User Name/Nick: Isabelle
User DW:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
vibishan
E-mail: PMs please
Other Characters: Shuos Jedao
Character Name: Fabian
Series: Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Age: ??? idk what uplifted spider lifespans are (or how long a year is on their planet) but Fabian is an adult in his society, in his physical prime
From When?: Right after his death.
Inmate/Warden: Definite Warden. Fabian is, in his way, a Big Damn Hero. He is one of his society's first two astronauts, ever, and he sacrifices himself to save the other. He's brave, he's willing to risk his life for the betterment of his species and the expansion of knowledge, and for the sake of another individual life.
More importantly, though, spider morality is in some ways similar to humans' and in some ways very different. I call it "white and orange" morality. They have a lot of similar ideas about what good prosocial behavior is - but very little concept that anything can be 'evil'. Dangerous, yes, but not evil. Or at the very least, they care far more about the former than the latter. They have a version of the Prisoner's Dilemma which has a fundamentally different answer from the human version. His perspective would be quite unique and would definitely make him a valuable warden.
Item: The little radio from his space suit.
Arrival:
Abilities/Powers: He is an uplifted spider originating in the portia labiata species of jumping spiders. He is a little over twenty inches long from the front of his head to the tip of his abdomen, and he can jump about 35-40 feet. He can spin both sticky and non-sticky threads and make a variety of useful items with them, including an abseiling parachute. He has sizable proportionate fangs that deliver venom intended mostly for invertebrate prey, which would proooobably not kill a healthy human, but would definitely cause a debilitating and horribly painful reaction - on the order of being stung in one place by at least several dozen bees. He heals quite quickly if he has enough to eat, but he will be wheezing a little at first, since he is used to a planet with about 4% more atmospheric oxygen than Earth/barge standard. He is not as good at regulating his body temperature as a mammal, and is sensitive to temperature fluctuations. He has incredibly accurate vision from his main eyes and less detailed but 360ยบ vision with his minor eyes. His hearing is terrible but he can feel very subtle vibrations in the conductive substance of the barge's walls. He is very intuitively good at certain kinds of math, particularly those related to the geometric.
Personality: The spiders of Kearn's world are in some ways profoundly different from human beings. They are not, however, truly alien. Five hundred million years ago, before the lineage of kingdom animalia split into vertebrates and invertebrates, they shared a common ancestor. Perhaps more importantly, the uplift virus which so dramatically changed their species over mere thousands of years of evolution was deliberately designed by humans to push certain human-like parameters of intelligence and social cooperation. The virus, in the initial test, was meant to operate on the much more familiar clay of monkeys, so its affects on far more distant cousins have sometimes been unexpected, or in odd tension, but it nevertheless found fertile ground in the spider's tiny but nimble brains.
The original species of jumping spider, portia labiata, is a race of solitary predators, capable of experimenting to devise complex hunting strategies for different types of prey, and of executing multi-stage plans even when the objects of their plans are out of view. From these beginnings, the nanovirus created a species which highly values cooperation, but which has little concept of formalized hierarchies or roles. Spider society is one of "functional anarchy" and very high social mobility, where status is based on making useful contributions. As with humans, the tensions between individualism and communalism are in complex balance, although the equilibrium shakes out differently: the spiders' intense meritocracy is filtered through the fluid formation of peer groups that accrue status by their members' actions, exist in shifting balance with one another, and support their various members, as there is no elaborate formal spider government to provide such welfare. They often see things in terms of web metaphors, and their society is the perfect example: to them it is a web of connections that is constantly being changed and re-woven.
Similarly, the tension between tradition, which the nanovirus encourages as a culture-building, society-strengthening meme, and between curiosity, which pushes the spiders forward in intellectual and scientific development, is a familiar one to humanity. In spiders, however, the way of curious almost always wins out, and rather more rapidly, and is more universally embraced and valorized. There is no stereotype of the "rebellious teenager" among spiders. Aggression is considered primitive, unless it is in defense of the nest, but innovation and experimentation (and competition between peer groups for achievements via the same) are celebrated.
