early_riser

Lemmy is so Linux-focused and people are surprisingly opinionated about it.

I read an interesting post about this on the worldbuilding subreddit that I was going to "cross post" here for the sake of having more content that isn't just me talking about my own stuff. Unfortunately I can't find the post again, so I'll just summarize it and put my own thoughts.

Basically, zombies and vampires resonate strongly with the modern mind. Zombies represent the loss of individuality and subsumption into the horde. Vampires represent a parasitic aristocracy literally sucking the life out of those beneath them. But werewolves don't really stand for something that modern man can latch onto.

Some of the comments suggested that lycanthropy is usually depicted as a part time transformation, so getting bitten doesn't mean a total loss of self or humanity, compared to becoming a zombie or vampire which is usually permanent, so it's not as impactful as the other two.

It's also possible werewolves represent the dangers of the wilderness, getting attacked or eaten by wild animals (wolves especially) or dying of exposure. In the past those were problems faced by more people, so the trope resonated more, but modern advancements have pushed the savage wilderness back, allowing humans to live in relative comfort without such fears.

The last point that was brought up approaches how I imagine lycanthropy, namely man's inhumanity to man, the worry that beneath a thin veneer of social convention we're all just naked apes acting on the same savage instincts that our hairier tree-dwelling cousins do. Werewolves represent what happens when that thin veneer is stripped away. Indeed, there's a Latin phrase that embodies this. Homo homini lupus (man is a wolf to man).

But I think I'd take the idea in a slightly different direction. What if we start with the conceit that werewolves are humans who turn into literal regular wolves every month, as opposed to superpowered bipedal wolf men. Wolves who think and act like the nonsapient animals they are in real life. Real wolves don't maul everything that moves. A wolf is more likely to run away at the sight of a human. A wolf who isn't currently starving isn't going to risk life or limb on a meal that fights back. So what if when a werewolf turns, he just slinks off into a corner and sleeps, or if hungry, seeks less risky prey than a human.

For a brief window of time, a human gets to experience a life without dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. He simply acts, without worrying about the morality of his actions, because he's an animal, and animals don't have a moral framework.

Perhaps some part of his humanity is accessible while transformed, but it's a faint echo of emotions evoked by familiar sights and sounds and smells. He has no idea what a house or a couch are, and even less what ownership is, but he recognizes his human house and human couch as places of rest and safety. So he just quietly curls up on his couch and, for the first time this month, gets a good night's sleep because he's incapable of worrying.

Humans are hardwired to interpret certain physical features as cute, triggering our nurturing instincts, regardless of whether the animal in question is safe to interact with. I'd personally love to give scritches and belly rubs to all sorts of floofy animals that would at best strongly object to me intruding on their personal space and at worst rip my face off.

Do you have any dangerous critters that evoke the same feelings? Are there other sophonts besides humans who have a different schema for cuteness?

The Lonely Galaxy has tree dwellers (or tree-dwellers), which are nonsapient congeners to the yinrih. They're visually identical to their sapient kin as far as humans are concerned.

Adult yinrih have a very strong sense of personal space. Their wild ancestors did not engage in allogrooming, since their jungle home had plenty of bristly plants that they could rub against or wallow on to get rid of mats and bugs. Gestures that involve physical contact are vanishingly rare among unrelated adults, including between parents. So when humans try to go in for a snoot boop or belly rub they're likely to be met with an assault charge.

However, pups are more physically affectionate. Siblings will thump each other across the back with their tails, sires and dams will "kiss" their pups (touching the wet tip of the nose to the muzzle, top of the head, or back of an ear and quickly exhaling), and parents will often intertwine their tail with their pup's to give comfort. As pups get older, they start rejecting physical affection from parents and litter mates, though they may resume them to some extent as adults.

Tree dwellers display similar developmental stages, with kits and pups actively seeking physical interaction from sires, dams, and litter mates, but rejecting (sometimes violently) this affection as they near adulthood.

Tree dwellers are almost as long-lived as yinrih, with more or less the same ~50ish years to reach adulthood, with a good 30 or so of those years where the pups are cuddly. So you can probably see where this is going. A human illegally buys a tree dweller pup, which will be all cute and cuddly for potentially the rest of the owner's life depending on the ages of the pup and owner, and by the time that pup grows into a violent adult, the owner has died and this critter who will live longer than the Western Roman Empire is now someone else's problem.

Because content!

This was supposed to take place after The Tornado. Sarah gets a tour of the Dewfall, then Tod gets bandaged up by Sunshine. He brings his powered armor with him when going back to town to meet Jim. Tod is an AW peacekeeper and is familiar with disaster relief operations, so he intends to assist the rescue operations in the wake of the tornado. That's what I intended to write, anyway. Here's what I managed before ADHD kicked in. I write scenes as they come to me regardless of order, then stitch them together, so it jumps around a lot.

