So I found this on Google, and I accidentally ended up having a megabrainstorm session with my dad about if Vulcans were actually photosynthetic, or really just how photosynthetic humanoids would work in general and how they'd function on a Starfleet ship? It was more like me ranting excitedly at my dad for a few minutes, but there were some cool ideas in there. (I mean I think they're cool, hopefully you guys do too)
Warning: EXTREMELY long (and nerdy) bullet point list follows under the cut
green skin because chlorophyll
possibly even leafy skin, which might end up looking more like scales, but with patches of softer more leaf-like areas where we'd have more body fat and/or body hair
(they can still have that Vulcan hair though, since it's sort of a defining trait/style of the species in Star trek)
This means they have to absorb sunlight through their skin, and convert it into energy in the form of glucose, like trees
Therefore they'd have to have glucose (not copper) based blood (but the melting point of sugar is really high? Hadn't quite worked that part out)
Their blood would be white then? Amber, like tree sap. Wait actually don't some flowers/green stemmed things have white sap in the stems? (Maybe their blood would change from white to amber as they age? I know flowers aren't younger versions of trees, but it would be cool)
and they'd have to drink water just as much as humans because plants need water (as Chekhov is panicking about) but maybe since Chekhov is worried about "watering" spock, their hair can function like roots or something to soak up extra water as well. Idk if it rains much on Vulcan but when it did they'd all be going outside like the worms do on Earth lol
They wouldn't really have to eat if sunlight is their primary energy source. Their mouth would be just for water, breathing, and speaking. In which case they'd have ALL different organ systems, seeing as our digestive system takes up a good chunk of space in the torso, what would they fill it with? Being humanoid, they'd still need lungs, as well as a heart to circulate the (glucose based?) blood. They can still have a liver as a toxin filter and whatever else livers do (trees have to deal with not-so-clean water, so the photosynthetic Vulcans could probably deal with pretty muddy/questionable water as well. And maybe that connects to a very basic digestive system (liver-filters > short and singular intestine > rectum) which is mostly just for getting rid of the mud (yes, pooping.) And the liver can also deal with dusty/sandy air probably. Oh they might not need to eat (maybe even CAN'T eat since they wouldn't need or have the organs to deal with it) but they could drink liquids other than water, and it might be helpful/necessary to drink sugary fruit drinks if it's been cloudy for a few days, because humanoids expend a LOT more energy than plants probably do. They probably have a "stomach" which acts as a storage and distribution-into-bloodstream area for water and sugar, a little like how a camel's hump works, so it might not only be "OMG did anyone water Spock today!?" But also "OMG Spock fainted, somebody get him fruit juice!" *frantic running to the mess hall* *20 ccs of sugar* "I told you to drink more sugary stuff, our artificial light here just can't give you as much energy as your THREE ENTIRE SUNS back home, you ****ing idiotic hobgoblin!" *definitely not crying over Spock's wellbeing*
Idk what would make up the rest of their torso since they don't need as much space for organs. Heart, lungs, liver, one intestine + waste management, storage stomach, and the rest of ours is primarily taken over by about 15 feet of scrunched intestines, so maybe for them it's all leg, or they could maybe have a redundant extra pair of lungs, and/or another heart, especially to lessen the workload since tree sap is significantly thicker than human blood? Or maybe all the water would thin it out? Or one heart is more connected to the skin where they absorb light energy and cycles the glucose-based blood (which goes from white to amber as they grow up) and the other heart connects more to the water/fruit juice storage stomach and cycles water as well as somehow sends old water off to get peed out? And they should also have an organ that somehow counters sunburn and helps then deal with their world's elevated levels of radiation.
So: two pairs of lungs (for no real reason), two hearts (and two circulatory systems?), one for water and one that's more for the nutrients of glucose from sunlight, a storage stomach, a liver, an organ that deals with radiation and sunburn, a short intestine for the undrinkable parts of potentially muddy/contaminated water, the rectum to poop out the mud, the kidneys/bladder/urinary system for old water, and I think that's it.
I've been occasionally researching (googling) during the process of writing this, and I found that trees actually do have 2 different kinds of sap! Phloem is the "more nutrient rich form, and flows from the leaves bringing sugars and hormones to nutrient-hungry parts of the plant," while Xylem "consists mostly of water" so it's perfectly reasonable for them to have 2 hearts, one for each kind!
