Wednesday, May 30, 2007

A critter that didn't make the cut

There's a lot of discussion going on. At times, it's fantastic, but at other times, it's depressing because people seem to want to repeat tropes that others have already done. For example there's a desire to make nonintelligent posthumans a la Baxter. it got voted down. Another is something that you could almost take from rasfs from years ago: the desire to take a water critter and make it terrestrial again. On rasfs it was the dolphin and turning it into a snake. This time it's the seal. it's less of a stretch, but it's still a bit perplexing to me. In the vein of participating and trying to think of something a little more original, since there were already two proposals for a seal-turned-snake and a triped, I suggested something a little different.

I stuck with a seal that turned biped...but not on its legs. Think walking on your hands. Or flippers. Body changed and the flippers elongated. It looked vaguely theropod like, but...not really. That's the closest I can put into words. The seal walked on the legs dervied from the fore flippers, but kept its rear feet, but not for walking. Rather, it was for signaling and displays. The rear flippers became very, well, batlike and became fans to be flared and displayed in mating dances and dominance games. It could become fanciful for that purpose. It was supposed to arise in an island situation. The contenders were a Nova Iceland, Great Carribea, or Greenland.

Anyways, it didn't make it. It seems the group wasn't very interested. I'm not that attached, but it was an interesting attempt at playing along. I don't see a seal coming ashore to be a dominant land critter. However, stretching the imagination is fun.

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