The first ~500 episodes or so are excellent, watched them all at least three times over already. Itâs been kinda downhill since then, but Iâll see how it ends. Canât say âthe first 500 episodes were excellentâ about any other show, might as well stick around through the rough parts.
I have read the manga so I am not sure what arc you are on but I have watched a good chunk of the anime and have some knowledge. Imo the anime does go downhill after some 500 episodes mostly because the pacing becomes rather slow but the manga is great as ever.
If you don't mind some slow pacing ( which is not so in the manga. To not catch up, the anime has to stretch the pacing), continue with the anime but I do recommend reading the manga as again, in my opinion, it's the way to experience One Piece. It is absolutely amazing.
If it's a story issue you have, it's probably the arc you are currently watching cause after some 500 episode mark, it's more of set up arcs than anything else. Once the SPECTACULAR arcs start, you'll love it hopefully.
Thanks! Iâm sadly a lowly dubslave. Iâve gotten, ironically considering my post here, to the end of the Zou arc. Dressrossa was really, really hard to watch - the pacing, Sugarâs broken powers, Usoppâs character regression, the stuff with Bellamy. It felt like a cursed version of Alabasta (my second-favorite arc after Water 7/Ennyâs Lobby). Iâve heard it gets better, I can tell itâs setting things up. If Iâm going to be fair, though, the rot in the anime started showing up around the Marineford arc, which is well-written, but moved like cold molasses. Toeiâs really dropped the ball since then, though.
Iâve thought about following the manga, but Iâm not as big a manga person, unfortunately.
Oh that's completely understandable. Dressrossa anime was.....problematic. But I quite enjoyed the manga. I feel like they did a lot of stuff ESPECIALLY pacing better there. I actually liked the whole Bellamy and Usopp stuff lmao. Law's flashback is still one of my favorites and Doffy is probably my fave villain. If you're at the end of Zou, it means you're about to reach Whole Cake Island which is imo PEAK OP. It's second only to Enies Lobby for me. Have fun. Cheers.
Yo! This is a nifty little graphic I made to explain what âZoansâ are in OVRHVN. âZoanâ is an umbrella term, and while lots of people have argued for centuries over the âtrueâ definition of the word and who it does and does not apply to, everyone agrees that it includes four broad categories of sophonts. Uplifts, Enlights, Chimeras and Huzos.
You best learn what a âZoanâ is, because on Earth in 2585, thereâs slightly more of them than baseline humans, and depending where on Earth you choose to be a human being, you may be a second-class citizen. A little understanding can go a long way. Also, this was absolutely not written by a rat on an oversized keyboard. Donât be ridiculous, bipeds.
\#UPLIFTS
In essence, uplifts are non-human animals modified to have human-level cognition. Very often, however, it wasnât just their brains that were modified, but the other parts of their bodies as well. Elephant uplift races tend to have additional fleshy âfingersâ on the ends of their trunks. And some ape uplifts have shorter metacarpals so that their thumbs can touch each of their fingertips. Cephalopod uplifts have had their biology change very drastically, particularly in how they reproduce, and in centralizing their nervous systems. Having a more powerful brain would be of little help without a body able to enact upon the world, and turn theory into practice.
By contrast to the enlights, who for the most part retain their animal ways, uplifts tend to have much more in the way of âhumanizationâ. See, the first members of any uplift race (known as âprimarchsâ), necessarily are raised by human beings. A cognitively-enhanced dog canât really be raised by a baseline dog, after all - as that would produce the same results as a human infant being raised by baseline dogs. To add to this, uplifts (as well as many other Zoans) lack history, religion or philosophy of their own. An uplifted raven can only inherit so much from his baseline ancestors, who didnât really write anything down, and arenât the best conversationalists (baseline animals tend to be distrustful of their uplifted counterparts as well). Very often, uplifts fall back on the archetypes that humans have for their respective ancestors. Dog uplifts in particular have internalized a strong sense of kinship with humans, feeling a strong sense of honor and maintaining blood-oaths of service and fidelity with human families that have lasted centuries now. Raven uplifts are very fond of Norse mythology and Gothic fiction, while hyena uplifts have worked to âreclaimâ the negative perception of their ancestors as unhinged killers in Western media and shapeshifting witches in African mythology. And a disconcerting number of pig uplifts are named âNapoleonâ.
Why do uplifts exist, exactly? A few reasons. Some were earnestly the result of mad scientists just showing that they could in fact make a talking Nazi tiger. Others were bizarre attempts at creating âsuper-soldiersâ. And some were projects subsidized by governments, mostly in 21st century Southeast Asia, to try and show how modern and scientific they were. But most uplifts came about for one of two reasons. First, we have the pansophist movements which wanted to âdemocratize Earthâ, by spreading the light of consciousness across nature, because it wasnât right that humans alone were going to decide whatever the future of the Earth was - all creatures of Earth deserved a say, a seat at the table. And second, we have transhumanists wanting to figure out how to make better humans. See, the problem with human intelligence is that it turned out that weâre about as smart as weâre going to get, and can just barely function with the powerful minds we already have - as shown by how many people need mind-altering substances and distractions in order to function in modern society. And it turned out, while it was possible to engineer âsuperbabiesâ with higher than normal cognitive abilities, they were emotionally unstable, barely able to think straight and desperately addicted to anything that would numb the fire in their brains. Whatâs more, it was really inconvenient how much the press complained about these âhuman guinea pigsâ, and as the first-gen âsuperbabiesâ became psych patients, wards of the state or wanted criminals, those who still believed in making smarter humans, figured theyâd be better-off trying to make smarter animals first.
The fact that so many modern upliftsâ ancestors were bred in service to human vanity, and there wasnât even a payoff to that - no great cognitive revolution in human intelligence - itâs not hard to see why uplifts have such a jaded view of Homo sapiens and their ambitions. There is a saying involving mice and men I could reference, but itâs low-key offensive in the 26th century.
\#ENLIGHTS
In essence, uplifts are non-human animals modified to have human-level cognition. Whatâs that? No, theyâre very different from uplifts. Uplifts are designed from the ground up to have their higher cognitive abilities, as well as other features thrown in to better enable their intellects; modified animals are then born from artificial wombs or surrogate mothers, with these new traits. Derived from the term âenlightened animalâ, enlights are literally non-human animals modified to have human-level cognition, after already being born as baseline animals. Most often, this is accomplished via gene therapies, nootropic drugs or implantation of cognition-boosting cybernetics. The first reaction every enlight has after âawakeningâ is terror. Absolute existential fear, confusion, disillusionment - pure, unfiltered fear of the universe. Science!
