why must my brain fixate on this

...oh man, I remember that book

A big giant sentient trumpeter swan that talks by writing on a little chalkboard and plays the trumpet like a professional jazz star

Surely this will fit in next to all the

Checks notes

jg'posgjnsj

HBO style tv drama protagonists, genshin impact anime teenagers, and.... ah yes

Baldurs gate III blorbos

Nobody ever tags me when I wanna be a musical bird

Okay but that would be awesome, I would tag a musical bird.

Admittedly, I have a character uniquely suited to CR like that right now.

Given that the motherfucker can talk mind to mind with animals.

OH MY GOSH that's so great!

I reread the book a few years ago, it was fun!

Laios would be fascinated

I know this feel. .-.
(I say, also playing what is essentially a sentient animal with A Gimmick. Though Hopper1 is not very musical, from what I know.)

The thing is, I don’t wanna play it as a gimmick or a gag, I genuinely think this could be interesting if played genuinely

Like in Louis it’s in a children’s book and so his story is obviously written very simply and straightforwardly, but

Also mood. (Gotchard has a LOT going on, especially in its mostly-undetailed backstory. Lots to say about interdependence and the need for letting the new generation decide on actions for themselves, though!)

I also want to do Mumble, the penguin from happy feet

okay, that movie DID give me feels. I see the vision.

speaking of talking animals, I did TDM reepicheep from Narnia a few months ago

But I’m the end there’s just not much about him, for all that he’s a major secondary character

I feel like he’s fun but it’s hard to give him like

Cultural details

Without having to just invent things

(A course I do say that but the ghost of CS Lewis can meet these hands in the parking lot if he wants to argue with me, but still)

trilobite_punch: YOU LAUGH but I’m completely serious here!!!

But what about unicorns? No voice for the most magical shape shifters?

... I have seen someone RP the Unicorn from TLU.

Yes, Lady Amalthea is relatively common by these standards. I've seen her a time or two.

Usually they do her as the humanized version, though not always

I guess the thing I'm gesturing towards here is

not actually some kind of Furry thing, honestly

but like, the idea of being conversant with a nonhuman intelligence, whether that's a sentient machine, an alien, or a talking animal. A person who is of a different species than our own

The ultimate context shift

And then the idea of fitting our lives together, accommodating the needs and comforts of both sides in ways that are both mundane and fantastical

like the way there are hamster-sized jeffries tubes for rapid transit in Zootopia and doors sized for rabbits right alongside elephant-sized ones.

And the way that agriculture and living spaces are arranged and segreagated in Jay Eaton's Runaway to the Stars

and the way that the Rats of NIMH forge their own plows, sized for teams of rats to pull them in place of any beast of burden

and the way that feline wizards have their own culture of game theory and political divides which relate to but aren't dependent on humans, in Diane Duane's Young Wizards series

By and large the aliens one meets in the Jamjar scene are not wildly diverse

they could be on star trek, played by people with makeup and latex

the cultures differ, but the fundamental shape of a chair?

that's the same

the assumptions about the importance of being able to sing, or fly, or clothing?

largely similar

i wanna make it weirder

i want people who are at least a bit more inhuman

and for it not to be a joke, or a gag, or some kind of sidekick

fully taking part in the world

ANYWAYS

WHAT IF A SWAN

yessss.
(I want more Gotchard backstory for exactly this reason. GO WHOLE HOG. Have the Chemies be MORE than just created-by-humanity.
It's why I really like the Manuals. Let the creatures be protagonists!!)

Captcha Check i make a thing

Okay but yes to all this, I love playing against weird characters. Please.

owls_in_moss: laios for you know that trumpeter swans have a bony wrist that they use to club threats with enormous power? It’s like getting hit repeatedly by a two baseball bats!

Autistic_Ace: tell me of gotchard

Iiii do not know if you have watched any Kamen Rider (series concept has existed since the 1970s, but they're released on a year-long schedule for each story), but in terms of tokusatsu its main themes are: individual heroes are granted or stumble upon power (pt 1),

have to go up against institutional corruption and apathy from the people they protect, and usually the threat in focus is supernatural (ghosts, humanlike AI instead of gotdang algorithms, aliens, transformational Hell-sourced fruits, etc) while still having basis in the part of humanity capable of cruelty.

