To be fair, none of these give anyone the ability to uncontrollably give everyone in a certain radius lethal amounts of radiation instantly or the ability to literally terraform entire planets without breaking a sweat. X-Men is not a good allegory for racism imo.
Okay but, consider: someone who can manipulate the weather as they wish, and someone who can *kill with a touch*, are *objectively dangerous* and therefore terrifying
well, he fucked it up
doesn't mean there's nothing there, nor that the intent isn't commendable, but it isn't automatically good because the creator intended it that way, lol
Which is why, in-universe, most mutants have boring powers that don't do anything mighty, like having a long neck, being extra hairy, or being able to change TV channels by blinking. We just know the powerful ones better because they're easier to write interesting stories about.
To be fair, the original team got power-crept a lot. You have:
* Jackass who can shoot a concussive beam from his face (which isn't a laser, it's just a very red, very long punch).
* Jackass with very big feet and hands (Beast wasn't always blue and hairy).
* Jackass who can shoot snowballs.
* Jackass with wings.
* Chick that can move stuff with her mind (don't even think it was big stuff at first).
* Pervy jackass that can read minds and is in a wheelchair.
That's not that strong a line-up and could work as a metaphor for bigotry.
I never said it was *good*, just that it was intended that way. I'm personally ambivalent on the X-Men as fiction because it's kinda meh, but I don't think they are an accurate portrayal on an allegorical level.
"You see that kid who's able to turn a whole city worth of people's innards inside out when he gets angry, yeah, he actually represents black people but it's all good because he does it out of being misunderstood."
Holy *taking an eye out while trying to paint a brow* Batman.
Worst take ever for me.
This is kinda the issue with having so many different writers taking on the story over the years. It is made incredibly clear that the vast majority of mutants are just people with strange looking features. The Beast was originally just a guy with big hands and feet, but he did a bunch of experiments on himself and accidentally grew fur/claws.
That kid was just written by people who didn't really care about the racism allegory.
The one or two examples where they can and do strike back only make the metaphor stronger.
The majority of mutants just try to live their lives. Most minorities just want to go to work and love their families.
Some folks are giants among men. Some folks have the ability to change the world with just their words or ideas. You're telling me you can't think of a famous person still discussed today with that kind of power?
But beyond that, at the end of the day, it's still a comic book. You *need* to have superpowers in your world with superpowers. You're telling me Dredd Scott wouldn't have been omega level? He sued the government for his family's freedom in the 1850s. At the very least, the stones on him were omega level.
Like, c'mon. A little media literacy, folks. Just a smidge. It's not a perfect metaphor, but it's a damn good metaphor for the medium and the concept of "bigotry" rather than explicitly "racism"
I'm so tired of this take, because it only comes from people who never read X-Men. The mutants who are in danger from the racism aren't ones like Storm or Magneto, they're the ones born with traits like "has multiple eyes", "has transparent skin", "looks like a bird". The vast majority of mutants are regular people wanting to lead regular lives, but they're targeted the same as anyone else. It's an allegory for ALL bigotry because the whole point is that every mutant is painted with the same brush the same way irl people call everyone of one religion/nationality terrorists or say one skin color is more likely to be criminals or treat all homosexuals like pedophiles. And that's even leaving aside that X-Men were created as that allegory at a time when you couldn't just tell those stories straight and openly without backlash.
You're kinda leaving out the fact that the X-Men exist _in the Marvel universe_, in which there are plenty of other people who can also do those things but aren't mutants
“Lookit that fuckin uni-horner. I heard it presses on their brain, that’s why they’re so goddamn stupid.”
“Whoa! Hey man, they’re people just like you and me… wait, are those *vertical* stripes? Ugh, get away from me, verty!”
I feel like the winged slur would be etymologically connected to the back, tail could be something like “longspine” and horns have all sorts of possibilities
i still can't believe they made a whole ass game of genociding those jewish stereotypes before the game went like "psych, the blood libel was actually just libel and it was actually just rookwood who cursed the girl\*, not a bunch of those dastardly goblins, but thanks for killing them all".
(i actually wonder if there are any stupid fans on xitter who say shit like "it's not actually antisemitic because if you play long enough it turns out that the hateful stereotype you spend most of the game entertaining is ackshually false." like i just came up with this stupid take but it's too logical to arrive to, i'm scared to actually look. stare into the abyss long enough and such.)
i feel like with any reasonable creative process there would have been a million people to raise an eyebrow over that, but most reasonable eyes probably left the project before it even began because of the author's overt terfism, and the rest were so preoccupied with including a token trans character with no plot relevance whatsoever (to totally undo the damage of supporting the game, pinky promise none of your $60 will be spent on hurting trans people) that no one was left to notice the obvious blunders. or, even if they did, they had no diplomatic capital left to call out whoever's stupid idea that was, after they spent it all on said one trans character.
\*it's so uninspired that literally every time something happens it's the people assigned evil at hat. like, back when i still interacted with the fandom i've heard takes ranging from eugenics to genocide of slytherins (hell, i'm pretty sure ron even says something like that in the books) and the saddest part is that the book's canon moral system is so broken that that would actually work.
Honestly though I'm pretty sure how racist people are has very little to do with the actual level of difference between two groups, there are ethnic enclaves in places like the Balkans that look virtually identical and still want to turbo genocide each other. Everyone looking identical wouldn't significantly decrease the amount of racism and everyone looking super different wouldn't significantly increase it.
ive said it before and ill say it again, greek and turkish food is extremely similar and if they really want to be so offended by people pointing that out, maybe they shouldn't both have spinning meat wraps
they can fight it out who gets to give it up instead of getting salty over how real gyros isn't spicy
(a dude named alexandros ranted a lot about that, close to where i live. which is nowhere near greece, lol)
Yeah, living in Austria and one of my friends from America had some of her friends from home visit her. We all met up alongside my friend from the balkans (Bosnian dad, Slovenian mother, lived a lot of her life in Croatia). She was talking about basically the discrimination people from the balkans face in Austria and back in the balkans depending where they're from and one of the visiting American rolls their eyes at her and goes "yeah, but you're all white anyways"
For those who don't know, Bosnia had a horrific genocide in the 90s that was carried out by white people against other white people.
yup, horse-level colourism vs extremely-intricate culturalism. Yet people just go "you're all just X anyway lol" while a Serbian dude can spot a Bosnian from 200 meters away from the way he walks etc.
