white boys will say this with the most smug look on their face and every time i have to count to at least 100 to make sure i don’t punch them right in the teeth
It’s fantasy, you can make them look however you want to. However cat digits with their retractable claws are arranged very differently from human ones.
I mean, just try to contort your own fingers into that arrangement. They just don’t flex that far, and that’s how cats walk around with their claws sheathed. We humans are using the very tips of our last phalange on each digit for our fine motor movement. The pad of a cat’s toes are essentially a joint they’re walking on.
So the equivalent of our fingertips is the tip of their claws. Which is a difficult mental image to coordinate.
I will never claim to be an artist, but I understand a lot of artists work by knowing where the bones and joints are, and then building up from there. You could certainly consider lengthening the last bone of the finger to provide a longer base to attach the nail, but if you want retractable claws those fingers are going to be shorter with more flesh around them when retracted, in order to lengthen when out.
There’s no basis for this in nature, but what about an arrangement where the claw grows from the second joint rather than the fingertip/first joint? Like a bone spur of sorts. Curl the hands and tuck the fingertips under to use the claws, a bit like brass knuckles, and straighten the hands to use the fingertips with the claws out of the way. The claws wouldn’t be retractable, but the effect would be similar.
You’re welcome. I switched off messages long ago because I was being inundated with people asking pet care questions on a daily basis, and while I do want to help everyone it was becoming an impossible, full time workload that was no good for my health.
Anon, why not give your cat a dirt box to play in, if he really likes dirt? Maybe just as an occasional treat rather than a fixture. Most grocery stores sell big foil roasting pans for under $5, you could get one and put some dirt in it for him to roll around in. He might not get the idea, but it’s worth a shot.
Well, it depends a lot on the cause- I know the sources for my own pain issues, so I can kind of go off of there, but in theory any sort of complex moving body has the risk of chronic pain, be it organic or cyber.
One of my major issues with pain is related to mobility- this runs in the family, stiff joints and muscle strain, a lack of cushion between bones or improper development of said bones. For cybertronians, replacing joints or whatever’s needed to lubricate them might be easier than it is for humans, but if their body can’t manage to upkeep of these joints I imagine any sort of mobility-based pain would return quickly. In most of my setting Cybertronian bodies function more or less like organic ones, with nanites and specific systems dedicated to various bodily functions, and sometimes there are inherent flaws that result in continued failure of these functions. Sometimes they can be treated, but other times there’s something perhaps spark-deep or the result of traumatic injury that refuses to let the body heal.
My other pain issues start at what is effectively the source of all pain- the brain and nervous system. Phantom pain and I are well acquainted friends, usually triggered by fatigue or other stressors, and it’s hard to recognize when there’s pain because something in your body is actually hurt, or because your nervous system is basically so stressed it’s crying. This might be a major issue for Cybertronians because pain that exists in the processor or spark may be similarly difficult to identify and treat without extensive and continual care- for me, antidepressants help, and they help a lot, but this also comes with the reality that if those fail- pain is waiting to return.
So that’s two options- cybertronians are full of moving parts and when those fail to work in tandem, chronic pain could result, or otherwise pain can stem from something deeper and less physical.
As for other options…chronic pain could be the result of illness or chronic illness– maybe a rust disease causing degredation internally, even if the immune system can repair and keep things going it would still be unpleasant or painful and certainly tiring, the constant repairs/re-repairs so on so forth. Or even a parasitic attachment, scraplets as the equivalent of tapeworms, just waiting in deep systems, passively sucking away life.
An old injury that never healed fully and instead other structures healed around it.
An unidentified allergic reaction or intolerance to an impurity in energon or paint (I mean, can you imagine cybertronian lactose intolerance?)
Stress from a million years of fear and warfare, when abated, suddenly the body doesn’t know how to handle not being constantly ready to fight, to die, and the pain starts because the brain is trying to find an outlet because something must be wrong, something.
So on, so forth! I think it’s an interesting avenue to explore, the causes and treatments of chronic pain in cybertronians.
Anyone have any ideas what this guy is? Thinking a mantid of some sort based on it’s forelegs but I’m not sure. He’s in my terrarium since he’s been inside for like two days anyway.
Looks like some sort of Hemiptera, the photos are really hard to see and it’s so dark. But it doesn’t look like a mantis at all, doesn’t have the head shape or the front femur for it.
Hard to say when you don’t give much information like location. But that would be my best guess.
I’d guess some sort of assassin bug. Definitely Hemiptera. Probably either sucks plant juice from stems or kills and drains small insects.
Polymita picta, common name the Cuban land snail or the painted snail, is a species of large, air-breathing land snail. Shells of Polymita picta can reach a length of about 20 millimeters (0.79 in). These large shells are shiny and very brightly colored. Normally they show a bright yellow color with a white stripe, but the species is well known for its colorful shell polymorphism, with numerous color varieties. These shells are sought after by poachers and used to make jewelry and trinkets. As a result, the species has become endangered.
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