Perhaps the most striking difference between humans and spiders is the existence of "understandings" - genetically encoded memories that prevent spiders from mythologizing their history in the way humans do. Spiders have direct access to the trials and triumphs of their ancestors. And by Fabian's time, genetic technology is advanced to the point that any spider can go to the library and have a new gene sequence inserted, which will remodel their brains over the course of about a day, clearing out some neglected skill or experience to make room for the new information. Identity itself is as fluid as their social structure or their silken urban architecture: what matters is what a spider chooses to be, and what they choose to keep. Some spiders change themselves often, and some rarely.
Fabian is ambitious. To be chosen as one of their species first two astronauts, with the eyes of the world breathlessly watching, he must be highly ambitious. He was chosen, we are told, both for his intelligence and his physical agility. But in a world with unofficial but lingering sexism against much smaller males - and Fabian is smaller than average even for a male - to even get to the point of consideration, he must be highly accomplished, as an athlete and explorer, as highly capable in a crisis, as a supportive team player, and as scientifically skilled enough to manage the very experimental craft of the delicate biotech high-atmosphere/low-orbit starnest.
Fabian is earnest, full of all his species' natural curiosity (at the fangpoint of scientific advancement, as one of his colleagues would have put it), and profoundly moved by the grandeur of an unknown universe beyond his planet. Orbiting Kearn's world is a slightly mad AI satellite monitoring the uplift program, which the spiders refer to intermittently as God, although they are far less prone to human-style religious fervor. After his crewmate, leader, and lover Portia is injured carrying out their mission to launch a communications satellite, Fabian desperately tries to make radio contact with anyone on the ground - and is answered, instead, by the messenger. He is the first male ever to speak to God, and even in his battered and dire state, is shaken by a profound awe. He is not in awe because he considers her "divine" in any sense human theologians would recognize. He knows she is far from omnipotent or numinous, that she is a measurable lump of metal orbiting his planet at an altitude of approximately 300 kilometers up. He does not consider her a moral figure at all - but she has been transmitting mathematics to the planet as a test of growing sapience for longer than any of the genetic understandings of his species can recall. She is a figure of knowledge, of the great unknown, unimaginable but not unapproachable, and that is what moves him.
In human terms, it might make sense to divide Fabian's most dearly-held values into two: the pursuit of such knowledge, and loyalty to the lives of his kin and comrades. But Fabian himself would not divide them at all. As a member of a species which remembers clearly so many of the steps that brought them from small bands of hunters to dominate their planet, Fabian is viscerally aware that serving the advancement of his people's knowledge and advancement of their welfare care one and the same.
Conversely, although he is entirely willing to risk his own life for the mission, and ultimately sacrifices himself to save Portia, there's no human stereotype left brain/right brain "science versus emotions" prioritizing with him, either. He's a sensitive soul: he notices when Portia sneaks out of the party before their launch, and she describes him as the kind of person who "always knows the right thing to say," to make her feel better, even when he has no answers to offer except simple companionship. Fabian definitely won't know the right things to say to humans right away, the cultural differences being in some ways profound - but he is observant, compassionate, solicitous, and motivated to try.
Barge Reactions: EVERYONE IS A GIANT MOUSE ALL THE ROOMS ARE SQUARE AND NEVER CHANGE EVERYTHING IS VERY WEIRD BUT HE IS LEARNING!!!! SO!!! MANY!!! NEW!!! THINGS!!!!! he is a very happy spider. oOuOo
Path to Redemption:
Deal: I think initially his deal will be for a more perfect intermediary language between the spiders and the stomatopods, but T B H he's mostly in it for GOING NEW PLACES and LEARNING NEW THINGS instead of being, you know, dead, and he might well change his deal or give it away at some point.
History: Like all spiders, Fabian hatched in a large communal family of sisters, cousins, friends, and valued co-workers that spiders call a "peer group," and instead of any particularly intensive mammalian nurturing, he benefited from a fairly large store of "understandings" - genetically encoded memories. Given his eventual selection for a highly prestigious expedition, it's likely that he was born to a fairly high status peer group, with a large array of valuable skills in his understandings. However, understandings must be used and practiced for full effect, and spider society does not much value hatchlings, who are not all expected to survive to their first molting. Fabian would have scrambled for survival in his early life and emerged triumphantly.
