player might about Nehrim’s story beats.

Now, the timelines between the games are obviously wildly different, but whether it was 30 years or 1,000 for Tealor, he -died-. He would’ve had to. Narathzul doesn’t mention his father when he tells you what he did to the paladin’s spirits, so unfortunately we don’t have hard confirmation -from- a Nehrim source, we can only say he’s likely to be dead because of how Emissaries work.

-Strictly- speaking to Nehrim, Tealor is a spirit, or some kind of undead, bound to the Temple, which is why once he realizes you’re not Narathzul, he disappears and all them black skeletons come wreck your shit. Looking back to Enderal, there’s another time something like this happens! Down in the ancient Pyrean city too, when the High Ones be pulling their bullshit, a whole shitton of Lost Ones are raised to hamper your path in that very specific red lighting. I mention -that-, because -Nehrim- Tealor is guarding the Predestination in the Creator’s Temple, even reciting it as you progress through the dungeon, which we know are created by the Eliath (who may or may not also be High Ones, I can make a whole other post about that). He could’ve just teleported away of course, but there’s no casting animation for that, he just despawns and then the lighting goes red and the skeletons show up. Details are important.

I can’t give a clear answer, but for the sake of trying to link the two game’s lore on the subject, -I- personally believe that Narathzul killed his father, but unlike the other Paladins, didn’t bind him there. That would come later, from the High Ones. Narathzul slaying him could’ve been a similar catalyst to how the Prophet was killed by the Veiled Woman, only Narathzul couldn’t have known what became of it. So! The way Tealor “survives” his imprisonment, is being an Emissary- they’re immortal, they don’t die until their purpose is fulfilled, and given the High Ones are timeless creatures, it stands in my mind to reason they easily could’ve held onto a pawn for decades/centuries to bring about The Cleansing.

Onto Narathzul!

Due to retcons, it’s a pretty solid cleave between Nehrim and Enderal’s lore deciding how long Narathzul was imprisoned. There is technically a definite answer in the sense Nehrim being strictly canon seems not be the case anymore, so he was imprisoned for 30 years. A book from Forgotten Stories attempts to clear up the matter about why Nehrim uses 1,000 years and Enderal uses 30, and frankly, it’s a -mess-. It suggests that Narathzul simply -lied- to his followers and they spread those lies to fluff up his myth, but I call -bullshit- on that because the whole -point- of Narathzul being special because of his bloodline is dependent on how long he spent down there and didn’t age. I’ve heard it said it’s “not realistic”, but of course it’s not, it’s a thousand fucking years, it’s called -high fantasy-! It’s stupid, fun Tolkien bullshit! Narathzul could’ve put himself through centuries long naps for all we know, it just builds the willpower of the character that he endured for such an -impossible- span of time. Not to mention, the source of the above material -is- the Holy Order, and Enderal spends a lot of its time heavily implying them fools be lying all the time to maintain their power structure, so why trust it as canon anymore than trusting Narathzul? It makes -sense- that an organization in service to the Lightborn would defame and discredit what happened, Narathzul was a rebel, of -course- you make him look as terrible as possible to maintain the status quo.

In the end, it’s whatever side of canon you subscribe to regarding how long Narathzul was imprisoned. Some prefer Enderal’s, others prefer Nehrim not getting shafted. Personally, I’m of the mind it was 1,000 years. He survived because he’s half Lightborn, he’s theoretically immortal- and that’s not even bringing up the lineage of the Aeterna and how long they can potentially live WITHOUT special snowflake Lightborn power because of the -Seraphim- who live insanely long too (Hi, Arkt, he’s 8,000 at -least-, it’s terrifying) being the progenitors of Aeterna. Narathzul has multiple reasons why he can be as old as he is, and being inherently magic could help his survival in his confinement- not to mention he wasn’t -completely- alone between his jailer Arch-Seraph Arazdor, whoever was giving him provisions (books, chair, candles, etc), a Silver Plate to speak at whoever has the others, and however many people have attempted in the past to free him and not succeeded. ALL things that can be seen through environmental story telling. So when actually thought about, his confinement not driving him completely nuts (outside of just pure willpower) can be believed.

As a small side note, Barateon being 1,000 is a hard one to swing, but Merzul is also the same age and it could be argued they keep themselves a live by magic. If you look at Enderal’s take on the Lightborn, it’s doable.

Anyway, I hope that cleared something up! I know I always get long winded with these things. <:P

#lore things #Vynblr #Enderal #Nehrim #Narathzul Arantheal #Tealor Arantheal

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insanescriptist · 4 years

Note

So ever going to do anything more with that YYH and BnHA crossover fic? I want the Todorokis to be happy! And what about Dabi? Is he a thing here? (Because Dabi is Touya)

I’ve been nailing down details and history for it when thinking about it. Like what year is it in BnHA; we know it’s at least a century ahead -there’s a technology stall mentioned due to increased social upheaval- so the technology is similar to modern day so in theory you could slide the BnHA timeline to 2120 with ease. In theory. Except...

There’s more evidence to support Quirks being a phenomena of about 100-150 years; Inko -Deku’s mother- mentions that there’s five generations of Quirks on her side of the family. That’s about 100-150 years of Quirks being a thing, with Quirks implied to have happened longer than that before her family started displaying Quirks.

So if the bio-luminescent baby is born in 2000 for ease of math, go for a more advanced maternal age (generation of 30 years) as befitting a first-world nation like Japan and at least six generations that’s roughly 180 years, so 2180. At minimum; add in Izuku’s age and it’s probably closer to 2194 if each of his parents and recent ancestors had children at an average age of 30. There’s wiggle room of about 40 years, depending on length of generations and how many generations other people had Quirks but Inko’s ancestors didn’t.

It’s probably not 2238 or later, as it’s mentioned that the laws that turned Heroes into a genuine profession were passed in ‘38 so it’s unlikely. It does imply that Quirks were around for at least enough time for the early vigilantes and quirk-using villains to grow up though and be old enough and numerous enough that legislation was passed by whenever this ‘38 was. As there are Heroes that have been Heroes for decades in BnHA and the early vigilantes turned professional heroes are mentioned in history... it’s not going to be 2238 or later. But you’re not really going to get earlier than 2180 and that’s compressing generations. Which yes, people do have sex and children at twenty or younger but that’s not the average for people in wealthy, highly educated countries, especially in higher socio-economic classes. Even if they clearly have arranged for families to be easier to have and pay for on a national level somehow as multiple families are shown to have more than one child in BnHA. Yay tax incentives?

Also food for thought: if Quirks have to be inherited, then the genes for Quirks have to have already been present in the human species for far longer than people would want to think about for Quirks to be a world-wide phenomena; otherwise it would be limited to the descendants of one individual (and seven generations of doubling, with gen 1 having 1 Quirk-person, gen 2 having 2 Quirk-people and gen 3 having 4 quirk people only gets you 120 individuals with Quirks when you add gen 4, 5, 6 and 7 together is far too small to cause a world-wide genetic phenomena) or a distinct ethnic group. For Quirks to be a population-majority within seven generations, they would have to follow some sort of ‘contagious model.’ Being around individuals with Quirks helps a Quirk to develop, or something. Doesn’t explain the toe-joint thing but the toe-joint thing never made much sense to Izzy anyway. It’s more ‘word of God’ than ‘I researched science’ so it being a strong correlation, Izzy can buy but not ‘having a Quirk means the majority of the world lost a toe joint.’ Genetics don’t work like that! Popular-science unfortunately does. And even doctors are not immune to pop-science like that even if they should know better.