::: spoiler here ya go. The tail lights of Mark's truck had barely disappeared from view when Sunshine turned to Sarah. «Well, now's your chance to see how a yinrih healer gets things done.» she said, walking over to the spacecraft and beckoning Sarah to follow.

"I still can't believe you spent two hundred fifty years in here."

«It's not so bad.» said Sunshine as she traced a pattern with her writing claw on a small panel next to the hatch. Her ink lingered briefly before being quickly absorbed into the smooth surface. A haptic motor in the panel pulsed in confirmation as the hatch noiselessly glided open. «Come on in, but mind the low ceiling. Womb ships aren't built with giant bipeds in mind.» She wrapped the tip of her tail around a control knob near the hatch and rotated it a few times, dialing the interior lighting to a frequency range that Sarah could see.

Sarah ducked her head and climbed through the hatch. She could just about stand upright if she bent her head forward. A melange of odors greeted her nostrils, a combination of lavender, disinfectant, and the musty smell of a kennel, a well cleaned kennel, but a kennel nonetheless. Six ovoid capsules lined the walls, three to a side, each just large enough to fit a single yinrih. They seemed to float freely just off the floor, but closer inspection revealed them to be attached by gimbals to the wall. Sunshine pawed one of the chambers, causing it to rotate forward revealing a door. Sarah could tell it was originally transparent, but the interior surface was coated in a translucent yellow residue.

«This here's an amnion.» said Sunshine patting the capsule demonstratively with her tail. She pressed a button, causing the transparent section of the chamber to swing open. The lavender smell intensified as the interior of the chamber was exposed to air. Inside was a harness to secure a traveler in place, as well as some drains and other things Sarah couldn't identify. «You get strapped in here and it fills completely with neurogel.»

"You're completely submerged?" Sarah asked. She couldn't see any breathing masks, tubes, or anything other than the harness meant to connect the occupant to the capsule.

«Sure. Neurogel is wonderful stuff. It's a cushion against high G-forces; it holds dissolved oxygen like nobody's business, so you just let it fill your lungs, and it serves as an interface between the nervous system and the ship's electronics. Oh, and it halts metabolism, that's the important part. It does all the work of keeping the brain nourished and oxygenated while your body is preserved for centuries.»

"I thought yinrih couldn't go unconscious. You're telling me you just floated in there like pickles in a jar for two hundred fifty years?"

«It only felt like a few days to us. While we were in interstellar space the amnions slowed down our brain functions so that time outside seemed to pass more quickly. When we entered Earth orbit they went back to normal. We were still in suspension when we heard Bob on the radio. Stormlight was the one who answered back, and he did it while floating in that amnion over there.»

Sarah reached her hand out to touch the patina of gel coating the door, but Sunshine gave her a warning look. «I wouldn't touch it.» she admonished. «I don't know enough about your neurology to say if it's toxic to humans. In fact, let's close this for now, just in case the fumes get to you.» Sunshine hopped up on her hind feet and pushed the door closed with her front paws.

Sunshine moved further into the tiny craft. «Mind the paw loops.» she said, using her right rear paw to tug on a cloth loop attached to the floor. They covered every free surface: walls, floor, and ceiling. «Most structures built in microgravity have these loops everywhere to help you pull yourself along. They also double as handles for lifting floor panels.» She said as she pressed four spring loaded buttons at each corner of a tile on the floor. The tile popped upward slightly and Sunshine lifted it up and set it off to one side. Beneath the floor were bags, boxes, canisters, and other impedimenta all bound by elastic cables to keep them from floating away.

«Did you forget why we're here in the first place?» Tod barked. «We're not here to give tours.»

«Don't get your tail in a knot. I'm getting my equipment as we speak.» said Sunshine. «Take this box and set it next to our impatient little patient.» She handed Sarah a transparent container filled with various oddments. «I'm right behind you with the rest.»

...

«Ouch! Don't they make stuff that doesn't sting so bad?» Tod complained as Sunshine smeared antiseptic on his forepaws.

«The pain is how you know it's working.»

"Is he okay?" Sarah asked.

«He's fine. Just some superficial lacerations and expressed ink sacs--self inflicted, I might add. And all over a little wind?»

«It wasn't 'a little wind'.» said Tod, looking at the human for affirmation.

"Tornadoes are no joke." said Sarah. "Don't you have violent wind storms back home?"

«Wayfarers' Haven? Certainly not.» said Sunshine as she put away her tools.

...