But how can we design starships to be more Vulcan-friendly then, if they need so much light? Well first of all, having sugar as an option for hyposprays in the medbay/sickbay, as well as plenty of sugary drinks available in the replicators, and the sugary fruit drinks shouldn't "cost" as much in rations since the Vulcans sort of need it as much as they need water when they aren't able to access direct sunlight. Speaking of which, all the hallways should have strips of light off to the side (one on the floor and another shining down from the ceiling above it) that the Vulcan crewmembers can walk through, and there should be a solarium room which does its best to replicate at least the lighting and radiation conditions of Vulcan (the planet). This solarium should have the light panels be able to slide away to reveal actual windows, and starships with any Vulcans in their crew should be required to spend a minimum amount of time every so often in orbit of an actual sun or star system so that the Vulcans can have genuine sunlight. It would be really funny if Spock just had a spotlight that follows him around like Olaf's snow cloud in Frozen, but it would be more practical if his station on the bridge just had extra light panels which are positioned in some way so as not to shine in his eyes. Also, this photosynthesis sort of depends on their skin actually being exposed to light, so the uniform would probably be modified for Vulcans to be short sleeves and shorts despite how weird that would be, or it would be designed like tinted glass somehow, or... some other way of letting the light in without being immodest, idk
And now for a very important question: some trees are deciduous, yes? Oh dang it I just googled whether Vulcan has seasons and the answer was no. Scrolling down pointed out that Vulcan is a desert planet and so they'd naturally be able to go without water for longer periods of time than humans. That second one is okay, that's why they have a water storage organ sort of like camels, and I guess maybe they wouldn't need so much water after all. More like cacti than trees. But the no axis tilt / no seasons thing sort of cancels out what I was about to write :(
I'll write it anyway. Let's pretend for a second that Vulcan has seasons, because this whole thing can really apply to "photosynthetic humanoids" in general, not just photosynthetic Vulcans in particular. So, I was about to talk about deciduous trees :) When the seasons shift towards winter, the sunlight is weaker, trees go red before losing their leaves and sort of hibernating, right? Well what if Vulcans start going pale, then yellowy, and eventually taking on a pale reddish hue, and since they can't lose their skin to conserve energy, they consume as much sugar/fruit juice as they can over a period of a few weeks, before going into hibernation like bears?
This means that your Vulcan crewmate is kind of useless for at least a quarter of every year, which isn't really a problem unless they're a senior officer, but if they ARE a senior officer, they better have an apprentice or someone who can cover for them while they hibernate. Maybe another Vulcan from the opposite side of the planet, who would naturally hibernate during the opposite half of the year.
Would this Vulcan and their opposite-side-of-the-planet counterpart be best friends, or bitter rivals? Who knows!
Now, starships do not actually have seasons, so the hibernation cycle wouldn't be technically necessary. The Vulcan has two options: either slowly adjust to the year-round availability of sunlight over a period of multiple years so that they don't have to abandon their crew for a few months out of every year (and be SEVERELY messed up if they ever retire and go back to the hypothetical version of Vulcan which has seasons), OR, make sure that the availability of light mimics the seasonal cycle of pretend-Vulcan-with-seasons so that they can have their hibernation cycle properly. (Clearly the better option if they aren't a senior officer, especially if they don't plan to spend the rest of their life on the ship.)
Also it would be really cute to see what kind of pillow fort nest Spock would probably end up making in his quarters to hibernate in. I wonder if they'd visit him.
DO NOT WAKE THE HIBERNATING SPOCK. Google says waking up an animal from hibernation too early can have fatal consequences. On the other hand, it also said bears can wake themselves up immediately to protect cubs if necessary or if they're startled awake, so maybe he can respond to red alerts. However going based off the first point, it might be necessary to completely soundproof his quarters and make sure he remains undisturbed. And yet another possibility is that photosynthetic Vulcans wouldn't need to hibernate at all if they come from a part of the planet which is mostly friendly year-round (which would technically be true, since it doesn't actually have seasons at all, and they would choose to have civilizations in the most habitable areas. Maybe civilizations closer to the poles would have Vulcans that are naturally paler or more reddish, like how the Aenar on the Andorian homeworld are blind and paler.)