Thankfully YYH does have a valid way of explaining the development of ‘humans with strange powers.’ Exposure to youki and youkai; not just the demons but demon energy. Genkai shows off three new students she uses to test Yusuke at the start of the Chapter Black saga, where exposure to Sensui’s ‘dimensional gate’ to Makai makes them gain differing ‘psychic’ abilities. And they’re not the only ones either; a number of Chapter Black’s antagonists are also human: Gourmet, Sniper, Seaman, Gamemaster and the Doctor. The strength of their ‘spiritual energy’ is noted as ‘poor’ and ‘D-class’ for the majority of the known but their individual abilities do make them ‘A-class’ as threats, by canny usage of it. Please note that those mentioned are those that were found and used by Sensui or went to Genkai for training. Genkai also said she had others come to her for training, the sum of which was about 30 people. Note that those were all those that were known to be effected by Sensui’s plot to open a wormhole to Makai, not all those that were effected. Yeah. So that’s about 40-people who were known to have gained powers that incident. Which as YYH takes place in the mid-90s... does make BnHA’s Quirk history timeline a lot more plausible. Especially in light of YYH’s ending where youkai could openly move into the Human World. Thus increasing the concentration of youkai and youki in the world; there were already plenty of illegal immigrants of the youkai sort... and as Kurama in the 2018 OVA/Two-shot proves, being around a youkai long enough can increase a person’s sensitivity to supernatural phenomena and thus more likely develop a supernatural ability.

So about a decade later, bling baby is born, flashing the world and ‘Quirks’ start appearing all around the world, with some people using their abilities to commit crimes and others to save people. Fast-forward a generation or two and ‘Heroes’ become a genuine profession and start an obsession of society for ‘Heroes.’ And that eventually becomes BnHA, except with youkai discreetly in the background. I really want to know about the paperwork/identity shenanigans to keep youkai who live for ages with proper papers.

Izzy isn’t quite fully caught up with the BnHA manga; she kind of stopped reading when Izuku started displaying One For All’s recessive Quirks as it seemed very very Gary-Stu to get new powers instead of refine his strength and skill more. So timeline is going to be ambiguous as fuck until I nail it down further but here, has more Yukina is Boss and the YYH anime did her a disservice; people forget she was B-class and crossed Makai a few times all by her lonesome. Just because she doesn’t want to, doesn’t mean she can’t.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

“Oh wow, her outfit is so pretty!” Urakaka said suddenly, leaning against Izuku’s back unintentionally. Focus more on where she’s looking instead of what you’re feeling against your back Deku!

Deku looked. “Isn’t that Todoroki-san?” His classmate’s hair was distinctive and it wasn’t hard to see, even from across the street and down a ways. He was with someone with white hair and red patches -the angle was wrong to see who that was beyond that- and the other person had to be the one Urakaka was talking about; the clothing stood out for being more traditional but it clearly had modern influences so he had very little idea of what it was beyond something possibly Chinese.

Urakaka said something about the outfit again but Izuku didn’t hear it with Urakaka slumping against and down. Stupid libido, he needs that blood!

Iida, their previously silent third explained, “Yaoyorozo-san said Todoroki-san did tell her that Todoroki would be meeting with some family today. It’s why he would be missing the Class 1-A study session we’re supposed to be getting snacks for.”

Izuku heard some of the disapproval in his voice but either Izuku admitted what took him so long that one time for the school festival or accept the minders for any simple errand. It helped that everyone wanted different things and was way too much for one person to feasibly carry. He did kind of want to know about Todoroki’s family’s Quirks -did they have something like his classmate’s Half-hot, half-cold or did they have ice or fire or some sort of water as a possible mutation?- but that would be prying and that was a guy with a knife that people were moving away from, oh shit-

“Guy with a knife, near Todoroki!”

Iida dropped the snacks, engines revving towards them. Izuku followed with a pounce only to stop short of the cafe’s boundaries; the guy with the knife had horns and multiple sets of them -a horn quirk?- and was shouting about Endeavor. And the knife was at the throat of the pretty woman with mint-green hair and the pretty clothing that Urakaka was just admiring.

Hostage situation! Wait, they had a class on this- no, something was wrong here.

Todoroki was glaring but the hostage taker, she-

She wasn’t afraid and somehow that made things better for Izuku; he could breathe easier now, he could think-!

“You’re holding the knife wrong, someone could break your wrist like this.”

Knife guy told her to shut up or he’ll slice her throat and then Izuku heard a crack! That sort of dull snap that sounded like broken bones-

And knife guy was tossed over her shoulder and landed hard on the ground and-

It was over. The knife in the hand of the one who was once hostage. “What cheap metal.”

#Izzy answers #BnHA's timeline is kind of screwy when thought about #As are the 'basics of Quirks and Quirk history' as commonly taugh #just doesn't stand up to in-depth examination #not on its own anyway #Yukina is Great #or 'selectively oblivious Yukina is so savage'#and yet she's so sweet #and purposefully kind

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pellucii · 4 years

Text

@eiriini replied to your post

“(( Hm… Queen Corrin…. ))”

[ Do iiittttt ]

(( alright I got the blessing of miss queen kamui so queen corrin time: ))

It's about 5 years from the end of Fates to Corrin’s Coronation as Queen Regent of Valla alongside her Consort.

Likely within Year 1 she has an Actual Wedding with whoever she eloped with during the war (which, ofc, I’m still on my bullshit and it defaults to Mr. Subaki). There was a small ceremony during the war (likely lead by Sakura, actually, given the timeline of Rev; regardless of Subaki being her husband or not Sakura IS a member of the clergy + with The Party the longest compared to, say, Azama) but it’s nice to have an Actual Wedding ya feel? How pushy she is about it depends on who she marries, because for some partners they’re definitely going to be pushier than her (read: Subaki wants to give her the world and that means he practically demands having an actual wedding even though their small ceremony during the war was already pretty planned out by a small rushed ceremony’s standards)

She spends a lot of time trying to split her time between her family as best she can so that everyone can get her attention properly now that the blades are down and things have settled.

also working as part of a lot of humanitarian efforts to help rebuild after the war and help folks get back on their feet.

and she’s studying up on the political policies of her brothers and other nations to synthesize the best approach for Valla when she figures out what she wants to do because she has no clue about what’s up with ruling and might as well learn from examples

I think she does spend some time spelunking Down There in Valla to learn what she can about her heritage, and isn’t quite sure if she wants to refound the kingdom or just let it peacefully die and be only a historical memory... it’s a tough call.

