stresstokens: Icon by @recadreuse (pic#17207037)
stresstokens ([personal profile] stresstokens) wrote in [community profile] etraya2024-05-31 04:01 pm

un: theball | text

Hey. Hope everyone's recovering from that stupid maze okay.

I'll just get right down to my point of inquiry. For a place that claims that we're meant to save the universe, I've noticed a pretty dramatic human-bias around here that strikes me as kind of odd, considering how diverse the universe actually is.

So I'd like to get a show of hands. Who here is from a world where humans are the only sentient species around, and who here is from a world with more than just humans kicking around? What other sorts of species are around? I'd like to know how much of it is selection-bias based on who's running this place and how much of it is them drawing from places that just don't have any non-human populations. I wouldn't mind hearing about what sorts of non-humans you have around either, but that's probably less important, statistically speaking.

Lastly... what do you see when you look at this picture?


[ Inserted is a photograph of a suave looking goblin man in a tuxedo with a pencil-thin moustache. He's holding a champagne flute towards the camera with his arm around -- something. If you've been infected by the curse, you'll see the goblin man's arm is around a black tabaxi woman, but if not, his arm looks as though it's simply hanging in mid-air. ]

[ OOC NOTE: due to the extremely low likelihood we'll ever get kalina in-game, the picture is just for flavour! if you'd like your character to be infected by the shadowcat and thus able to see her image in the photo, it would be due to any circumstance in which any of riz's bodily fluids were absorbed into their own body in some way, i.e. blood or saliva. feel free to handwave a circumstance in which that could happen, even if it's riz's blood lingering on one of the labyrinth's traps that then got into an open cut of theirs, a glass in the labyrinth he drank from that they then used, etc., etc.! Please see this comment for more information! ]
projected: (who is felicia)

un: e. thawne

[personal profile] projected 2024-06-01 06:07 am (UTC)(link)
1. My universe houses sentient life beyond humans. Earth is largely human populated, in the same way many other planets are dominated by sentient beings that aren't human. There are also cases where humans mutated into non-human beings, to such an extent that they can no longer be considered human.

2. I only see a man with his arm hanging in the air. Was this photo taken with a vampire?
projected: (pic#17216230)

[personal profile] projected 2024-06-01 04:27 pm (UTC)(link)
You stepped on a proverbial landmine! People love talking about the parameters of humanity and what it means to be a human at all.

But yes, I am human. We have Kryptonians, Martians, Thanagarians, Tamaraneans - they can largely pass as human to some degree but are not human.

Then we have mutated gorillas, sharks, essentially animals that have gained a level of intelligence that they can communicate their thoughts cross species. And there are humans who have powers because of a chemical alteration in their body, scientific or even cosmic. When those people have children they could end up passing on a meta-human gene genetically.


[ He's not going to bring up technically being a meta-human himself though. Trying to be a little covert here for his own sanity if nothing else. ]

I will say, a curse that can impact a person's perception even through photography is fascinating. Though I'm a man of science, so such things are out of my wheelhouse.
Edited 2024-06-01 16:28 (UTC)
projected: (this is some bullshit)

[personal profile] projected 2024-06-03 12:18 am (UTC)(link)
Extraterrestrial. As to why they came to Earth, it's a range. Some are refugees, others were invaders at one point or another. There aren't a lot of them, not even enough to establish communities on Earth. Meta-humans are considered humans, but some individuals may not identify as human anymore for their own reasons. Sometimes superiority, other times inferiority.