Animals coming out of hibernation can have lost up to 30% of their body weight (over a QUARTER), so Vulcans coming out of hibernation would look so sick and weak, and they'd probably take a while to get their full green color back, and the more soft leafy areas of higher body fat would have shriveled into just the small scale-like leaves that make up the majority of their skin, and their uniforms would be all baggy on them, and the human crew would probably be so so so worried for them, especially the first few hibernation cycles
*Spock stumbles onto the bridge for the first time in several months, pale orange-red and extremely skinny* "Oh my god, Spock!" (overjoyed at his return) -- "Oh my god Spock you look like crap, are you alright?" (softer and full of concern upon actually noticing what he looks like) -- "This is perfectly normal, I'll be fine, you need me on du-" *faints*
It's a lot healthier to go for a daily walk than to sign up for a gym membership you won't be using because you hate that kind of exercise. It's a lot healthier to eat a frozen meal than to skip a meal because you were too tired to cook something healthy. It's a lot healthier to take a quick shower than to procrastinate an elaborate routine for days. Don't aim so high that you won't be hitting anything!
can any tumblr paleoanthropologists weigh in? I just had An Idea:
-laughter is an involuntary reflex most of the time, and i read once that laughter might have started as a signal that danger is over (I think it's reasonable to assume based on this that "nervous laughter" might be the "original" laughter before the behavior evolved to encompass "humor")
-chimps smile out of submission
-, and many primates have complex social touching behaviors, including humans
so, therefore, is it outlandish to guess that tickling used to be a social dominance type of behavior? or maybe not dominance, but definitely indicating Something.
Doodles of Tuvok's gay son and his family who appear on a singular page in the comic Star Trek 'Homecoming'.
Ekundayo is a Yoruba name so I looked up Yoruba/Nigerian wedding traditions to see if there was anything I could add to the headcanon fodder and I started thinking that it'd be cute if despite marrying a Human, Sek still largely had an arranged marriage conducted according to both their traditions.
Long ass process full of love & worth it for the massive wedding party!
I headcanon Vulcans as having very little ceremony to their weddings, especially when compared to the preamble (though said preamble is usually sorted out in childhood) and other events/rituals. This is because a significant number of weddings are conducted in response to the pon farr and so they're typically incredibly quick and quiet, with as few people in attendance as possible. Because of this, Sek and Ekundayo's wedding is held in accordance to Ekundayo's family's Human traditions with the only addition being that some Vulcan religious texts are recited. It's a lovely ceremony and a happy day!
been thinking a lot lately about the existence of Sisko’s Creole Kitchen and what it means for 24th century Earth.
because on one hand, narratively, it’s an important piece of establishing the character of Benjamin Sisko - it tells us where he comes from and what kind of family raised him. the family restaurant situates him in a particular historical and cultural context by showing us that the Creole food he cooks on the station is something he and his son quite literally inherited and is part of a continuation of Creole culture in New Orleans centuries ahead of the here and now. it is the antithesis of Star Trek’s usual watered-down and whitewashed approach to various Earth cultures, where established characters of color are stripped of their culture in order to fit into the homogeneous Human.jpg box Star Trek likes to put its human characters in to contrast with the aliens of the week - all under the guise of equality. textbook allegorical storytelling. what sets Sisko apart from this tendency is that he is not just a Starfleet captain who happens to be Black, he is explicitly written as a Black American captain whose identity and family history is deeply rooted in the legacy of his ancestors. on this hand, Sisko’s Creole Kitchen is a vessel of cultural preservation.
and on a sort of different hand, Sisko’s Creole Kitchen is a very clear example of community-based food sovereignty on a post-capitalist Earth. on this Earth, Joseph serves his patrons without any expectation of compensation for his and his kitchen staff’s labor, which means that he’s likely not paying for anything that allows him to keep running the restaurant. might seem a bit contrary to the whole concept of a restaurant, but that’s what i’m trying to get at, here.
in a future where every starship and probably most homes are equipped with replicators that can create pretty much anything for you, farms and restaurants and even the act of cooking might seem a bit redundant. so why continue those traditions at all?
well, the concept of a restaurant in the world of today is, essentially, to eat a meal that you don’t have to prepare for yourself, as well as for chefs to share cultural ties through food and creativity with others. it’s both a time-saver for consumers and a platform for culinary art. but it also commodifies food, the act of cultivating it, the act of consuming it and the act of making it.
in a post-scarcity society, where, presumably, no one is required to work long hours at the expense of their physical and mental health just to keep a roof over their head, everyone should, in theory, have enough time to put as much effort as they choose into preparing their own food. of course, cooking is not everybody’s particular love or strong suit, so the appeal of restaurants as access to good, fresh food remains.