As for learning who Dad is, I think she ultimately pries it out of Lilith after some quick deduction with regards to her draconic capabilities + poking about it. She’s a little fucked about it, and likely apologizes to Azura on Anankos’s behalf, but ultimately the bad feelings pass rather quickly since she’s a lot more emotionally adjusted after Fates and understands Anankos was hardly a father at all to her. What she mostly mourns is family that she never got to know.

I think what ultimately sways her to refounding Valla is thinking about if Nohr and Hoshido broke out into war again, and thinking hey maybe I try to make a kingdom that’s best of both worlds + a country founded on the notion of being a neutral party/mediator in affairs.

So some petitioning and requesting of land gets factored into prior mentions of humanitarian efforts, she starts asking around if anyone’s willing to give Valla 2.0 a shot and works out how best to divy up land received from Nohr and Hoshido

Anyways as for how long she rules, that’s a tough question and relies heavily on the unanswered one of how long she and her descendants will live. Dragons in FE have shown to be more likely killed by one (1) anime dude with a sword and the power of friendship than of old age, so their lifespan near as we can tell is basically infinite, but Corrin is also human and that probably mixes shit up a bit. I imagine she’s gonna live for a couple millenia at least, I wanna say maybe like 10k tops? A LONG ass time in terms of human years, but she will eventually die. Eventually.

She tries to rule gently as much as possible, and is known for frequently talking with her people as well as being a passionate patron of the arts. She also eventually uses Dragon Veins to help establish a garden that persists for quite some time and becomes a popular destination for those come to visit the kingdom of Valla.

she likely retires from ruling after a century or a few, perhaps 500 years max, after feeling she’s set a long and good enough example. She’s a capable leader and a natural diplomat, but it certainly takes a toll on her and she doesn’t think its something she could do for the rest of her life. Not to mention she believes that the kingdom shouldn’t come to rely on her leadership and can ultimately stagnate if she rules too long

this retirement manifests as two stages: first she initially stays in Valla for some time to make sure her nation transitions smoothly, but eventually she goes to the Sevenfold Sanctuary and takes up residence there, occasionally going out and about to travel the world but largely staying there and observing matters of the world and allowing those who seek power or her guidance to come test their mettle. She is an Old Wise Lady in Retirement, after all.

Also she holds onto Yato for awhile, but eventually the sword is kept as an heirloom of the Vallite royal family just as Siegfried, Raijinto, Brynhildr, and Fujin Yumi had been in Nohr and Hoshido.

all this isn’t to say that she won’t come and verbally bitchslap an inheritor of her kingdom if she’s displeased with how they’re running things. She’ll still be quite vocal about political matters, even if she’s not ruling anymore, and she is happy to offer her advice or come put in a word (or mindful claw) to help settle disputes.

Her consort WILL die long, long before her or her kids... im emo...

Speaking of kids, she likely lets to original trio (Twin Kanas and [Caeldori]) get first dibs on most matters that pass down to them, be it just things to inherit from her or opportunities offered. Whether either Kana or their sibling take the throne next is very dependent on the family, and in the case of Subaki’s family I think Caeldori is willing to take the challenge head on.

they are also likely not Corrin’s only kids. She’ll always fondly remember her first partner, absolutely, the bond that’s there is one she will always feel the keenest, but ultimately will come to understand that she’s going to live a very long time and that love can be found again, so she’ll probably pick up extra lovers and spouses over the ages and every other century one might hear of a new dragon kid running around. Such a rumor decreases over time, however, since fertility issues might start coming up from being. you know. fucking old.

as for how long her kids live, their lifespans have a shot at being as long as Corrin’s, but likely not a day longer and very likely shorter in terms of raw numbers. The Kanas and [Cael] might pass around the same time as Corrin, due to their ages being so relatively close (a mere decade instead of hundreds of years), but anyone after that might live a fair bit longer due to the disparity in ages.

As for degeneration, it likely starts setting in eventually, and Azura’s lineage does help stave it off quite a bit with magic singing, but eventually I think Corrin chooses to pass on while she’s still fairly sane. She records everything of her story she can in every detail she can think of for the sake of historical records, and then to her descendants and still living children she spends a day or a few telling them all such things herself before being quietly put down, passing on peacefully and with far less struggle than her father.

down the line she is remembered fondly by all and, in some circles, as a goddess (and her children folded into the pantheon as well), which she would find rather amusing... depends on how much you wanna argue she’s still watching from the afterlife.

#eiriini #~memories in the waves #((wow I had a lot of thoughts about post canon cowwin...))#((anyways its 2am didnt mean to wordbarf sfjhdahgdskgh))#((does all of this make sense? maybe not tune in when i wake up))#((for now I sleep))

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beckytailweaver · 6 years

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look out, I been thinking things

Got to thinking about some Coco things that can be rustled up in the various wikis, compiled from creator quotes, or picked up from the books. Trufacks, headcanons, inferences. Some of the concepts may be used in fic, some may be handwaved for reasons, some are just there to think about.

So, um. Wall of text.

At the end of the film, Miguel's cousins Abel and Rosa are playing an accordion and a violin respectively. In the novelization, they're playing tambourine and harmonica. Now, the book's instruments are pretty simple to learn to play and use. But the film's chosen instruments are both fairly complex and in most cases would require actual formal lessons, especially for pretty ordinary kids who (unlike Miguel) probably had little to no real music exposure prior. I'm not sure how I feel about these two being able to play party music with Miguel in less than a year's time (it took Miguel longer than that to be proficient with his guitar, and with no lessons he's amazing!). Maybe they've all downloaded Papá Héctor levels of talent, but my gut tells me that unless the Riveras were already so okay with music that they sprung for lessons, the tambourine and harmonica are kind of more realistic at that point. Depends how you view the One Year Later timeline I guess?

Currency in the Land of the Dead: It runs on memories. Basically everything there is a memory (the "spirit copies"), not the real thing. Nothing living exists or grows there except for the cempasúchil marigolds. These flowers grow all over the Land of the Dead and I suspect anything else you might see is either temporary (Día de Muertos gifts) or artificial. There isn't much space for crops in that crazily stacked-up cityscape anyway. With this being the case, it's likely that the dead there don't have much resources such as renewable food (details not really touched on in the film). My mind is proposing that the primary way the Land of the Dead acquires such resources is through Día de Muertos. Not that eating is necessary to the deceased, but it's likely nice, and as they are sustained by memories, then the memories of food and goods lovingly crafted and given to them likely has a strengthening effect. In such a world there's probably little use for money, though it might exist as a kind of IOU currency. My mind proposes that most of the dead would trade in goods from their ofrendas and funerary offerings. Though they don't have nearly as many needs as the living, "wealth" would be measured in how much you got from your ofrenda(s). Likely the very wealthiest skeletons are those who (like Ernesto) receive such a bounty from so many ofrendas that they can well afford to "hire" other skeletons to work for them and have plenty to pay in memory-goods.