As he pursued his education and his career as a scientist and explorer, he likely would have faced some prejudice. Although by his time, males have achieved technical legal equality with females, they are still severely underrepresented in the highest status positions, and in his home city of Great Nest, males have never been allowed to be fighters - after all, they are nearly half the size of females. They're so delicate!
However, it is precisely this large sexual dimorphism that leads to his presence on the Star Nest. Fabian is one of only two males on the twelve-spider team that takes the Sky Nest (essentially a massive silk dirigible) to the upper atmosphere, and this is a testament to his intelligence, bravery, determination, and skill. The Star Nest, however, is the spider's first ever 'spaceship', designed to detach from the skynest and into space, where he and his crewmate (and lover) Portia launch the spiders' first ever communications satellite into low Kearn orbit. Although technically only one crew member is needed, mission control wanted to send two spiders so that one could assist if something went wrong, and a second female would have added too much weight.
Something does indeed go wrong. The spiders did not anticipate the freezing effects of the upper atmosphere, and the satellite does not detach properly from the Star Nest because it is trapped by ice. Portia climbs out of the Star Nest to investigate, and manages to free the satellite before its chemical propellant incinerates the entire delicate silk-and-biotech craft. She is, however, badly wounded in the course of freeing the satellite, and the Star Nest itself thrown somewhat off course. Fabian reels Portia back inside the capsule by her safety line. There is not enough air left for both of them, and there is no food that would allow Portia to heal and survive. After a brief talk with God/the Messenger (an ancient AI monitoring the uplift experiment in orbit around their planet), he puts his plan into action. He dances for Portia, a careful, deliberate, provocative mating dance, until he awakens her primal instincts for spousal cannibalism, deliriously attacking and eating him. His plan succeeds: Portia survives.
Sample Journal Entry: TDM
Sample RP: And all the other threads.
Special Notes: Although I have him typing for all his communication on the test drive, I imagine that after not too long on the barge he will construct some kind of artificial tympanum for more fluid speech back and forth.
User DW:
vibishanE-mail: PMs please
Other Characters: Shuos Jedao
Character Name: Fabian
Series: Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Age: ??? idk what uplifted spider lifespans are (or how long a year is on their planet) but Fabian is an adult in his society, in his physical prime
From When?: Right after his death.
Inmate/Warden: Definite Warden. Fabian is, in his way, a Big Damn Hero. He is one of his society's first two astronauts, ever, and he sacrifices himself to save the other. He's brave, he's willing to risk his life for the betterment of his species and the expansion of knowledge, and for the sake of another individual life.
More importantly, though, spider morality is in some ways similar to humans' and in some ways very different. I call it "white and orange" morality. They have a lot of similar ideas about what good prosocial behavior is - but very little concept that anything can be 'evil'. Dangerous, yes, but not evil. Or at the very least, they care far more about the former than the latter. They have a version of the Prisoner's Dilemma which has a fundamentally different answer from the human version. His perspective would be quite unique and would definitely make him a valuable warden.
Item: The little radio from his space suit.
Abilities/Powers: He is an uplifted spider originating in the portia labiata species of jumping spiders. He is a little over twenty inches long from the front of his head to the tip of his abdomen, and he can jump about 35-40 feet. He can spin both sticky and non-sticky threads and make a variety of useful items with them, including an abseiling parachute. He has sizable proportionate fangs that deliver venom intended mostly for invertebrate prey, which would proooobably not kill a healthy human, but would definitely cause a debilitating and horribly painful reaction - on the order of being stung in one place by at least several dozen bees. He heals quite quickly if he has enough to eat, but he will be wheezing a little at first, since he is used to a planet with about 4% more atmospheric oxygen than Earth/barge standard. He is not as good at regulating his body temperature as a mammal, and is sensitive to temperature fluctuations. He has incredibly accurate vision from his main eyes and less detailed but 360ยบ vision with his minor eyes. His hearing is terrible but he can feel very subtle vibrations in the conductive substance of the barge's walls. He is very intuitively good at certain kinds of math, particularly those related to the geometric.