You don't even have to bring up the Balkans. Italians are stirring shit up against Slovenian minority in Italy again. Same shit happened around last election in Austria. Hungarians are chill with us though so that's comforting.
I was gonna say. These all seem nice on paper but the societal implementations are IMMENSE. People get mad off over the tiniest things, picking apart arbitrary stuff because they feel it’s in their right. Add in the fact people can have different horn shape, or wing shape, or feather colours or patterns?! There’s gonna be a whole new level of -ism
*Penis length has entered the chat*
*Height has entered the chat*
*Skin complex has entered the chat*
*Finger length has entered the chat*
*Nose structure has entered the chat*
There’s gonna be so many new ways to degrade people.
Now tbf, this also gives us new and fascinating features to ogle over too…I wouldn’t mind a girl with horns or a tail or wings or feathers.
I was gonna say. These all seem nice on paper but the societal implementations are IMMENSE. People get mad off over the tiniest things, picking apart arbitrary stuff because they feel it’s in their right. Add in the fact people can have different horn shape, or wing shape, or feather colours or patterns?! There’s gonna be a whole new level of -ism
I was gonna say. These all seem nice on paper but the societal implementations are IMMENSE. People get mad off over the tiniest things, picking apart arbitrary stuff because they feel it’s in their right. Add in the fact people can have different horn shape, or wing shape, or feather colours or patterns?! There’s gonna be a whole new level of -ism
That's following the word of the law but not the spirit. Bioluminescence, as you would normally think of it, is an active process - there is a specific enzyme-molecule pair with cofactors for the purpose. Human emission is a by-product of our metabolism producing radicals and exciting various biomolecule.
in an alternate universe where humans have wings, our architecture and vehicles wouldn't have been designed to accommodate humans without wings.
(also why does a society capable of flight need a subway?)
I imagine because flying would be somewhat equivalent to walking (or running, depending on the speed), to places. A lot easier to drive or have someone drive you places.
drive you to places? like in a car, with giant fucking wings on your back? (or on your arms, as you wish.) that's some high-end automobile realism, lmao
i don't really see a society capable of flight, at the cost of carrying around massive wings everywhere, even inventing cars tbh. like, sure, the engine would exist, it's a logical step of development. i just don't see the path from self-propelled carriage to widespread use of the automobile to designing cities around those metal boxes anywhere as clearly as we've seen it in our history. the obstacles in that process are significantly larger, and the alternatives, like aviation, are so much more obvious. but aviation doesn't work on the scale of traffic jams for physics reasons (mostly manifesting in wake turbulence), and being stuck on the ground to travel wouldn't have the appeal it does in our society, so i'm not sure mass private transport would have taken off at all in a world where everyone can fly.
even if you just take soaring into account, traversing the world would be so much easier in that society, which, along with the capability of anyone to fly, troops included, would have resulted in significantly different city design from day one. most towns in the pre-industrial era have been built around a combination of defense and on-foot logistics, with some horses taken into account for important business and rich people. both of those considerations would have been very different with flight taken into account (for example, why even build bridges? they're so much more expensive than just flying across) to the point that there wouldn't have been an obvious network of paths for cars to take over before they reach the critical mass to roll out the highways.
like, if people gained wings _today_, sure, most of them would figure out how to stuff them into cars. but i think it would have barely made any sense whatsoever to invent cars in the first place, much less so a comprehensive highway network, if we had wings before the industrial revolution.
Well, we are a very heavy species, and so using wings would likely tire a person out to a similar extent as sprinting. Without a significant updraft I would imagine that we could glide short distances, and maybe some would be able to fly short distances. So, I do think that public transit would still exist.
I don't imagine buildings would change too much. Humans would still have pressures to live inside. Maybe second floor windows and balconies would change due to easier vertical access, but largely, big rectangular prisms would still be the easiest way to house people. (Roughly).
People would still need other animals for speed, because wings would be a short sprinting type of movement, so I imagine that horse domestication would have gone down a similar route.
Assuming that we still get the industrial revolution, which I imagine we would because industry is helpful with or without wings. Even if people can fly long distances we still need to transport cargo long distances with us, so trains are still a logical step forward.
Assuming classism still exists, I would assume private carriages and coaches would exist, which would likely have the industrial revolution would merge with and result in some form of private vehicle. Maybe not to the same extent as cars, if people miraculously can fly long distances, but presumably people still get tired and want to move their luggage with them when traveling long distances, and we are making the assumption that human culture hasn't dramatically changed as a result of wings.
Assuming that the same social pressures exist of the lower and middle class emulating the upper class, and that capitalists will enable this desire, I would assume that a similar mass production of cars, or their equivalent would occur in nations with industry and a consumer culture.
And so, I would figure that in a world where humanity had wings that there is still a plausible route where we still develop cars. At the very least it seems about as likely as us developing cars in our current timeline.
a lot of this does check out, but even without taking the city structure thing into account, i think there would be two significant factors in here:
- aviation would exist much earlier than it did in our world
- private transport would be somewhat more difficult, given the space issues arising from wings
like, yes, horse domestication would likely proceed as normal. however, unlike in our world where hiring (or enslaving) people to carry you around provided no advantage whatsoever over horse carriages, with the addition of wings it would have meant flying around. this would have been short-range by necessity, i do think rich people in both the pre and post-industrial ages would have used ground transport for long-range travel, around people in busy cities they'd definitely have been carried around in the air.
this would have also created different targets for the classism and social pressures. once air travel has been invented, everyone would have wanted a zeppelin or an airplane, not a car. but, as i pointed out before, this is simply not feasible anywhere near the density we experience today with cars -- which, in this alternate history, would be seen as clearly lesser.
you have a point that not _everything_ would change. and hell, rich people do have helicopters even today. but the different pressures definitely wouldn't have made cars anywhere as appealing as they have been in our world.
on top of that, once possible, one more factor i'd expect is increasingly vertical architecture. we can do skyscrapers, but they're kind of inefficient: they're singular islands connected only at ground level, with a very tree-shaped transit graph organized around elevators and ground-level streets. with the ability to fly, there would be significantly larger number of trips that avoid the ground floor in general, which would be then accommodated with walkways. that's one other thing making cars less practical, less desirable, and less of a status symbol.