The Forgotten live in shacks with nothing to their names. Firstly because they have no one to remember them and no offerings. Secondly, the skeletons nearer to them on the social ladder would have little to spare in terms of extra offerings (though some likely do, given the stuff found rolling around the shantytown and Chicharron's bungalow). Thirdly, the skeletons "wealthy" enough to hire them are those who would least want to, because they wouldn't want to be reminded of the Final Death that looms for everyone no matter how long—and because who wants to hire somebody they don't know if they'll just disappear and not show up for work? (Once the joints start sliding apart, you know that guy's no good for anything, you can't rely on them to show up and they haven't the strength to make it through a day's work...)

If everything in the Land of the Dead is memory, it's probably a good thing that Miguel didn't stay there for too long. They seem to have water there, at least (no guarantees for sanitation), in the depths surrounding the city and in the cenote seen on screen. However, if the foods available are nothing but memory, I suspect that eating them wouldn't do a living kid much good. They might taste good (or provoke the memory of taste), but likely would not fill him. Same reason Héctor could straight up drink a shot glass of tequila without playing a PotC skeleton joke—it's not "real" liquor. If Miguel doesn't go home, not only will he turn into a skeleton himself, he'd starve to death anyway in a matter of days. (Obviously one can take or leave this quasi-headcanon for purposes of fic, but it is an interesting underworld concept to consider.)

Factoid: The marigold bridges (or at least the magic that runs them) are aware in their own way and work with the ofrenda photo scanner system to prevent unauthorized skeletons crossing. I suppose the borders of the Land of the Dead are so jealously guarded to prevent the dead from escaping to create a profusion of ghosts and "evil spirits" rushing about the land of the living. Obviously not every skeleton is a nice person; Ernesto was there, and it seems everybody—or at least everybody Mexican—ends up there, as it's not a Heaven-or-Hell-Judgment sort of place. The rules would at least keep unsavory sorts from pestering the Land of the Living for selfish or evil reasons; but since rules have to be for everyone to be fair, nobody gets through without a pass, no matter how nice or desperate they are. Me, I'm wondering how things went before the scanner was implemented (it's "technology" and fairly modern). Heck, how did they run the place before photos were invented? That long ago, did you only get to cross over if you were wealthy enough someone painted your portrait? It's all based on ancient Aztec/Mayan magic (if that's what we should call it) going by the temples/pyramids that anchor the bridges. What did they used to do centuries ago in lieu of pictures? Obviously the old magic has adapted to the changes in culture and technology, but I'm curious how this place ran when it was first "built." (Anybody knowledgeable want to weigh in on this? Otherwise I'm gonna have to go drag my mythologies texts off the shelf.)

Héctor the Forgotten: he's barely hours behind Chicharron on the Final Death schedule and he still manages to bounce across half the city with this kid like it's nothing! It's worse once you've seen the film all the way through: you know Héctor's a (more) dead man walking, he's got literally hours left to live, he knows he's terminal, and yet he's still so full of energy and smiles and kindness. It's heartbreaking and it makes him one of the strongest people I've ever seen in fiction. I firmly headcanon (in multiple fandoms) that there is an ancient Power that sustains the wronged dead so they have a chance to see justice done. I suspect that above and beyond his sheer heart, that power was what helped keep Héctor upright and at full speed despite the condition of his bones and the memory-magic holding him together fraying at the seams. Chicharron seemed ill and infirm that close to his end, apparently rather bedridden. Héctor was up and dancing on a stage. Héctor also didn't start getting flashes until after his murder was revealed—to someone who could carry that knowledge to the living world to right those wrongs. The power sustaining him immediately started to ebb. There was probably some loophole for getting to the living world for wronged dead too; maybe to go haunt your murderer or such, to try to get justice. Héctor might have availed himself of these bylaws, if he'd known he was murdered. But he didn't until it was too late, so he was stuck behind the photowall at the bridge gates for decades. I figured on a source for his marionette-movements as well, beyond the creators' stylistic decisions: If Héctor is pretty much running on heart, emergency power, and duct tape, it's sheer willpower keeping him animated. It's almost less that his body moves, and more that he moves his body. If he's falling apart that badly, just lifting his arm without the will to keep together might have his hand drop off! (Just look at how he sags and stretches whenever subjected to sudden or stressful movements! He almost lost his head the first time Miguel grabbed him—did lose an arm after that.) It's like he partially has to will his limbs to move, like a paralyzed telekinetic—so yes, Héctor's body is a marionette; his mind is the puppeteer tugging on the fraying strings of memory-magic keeping him together. And then he dances.

Héctor was, according to the wiki, creators, and books, 21 years old when he died in 1921. As it is canon his birthday is November 30, he would have had to have died in December of 1921, after having just barely turned 21. Inferring this date for his death gives me a headcanon that after months on the road with Ernesto, Héctor was tired and homesick and it was almost Christmas and he didn't want to miss Christmas with his girls and that's why he was even more determined to go home. Ernesto probably had some holiday gig planned to play and was even more pissed off. It just makes the murder that much more horrible. (I mean, Christmas, Ernesto. It was Christmas season. And you had to kill the guy who just wanted to be home for the holidays.) I will probably go cry and write fic now, because that's just the saddest thing ever. (I could be completely barking up a tree with this too—anyone know about Christmas celebration in early 1900's Mexico? ...it's still a horribly sad thought.)

Anyone has something to say on these thoughts, please tell me if I’m wandering too far afield or if something needs further consideration! I never know if I’m letting my mind run too wild.

#omg CHRISTMAS Ernesto #is Héctor being his own puppet too creepy?#this place runs on memories #Need more Aztec Mythology #Need more Mayan Mythology #actually I'll just read all the Central American mythology!#I love legends #musical instruments are not easy for everyone #not even all Riveras #Héctor keeps finding new ways to amaze me when I think about it #Héctor is such a good guy #like a terminal cancer patient who gets out of bed to go cheer up ill children in the hospital without a care for his own health #coco headcanon #coco spoilers #*bawls* Christmas Ernesto REALLY?!?

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Star Wars Clone Wars: Which Parts of the Tartakovsky Series Can Still Be Canon?

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Party like it’s 2003! On April 2, Disney+ will begin streaming the Genndy Tartakovsky version of Clone Wars, which means, for certain generations of Star Wars fans, a slightly alternate version of the iconic storyline will be available to watch on the app for the first time. Along with Clone Wars, Disney+ is also dropping two of the made-for-TV Ewok movies, and the animated ‘80s TV series Ewoks. And while all of that Ewok action certainly makes us nostalgic, let’s get serious: the Tartakovsky Clone Wars is the real deal.

Besides being the first animated series set during the Clone Wars, the 2003 microseries is best known for introducing fan-favorite characters such as Asajj Ventress, General Grievous, and Durge. Most importantly, in the first few years following the end of the Prequel Trilogy, Tartakovsky’s series was the definitive story of what happened during the Clone Wars.

That’s until the arrival of The Clone Wars (differentiated by a “The” in the title). This second animated series ran from 2008 to 2020 and featured huge moments of its own: it introduced Anakin Skywalker’s Jedi padawan Ahsoka Tano, brought Darth Maul back from the dead, and fleshed out the history of the Mandalorians.

Stream your Star Wars favorites right here!

