T-shirt That Says ‘I LOVE BEING ALONE IN QUIET DARK PLACES.’ On The Front And ‘I AM NOT A FUNGUS.’

the need to talk about the characters vs the fear that all of my analysis is just empty prose and surface level understanding

was just thinking about how Narinder probably hasnt experienced rain in centuries and Heket thought she never would again. fictional tragic siblings...

bonus leshy- because u know his ass would be out there

first artfight attack for @ardienothesieno of their character Ashes from Above!

art is about spending an embarrassing amount of time trying to get something to look right giving up and then moving on to do it slightly better next time. at some point if you're an exhibitionist you then post it for internet strangers to look at.

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.

it hurts the lord when you listen to lustful, violent music. so crank that shit UP

can't today. busy.

look at this wonderful gif of scallops getting scared and scattering like a flock pigeons

the quality on this got real crunched, but have a pebbs