Latest Posts by enbylvania65000 - Page 6
Ok, let’s do this once more.
Ok, last year was… chaotic as no one needs to recall it. So the project was kinda outrunned to allow many things to be resolved. This year I want to restart it and make a real advancement. So here we go:
For everyone who may feel interested:
I am going to recruit voluntarees from all the available sides, sites and whoever may want to get in the way for an awareness campaign The objective of the campaign is to create a series of fan-based works with the object of serve as an educational approach of irl consensual incest (Consanguinamory, per se)
The works will be around known “problematic ships” of shipcest type so we can use the shipped characters as a way to explain the true whereabouts of how consanguinamory works. The facts and the myths and their inner realities
The works will be compiled in a fanzine and the fanzine will be shared thru web media
Whoever may be interested, can contact me so I can begin to finish the main list of participants. I’ll be clarifying doubts and comments around the campaign.
felt inspired to make this after reading some of the comments on my post about liking history
The Late Rodentocene: 20 million years post-establishment
Ain't No Passing Craze: The Great Ecatorian Desert
The continent of Ecatoria is a lush, warm tropical region, fed and nourished by rainfall from the South Ecatorian Sea. But not all of it is drizzled with a constant supply of precipitation: west of the mid-Ecatorian mountain ranges lies an expanse of land shielded from storms and moisture, and thus is dry and arid: the Great Ecatorian Desert, the largest desert on HP-02017 in the Late Rodentocene.
It is a hot afternoon in the Ecatorian Desert, and Alpha shines scorchingly overhead. On the western horizon Beta slowly begins to set, as the two suns are now separated by half a day: the coming of spring. But while elsewhere on Ecatoria spring would be mild and rainy, here in the Ecatorian Desert the climate is scorching in the day and chilling in the night: and despite this conditions some specialized organisms are able to eke out an existence in this inhospitable land.
A dark shadow glides overhead: a predatory ratbat, scouring from the skies above for any small creature down below. Though a rodent, this flying hunter is akin to a hawk, having adapted tremendously keen eyesight to home in on any movement down below on ground level. Down below, there is nothing but an expanse of sand and dry grass for miles, punctuated only by occasional towering plants, somewhat resembling cacti but in truth are highly-derived grass. Even the plants of this seeded world have begun evolving to fit new niches, not merely a green background in a planet of animals, but themselves competitors in the evolutionary race.
The ratbat-of-prey spots movement down below and circles around to zero in on its target. However, it quickly breaks off the hunt and soars off in search for another, easier meal: its rejected quarry is far too big to tackle. A desert-dwelling descendant of the cavybaras, it is nearly the size of its ancestor and simply too large for the ratbat to carry off, and so the predator wisely departs, while the lumbering beast below briefly watches the departing figure in curiosity, gives a huffing snort of confusion, and then proceeds on its way.
The creature in question is a direct descendant of the cavybaras, that has evolved modified extensions of its lower incisors that grow outward of its mouth, forming tusks which it uses in digging for food and for self-defense. Known as the desert bumbaa (Scrofacricetus hakunae), it is one of the several species of the genus Scrofacricetus, with its other cousins having adapted to different biomes, such as the forest bumbaa (S. matatai) and the plains bumbaa (S. porcius), which thrive in other regions of Ecatoria. The desert bumbaa differes from its cousins by its larger ears and thinner, sparser coat, which helps it lose heat in the arid climate.
The desert bumbaa is an omnivore, feeding mostly on tough shrubs and cacti-analogues in the desert. However, it also greatly relishes insects, many of which nest in burrows or underneath rocks and logs, and so the bumbaa puts its tusks to great use to dig up an abundance of bugs, overturning driftwood and uprooting plants to get at its prize. And its messy eating habits attract the attention of another desert dweller, the banded meerca (Paramustelamys timonii), a small, insectivorous ferrat that has developed a bizarre, and mutualistic, relationship with the bumbaa.
While fond of feasting on bugs, the desert bumbaa itself is plagued by insects of a nastier kind: wingless, bloodsucking flies that have converged with ticks and fleas as external parasites of mammalian hosts. These bugs cause the bumbaa great discomfort, but that is when the meerca comes to the rescue: an avid insectivore, it not only feeds upon the escaping leftovers of bumbaas while they raid insect nests, but also plucks the pests off the bumbaa's thick hide, offering them relief. The bumbaas have learned to tolerate and even welcome their presence, actively seeking them out and laying down to be groomed from parasites, while the meercas follow bumbaas around to be led to insect nests which the bumbaas then dig up, allowing the tiny meercas to share access to a buffet of bugs otherwise out of their reach.
Another benefit the meercas gain from the company of their lumbering companion is protection from predators: and indeed, there is a specialized predator prowling this dessicated wasteland: the dwarf hamyena (Microcutamys minimus). Smaller than many of its other relatives across Ecatoria but no less a deadly hunter, this badger-sized predator is descended from the hammibals of ten million years prior, and specializes on small rodents- including meercas. However, a full-grown bumbaa is too much for them to handle, their sharp tusks potentially being wielded with lethal force: as such, as long as the bumbaas are around, the meercas are safe from their small but fearsome enemy.
Other rodents also thrive in the Ecatorian Desert: furbils and jerryboas, ever present throughout the planet in all their diversity, exist in numerous forms throughout the desert landscape, feeding on insects, seeds and cactus-analogues, which they chew through their tough outer skin to reach the water-rich tissues inside. Their large ears and long tails act as heat sinks to lose excess heat, while their pale fur reflects heat and camouflages them in the light-colored sandy soil.