Kamen Rider Gotchard is the story of newcomer alchemists, the parents that attempted to protect them from someone seeking to preserve the world in eternal stasis (via GOLD), and the various ways those parents/mentors have failed yet still believe in them.

the other half of it is: there are 100 (101) alchemy-derived creatures. It is never confirmed how chemies exactly are made, but the first ones were made by someone who Was Once Human and gave that up to ascend with two other people into the Demon King.

The chemies are supposedly lab-created, and we are left to guess at things such as lab-order, but (and this bit is my conclusion) it is unlikely there's just 100 around that world, made in the past 2000 years, especially if no one's successfully nailed down the process.

(report your scientific discoveries, people!!)

Chemies (usually) pair themselves into partners, and the main Thing of the show is that the three main Rider characters pick one (or a pair) and combine with them into Kamen Riders (or Warriors, in the case of the one Edgey McEdgelord character with the particularly traumatic backstory).

The Chemies are both Monsters of the Week (because they transmute with human emotions - negative-fueled transformations are called Malgams, and there's no specific name for the positive-fueled ones but we do see those as well) and victims of the week, because they aren't actually in control of the malgamization process.

It's essentially automatic, and the ability to immunize them from it happening by force is only coined at the start of endgame.

There are also three homunculus (homunculi?) girls, the Meikoku Sisters, and they are initially the drivers of the plot at the behest of their father/creator... who is mostly just using them to achieve his endgame above (he is not secretly a kind dad, whoops), and watching the trio realize the abusive nature of their situation over the course of the show

was both emotional and at times just plain heartbreaking.

But back to the not looking-like-humans crowd, the Chemies are fully capable of understanding those around them, but most can only say their own names. There are three exceptions; one looks like a cosplayer (it's not clear where he gained humanspeak but he didn't always have it), one just plain looks human but didn't always, and

the third imprinted directly on the protagonist's soul (and had been helping him understand his transformations and such throughout the show).

The series ends with them literally getting their own planet - but not being sealed off from Earth, so there's nothing to prevent them just visiting whoever they like when they want.

Another theme of the show is the confrontation of failure, and it not being the end of seeing something through, so establishing coexistence/interdependence being a proper longterm goal instead of being handwaved as completed successfully made narrative sense.

(that's all I got for now, unless you want to read through my little ficlets or look at fanart. |D)

(Laios thinks more animals should have bone clubs, because that's cool!)

yeah the majority of my characters are seriously non human bc all of that is interesting to me too

I played a hatoful boyfriend pigeon for years and the first time I apped the mod was like oh I thought this would be a joke app

no! the pigeons are absurd on the surface but there is depth and pathos!

it's also a lot of Alloran appeal
though I steal a lot of culture worldbuilding from a major fanfic

I think that’s fair in the case of Alloran; there’s enough of the alien species explored in Animorphs to provide direction, if not a full picture

I’m genuinely sad about old Reepicheep, honestly. He’s such a compelling little fellow, but there is exactly zero to his known background or culture beyond that he is/was the leader of the talking mice, and that he’s sensitive about his size in a way that implies that mice are often the subject of mockery on that topic, as a group

Like, what is mouse culture in narnia?

I’d write a very pretty fanfiction about it, but it’s cutting from whole cloth

At that point, it’s just making an oc and giving it a canon character’s skin to wear

right, right

Joysweeper: are you aware of a webcomic called nature of nature’s art?

I think maybe you’d find it interesting

never heard of it! what's it about?

It’s about animals both forming and living in an animal society that they have formed in the wilds beyond human notice

There is also a mysterious latent psychic ability that animals have, which they refer to as Art

It’s really interesting

My favorite arc called “10%+”, which is about a pair of friends; Quintet the cat and Meander the maned wolf as they navigate their challenging last season of college before graduating, and discover a dark secret that their teachers have been hiding

oh it's the has colleges sort of society

Sometimes! There are lots of points along the timeline

At the founding of society they weren’t any

The current arc is about first contact with humans and how the animal and human societies came up integrate and interact with one another

nods
sorry if I'm abrupt and come and go, I'm at work and sometimes I get a stat or something and gotta step aside

It’s fine, this is Plurk

We leave messages being for our friends

NofNA; 10%+

Here's the link, if you're interested

the art style is sort of an acquired taste, and it's particularly rough in 10%+, especially towards the beginning, since it's basically the first comic the author ever posted

but i still think its my favorite

nice nice, I'll take a look later

"aptophilia", the fascination with unique body plans making daily life difficult/different
that's the word I was thinking of!