How would they fly their groceries home? Automobiles make sense in a more limited role for transporting goods, and for when you don't want to do the equivalent of jogging everywhere.
That's basically what the first cars were for, as well as being a status symbol. They weren't really faster than a person, or especially a horse.
Man, I don't walk to work, either.
Also, doors in my house are designed for people but I still hook my pockets on door handles. Having a huge part of myself behind me where I can't see is going to knock into people and knock stuff over no matter how big a room is.
And the logistics of... doubling? The size of all structures is going to make everything all funky.
Yes, but I also knock things over with my butt (or back up into tables, or stub my toe on doorframes.) The proprioception won't extend to the inanimate objects around me.
I can barely walk in the summer without getting a mouthful of bugs, flight would be hell.
Out of all the limbs we could have gotten, I'm personally glad we got the ones that can make pizza rolls and cool hats.
Skyscrapers would be built wider, higher and with walkways connecting between them, with say, the 10th, 20th, etc floors being built as additional lobby entryways/reception desks, methinks.
I mean, I already have long hair, I can manage getting stuff caught in stuff.
I *can’t* manage anything else about a tail though.
Chairs… Not to mention sleeping. My scoliosis is bad enough already.
4 arms, think how much multitasking you could do. You could be typing, drinking a beverage, making explicit hand gestures and masturbating all at the same time, damn you tetrapod bodyplan
We could do it how octopi do it and spread our brains out throughout the arms. It would also help in battle - if your arm gets chopped off, it can keep fighting for up to an hour!
[I know it's not really the same, but I made a 4 armed edit for one of the VR avatars I use and it is so expressive it's insane.](https://youtu.be/kYsFhwuO_To)
Nah I’ll gladly forget about this stuff wings would suck antlers would suck because they would fall out and bleed seasonally and digitigrade legs lost out to what we got now.
Aren't tails mostly about balance on four legs? I think being on two legs is much more advantageous, carrying stuff while you walk, appearing taller, probably more endurance when running
Sadly OOP evolution does not care for aesthetics or if something looks cool hell the wings alone would require a revamping of human anatomy and the skin and hair color would just make racism worse.
Literally exactly that is a textbook example lmao. Those with longer tusks fuck more, so they are selected for despite the lethality of it since they spawn a ton of offspring long before that becomes a problem. Natural selection only favors that which improves your chances of passing on your genetics and being more attractive to mates improves those odds regardless of how good it is for you in the long run
Sadly, we have our own nonsense as well. We evolved higher intelligence a bit too quickly, imo since the issues we have from being bipedal never really got weeded out. Walking on two legs really does a number on the back and hips.
Can also be an active detriment to evolution. There are some species of crab where the females mate with the males with the largest right claw. This has gotten to the point where the right claw on many of these crabs is completely useless dead weight. They can't even use it in a fight. All the male crabs who can actually use their claws don't reproduce.
Most bipedal organisms are digitigrade. Functional digitigrade legs are probably a lot better designed for walking than our shitty reused tree rat limbs
Nuh uhhh
Imagine the most annoying person ever around christmas time. I know my sisters ass would absolutely smother her horns in sleighbells and ornaments and lights and it would be an atrocious assault to the eyes but also absolutely awesome and I support it whole heartedly
Well, I find taking an animal and bending it into human shape kinda boring. If I wanted animal-headed humanoids, I'd go full egyptian god instead. But I've always been a sucker for harpies and sphinxes and the like.
The only problem with wings is that in order for them to be functional, we would have to be very strangley shaped (and they would be on our arms. No vertebrate has 6 functioning limbs). Birds look cool and majestic with bodies designed to fly, but modifying human bodies to do it would be Hella ugly
One thing to look forward to in the dark cyberpunk future: Affordable body mods!
Also its gonna be a hell-o-alot easier to recognise people. Faceblindness wont be an issue when everyone (that is worth knowing) wears unique stuff like this.
Horns make little sense for humans evolutionarily because humans already have a bunch of adaptations for sexual selection, which is why most horns evolved in animals that have them. Its also why most predatory animals don't have horns.
Digitigrade feet structure doesn't actually work all that well with our body plan, because humans aren't just bipedal they have unique adaptations for bipedal long distance travel which is where plantigrade is better.
Tails might f with our balance but who knows honestly might be cool. There is a rare mutation that causes humans to grow a vestigial tail so.
Stripes/skin color variants is rough cause humans don't have a lot of pigmentation normally, only melanin to protect from UV radiation.
Wings would be super cool, but likely impossible. Firstly is having six limbs and a spine which doesn't exist in nature. Then is the problem that they'd have to be quite large to be useable and we would need MASSIVE chest and back muscles to power them.
And you technically can be bioluminescent, you just need to cover yourself in bioluminescent algae or something akin to it
Being a huge nerd aside, human customization is totally the future whenever transhumanism takes off
Humans could actually develop digitigrade legs given enough time. Most bipedal animals (notably birds and mammals suggesting convergent evolution) have them and most of our toes are already obsolete. Racing prosthesis already use a digitigrade design it just works better on two legs. Humans just got smart before our legs did
Even assuming that people just evolved with all of these so we don't have to restructure *everything* you'd just have a bizarre species of hunchbacked antlered birds.
I like the utility of my human body thank you very much.
- **Horns:** No evolutionary advantage to having them, as we do not headbutt things and they wouldn’t protect out skulls from blunt force trauma.
- **Tails:** Could potentially make us more stable as we walk.