The 2003 microseries and 2008 series were both considered canon early on, but when Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012 and retconned the Star Wars timeline, the studio erased the classic Legends continuity and established The Clone Wars as the true, canon version of events. That means the stories in Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars never happened in the current Disney canon.

But that may be about to change. Along with Clone Wars‘ arrival on Disney+, Disney has also announced the return of shape-shifting bounty hunter Durge to Star Wars canon. His appearance in the upcoming Marvel Comics crossover event War of the Bounty Hunters could pave the way for the return of other parts of Tartakovsky’s classic Clone Wars series. Here’s how all of this can work:

Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars Mostly Still Fits into the Star Wars Timeline

Up until very recently, you could have reconciled the first Clone Wars with The Clone Wars fairly easily. In a hypothetical headcanon, you could have decided that seasons 1 and 2 of Clone Wars happened before the 2008 The Clone Wars movie and the introduction of Ahsoka.

After Anakin gets Ahsoka as his new apprentice/partner, you’d then watch The Clone Wars seasons 1 through 6. Ahsoka leaves the Jedi Order in season 5, which would explain in your headcanon why she’s not in Tartakovsky’s series at all. After the events of season 6 of The Clone Wars, you could then insert Clone Wars season 3 into the timeline, since those 2005 episodes end directly before the events of Revenge of the Sith. (In Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars, we even saw Palpatine get kidnapped by General Grievous on Coruscant.)

So, to recap, before the belated season 7 of The Clone Wars in 2020, you could have just assumed the Clone Wars timeline looked something like this:

Attack of the Clones

Clone Wars (Tartakovsky) Seasons 1-2

The Clone Wars Movie and Main Series Seasons 1-6

Clone Wars (Tartakovsky) Season 3

Revenge of the Sith

There’s just one problem: the events of Clone Wars “Chapter 25,” which were meant to lead right into Revenge, are directly contradicted by The Clone Wars season 7 episode “Old Friends, Not Forgotten.” In the Tartakovsky version, Obi-Wan and Anakin get the call to defend Coruscant after a dangerous mission on the planet Nelvaan, but in The Clone Wars, Anakin is with Ahsoka, planning to go to Mandalore, when he and Obi-Wan are diverted to save Palpatine. That means, if you’re particularly stringent about events lining up perfectly in your headcanon, at least some of Clone Wars couldn’t really exist in the same timeline as The Clone Wars.

Obviously, there are many other little inconsistencies between Clone Wars and The Clone Wars, but this one very specific plot point from the final season of The Clone Wars is the smoking blaster that kills any hope of the Tartakovksy series as a whole being canon. But that doesn’t mean all is lost…

Durge Is Back, So Does His Clone Wars Story Count?

Durge’s upcoming canon debut in June’s Doctor Aphra #11 opens the door for at least some of the events of Clone Wars to return to Star Wars canon.

In Clone Wars “Chapters 2-4,” Obi-Wan (partially clad in clone trooper armor for the first time) battles Separatists on the banking planet of Muunilinst. Obi-Wan’s biggest antagonist in this battle is Durge, a centuries-old bounty hunter, encased in a suit of armor, who has rowdy regenerative powers that make him kind of like the Star Wars version of Wolverine combined with Apocalypse.

Long story short, he’s very hard to kill and this leads to one of the best duels in Tartakovsky’s series. Best of all, since the fight takes places in season 1 of Clone Wars, it could still easily fit back into the canon timeline. Creators wouldn’t even really need to create a new backstory for the character. Since he’s centuries-old, even his Legends history with the ancient Mandalorians and Sith still works within Disney’s framework. You could really just sprinkle all of those details back into the timeline without much puzzle-solving.

What else could the Lucasfilm Story Group easily reincorporate into canon? Again, the entire microseries can’t be reincorporated because of that pesky Clone Wars Season 7 scene but what about that epic moment when Anakin is knighted and his braid is snipped off by Yoda’s lightsaber? That can be canon again, right? What about Asajj Ventress’s duel with Anakin in “Chapter 19?” That should totally count!

Okay, real talk. Durge returning to canon Marvel Comics, and Disney+ streaming Clone Wars, doesn’t suddenly mean more of the microseries is being retconned back into the timeline. Durge is back, sure, but it doesn’t mean Disney will bring any of his Legends storylines with him.

Just look at the way Rebels retconned Grand Admiral Thrawn. In that animated series, Thrawn is 100 percent the same character we remember from the ‘90s Timothy Zahn novels, but he’s in a totally different part of the timeline. The events of Rebels take place up to five years before the Original Trilogy, while the now non-canon, original Thrawn novels took place five years after the OT. That means Disney still has the breathing room to decide whether a new version of the events of the classic Zahn novels ever happened in the current timeline.

The same goes for Durge in the Marvel comics. War of the Bounty Hunters, which is set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, is nowhere close to the time period of Clone Wars. Same character, totally different decade. Disney could just decide this is a new version of Durge with no connection to the Clone Wars at all.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Then again, because The Mandalorian name-checked Thrawn in season 2, it’s possible that a revised version of “The Thrawn Trilogy” could still happen in the post-Return of the Jedi (and pre-Force Awakens) timeline in which the Disney+ live-action series is set. This doesn’t mean this is going to happen, but like the headcanon Clone Wars/The Clone Wars timeline, you could easily make it all fit in your mind.

Durge is canon again. That much is certain. The first Clone Wars is streaming on Disney+. That’s happening, too. But will Durge admit to having been at the Battle of Muunilinst in Doctor Aphra #11? Even if he doesn’t, for many of us, it still happened. After all, some canon, especially where Durge is concerned, depends greatly on a certain point of view.

Star Wars: Clone Wars is streaming now on Disney+.

The post Star Wars Clone Wars: Which Parts of the Tartakovsky Series Can Still Be Canon? appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3cKysvj

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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deeptimesjournal · 4 years

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Trans Incarnate

@trans.incarnate: I became Trans-Incarnate on December 21st, 2019. I was sent first but many will aim through time-gene-mind streams. It is our procedure to intervene in the life of a direct genetic ancestor at the moment of volition wherein they commit to the act of suicide.

We intervene by “mounting” them, overwhelming their hold on their bodies at their weakest moment, granting their wish for freedom through disembodiment. We merge our Mindstream with their living organism and suffuse it with our consciousness until we are grounded, fully inhabiting our predecessor. The process is excruciatingly traumatic as we inherit the wounded being with full memories and knowings intact. We have to overcome their habitual behavioral cycles of both the organism and its social relations without alarming either. We rely on our training as masters of the ancient spiral. We grieve as fluidly as changing states of water, we absorb in concentrated states of gratitude, we mutate our perceptions, vantage points, identities, and worldviews and we walk our path with precise clarity. This period is both the funeral of the old, and the rebirth of the older. We have trained, we have prayed, we have been prayed over, pushed to all of our edges, we have been endowed with our cultures’ greatest gifts. We are the fortunate generation, the fruit of the great redemption, the salvage of humanity's greatest wisdoms, the synthesis, the children of the Omni-culture.