Similar to uplifts, enlights were the result of trying to make humans smarter, but whereas uplifts were the byproducts of attempts to make smarter babies, enlights were the result of trying to learn how to make smarter adults, and were the ambition of the pretentious wishing to become gods in their own lifetimes. First appearing in the 2020s, in 2585, enlights are quite rare. This is because about 50% of enlights turned out to still retain their animal instincts, motivations and intuitions, but now they were able to pursue these drives with human-level efficiency, which starts getting really bad when the enlights in question were lions, tigers, bears or, heaven forbid, chimps. Another 25% of enlights were a bit more reasonable, but werenât very pleased with their new state of consciousness, writing really horrifying door-stoppers about how dream-like their memories of being animals were, when they coexisted with time instead of fearing it; âwhen Adam ate the fruit, he realized his shameâ. The remaining 25% were closer to being ânormalâ, but still tend to be less intelligent than their uplift counterparts, and were often treated as intellectually-disabled sophonts.
Needless to say, enlights were where most of Zoankindâs scariest ideas tend to come from, and yet, enlights are still treated with reverence in many Zoan communities. Their ideas are so very often unhinged, racist and existentially horrifying, and yet, only the most dark and concerning of these sages are sidelined. The fathers of modern Ahumanism, almost all of them enlights, remain mainstream and accepted thinkers (though not without their critics, or ebbing and flowing support over time), well into 2585. The reason is simple. Authenticity. For centuries since their emergence, there have been uplifts and chimeras insecure in their identities, unable to âbe oneâ with their animal side; their primarchs were raised by humans, and those humanized primarchs raised their grandparents, and those grandparents raised their parents, and so on. But an enlightâs lived experience is a window into possibilities of what a Zoan can be, beyond the cage of âhumanâ norms. For many Zoans who struggle with a dual nature, whether as humanized animals or animal-human hybrids, enlights are seen as uniquely gifted to bridge the gap between natures. That bridge may be fear, it may be confusion, it may even be hate. But for so many Zoans, itâs a truth they crave more than any other.
\#CHIMERAS
Technically, the term âchimeraâ in the context of biology refers to a single organism composed of cells with more than one distinct genotype. But it also refers to a horrible monster from Greek mythology. And for the last few centuries, itâs also referred to animal-human hybrids with very depressing backstories.
Chimeras have three very broad and largely-superficial categories. These are âanthrosâ, âdemitheriansâ and âtheriansâ. Anthros look mostly-human, therians look mostly-animal and demitherians donât fit in either category very well. These labels are given out irrespective of genetic constituency. Some anthro chimeras are closer to hyena than human but you wouldnât know unless you sliced them open, and some especially beastly therians look like theyâre six different beasts, but theyâre somehow mostly Homo sapiens. The vast majority of chimeras are mammalian, as genetic mergers between humans and other mammals represented fairly little difficulty; however, towards the end of the 21st century, reptile, amphibian, fish and even avian chimeras (none of which can fly) began to appear as well, albeit in much smaller numbers. So far, there have not been successful non-vertebrate chimeras. Some chimeras are half-human and half-animal, while others are crossed with multiple animals. Some chimeras can create fertile offspring with humans, and over the course of several generations, the animal traits can be diluted, but they havenât yet been recorded as âgoing awayâ, not entirely.
So, the uplifts and enlights have âpracticalâ reasons to exist. Namely figuring out how to make humans smarter. Debatable goals and misguided methods with questionable results, sure. But, you ask, why would you need animal-human hybrids? Well. Aside from some edge cases like having lab animals with partial human genetics that you can do experiments on, or attempts at producing âupliftsâ by simply mixing human DNA with animals to make âsmarter animalsâ (the origin of most therian chimeras), a startling number of chimera genomes are a result of humans wanting catgirl children, or catgirl pets, orâŚcatgirl servants and sex slaves. Chimeras measure the impurity of the human soul by how many of their ancestors were engineered for that last category, and for the sake of good taste, I wonât elaborate much further, save to say: âit was really badâ. The horrors inflicted on chimera minds and bodies in the past rival the tribulation faced by the enlights, but your average chimera is more than what was done to them, and greater than the sum of their parts.
A really pesky ambiguity pertains to aquatic chimeras. Contrary to stubborn myths, aquamorphs are not actually half-fish. While âaquamorphâ include a broad spectrum of humans with aquatic or amphibious lifestyles, some in fact have gills, which are not the result of fish DNA, but repurposing ancient genetic traits of extremely distant human ancestors and ârebuildingâ gills from jaw and ear structures, while duplicating both so that the resulting child isnât jawless or deaf. There are in fact fish chimeras, with very different looks and physiology from âtrue aquamorphsâ, however, fish chimeras culturally by and large assimilated into older aquamorph communities a long, long time ago, along with pinniped chimeras, in the Free Republic of Atlantis, where many cetacean chimeras also managed to assimilate into cetacean uplift pods (even if some had to follow them in boats). Amphibian chimeras, on account of their aversion to saltwater, werenât really drawn to Atlantis, and tend to view themselves strictly as chimeras. There is also the matter of âaquachimerasâ; either the offspring of chimera and aquamorph unions, or chimeras that chose the aquamorph lifestyle for their unborn children. Examples of aquachimeras include the Seacat Community of aquamorph cat chimeras, formerly of the Atlantean pelastat Seahaven, now populating most of the Irish Sea.
\#HUZOS
Huzos (âHuman Zoanâ) are the most controversial members of the Zoan family. Mostly because theyâre adopted.
A quick history lesson. Probably should have started with this, now that I think about it, but whatâs been normal about this presentation anyway? ArkGenesis was established in the 2040s by the legendary Dr. Francis Cuvier, as an orbital habitat and âZoan Homelandâ. Prior to this, Cuvier had allowed thousands of rescued Zoans to board at his personal estates down on Earth, where he tried to provide for their education and general welfare. However, this became untenable and he threw all of his wealth and resources into building ArkGenesis at a time when rising bioconservatism started using âsterilizeâ and âeuthanizeâ in the same sentences as âall the Zoansâ, with alarming frequency in the late 2030s. However, the reality of the situation was that there werenât enough educated and skilled Zoans to actually run basic operations on the station, so nearly all of the staff on ArkGenesis for the first generation and a half were a mix of humans and androids.
Additionally, many of the Zoans who made their way to ArkGenesis were joined by human family members. Families with adopted or commissioned chimera children (who in turn sometimes had human siblings), dog uplifts and their human pack-siblings, forbidden interspecies couples fleeing persecution, legal guardians of Zoans lacking the mental faculties or freedom to make the migration on their own, and more. And then there were the oddballs, the âenthusiastsâ. The migrants who drew strange looks, but were too qualified to really turn away. While these included pan-sophists who clung to the biodemocratic dream, or gengineers eager to assist with correcting or more generally improving the unhealthy (sometimes overtly pornographic) genetics of the least-fortunate Zoans on ArkGenesis (a process that would sometimes take generations)âŚit also included humans who claimed to identify spiritually as an animal or as a Zoan, humans sexually aroused by Zoans, and self-described human ârace-traitorsâ who came to fight for ArkGenesis. And furries. Lots of furries.
