i am simply vibing

So, first thing you need to know is that is a very visibly healthy adult green iguana. Every part of the iguana is sharp. The claws evolved to haul a ten pound lizard up a tree. The spines are like tiny icepicks. The tail is a bullwhip. The teeth evolved to shred leaves, but they'll just as easily shred your flesh. Good luck making a healthy adult iguana do anything they don't wanna. That puts us on our first thing to look at- is the animal capable of defense and getting away, physically? Yes, definitely.

Next thing to know is what does a threatened or scared iguana look like? When an iguana is threatened, it doesn't stand on its hind legs like that; it stands on all fours and puffs itself up to look bigger, aggressively bobs its head (note: head bobbing is a behavior used for a LOT of things, it does need context- for example, they also head bob as part of mating displays), there is hissing, there is tail whipping- iguanas are not subtle creatures. None of this is the behavior of an iguana that feels threatened or is being a threat!

So what does standing like that mean? That's just simple reaching. The iguana sees something they want and is attempting to reach it, and what they want appears to be uppies, because they settle into the human's grip immediately.

Then, we see some GREAT handling from the human. There's really great communication happening between the two of them! The person picks up the iguana very securely- pelvis and pectoral girdles are well supported, and he doesn't grab. (Iguanas typically do NOT like being grabbed around the sides; many of their predators are birds and coming at them from above or gripping the sides is scary!)

As he goes in for the pet, he lets the iguana support their back half on his knee. The hold is secure but not tight; at any point, if the iggy was distressed, they could leave. But they don't- instead, you see them leaning into the pets, actively participating in the behavior. They're not even closing their eyes to block stimulus. They want this to happen.

This is the kind of bond that's possible when you can prove to a big lizard that you're trustworthy, and easily the best iguana video I've seen in a long time. Thank you for tagging me in!

Some green iguana body language resources under the jump!

What happens when Grace doesn’t sleep for 48 hours.

Based on this panel from Dungeon Meshi:

I've been loving the hell out of Living the Dream and I've always had one Mii who I absolutely adore. If you've ever seen my account, you know who I'm talking about considering I draw him all the time; Quit!!!!

^ here he is on my main island. So I decided I wanted to run an experiment: I would make an alt save with 60 of the same Mii. Every single Mii will be a clone of our beloved Quit (seen above) with the exact same personality, voice, face, dating preferences (all Quits can date all 3 gender options), everything. The only difference is that 20 of them are male, 20 are female, and 20 are nonbinary (because I'm curious on if Mii gender impacts how a Mii forms friends). It was a lengthy process making 60 of the exact same Mii, but finally...

Welcome to Quitland. My general rule for this save file is that I must interfere as little as possible with the Quits lives. I'll only give them food, new clothing, treasures, or new housing if they directly ask me for it. I can't force any relationships either (barring the tutorial which forces you to do so). I want to see how these 60 clones all grow and adapt, and how they will eventually differentiate themselves. I had put all 60 Quits in at midnight so right after doing so I decided to head to bed. I then proceeded to spend the chunk of my morning doing quite possibly the stupidest thing ever:

Creating a giant pixelated Quit to put on the ground. From there I learned about something kind of interesting. Turns out when you create 60 Miis all at once, with all of them having no little quirks, friends, or really anything to define their AI past their basic personality, they become... ...kind of stupid. Here are some examples of small groups of Quit randomly choosing to follow one "leader" Quit for no reason. They REALLY enjoy doing this. Its not uncommon for small packs of Quit (usually containing 2-6 members) to just stalk another Quit for extended periods of time. I believe they are developing pack-hunting strategies. This scares me.

They also enjoyed talking. A lot. My entire island is just constantly full of random Quit chatter 24/7.

I'll admit though it is very rewarding just seeing all of them standing about, doing weird Quit things. I feel like a proud father of 60 single-celled organisms.

Also I got quite possibly the funniest Tomodachi Life clip I've ever seen:

There ain't a single brain cell between any of them. Honestly it was really fun just watching them frolic about, like an ant farm made entirely up of brainless homunculus.

In terms of actual development between the Quits, some of them became acquaintances and a few even became friends, but the REAL development was between Quit 1 (known as Original Quit) and Quit 3:

Quit 3 started crushing on Original, and just a few minutes after that Quit 3 surprised me by deciding to just up and confess to Original. This was pretty shocking...so far, every other Quit has been fairly reserved in making relationships. While plenty of them became "like-minded" (not surprising considering they all have the same mind), few were brave enough to become friends, let alone lovers. Perhaps Quit 3 is some kind of deviant Quit???

Well lucky for Quit 3, their boldness ended up paying off...and Quitland got its first couple!

I wonder how long it'll last... Besides that, only one other romantic event happened. Which was Quit 48 developing a crush on Quit 28. (I know it's hard to tell that this Quit is different from the Quit above...but trust me, its a different guy.)

...could this be considered an example of egomania...? I mean they look identical...

And that was about everything interesting that happened on day 1 of my little experiment. I might post more if anyone has any interest in the Quit ant farm. This is a little different from what I usually post so hopefully the people who follow me just for the art don't mind a bit of a change lol. To end off, here's some group pictures after I finally unlocked the photo mode:

generative AI - bad evil AI. chatbots, LLMs, image generators, etc. this the one that steals shit.

analytical AI - helpful medical AI. this the one that helps detect cancer early.