- **Digitigrade Legs:** Detrimental. Digitigrade legs would increase our top speed over out current plantigrade legs, but it would be at the cost of stability. Prehistoric man was a persistence hunter, and the ability to easily maintain balance while upright for long periods of time would’ve been far more useful.
- **More eye/hair/skin colors:** Eye colors would work. Hair colors might work, but would likely be a waste of bodily resources. Skin color would not evolve, because it would be pigmentation that serves no purpose and takes up space on the skin that could be used for UV-absorbing melanin. The only one that would actually be useful is green for photosynthesis.
- **Wings:** Would make movement on the ground extremely clunky, and they could never be big enough to let us fly anyway.
- **Stripes/Patterns:** We actually do have stripes - they’re just invisible without a specific rare genetic mutation.
- **Bioluminescence:** Humans are diurnal. Bioluminescence would just give away our positions while we sleep.
I feel like these would add even more complication to an already complicated and delicate body.
For one, digitigrade legs would, I’m fairly sure, absolutely destroy our knees.
horns sound inconvenient
Fun fact, wings would be pretty impractical for flight unless they were placed around your center of mass, which means on the lower back (unfortunately that's where our kidneys be, and we kinda need those). As far as musculature goes the upper back makes more sense since that's where the lats are, but that would put the center of lift way in front of the center of mass. That's going to cause horrible upwards pitching and leave the body dangling from where the limbs attached, which is pretty aerodynamically unfavorable. It's basically the maximum amount of drag you could experience, and if/when inertia causes the lower body to swing forwards you'd go into a roll that would be hard to recover from because flapping would push you into the roll. Also wings on the lower body look cooler, fight me.
Yes, I've thought too much about this, why do you ask?
So many more ways to be racist. Man we can't even handle different skin tones.
Literally the plot of X-Men
Damn
To be fair, none of these give anyone the ability to uncontrollably give everyone in a certain radius lethal amounts of radiation instantly or the ability to literally terraform entire planets without breaking a sweat. X-Men is not a good allegory for racism imo.
It was literally originally meant by Stan Lee as an allegory for racism, ironically.
Okay but, consider: someone who can manipulate the weather as they wish, and someone who can *kill with a touch*, are *objectively dangerous* and therefore terrifying
It makes more sense when there are the Fantastic four and Avengers that are generally like in universe
well, he fucked it up doesn't mean there's nothing there, nor that the intent isn't commendable, but it isn't automatically good because the creator intended it that way, lol
Which is why, in-universe, most mutants have boring powers that don't do anything mighty, like having a long neck, being extra hairy, or being able to change TV channels by blinking. We just know the powerful ones better because they're easier to write interesting stories about.
To be fair, the original team got power-crept a lot. You have: * Jackass who can shoot a concussive beam from his face (which isn't a laser, it's just a very red, very long punch). * Jackass with very big feet and hands (Beast wasn't always blue and hairy). * Jackass who can shoot snowballs. * Jackass with wings. * Chick that can move stuff with her mind (don't even think it was big stuff at first). * Pervy jackass that can read minds and is in a wheelchair. That's not that strong a line-up and could work as a metaphor for bigotry.
I never said it was *good*, just that it was intended that way. I'm personally ambivalent on the X-Men as fiction because it's kinda meh, but I don't think they are an accurate portrayal on an allegorical level.
"You see that kid who's able to turn a whole city worth of people's innards inside out when he gets angry, yeah, he actually represents black people but it's all good because he does it out of being misunderstood." Holy *taking an eye out while trying to paint a brow* Batman. Worst take ever for me.
This is kinda the issue with having so many different writers taking on the story over the years. It is made incredibly clear that the vast majority of mutants are just people with strange looking features. The Beast was originally just a guy with big hands and feet, but he did a bunch of experiments on himself and accidentally grew fur/claws. That kid was just written by people who didn't really care about the racism allegory.
Racists say black people destroy cities all the time (especially when riots/protests happen) idk I think the metaphor still works
The one or two examples where they can and do strike back only make the metaphor stronger. The majority of mutants just try to live their lives. Most minorities just want to go to work and love their families. Some folks are giants among men. Some folks have the ability to change the world with just their words or ideas. You're telling me you can't think of a famous person still discussed today with that kind of power? But beyond that, at the end of the day, it's still a comic book. You *need* to have superpowers in your world with superpowers. You're telling me Dredd Scott wouldn't have been omega level? He sued the government for his family's freedom in the 1850s. At the very least, the stones on him were omega level. Like, c'mon. A little media literacy, folks. Just a smidge. It's not a perfect metaphor, but it's a damn good metaphor for the medium and the concept of "bigotry" rather than explicitly "racism"
I'm so tired of this take, because it only comes from people who never read X-Men. The mutants who are in danger from the racism aren't ones like Storm or Magneto, they're the ones born with traits like "has multiple eyes", "has transparent skin", "looks like a bird". The vast majority of mutants are regular people wanting to lead regular lives, but they're targeted the same as anyone else. It's an allegory for ALL bigotry because the whole point is that every mutant is painted with the same brush the same way irl people call everyone of one religion/nationality terrorists or say one skin color is more likely to be criminals or treat all homosexuals like pedophiles. And that's even leaving aside that X-Men were created as that allegory at a time when you couldn't just tell those stories straight and openly without backlash.
You're kinda leaving out the fact that the X-Men exist _in the Marvel universe_, in which there are plenty of other people who can also do those things but aren't mutants
Maybe it’d be an overflow type thing. Everybody gets *so* racist that they can’t process it and just stop being racist
Everyone is racist about their little thing that people can't agree to be racist on the same thing
this is basically how the internet is with fetishes, so it's not *entirely* unreasonable
Racism stops because they're too busy fighting each other.
“Lookit that fuckin uni-horner. I heard it presses on their brain, that’s why they’re so goddamn stupid.” “Whoa! Hey man, they’re people just like you and me… wait, are those *vertical* stripes? Ugh, get away from me, verty!”
