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[deadpegasusgasoline]

The only Killjoys adaption I will stand for is a Team Starkid style spoof musical. And that's it.

[xeno-bio-sociology]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations RPF, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Anthony Bourdain, Reepicheep Summary:

I’m crammed into a burrow so small that my knees are up around my ears and the boom mike keeps slamming into my head, inhaling the potent scent of toffee-apple brandy and trying to drink a talking mouse under the table.

[xeno-bio-sociology]

Re the fingers thing; trolls having fewer fingers and/or fewer joints in those fingers, along with their implied thicker/tougher skin and long claws over their fingertips, would contribute to them having shitty manual dexterity, and that might be supported by so much of their tech being grown rather than built and robotics and sewing being pretty uncommon hobbies on Alternia.

Could definitely do that, yeah. Especially if the digits are sturdy enough for snagging a claw to not risk wounding the finger, with the size and weight of a fullgrown troll behind it.

[xeno-bio-sociology]

Genuinely how do you keep finding this stuff? So much of it is super ancient

I cannot tell if that is a compliment or a criticism.

The honest answer is that when I find someone who does xeno stuff I go through their whole blog (or whatever designated tag they have) and add it all to my drafts, which results in a drafts folder that reached its height at WELL into the high 5ks (or maybe the early 6ks even), so even at like 15 posts a day it has taken me years to get down to *checks* 3765.

To queue stuff up I go digging so we get a nice mix of fandoms and artists, and in the end that means that there's also a mix of old and new stuff!

Are people not liking the older stuff? Even though I have seen it all already I am enjoying being reminded of all the creativity and hard work that everyone has put into their worldbuilding and designs.

I am sure that I occasionally repeat stuff, and very rarely will do it on purpose because I was reminded of how much i liked a particular piece (especially in the homestuck fandom since that's my main and there's not as much output as there was) but mostly it's all the first time any given post is featured on this blog, just months or years delayed from the creator's original release date.

[xeno-bio-sociology]

Do you think carapaces are an actual biological species, or artificial? They seem to only reproduce artificially and are created by the game, so... I have an AU idea where they're basically ball-jointed-doll golems (not using the term golems since that's a specific Jewish folklore thing, but that general kind of being - "construct" is too vague to get the point across).

Yee, I get you. Construct’s a good word but can be kinda vague, especially when the work one is referencing also contains “game constructs” as a thing, which the aforementioned characters may or may not classify as.

It is rather up in the air, isn’t it?  It is entirely possible that the carapacians were entirely biological and natural creatures that predate SBurb and were just inserted into the game whole. It is also possible that they are entirely artificial and were created solely for the game and contain no biological nor organic parts whatsoever, just that the vats that we see them in are the method of construction. And of course everything in between. It is rather intriguing, as is their potential relation, or lack thereof, to other game constructs such as imps; and whether the larger and more mutated-looking pieces are themselves ordinary carapaces or if they were instead through some process mutated or re-built over the course of the game.

I also borrow from ball-jointed dolls for my own designs. I meshed different chess pieces, ball-jointed dolls, sugar-shakers, sea turtles, wasps, and a few other things to get something I’m happy with visually. (I still have to figure out a good arm design, so I’m not quite finished yet though)

On the biological side, I am classifying them as techno-organic or bio-mechanical. I intend for them to have a skin/shell that is somewhat plastic-like and iridescent and a highly segmented body with pieces that are swapped out when an individual ages or otherwise earns an upgrade, such as when PM (a pawn) crossed the board and was later queened. Each body section is neatly self-contained and while they serve separate functions they can also have a fair bit of redundancy so that the rest of the body will still live and function for quite a while should one (other than the head) be severely damaged or removed. (as WV experienced when Bec Noir extracted the uranium) On the whole they are very efficient and can survive a very long time without sustenance, as is necessary for those that go into exile.

Of course, none of this necessarily helps you as you prefer to adhere closely to canon.

Canon-wise, I’d guess that Carapacians are likely biotech due to the vats and because biotech has been a running theme in the comic. They are probably coded using some form of DNA, since we have seen that used in the meteors in the making of Bequerel and Doc Scratch. The variants on the same piece in different universes, such as multiple Black Queens and more importantly their associated Archagents points to a set of pre-determined individuals with their own pre-arranged personalities, likely with different potential questlines and objectives like helping Noir with his assassination or WV going farmer/rebel already programmed in. Whether there are a limited number of such pregen’d NPCs and everything else is generated as needed, or if some archetypes may be re-used and scattered around to fill in the blanks, is unclear. As is whether they can reproduce without the vat system, or at least I think it is. I have mentioned that I have not read all of the Epilogues, so I do not know how the Carapacian population has grown on Earth C, whether that would be canon to the rest of the comic or not.