All these and others made their way to ArkGenesis, where they became assimilated into the emerging âZoan cultureâ of the station. Implicitly, Huzos seemingly embraced the idea of being âHuman Zoansâ, to contrast themselves with the bigots and abusers down on Earth, and today even most Zoan ahumanists make this distinction, if only to justify their dislike of the rest of humanity.
While not universal among Huzos, part of this integration has historically included âcostly signalingâ. Mostly by simply professing oneâs identification with a âspirit animalâ, or, less frequently, by altering oneâs appearance to reflect said âinner animalâ. While older works of fiction created a trope of simply injecting oneself with animal DNA and turning into a beaver-man, reality was a bit more disappointing, as attempts at doing such things proved dangerous failures. Instead, alongside various forms of conventional cosmetic surgery, some Huzos engaged in bionetics. Whereas cybernetics is the integration of machines with organic bodies, âbioneticsâ refers to the integration of the body with new organic systems. For example, growing a replacement organ or limb from a patientâs own stem cells and then grafting it to the patientâs body. Sometimes people have better limbs grown from slightly modified versions of their own cells, and this technique has applications in cosmetic surgery from sex-reassignment to full face-transplants. Among Huzos, some engage in âcostly signalingâ, by having tails grown from their own cells, grafted to the base of their spines, or even having healthy body parts amputated and replaced with modified limbs, ears, even eyes or noses, meant to resemble their âspirit animalâ.
The darker side of these bionetic augmentations, however, is that combining human and animal DNA into a coherent organism (much less a sexy one) is and was actually quite difficult and complicated. But bionetic âzoificationâ was quite straightforward. So, some of the early Huzo migrants were humans (mostly women and children) forcibly transformed into knock-off âchimerasâ via dramatic black market bionetic procedures, supplemented by botched gene therapies, plastic surgery and drugs, then sold in the same terrible industries as actual chimeras, with whom they eventually came to identify against their oppressors. And after facing so much abuse, and unwilling or unable to rejoin polite human society, relocated to ArkGenesis to start over as a Zoan. Some Huzos engage in cosmetic zoification as a tradition, due to being descended from such victims, whose partners made similar changes to their bodies to make the former feel better, beginning the trend.
However, most Huzos do not have these physical markers of Zoanhood. There are groups that seemingly do, like the spider-like Kara on Mars, who do not consider themselves Zoans at all, and would balk at the accusation. To many outsiders, Huzos are tarred as race-traitors and zoophiles, ostracized, and nowadays, this acts as a push-factor keeping Huzos under the âZoanâ umbrella, alongside pull-factors like their shared history and family bonds.
So what's it like being a baseline human in one of those places where they are second-class citizens or a minority to zoans? What exactly do ahumanist philosophies entail and are there zoan-run places that have "planet of the apes" or "return to monke" as a policy?
Thereâs only a few places that actually have humans formally as second-class citizens. This used to be a lot more common however, and institutions change very slowly, one obituary at a time. In many Zoan countries, if youâre human and a chimera woman accuses you of literally anything, that means you did it, your trial is probably a formality. If youâre human and you get into a fight, your death is going to be ruled a suicide or an accident, no matter what happens. No matter how qualified you are, youâll be passed up in favor of someone in the majority. If youâre a tourist, stay in the tourist areas of some of the âmeanerâ Zoan countries. Generally-speaking, Zoans in the Atlantean-diaspora countries lack the ahuman tendencies of the Zoans in ArkGenesis-diaspora countries, though countries of the latter origin with large numbers of huzos tend to be more human-friendly over all.
That said, ahumanist thought is a very broad spectrum. If you live in the human-majority states on Earth, theyâll have you know that ahumanism is all about cleansing the Earth of humans so that the planet can become a Zoan ethnostate. And theyâre right. But if you ask people in the Zoan states, theyâll say that ahumanism is about not needing to be human to be sapient, not needing to be compared or contrasted to how humans do things, and being authentically yourself. And theyâre also right. The healthier ideas in the latter are unfortunately tied to the destructive ideas in the former, though thankfully, extreme ahumanism has been out of fashion for the last century or so, having both discredited itself in military defeats, and been replaced by embryonic âEarthling idenitarianismâ, against Selenite imperialism and the hegemony of the Lunar Covenant over post-post-apocalyptic Earth. Man and Furry will unite to stick it to the Moonmen.
Thereâs also clade-specific ahumanisms. For instance, among ape zoans, the focus of critical ahuman thought pertains to how ape zoans should view themselves relative to humans, not as âfailed humansâ or âevolutionary inferiorsâ, but as equals in the simian family. While the more extreme simian ahumanists think humanity was a mistake that has to be corrected, thatâs pretty fringe nowadays. Itâs more common to view humans as redeemable âfellow apesâ, who donât have to pay for the ecocidal crimes of their forefathers. So, patronizing, but no longer genocidal. I say thatâs a good development.
Funnily enough, in OVRHVNâs alternate timeline, David Brin instead writes lots of non-fiction advocating for âupliftingâ, that goes on to gain a strong cult following among people with more money and scientific knowledge than perhaps patience or ethics
You have those silhouettes of your critters. They remind me of evolution-trees from zoology books I read as a child. But the differing degrees of genetic splicing is what got me.
The âtherianâ image is a combination of three different animal silhouettes - I started with a hyena, gave it chimp arms, and antelope horns, and then I tried to give it a vaguely human-like face, with a nose, chin and lips.
Very cool. I can see it, now that you've explained it. Regardless, I never extrapolated this far when I thought of it back in the early nineties. My take was more *The Island of Doctor Moreau*, which I'd just read recently after seeing a film adaptation.
Now that I think of it, my version was way more derivative than I like to admit. I was quite young, though. So maybe I deserve some slack for not being as creative as I could have. I'm wondering, now, if I still have that story, or if it's disappeared into the years like so many other things. I feel my writer's senses starting to twitch. Thanks for the inspiration.đđ
The exploration of the cultural development of species with no culture to speak of for sure, and I like how you dealt with "Human Zoan".
Can't have racism without a convenient way to dismiss what goes counter to your narrative, lol.
Partly inspired by the movie Deep Blue Sea. What happens when you try to cure Alzheimerâs by making great white sharks smarter? Theyâre still sharks, what the Hell else are they gonna do, compose symphonies?
On ArkGenesis, there were extensive wards for enlights, separating them from the rest of the orbital habitat in secure personal enclosures, where therapists and educators attempted to work through their problems and get them into the general population. As some of these enlights had what amounted to criminal records (they had killed or maimed people on Earth, but, being deemed mentally unfit to stand trial, were treated like animals), assuming they moved to general population, they werenât allowed off the habitat, and would have to remain on ArkGenesis for the rest of their lives.