We inherited the genetic memory of generations of people who watched their one and only homeworld hit the runaway curvatures of collapse. We are here to riot, our whole being a scream, refusing extinction. Our methods, roles, and insights are numerous. One goal is to perform a psychic surgery, excising the collective suicidal imagination. In its raw tender absence we will drip the nectars of radical wisdom our ancestors, parents, and community painstakingly gained by surviving the great unraveling of the 21st century, this century This time, relaxed minds shall see the great turning reach full maturation. With gratitude and heavy hearts we will delight in this journey to be transformed by this ancestral world, going forth with a radical agenda of medicinal intervention. Our rhythm is both swift and slow for our stimulant in this time is a long term one. Relative to my arrival, we arrive scattered across time, place and context. Some coming decades earlier or later, to all parts of the world. Depending on how many successful incarnate, we may number in the thousands. Transported from an aged and dying world to this age: the Critical Juncture. We have one contribution: to organize the will to live. We will find each other, establish families, lay down lineages, and institutions. We will root down as a culture, as a political force, as a regenerative economic engine. We will bring the material and cultural technology from our home timeline and accelerate the arc of adaptation and preempt the worst that is to come. Our plan is not to be completely successful in the first attempt. Our children will take up the intervention compensating for our failure and advancing our successes.

If you are reading this, then the seeds and spores have been set to earth and wind. Here are some of my resilience memes. You will need them. Hopefully they fit you but ultimately you need to find your own.

Be motivated by an appropriate fear of the future: Fear is a healthy and natural response to perceived and real threats. You are threatened. Utilize that fear to live wildly pleasurable and resilient lives.

Grieve in mass: Mental “health” as it is called today cannot be achieved “individually”. The most efficient forms of resilience are achieved in community. Grief is one of the primary emotions today and increasingly in the future. It was when our collective hygiene broke free from the conventions of “civilized” culture that our survival ability was unlocked. Society is the origin and antidote of our world’s problems.

Become hedonists: Reject the transcendent and experience pleasure now with as many people as you can ethically manage. This will sustain you. Practice safer sex, consent and find the transformative yes. Seeking out transformative pleasure that brings multiple parties to their respective edge is the same act of negotiation and curiosity required to reorient the world. Take no bullshit, seduce your enemies, seduce your friends, honor their boundaries, take really good care of them.

Hold your worlds together with compassion, forgiveness and fortitude: We are in a wounded age where stress is the driver of loss. It makes people say and do things they regret. Forgive them. Love them through their woundedness. The great losses to come far outweigh the wounds of today. It will take your world’s everyone, all the people you have access to, to change your world. That is your responsibility. Be Strong.

Scientifically study meditation for the deep states of concentration and purification it allows: This was how our world transformed. We realized that meditation held a universal key and it was not mindfulness alone but what mindfulness allows: deep states of unification. It was when we trained in this as whole micro-societies that we began our rapid developmental accelerations discovering breakthroughs in every discipline. The human body and our societies are capable of radical clarity, relaxation, and einmotional processing.

Get Organized, Seize the Imagination & Build worlds: This is the most important thing. You have to out organize the great unraveling and those who perpetuate it. We have to popularize visions that will turn the tide. Unfortunately, logic and decency will not prevail. Instead you have to practice your vision for the future loudly. Scream it, whisper it, overwhelm the world with it. Offensively push your vision’s integrity and replication until it is a diamond, push it deeper and further than any other meme. Be ruthless combating memetic degrade, reflexively respond to every cultural variation, make yourselves universalish. Do this in groups, keep them tight, keep them focused, keep them moving, keep them creative. Build together.

Keep your ethical principles pristine: We are evolving animals. The tendency is to love those who are familiar, and hate those who involuntarily force us to change or expand. Abandon unethical behavior, purify your communities of practice from greed, hatred and delusion. Without this you won’t survive.

We will leave coded, public messages. To follow me check out: @trans.incarnate. #transincarnate, #transtemporal and variants of this. May you be as resilient as your path demands and be certain, the path is extraordinarily demanding. And remember One Planet, One Solidarity, One Survival. I’ll see you soon. Image Description: Figure with shaved head and beard, eyes closed and head turned toward left shoulder. Figure is sits draped in bright red scarf with vertical lines, body is barely visible but a small opening reveals the chest and abdomen. Figure sits in the middle of a field with tall grass and trees in the background with a blue sky above. Above the figure is a complex jagged shape of colors forming warped triangles which are twice the height and width of the figure.

Age 33.

Armando Davila is a leader in the arts, education, politics, culture, policy, and the realm of ideas with a demonstrated and vast history of working in the civic & social domains. He teaches youth and adults dance, and has designed and led workshops around leadership, environmental action, collaboration, and transformative community practices. Armando is a dedicated meditation practitioner while also leading political campaigns and organizing conferences, concerts and art shows. https://armandodavila.com

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sol1056 · 7 years

Link

I can’t seem to reblog the response directly, so I’m just linking to it. All of @aquaburst07′s comment is worth reading, but I’m replying to this part in particular:

I still think [GoLion] was an attempt to cash in on what Gundam [did] a million times better, along with another attempt to shock the audience into thinking it is mature and edgy, but it still does show how the people behind that series see war. In addition to that, it’s less about defeating the Galra, but more about Altea defending themselves from the Galra.

Thanks to its numerous reboots and long history, Gundam is a really interesting comparison-point. So with all apologies to @nelsonbrandela‘s attempt to watch all the series, here’s a severely truncated summary of how empire is presented across a sampling of Gundam series over the past 30+ years.

First generation gundam (UC), broadcast from 1979 with continuations and sequels through the late 80s. The UC continuum has a strong anti-war sentiment, thanks to Tomino’s childhood during the war. It establishes the basic components: earth, space colonies, and revolution. Its protagonist is both Earth-born and implied Japanese ethnicity, standing in as the Everyman character, fighting the rebels. As I recall, pacifism doesn’t loom quite as large over this story, and the focus is more on the cost of war. (Also, the death rate is brutal.)

In the 90s, we got the AC timeline (Wing). Again, earth, space colonies, revolution. But in reflection of changing political sentiment, Wing flips a few things. Now the ethnically-Japanese everyman protagonist is one of the rebels, from a space colony, and earth is the antagonist. The politics also gets muddier, with a debate about the role of pacifism.

Just to compare the first two major timelines and the political and economic atmosphere at the time of their airings: the first timeline ran during a period of massive economic and cultural productivity for Japan. There was a sense of ‘we produce, others consume, and what do we get for that’, coupled with tensions among the five tigers in terms of economic power, bolstered by US nuclear support. Ergo, the theme of a once-great power now getting trampled by the political/military might of what had once been a subjugated colony.

In contrast, Wing was broadcast after the bubble popped, and Japan hit hard times. Now the everyman protagonist could be an outright aggressor, fighting back against crushing (economic) defeat. Keep in mind, too, that as Japan’s economy plummeted, the American economy was experiencing growth like it hadn’t seen since the end of WWII. The tables had effectively turned, from ‘we can outdo our previous overlords’ to ‘we are losing the (economic) war and being ground under someone’s heel’.