Personality: The spiders of Kearn's world are in some ways profoundly different from human beings. They are not, however, truly alien. Five hundred million years ago, before the lineage of kingdom animalia split into vertebrates and invertebrates, they shared a common ancestor. Perhaps more importantly, the uplift virus which so dramatically changed their species over mere thousands of years of evolution was deliberately designed by humans to push certain human-like parameters of intelligence and social cooperation. The virus, in the initial test, was meant to operate on the much more familiar clay of monkeys, so its affects on far more distant cousins have sometimes been unexpected, or in odd tension, but it nevertheless found fertile ground in the spider's tiny but nimble brains.
The original species of jumping spider, portia labiata, is a race of solitary predators, capable of experimenting to devise complex hunting strategies for different types of prey, and of executing multi-stage plans even when the objects of their plans are out of view. From these beginnings, the nanovirus created a species which highly values cooperation, but which has little concept of formalized hierarchies or roles. Spider society is one of "functional anarchy" and very high social mobility, where status is based on making useful contributions. As with humans, the tensions between individualism and communalism are in complex balance, although the equilibrium shakes out differently: the spiders' intense meritocracy is filtered through the fluid formation of peer groups that accrue status by their members' actions, exist in shifting balance with one another, and support their various members, as there is no elaborate formal spider government to provide such welfare. They often see things in terms of web metaphors, and their society is the perfect example: to them it is a web of connections that is constantly being changed and re-woven.
Similarly, the tension between tradition, which the nanovirus encourages as a culture-building, society-strengthening meme, and between curiosity, which pushes the spiders forward in intellectual and scientific development, is a familiar one to humanity. In spiders, however, the way of curious almost always wins out, and rather more rapidly, and is more universally embraced and valorized. There is no stereotype of the "rebellious teenager" among spiders. Aggression is considered primitive, unless it is in defense of the nest, but innovation and experimentation (and competition between peer groups for achievements via the same) are celebrated.
Perhaps the most striking difference between humans and spiders is the existence of "understandings" - genetically encoded memories that prevent spiders from mythologizing their history in the way humans do. Spiders have direct access to the trials and triumphs of their ancestors. And by Fabian's time, genetic technology is advanced to the point that any spider can go to the library and have a new gene sequence inserted, which will remodel their brains over the course of about a day, clearing out some neglected skill or experience to make room for the new information. Identity itself is as fluid as their social structure or their silken urban architecture: what matters is what a spider chooses to be, and what they choose to keep. Some spiders change themselves often, and some rarely.
Fabian is ambitious. To be chosen as one of their species first two astronauts, with the eyes of the world breathlessly watching, he must be highly ambitious. He was chosen, we are told, both for his intelligence and his physical agility. But in a world with unofficial but lingering sexism against much smaller males - and Fabian is smaller than average even for a male - to even get to the point of consideration, he must be highly accomplished, as an athlete and explorer, as highly capable in a crisis, as a supportive team player, and as scientifically skilled enough to manage the very experimental craft of the delicate biotech high-atmosphere/low-orbit starnest.
Fabian is earnest, full of all his species' natural curiosity (at the fangpoint of scientific advancement, as one of his colleagues would have put it), and profoundly moved by the grandeur of an unknown universe beyond his planet. Orbiting Kearn's world is a slightly mad AI satellite monitoring the uplift program, which the spiders refer to intermittently as God, although they are far less prone to human-style religious fervor. After his crewmate, leader, and lover Portia is injured carrying out their mission to launch a communications satellite, Fabian desperately tries to make radio contact with anyone on the ground - and is answered, instead, by the messenger. He is the first male ever to speak to God, and even in his battered and dire state, is shaken by a profound awe. He is not in awe because he considers her "divine" in any sense human theologians would recognize. He knows she is far from omnipotent or numinous, that she is a measurable lump of metal orbiting his planet at an altitude of approximately 300 kilometers up. He does not consider her a moral figure at all - but she has been transmitting mathematics to the planet as a test of growing sapience for longer than any of the genetic understandings of his species can recall. She is a figure of knowledge, of the great unknown, unimaginable but not unapproachable, and that is what moves him.