the fact that Sisko’s even exists is indicative of, once again, the act of cultural preservation and also of the necessity of establishments that feed their surrounding communities through a labor of love. the best reason to cook is because you love doing it and Joseph clearly values culinary artistry and the cultivation of fresh ingredients, so he must not only be supporting those who come to his restaurant but also those who fish, rear livestock, grow produce and those who help prepare them to be served. in this way, his restaurant could be a very direct system by which he keeps other foodways alive. and, again, presumably - because none of this is based on a system of currency or capital and food is not a product but a facet of the community - it's plausible and, in fact, necessary that all of this is done on the terms of those involved. so on that hand, Sisko’s Creole Kitchen is a cornerstone of food sovereignty on 24th century Earth.
I appreciate the sentiment but I don't get all those "we made it to the longest night of the year! the light will start returning soon! it's all uphill from here & we're halfway there!" posts because like. Oct-Dec is the easier half of Winter. Jan-Apr is way harder. there's no big holidays or decorations, everyone is kind of over the whole Cozy Hygge Sweaters & Cocoa vibe so they're just tired & restless instead, and the whole thing is so drawn out & uneventful that it feels like it lasts 10x longer
- a holiday sometime in the middle of Cold Time Jan - Apr
- The literal point of it is to be hedonistic
- A costume holiday
- A parade holiday
- A Music holiday
- A Feast Day
Turn your
Into
And I am not suggesting you travel to New Orleans.
I am suggesting that you Throw. A. Bacchanal. In. Your. House.
On a Tuesday
Make it a masquerade
Eat all of your favourite foods
Drink, Smoke, or otherwise imbibe to excess
Loud music
Dance
Colours! Sparkles! Lights!
Build a float and march it around your neighborhood to show it off.
Entice the people who come to stare at you to join the party.
Let a cake decide who throws the party next year.
Spend a week leading up to the party throwing smaller parties to get all the prep done!
Rinse and repeat every year sometime in the darkest months.
You dont need to be Catholic. You just need to recognize that this part of the year is often thin, colourless, and humdrum for us all and rage against it.
If you do practice lent, get your yayas out before your difficult fast!
If you are a theater kid and your favorite week was tech week, man are you going to have fun!
If you love a potluck where everyone tries to out cook one another, boy are you going to love this.
Its a time to meet people, and make things together, and shake the cobwebs out of your house, your body, and your soul.
The 6th of January is the official end of Christmastide and the beginning of Epiphany. And on that note, let's talk about how much of Christmastide has been abandoned because it ::checks notes:: makes the rich people uncomfortable to be confronted with poor people and the theme of Christmastide being merriment and reversals and generosity, I think it's really fucked up that people treat holidays like due dates, where there's too much lead-up and then the day arrives and it's like it's already over. That's unnatural. We need a war on capitalism and how it's destroyed holidays.
Let's talk about the purpose of merry-making and holidays about fun and the dire need humans have for rituals. I'm going to talk about Christianity because it happens to be one of their relevant holidays for that, and because most of what I know about the psychosocial purpose of holidays comes from my studies of Christianity and Christmastide lore specifically.
Christmastide was (and by 'was' I mean in the Middle Ages-Early Modern period), roughly, a month long, no matter where you were in Europe. December 5th (Krampusnacht) to January 6 (Feast of Fools/Epiphany). It encompassed all kinds of sub-holidays like St Tibbs Eve, La Befana Eve, Childermass (blessing of the toys), and all kinds of stuff, depending on where you lived in Europe. But there's a reason we use the term "Christmas season", because it used to be MORE THAN ONE DAY. Christmas Day was one small part of Christmastide! It was smack in the middle, there were celebrations all through! What we would recognise as the ancestor to trick-or-treating and carolling was done all through it, poor folks going door to door, demanding the rich give them charity, reinforcing bonds with poor neighbours with jokes and songs and traditional rituals (like Mari Lwyd!). It was sometimes--especially in Britain--called Wassailing. Wassail is also a hot drink of mulled apple cider, and the apple part is important, because Wassailing is also done to the apple trees, singing to them and giving offerings so they will bear lots of fruit next year. There were all kinds of rituals like this, proper holiday rituals that strengthened community and gave us something to look forward to, something fun to do together to fight off the seasonal depression.