These tiny rodents, in turn, form a major part of the diet of the desert's primary aerial hunter, the masked batzzard (Nyctaquilus aridus). With a wingspan of about four feet, this desert ratbat circles the daytime sky, seeking out small prey such as jerryboas, furbils and meercas, which it swoops down onto, pounces on with its wing claws, and dispatches with a bite from its sharp, stabbing incisors. Hooked talons on its forelimbs ensure that prey is unable to easily escape, attacking its targets with an unusual hunting strike partly like a hawk, and partly like a cat. While live bumbaas are far too big to deal with, dead ones certainly aren't off the menu, and groups of batzzards may occasionally congregate at a carcass, where, due to their normally solitary lifestyle, nearly all their social interaction takes place, such as courtship, mating and dominance posturing.
Even in this harsh, dry landscape, life on HP-02017 has found a way. A wide, diverse collection of life thrives in this barren wilderness, despite its challenges --competing, coexisting, and even cooperating with one another, to overcome the harsh and unforgiving trials of life in the Great Ecatorian Desert.
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The Late Rodentocene: 20 million years post-establishment
Lake It or Leave It: The Great Lakes of Nodera
It is early morning on the continent of Nodera. The twin suns bathe the landscape in a warm orange glow, as they rise together side-by-side on the eastern horizon, closer together in the sky than any other time of the year: midwinter.
The morning light casts its glow upon a tranquil scene near the shores of an enormous aquatic landscape: the Great Lakes of Nodera. The largest inland body of water on the surface of HP-02017, the Great Lakes connect to the sea by a river system opening out to the Centralic Ocean, and is comprised of a system of several interconnnected bodies of water, gouged into the landscape by the shifting tectonics of Nodera and filled up with water by the action of erosion and precipitation ofver the course of countless millenia.
In this tranquil lanlocked lake several signs of life begin to stir in the cool morning breeze, as the residents of the water's edge awaken to begin their day. On the grassy banks, a large, beaver-sized rodent begins to amble about in search of food, its bold stripes serving as a warning to potential predators of its potent defense mechanism, while up above in the sky, soar several winged figures: ones that from a distance one would suppose to be birds -- until they remembered that on this planet, there were no birds at all.
It has been another 10 million years since we last explored the diversity of this planet's evolution, and from those humble creatures of the Middle Rodentocene strange new forms have emerged. Strange new forms that on a surface view uncannily resemble the familiarity of Earth's fauna, but upon a closer look are revealed to be an entirely different creature, molded from their ancestors by the forces of evolution in an ever-changing world.
The Great Lakes of Nodera have been filled by a diverse ecosystem of aquatic life, such as forests of water plants which become home to freshwater shrish: descendants of krill that have become analogues of the fish on Earth and now have colonized this inland body of water as well. Some of them migrated upriver to spawn, found the lakes, and ultimately came to permanently settle there, becoming a part of the local ecosystem-- and a veritable food source for the descendants of the planet's first aquatic hamster, the pondrats (Aquacricetus spp.)
Ten million years have done wonders on the humble pondrat, as it comes to dominate aquatic niches throughout the lake systems. One of the more basal and populous of these are the smellcastors (Castorocricetus spp.), a group of amphibious omnivores that forage for shrish, mollusks and water plants. They are roughly the size of Earth beavers and quite closely resemble them too, save for one conspicuous feature: lacking the beaver's paddle-like tail, or indeed any tail at all, they instead propel themselves through the water with webbed, flipper-like hind feet. Smellcastors are so called for their defensive tactic of spraying an overpowering scent from modified anal musk glands that can seriously irritate a predator's sensitive nose: their bold markings are warnings of their ability, and many predators quickly learn to leave them alone.
Other descendants of the pondrat that make a living in these waters include the lutrons (Lutracricetus spp.), which are smaller and more slender than their striped and smelly cousin and spend far more time in the water, pursuing shrish with grace and agility and seldom emerging onto dry land, where their flippered hind feet make them awkward and clumsy waddlers. Another relative is the pug-billed ratypus (Brachycephalomys platypoides), a bottom-feeding pondrat with a distinctive squashed-in face and wide, sagging lips and cheeks. Long whiskers help probe for small invertebrates in the muddy pond bottom, which the ratypus slurps into its mouth and stores in its cheeks while it swims, surfacing every few minutes to breathe, chew and swallow.
And the life on the lake system isn't limited to just pondrats: in the resource-rich environments of the Great Lakes other lineages have thrived as well. The hamtelopes, specifically the long-legged ratzelles (Cervicricetus spp.), have put their elongated limbs to good use to take advantage of soft water plants growing in the shallows, becoming lanky waders that spend much of their time in knee-high water feasting on the abundance of water plants. Meanwhile, on a higher rung of the food chain lurk the searets (Lutrodiromys spp.): large aquatic ferrats that hunt like crocodiles, ambushing prey like wading hamtelopes and pondrats while swimming half-submerged, with the help of powerful crushing jaws that can drag prey underwater to drown.
But of greater interest are the vaguely-avian flyers that congregate in the skies above the Great Lakes: the ratbats (family Nyctocricetidae). Descended from the flittering jazzhand of ten million years prior, they have webbed wings of skin like bats, and fly in the daytime like birds, but are neither: like all other vertebrates in this planet, they are hamsters, albeit ones that through eons of evolution now barely resemble the familiar chubby rodent that comes to mind with this name.