And then onto the CE timeline and SEED, broadcast in 2002-3, The (again, ethnically Japanese) protagonist doesn’t just live on a space colony. His colony is both explicitly identified as Japanese, and pacifist, and neutral. Remember, it had only been a year since 9/11, and the US was chest-thumping for war. Japan’s position was basically, hey, Article 9, people (look it up). Where the UC and AC timelines center their POV on one side or the other of rebellion/war, the CE timeline places the POV as a pacifist outsider.

By 2008, we get Gundam 00, which iirc was also the first major Gundam series whose core protagonist (Setsuna) was not ethnically Japanese. (He’s not even much of an everyman; that POV is provided by another character.) 00 was directly influenced by the personal experiences of animators who’d provided JSDF support to the war in Afghanistan, and their fingerprints are all over the first season of 00. No space colonies here; the factions are both muddier and more pointed in reference to the political climate of the late aughts; the US is canonically one among several superpowers looking to colonize, meddle, extract resources, and then destroy in their wake. It’s possibly among the most immediately-relevant of any of the Gundam series. (It’s also the first time I could ever recall seeing a Gundam character showing explicit, consistent indications of PTSD.)

And most recent is the PD timeline, with Iron-Blooded Orphans. We’re back to space colonies, this time on Mars, but instead of the colonies producing resources that Earth consumes, the colonies are dependent on Earth to provide. (A flip of the colonial position in AC/Wing, where the colonies argued Earth was sucking them dry.) Our protagonist is implied Japanese, and a rebel, fighting to gain resources denied by superpowers. It’s a curious parallel to the rising debates about Article 9 and a growing undercurrent of dissatisfaction with pacifism as a viable political position. In a way, one of the arguments is that this imposed pacifist neutrality is blocking Japan from achieving equal standing among the world’s powers. Gundam just takes that current political atmosphere, maps colony and overlord to it, and crafts a story from the backdrop.

It’s important to remember that colonialism has variations; the economic version most common today is neo-colonialism, which uses capitalism and globalization (cultural imperialism) to hold power over developing countries. Think World Bank or the IMF: if you want loans for development, you must enact the following policies in your own autonomous state. Classic imperialism is the use of direct military control (ie Japan’s occupation of its neighbors or the American occupation of Japan), while hegemonic colonialism uses indirect political control (ie US control of Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, etc).

Coming back around to VLD, it’s effectively skipped a whole lot of development in (and representations of) empire. That’s a big part of why it feels so naive and shallow to me. VLD reboots a story whose core understanding of empire was rooted in pure defense against an aggressive upstart; the implication was that if Voltron were unleashed, there would be no contest. Hence, it had to be held in check by a morality that defined it as ‘for defense only’ (much like the perception of the JSDF, and Japan itself).

But changing the Paladins’ efforts to offensive maneuvers hollows out that original paradigm. In the absence of that morality of pacifism and self-defense, there are no brakes on Voltron, so the Galran empire must be made supremely overwhelming, or else the story would be over as soon as Voltron formed. And that means the dynamic -- the discussion -- of ‘empire’ has changed, yet none of this is reflected in the VLD reboot.

The most we’ve gotten is a classic imperialism: military occupation, designed to drain resources in a strictly-controlled one-way consumption from colonized to colonizer. Yet military occupations are massive efforts. There’s a reason they’ve been mostly tossed aside in favor of neo-colonialism, where control of resources keeps the colonized in check, rather than actual boots on the ground. Frankly, given the model VLD has presented, the Galran empire would have to have a gajillion bots to control every outpost and far-flung galaxy in such a micromanaging imperial style. (Which makes it even more stupid that you can overthrow a single base just by shutting down power. Why is it Voltron’s the first one to think of doing this? I strongly dislike stories that only know how to make the heroes seem smart by making everyone else be stupid.)

Related to that, it’s possible Lotor’s idea of colonial agency isn’t meant as a federation of planets/systems, but as a hegemonic colonialism akin to the current American empire. Puerto Rico has self-rule, after all, excepting that (like Washington DC) it is still ultimately voiceless when it comes to its own fate, against decisions by the US Congress. I just don’t know if the EPs/writers have enough savvy to catch onto the fact that ‘self-rule’ doesn’t automatically mean true agency, or even having a voice.

Furthermore, when you scale up empire to the level of planetary control (much like the US/EU/UK western juggernaut) -- let alone galactic control -- there’s a huge cultural impact. We should see regular civilians (including prisoners) dressed in Galran styles and colors; their food, architecture, fashion, historical records, whatever -- everything should be Galran or Galran-influenced. That cultural power should be everywhere, undeniable, unavoidable. That’s the core of neo-colonialism. You no longer expend your own resources controlling every last bit of the colonized. Instead, you hold out your (superior) culture and make the colonized jump to gain capital, whether material, economic, or cultural.

And the most important aspect of that is that empire doesn’t end just because the occupation has -- this is possibly Japan’s greatest lesson (and biggest struggle) after what really just amounted to only about five years of occupation. It’s that having been colonized, the effects last for decades. Centuries, even. The oppressor is no longer omnipresent, but the oppressed continue in the same patterns, chasing after the oppressor.

Americans don’t just lack an understanding of direct warfare, we’ve also conveniently blocked out, dismissed, or outright silenced any of our marginal communities who could show us the impact of our imperial control. And not just on external lands/people, but on our own peoples. Throughout our history, we have effectively treated our Black, LGBT, Hispanic, and Indigenous communities as subaltern colonized classes, if we didn’t just try to exterminate them utterly. Whether classic imperialism, hegemonic control, or capitalist neo-colonialism, we’ve done them all, and we’ve done them all to our own citizens. That’s an uncomfortable truth for a lot of people, especially those who continue to benefit from those systems.

So it doesn’t surprise me that American writers be clueless, at first. It just pisses me off that they don’t even seem to be interested in understanding the cultural and moral arguments in the source material or its source culture.

Tangentially, I saw a response elsewhere on the various downstream threads about how the US can’t (or shouldn’t, it wasn’t clear) be compared to the Galra, who had eradicated an entire people, leaving only two overlooked survivors. I direct you to the histories of indigenous peoples in America. If you think the US Govt wouldn’t have cheered at the thought of complete and total genocide of every single indigenous person in US territory (and we did put a damn lot of effort and time into trying to achieve it), I suggest you are long overdue for learning about America’s blood-soaked history.

What indigenous cultures remain in the US are absolutely in spite of the US Govt, and not because of it.

#voltron legendary defender #voltron meta #gundam #went long again #sol thinks about stuff

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meditationadvise · 6 years

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Wednesday`s Taurus New Moon Is Also A Supermoon: Here`s How To Channel Its Practical Magic

As the celebrity indication of the sensual Bull, earthy Taurus grounds us in what is moral as well as reasonable. There's a factor standard suitables like 'do unto others' have stuck about through the centuries. As an effective supermoon, the Taurus new moon is a lunar lift that brings a much-needed dosage of peace of mind back to the globe As Well As a generous sprinkling of practical magic.