I'm not christian and never have been, but I grew up in christendom and as a child I really liked the idea of Christmastide, the old kind, from when I first read about it in Catherine, Called Birdy. It filled in the blanks and explained a lot of the diminished skeumorphs still present in modern versions of the holiday. A singer from very young, I loved how much music was a part of the holiday, and always had been, and how much coming together was a part of the season. I didn't grow up where we even had winter, but now that I do live somewhere with really terrible winters, I get it.
And then I learned about all the monsters and ghosts, all the fun rituals, that happened in Europe and had been tradition for hundreds of years. From the relatively modern Pantomimes of the British to the march of the Christmas monsters in the streets, to the Feast of Fools and the tradition of reversal (and psychosocial function of pressure release) it embodies, leading into the Epiphany and Carnival season.
The fact that, in my country, Christians have largely abandoned their liturgical calendar is kind of upsetting, especially given how many of them still say they practise their religion. But I would argue it's also kind of why everyone here is so fucking messed up. Because holidays serve a psychosocial function, they have a very important function in a community. They serve as pressure release, or as reinforcement of community bonds, or as a re-centring of community values, or other very important things. I know the USA was founded specifically by Christians who purposely and specifically abandoned every single fucking holiday because they were unfathomable levels of fucked up, but that's kind of my point: I firmly believe the deep-seated isolation, fear of neighbours, and general hostility is because there's no fucking holidays to help people fucking cope with life.
We need to take holidays back from capitalism, we need to divorce them from capitalism and we need to take them out of private isolation and bring them back into the community. Tbh I would not mind Christians as much as I do if I interacted with them in situations other than them trying to convert me, which is the only time they ever interact with me. It's the only time most of Christianity interacts with anybody in their wider community, that's why so many of us get so fucking irritated with them! But if someone knocked on my door in December and sang a song or told a joke and asked for wassail? That's different. I'm not part of that religion but there's a vast and palpable difference between being aggressively told I need to join up or else, and someone giving me a gift because in their religion it's a time for gifts and togetherness with everyone. I don't care why you are making me laugh or reminding me my neighbours wish me well. If more people cared about neighbours and songs and the humble pleasures of the world, no matter why or who they think told them to, it would be a better world.
As we move into the Christian Carnival season, that season of absurdity and mockery, of satire and spoof and clownery, remember there's a reason for that. There's a reason they decided to put that theme smack in the middle of the worst part of snowcountry's winter. It may not have been a direct decision, but there's a reason it happens when it does, all the same.
My point in all of this is: people NEED celebrations. We need all kinds of celebrations, but especially the merry ones. We need to make merry or what is the damn point of anything we do? There's a reason it's a human right to peacefully assemble, and speak freely, and holiday celebrations are a huge part of that. The fact that in the US, any kind of assembly is now being criminalised is stifling our human spirit and destroying community by making it impossible to actually see and interact with our community.
It's only the worst part of the year if you don't have a holiday to celebrate. You don't have to adopt Christendom's holidays. But take inspiration from them. Make up a holiday season that brings warmth to you, that goes on for more than a single hour. Humans made up all religions, and all holidays. There's nothing stopping you from making up your own holiday right now.
The fun thing is he would understand why people were getting him outfits with storks on them. That’s a word, it’s his name, straightforward. All the humans get him the same gag gift, but like, they’re putting effort in at least. This is a genuinely nice outfit. Stork will be a walking zero-effort pun sometimes, rather than waste a perfectly fine robe.
It’s fine. This is a readily comprehensible human illogic. Exactly the kind of thing he expected from moving to Earth.
Six years in he finds out about the stork bringing babies.
Stork has a good long meditation session about this myth, his name, his job, the outfits, the whole shebang (or whatever Vulcan concept is the equivalent).
And he decides he’s honored by it, in a humanly illogical way.
The humans are asking him to do what is after all his job, and specifically requesting him for the joy his name brings them on top of an already agreeable and satisfying task. He has no objection to engendering positive emotions in others. Harm hastens the heat-death of the universe, Surak teaches, so happiness must logically slow it down.
Plus, Vulcans of his generation love puns. There were two decades of punning competitions in colleges across the planet. So when he realizes that he is a walking zero-effort pun, and that the humans also love the pun, he is all for it. He is the Joe Cool of the entire Vulcan population in his city.
And via this pun, the humans are including him in a cherished and traditional myth, by casting him as the literal bringer of life and the expander of families.
There’s no downside. Stork wears his robes, pins, keychains, and other bird-related tchotchkes with genuine pride.