Tod lifted a floor panel covering the basement storage area. He pulled out a large canister and unscrewed the lid, allowing the contents to spill onto the floor. The flexible pseudosinew of a torso jacket crinkled quietly as the garment unfurled slowly from its two and a half century sequester in a vacuum cylinder. He took a cursory inventory as he spread the components out on the floor: One torso jacket, one tail sheath, four paw gauntlets, two drone capsules, which were already snapped into brackets on either side of the spine of the jacket, and one helmet.

Lying on his back atop the jacket, he slid his hind legs into the two rear sleeves, then his forelegs into the two front sleeves. He wriggled his tail through the hole at the hind end of the jacket. Once all five limbs were where they needed to be, he zipped down the front, covering his belly in glossy black artificial musculature. He gripped the tail sheath in his rear paws, slid his tail inside it, and snapped the sheath onto the gasket surrounding the base of his tail. His hindquarters were now protected by the best, most durable tech the lowest bidder could offer.

Next came the paw gauntlets: Front right, front left, rear right, and rear left. He flexed all six digits on all four paws to see how the pseudosinew mimicked his fine motor movements. The front right paw was a bit stiff, but otherwise the gauntlets had endured the test of time.

Finally, he picked up the helmet. The colored chevrons on the back of the ear guards fluoresced as brightly as the day they were applied. He gave it a quick once over. The HUD visor was clear, the air inlet filters along the muzzle were free of dust, and the umbilical port on the back of the neck was still magnetized. Once he was satisfied with the external inspection, he donned the helmet and began a checklist of the internals. He flicked some of the tongue-actuated switches and made sure the ball valve on the hydration line was clear by giving it a few licks. Once he was satisfied that nothing was amiss, he flipped back over onto his feet and quickly tossed his head back to snap the umbilical in place, connecting the helmet to the rest of the suit.

With all the passive systems in order, it was time to apply power to this powered armor. Tod pressed his inner thumb against the control ring on his left writing claw and listened for the subtle whirr of the inlet fans of the micro fusion reactor as they began drawing in ambient water vapor. Some of the water would be electrolytically separated, with the hydrogen going to feed the reactor and the oxygen either exhausted back into the environment or added to emergency air tanks. The rest of the water would serve as coolant or be added to the hydration line to be lapped up as needed.

«Lefty? Righty? How are you little felllas holding up?» He affectionately patted the two drone capsules with his tail. A haptic motor in each capsule gave a quick pulse letting Tod know their firmware had successfully booted. He flicked a tongue switch, pulling up the video feed from each drone onto his HUD. The retroreflectors on his ear guards shone back at him in the darkness.

...

"What do you mean we can't go back?" asked Jim.

"Sorry, sir, but that whole side of town is under strict curfew until 7:00 tomorrow morning." It was the same cop who had dropped Jim off at the clinic. "There may be other people in that trailer park that need help, and you'd just get in the way. I'll see to it personally that your belongings are safe. You can return after sunup and go through your things."

"I can help you get the other people out." Jim suggested.

"Sorry, but no. We need trained professionals for this sort of thing. You could just end up making things worse if you don't know what you're doing. Here," The officer pulled some bills out of his wallet and offered them to Jim. "There's a motel across the street. This should cover a night for you and our little visitor. Y'all get some rest. I can pick you two up in the morning.

"Excuse me, sir." Tod had donned the HUD specs and keyer and was sprawled out across three of the waiting room chairs. "First, allow me to introduce myself properly this time." He patted his abdomen but skipped the more formal greeting. "My name is yip, whine, yip, whine, grunt," he said in Commonthroat then continued speaking using the synthesizer. "but you can call me 'Tod'." He pulled a card out of a pocketed band wrapped around his right wrist and offered it to the officer. "If you need experienced first responders, I happen to be a veteran of the Allied Worlds peace keeper corps. This sort of thing is my crackers and mustard."

"I think he means 'bread and butter', officer." Jim corrected.

"What he said." Tod continued. "I have experience with civilian relief operations. I think I could be of some use."

The officer politely pretended to read the alien writing on the card, then turned down to look at Tod. "We are short on help. OK. You come with me

I stumbled upon this spec evo video and it reminded me of the weird stuff I'd come up with in middle school, and I mean that in a good way. This gets at the heart of what I like about conworlding as a standalone hobby, seeing people's rough and raw unfiltered imagination.

I think my only qualm is that he pretty quickly ignores the conceit of this being a microbiome inside a Micky D's cup, like there's not much done with the fact that the "land" is crystalized sugar and the "water" is soda or that photosynthesis and conventional vision shouldn't work in the dark. But again, the fact this is rough around the edges is part of why I like it.

