Chookily

Dragonfly nymphs have a bizarre anatomical feature -- their lower jaw is equipped with an arm-like apparatus that can swiftly expand and retract, allowing the nymph to grab and devour its prey.

This apparatus is known as a prehensile labial mask. It consists of two long structures that pivot around a multiaxial joint, a pair of labial palps, and movable claws that are used for gripping and chewing. When the labial mask is not in use, it simply folds up beneath the nymph's head.

According to this article:

In their biotopes, dragonfly and damselfly larvae are important predators that catch their prey with a biomechanically unique and highly efficient catching apparatus known as the prehensile labial mask, which is formed by the modified labium.

By means of this prehensile mask, the larvae can capture fast-moving organisms up to their own size. The movable hooks, pointed lobes at the end of the prehensile mask, grab or often pierce the prey to hold it tight.

Dragonfly nymphs live in ponds, lakes, and other freshwater ecosystems, where they prey on other invertebrates, tadpoles, newts, and even small fish.

The nymph lies in wait, using its remarkable eyesight and sensitive mechanoreceptors to detect potential prey; once a victim is in range, it engages the labial mask, which can fully extend in just 15 milliseconds. The claws at the end of the labium then draw the victim toward the serrated mandibles of the nymph's mouth.

For decades, researchers believed that the movements of the labial mask were powered by hydraulics, but studies now suggest that the structure moves more like a synchronized system of catapults:

The jet propulsion of the dragonfly larvae’s mouthparts functions much more like a controllable catapult system: an internal elastic structure in the dragonfly’s head that is held by a muscle like a spring under tension. This is where the muscle’s energy is stored. The two segments of the labial mask are interconnected and are locked and triggered by a shared mechanism.

Sources & More Info:

Zoological Society of London: The Toolkit of a Hunter: Functional Morphology of Larval Mouthparts in a Dragonfly

Journal of Experimental Zoology: A Switchable Joint in the Head of Dragonfly Larvae

Discover Wildlife: How Do Dragonfly Larvae Hunt?

Science Robotics: Hunting with Catapults: the Predatory Strike of the Dragonfly Larva

Indian Institute of Technology: Prey Capturing and Feeding Apparatus of Dragonfly Nymphs

Kiel University: Bio-Inspired Robotics: Learning from Dragonflies

On my old server, there was a character named ßillyßadass.

This never failed to make me laugh, because that letter is not pronounced like B. It is a sharp S. 

Д as an aesthetic A? Дon’t be a дumbass.

И as an aesthetic N? don’t be sillи.

П as another aesthetic N? stoп it.

У as an aesthetic Y? ty bad.

Ш or Щ as an aesthetic W? nope. it’s “sh” and “shch”!

Я as an aesthetic R? surprise! it’s “ya”.

There is so much going on here that we need to properly break it down:

Η (eta): Long “e” sound like in “free”

Ψ (psi): “ps” sound like in “psychology” or the noise you make to call your cat

Ρ (rho): equivalent of English “R”

Λ (lambda): equivalent of English “L”

Τ (tau): equivalent of English “T,” one of two letters properly employed here

Φ (phi): equivalent of English “F”

Σ (sigma): as noted above, equivalent of English “S”

Μ (mu): equivalent of English “M,” other properly employed letter

That “presecription” Rx combo: Does not occur in Greek or any other alphabet, what the Hell is it doing here

Θ (theta): soft “th” like in “thing”

Γ (gamma): Kind of an asperated “gh” sound like you start to make a hard “g” but stop halfway through

Δ (delta): hard “th” like in “there.”

Χ (chi): asperated “kh” like in “challah”

Π (pi): Equivalent of English “p”

The other letters do not occur in the Greek alphabet, although you will see English letters used for things like names and titles.

So when we put it all together, this miracle of title design reads something like:

After recent events over the past couple of months, my co-director and I have decided that we are no longer working with Patricia Taxxon, and her score/sound design will not be used in the final release of our animated student thesis In Your Orbit. She has rights over all of the audio files that she created, and she is free to use or alter them for whatever other projects may come up for her. We only retain the rights to our visuals. On the off chance that the last festival that is showing the current version of the short gives us any prize money, she will still get a cut of it. She is free to continue to state publicly that she worked on the film originally, and use the soundtrack in her portfolio, but we will not be posting it or promoting it. 