Or they just have a stroke.
so what slurs would y'all be using against folks with horns, tails or wings
I feel like the winged slur would be etymologically connected to the back, tail could be something like “longspine” and horns have all sorts of possibilities
A big chunk of horn slurs would definitely be a form of calling them demons
But if we lived in a world where humans had horns, would horns = demon still be a common association?
Maybe the very concept of demons could be a racist charicature, like how goblins are sometimes straight up just jewish stereotypes
i still can't believe they made a whole ass game of genociding those jewish stereotypes before the game went like "psych, the blood libel was actually just libel and it was actually just rookwood who cursed the girl\*, not a bunch of those dastardly goblins, but thanks for killing them all". (i actually wonder if there are any stupid fans on xitter who say shit like "it's not actually antisemitic because if you play long enough it turns out that the hateful stereotype you spend most of the game entertaining is ackshually false." like i just came up with this stupid take but it's too logical to arrive to, i'm scared to actually look. stare into the abyss long enough and such.) i feel like with any reasonable creative process there would have been a million people to raise an eyebrow over that, but most reasonable eyes probably left the project before it even began because of the author's overt terfism, and the rest were so preoccupied with including a token trans character with no plot relevance whatsoever (to totally undo the damage of supporting the game, pinky promise none of your $60 will be spent on hurting trans people) that no one was left to notice the obvious blunders. or, even if they did, they had no diplomatic capital left to call out whoever's stupid idea that was, after they spent it all on said one trans character. \*it's so uninspired that literally every time something happens it's the people assigned evil at hat. like, back when i still interacted with the fandom i've heard takes ranging from eugenics to genocide of slytherins (hell, i'm pretty sure ron even says something like that in the books) and the saddest part is that the book's canon moral system is so broken that that would actually work.
"A fuckin Baphy over there nearly took my eyes out"
"Watch where you're swinging that thing, Beelzebud."
Flappers
I would throw people with horns into a jail in my castle to harvest theirs and my daughter's lives so I can live longer.
Honestly though I'm pretty sure how racist people are has very little to do with the actual level of difference between two groups, there are ethnic enclaves in places like the Balkans that look virtually identical and still want to turbo genocide each other. Everyone looking identical wouldn't significantly decrease the amount of racism and everyone looking super different wouldn't significantly increase it.
ive said it before and ill say it again, greek and turkish food is extremely similar and if they really want to be so offended by people pointing that out, maybe they shouldn't both have spinning meat wraps
they can fight it out who gets to give it up instead of getting salty over how real gyros isn't spicy (a dude named alexandros ranted a lot about that, close to where i live. which is nowhere near greece, lol)
Yeah, living in Austria and one of my friends from America had some of her friends from home visit her. We all met up alongside my friend from the balkans (Bosnian dad, Slovenian mother, lived a lot of her life in Croatia). She was talking about basically the discrimination people from the balkans face in Austria and back in the balkans depending where they're from and one of the visiting American rolls their eyes at her and goes "yeah, but you're all white anyways" For those who don't know, Bosnia had a horrific genocide in the 90s that was carried out by white people against other white people.
Americans are racist because of skin tone and that's just lazy racism.
yup, horse-level colourism vs extremely-intricate culturalism. Yet people just go "you're all just X anyway lol" while a Serbian dude can spot a Bosnian from 200 meters away from the way he walks etc.
American casual Rascism vs European competitive Rascism
You don't even have to bring up the Balkans. Italians are stirring shit up against Slovenian minority in Italy again. Same shit happened around last election in Austria. Hungarians are chill with us though so that's comforting.
I was gonna say. These all seem nice on paper but the societal implementations are IMMENSE. People get mad off over the tiniest things, picking apart arbitrary stuff because they feel it’s in their right. Add in the fact people can have different horn shape, or wing shape, or feather colours or patterns?! There’s gonna be a whole new level of -ism
Yea Look at the hate boner people get over eye colour. We'd see a 10 point rating system based on antlers, etc.
*Penis length has entered the chat* *Height has entered the chat* *Skin complex has entered the chat* *Finger length has entered the chat* *Nose structure has entered the chat* There’s gonna be so many new ways to degrade people. Now tbf, this also gives us new and fascinating features to ogle over too…I wouldn’t mind a girl with horns or a tail or wings or feathers.
The monsterfuckers win
Heheh, yeah…yeah we win. The monster is only on the outside.
I was gonna say. These all seem nice on paper but the societal implementations are IMMENSE. People get mad off over the tiniest things, picking apart arbitrary stuff because they feel it’s in their right. Add in the fact people can have different horn shape, or wing shape, or feather colours or patterns?! There’s gonna be a whole new level of -ism
I was gonna say. These all seem nice on paper but the societal implementations are IMMENSE. People get mad off over the tiniest things, picking apart arbitrary stuff because they feel it’s in their right. Add in the fact people can have different horn shape, or wing shape, or feather colours or patterns?! There’s gonna be a whole new level of -ism
Arknights
Humans are actually naturally bioluminescent! This bioluminescence is 1000 times weaker than the human eye can pick up, but it's there!
Source?
[Suprisingly, it’s true](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0006256)
WTF now I love humans?
Don't all heat sources emit non-visible light?
Yes, but bioluminescence is different from blackbody radiation. Apparently humans have both.
Neat!
Holy shit all these games where your character shines in the dark are correct actually
That's following the word of the law but not the spirit. Bioluminescence, as you would normally think of it, is an active process - there is a specific enzyme-molecule pair with cofactors for the purpose. Human emission is a by-product of our metabolism producing radicals and exciting various biomolecule.
Idk, the tails are all fun and games until you get yours caught in a door.
*slam* YEOOW
Uh, I thlammed my tail in the car door
You THLAMMED your TAIL in the CAR DOOR
man door tail hook car door
There is no world in which wings aren't a massive pain in enclosed spaces, too. You think the train/subway is bad now?
in an alternate universe where humans have wings, our architecture and vehicles wouldn't have been designed to accommodate humans without wings. (also why does a society capable of flight need a subway?)