[xeno-bio-sociology]

Do you have any thoughts on an Alternian conlang? Years ago I had a cowriter who tried to figure out enough of a conlang to assign meanings to all the characters' names and I liked that. (Theory we went with is the lusus makes a noise at the hatchling and the jades transcribe it into words.)

I've seen a couple of people trying to conlang Alternian over the years but have no real thoughts of my own other than I would want it to not be at all like any existing Earth language and should include noises humans can't reliably pronounce or hear, with SBurb having done the translation bits between species.

I have some meta floating around somewhere about quirks being a transcription of a sort of "accent" one acquires from one's lusus. Young trolls are mimics with a wide vocal range so as to learn how to communicate with their lusus, and as they grow their voicebox solidifies such that they lose most of their range but retain both what is needed for the alternian dialect and what they've used for custodial communication.

The thing about names being a transcription of lusus noises is I think canon, though of course it is entirely possible it's fudged a bit in reality. It would, for instance, be difficult to get a "feferi" out of Glubglub (forget how that's spelled) without killing a large percent of the population.

[xeno-bio-sociology]

Yeah, I am not keeping up with the tags. I will likely not be able to for a while; I am kinda swamped. 

Go vote what I do about it

[xeno-bio-sociology]

There are no humans in Star Wars

There are no humans in Star Wars.

This should be obvious from the title card. We’re a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Human beings evolved on this planet, Sol 3, over the last sixty million years or so depending on how you count. If we don’t want to go all “Chariots of the Gods?” we have to throw out the notion that the people represented by human actors in Star Wars movies are in fact human. They’re something else.

Why represent them as human? Let’s assume that the Star Wars movies are dramatizations of real history: that Luke, Leia, Han et. al. actually existed in a galaxy long, long ago (etc.), and that George Lucas accessed this history via the Force and wanted to represent it on film. Star Wars tells the story of a dominant-species empire arising from a pluralistic society, then being overthrown by courageous rebels and warrior monks. Lucas had to cast this drama with human actors, and the obvious choice was to use unmodified humans to represent the most common species.

While convenient, this approach does present one problem: watching the Original Trilogy, we assume that the ‘humans’ of the GFFA (Galaxy Far Far Away) are biologically and sociologically identical to Sol 3 humans. When obviously they’re not! In fact, I think a few important context clues present a very different picture of the dominant race of the Original Trilogy.

Gender is the most important clue. The Original Trilogy has a shortage of women when considered by the standards of a two-sexed mammalian species. Leia is the most prominent female, and the only one to feature in all three movies. Aunt Beru and Mon Mothma also have named speaking roles. Aside from these three, I can’t think of another definitely-female, definitely-‘human’ character in the series. In RotJ Leia describes her mother, who is obviously a queen. These females all possess at least local political and social authority.

Family is a second important clue—or, rather, the absence of family. With one notable exception, people in the series don’t talk much about parentage. No non-Force sensitive male ever describes his family, if I recall correctly. Han, Lando, Wedge, Biggs, Tarkin, Dodonna, and so forth, all might as well have sprung from the brows of their ships. In six+ hours of film about war, I would expect to see someone to drop at least a single reference to parents of some sort. The lack of strong family ties suggests that parenting relationships are much less close for most GFFA ‘humans’ than for Sol 3 humans—which in turn suggests large brood sizes, short gestation periods, young ages of maturity, or all of the above.

So we’re looking for an organism with large brood sizes, young ages of maturity, short gestation periods, and relatively few fertile females who naturally assume positions of social and organizational authority.

Here is my modest theory: the GFFA’s ‘humans’ are in fact sentient hive insects, organized around a single queen, a handful of fertile males, and a horde of infertile female soldiers. For parsimony’s sake, let’s assume that Force sensitivity in this species is possessed by fertile males and females, and that male actors used to represent non-Force sensitive characters are actually representing infertile females.

This explains a few things:

The Emperor’s Reproductive and Political Strategy. The Emperor, a fertile male, has replaced the old Queen, substituting the use of clone warriors for ‘normal’ biological reproduction.

The Horror of the Clone Wars. The true horror of the Clone Wars thus becomes clear. They’re not just wars in which cloning technology is used. They’re wars in which the fundamental structure of the ‘human’ species is inverted: wars in which queens are killed, hives consolidated, and clones take the place of biological reproduction. Wars about the use of clones instead of queens.

