Hi! Your fusion au is so cool and the drawing of all of the Nein loafing together to sleep is instant serotonin
One question, as a Griffin, Yasha has traits from two animals, and you said that one was a clouded leopard but what is the other? Also, if someone is a griffin does it say anything about their personality or do they just have the traits of the two animals?
hi! you've activated my trap card im going to talk about griffins in Altered now
FIRST though! 1. thank you the image gave me a great deal of serotonin to draw also 2. snow leopard not clouded leopard in yasha's case, sorry, i know its slightly confusing all these cats pretending to be leopards 3. YES she is a specific bird. she's a bearded vulture! they evolved to subsist entirely on bones and look extremely metal on top of that and yasha deserves nothing less!
now as for griffins though they do have specific behavior that im gonna put under a cut here but they are an actual species that exists in the world of altered and its that behavior that was used for yasha's animal form
griffins are interesting creatures. it's unknown how intelligent they are--some people claim that while they don't speak they can understand human speech, but then, lots of folk say that about their dogs, and it's mostly griffin riders who make that claim, and everyone knows griffin riders are eccentric folk.
what is known is this: griffins are intensely loyal creatures, but only to humans they personally believe deserve that loyalty. a kingdom might have an entire stable full of hand-raised, fully trained, excellently behaved griffins, but if the powers that be lose the respect of those griffins, they will all Simply Leave. and if a griffin's owner is to take extreme measures to force them to stay, the griffin will either attempt to kill that master or just starve to death. they are proud creatures and their loyalty is not easily earned.
but once it is earned it is forever. they are incredibly focused and loving creatures with a very powerful protective instinct and will fight to the death for the object of that instinct, and if it's you, you have a friend for life.
the most common type of griffin in domestic-ish scenarios looks like this (technically this is the animal form of an Actual Guy in altered but his animal form won't be revealed for a while and as long as i dont name him it's fine lmao)
they're social creatures which is why they're the prefered ones in captivity; they get along decently well with other griffins and are much easier to form initial connections with, as they lack any sort of dispersal-upon-adulthood behavior that many other species of griffins have. these ones also have a fairly high sexual dimorphism, with the females still having manes, but those manes being much smaller.
yasha, however, is a very different, much wilder species. she'd be very rare to see in captivity, with a reputation for being exceptionally dangerous. yasha's species of griffin lacks the sexual dimorphism of the common species (aside from females being MUCH bigger than males) is known to live solitary lives in cold, bleak, rocky and icy environs. They are said to be quite vicious when approached, and adept hunters, as well as often being seen waging fierce territorial battles.
for a long time this species wasn't thought to be capable of the bonding behavior griffins are known for, however, local legend says otherwise. stories are told of a hunter who accidentally caught such a beast in his trap, and released it, hoping to be allowed to live. not only did it let him go, but the hunter later found the same creature building a nest upon his roof.
it's unknown how much of the story is true, but what is known for certain is that one of these creatures is always nesting in the home said to be that of the hunter's--even generations later, it seems that with each generation of griffin as well, one of each clutch stays behind, to ensure that the family of the kind hunter is never without a guardian, eternally thanked for a single act of kindness....
in other words: to have the animal form of a griffin of any kind represents someone with heavy protective instincts/loyalty inherent, but only to people who have well and truly earned it; loyalty not of the fawning, unconditional variety of a dog, but of the iron-honed, courageous, selfless type forged by a kindness offered. in yasha's case, she's a much wilder variant with a different reputation, which extra emphasizes yasha's whole struggle with the love that is inherent to her core; she's not someone who finds love easily and is often afraid of it but when she does love someone she loves them completely and without exception.
and also, being a mix of the apex predator of the tallest of mountains and a bird that evolved to eat exclusively bone is metal as hell, and yasha deserves it.
rereading crossfire as a gift for myself, it still slaps every time. are you looking at expanding on it or is it gonna stay that one fic?
I have. A BUNCH of the one shot written but not finished and I’m unfortunately currently preoccupied with original work but i consider getting back to crossfire often enough that I’m not gonna call it abandoned
[[not going active here again just yet--sorry, not ready to come back to this story at this point, i really am--but like, for the record, i’m gonna be trying to get the art for this uploaded elsewhere just in case; it isn’t yet but at some point it’ll be available at furaffinity (https://www.furaffinity.net/user/happikatt/) and on ao3 (https://archiveofourown.org/users/HappiKatt/works)]]
So i just zipped through your altered tag and its now chewing on my brain. So sorry if youve already mentioned it but im curious about your animal choices in Altered!