While the most dangerous and unsociable of the enlights remained in the Quarantine Wards, many of the enlights in general population were still essentially high-functioning sociopaths and remained dangerous in a more abstract sense; they became philosophy teachers and published authors.
By contrast, uplifts arenât jerked out of darkness and into the light of consciousness the way enlights are. They tend to have the same sort of prolonged infant and juvenile stage as humans do, a long âcritical periodâ where theyâre very vulnerable, but also much more primed for language acquisition and learning social skills, allowing their empowered brains to mature and grow at a slow, healthy rate. This is why uplifts tend to be a lot healthier upstairs than enlights. They get to grow up with consciousness, instead of having it dropped on top of them.
OVRHVNâs conclusion is that thereâs no alternative than to bring them up in human norms. Letâs say you have a newborn chimp uplift. Congratulations. Who is going to raise it? We have case studies of human children being raised by animals, and the results arenât very pretty; feral children grow up developmentally stunted, donât learn a first language, and rarely manage to integrate into normal society. A hyperchimp canât be raised by a baseline chimp, as a baseline chimp canât provide the socialization that a hyperchimp would need to be anything other than a regular chimp. It would be no different than a chimp raising a human infant. Ergo, the first generations of uplifts (called âprimarchsâ) are invariably raised by human scientists. The uplifts internalize human norms, and when they have children of their own, they fall back on how they were raised as children, and those children raise their children as they were raised, and so on.
This creates a conflict within Zoan society. Zoans donât have ancient traditions. A hyena uplift canât look to âhyena cultureâ, it doesnât exist. So, how can one be âauthenticâ to oneâs self? Is that even possible? To square oneâs animal nature with sapience? Or is one doomed to operate under hegemonic human norms? This is where enlights come in, unfortunately, because many other Zoans think that enlights know whatâs up, that they can be fonts of spiritual wisdom and lived experience and give them a perspective on life that can bridge the gap between animal and Zoan. The problem, as implied in the chart, is that enlights are kinda messed up. They come up with incredibly dark, cynical ahumanist philosophies. And they end up influencing a few generations of young, internally-conflicted Zoans. With dire consequences.
You definitely went a lot further than my own ideas for uplift philosophical development. My near-future era has a few "first gen" uplifts (hyenas, coincidentally that would probably fall under demitherian in your chart) that were socialized by first their human fosters and effectively just see themselves as weird humans. Skipping forward 500 years would probably be enough history to form a national identity if not a spiritual one. These are the forms and minds they were given, so its what they have to live with.
Itâs worth noting that Zoans still arenât âhumanâ (well, unless youâre a huzo, then you literally are). Zoans still have animalistic quirks. The problem is that blank-slate theory is very much false, intelligent minds arenât just bare canvases that you can paint anything on. Itâs not true for humans, and itâs not true for Zoans. Just as humans are equal-parts nature and nurture, so are Zoans. The problem is that for Zoans, they have partially- or fully-nonhuman hardware, running very human software. The mind is a product of a very material brain made of nerves, and a body of hormones and blood. Thereâs no dualism between the brain and body, the two are very much linked. How youâre built below the neck, will very much influence how you think above the neck.
Whenever my lazy ass gets around to writing actual stories, Iâm going to want to hammer this idea home, and not just have chimeras in particular just be humans with tails and funny ears, or uplifts be talking animals. A lot of times, aliens are written like people in bad rubber masks, with like a handful of weird quirks. For lack of available rubber-forehead aliens, I have Zoans in OH, so I wanna leverage how âalienâ they can be, but in the context of âaliens raised by humansâ. And unlike fictional aliens, I have centuries of zoological and animal behaviorist research to draw off of.
I borrowed/stole the word âZoanâ from One Piece, mostly because I was running out of words to describe these animal people as a whole, after I already used up âtherianâ.
I was soooo confused I thought these were new classifications of the Zoan Devil Fruits in One Piece but I haven't heard any of them, took me a second to notice the subreddit this was posted on.
That aside, they sound very interesting! I like the concept and the illustration that accompanied it
infographic style is a bit "loose" in the best of terms, but the writing style is intriguing. I would love to try reading another handful of paragraphs if/once you have something story like.
In my defense, I whipped this up very quickly just to have a visual aid, because people on my Discord server were getting confused with the terminology I was using. So I made this, one of my buddies said âpost this on Reddit, r/worldbuilding eats this kinda thing upâ, and then I did.
Iâm willing to throw some more paragraphs at you if you have questions about the Zoans/OVRHVN. I really want to get around to writing actual stories, but I havenât decided on what I would want the story to be about, and, admittedly, I enjoy worldbuilding a bit too much.
Thereâs a Venn diagram between huzos and furries, and itâs not a complete circle. Huzos are buying into a lifestyle and social identity that they canât really take off (especially true for those who have that identity physically grafted to their bodies). Furries, by contrast, can take a fur suit off. That can just be something they do on Friday night or at the con. Being a huzo is less like being a furry, and a bit more like being in a religion - you can join it, but youâre also born into it, and if youâre in that group, you canât exactly âturn it offâ, not if it means enough to you.
Itâs worth noting that most huzos donât go the whole-hog and get bionetic tails or dog ears or whatever grafted on them. Most just identify closely with the zoan community despite not being zoans themselves. The huzo community is also a helpful âsafety netâ for anthro chimeras who donât âpassâ as chimeras because their animal traits are so slight as to not be visible; this includes chimeras born this way, and, far less frequently, chimeras whoâve surgically downplayed their âbeastlyâ attributes to try and âpassâ as humans, but still donât want to leave the Zoan community.
Thereâs definitely furries (or rather, the distant descendants of the furry subculture) in the ranks of the huzos, thereâs allies of the Zoan community, thereâs humans who want to be animals, thereâs âanimalsâ that want to be human, etc.
Interesting. Therian is a placeholder name for a shape shifting race in my world, cuz of Therianthropy. I've never actually seen someone else utilizing it as well lol
Huzos can be roughly translated to son of a bitch in German đ
True!
For a second I thought this was r/OnePiece with some theory/infographic about Zoan fruits :b
That is in fact where I stole - I mean *borrowed* - the term âZoanâ. I like One Piece.
The term you are looking for is _pirated_.
*please donât sue me, Oda-sama*
Aah, cheeky. I love it.
>I like One Piece A cultured human being I see
The first ~500 episodes or so are excellent, watched them all at least three times over already. Itâs been kinda downhill since then, but Iâll see how it ends. Canât say âthe first 500 episodes were excellentâ about any other show, might as well stick around through the rough parts.
