Results For The Poll I Made The Other Week Came In- The Whale And Octopus X Squirrel Tied, So I Started

Results for the poll I made the other week came in- the whale and octopus x squirrel tied, so I started with this.

I'm going with the whale being a queen-of-all-cetaceans kinda local deity. You think blue whales are large? She's the Viola (the cow not the instrument) of whales.

The largest blue whale ever recorded way 33.58m (~110' 7") long. Off that record, I'm going with this lovely lady being around 100m (328') long at least.

She guides regular whale migrations and has minor healing abilities. Mostly just a whale protector, but massive and magical. Hence the cool colours.

There is 100% an Atlantis preserve, hidden underwater for oceanic creatures and you cannot convince me otherwise. This whale lives there, under their care. She'll leave every couple months to check up on her whales and dolphins, but comes back for the free food and head scratches.

I'd like to say that most animal families (cervidae, canidae, felidae, columbidae, ursidae, etc) have their own magical minor deity. They're all massive, have minor magical properties and abilities and often have cool colouration. She is one of them.

This could also be taken a step further- with Milch creatures like Viola or The Walrus being their deity's offspring or the deities themselves. (Demigod Viola is going to take over my mind from here on out, thank you.)

I'm gonna be honest, I don't know what's going on here. My little sister suggested it. So I drew it.

In order to justify this lil' dude's addition to my Fablehaven Beastiary, I'm going with a mildly crazy hedgewitch named Aisteach a couple hundred years ago. She was trying to learn transmutation, wasn't particularly good at it, but realised she loved her weird creations and made a bunch.

So. Many.

These half/half hybrids are all considered the same species, Aistechi (single Aistechus)- named in her honour.

Due to a weird twist of magic, even though they have no special properties or abilities themselves, if they breed with any of the components of their crosses (in this case, a squirrel or an octopus), all their offspring will ALSO be Aistechi of the same kind.

A couple got out near the beginning of the debacle, and... well...

They're generally considered either highly invasive and irritating pests or cool pets in reserves, depending on which form of Aistechi they have and how easily they can breed with the native wildlife in the area.

Reserves have a difficult time trying to contain them, stop them breeding wildly, while also fending off poachers, due to the pet market for some of the cuter forms among the rich and elite. Most preserves just try to avoid having any at all.

Fablehaven has exactly 0, because possessing this species is rather counter-productive if they're going for secrecy. Though Seth may smuggle one back from a knight's mission from a preserve madly trying to rehome the children of a grey wolf x sandpiper (who found another sandpiper- don't ask me how that worked) and name him Zip sometime in the future. Nobody can persuade Seth to give Zip up, and they go flying occasionally.

Seth has to get written permissions and several licences just to keep Zip, let alone bring him along on adventures. The less said about getting permission for Zip to go to other preserves with Seth, the better. Most have the instinctive reaction of looking at Zip, pointing, and screaming. Which is wildly hilarious, as he's adorable.

I’ve seen discussions sometimes about how fanfiction-based fandom culture is heavily influenced and dominated by people who are not cis men.

One thing I haven’t seen discussed as much though is how much of fandom in general is shaped by neurodivergent people.

I mean, you have autistic and ADHD people with special interests or hyperfixations collecting information and writing detailed meta, connecting very strongly with characters and fandoms. I would not be surprised if the percentage of autistics in fandom communities was significantly higher than in the general public.

And that’s not even getting into other types of neurodivergencies and how they influence fandom culture.

I sometimes see people try to divorce fandom culture from the idea of being a “geek”, and I understand that this is sometimes because of the association with the sexist geek stereotype, but I also know that there is a connection between the two concepts, and it’s probably us neurodivergent people.

obsessed with this baby hippo from thailand's khao khew zoo.. she has been so utterly betrayed by the world

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