The clapping, insect-seizing motions of the jazzhand have given rise to active powered flight in the ratbats, with their webbed hands merging with their patagia and becoming a true, functional wing. Two of their fingers have lengthened into supports for their wings, while the other two fingers bear large claws and toe pads, and are used for walking quadrupedally on the ground, with the wing fingers flexible enough to fold out of the way when walking and keeping them from dragging their delicate wings on the ground.
One of the most common ratbats seen in the skies around the Great Lakes is the squift (Nyctocricetus spp.), an agile insectivore that specialized to feast on the abundance of flying insects that breed and nest in water. Swarms of them congregate above the lake's surface during the breeding season, and the squifts are never far behind, darting acrobatically through the swarm to snatch up insects midair. Its close cousin, the duskflapper (Pteromys spp.) has a similar lifestyle, but instead emerges at dawn, dusk and Beta-twilight, feeding on the buffet of flying insects active at this time, and thus avoiding competition with its diurnal relative.
Ratbats have reached a massive amount of diversity since they first achieved powered flight, and among the hundreds of species living in this time are a wide array of different niches: their ranks including not only insectivores but also seed-eaters, nectar-feeders, and even predators of small ground rodents. But most notable are the shrishers (Piscivenatomys spp.), large plunge-divers with wingspans of almost six feet, and are the biggest flyers of the Late Rodentocene. They specialize on feeding on shrish, and thus have long snouts and multi-cusped molars, allowing them a good hold of their slippery prey, and not content to snatch them from the surface, dive in the water like gannets to seize their prey underwater before bursting back into the skies with their meal in tow. Specialized oil glands on their skin keep their fur water repellant, and so shrishers are commonly seen vainly preening themselves constantly, to keep their fur all greased up and resistant to sogginess when diving after their aquatic prey.
The Great Lakes of Nodera, like many isolated ecosystems, has become a sanctuary for unique and endemic lifeforms, and the unusual hamsters that have adapted to live in an aquatic environment. But their isolation is not to last: as East Nodera gradually breaks away from West Nodera with the drifting tectonics, the Great Lakes will soon be opened up to the sea- and with it, the aquatic hamsters, in the distant future, soon find themselves in a vast new body of water ripe for the taking: the Centralic Ocean itself.
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The Late Rodentocene: 20 million years post-establishment
Riffing the Reefs: Marine Life of the Late Rodentocene
HP-02017 is easily thought of as a planet of hamsters, but other life also thrives. The ecosystem's accessory organisms released onto the planet have since formed ecosystems of their own, equally players in the game of life as the hamsters are, and nowhere is this more evident than the shallow seas of the Late Rodentocene.
At first glance, the reefs that grow in the sunlit shallows of the planet's seas look incredibly like those of our own. Forests of algae and kelp grow in the rocks close to shore, as well as corals of all shapes and sizes that sprout in great masses, forming reefs that serve as a shelter for small, colorful sea creatures that thrive in abundance. Yet despite its initial familiarity, the marine biomes of HP-02017 are anything but: its similarities are superficial, and its creatures are something else entirely.
Only a choice few organisms were seeded into the seas: small mollusks such as sea snails and bivalves, as well as sponges and corals, which at first were from but a small collection that have since diversified into a dazzling array. But with so few creatures, and so many empty niches, it didn't take long for the choice few colonists to explode into a diversity rivalling that of Earth's oceans.
Corals, which reproduced via free-swimming planktonic larvae, have filled the empty spaces of their relatives the cnidarians, with some forms becoming tentacled stinging sessile hunters akin to sea anemones, while other drifting larvae become neotenic, remaining in their mobile forms into adulthood and become the transparent, drifting mock jellies.
The humble sea snail has also seen an extreme explosion of diversity in the past 20 million years, spawning thousands of species that came to fill nearly every marine invertebrate niche imaginable. Some lost their shells, coming to resemble sea slugs, and many of which would develop bright body colors for display or as warning coloration, converging heavily on nudibranches present in Earth's oceans. Other snails, developing flattened bodies and a unique vascular system in their belly-foot, become heavily convergent on echinoderms, with some being long-bodied bottom feeders like sea cucumbers, others developing venomous spines akin to urchins, and one strange lineage, developing vaguely-arm-like protrusions on their foot and a radula adapted for feeding on bivalves, becoming a bizarre analogue of a starfish. Others become tentacled swimmers resembling shelled cephalopods: the notiluses.
But by far the most diverse and successful invertebrate clade in the planet's oceans are descendants of planktonic krill, which, in the absence of fish, exploded in diversity to fill as many aquatic niches as they can. Known as shrish, these peculiar crustaceans first emerge as shrimp-like swimmers that propelled themselves through the water with a paddling array of feathery swimming legs.
As they evolved even further, however, they began taking on peculiar niches as time went on. Bottom feeders such as the trilobug became broad and flat, filling roles akin to flatfish or crabs, and some of these bottom-dwellers secondarily re-evolved to become active swimmers, such as the filter-feeding shringray that defends itself with venomous barbs on its tail. Others became elongated, flexible centipede-like predators that hunted other shrish, lurking in caverns in coral much like moray eels in wait to ambush their prey, known as the shreels.