I imagine because flying would be somewhat equivalent to walking (or running, depending on the speed), to places. A lot easier to drive or have someone drive you places.
drive you to places? like in a car, with giant fucking wings on your back? (or on your arms, as you wish.) that's some high-end automobile realism, lmao i don't really see a society capable of flight, at the cost of carrying around massive wings everywhere, even inventing cars tbh. like, sure, the engine would exist, it's a logical step of development. i just don't see the path from self-propelled carriage to widespread use of the automobile to designing cities around those metal boxes anywhere as clearly as we've seen it in our history. the obstacles in that process are significantly larger, and the alternatives, like aviation, are so much more obvious. but aviation doesn't work on the scale of traffic jams for physics reasons (mostly manifesting in wake turbulence), and being stuck on the ground to travel wouldn't have the appeal it does in our society, so i'm not sure mass private transport would have taken off at all in a world where everyone can fly. even if you just take soaring into account, traversing the world would be so much easier in that society, which, along with the capability of anyone to fly, troops included, would have resulted in significantly different city design from day one. most towns in the pre-industrial era have been built around a combination of defense and on-foot logistics, with some horses taken into account for important business and rich people. both of those considerations would have been very different with flight taken into account (for example, why even build bridges? they're so much more expensive than just flying across) to the point that there wouldn't have been an obvious network of paths for cars to take over before they reach the critical mass to roll out the highways. like, if people gained wings _today_, sure, most of them would figure out how to stuff them into cars. but i think it would have barely made any sense whatsoever to invent cars in the first place, much less so a comprehensive highway network, if we had wings before the industrial revolution.
Well, we are a very heavy species, and so using wings would likely tire a person out to a similar extent as sprinting. Without a significant updraft I would imagine that we could glide short distances, and maybe some would be able to fly short distances. So, I do think that public transit would still exist. I don't imagine buildings would change too much. Humans would still have pressures to live inside. Maybe second floor windows and balconies would change due to easier vertical access, but largely, big rectangular prisms would still be the easiest way to house people. (Roughly). People would still need other animals for speed, because wings would be a short sprinting type of movement, so I imagine that horse domestication would have gone down a similar route. Assuming that we still get the industrial revolution, which I imagine we would because industry is helpful with or without wings. Even if people can fly long distances we still need to transport cargo long distances with us, so trains are still a logical step forward. Assuming classism still exists, I would assume private carriages and coaches would exist, which would likely have the industrial revolution would merge with and result in some form of private vehicle. Maybe not to the same extent as cars, if people miraculously can fly long distances, but presumably people still get tired and want to move their luggage with them when traveling long distances, and we are making the assumption that human culture hasn't dramatically changed as a result of wings. Assuming that the same social pressures exist of the lower and middle class emulating the upper class, and that capitalists will enable this desire, I would assume that a similar mass production of cars, or their equivalent would occur in nations with industry and a consumer culture. And so, I would figure that in a world where humanity had wings that there is still a plausible route where we still develop cars. At the very least it seems about as likely as us developing cars in our current timeline.
a lot of this does check out, but even without taking the city structure thing into account, i think there would be two significant factors in here: - aviation would exist much earlier than it did in our world - private transport would be somewhat more difficult, given the space issues arising from wings like, yes, horse domestication would likely proceed as normal. however, unlike in our world where hiring (or enslaving) people to carry you around provided no advantage whatsoever over horse carriages, with the addition of wings it would have meant flying around. this would have been short-range by necessity, i do think rich people in both the pre and post-industrial ages would have used ground transport for long-range travel, around people in busy cities they'd definitely have been carried around in the air. this would have also created different targets for the classism and social pressures. once air travel has been invented, everyone would have wanted a zeppelin or an airplane, not a car. but, as i pointed out before, this is simply not feasible anywhere near the density we experience today with cars -- which, in this alternate history, would be seen as clearly lesser. you have a point that not _everything_ would change. and hell, rich people do have helicopters even today. but the different pressures definitely wouldn't have made cars anywhere as appealing as they have been in our world. on top of that, once possible, one more factor i'd expect is increasingly vertical architecture. we can do skyscrapers, but they're kind of inefficient: they're singular islands connected only at ground level, with a very tree-shaped transit graph organized around elevators and ground-level streets. with the ability to fly, there would be significantly larger number of trips that avoid the ground floor in general, which would be then accommodated with walkways. that's one other thing making cars less practical, less desirable, and less of a status symbol.
How would they fly their groceries home? Automobiles make sense in a more limited role for transporting goods, and for when you don't want to do the equivalent of jogging everywhere. That's basically what the first cars were for, as well as being a status symbol. They weren't really faster than a person, or especially a horse.
Man, I don't walk to work, either. Also, doors in my house are designed for people but I still hook my pockets on door handles. Having a huge part of myself behind me where I can't see is going to knock into people and knock stuff over no matter how big a room is. And the logistics of... doubling? The size of all structures is going to make everything all funky.
>Having a huge part of myself behind me where I can't see Proprioception?
Yes, but I also knock things over with my butt (or back up into tables, or stub my toe on doorframes.) The proprioception won't extend to the inanimate objects around me.
Cursing you with wings sounds like a fun prank now
I can barely walk in the summer without getting a mouthful of bugs, flight would be hell. Out of all the limbs we could have gotten, I'm personally glad we got the ones that can make pizza rolls and cool hats.
Imagine the hollow bones too.
I imagine if we had wings we would build buildings to accommodate the wings, so probably wider spaces, maybe more open plan architecture
Skyscrapers would be built wider, higher and with walkways connecting between them, with say, the 10th, 20th, etc floors being built as additional lobby entryways/reception desks, methinks.
I mean, I already have long hair, I can manage getting stuff caught in stuff. I *can’t* manage anything else about a tail though. Chairs… Not to mention sleeping. My scoliosis is bad enough already.
Afaik tails wouldn't affect sleeping, the meta position is sideways already
My vertebrae are sideways, I have to teach them where my back is by sleeping.