Patricia Taxxon has proven to be a person who is irresponsible at best. She has allegedly had inappropriate sexual conduct with minors as young as 13. She also regularly posts her extreme sexual fantasies on her main Tumblr, and has made claims regarding the nature of pedophilic art that she is not qualified to be making. She has also posted from behind closed doors that she has intentionally been manipulative regarding her apologies for her alleged sexual misconduct.

The original victim who accused her was harassed off the internet both times she came out about this, and no longer wishes to be contacted on this matter. However, the idea that any of the allegations were ever rescinded due to misinformation, or proven untrue, is false. In my opinion, I believe the victim’s testimony. It lines up with what I remember the environment of Taxxon’s discord server being like when I was there.

During the production of the short film, I was already aware of some of the accusations made towards Taxxon, but as I was a close friend, I wanted to believe they weren’t true. I was told that she was groomed into doing these things, that she didn’t remember doing them, and that she was likely to commit suicide. She told me she was suicidal on a regular basis during production, especially when the alleged victim was making and then posted a video recounting the allegations. Before that video even came out, she was telling me it was likely to ruin her life irreparably. She had a mutual friend with the victim who was supposedly playing double agent for her, so I heard all about it before and after it came out. I was under the impression that she was in imminent danger of harming herself several times. You can imagine what this might do to a person who cares about her. So, I willfully ignored the allegations for a long time, up until the point that Taxxon showed outward bigotry towards my demographic in a Tumblr meltdown. I deserve criticism for this, and I won’t begrudge anyone who feels like I waited too long or came out with the leaks that I did for selfish reasons. That is your right, and I’m sorry. I decided that all I could do was come out with what I do know and stop supporting this person, even if it costs me opportunities down the line.

Taxxon has also repeatedly shown herself to be extremely unprofessional, even for the standards of an internet drama cycle. She started by vaguely posting about myself on her Tumblr, stating that I am a threat to her, implying that I used her only to “dump her without warning,” and has repeatedly twisted my actions in order to gain sympathy from her Tumblr audience. She even begged her followers for someone else to take her to the Omaha Film Festival, before deleting that addition because she realized it made her look bad.

Her newest gripe with me is that I did not pay her for her work on the film, supposedly finding out partway through the project that she was not being paid. This is untrue. Luka and I were forthright with the fact that we were a team of two college students in Missouri with very little spending money. Thus, we offered her a cut of whatever we ended up making from the film in the festival circuit, planning to split any possible winnings among the three of us based on creative input. We also stated that we would not be taking a cut of any earnings she made off of the sale of the soundtrack, and that it would belong completely to her, just as my characters would to me. If any film companies approached us about the film to license it and the soundtrack, or if they wanted to use her music for another project involving these characters, that money would have gone to her. If she was confused about or had an issue with this arrangement, the time to bring that up would have been when we were discussing the agreement with her, or after any of the many critique sessions we went through with our professors and we were all discussing next steps, or really, any time at all during the year and a half that we were discussing and working on this project. But at no point before, during, or after production did she bring it up. She never suggested a rate, asked about other forms of payment, or anything. I was not holding a gun to her head. She could have brought it up with us at any time, and I am not a mind reader. Her only bringing up the subject now, after all of this time, points clearly to her attempting to extort me or use this issue as a way to gain sympathy from her Tumblr audience. It comes off like she wants to hold this over my head.

All of this not even mentioning that Taxxon was the one to say she wanted to work on the film, years before production started. This started as a collaboration between friends. Luka and I structured our agreement to be a partnership, where none of us were making guaranteed profit off of this project, especially since it is a student work, and we are not established artists with an audience. If anything, the person most likely to make any money off of this arrangement was Taxxon. We considered her an equal participant in this short film, and we wanted it to lift us all up. We gave her full artistic control over what vision she had for the soundtrack, and we often tried to cater our animation to best match it. This is why I found it strange when I asked if she was willing to contribute to festival fees, that she was very flippant with me about it. She stood to gain just as much as us from the film festival circuit, and I had already taken on the workload of doing research on and writing cover letters to each festival. Especially given that I pitched the festival circuit to her as a method to help her get her career offline and away from Kiwifarms, she had a lot to gain from all of this. As someone who had considered her a creative partner, her dismissal felt weird.