Some shreels would eventually develop a shorter and more streamlined body, and give rise to active swimmers that propelled themselves with undulating waves of their abdomen and tail. Becoming a more efficient means of propulsion with larger or faster species, these paddletailed shrish would eventually modify their rearmost swimming legs along with their tail fan into a caudal fluke of sorts, while their thoracic limbs became used for catching food or filtering particles from water. This lineage of paddletailed shrish would eventually bring about the biggest top predators of the Late Rodentocene seas, the shrarks. Using their barbed rostrums and spiked forelimbs as three grabbing "jaws", the shrarks reach lengths of almost a meter: rivalling the largest marine arthropods of Earth's history, the eurypterids of the Devonian era.
The reefs of the Late Rodentocene are a vast and diverse ecosystem that flourishes in strange new ways independently of the world of rodents above. Life in the ocean takes on unusual new forms in a biome not yet invaded by the hamsters -- at least for the time being.
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bento’s garden follow me on twitter / instagram / patreon / shop / leave a tip
The Indian side of the Indo-Gangetic plains, one of the most populous patches on Earth and home to over half a billion people. Each white dot is a human settlement.
That rabbit/hare post is messing me up. I’d thought they were synonyms. Their development and social behavior are all different. They can’t even interbreed. They don’t have the same number of chromosomes. Dogs, wolves, jackals, and coyotes can mate with each other and have fertile offspring but rabbits and hares cant even make infertile ones bc they just die in the womb. Wack.
EVA preparations at Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center
The perfect storm of intelligence and agility
Brian self portrait
Apparently Brian drew it in Japanese news show (x)
The Late Rodentocene: 20 million years post-establishment
The Map and World of the Late Rodentocene
The Late Rodentocene, 20 million years PE, is a world that geologically speaking has changed very little from the time the hamsters first arrived, save for the rise and fall of the sea levels due to the glaciation of the northern and southern ice caps, which in turn repeatedly exposed and submerged land bridges that allowed hamsters to migrate across continents only to later be isolated from their relatives, to diverge genetically and become a new species.
The climate of the Late Rodentocene is temperate and humid, and conducive to the growth of a wide array of biomes across its six primary continents: small Borealia in the north, Easaterra and Nodera south and east of Borealia, temperate Westerna and tropical Ecatoria across the expanse of the Centralic Ocean, and the oddly-shaped Peninsulaustra at the south of the Centralic. For a brief period spanning a few thousand years, they were all connected when the sea level dropped, bridging them all to Isla Genesis (highlighted in orange), the experimental island where hamsters were first released as test subjects in a secluded environment.
With the land bridges long since sunk, however, the continents have been cut off from one another and in their separation have developed their own unique flora and fauna, such as Peninsulaustra becoming an frigid tundra home to species adapted to the cold, and Borealia, with only a few species making it across the land bridge before it flooded over, now being a thriving hotspot for endemic species found nowhere else on the planet.
The seas are also thriving as of the Late Rodentocene: while no hamsters have colonized it, at least just yet, the warm waters are flourishing with reefs and algae forests that grow with tremendous jungles of kelp that form their own biome from small organisms that take shelter in them. Most conspicuously, however, are the lack of fish: and in the absence of the dominant marine vertebrates of Earth, strange new clades have evolved in the briny depths, to fill the gaps left vacant.
The era is a time of stability: for the next tens of millions of years, the clime and tectonics will change little and the biomes will remain habitable and little-changing. But while the world itself stagnates, its creatures do not -- and this era will be their first big hurrah, as the planet's dominant clade.
The Middle Rodentocene: 10 million years post-establishment
Retro Rodents: The Furbils and Duskmice
By 10 million years PE the hamsters have diverged into many different forms, such as ungulate-like runners, mustelid-like predators or macropod-like hoppers. But while some of the resident rodents have further specialized away from the basic rodent body plan, two lineages, the furbils (family Caudatocricetidae) and the duskmice (family Cricetomuridae) are notable in having retained fairly conservative rodent anatomy, and are all the more successful for it: these two unassuming lineages have attained a diversity rivalling that of the jerryboas, and fill nondescript mouse, rat, hamster or gerbil niches all across the world.
The furbils, the more derived of the two lineages, are highly social creatures with long, tufted tails, displaying a very marked sexual dimorphism in many species, with dull, drab females and extravagantly-adorned males sporting striking markings and decorative tufts and manes of fur, which are used for display and attracting mates. Furbils tend to live in harems of several breeding females and one dominant male, while younger males are typically solitary and roam about searching for an opportunity to breed with any receptive females. Furbils are omnivores, feeding on insects, invertebrates, seeds, nuts and fruit, and males are known to attain their brilliant colors from pigments in their food: their colorful fur serving as an honest advertisement to their good health.
Male furbils are highly territorial, with the most brightly-colored and brilliantly-patterned males being the ones most attractive to females. This same coloration makes them more conspicuous to predators, as an unfortunate side effect: however, the fact that it gets them a higher chance to breed nonetheless allows them to more effectively spread their genes at the cost of individual longevity-- and in addition, essentially shows off their fitness by advertising an intentional handicap: a male that survives to breeding age even with such visible colors must be a very fit individual indeed, as far as females are concerned.
The most distinctive furbil characteristic of all is their long tail, which depending on the species serves a wide array of functions: for display, social signaling, or balance. One lineage of furbils, however, the subfamily Caudotomae, have a different, more drastic use of their tails: as a defensive measure used to divert predator attacks.