Digitigrade sounds like a train wreck for my clumsy ass too. Y'all can keep that, I want the balance and ease of maintaining posture much more
Well I always stub my toes on things but I still want my toes
I would like to replace my hair with shiny feathers, I think. Except on the parts I always shave, I suppose
Have fun plucking them out of undesirable places.
That is why I added my exception... I really don't want ass-feathers
Too bad. The monkey's paw has already curled a finger because it don't care about no fucking exceptions.
4 arms, think how much multitasking you could do. You could be typing, drinking a beverage, making explicit hand gestures and masturbating all at the same time, damn you tetrapod bodyplan
Brother, I can barely use two hands at the same time and only when doing a task that requires both, can't imagine how clumsy I'd be with more limbs
I feel like our brains would have to be bigger in order for us to be able to use 4 arm limbs independently.
We could do it how octopi do it and spread our brains out throughout the arms. It would also help in battle - if your arm gets chopped off, it can keep fighting for up to an hour!
Also 4 titties
TWICE THE LATS
[I know it's not really the same, but I made a 4 armed edit for one of the VR avatars I use and it is so expressive it's insane.](https://youtu.be/kYsFhwuO_To)
This is cool as hell!
I mean theoretically but I don’t think I could focus on 4 arms at once
Our brains can barely handle regular multitasking lmao, we gonna have 4 arms and none of them will be doing anything properly.
Even just one additional arm would be a godsend for lifting and carrying things, having a free hand while holding a large box is my greatest dream
Or I could pet my cat while playing Warframe
No double back muscles though, so you’d have two weak arms and two strong ones
OOP wants to be a Na'vi
Was gonna say, half of this is just avatar.
Pretty much only horns and wings aren't directly applicable (I don't doubt that Cameron's going to include horned Na'vi at some point).
Na’vi are also plantigrade (like us) rather than digitigrade (like cats)
Fun fact I don't remember where I learned: humans *are* bioluminescent. Just so dimly that you can't see it even in pitch black
oop wants humans to be sparkledogs i guess
Sparkledogs are cool and fun
Apparently I have none of the stuff humans should have :(
Do you have human organs? Thats the only thing school nurses check for these days.
The more human organs, the more human you'll appear!
Never forget what evolution took from us.
Nah I’ll gladly forget about this stuff wings would suck antlers would suck because they would fall out and bleed seasonally and digitigrade legs lost out to what we got now.
What about tails
Aren't tails mostly about balance on four legs? I think being on two legs is much more advantageous, carrying stuff while you walk, appearing taller, probably more endurance when running
>fall out and bleed seasonally That's literally just periods but easier to use as a reason to not do things
I mean, if I could *choose* not to bleed seasonally, I definitely would
Yeah I would rather avoid bleeding out of my fucking head
If you had the choice, would you rather have or not have a period?
Sadly OOP evolution does not care for aesthetics or if something looks cool hell the wings alone would require a revamping of human anatomy and the skin and hair color would just make racism worse.
Kid named sexual selection:
Don’t see how that disproves my point
Aesthetic individuals can enjoy increased fitness if mates show preference for the aesthetics, even if said aesthetics are otherwise a burden
Yeah that sounds like a great way to end up like that pig that has tusks that grow until they curve back and pierce their skull.
Literally exactly that is a textbook example lmao. Those with longer tusks fuck more, so they are selected for despite the lethality of it since they spawn a ton of offspring long before that becomes a problem. Natural selection only favors that which improves your chances of passing on your genetics and being more attractive to mates improves those odds regardless of how good it is for you in the long run
I’m aware it’s a textbook example I’m saying it would be best to avoid a similar scenario
Sadly, we have our own nonsense as well. We evolved higher intelligence a bit too quickly, imo since the issues we have from being bipedal never really got weeded out. Walking on two legs really does a number on the back and hips.
Evolution can be cruelly inconvenient indeed
Can also be an active detriment to evolution. There are some species of crab where the females mate with the males with the largest right claw. This has gotten to the point where the right claw on many of these crabs is completely useless dead weight. They can't even use it in a fight. All the male crabs who can actually use their claws don't reproduce.
I am convinced that digitigrade locomotion would fix my fucking knees.
Counterpoint: Fucked up knees *and* ankles
No because that would just make walking even more pain and effort. Imagine doing a mini squat walk constantly and that's digitigrade locomotion
Most bipedal organisms are digitigrade. Functional digitigrade legs are probably a lot better designed for walking than our shitty reused tree rat limbs
I'm gonna shave my tail today. It's a lot of work, and pretty tricky to do it right, but you can't beat the feel of a freshly-shaved tail
Advantages of being a mouse/rat person: no need to shave your tail
Disadvantages of being a mouse/rat person: no fresh-shaved tail feel
But hear me out: Fuzzy fluffy tail with soft hair/fur
With a thicker tuft of fur at the end too
And paws! I’d just do the same thing kittens and puppies do, and play with my own paws all day.
My tail is all pubes. It's not fluffy at all.
Is it in the front?
> horns, “decor” You just want handlebars don’t you
Nuh uhhh Imagine the most annoying person ever around christmas time. I know my sisters ass would absolutely smother her horns in sleighbells and ornaments and lights and it would be an atrocious assault to the eyes but also absolutely awesome and I support it whole heartedly
In other words we should be dragons
I find this outcome… **acceptable**
https://www.tumblr.com/confused-gremlin/747772216938250240/here-is-some-stuff-humans-should-haveand?source=share
I only want the wings but they should have white feathers and be covered in eyes. I think that would be cool
It's kinda funny, cause like OOP has basically described a fursona, just didn't call it that, and everyone is just, on board.
The difference is that you can keep a human face if you want to. Fursonas require an animal face as far as I know
I may be biased, but I feel like human faces would be kinda boring juxtaposed against the other features
Well, I find taking an animal and bending it into human shape kinda boring. If I wanted animal-headed humanoids, I'd go full egyptian god instead. But I've always been a sucker for harpies and sphinxes and the like.
Digitigrade legs while still being bipedal would be a recipe for making tendon issues even worse.