Specifically Fjords -- if im not mistaken he's an otter right? (Im on mobile so i cant see image descriptions 😭) ((Such a good choice btw omg 💕)) I adore otters -- specifically river otters. Is there a reason u chose river otter instead of sea otter for him? (Or am i horribly mistaken and my memory of different sea otter appearances is lacking 😅)
fjord is genuinely one of my favorite ones to talk about because he was a JOURNEY to figure out
he's specifically a giant river otter! they live in the amazon and are about five feet long not including their tail! they are apex predators! :) VERY big otter that looks like it's witnessed the face of god
here's a photo of a couple of them on wikipedia
anyway what happened, on the day my very dear friend @tactfulgrimalkin cursed me by asking and i quote "at the risk of inflicting you with terminal brainrot, what would the mighty nein's animal forms be" when i got to fjord i said: were it not for the nautical theming built into fjord's character, he would be the easiest wolf of my life.
(doing a cut because this got long)
i consider a LOT of things when im assigning animal forms/actually i tend to start with the animal form when i'm creating characters, because i find that a bit easier, but in this case obviously it was the other way around and the fact remains i go through a LOT of things. i think about their cultural relationship w/ humans and how they're portrayed, historical stuff, but most of all the number one thing is always the animal's Actual Behavior.
with wolves, if someone is a wolf, the sort of hallmark trait that will make me define them as a wolf over any other animal i might have narrowed it down to is that above all else, for better or worse, family is the most important part of their lives. for fjord, an orphan who had a whole ass long complicated journey around learning to be accepted for who he is and all, i'd say that hits pretty true.
additionally, there's the tension between wolves and dogs which fits well with his struggle with the whole half-orc thing as well as his feeling very out of place on land a lot of the time, even if he's good at acting otherwise (sailor beached on land and all).
there's ALSO the whole perception of wolves culturally with them being regularly maligned as terrible, evil creatures when their actual behavior is just a very family driven species (a tension that's VERY important to altered, actually, but i shant say more about that yet. bewarethekingofwolves etc). and they are SO family driven like i said; they're apex predators, which in the same way caduceus described being a beast of burden as something that can mean multiple things depending on how he chooses to interpret it, being an apex predator is also something that can mean a lot of things, but its important to note with wolves that the reason they hold that spot is specifically because they are cooperative pack hunters.
But the tension again relates well both to fjord's half-orc struggles of not feeling like he fits anywhere and ALSO reflects his whole toxic masculinity thing. i could keep going on about this.
there is unfortunately one problem. wolves aren't the least bit aquatic.
technically, FULLY aquatic animals are no-gos for animal forms for logistical reasons--you can't shift forms if doing so will harm you, so any animal that starts dying the moment you take it out of the water is just not allowed (primates are also off limits but that's because of historical racism but thats another conversation). HOWEVER. semi-aquatic is fine and i knew like, the water is too important to fjord for him to not be something good at swimming. now, there's a subspecies of sea wolf that's slowly evolving in that direction up in vancouver, and if we lived in a reality in which those guys started evolving a few million years earlier and were already like fully obviously something that swims enough for my liking, i woulda jumped on that and been done with it. but we dont live in that world so me and my friend had to get back to the drawing board.
had a lot of points to look for, at least: apex predator, cooperative pack hunter, tension between portrayal in media/perception by humans vs the animal's actual behavior, huge focus on family life. but also needed to be aquatic enough to fit fjord.
and at some point one of us, i think he did but im not sure, mentioned giant river otters, so i did some reading and uh yeah it turns out giant river otters are EXACTLY that. they don't have the exact same reputation as wolves, which is the one thing i was less thrilled about, they're viewed more as pests than an actual threat by people who live near them locally, but at the same time any time you look at comments of like a youtube short of them, or try looking up documentaries, a lot of it is like look at these BIG SCARY HORRIBLE-LOOKING NASTY BOYS. they're like the cute little button eyed otters you know but BIT and CREEPY and DANGEROUS
(they are family creatures who live in the same social structure as wolves, with mom and dad in charge and a year or two's worth of older pups helping raise the youngest ones, then slowly dispersing as they grow old enough to want to establish their own territories and families. they share food with each other if someone's struggling to catch any fish. they can hunt CAIMANS sometimes. they bully any jaguar who goes swimming in their territory. they make little squeaky noises and apparently even produce a sound similar to a purr when they're content. yes they can be dangerous to humans in their territory but like it's their territory just leave them alone)
so that's. a very long winded late night ramble but i hope i got the general ideas across! thank you so much for asking!
im being so brave about having to do lineart for a big messy battle scene for like half the 125 page chapter i get to be silly about What If The M9 Could All Turn Into Animals At Will as a treat
I love your AU designs so much so here's a little doodle of Mollymauk!!! i cannot wait to see what else you've been cooking up :3
WOAGHGHSD
HE. THE CREATURA
thank you??? actually in awe that someone liked my extremely self indulgent ramblings enough to draw stuff from it omg. i love the way you drew him here also hes so sleek and fluffy
shoutout to the tiny handful of ppl who either followed from the animal forms post or have been here for years and just didnt leave even after i went radio silent for a long ass time who keep liking/commenting/tagging the stuff im posting btw yall are helping me maintain sanity in this trying time (attempting to get through the lineart done on this dang webcomic chapter)