For real though working together with some human social workers, a Vulcan would be an excellent caretaker for children in an adoption center.
Child has a meltdown? Imagine Stork, perfectly calm and unbothered, approaching the kid and saying “You appear quite upset, Eliza. If you would please allow me to relocate you to the ‘bean-bag-chair,’ we can discuss the source of your distress.”
A Vulcan educated in medicine and child psychology would be endlessly patient with a kid with behavioral issues. Stork wouldn’t get or upset or frustrated. After all, these are children with medical and psychological conditions. It would be illogical to blame the child or to not treat them with the appropriate care.
Even if the a little one was having a bad day or was just overtired, Stork wouldn’t get angry. He might even be a calming presence. Any new kids acting out would learn real quick that they’d have better luck trying to arm-wrestle a Klingon than get a rise out of Stork.
Not only that, Vulcans live much longer than humans. Imagine Stork looking virtually unchanged as decades pass. Kids he’d helped years ago would turn up fully grown, maybe there to adopt their own kids, and run into Stork, looking almost exactly as they remember him.
And he’d probably remember them too. “Welcome back, Eliza.”
“X bodily fluid is just filtered blood!” buddy I hate to break it to you but ALL of the fluids in your body are filtered blood. Your circulatory system is how water gets around your body. It all comes out of the blood (or lymph, which is just filtered blood).
“Okay but why is it always so chemically roundabout and unnecessarily complicated” well buddy, that’s because your blood is imitation seawater. See? It’s very simple.
#are you telling me#humans are just sentient aquariums?
Buddy if anything is living in your blood (except for more parts of you) in detectable amounts then you have a serious microbial infection and need to go to the hospital.
Humans are seawater wastelands kept sterile of all but human cells, with microbial mats coating their surfaces.
#/blood is imitation seawater/ is the part that’s confusing
Picture this: you are a Thing That Lives In The Ocean. Some kind of small multicellular animal a long time ago, before proper circulatory systems existed. “Wow,” you think, metaphorically, “it sure is difficult to diffuse chemicals across my whole body. Kinda puts a hard limit on the size and distance of what specialised organs I can have. Good thing I have all this water around me that’s the same salinity as my cells (they have to be that way so I don’t explode or shrivel up) so I can diffuse and filter chemicals with that.”
“Wait a minute,” you say a couple of generations later, because you’re not actually a small animal but an evolutionary process personified and simplified to the point of dangerous inaccuracy for the purposes of a Tumblr post, “instead of losing all these important chemicals to the water around me, how about I put it in tubes? I can keep MY water separate from the rest of the world’s water! Anything I want to keep goes in my water! Anything I don’t, I dump back into the outside water! I’m a genius! An unthinking natural trial-and-error process that’s a GENIUS!”
“Wow,” you think a great many generations later, “being able to have such control over such high concentrations of important chemicals is so great. Look how big I’m getting. I even have a special pump to move my seawater around, and these cool filter systems to keep the chemicals in it right, and that control and chemical concentration has let me grow so many energy-intensive, highly specialised organs! Being big is so hard. I need special cells just to carry my oxygen around now, to make sure my enormous, constantly-operating body has enough of it.”
At this point you are embodying a fish, and eventually, fish start straying into water with different pressures and salinity levels. (I mean, they do that since befor ehty’er fish, but… look, I’m trying to keep things simple here.) “What the FUCK,” you think. “My inside water is at a different salinity and pressure to the outside water?? How am I supposed to deal with that? I can’t have freshwater inside my seawater tubes! My cells have a set salinity and they would explode! I need to start beefing up my regulatory and filter systems so that my inside seawater STAYS SEAWATER OF THE CORRECT SALINITY even if the outside water is different! Fortunately, adding salt to my seawater is a lot easier than removing it, and I want to be saltier than this weird outside water.” At this point you beef up your liver and urinary systems to compensate for different salinities. (Note: the majority of fish, freshwater and saltwater, have a fairly narrow band of salinities they can live in. Every fish doesn’t get to deal with every level of salinity; they are evolved to regulate within specific bands.)