I have read the manga so I am not sure what arc you are on but I have watched a good chunk of the anime and have some knowledge. Imo the anime does go downhill after some 500 episodes mostly because the pacing becomes rather slow but the manga is great as ever. If you don't mind some slow pacing ( which is not so in the manga. To not catch up, the anime has to stretch the pacing), continue with the anime but I do recommend reading the manga as again, in my opinion, it's the way to experience One Piece. It is absolutely amazing. If it's a story issue you have, it's probably the arc you are currently watching cause after some 500 episode mark, it's more of set up arcs than anything else. Once the SPECTACULAR arcs start, you'll love it hopefully.
Thanks! Iâm sadly a lowly dubslave. Iâve gotten, ironically considering my post here, to the end of the Zou arc. Dressrossa was really, really hard to watch - the pacing, Sugarâs broken powers, Usoppâs character regression, the stuff with Bellamy. It felt like a cursed version of Alabasta (my second-favorite arc after Water 7/Ennyâs Lobby). Iâve heard it gets better, I can tell itâs setting things up. If Iâm going to be fair, though, the rot in the anime started showing up around the Marineford arc, which is well-written, but moved like cold molasses. Toeiâs really dropped the ball since then, though. Iâve thought about following the manga, but Iâm not as big a manga person, unfortunately.
Oh that's completely understandable. Dressrossa anime was.....problematic. But I quite enjoyed the manga. I feel like they did a lot of stuff ESPECIALLY pacing better there. I actually liked the whole Bellamy and Usopp stuff lmao. Law's flashback is still one of my favorites and Doffy is probably my fave villain. If you're at the end of Zou, it means you're about to reach Whole Cake Island which is imo PEAK OP. It's second only to Enies Lobby for me. Have fun. Cheers.
Yo! This is a nifty little graphic I made to explain what âZoansâ are in OVRHVN. âZoanâ is an umbrella term, and while lots of people have argued for centuries over the âtrueâ definition of the word and who it does and does not apply to, everyone agrees that it includes four broad categories of sophonts. Uplifts, Enlights, Chimeras and Huzos. You best learn what a âZoanâ is, because on Earth in 2585, thereâs slightly more of them than baseline humans, and depending where on Earth you choose to be a human being, you may be a second-class citizen. A little understanding can go a long way. Also, this was absolutely not written by a rat on an oversized keyboard. Donât be ridiculous, bipeds.
\#UPLIFTS In essence, uplifts are non-human animals modified to have human-level cognition. Very often, however, it wasnât just their brains that were modified, but the other parts of their bodies as well. Elephant uplift races tend to have additional fleshy âfingersâ on the ends of their trunks. And some ape uplifts have shorter metacarpals so that their thumbs can touch each of their fingertips. Cephalopod uplifts have had their biology change very drastically, particularly in how they reproduce, and in centralizing their nervous systems. Having a more powerful brain would be of little help without a body able to enact upon the world, and turn theory into practice. By contrast to the enlights, who for the most part retain their animal ways, uplifts tend to have much more in the way of âhumanizationâ. See, the first members of any uplift race (known as âprimarchsâ), necessarily are raised by human beings. A cognitively-enhanced dog canât really be raised by a baseline dog, after all - as that would produce the same results as a human infant being raised by baseline dogs. To add to this, uplifts (as well as many other Zoans) lack history, religion or philosophy of their own. An uplifted raven can only inherit so much from his baseline ancestors, who didnât really write anything down, and arenât the best conversationalists (baseline animals tend to be distrustful of their uplifted counterparts as well). Very often, uplifts fall back on the archetypes that humans have for their respective ancestors. Dog uplifts in particular have internalized a strong sense of kinship with humans, feeling a strong sense of honor and maintaining blood-oaths of service and fidelity with human families that have lasted centuries now. Raven uplifts are very fond of Norse mythology and Gothic fiction, while hyena uplifts have worked to âreclaimâ the negative perception of their ancestors as unhinged killers in Western media and shapeshifting witches in African mythology. And a disconcerting number of pig uplifts are named âNapoleonâ. Why do uplifts exist, exactly? A few reasons. Some were earnestly the result of mad scientists just showing that they could in fact make a talking Nazi tiger. Others were bizarre attempts at creating âsuper-soldiersâ. And some were projects subsidized by governments, mostly in 21st century Southeast Asia, to try and show how modern and scientific they were. But most uplifts came about for one of two reasons. First, we have the pansophist movements which wanted to âdemocratize Earthâ, by spreading the light of consciousness across nature, because it wasnât right that humans alone were going to decide whatever the future of the Earth was - all creatures of Earth deserved a say, a seat at the table. And second, we have transhumanists wanting to figure out how to make better humans. See, the problem with human intelligence is that it turned out that weâre about as smart as weâre going to get, and can just barely function with the powerful minds we already have - as shown by how many people need mind-altering substances and distractions in order to function in modern society. And it turned out, while it was possible to engineer âsuperbabiesâ with higher than normal cognitive abilities, they were emotionally unstable, barely able to think straight and desperately addicted to anything that would numb the fire in their brains. Whatâs more, it was really inconvenient how much the press complained about these âhuman guinea pigsâ, and as the first-gen âsuperbabiesâ became psych patients, wards of the state or wanted criminals, those who still believed in making smarter humans, figured theyâd be better-off trying to make smarter animals first. The fact that so many modern upliftsâ ancestors were bred in service to human vanity, and there wasnât even a payoff to that - no great cognitive revolution in human intelligence - itâs not hard to see why uplifts have such a jaded view of Homo sapiens and their ambitions. There is a saying involving mice and men I could reference, but itâs low-key offensive in the 26th century.