Finally something cool for humans! This is a dual grav suit, which is powered armor designed for humans living on the Split Horizon, an orbital colony located in the inner belt of the yinrih's star system. Its most notable feature is the caudal prosthesis, an artificial tail emerging from the middle of the suit's back (rather than the base of the spine as would be expected). It's meant to tether the center of mass to paw cables and tail bars designed for vulpithecine use. The Dual Grav name comes from the fact it's designed to be equally effective in zero G and the centrifugal gravity of the Split Horizon.

The caudal prosthesis works like an octopus tentacle. The human gives a small embedded AI general directions like "grab this" or "anchor me here" and the tail interprets the commands and takes care of the specifics.

The hand print on the pauldron is meant to evoke the red ochre hand prints left by stone age humans found in caves around the world.

Diagnosed with ADHD as a kid. Insomnia started in college and hasn't really gone away. I discovered doxylamine works, but I recently learned that these older antihistamines increase the risk for dementia and that the effect is cumulative. Age related mental deterioration is literally my worst fear, more than just straight up dying, so I've been trying to quit, even though I'm sure it's already too late since I've been taking them on the regular for 20 years.

There was a period of abouta year where the insomnia was so bad I was taking two Unisom per night, once right before bed and again around 3 AM (it's always 3 AM that I wake up and can't go back to sleep). This was around 2014-2015. Since then I've had to medicate on average once every other night at best.

I've tried a couple other meds. I've tried melatonin (usually as a gummy) but I habituate quickly. Anti-anxiety meds didn't really do anything and muscle relaxants just relaxed my muscles, not my brain. Magnesium doesn't seem to help either.

AFAIK I have good sleep hygiene, consistent bedtime even on weekends, only use the bed for sleep, actually this goes for the entire bedroom, no desk or computer etc. I'm early to bed and early to rise (hence my username), going to bed around 8:30 and (ideally) getting up between 5 and 5:30.

I've tried a few things besides meds, a weighted blanket helps a little but not much (I'm also allergic to something in it, so I have to have a top sheet between me and the weighted blanket and a comforter above otherwise my nose and eyes run. I've tried music, spoken word (usually audio books or calm YT videos in the background), white noise, complete silence. The trick with the books/vids is they can't be so engaging that they keep me awake, but they can't be so boring that they just become noise that can't out-compete my brain. I've even written my own little short stories and converted them to audio.

I've tried exercising. I like walking, so I often go for long treks around my neighborhood. I also have one of those half-a-bikes that you can use while sitting on the couch. It's great when watching videos or playing games. But effect on sleep is mixed. I also have arthritis in my left knee that gets worse if I exercise, so after a day or two I have to take an extended break until the pain goes away. I've seen a doctor about it and gone to physical therapy, but it remains.

Alcohol sometimes helps, but I absolutely don't want to self-medicate with booze. It will not end well.

Stress going on in my life obviously makes it worse, so there are times of relatively low stress where I can get a whole night in. I had a streak of about 2.5 months that just ended where I slept well consistantly thanks to having dropped a certification program that I wasn't passing despite 8 attempts at the exam. But now the uncertainty of where my career is going now that all my certs are expired as well as a general midlife crisis and good ol' existential dread have moved in.

And of course there's the stress caused by the insomnia itself. It starts with one bad night, I feel crappy the next day, then the next night I start worrying that I won't sleep again, making me feel even worse the next day, and it's a positive feedback loop.

So that's my situation. I've seen similar questions asked here and elsewhere and there doesn't seem to be a solution, unless someone can refute the antihistamine-dementia connection.

Cats, Wolves, Foxes, as well as generic reptiles and birds seem to be pretty well represented. You've also got hyenas in the form of gnolls, as well as frogs. I don't see a lot of insects borrowed wholesale, but plenty of pixie-esque creatures borrow some anatomy here and there like wings and antennae.

One thing I see very little of are domestic dogs. The above mentioned wolves and foxes seem to fill that niche. Shame IMO, as the staggering variety in appearance and behavior of dogs (I believe they're the most phenotypically diverse species known) is excellent fodder for different cultures. Ironically, I myself ended up homogenizing my own diverse canine kobolds into the more vulpine (and less anthropomorphic) yinrih.

Admittedly I didn't have much developed on them, but there were two subraces of kobolds based on corgis that filled the dwarf role (short, hardy, stubborn, and practical) but they were pastoralists as you'd expect of a herding breed.

Primates, even other hominins, would make a great foundation for fantasy races. My previous conworld, whence came the above kobolds, did this, with human subraces based on neanderthals.

Yes yes billionaire and all that, I mean going beyond his company and personal ethics. People talk about how he looks and acts in the moment as creepy or unsettling, feelings which other tech bros don't seem to evoke. Why is that?