You also, at some point, go out on land. This is new and weird because you have to carry all of your water inside. “It’s a good thing I turned myself into a giant bag of seawater,” you think. “If I wasn’t carrying my seawater inside, how would I transport all these important chemicals between my organs and the environment?” As you specialise to live entirely outside of the water, you realise (once again) that it’s a lot easier to add salt to water than to remove it in great quantities. Drinking seawater in large amounts becomes toxic; your body isn’t specialised for removing that amount of salt. Instead, you drink freshwater, and add salts to that. The majority of your organs are, at this point, specialised for moving your seawater around, protecting it, adding stuff to it, or taking stuff out. You have turned yourself into an intelligent bag for carrying and regulating a small amount of imitation seawater, and its salinity (and your commitment to maintaining that salinity) is based entirely on the seawater that some early animals started to build tubes around a long time ago.
Because at some point, operating along lines of logic that worked out perfectly so far, you did decide to be a mammal.
A mammal is a machine for adapting to Circumstances. A mammal is a tremendously resilient all-terrain life-support system, with built-in heating, cooling, respiration, and incubators for reproduction. Mammals internalise everything (grudges, eggs) and furthermore are excessively, flamboyantly wet internally. Sure, everyone’s a bag of chemicals; but mammals slosh. Mammals took the concept of an internal ocean and took it in an unnecessarily splashy direction, added aftermarket mods and a climate-control system,
and just to show off, you leaned across the metaphorical gambling table and said: “my internal ocean is so good-“
“Bullshit,” said the shark, keeping it salty (ha)
“My internal ocean is so brilliantly resilient, more so than any of YOURS,” you said, holding their attention with a digit held aloft, “that for my next trick, I shall artistically recreate the ballad of evolution as a performance. I shall craft a complex chemical ballet depicting the origin of multicellular life - using some of my own material, of course-”
“Oh, ANYONE can lay an egg,” yodel the fish, and the ray adds: “ontogeny does NOT recapitulate phylogeny!!”
And you’re like, “yeah no, it’s an artistic rendition, not a literal thing. Basically I’m going to take some cells and brew them up-“
“Like an egg.”
“Like an egg. An egg but internally.”
“Yeah,” said the viviparous reptile, “yeah, like, that can work really well. I’ve always said it’s the highest test of one’s chemical know-how. It’s a lot of work. And forget about support from your family - forget about support from your PHYLUM - all you get is criticism.”
“I’m gonna do it on purpose forever,” you said. “The highest chemical, thermoregulatory, immunological, everything-logical challenge. It’s gonna be my thing.”
“I’m with you,” said a viviparous fish, stoutly. “Representation.”
You kindly don’t point out, once again, that you’re planning to do this outside the ocean, in a range of temperatures; carrying the dividing cells in a perfect 37.5• solution of saline broth in all terrains, breathing oxygen in a complicated matter, you know, bit more difficult; but you need your allies.
“It’s solid,” says the coelacanth.
“But is it metal?” says the deep-vent organism.
“Oh, it’s metal. I will feed the young,” you say, magnificently, “on an echo of the mother ocean. The first rich feast of cellular matter, the first hunt for sustenance, the first bite they sip of our liquid planet-”
Everyone waits.
“Will be a blood byproduct. My own blood byproduct.”
Everyone looks uncomfortable.
“But,” a hagfish says carefully, “don’t you outdoorsy guys still need your blood?”
You cough and explain that if you stay wet enough internally and hydrate frequently, you should be able to produce enough blood byproduct to sustain your hellish new invention until they can eat your peers.
The outrage that follows includes questions like “is this some furry shit?” And: “milk has WATER in it?”
And you won the bet. “My inner ocean is such a perfect homage to the primordial soup that I can personally cook up an entire live hairy mammal in it. And then generate excess blood byproduct from my body and give it to the small mammal until it gets big.”
That is an absolutely bonkers pitch, by the way, and everyone thought you were a showoff, even before the opposable thumbs. When the winter came, and the winter of winters, and the rain was acid and the air was poison on the tender shells of their eggs and choked the children in the shells; when the plants turned to poison, and the ocean turned against you all; when the climate changed, and the world’s children fell to shadow; your internal ocean was it that held true. A bet laid against the changing fates, a bet laid by a small beast against climate and geography and the forces of outer space, that you won. The dinosaurs fell and the pterosaurs fell and the marine reptiles dwindled, and you, furthest-child, least-looked-for, long-range-spaceship, held hope internally at 37.5 degrees. Which is another thing that humans do, sometimes.
It has been MONTHS, @elodieunderglass, and I am still mumbling “furthest-child, least-looked-for, long-range-spaceship” under my breath as a comfort phrase, and the FUCKING INDIGNITY that it came from this godforsaken post about THE HORRIBLE WETNESS OF MAMMALS!