The Deal with Jabba’s Humanoid Slaves. Doesn’t it seem weird that a presumably hermaphroditic gastropod should be so fascinated by displaying captive females of another phylum in bikinis? The Hive Insect theory makes this habit a clear and calculated display of dominance, communicating to ‘human’ visitors that Jabba is to ‘human’ queens as queens are to drones and soldiers. (This also suggests that Jabba’s interested in twi’lek girls because they look like ‘humans,’ but may be easier to come by—giving his character a bit of extra complexity, since he wants to communicate dominance to his followers in this way but isn’t able to do more than pretend until Leia comes along.)

Why Kill the Jedi? I mean, sure, kill the old ones, but wouldn’t it be easier to convert younglings than wipe them out? Well, drones in the absence of a queen naturally rear fertilized eggs into new queens. If Palpatine is trying to destroy queen-dom, he cannot permit the existence of any drones who are not perfectly loyal to his New Order. Conversion is apparently a brutal process. Vader survived it; Luke might survive it. Perhaps no one else did.

What’s with all the Death Stars? It isn’t hard to annihilate all life on a planet from orbit. If you’re in orbit, you’ve already done the hard part—just tractor some rocks into the surface. Obviously a superweapon is nice to have, but why not build just the weapon and the shielding system? That would be cheaper, certainly. It seems that the superweapon is only part of the purpose of the Death Star—the Star is in fact an artificial hive, built as the perfect environment for the Emperor’s new clone-based society.

Admittedly, this doesn’t explain what’s going on between Leia and Han. It’s possible that Han is in fact a drone and doesn’t know it—he is phenomenally lucky, after all, which suggests Force sensitivity. On the other hand, it seems reasonable, given the importance of queens, that some sort of queen-soldier pairbonding could occur. This may even be the sort of relationship that the Emperor is intending to replicate with Vader.

So that’s a theory. I mean, what’s more likely—a Galaxy Far Far Away full of psychic alien super-bees, or one in which you can cross thirty solar systems and run into three women with speaking parts?

DISCLAIMER: I love Star Wars. It rocks. And precisely because of this, it’s fun to tweak. Obviously, the above argument only refers to the OT; the EU features a much broader range of characters and situations, and I don’t want to be responsible for creating a consistent interpretation of the prequel trilogies. (Though just off the top of my head, Naboo-’humans’ do seem to fit with Hive Insect theory.)

This article originally appeared October 21, 2013 on Max Gladstone’s blog.

Additional comments: 

16. Fred Davis      Fri May 2, 2014 8:56pm

Actually the prequal trilogy works even better with this theory – who would “elect” a teenage “queen” like amidala? Viewed as the result of a sane sol c society it’s nonsensical, but for humanoid bees? Even the use of the idea of being “elected” makes more sense – now it’s not a thing of democratic votes but of convincing a swarm of infertile females to come nest with a new queen.

Similarly, the anakin/his mother/amidala relationship is one of a fertile male drone produced by an enslaved queen going from one drone/queen relationship to another – and palpatine’s usurption of that relationship is ultimately and irrevocably confirmed when the drone lashes out and fatally injures his queen.

This act is in turn is so aborrent and unthinkable that when it happens to amidala she gives up her life out of a sense of shame, presumably in the form of producing epic quantities of royal jelly to feed the pupal leia and luke, rather than live as the queen who was struck by one of her male drones – obviously she’d be unable to form any kind of hive after that and so put all her hopes for the formation of a new hive that could fight palpatine’s new clone hive in her children.

19. claritywhisk      Sun May 11, 2014 12:33am

What truly undermines the argument here is that, while positing the theory, it doesn’t mention the most obvious item of support. Light saber combat, an intricate dance involving rapid flipping, is obviously a depiction of aerial combat and/or wrestling: something akin to the fighting of terran bees. The force concerned is simply gravity. When you think about the repeated emphasis on agility and ‘human’ nature overcoming imperial forces throughout the films (e.g. downing the imperial walker; also, ewoks) it’s apparant there was cleverness in overcoming the flightless limitations of the actors available. But really, forgetting the flight saviours? It’s almost as gaping a hole as omitting comment on the dance at the entryway to the death star. Perhaps over time you can elaborate the paper to give it a bit more sting. As it is, I’m puzzled as to the clear trueness of the presented hypothesis, what grade of honey that truth corresponds to and whether further study would find it moldy.

22. Merle      Mon May 12, 2014 2:43pm

Great read! Though now I’d love to see insectoid redesigns of the main cast…