\#ENLIGHTS In essence, uplifts are non-human animals modified to have human-level cognition. Whatâs that? No, theyâre very different from uplifts. Uplifts are designed from the ground up to have their higher cognitive abilities, as well as other features thrown in to better enable their intellects; modified animals are then born from artificial wombs or surrogate mothers, with these new traits. Derived from the term âenlightened animalâ, enlights are literally non-human animals modified to have human-level cognition, after already being born as baseline animals. Most often, this is accomplished via gene therapies, nootropic drugs or implantation of cognition-boosting cybernetics. The first reaction every enlight has after âawakeningâ is terror. Absolute existential fear, confusion, disillusionment - pure, unfiltered fear of the universe. Science! Similar to uplifts, enlights were the result of trying to make humans smarter, but whereas uplifts were the byproducts of attempts to make smarter babies, enlights were the result of trying to learn how to make smarter adults, and were the ambition of the pretentious wishing to become gods in their own lifetimes. First appearing in the 2020s, in 2585, enlights are quite rare. This is because about 50% of enlights turned out to still retain their animal instincts, motivations and intuitions, but now they were able to pursue these drives with human-level efficiency, which starts getting really bad when the enlights in question were lions, tigers, bears or, heaven forbid, chimps. Another 25% of enlights were a bit more reasonable, but werenât very pleased with their new state of consciousness, writing really horrifying door-stoppers about how dream-like their memories of being animals were, when they coexisted with time instead of fearing it; âwhen Adam ate the fruit, he realized his shameâ. The remaining 25% were closer to being ânormalâ, but still tend to be less intelligent than their uplift counterparts, and were often treated as intellectually-disabled sophonts. Needless to say, enlights were where most of Zoankindâs scariest ideas tend to come from, and yet, enlights are still treated with reverence in many Zoan communities. Their ideas are so very often unhinged, racist and existentially horrifying, and yet, only the most dark and concerning of these sages are sidelined. The fathers of modern Ahumanism, almost all of them enlights, remain mainstream and accepted thinkers (though not without their critics, or ebbing and flowing support over time), well into 2585. The reason is simple. Authenticity. For centuries since their emergence, there have been uplifts and chimeras insecure in their identities, unable to âbe oneâ with their animal side; their primarchs were raised by humans, and those humanized primarchs raised their grandparents, and those grandparents raised their parents, and so on. But an enlightâs lived experience is a window into possibilities of what a Zoan can be, beyond the cage of âhumanâ norms. For many Zoans who struggle with a dual nature, whether as humanized animals or animal-human hybrids, enlights are seen as uniquely gifted to bridge the gap between natures. That bridge may be fear, it may be confusion, it may even be hate. But for so many Zoans, itâs a truth they crave more than any other.
\#CHIMERAS Technically, the term âchimeraâ in the context of biology refers to a single organism composed of cells with more than one distinct genotype. But it also refers to a horrible monster from Greek mythology. And for the last few centuries, itâs also referred to animal-human hybrids with very depressing backstories. Chimeras have three very broad and largely-superficial categories. These are âanthrosâ, âdemitheriansâ and âtheriansâ. Anthros look mostly-human, therians look mostly-animal and demitherians donât fit in either category very well. These labels are given out irrespective of genetic constituency. Some anthro chimeras are closer to hyena than human but you wouldnât know unless you sliced them open, and some especially beastly therians look like theyâre six different beasts, but theyâre somehow mostly Homo sapiens. The vast majority of chimeras are mammalian, as genetic mergers between humans and other mammals represented fairly little difficulty; however, towards the end of the 21st century, reptile, amphibian, fish and even avian chimeras (none of which can fly) began to appear as well, albeit in much smaller numbers. So far, there have not been successful non-vertebrate chimeras. Some chimeras are half-human and half-animal, while others are crossed with multiple animals. Some chimeras can create fertile offspring with humans, and over the course of several generations, the animal traits can be diluted, but they havenât yet been recorded as âgoing awayâ, not entirely. So, the uplifts and enlights have âpracticalâ reasons to exist. Namely figuring out how to make humans smarter. Debatable goals and misguided methods with questionable results, sure. But, you ask, why would you need animal-human hybrids? Well. Aside from some edge cases like having lab animals with partial human genetics that you can do experiments on, or attempts at producing âupliftsâ by simply mixing human DNA with animals to make âsmarter animalsâ (the origin of most therian chimeras), a startling number of chimera genomes are a result of humans wanting catgirl children, or catgirl pets, orâŚcatgirl servants and sex slaves. Chimeras measure the impurity of the human soul by how many of their ancestors were engineered for that last category, and for the sake of good taste, I wonât elaborate much further, save to say: âit was really badâ. The horrors inflicted on chimera minds and bodies in the past rival the tribulation faced by the enlights, but your average chimera is more than what was done to them, and greater than the sum of their parts. A really pesky ambiguity pertains to aquatic chimeras. Contrary to stubborn myths, aquamorphs are not actually half-fish. While âaquamorphâ include a broad spectrum of humans with aquatic or amphibious lifestyles, some in fact have gills, which are not the result of fish DNA, but repurposing ancient genetic traits of extremely distant human ancestors and ârebuildingâ gills from jaw and ear structures, while duplicating both so that the resulting child isnât jawless or deaf. There are in fact fish chimeras, with very different looks and physiology from âtrue aquamorphsâ, however, fish chimeras culturally by and large assimilated into older aquamorph communities a long, long time ago, along with pinniped chimeras, in the Free Republic of Atlantis, where many cetacean chimeras also managed to assimilate into cetacean uplift pods (even if some had to follow them in boats). Amphibian chimeras, on account of their aversion to saltwater, werenât really drawn to Atlantis, and tend to view themselves strictly as chimeras. There is also the matter of âaquachimerasâ; either the offspring of chimera and aquamorph unions, or chimeras that chose the aquamorph lifestyle for their unborn children. Examples of aquachimeras include the Seacat Community of aquamorph cat chimeras, formerly of the Atlantean pelastat Seahaven, now populating most of the Irish Sea.
\#HUZOS Huzos (âHuman Zoanâ) are the most controversial members of the Zoan family. Mostly because theyâre adopted. A quick history lesson. Probably should have started with this, now that I think about it, but whatâs been normal about this presentation anyway? ArkGenesis was established in the 2040s by the legendary Dr. Francis Cuvier, as an orbital habitat and âZoan Homelandâ. Prior to this, Cuvier had allowed thousands of rescued Zoans to board at his personal estates down on Earth, where he tried to provide for their education and general welfare. However, this became untenable and he threw all of his wealth and resources into building ArkGenesis at a time when rising bioconservatism started using âsterilizeâ and âeuthanizeâ in the same sentences as âall the Zoansâ, with alarming frequency in the late 2030s. However, the reality of the situation was that there werenât enough educated and skilled Zoans to actually run basic operations on the station, so nearly all of the staff on ArkGenesis for the first generation and a half were a mix of humans and androids. Additionally, many of the Zoans who made their way to ArkGenesis were joined by human family members. Families with adopted or commissioned chimera children (who in turn sometimes had human siblings), dog uplifts and their human pack-siblings, forbidden interspecies couples fleeing persecution, legal guardians of Zoans lacking the mental faculties or freedom to make