The Caudatomae are unusual among their furbil kin as they are solitary and come together only to mate, and as such lack the marked sexual dimorphism of their cousins. They have instead opted their tail into a lure, with the tuft at the end serving to draw predator attacks away from their body and head. Usually this is only meant to distract the predator and allow the furbil to escape: however, should the tail be caught, the furbil can actually detach it completely and flee from danger, as a special joint at the tail's base allows it to break off with little injury when sufficient force is applied. Unlike lizards who use a similar tactic, however, the tail-dropping is a one-time trick in the animal's whole lifetime, as it does not regrow once shed-- as such, it is a costly sacrifice that is only used as a last resort if no other means of escape is possible.
One very peculiar species, however, has compensated with the lack of mammalian regeneration with a downright absurd adaptation: multiple fracture points along the length of its tail. Known as the fuse-tailed dynamouse (Fragmacaudamys cabuum), it can fracture off its tail a maximum of up to three times, as its tail is comprised almost entirely of three very long and stiff vertebrae. Its reddish fur camouflages it well in Beta-twilight, the time when it is most active, but a conspicuous yellow tuft on the end of its tail serves as a predator distraction tool. If the tail breaks off at a joint the tail quickly heals the end of the stump and a new tuft of yellow hair soon grows around the injury, restoring the form and function to a now-shorter tail. Once a dynamouse has broken its tail three times, the tuft forms directly at the base of its rump, and while no longer to shed any more segments, can still serve as a distraction by making predators attack the wrong end and still giving the now-truncated dynamouse a fair chance to flee.
Just as strange and diverse as the furbils are the even more basal duskmice, small, stocky short-tailed rodents that still very closely resemble their hamster ancestors. Duskmice are a diverse group numbering nearly a hundred species, most of which are nondescript mouse-like seed eaters that hoard food in burrows and emerge at night and sometimes at Beta-twilight to forage, avoiding the many diurnal predators active during the day.
Some duskmice, however, have taken off to unusual niches, to take advantage of food sources beyond the reach of other hamsters. One genus, the molemice (Subterramys spp.) have adapted into specialized burrowers, developing large clawed forepaws for shoveling away dirt and hairless flat noses to push loose soil aside. They tunnel underground in search for roots, tubers and worms, and rarely ever come to the surface unless disturbed or if their burrows are flooded by heavy rains.
Another duskmouse lineage, the pondrats (Aquacricetus spp.), have instead taken to the water to feed on aquatic invertebrates and water plants that occur in abundance in freshwater bodies such as lakes and streams. They are the first hamsters on HP-02017 to specialize to a water-dwelling lifestyle, and as such have utilized a very unusual part of their anatomy to thrive in wet habitats: their cheek pouches. Acting as both flotation device and air storage, they can contract specialized muscles in their cheeks to compress the air, allowing them to sink and dive, and when returning to the surface quickly reinflate their cheek pouches to rise quickly to the top. Due to this specialization the cheeks can no longer be used as a food storage, and the pondrats instead hold food in a new different set of pouches that open lower in their mouths, surfacing every now and then to feed on their haul while floating at the surface.
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And thus with the duskmice ends the list of diversity in the Middle Rodentocene, the peak of speciation in a world of the small and scurrying. Our next stop will be at the Late Rodentocene, 20 million years PE: a time of even more diversity, but one that heralds the end of an age-- and a new promise of even greater things to come.
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Fate rolling
Ben: I’ll search for something to eat. (rolling for skill “Pig” on tier 2) Um. I rolled 1.
DM: You found a lot of mustard. The problem with it is… is all on yout shirt.
okay my calendar is available for sale again!
https://8pxl.co
i also have new charms and prints available!
Our campaign’s Big Bad, threatening our necromancer through her dreams: I am beyond your mortal comprehension. My name cannot be uttered by your tongue, I shall destroy-!
Our necromancer, nodding: I’m going to call you Jerry.
The boss’ name was later revealed to be Yogsathoth, but was never referred as anything but Jerry.
So many rainbows
Is it bad that this is how I just normally talk, even when I’m not trying to be mean
The Middle Rodentocene: 10 million years post-establishment
Canopy Critters: Arboreal Hamsters of the Middle Rodentocene
The Middle Rodentocene has seen massive explosions in hamster diversity, as various species adapted to take advantage of the banquet of different resources available to them in a mostly-vacant planet. And so, with most of the niches on the ground filled one way or another, the hamsters turned to the much un-exploited resources up above: the trees.
A veritable smorgasbord of seeds, nuts, leaves, fruit, bark and various invertebrates, there was more than enough reason for the hamsters to head skyward into the treetops to feast on the abundance. A tree-dwelling life favored those with more flexible paws for gripping, more agile reflexes, and long tails for aiding in balance, and 10 million years PE, the race to the treetops brought about the evolution of a diverse family: the Arbocricetimorpha, a family comprised of the squizzels and spunkmunks (Arbocricetidae) and the kiterats (Volaticricetidae).
The squizzels are among the most diverse forms around in the treetops, occupying virtually any biome possessing trees, such as tropical jungles, temperate forest, and even in the snowy tundras, where some species, such as the snowy ground squizzel (Pilosocaudamys arcticua) nest in the few sparse conifer trees that thrive in the chilly plains, but forage for food mostly on the ground, retreating to the trees only to sleep or to flee from ground-dwelling predators.
