Chapters: 4/7 Fandom: Transformers (Bay Movies) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Megatron/Sunstreaker (past), Ratchet/Ironhide (past), Optimus Prime/Sideswipe, Megatron/Ratchet Characters: Megatron (Transformers), Ratchet (Transformers), Sideswipe (Transformers), Optimus Prime Additional Tags: Post-Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), Moving On, Grief/Mourning, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship Series: Part 3 of Interwoven Summary:
For Megatron, grief is an ever-shifting presence, first in the echoes of loss, and then in the ebb and flow of healing. And as it turns out, no one understands this better than Ratchet.
happy Friday everybody, it’s time for another installment of Weird Biology! and today, you’re going to learn about a goddamn dinosaur.
(yes, I know all birds are technically dinosaurs, but this one is… dinosaurier? dinosaurien? DINOSAURIEST than the rest)
meet the Hoatzin, relic of ages past
*raptor screech*
the Hoatzin is the only member of the family Opisthocomidae, an ancient line of birds that branched off from the rest some 64 million years ago. this would have been just shortly after the event that murdered the shit out of all non-avian dinosaurs. to death.
Hoatzins are the very last survivors of this ancient line. (I wanted to make a joke here, but that’s actually really fucking tragic)
shit I made myself sad, MORE JOKES
Hoatzins are common pheasant-sized birds that live in the riverside forests of South America, where they survive on a diet of *drumroll* leaves. yum.
seriously, they are one of exactly two known bird species to specialize in leaf-eating, having evolved past their shame trait some 30 million years ago. (the other one is the Kakapo, who mostly just seems confused)
Kakawho?
their love of delicious delicious leaves gives them a very… distinctive odor, shall we say. this is due to their fermentative digestive process. it has earned the Hoatzin the local name ‘Stinkybird”, which for any Hoatzins reading this, is really more of an affectionate nickname. honest.
but what truly sets Hoatzins apart, and proves their saurian nature, is this.
HOLY SHIT A DINOSAUR
the hatchlings have fucking claws on their wings. remind you of anything? like maybe, oh I dunno, this guy?
HOLY SHIT A BIRD
Archaeopteryx up there bears a striking resemblance to our Hoatzin friend, which did not go unnoticed by the scientific community (who was actually paying attention this time, they swear). in fact, this uncanny resemblance helped finalize the theoretical link between dinosaurs and birds, which we now know are the same fucking thing. (more or less)
but anyway, the baby Hoatzins use those scientifically-groundbreaking claws to scramble around in trees and avoid predators. also apparently the claws just kind of… fall off?.. when the bird becomes an adult. like, imagine if your fingers all fell off at puberty, how weird would that be? jesus.
(Hoatzins definitely aren’t the only birds with wing claws, but DON’T TELL THEM THAT. they like to feel special.)
thankfully, it looks like these evolutionary weirdos will be with us for some time to come, as Hoatzins continue to be plentiful in their range. we hope they and those weird dinosaur claws stick around for a long, long time.
Anyone else remember playing the Legend of Zelda as a kid and being seriously spooked by those hand monsters that would drop from the ceiling, Wallmasters I think they were called? I hated them back then, but I kind of love them now, and that’s what I was thinking of when a ‘Disembodied hand monster’ was requested for this Fantasy Biology post.
Most fantasy species are at least superficially similar to a real, living or extinct species from which to draw inspiration and scientific understanding. A ‘hand’ that crawls around on its own, eh, not so much.
Unless we stretch what we know of biology quite a bit.
Viewing our hand monster from the outside, which is really all we have to start with, we find five limbs (fingers and thumb) and a body (the palm and wrist in some cases). Even if you consider the ‘thumb’ to be some sort of tail-like-limb, it doesn’t really resemble the anatomy of any vertebrate species. It’s barely even bilaterally symmetrical, it’s actually closer to radial symmetry.
And the Earth does have a handful of radially symmetrical creatures. The jellyfish and anemone being some.
Yes, I’m going to argue that the Hand Monster is some sort of very distantly evolved land jellyfish.