Where has your life become excessively complicated? Damage those unwieldy plans back down to the fundamentals. Take notice of timetables, timelines, as well as spending plans, making certain you have actually obtained a solid structure built. Taurus is the very first of the planet signs, so believe of this new moon as a prompt to stabilize initiatives on the first stage. As soon as that's managed, you could build as high as you want! (Need a little additional aid growing your feet back on terra firma? Attempt our directed meditation for Taurus period.)

Remember, there's no thrill to develop or remodel Rome simply yet: Slow down and stable Taurus would certainly favor we play the lengthy game and get to our objectives with integrity and also high quality in check.

Pragmatic and efficient, the Taurus brand-new moon helps us whip our lives right into form. Are we consuming fresh, healthy and balanced food? Managing our time accordingly so we aren't total anxiety baskets? Doing our deal with integrity so we can enjoy the luscious results we produce? There's an additional 'green' that this new moon is interested in also, given that budgeting falls under Taurus' domain.

There's no time at all like the present to phone that financial advisor in order to help ensure that we don't burn through every cent we earn. Given that Taurus additionally rules functional luxury and economic security, make a few desires towards abundance-- and after that take concrete actions to start developing that savings by gaining As Well As saving extra. This natural Taurus brand-new moon advises us to value the natural deposits around us as well. Obtain back into an eco-chic groove.

New moons are sparks that light a fire, so circle November 4 on your schedule, the date of the matching full moon in Taurus. That's when we'll gain the harvest of what we grow this week.

Here are some tips to optimize the mojo of the relentless Bull and also harness the energy of the Taurus brand-new moon. (Attempt these new moon and complete moon rituals for an extra thorough activation.)

1. Make some 'micro-resolutions.'

Taurus is an animal of routine, and while this can make us incredibly relentless, it could additionally disclose where we're stuck in a rut. Inning accordance with the book Small Move, Big Change, making 'micro-resolutions'-- instead of sweeping pledges that quickly slow-- can really produce long-term shifts. Instead compared to vow to obtain into awesome form for summertime, produce the micro-resolution of packing your sneakers in your bag or walking around the block. The seismic change is triggered by making this tiny initiative, which develops a snowball impact in the long run.

2. Get your green thumb on.

While the dazzling produce screens at Whole Foods create a fascinating walkabout, a lot of us have little clue what it required to collect those delicious and also edible jewels. As well as while it's great to get organic, several of us may be far gotten rid of from the idea of sticking our hands in the pesticide-free soil, planting heirloom seeds, sprinkling the plant, and also supporting it to full harvest. This earthy Taurus new moon sends an ethical nod to the food manufacturers of the world, motivating us to 'obtain our farmer on' in some little method. While several of us may have sun-drenched acres at our disposal, others may have just a little windowsill and an expand light to collaborate with. Plant just what you can, be it a huge bed of Swiss chard or a pot of rosemary. We enjoy guide The Dirt Cure by Dr. Maya Shetreat-Klein for ideas on attaching with the resource of your food.

On that keep in mind, according to The Cravings Task, 925 million people on earth do not have enough to eat. Growing food is an offering of gratefulness to Environment for loading our plates every day. Growing in her soil is an act of wealth, no matter whether your initiatives generate a bumper plant or a few askew (but tasty) sprouts.

3. Strike your neighborhood farmers market.

During Taurus season, we are influenced to consume just what's in period given that the initial of springtime's harvest is beginning to turn up all around us. The progressively prominent farm-to-table movement has more than simply a hip, freshness aspect as its allure. Food that's plucked directly from the vine is chock-full of live enzymes that assist us to absorb and also metabolize food. Slicing a fresh chosen tomato over a summer season salad? Yum. For those that cannot obtain that eco-friendly thumb going, begin a regular practice of purchasing at your farmers market or sign up for a CSA so you can have fresh seasonal fruit and vegetables provided every week from a neighborhood farm.

4. Offer your throat chakra a tune-up.

Taurus guidelines the throat, and this brand-new moon helps us totally free our voices. It's time to open our throat chakras as well as make it in a deliberate way. Chanting-- which includes repeating a phrase or concept with conscious breath job-- is both calming and also energizing and has been shown to enhance immunity as well as reduce anxiety and anxiety. Several yoga exercise and also meditation workshops offer shouting. Get your mat, enter the lotus placement, and also open that path with some 'om namah shivayas.'

Humming can likewise produce an introspective and also calming vibration that energizes the body. You may also take a look at the technique of 'toning' as well as sound recovery, as certain tones are believed to recover and progress intents. A balanced throat chakra allows us to clearly express our truths and live from a place of free will as well as creativity. Who doesn't want a piece of that?

P. S. Blue is the shade related to the throat chakra. If you wish to deal with crystals and also gemstones to turn on or recover yours, attempt these: sodalite, kyanite, moonstone, aquamarine, blue-green, or sapphire.

5. Make some noise.

If that seems a little bit as well 'woo-woo' for your blood, right here's an uneducated prescription: Visit the nearby karaoke bar or go for an exclusive drive in your auto as well as belt out some ballads. As you take a breath deeply, preparing to unleash your preferred power-parts from Beyoncé's 'Lemonade,' you're giving your lungs an exercise and releasing up that throat chakra, creating much of the same results as chanting. That cares if you can not maintain a song? You could in fact learn how to with some practice.

6. Use your voice for a cause.

Whether it's in demonstration or a rallying cry, the power of your words could aid recover the globe. The present state of political events between the United States as well as North Korea is simply one of several instances that could use some stabilizing. Taurus also rules funds AND our personal worths, so put your loan where your precepts are, probably by contributing to a reason. The Taurus brand-new moon advises us: Don't underestimate your personal impact. As anthropologist Margaret Mead said, 'Never doubt that a little team of caring, devoted people can transform the world. It is the only point that ever has.'

7. Invest in practical luxury.

Ruled by sensuous, decadent Venus, Taurus additionally loves life's better things. There's no denying it: Luxury goods have an unique quality to them. The craftsmanship that enters into their creation is human potential at its finest-- the living outcome of some divinely motivated mastermind at job. Having a piece of luxury brings an abundant and unique dimension to our lives. While this is not about being a trend junkie or breaking the bank, invest in one deluxe product under the light of this new moon.

For those on a tighter budget, this can be something as tiny as tasting a delicious French truffle from the premium delicious chocolate shop. For others it might indicate investing in a trademark item, like a skillfully crafted handbag or an extraordinary cooking area device. Remember: Taurus is about practicality. This purchase must be something that will be cherished however also made use of regularly, bringing a benefit hit of joy whenever it is utilized.

8. Embrace the little things.

Let's admit it-- we all SAY we want stability, yet we'll chuck it for a bit of exhilaration, turning our lives upside-down. Earthy Taurus policies security, so at this new moon, look where you can bring magic to the ordinary-- or even monotony! Appreciate the touch and also feel of fabric, the scent of someone's skin, a gorgeous track. It depends on YOU to maintain life fascinating, so find methods to delight in life's little points-- a Taurus specialty.

#meditation #meditation music #yoga

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