Hey folks. I’ve been cheating a bit. Some of my patreon patrons are getting postcards that I’m scanning and then using for my dnd campaign. Anywho here’s a wizard and his antbear.
I don’t even go here in regard to TAZ, but I read the creator’s response to all of the “backlash” yesterday and…
Wow. It is a fucking shame that even had to be written. Gracious and smart and honest as it was, it’s incredulous it came to them having to do that.
From an outsider’s perspective, it seems like yet another gross example of fans overstepping boundaries and using Representation and Diversity as their progressive superiority fodder. Which is always difficult (especially for creators belonging to certain majority groups) to argue against without coming across as assholes or dismissive. It does not allow the possibility that maybe these fans are just entitled assholes using skin color as a means to bully creators into telling their stories.
And can I just say: the fact that anyone would expect a fantasy character named Taako to be Latinx just because the name sounds like/is related to tacos is fuckin’ racist as shit. How is that an actual parameter of someone’s assumed race/culture? And that this sect of the fandom has hung that expectation (or other expectations of representation) over the creators’ heads to the point that if the creators don’t adhere to it (like the graphic novel), they feel justified hurling claims of racism and whitewashing which, from what I read, is far from the truth.
What disgusts me more in this is that the majority of these dissenting voices do not seem to belong to brown people. There is a new form of fetishization of brown flesh happening in fandom–where white fans use us and our skin color to get a stamp on their Progressive Brownie Points card. A new way to assuage their White Guilt and fluff their I’m Woke About Representation boners at the same time. They think it’s some significant act of contribution to diversity in media to headcanon characters as brown. Or gay. Or disabled.
Well. It’s not. Because it’s not their story to do that with. And it’s often really just another form of fetishization with self-centric intent on some “I love brown people! Some of my best friends are brown!” bullshit. These are people that’d rather bark at three white guys about including brown character instead of, oh, I don’t know…using that energy to look for some brown creators to support.
When earnest, the challenge of “Creators should think beyond the narrow standards” should always be presented. And fans should be able to communicate with creators their concerns and critiques about representation. But stories should ALWAYS belong to creators first. They should be able to create the kind of stories and characters they envision and determine what degree of influence their audience will have.
Concerns of predominantly white or straight or cis casts are usually valid and discussions should be had. But every story is not going to be representative of everyone. Or anyone. Sometimes, stories are just stories that people love for very personal reasons and they want to tell and share them for reasons of self fulfillment and the hope that others will enjoy it, maybe even identify with. But if certain people don’t enjoy or identify with it, it’s not necessarily the duty of the creator to change their vision in order to check off representation boxes.
Social media has made creators too accessible and given fans a stage on which their voices are too loud. Tumblr and Twitter can be great tools to connect creators and community, and produce some wonderful discussions that should and need to be had. But creators also have to set some firm and impassible boundaries of how much interaction fans have with them and how much influence they will have on their creation. Arguing for representation and diversity isn’t always done with the best intentions or communicated with the most effective voice.
I give it to any creator–even the ones who fuck up–who bare themselves with an admission of guilt and a true desire to do better through listening to their fans. But sometimes, the fans aren’t right. Sometimes it’s the fans that should check themselves and feel guilty.
if you tried to describe the earth’s geomagnetic interaction with the solar wind
with a bronze-age vocabulary, you might come up with something a whole lot like certain descriptions of angels
i mean, wheels within wheels and fiery wings? eyes in wheels and wings! how do you make sense of that shape if your scientific knowlege extends only about as far as “if i leave a skin of milk hanging by the door overnight it may or may not be yogurt by morning”?
I remember once reading a post that explained why angels were, in fact, black holes.
Cecaelia
is the name often given to half-human, half-octopus creatures, though they may also be refereed to as octofolk.
Be very careful searching for images of this species because frankly a creature that is a beautiful human on the top half and gratuitous amounts of tentacles on the bottom half inspires a particular type of art from the internet.
Octopi, and cephalopods in general, have a number of abilities that make them interesting from a fiction or monster perspective.
Known to be highly intelligent
Willing to leave water
Associate with ocean floor, shallows, reefs and shorelines
Can change color
Masterful mimicry
Ink squirting
Carnivores
So you have a highly intelligent carnivore, master of disguise, that for some reason looks human on the top half.
Why on ‘Earth’ does this creature resemble a human?
Here is a simple octopus anatomy diagram for your consideration:
The octopus has no bones, but related species such as the squid and cuttlefish do have an internal shell, which serves a similar function. The Cecalia may have this sort of modified internal shell instead of a skeleton. This internal shell would allow the torso to be held upright, and additional internal shells may also allow the limb to move like a human.
However, this seems too simple to me. In the octopus and its tentacled friends, the mouth is located between the tentacles, and the eyes just above it. You are rearranging a lot of anatomy to move the eyes and mouth far away from their original position onto a humanoid torso, while presumably leaving the anus out of sight where it belongs.
What if the top half of the Cecalia is merely an imitation of a human torso?
I wouldn’t put it past a highly intelligent carnivore to mimic the upper half of an attractive human, especially if they have a culture that values shiny things you simply can’t mine under the ocean (gold and other loot)
It’s entirely plausible that the mouth of a Cecalia is still located between the tentacles like a regular octopus, with the real eyes just above the tentacles, but the ‘head’ of the octopus being reshaped to mimic a human. They may then attempt to lure humans into shallow waters to prey upon them.
The implications of such anatomy, where the humanoid torso is essentially an excellent mimicry, are:
The humanoid segment can resemble any humanoid, and can change
Different individual Cecalia could imitate the same humanoid at different times
A bold adventurer could ‘decapitate’ the humanoid torso and only seriously wound the octofolk.
Any voice the creature has is likely to emanate from its tentacle region.
They may leave the water for a short period of time but will always try to return there for a confrontation.
Octopi produce ink and have excellent vision. They are highly likely to be artistic.
But they have a completely different evolutionary pathway to humans and are unlikely to share the same goals, motivations to aesthetics.
If they have perfected the art of mimicking humans then they likely spend a significant portion of their time either preying on or scavenging from them.
Octopus eggs are cared for in batched of hundreds or thousands, and the newly hatched octopi are tiny when they emerge. Imagine all these tiny creatures innately trying to mimic humans but not quite getting it right. Nightmares, anyone?
So as far as an octopus mermaid goes, yes they probably would lure men onto the rocks, they probably would appear beautiful, they might not sing, but they are most definitely dangerous.
Anonymous
