ZeroDevil

I've been thinking about bees for no real reason.

Bees are interesting, and vital for many plant species.

But moreover, the parallels to various human societies are numerous. For instance, there is evidence that bees either have emotions or at least the base mechanisms behind them:

www.scientificamerican.com/art…

Also, they apparently have something regarding culture, as they use a complex dance to guide other bees toward where flowers with nectar remaining are located. These dances can vary by hive and species.

They also have pheromones, and other types of body language besides their navigation dances, to express some type of meaning, and perhaps even use static electricity in communications:

www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/0…

They also have social structures inside of their hives, based on their "caste" and the amount of resources their hive has.

Interesting fact: most bees you will ever see are female, and they work from within their hive to protect each other, feed each other, their queen (who is really their mother), and their developing larvae, most of whom, aside from drones, are also females.

So effectively bees are an almost all-female societal animal that use perfumes, dances, and perhaps along with static electricity, to communicate with each other, have emotions and emotional states, work feverishly day and night to feed and care for their baby sisters and their mother, and live off of a sugary substance that we know as honey, as well as plant pollen and spend nearly all day buzzing around flowers.

I can't help but notice how their behavior alone resembles many traits that are considered very feminine even in a lot of human societies by societal norms. On top of it all, again, most bees are female.

It's kind of ironic that bee social norms and some culture's social norms are very similar in this one case.

I stress though, in this one case.

That said though, it doesn't make them ubiquitous everywhere in every human culture, and that's not getting into subcultures. This is just a perceived generality.

And, oh hell, did I find one.

It's commonly abbreviated DDLC, and it has nothing to do with expansion packs for games (called DLC or downloadable content).

The full name of it is Doki Doki Literature Club, and it's styled to look like, on the surface, an Eastern-made Visual Novel/Dating Sim. At first I didn't think much of it since I don't really play that kind of game, but I heard it was freaky in a psychological way, and it was free of charge on steam, so I downloaded it and gave it a playthrough.

BEAR WITH ME; THIS GETS WEIRD AND DARK...

To the point of borderline Lovecraftian.

It starts out innocuous enough; you play the role of a male high school student who joins the school's literature club, a club that was (prior to your arrival) composed of four girls roughly your own age.

Things go okay for the first few in-game days and then things go wrong just before the day of the festival. The game then gets really meta, you are forced to go through multiple playthroughs of it and things get more twisted each and every time.

















SPOILER WARNING
It turns out that one of the characters in the game has become truly self-aware and is perfectly aware that she's just a character in a game, goes mad from this revelation, and now realizes that she's the only truly living thing in a simulated game world... And then latches on to you (not your character, but YOU) and becomes completely obsessed with you, breaking the game, literally, just to be with you. The only way to "win" is to go into the game's files in your computer's directory and either delete or remove her file, which makes her die in-game. Her "ghost" realizes her mistakes and tries to reset everything, only to watch as one other character has the same realization that she did and then also goes insane, prompting what's left of her to fall into despair and, I kid you not, delete the game from your hard drive after the credits finish rolling





















I do not recommend playing a session of this just before going to bed (which I did last night).

I should have researched them more back when I played D&D because in a lot of ways they're almost exactly like the Argonians, otherwise known as Saxleel, from The Elder Scrolls series (which makes sense the The Elder Scrolls series was originally a homebrew game of D&D played by the devs at Bethesda during their lunch break; no joke, Tamriel was a realm they'd made up for their own D&D campaign that got turned into one of the best known series of western, or non Asian-made, fantasy role playing video games in the world).

That said, Kobolds.

*DISCLAIMER*

This is all from online sources related to D&D. I could be wrong about some or most of the info here. I do not currently have an manuals for the game either (it's been a long time since I've played it).