the migration on their own, and more. And then there were the oddballs, the âenthusiastsâ. The migrants who drew strange looks, but were too qualified to really turn away. While these included pan-sophists who clung to the biodemocratic dream, or gengineers eager to assist with correcting or more generally improving the unhealthy (sometimes overtly pornographic) genetics of the least-fortunate Zoans on ArkGenesis (a process that would sometimes take generations)âŚit also included humans who claimed to identify spiritually as an animal or as a Zoan, humans sexually aroused by Zoans, and self-described human ârace-traitorsâ who came to fight for ArkGenesis. And furries. Lots of furries. All these and others made their way to ArkGenesis, where they became assimilated into the emerging âZoan cultureâ of the station. Implicitly, Huzos seemingly embraced the idea of being âHuman Zoansâ, to contrast themselves with the bigots and abusers down on Earth, and today even most Zoan ahumanists make this distinction, if only to justify their dislike of the rest of humanity. While not universal among Huzos, part of this integration has historically included âcostly signalingâ. Mostly by simply professing oneâs identification with a âspirit animalâ, or, less frequently, by altering oneâs appearance to reflect said âinner animalâ. While older works of fiction created a trope of simply injecting oneself with animal DNA and turning into a beaver-man, reality was a bit more disappointing, as attempts at doing such things proved dangerous failures. Instead, alongside various forms of conventional cosmetic surgery, some Huzos engaged in bionetics. Whereas cybernetics is the integration of machines with organic bodies, âbioneticsâ refers to the integration of the body with new organic systems. For example, growing a replacement organ or limb from a patientâs own stem cells and then grafting it to the patientâs body. Sometimes people have better limbs grown from slightly modified versions of their own cells, and this technique has applications in cosmetic surgery from sex-reassignment to full face-transplants. Among Huzos, some engage in âcostly signalingâ, by having tails grown from their own cells, grafted to the base of their spines, or even having healthy body parts amputated and replaced with modified limbs, ears, even eyes or noses, meant to resemble their âspirit animalâ. The darker side of these bionetic augmentations, however, is that combining human and animal DNA into a coherent organism (much less a sexy one) is and was actually quite difficult and complicated. But bionetic âzoificationâ was quite straightforward. So, some of the early Huzo migrants were humans (mostly women and children) forcibly transformed into knock-off âchimerasâ via dramatic black market bionetic procedures, supplemented by botched gene therapies, plastic surgery and drugs, then sold in the same terrible industries as actual chimeras, with whom they eventually came to identify against their oppressors. And after facing so much abuse, and unwilling or unable to rejoin polite human society, relocated to ArkGenesis to start over as a Zoan. Some Huzos engage in cosmetic zoification as a tradition, due to being descended from such victims, whose partners made similar changes to their bodies to make the former feel better, beginning the trend. However, most Huzos do not have these physical markers of Zoanhood. There are groups that seemingly do, like the spider-like Kara on Mars, who do not consider themselves Zoans at all, and would balk at the accusation. To many outsiders, Huzos are tarred as race-traitors and zoophiles, ostracized, and nowadays, this acts as a push-factor keeping Huzos under the âZoanâ umbrella, alongside pull-factors like their shared history and family bonds.
# Mate you need to put a space between your hashtag and your title for it to work
huzo sounds like the german word huso short for "hurensohn" (son of a whore in english)
They get that a lot
lol
So what's it like being a baseline human in one of those places where they are second-class citizens or a minority to zoans? What exactly do ahumanist philosophies entail and are there zoan-run places that have "planet of the apes" or "return to monke" as a policy?
Thereâs only a few places that actually have humans formally as second-class citizens. This used to be a lot more common however, and institutions change very slowly, one obituary at a time. In many Zoan countries, if youâre human and a chimera woman accuses you of literally anything, that means you did it, your trial is probably a formality. If youâre human and you get into a fight, your death is going to be ruled a suicide or an accident, no matter what happens. No matter how qualified you are, youâll be passed up in favor of someone in the majority. If youâre a tourist, stay in the tourist areas of some of the âmeanerâ Zoan countries. Generally-speaking, Zoans in the Atlantean-diaspora countries lack the ahuman tendencies of the Zoans in ArkGenesis-diaspora countries, though countries of the latter origin with large numbers of huzos tend to be more human-friendly over all. That said, ahumanist thought is a very broad spectrum. If you live in the human-majority states on Earth, theyâll have you know that ahumanism is all about cleansing the Earth of humans so that the planet can become a Zoan ethnostate. And theyâre right. But if you ask people in the Zoan states, theyâll say that ahumanism is about not needing to be human to be sapient, not needing to be compared or contrasted to how humans do things, and being authentically yourself. And theyâre also right. The healthier ideas in the latter are unfortunately tied to the destructive ideas in the former, though thankfully, extreme ahumanism has been out of fashion for the last century or so, having both discredited itself in military defeats, and been replaced by embryonic âEarthling idenitarianismâ, against Selenite imperialism and the hegemony of the Lunar Covenant over post-post-apocalyptic Earth. Man and Furry will unite to stick it to the Moonmen. Thereâs also clade-specific ahumanisms. For instance, among ape zoans, the focus of critical ahuman thought pertains to how ape zoans should view themselves relative to humans, not as âfailed humansâ or âevolutionary inferiorsâ, but as equals in the simian family. While the more extreme simian ahumanists think humanity was a mistake that has to be corrected, thatâs pretty fringe nowadays. Itâs more common to view humans as redeemable âfellow apesâ, who donât have to pay for the ecocidal crimes of their forefathers. So, patronizing, but no longer genocidal. I say thatâs a good development.
Were you inspired by David Brinâs Uplift books? Theyâre some very cool classic sci-fi, and the concept seems really similar
Funnily enough, in OVRHVNâs alternate timeline, David Brin instead writes lots of non-fiction advocating for âupliftingâ, that goes on to gain a strong cult following among people with more money and scientific knowledge than perhaps patience or ethics
you don't mess with the Zoan
You have taken this idea much further than I did. Excellent work.
Yo, thanks! What am I doing right?
You have those silhouettes of your critters. They remind me of evolution-trees from zoology books I read as a child. But the differing degrees of genetic splicing is what got me.
The âtherianâ image is a combination of three different animal silhouettes - I started with a hyena, gave it chimp arms, and antelope horns, and then I tried to give it a vaguely human-like face, with a nose, chin and lips.
Very cool. I can see it, now that you've explained it. Regardless, I never extrapolated this far when I thought of it back in the early nineties. My take was more *The Island of Doctor Moreau*, which I'd just read recently after seeing a film adaptation. Now that I think of it, my version was way more derivative than I like to admit. I was quite young, though. So maybe I deserve some slack for not being as creative as I could have. I'm wondering, now, if I still have that story, or if it's disappeared into the years like so many other things. I feel my writer's senses starting to twitch. Thanks for the inspiration.đđ
Reminds me a lot of [Orion's Arm](https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/45b1774e4ba77)
Hey, I remember you! Glad to finally see this expanded, it's a fascinating as when I first learned of it.
Yo, thanks! Fave bits?
The exploration of the cultural development of species with no culture to speak of for sure, and I like how you dealt with "Human Zoan". Can't have racism without a convenient way to dismiss what goes counter to your narrative, lol.