Squizzels are omnivores, feeding on a wide variety of food, with the long-nosed squizzels (Ardillacricetus spp.) being noteworthy for their more insectivorous diet, but nuts and other hard-shelled seeds are a particular favorite of the majority, with them storing nuts in holes gnawed into trees as larders for later meals. Many squizzels are gregarious creatures that store enormous hoards of seeds and nuts from the work of at least a dozen related individuals: benefitting them all in particularly cold climates as it improves the chances of survival of them working together as opposed to just hoarding seeds on their own.
But while most other squizzels are sociable, docile creatures that nest in small family groups, one small subclass, the spunkmunks, are notable for their vastly different temperament: highly aggressive and territorial, they are far more solitary than their gregarious peers, and thus defend themselves from predation not by cooperation or advantage in numbers, but simply by being absurdly vicious for their size. In fact, many species are rather poorly camouflaged: conversely, they have bright warning coloration contrasting light, dark, and warm colors easily seen by diurnal predators-- instead of hiding from their enemies, they outright advertise themselves as something not to be trifled with.
One such notable species is the rocking punkmunk (Rufomelanomys thanatometallicum), distinctive for its pronounced sexual dimorphism: females are a drab shade of brown, and are somewhat more tolerant of other females nesting in the same tree, though not as gregarious as other squizzels are. Male punkmunks, however, are fiercely defensive of their territories and the females their range overlaps with, engaging any other male on sight, and try to intimidate rivals with an exuberant display. They erect a crest-like mane of brilliant orange hair running along their backs, stand on their hind legs, and bare their teeth while making unearthly high-pitched screams to attempt to scare off their rival. This display is their first and final warning: if neither competitor backs down, it quickly escalates into a violent struggle that very frequently results in a messy end for the weaker of the two parties, as their sharp teeth, fast reflexes, and ferocious tenacity can lead to bloody wounds, severed paws, gouged eyes, or even outright evisceration-- and subsequent consumption of the loser by the victor.
Meanwhile, on a separate branch of the family tree from both their gregarious, cooperative cousins and their aggressively-antisocial ones are the kiterats (family Volaticricetidae), a lineage more commonly found in the forest grasslands: areas where small, dense bunches of trees are spread unevenly across thick grassland. With trees being too far away from each other to simply jump too, and the multitude of dangers lurking in the tall grass below, the kiterats instead opt to take to the air: converging heavily on a wide array of unrelated gliding mammals found on Earth.
Kiterats posses stretchy membranes of skin between their wrists and ankles, acting as gliding surfaces as they leap from one tree to another. Flat, feather-like tails act as rudders to change direction and control their descent, and with a good tailwind can easily travel up to 100 feet in a single glide. This enables them to travel quickly and efficiently across the sparse canopy, searching for food, escaping enemies, and tracking down mates as they journey across the treetops.
But of notable interest is one highly unusual kiterat that stands out among the twenty or so species in the Middle Rodentocene: the flittering jazzhand (Protopteramys razzli), the only member of its genus. Its divergence is evident from its broad, webbed hands, which specialized to catch flying insects midair --indeed, it differs from most other omnivorous kiterats by its almost-obligate insectivory-- which it grabs midair with a downstroke clap of its arms. However, these webbed hands serve more than to just act as bug-catching nets: they also increase the jazzhand's gliding surface in order to traverse longer distances than its solely-patagium-based cousins. They are also known to twitch their webbed hands mid-glide in order to gain lift and prolong their glides, and coupled with their insect-seizing clapping motion, would gradually give rise to a stronger flapping downstroke- the beginning of powered flight.
The Arbocricetimorpha, however, are not alone in the trees. A completely separate lineage, the bossums (family Didelphocricetidae) have also colonized the trees at this point. More closely related to the fearrets than they are to the other tree-dwellers of the era, the bossums thrive primarily as arboreal insectivores in dense, tropical jungle.
With grasping paws bearing semi-opposable thumbs and long, flexible tails, the bossums are highly agile and acrobatic in the trees. Most species simply use their tails as counterbalances, as well as tufted flags for signaling, though one species, the speckled bossum (Didelphocricetus variegata), has adapted its tail into a surprisingly-prehensile grasping organ, acting almost as a fifth limb while it clambers about in the treetops.
Most bossums feed mostly on insects, and many species which ambush pollinators among flowers and fruit have taken a liking to the flowers and fruit themselves. However, one genus, Dirodidelphis, has turned its attention from simply bugs and berries, toward another equally-abundant food source in the treetops: other arboreal rodents. The largest species, the tiger bossum (Dirodidelphis pantheri), is roughly the size of a small house cat and is the apex predator of the treetops as of the Middle Rodentocene, hunting squizzels, kiterats and even smaller bossum species as well. Agile in the treetops and able to scale vertical branches and leap from tree-to-tree in a manner akin to the Madagascan fossa of Earth, this canopy carnivore is well-suited for a high-living life, also managing to avoid competition with its distant cousins, the fearrats, which hunt prey on the forest floor and seldom if ever ascend to the trees.
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i don’t have anything grand for the 13th anniversary, but here’s a drawing i got done of my favourite bot earlier. happy anniversary spg!! 💘
don’t trace, copy, or steal.
So, in the light of the 13 year anniversary of Steam Powered Giraffe, I decided to share a picture that was taken back in 2018, at Weekend at the Asylum steampunk festival. Last year I shared some pictures I took during the concert that evening, but this picture was taken during the day, at the photo op. I don’t believe that I’ve ever shared it before, but I just felt like it was the right time.