Basic description; in the more modern versions of D&D, from 3.0 onward, they're a relatively short, clever, and sneaky race of bipedal reptilian creatures that were bred as servants for Chromatic (or evil-aligned) Dragons. As of D&D 3.0 and 3.5, they stand at 2 feet tall to 2 feet, 8 inches tall. In D&D version 4.0, this was increased to be between 3 feet tall at the shortest, and 4 feet tall at the tallest (which personally is the size I'd prefer them at, even though I prefer D&D 3.5 to 4.0 and later). They are covered in fine scales with a reptilian, in some cases almost crocodile-like, face, a tail whose scales are very fine, making almost look like the tail of a rat from a distance, the ability to see in the dark as they live in underground tunnels, burrows, and warrens, and in general have a lawful evil alignment, being bred specifically as a servitor race for Chromatic Dragons, whom are evil-aligned.

Prior to D&D version 3.0, Kobolds looked more dog-like and were listed as a "goblinoid", or goblin subrace, rather than their current reptilian appearance. Their description was something to be considered a cross between a short man, a dog, and a rat, and although they spoke draconic as their primary language, they spoke it with an accent that sounded similar, to most, to the yapping and yiping of a small dog.

Even though they still have their reptilian appearance in modern version of D&D, they still retain the "small dog-like accent" when speaking in their native tongue of draconic.

Other than that they share some traits in common with Dwarves; they live underground, they mine materials and build things as they're quite industrious, crafty, and clever, and they also do magic as sorcery is something the more powerful of their society perform. Mind you, they are lawful-evil aligned. They can be spiteful and cruel creatures, in general, that go about doing this to make traps, pitfalls, and so on the capture people and take them slave, if not just kill them. They're also frequently described as "cowardly", preferring to use methods of capture that involve little personal risk on their part. Some Kobolds have wing and called "Urds". These can glide but not truly fly as their wings don't have the muscle power for sustained flight. Some Kobolds practice sorcery and magic and thus can become liches, which being of a typically evil alignment, they might very well have an inclination to do. Their society, the individual clans in it, are usually ruled by the eldest Kobold in said clan, and thus a Kobold might become a lich to continuously rule over their clan for eternity.




*This data is what I looked up via other sources*

As goes the origin of the name, apparently the term "Kobold" or "Cobold" comes from Germanic mythology, although the actual mythological creature is very different; they're described as being similar to the Irish "Brownie" or house spirit, taking rewards of clothing and food in exchange for doing housework and appeared as small humans about the height of children. Some were described as living in mines and caves and doing mining but they were still described as looking like short humans, only the underground variety were described as being physically ugly. Some were also described as living on ships. These looked like miniature sailors, wearing a sailor's uniform and smoking a pipe.

Interesting fact; the name of the chemical element "Cobalt" comes from "Cobold" as miners believed that the mine-dwelling Cobolds were the reason why the ore it was found in is toxic (in reality cobalt ore is toxic because it contains large amounts of arsenic).





In terms of D&D again, I probably should have tried playing as Kobold, as apparently some can be of a neutral alignment, such as neutral evil or even lawful good, although usually the manual calls for them to be either of some type of "evil" or some type of "lawful" alignment, but preferably they are "lawful" before anything else, having been bred for service to Dragons, which requires some kind of code.

I might try drawing a Kobold at some point.

Lol.

Got a few things for Christmas; a few new sets of clothes, and a game of the year copy of Overwatch.

Been playing that for a few hours now.

I think I've got my lineup set.

Main is Bastion (yeah, you heard me).

Secondaries are Road Hog and Junkrat.

Tertiaries are Reaper and Mercy.


PS: Spawn camping as Bastion is a dick move but oh so funny when people start swearing at you over the mic. XD

I was just sitting there just behind a corner with a small ledge in front of me, barely getting hit, and laying down a steady stream of suppressing fire RIGHT INTO THEIR SPAWN. If it wasn't for the force field surrounding the spawn point they'd have been dying as soon as they joined in.

It worked up to the point where someone wizened up and went Reinhardt...

Until our Junkrat promptly blew him up and I went back to peppering their spawn with suppressing fire. XP