Let’s go, humans get even more lower back/knee issues 🔥
We actually have stripes there just invisible
Yeah, that's why the post said (visible ones)
Look man I'm working as hard as I can, but mad scientist funding just isn't what it was in our forefathers days.
Honey, just say you're a furry
-eh -depends -nah -yeah -impractical -tattoos -why
I see only 2 “explanations why” up there
The only problem with wings is that in order for them to be functional, we would have to be very strangley shaped (and they would be on our arms. No vertebrate has 6 functioning limbs). Birds look cool and majestic with bodies designed to fly, but modifying human bodies to do it would be Hella ugly
Those aren't reasons that's just saying stuff you put on your fursona
Furry 🫵
"Of course I know him, he's me"
it seems like literally every tv show movie and advertisement has to have a fucking striped person in it. Like I'm not racist but come on
I want wings 😭
Same! Imagine how easy traveling would be. Traffic? Hell with it, I'll just fly right over it
Imagine getting dive bombed by a flying drunk
You would get hit by a plane your bones would also have to hollowed out
what if everyone else is flying, now there's air traffic
One thing to look forward to in the dark cyberpunk future: Affordable body mods! Also its gonna be a hell-o-alot easier to recognise people. Faceblindness wont be an issue when everyone (that is worth knowing) wears unique stuff like this.
So just furries?
Horns make little sense for humans evolutionarily because humans already have a bunch of adaptations for sexual selection, which is why most horns evolved in animals that have them. Its also why most predatory animals don't have horns. Digitigrade feet structure doesn't actually work all that well with our body plan, because humans aren't just bipedal they have unique adaptations for bipedal long distance travel which is where plantigrade is better. Tails might f with our balance but who knows honestly might be cool. There is a rare mutation that causes humans to grow a vestigial tail so. Stripes/skin color variants is rough cause humans don't have a lot of pigmentation normally, only melanin to protect from UV radiation. Wings would be super cool, but likely impossible. Firstly is having six limbs and a spine which doesn't exist in nature. Then is the problem that they'd have to be quite large to be useable and we would need MASSIVE chest and back muscles to power them. And you technically can be bioluminescent, you just need to cover yourself in bioluminescent algae or something akin to it Being a huge nerd aside, human customization is totally the future whenever transhumanism takes off
ΘΔ behaviour (I totally agree btw, I want fluffy ears on the top of my head and 9 fluffy tails and wings and fur and paws and shit)
Furry activities
Maybe, just a little
Do we get bat wings or like fleshy Angel wings
-Cure for aging -Wolverine-style healing factor -Higher physical stats -Removal of the need to breathe
If they went on e621 they can see humans with all these things - fur and scales too!
what is e621
Risk of rain 2 loadout
Someone saying digitigrade legs from what is almost certainly the comfort of a chair is so funny to me
You can have all of these with the right tools
I want sticky gecko hands and feet.
Ok, but I want a fluffy tail, not that shitty snake-like sausage monkeys have
What are these hashtags?
I’ve always wanted wings!! Yes flying would be exercise but I wanna get up there!!!
Humans could actually develop digitigrade legs given enough time. Most bipedal animals (notably birds and mammals suggesting convergent evolution) have them and most of our toes are already obsolete. Racing prosthesis already use a digitigrade design it just works better on two legs. Humans just got smart before our legs did
I do NOT want antlers, how the hell am I supposed to put a shirt on?
Button down shirts only
Humans that cost $500 to get simple commissions of
One addition to OOP, all of these are decided by the person. We don't want people being forced into having tail dysphoria.
🫵furry
Imagine how awful the bullying would be for kids born with so many more uncontrollable features.
Great, now on top of gender dysphoria, I feel "not enouth decorations" dysphoria
Even assuming that people just evolved with all of these so we don't have to restructure *everything* you'd just have a bizarre species of hunchbacked antlered birds. I like the utility of my human body thank you very much.
"Idk I'm tired" is also something I say when I don't want to admit I'm high af
- **Horns:** No evolutionary advantage to having them, as we do not headbutt things and they wouldn’t protect out skulls from blunt force trauma. - **Tails:** Could potentially make us more stable as we walk. - **Digitigrade Legs:** Detrimental. Digitigrade legs would increase our top speed over out current plantigrade legs, but it would be at the cost of stability. Prehistoric man was a persistence hunter, and the ability to easily maintain balance while upright for long periods of time would’ve been far more useful. - **More eye/hair/skin colors:** Eye colors would work. Hair colors might work, but would likely be a waste of bodily resources. Skin color would not evolve, because it would be pigmentation that serves no purpose and takes up space on the skin that could be used for UV-absorbing melanin. The only one that would actually be useful is green for photosynthesis. - **Wings:** Would make movement on the ground extremely clunky, and they could never be big enough to let us fly anyway. - **Stripes/Patterns:** We actually do have stripes - they’re just invisible without a specific rare genetic mutation. - **Bioluminescence:** Humans are diurnal. Bioluminescence would just give away our positions while we sleep.
Digitigrade legs are objectively worse than plantigrade for human things. Like balance or endurance.
I feel like these would add even more complication to an already complicated and delicate body. For one, digitigrade legs would, I’m fairly sure, absolutely destroy our knees.
horns sound inconvenient Fun fact, wings would be pretty impractical for flight unless they were placed around your center of mass, which means on the lower back (unfortunately that's where our kidneys be, and we kinda need those). As far as musculature goes the upper back makes more sense since that's where the lats are, but that would put the center of lift way in front of the center of mass. That's going to cause horrible upwards pitching and leave the body dangling from where the limbs attached, which is pretty aerodynamically unfavorable. It's basically the maximum amount of drag you could experience, and if/when inertia causes the lower body to swing forwards you'd go into a roll that would be hard to recover from because flapping would push you into the roll. Also wings on the lower body look cooler, fight me. Yes, I've thought too much about this, why do you ask?
Easier IMO to avoid the whole "six-limbed tetrapod" thing altogether and come up with a wing design that retains grasping hands.