I don’t know if I’ll ever meet the band again, but I’ve met them 3 times by now, and this was definitely one of the highlights, though the band was absolutely lovely every time I met them. And as an added bonus, I’ll share the pictures I had taken with David in my The Spine cosplay, because, you know…. That was kind of mandatory, right?
Happy Anniversary @officialsteampoweredgiraffe ! Keep on truckin’!
The Middle Rodentocene: 10 million years post-establishment
Silence of the Hams: Predatory Hamsters of the Middle Rodentocene
The increase of species diversity in the Middle Rodentocene has also put pressure on food sources, with different species competing over resources and access to available niches. With so many different hamster species abundant all over the various biomes, some of the species have turned their attentions to other, more viable food sources: other hamsters.
Even the ancestral hamster species they all spawned from wasn't exempt from occasionally snacking on one another, or more infamously among pet owners, of hamster mothers devouring their own babies when disturbed. As such, predatory behavior likely first emerged as a means of getting rid of competition: but with them both disposing of rivals and getting nutritious meals as a beneficial bonus, it wasn't long until some became obligate hunters of their fellow rodents. Multiple, unrelated lineages would separately and convergently become predators, relying on a diverse array of tactics for capturing their prey.
One of the most basal lineages of predatory hamsters are the hammibals (family Pantherocricetidae) a clade of small predators that possess dentition and anatomy that physiologically resemble those of a typical rodent. However, rodent teeth are fairly well-suited for gnawing on both plants and meat, and so the hammibals specialized into a different niche while keeping their anatomy conservative. Their grisly behavior meant that they no longer had to compete with other hamsters over food -- they became their food.
The largest of the hammibals is the Leopard Hammibal (Pardocricetus lecteri), growing up to the size of a large rat. While still mostly insectivorous, a significant portion, almost half, of its diet consists of smaller hamster species which it ambushes in their burrows or pursues when they emerge to forage. Grasping forelimbs with sharp claws seize the prey in an instant, and once secured in its grasp, the hammibal begins to feast on the struggling victim, chomping away on the unlucky prey headfirst until at last the desperate squeaks fade into silence.
But while a basal rodent body plan is suitable for predation of smaller rodents, tackling bigger prey proves for more of a challenge. As such, the fearrets (family Mustelocricetidae) have specialized their body plan far more than the hammibals did, developing stabbing points on their incisors and moving their first molars forward to form shearing teeth that can easily slice mouthfuls of meat from bigger carcasses. This peculiar dentition, closely reminescent of the prehistoric Earth marsupial Thylacoleo, allows the fearrets to take on much larger prey, typically hamtelopes and jerryboas but also young cavybaras on occasion.
The largest species, the Grey Fearret (Mustelocricetus atrox), is roughly the size of a pine marten, and as of this era is currently the biggest carnivore of HP-02017. An ambush predator that specializes on hamtelopes, it hunts during the daytime, where its favored prey, the long-legged ratzelles, are most active. Fearrets hunt by using their incisors to puncture bloody wounds into a victim's neck, before quickly retreating: to avoid injury to themselves, they repeatedly lunge, attack, retreat and attack again, wearing the prey down until it eventually succumbs to exhaustion and blood loss.
Grey fearrets mate for life, and mated pairs are known to hunt cooperatively, with one partner chasing prey in the direction of its concealed mate preparing for an ambush. Each pair produces yearly a litter of 2-4 pups at a time, which are dependent on their parents for several months until they are old enough to hunt on their own.
But not all predators in this time period are active hunters that pursue and grapple with their prey. Others, such as the scabbers (family Vermicaudamuridae) rely on other tactics: namely, stealth and deception, luring their prey to them instead of expending much energy in a chase.
The mottled scabber (Vermiformicauda pettigrewi) is one such bait-hunter, preying on small rodents that live on the forest floor, primarily insectivorous ones. Its coat is mottled with light and dark spots to blend in almost seamlessly with the leaf-litter of the ground, and rolling among the fragrant dried leaves to disguise its scent. However, while it is well hidden, one part of its body is very conspicuous: the very end of its long tail, which is flexible, hairless and segmented-- bearing very close resemblance to an earthworm, a favorite meal of many forest-floor hamsters.
Hiding quietly among the dead leaves, the mottled scabber exposes the tip of its tail and twitches it in imitation of a worm. Attracted by the movement, small insectivores eagerly pounce on the wiggling lure...and right within striking range of the camouflaged hunter, which lunges in a blink of an eye and quickly dispatches its quarry with a bite to the back of the neck, crushing its spine and ceasing its struggles in an instant.
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It’s my favorite thing when a lesbian is just like “I got extra fries with my meal, gay rights” or an enby is like “wow trans rights I just got a free gift card to the movies” or a bi dude is like “finally found a plant that won’t die, queer rights I guess.” Like that is the funniest shit I don’t care.
The Middle Rodentocene: 10 million years post-establishment
Better Ungulate than Never: The Hamtelopes
A small, but abundant and diverse herbivore common across the land during the Middle Rodentocene are the hamtelopes (family Cervimuridae), which are found on most of the continents by this point in the planet's history. Looking a fair bit like small ungulates, hamtelopes are browsers, feeding on higher vegetation such as bushes and shrubs, and thus avoid competition with grazing cavybaras when the two coexist on the same turf.