In human terms, it might make sense to divide Fabian's most dearly-held values into two: the pursuit of such knowledge, and loyalty to the lives of his kin and comrades. But Fabian himself would not divide them at all. As a member of a species which remembers clearly so many of the steps that brought them from small bands of hunters to dominate their planet, Fabian is viscerally aware that serving the advancement of his people's knowledge and advancement of their welfare care one and the same.
Conversely, although he is entirely willing to risk his own life for the mission, and ultimately sacrifices himself to save Portia, there's no human stereotype left brain/right brain "science versus emotions" prioritizing with him, either. He's a sensitive soul: he notices when Portia sneaks out of the party before their launch, and she describes him as the kind of person who "always knows the right thing to say," to make her feel better, even when he has no answers to offer except simple companionship. Fabian definitely won't know the right things to say to humans right away, the cultural differences being in some ways profound - but he is observant, compassionate, solicitous, and motivated to try.
Barge Reactions: EVERYONE IS A GIANT MOUSE ALL THE ROOMS ARE SQUARE AND NEVER CHANGE EVERYTHING IS VERY WEIRD BUT HE IS LEARNING!!!! SO!!! MANY!!! NEW!!! THINGS!!!!! he is a very happy spider. oOuOo
Deal: I think initially his deal will be for a more perfect intermediary language between the spiders and the stomatopods, but T B H he's mostly in it for GOING NEW PLACES and LEARNING NEW THINGS instead of being, you know, dead, and he might well change his deal or give it away at some point.
History: Like all spiders, Fabian hatched in a large communal family of sisters, cousins, friends, and valued co-workers that spiders call a "peer group," and instead of any particularly intensive mammalian nurturing, he benefited from a fairly large store of "understandings" - genetically encoded memories. Given his eventual selection for a highly prestigious expedition, it's likely that he was born to a fairly high status peer group, with a large array of valuable skills in his understandings. However, understandings must be used and practiced for full effect, and spider society does not much value hatchlings, who are not all expected to survive to their first molting. Fabian would have scrambled for survival in his early life and emerged triumphantly.
As he pursued his education and his career as a scientist and explorer, he likely would have faced some prejudice. Although by his time, males have achieved technical legal equality with females, they are still severely underrepresented in the highest status positions, and in his home city of Great Nest, males have never been allowed to be fighters - after all, they are nearly half the size of females. They're so delicate!
However, it is precisely this large sexual dimorphism that leads to his presence on the Star Nest. Fabian is one of only two males on the twelve-spider team that takes the Sky Nest (essentially a massive silk dirigible) to the upper atmosphere, and this is a testament to his intelligence, bravery, determination, and skill. The Star Nest, however, is the spider's first ever 'spaceship', designed to detach from the skynest and into space, where he and his crewmate (and lover) Portia launch the spiders' first ever communications satellite into low Kearn orbit. Although technically only one crew member is needed, mission control wanted to send two spiders so that one could assist if something went wrong, and a second female would have added too much weight.
Something does indeed go wrong. The spiders did not anticipate the freezing effects of the upper atmosphere, and the satellite does not detach properly from the Star Nest because it is trapped by ice. Portia climbs out of the Star Nest to investigate, and manages to free the satellite before its chemical propellant incinerates the entire delicate silk-and-biotech craft. She is, however, badly wounded in the course of freeing the satellite, and the Star Nest itself thrown somewhat off course. Fabian reels Portia back inside the capsule by her safety line. There is not enough air left for both of them, and there is no food that would allow Portia to heal and survive. After a brief talk with God/the Messenger (an ancient AI monitoring the uplift experiment in orbit around their planet), he puts his plan into action. He dances for Portia, a careful, deliberate, provocative mating dance, until he awakens her primal instincts for spousal cannibalism, deliriously attacking and eating him. His plan succeeds: Portia survives.
Sample Journal Entry: TDM
Sample RP: And all the other threads.
Special Notes: Although I have him typing for all his communication on the test drive, I imagine that after not too long on the barge he will construct some kind of artificial tympanum for more fluid speech back and forth.