So I'm un university now, and earlier this month I had a minor incident with the band director of symphonic band, who also directs the short stint pep band is.
Before I go on, this man verbally admitted to me that he knows zilch about marching band. He's 70 something years old, and has a degree in education and music. His main is clarinet.
Someone in pep band asked what happens if it rains, and I, naturally, told them to hide, with woodwinds getting priority.
He told me that "I believe it's my job", then turned around and said "I've been told to keep playing if it rains".
Mind you, this is pep band. Nobody's getting run over if we just stop for a minute and tuck our instruments underneath our jackets or shirts.
My first thought was "I'm pretty sure I know more about this than you, old man". It was out of anger at first, and then I realized.
I'm pretty sure I do know more about this than he does. Not just marching band, but also performing outside.
More recently, I've been having this persistent thought that the music community, despite being 3 times smaller than my 300-strong high school band, isn't that well knit, and that they're well.
Soft.
And then, I had another realization. They are soft- this is East Coast Canada, there's no marching bands over here that I'm aware of. They don't have the bonds that marching bands generally forge- there's no actual trust between them, trust that no matter what, the person next to them won't screw up. On the field, that trust is necessary- you can't be looking back when you backwards march, you have to trust the person behind you won't crash into you. There's no easy camaraderie that comes with a week or 2 of straight band camp, no little inside jokes that come from band camp or band bus mishaps. People have friends, sure, but other than that they're about as far removed as possible from each other, mentally and physically. They've never had to spend 8+ hours outside, never had to awkwardly look away while a freshman has a genuine breakdown right on the field in frustration.
I've been genuinely thinking about confronting the band director over this.
Because I do know more than him. I know that instruments outside, unless there's a parade or show happening, is never a good idea, and even then you tuck them into your jacket, hunched over them as you run underneath the stands or hold out to the rest of the parade.
What's the longest he's ever stayed outside without going back in? He's never done Hell Week, but I have. The longest I've stayed outside is almost ten hours, with 8 of them being spent in the burning hot sun. I've got the terrible farmer's tan on my arms to prove it.
Has he ever performed outside? And if he has, what's the worst weather he's performed outside in? I have two contenders- it hailed once, during a parade, and we had to finish the set before shoving our instruments against our chests, shielding them from the ice rocks from the sky. And in my first year, we were just about to march on the field for a show before it started raining so badly that in a couple of minutes the rain looked like like individual droplets and more like fog. We had to book it underneath the stands, hiding instruments in our jackets and grabbing our hats like they were lifelines. We were freezing, shivering, dripping wet.
If he has performed in bad weather, then how many times has he performed outside? Because my number is over 100- enough that I've actually lost count. Beyond the ones mentioned above, my most notable days were:
2023. We were doing a standstill of our parade songs straight into show music. Halfway into Mvmt One, it started to rain- not enough to justify panicking and hiding, but enough that when our instruments were at carry most people had them tucked into their bodies. (Notable because it was the only show standstill that year where it rained- fitting considering our theme was 'Dark Seas')
2023, again. We at a parade when it started raining. Drumline did the cadence for way too long while we hid our instruments against our bodies, or even gave them to the staff and chaperones to be protected with their bodies or underneath a tarp covering the water wagon.
2022. Another parade. It was snowing a little, but freezing cold otherwise. A flutist tried to empty her spit at one point and ended up with an icicle instead.
2024, that same exact parade. Not as cold, but light flurries started up. There was melted slush all over the road- we were almost praying to literally every deity that had ever existed that nobody stepped on it wrong and slipped and fell. There was also black ice at some parts; we had to break up the parade block just to avoid them.
My point here is that I know more than him, and being dismissed on something so important to the WWs when he's a WW himself just hurt. Just because I'm a first year doesn't mean you magically know about marching band then I do.
"I believe it's my job" Yes well I believe that I know more than you. But if you want to be the reason why we have moldy pads, then go ahead I guess.
I miss marching band. At least our staff weren't as stuck-up as he is.
[id: photo of a newspaper ad showing a blurry image of a blond in a blue suit and black shirt. “Retraction - Bogart. In 1995 we announced the arrive of our sprogget, Elizabeth Anne, as a daughter. He informs us that we were mistaken. Oops! Our bad. We would now like to present, our wonderful son - Kai Bogart.
Loving you is the easiest thing in the world. Tidy your room.”]/end id.