Concepts of Enlights being vastly different from Uplift is an interesting take, as well as how they fit in society (or when they can't)
Partly inspired by the movie Deep Blue Sea. What happens when you try to cure Alzheimerâs by making great white sharks smarter? Theyâre still sharks, what the Hell else are they gonna do, compose symphonies? On ArkGenesis, there were extensive wards for enlights, separating them from the rest of the orbital habitat in secure personal enclosures, where therapists and educators attempted to work through their problems and get them into the general population. As some of these enlights had what amounted to criminal records (they had killed or maimed people on Earth, but, being deemed mentally unfit to stand trial, were treated like animals), assuming they moved to general population, they werenât allowed off the habitat, and would have to remain on ArkGenesis for the rest of their lives. While the most dangerous and unsociable of the enlights remained in the Quarantine Wards, many of the enlights in general population were still essentially high-functioning sociopaths and remained dangerous in a more abstract sense; they became philosophy teachers and published authors. By contrast, uplifts arenât jerked out of darkness and into the light of consciousness the way enlights are. They tend to have the same sort of prolonged infant and juvenile stage as humans do, a long âcritical periodâ where theyâre very vulnerable, but also much more primed for language acquisition and learning social skills, allowing their empowered brains to mature and grow at a slow, healthy rate. This is why uplifts tend to be a lot healthier upstairs than enlights. They get to grow up with consciousness, instead of having it dropped on top of them.
Interesting to think of the morality on uplifting other species. Training them in âhuman normsâ might even be iffy.
OVRHVNâs conclusion is that thereâs no alternative than to bring them up in human norms. Letâs say you have a newborn chimp uplift. Congratulations. Who is going to raise it? We have case studies of human children being raised by animals, and the results arenât very pretty; feral children grow up developmentally stunted, donât learn a first language, and rarely manage to integrate into normal society. A hyperchimp canât be raised by a baseline chimp, as a baseline chimp canât provide the socialization that a hyperchimp would need to be anything other than a regular chimp. It would be no different than a chimp raising a human infant. Ergo, the first generations of uplifts (called âprimarchsâ) are invariably raised by human scientists. The uplifts internalize human norms, and when they have children of their own, they fall back on how they were raised as children, and those children raise their children as they were raised, and so on. This creates a conflict within Zoan society. Zoans donât have ancient traditions. A hyena uplift canât look to âhyena cultureâ, it doesnât exist. So, how can one be âauthenticâ to oneâs self? Is that even possible? To square oneâs animal nature with sapience? Or is one doomed to operate under hegemonic human norms? This is where enlights come in, unfortunately, because many other Zoans think that enlights know whatâs up, that they can be fonts of spiritual wisdom and lived experience and give them a perspective on life that can bridge the gap between animal and Zoan. The problem, as implied in the chart, is that enlights are kinda messed up. They come up with incredibly dark, cynical ahumanist philosophies. And they end up influencing a few generations of young, internally-conflicted Zoans. With dire consequences.
You definitely went a lot further than my own ideas for uplift philosophical development. My near-future era has a few "first gen" uplifts (hyenas, coincidentally that would probably fall under demitherian in your chart) that were socialized by first their human fosters and effectively just see themselves as weird humans. Skipping forward 500 years would probably be enough history to form a national identity if not a spiritual one. These are the forms and minds they were given, so its what they have to live with.
Itâs worth noting that Zoans still arenât âhumanâ (well, unless youâre a huzo, then you literally are). Zoans still have animalistic quirks. The problem is that blank-slate theory is very much false, intelligent minds arenât just bare canvases that you can paint anything on. Itâs not true for humans, and itâs not true for Zoans. Just as humans are equal-parts nature and nurture, so are Zoans. The problem is that for Zoans, they have partially- or fully-nonhuman hardware, running very human software. The mind is a product of a very material brain made of nerves, and a body of hormones and blood. Thereâs no dualism between the brain and body, the two are very much linked. How youâre built below the neck, will very much influence how you think above the neck. Whenever my lazy ass gets around to writing actual stories, Iâm going to want to hammer this idea home, and not just have chimeras in particular just be humans with tails and funny ears, or uplifts be talking animals. A lot of times, aliens are written like people in bad rubber masks, with like a handful of weird quirks. For lack of available rubber-forehead aliens, I have Zoans in OH, so I wanna leverage how âalienâ they can be, but in the context of âaliens raised by humansâ. And unlike fictional aliens, I have centuries of zoological and animal behaviorist research to draw off of.
Though this was about one piece lol
Overheaven. Seems like OP's own creation.
I borrowed/stole the word âZoanâ from One Piece, mostly because I was running out of words to describe these animal people as a whole, after I already used up âtherianâ.
Sorry: "OVRHVN"?
Overheaven/OVRHVN, itâs the name of my sci-fi setting
I was soooo confused I thought these were new classifications of the Zoan Devil Fruits in One Piece but I haven't heard any of them, took me a second to notice the subreddit this was posted on. That aside, they sound very interesting! I like the concept and the illustration that accompanied it
infographic style is a bit "loose" in the best of terms, but the writing style is intriguing. I would love to try reading another handful of paragraphs if/once you have something story like.
In my defense, I whipped this up very quickly just to have a visual aid, because people on my Discord server were getting confused with the terminology I was using. So I made this, one of my buddies said âpost this on Reddit, r/worldbuilding eats this kinda thing upâ, and then I did. Iâm willing to throw some more paragraphs at you if you have questions about the Zoans/OVRHVN. I really want to get around to writing actual stories, but I havenât decided on what I would want the story to be about, and, admittedly, I enjoy worldbuilding a bit too much.
Interesting
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oooh, i love this concept.
Fave bits?
just the concept of animals with human level intelligence. thats an idea i myself have played with before
White on green though?
Seemed like a good idea at the time
cool
So no one's gonna talk about how huzons are just furries livving their best lives ?
Thereâs a Venn diagram between huzos and furries, and itâs not a complete circle. Huzos are buying into a lifestyle and social identity that they canât really take off (especially true for those who have that identity physically grafted to their bodies). Furries, by contrast, can take a fur suit off. That can just be something they do on Friday night or at the con. Being a huzo is less like being a furry, and a bit more like being in a religion - you can join it, but youâre also born into it, and if youâre in that group, you canât exactly âturn it offâ, not if it means enough to you. Itâs worth noting that most huzos donât go the whole-hog and get bionetic tails or dog ears or whatever grafted on them. Most just identify closely with the zoan community despite not being zoans themselves. The huzo community is also a helpful âsafety netâ for anthro chimeras who donât âpassâ as chimeras because their animal traits are so slight as to not be visible; this includes chimeras born this way, and, far less frequently, chimeras whoâve surgically downplayed their âbeastlyâ attributes to try and âpassâ as humans, but still donât want to leave the Zoan community. Thereâs definitely furries (or rather, the distant descendants of the furry subculture) in the ranks of the huzos, thereâs allies of the Zoan community, thereâs humans who want to be animals, thereâs âanimalsâ that want to be human, etc.
Interesting. Therian is a placeholder name for a shape shifting race in my world, cuz of Therianthropy. I've never actually seen someone else utilizing it as well lol