Among the many species of hamtelopes, the most remarkable is the Rusty Hamtelope (Erythrocervimys bambini), which is unmistakable due to its distinctive reddish-orange hue of its coat. On Earth, such a color for a forest-floor browser would be highly disavadvantageous, sticking the animal out into plain sight and leaving it vulnerable and visible to predators.
However, HP-02017 is distinguished by the presence of a second minor sun, Beta, that orbits further out from the main sun Alpha and for a large portion of the year is opposite the main star, making Beta appear by night and illuminate the landscape in a phenomenon called "Beta-twilight". Beta-twilight is when the rusty hamtelope is at its most active, as well as dawn and dusk: and in the fiery glows of sunrise and sunset, or the red-orange Beta-twilight landscape, the rusty hamtelope demonstrates that Earthly life can adapt even in conditions not normally found in Earth, camouflaging perfectly in the forest floor while the forest is bathed in a faint, scarlet hue.
But as remarkable as the rusty hamtelope is, the clade of hamtelopes is not merely limited to this one genus. Hamtelopes have reached peak diversity in the Middle Rodentocene, spanning several genera and dozens of species. Some, such as the long-legged ratzelles (Cervicricetus spp.) are daytime grazers of the forest floor, and indeed even share habitat with the rusty hamtelope by different times of activity to minimize competition. Others, such as the ramsters (Capramys spp.) are more at home in the alpine tundras and high plateaus, leaving a lifestyle akin to that of mountain goats, agile and surefooted as they climb up steep cliffs to graze on mountainside vegetation.
But by far the most unusual members are the toponies (Microhippoides spp.) which are plains-dwellers resembling tiny, tailless equids. What makes them particularly odd is how small they are, compared to the other genera: this in fact is due to competition with larger, bipedal hopping jerryboas that have usurped their niche out in the open plains. Able to travel longer distances with their more energy-efficient bounding gait and defend themselves from predation with sharp hind-limb claws, the jerryboas very quickly dominated the open grassland and savannah, leaving only the niche of small grazer vacant for the toponies.
As new lineages emerge and diversify in the Middle Rodentocene, their more divergent forms begin to clash with one another in ecological terms. In the end, some families will dominate, others will barely hang on and others will completely die out, as hamster diversity climaxes in the Rodentocene's halfway mark.
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Hey, help me please. How do you write description in your novels? Not a character one, surrounding ones. How do you describe from 3 POV , the background of the novel?
5 Tips for Writing Great Descriptions
Hi there! Thanks for writing. I talk at length about this in my book The Complete Guide to Self-Editing for Fiction Writers (See Chapter 4 / “Building Your Story World,” Chapter 16 / Setting the Scene, and Chapter 21 / “Choosing the Right Details” for the majority of the discussion about description, but it’s peppered throughout), so I’ll just give a brief rundown here. :)
Tip #1: Use concrete, sensory details
That means describing, with precision, a detail you can see/hear/touch/taste/smell. Avoid using vague words that are hard to visualize or sense, like “the house was ugly” or “the weather was bad.” Instead, choose a sensory detail (or two) for your descriptions, for example “the house was a wretched shade of salmon pink” or “the wind was blowing I could taste dust in my mouth.”
Tip #2: Try not to over- or under-use descriptions
It’s common for beginning writers to either use no description, or go completely overboard. I give examples of both in my book. While there’s no hard rule about how much description is too little or too much (it depends a lot on the particular story, genre, and the writer’s style), I personally like to include around 4-5 sensory details per page.
The idea is to give the reader a solid sense of where they are without going on and on, making them want to skim over as you carry on for paragraphs about the smell and texture of a doily.
Tip #3: Use more description during important parts of the story
Description draws your readers attention to what you’re describing. Use that to your advantage. If that doily contains a blood stain that’s a pivotal clue in your murder mystery, by all means spend three sentences describing the particular color red of the blood or the weird smell it emits. Where you linger, the reader will linger.
Tip #4: Use description to set the scene
Use more description at the beginning of a new scene, or anytime the location of your story changes. I talk about this in the section on transitions in my book. Summary gets a bad reputation in fiction, but these transitional paragraphs are the perfect time to paint the scene with sensory details about your character’s surroundings.
Tip #5: Pay attention to “camera movement”
One common thing I see in writer’s manuscripts is what I call “jerky camera movement.” Here’s an example:
Jesse pulled into the driveway of the suspect’s mansion around noon. A white, floppy dog barked ferociously in the window. It was a warm, sweltering day. Jesse looked down and realized her shoe was untied. The house had three large columns in front, each wrapped with a gawdy red bow.
In this example, the “camera” moves from the driveway, to the dog in the window, to the “day,” to Jesse’s shoe, to the outside of the house. If that was your head, looking around the scene, you’d get dizzy pretty fast. Here’s a smoother movement, starting wide and focusing in on Jesse’s untied shoe.
It was a warm, sweltering day. Jesse pulled into the driveway of the suspect’s mansion around noon. The house had three large columns in front, each wrapped with a gawdy red bow. In the window, a white, floppy dog barked ferociously. As Jesse approached the door, she looked down and realized her shoe was untied.
These aren’t perfect examples because I’ve dashed them off just now, but you get the idea :) Try not to make your reader seasick by making them look all over the scene (unless you’re trying to achieve that effect, for example, in a scene where your protagonist is drunk or discombobulated).
Hope this helps!
You’re welcome.