We’re Doing An Egg Drop In Class— I Think My Ideas Are Pretty Revolutionary

visored longwing harpies & the hall of faces

I did say there was no exclusive global culture on Siren shared by humans of a certain body type, and I lied, because there is One.

The early settlers on Siren were the unaltered human workforce of a certain megacorporation. While an almost unlimited budget was poured into the dodgy gene programs, since that was why they chose to settle a planet so far out of the reach of The Authorities, everything else was done pretty cheaply, including the settling itself. In order to map out their new home planet, incredibly cheap mass-produced aircraft were used by pilots. These aircraft could be made quickly and easily at the settlement site because they lacked a flight computer or any real sensors - or any equipment at all in the cockpit. Rather than a multitude of different equipment loadouts on an aircraft that would take time and effort to swap out or maintain, the pilots instead used these visors which were universally compatible with the one-size-fits-all aircraft. It's kind of like how it's easier to just carry a phone around with a calculator app than it is to carry a phone and a calculator, even if the phone app calculator experience sucks by comparison.

The visors were the real expensive kit, each custom built to a pilot's exact needs and flight style, and they were built to last. the aircraft fell apart in the following centuries but the visors remained, hyperlight plastic powered by the planet's native star, and something interesting happened. The remains of the first settlement were largely inaccessible to anyone but longwing harpies, and these harpies had the right head shape to fit the visors. Many of the pilots had filled their visors with video and photo files from home, from Earth, like a worker decorating his cubicle with photos of his family. Some had been decorated on the outside, as well, resembling birds. The harpies that found the visors obviously tried to use them. They found themselves experiencing visions of strange worlds, recordings of long-dead pilots and ATC, and found that each visor can interface with every other one, no matter how far apart. Each visor came with its own callsign, its own name, which has remained for thousands of years - and because of this, each visor is considered by the cultures of Siren to be a named character with a distinct personality (eg. the swan visor was cygnus2, it is known now as Signastoo)

I keep posting the map and it needs to be redrawn but essentially every red triangle is an ancient telecomm tower. These became the only remaining waypoints on the visors' HUD and mapping software, meaning that 1. a true global culture could emerge, with longwings gathering at these sites, and 2. visored longwings became the gold standard for navigation on Siren. In a world that is basically just water, that's a big deal.

There exist only a few thousand visors (about 3k I'd say). The unused visors are kept in the Hall of Faces, the ancient aviation bay at the first settlement in West. Because of how water levels and land structures have changed over the years, this building exists on a mesa that rises another few thousand feet out of the water, with sheer sides, and is utterly inaccessible to anyone but a longwing harpy. When a visored harpy dies, the visor is returned here. If you want to claim a visor, you need to hold an interview with one of the elders at the site, who will test you rigorously to see if you can inhabit the character of one of the visors. If not, too bad. If you do get it, it's yours until either you die or you do something considered 'out of character' for the wearer of that particular visor. It is DEEPLY discouraged to steal a visor off anyone because it would be largely impossible, given how they all can communicate (imagine a gigantic worldwide discord server where the location & name of every person is known at all times... the drama is likely insane but at least if someone steals a visor, everyone will know about it)

not every longwing desires a visor because it comes with a lot of responsibility alongside its automatic prestige, and you can't really give it up once you have it. also there's always the possibility of being diagnosed with a super annoying, glitchy, or hated visor character lol. but among the roughly 2700 visored harpies on Siren there does exist a global culture exclusive to them. they chat to one another long-distance, engage in closed-practice ceremonies where they all get high and look at videos of Earth, and essentially become a class outside the mundanity of normal life on Siren. to the rest of the population, they basically become telepathic wizards

Terwyef's visor (first pic) is called Scrappercharlee and is one of the more common models, tho it has been decorated over the years with extra bits. Scrappercharlee is a bit busted and half the HUD is missing. Miakef's visor (second pic) Signastoo is one of the very fancy and well-known ones, it's shaped like a swan's head and likely belonged to a high-ranking pilot who could afford a bit of frippery and showmanship back in the day. Birds do not exist on Siren and harpies are mammals so the swan itself is symbolically meaningless, but the bird-style visors introduce the idea of 'a bird' in the abstract, and this has been imbued with its own form of meaning by harpies.

Drew some of my ocs yayy

the spirit is unwilling and the flesh it feels not so good also

i hate how you get desensitized to the cool stuff in your WIP if you've been writing it for a long time so when you read back over it you're like "this isn't as cool as i thought :(" but it still is! you just read it too many times

i love it when moths are shaped like this and rthen you get them in a glass to let them outside and you see them from underneath and they look like this

If you think about it…. the acronym KYS isn’t saying “kill yourself,” it’s saying Kill Your Self. Three words. As in, kill the concept of the “Self” - your consciousness’s perception that it is an individual, that it has one meaningful isolated identity that is “you,” that it is not but a droplet in the grand ocean of interconnected souls of all living beings in this universe. I think this is beautiful. Embrace ego death and become one with everything. Everyone should KYS

a little drawing of one of my ocs I'm pretty proud of. he doesn't have much lore so far lol.

Senshi and Uncle Iroh would be such good friends guys can you imagine

Nature really went off with sperm whales. A 70-ton predator with teeth the size of a banana but it only eats squishy prey that it doesn’t even chew, it just schlorps them down whole like a vacuum cleaner. Big giant fat head full of goop. Tiniest fins in the world. Strong enough to smash a ship to pieces and smart enough to figure out how to do so but its first line of defense is just to shit everywhere. Possibly the most complex language in the animal kingdom and it creates sounds by blowing air through its internal right nostril (it uses the left one to breathe) into its giant fat head. It’s the loudest animal on the planet and might have the capability to create a beam of sound so loud it can shake your organs apart but they don’t seem to use that to hunt or fight. They’re highly flammable. We used them to make candles.

process of drawing an OC: - you design them - you get attached to them - their hair gets bigger without you realizing it