you have permission to pick that 2 year old "abandoned" project back up. it's not mad at you for setting it aside. and maybe time and distance have helped ease or erase the things that made you put it down in the first place.
Bobole shown in natural patterns, with a kula and a sloman silhouette for reference.
The second most widespread domesticated predator the slomen have would be the rounder than round big-maw.
They come from temperate climates, where they roam the forests, eating animals of many sizes (usually based on pack size). Most often, they are seen in pairs (commonly of siblings), but this rule isn't unbreakable. Sometimes, packs reach over 6 members that stay together for a long period of time before they eventually separate into smaller groups. This adaptability might be why their domestication came quite naturally. From the bobole's point of view, slomen might have been great hunting buddies.
Bobole are intelligent hunters that rely on visualizing the path of their prey more than on communication between members. This makes them both adaptable and stubborn when working in bigger groups or with slomen. The usual strategy is for one individual to stay low, watching the target, while others chase it in the other's direction. The unmoving bobola waits for the moment the target is close enough to strike it. In case it fails, the one chasing will still be available on the other side to mayhaps save the hunt.
With smaller prey, they can be useful chasing the target for slomen too. But with their stubborn attitude toward their technique, it's more common for them to help keep the watch on prey and track it.
In an active hunt, the slomen direct the bigger prey to the usually-larger-breed bobola to deal the first hit, keeping the animal in grasp for a person to kill it with a weapon.
Some breeds are very territorial. For this, you will rarely see them in Ciwa, where you could consider them outlawed. Not because they could hurt a person, but because a kula could be at risk. The sacred feral population must live on.
Unlike a dog, bobolas are not as flexible to train. Little funny tricks are meant for a kula. These orbs are loyal and follow direction, but they take a lot of time to do their natural behaviors in ways most useful for people.
The easiest is for them to protect family members from threats, which is why many cultures have at least one devoted to the household kids and follow them on their mischievous journeys even when they sneak around the adults. Of course, one must establish what a threat is early on. Nobody wants an anxious bobola who bites their aunt.
In some regions, if you were to visit a village, chances are you would see them sitting by every third settlement, either sleeping or watching you. Sellers might even take them to the markets to keep thieves away.
Now, you might find these orbicular animals somewhat similar to the put-tut, but they are hardly related. Bobola are actually genetically closer to the 'slomland' bird than to slomen themselves. Just like with the raptorial shape before the mammal overtaking on earth, the upright biped is popular with convergent evolution. However, since vertebrates of the continent don't have true tails to balance them horizontally, most bipedal animals here keep their head high.
This creature has been pretty much designed for a looong time now, but I never got to actually rendering it.
I think one important step in decolonizing fantasy is to recognize how wildly anti-environment Europeans became, and how this affects the way we look at the nonhuman world. Like, in England wolves were driven to extinction because they were perceived as threats to sheep. And white people absolutely carried this kind of mentality everywhere they colonized. We see it in people who think rattlesnakes should be killed on sight. And it comes out in fantasy when every kind of creature that's challenging to humans is degraded, unpersoned, and treated like something to kill or keep contained out in the deep wilds.
I HAVE FELT THIS FOR SO LONG!!! Like I was always like "It's kinda fucked up that monstrous creatures/people in fantasy fiction are only approached in terms of being conquered or killed, right? Or in terms of only how they serve humans and that's IT." and it's fucked!
Yep! That's literally the colonialist mentality at work. If you want to feel even more vindicated, I recommend checking out Robin Wall Kimmerer's books and/or watching her interviews and speeches on YouTube.
Normal carnivorous animals always being portrayed as relentless hunters even if it causes them more harm than good. Fantasy monsters that are supposedly a natural part of the world but don't seem to have any actual purpose within their environment for no reason (like at least make them an invasive species or an artificial creation or something? that could be neat!)
This definitely also falls in line with the portrayal of any group of fantasy people as a flat stereotype of "evil" or "good".
I have caught myself worrying that the fantasy creatures I've put in my own world aren't epic and dangerous enough, because I make them in a way that actually gives them an environmental niche, and their behaviors are just normal animal behaviors. So they may not feel as fantastical and monstrous. But more and more I think it's just not worth it to me to force them to be monsters just for the sake of fitting a trope into my writing. I like my big olm-like amphibious wyrms. They don't need to be ravenous hunters. They're just big fat wet noodles.
Everyone always says they wish that they had wings but I’m sure they’d be exhausting to use. So many captive birds don’t fly if they don’t have to, but choose to walk and climb around rather than go to the effort of flapping their wings. I suspect that, if humans had wings, most of us would consider flying a chore-like exercise and let those muscles atrophy.
serious flying, sure, but if we were capable of hovering with them I think most people would use them all the time - think about how often something is just too high to reach.
Hovering with wings sounds like a lot more effort than flying! Soaring around on thermals doesn’t require much wing movement at all. What is an albatross but a meaty hang-glider?
My friend’s parrot just climbs with his feet and beak when something’s out of reach. I guess a couple flaps of your wings would be fun to leap into the air a little, but it would cause so much air disturbance that anything I was trying to reach would probably just be blown off the shelf anyway.
If they were ethereal magic wings, that would be one thing. But imagine having to take care of enormous human-proportioned wings and plumage… treating your feathers with Permethrin to control mites and flatflies…
And if you had leathery wings instead? Imagine moisturizing. Imagine sunscreen. Instead of backne, would we get wingne?
The extra muscles needed alone would cause a lot of ache even without actually using them much. Sleeping would be a difficult task. And yeah, really not actually useful for little mundane tasks indoors like reaching a tall shelf. Wings take up a lot of space! I personally already have enough trouble figuring out where my hips are at any given moment. If I had wings they would be very bruised from bumping into things.
I can also imagine that they’d be hard to maintain because how do you reach the back feathers to keep them clean and organized? Communal grooming would definitely have to be a thing for winged humanoids.
Also! Not all birds can hover! Body size and wing shape play a large part in that! Probably could not effectively hover as a winged humanoid, not the way you are probably picturing at least (ie, hummingbird and kingfisher style, staying mostly in one spot in the air.) Maybe could hover in a choppy sort of way, but not for an extended length of time and it would be exhausting (I have done research on this, some kingfishers beat their wings 8 times in a second to hover. Dont get me started on how ultra specialized hummingbirds are for that.)
Two sets of shoulders, also. That’s a recipe for pain.
I still love to make winged humanoid characters because drawing people with wings makes me happy lol but oh boy the real world problems that would come with wings are not something I ever want to personally deal with.
Funny that the stereotypical cynic is an idealist who aged out of it. In my experience, the reverse is true. I was an extreme cynic as a teenager and then I noticed how profoundly limiting it was, and also that "cynics are cool and smart" was a message that was being constantly reinforced by corporate media for some reason.
#yes! cynicism reads as very juvenile to me#and yes prev often stemming from teen pain
Yeah, like I see black-pilled people on here and my default reaction isn't "oh, these must be world-weary old warriors who've lost their faith in humanity", it's "these people are in their 20s and need a hobby"
I also think that the present era has proven that authoritarian leaders don't actually want a population of wide-eyed idealists, they want a population of jaded assholes who are convinced that everyone is lying, any resistance is either a scam or doomed to failure, and nothing can ever get better.
romaincrisis
turnnoffyourmind
areudirty