Okay but what if Peter and Shuri are at the Avengers Compund and Peter asks Shuri if she wants to watch a movie with him in the screening room and she says yes. So they go in and Peter turns on Star Wars and half way through the movie he jokingly says how she should make real life SW tech. She tells him to pause the movie and she walks out of the room and comes back 10 minutes later and is like “I made these when I was 11!” And pulls out 2 functioning lightsabers and hands one to Peter, who is in shock and they start running around the compound fighting with lightsabers. T’Challa is annoyed because he told Shuri to leave them at home and Tony doesn’t know if he should be impressed bc Shuri made actual lightsabers or worried that two 16 year olds are running around using ACTUAL lightsabers.
Reporter in the Marvel unviverse: Anthony Stark, well-known as a generous philanthropist, the CEO of Stark Industries, and his alter-ego “Iron Man,” under fire today after a controversial video he posted to his personal Vine account went viral. The short footage showed Stark in the passenger seat of a car, driving by an anti-homosexual rally, repeatedly shouting “I love sucking [expletive for male genitalia]” out of the open window.
A+ Concept, I love it, I’m dying, it’s too good.
It becomes the hottest new meme throughout the US. Every single time there’s some homophobic rally, Hell, every time there’s a rally held by homophobes whether or not the rally was ABOUT homophobia there’s now teens doing drive-by’s being like “Ahem, this one is for Tony Stark – I LOVE SUCKING [expletive for male genitalia]”. The meme keeps escalating as people find newer and funnier ways to bleep out what they are saying in real time and on Vine. The most popular way? The sound of a repulser charging up.
The whole thing drives homophobes crazy. They hate it so much, it literally has some people trying to create their own counter meme (”I love sucking UP TO JESUS”) that goes very very badly (exactly how you’d expect). So, out of options, they try to sue Tony.
Everybody should know better than to sue Tony.
His lawyers tear them apart. There’s an unholy grin on Tony’s face during the entire publicized case – he’s in a rainbow suit. He’s in rainbow shades. He’s wearing a harness over his suit and his shoes literally leave glitter footprints everywhere he goes. His tie says “I love sucking [REPULSER NOISE]”. Twitter goes nuts. A still of Tony from the trial, one where he is sarcastically blowing pink glitter into the face of a woman trying to hit him with a picket sign, becomes a reaction image nobody can resist. You wanna represent how tired you are of homophobic comments? That’s your image. It’s usually coupled by one of Rhodey in the background, military dress uniform smeared in glitter and a blatant glittery kiss mark pressed to his cheek, staring at the ceiling and praying for death.
Listen this is the best addition to my post and im both writing this into a fic and drawing fan art for it @purgatoryandme
I’m pretty sure that if you put this in front of RDJ he would provide us with actual footage of these things.
I just realized that Han never knew that Luke got his hand chopped off while he was in carbonite and I don’t know which path I want to follow with this information:
1. Han seeing Luke’s injured hand after the sail barge battle and thinking that Luke has been a robot the whole time
2. Luke shaking his hand with a super-firm grip and Han just thinking “Wow this kid has gotten…absurdly strong.”
3. Luke just pulls off his hand one day and throws it at Han.
4. Luke picks up a spacechicken carcass and crushes it with his bare hand and Han is intimidated
5. Han says “It’s good to see you’re all right” and then Luke says “well, actually…” and pulls off his hand and Han falls over the back of his chair
6. Han says “It’s good to see you’re all right” and everyone gasps and Leia says “Too soon!” and Han is confused and they all just rag on him
7. Han needs a battery and Luke just opens up his hand and pulls out a battery and gives it to him and Han just stares
8. Luke reappears after a mission with all the synthflesh off and Han says “I thought it was easy but you LOST YOUR HAND?” and Luke just says “Oh, no, I lost this before Endor” and Han is hurt and betrayed.
9. Luke keeps making hand puns and limb puns and raising his right hand to high-five Han and Han just never gets it
10. Luke excitedly tells Han as they’re waiting to be taken to the Sarlacc because it’s been a whole year that he’s wanted to tell the guy.
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