This screenshot from the time shows what she said to me regarding the fees, and also shows that she was aware of the arrangement. Thankfully, a lot of this took place on her new Discord account, so I do have the evidence for this portion.

Then, a couple of days later, she asked me if she could stay in my co-directors house or mine for the duration of the Kansas City FilmFest International (or KCFFI). Given she had not contributed to us submitting to that very festival, and had been flippant with me in that same week about the subject, I found it disrespectful. A good friend of mine compared it to “staying at a friend’s house and refusing to help with the grocery tab.”

And the fact that she decided to contribute to the DCP of all things because she “had a vested interest in [the film] sounding good,” as if festival fees were beneath her, but this, now this was something she could be bothered to care about… It was very telling with regards to how she viewed this film.

If she wants to get her 30 bucks back, I can PayPal it back to her.

I stand by everything I said in my testimony on the stream with CrimsonEnder. Honestly, I feel I was much too forgiving on the subject of sexual misconduct, especially since at the time, all of us were trying to gloss over the specific allegations for the victim’s sake, as like I said, they did not want to be involved. As much as Taxxon blustered about “ad-hominems,” I never called her names during the stream. I didn’t even directly call her a transphobe or any kind of bigot. I did not diagnose her with a paraphilia. I specifically stated that her being a trans woman should have nothing to do with why she does the bad things she does. I discussed the things she said and the actions she took. I stated what I remember of our relationship and the events that took place during production, because she had already taken to misrepresenting me in her Tumblr posts. I wanted to lay everything out for full transparency, as she was telling a very specific story about me and who I was. I wanted to present my counter-narrative. I got vulnerable, upset, and fiery at times, but for a public crashout taking place very soon after my falling out of a six year long friendship, I think it gets my points across fine. Especially considering I was still freshly feeling the shock of her outwardly going on a tirade about trans men. The stream is still available on Crim's channel for those who want to hear what I said. Taxxon only presented a couple of my basic notes on the subject that were made to keep me on track.

Taxxon also, notably, sent her followers after CrimsonEnder in a purposeful attempt to incite a harassment campaign against him. She reblogged a reply from him, implying as much, and then he immediately received an anon referring to him with a slur, and saying he was now in “a Panopticon.” Taxxon would later be seen replying in a different but related conversation, misusing the word “Panopticon” in the exact same way (Hint: the term for many people watching one would be a “Synopticon.” A Panopticon refers to one person watching many). You can find Crim's full statement about this incident on his blog.

She also referred to him as a “violent misogynist” who "threatened her in public" in a DM with me where she waved around the fact that she would be justified in “dragging me publicly” for my “betrayal” but wouldn’t, as if it was some big act of charity from her.

Only to, for some reason, make a request to CrimsonEnder (from behind a block) to take my testimony out of his stream and out of his document in a recent post. She is very vested in sowing division between myself and Crim, for what reason I’m not sure. All I know is that she is not above harassing the people who criticize her, and given that, it’s very rich for Taxxon to posture like her not sending her followers after me thus far is an act of goodwill. If I were to guess, now that I have made this statement and cut her off from the project, she will feel much more comfortable going scorched earth. She no longer has a project to protect her connection to.

In Your Orbit will be released at some point in the indefinite future, with a new score and new foley work. I will not be attaching Taxxon’s name to it at all, positively or negatively. I will not be using any of the work that she produced, and I will never work with her in any capacity ever again. I cannot promote the work of a person who acts like this, who hurts others without remorse and uses her power as an influencer to get away with sweeping serious allegations under the rug. Especially given that none of our agreements were set in stone with a signed contract, I have no obligation to continue to associate with her after all she's done. I would be a hypocrite if I used her clout to profit or to expand my career opportunities. Even if it means I have to lose out on networking possibilities, lose the guaranteed audience, and pay out of my pocket to have the film re-scored and have a new foley track added. I am sticking to my principles on this. I refuse to coast on her coattails, and if this means that the film won’t be as successful, then so be it. Any recognition gained through affiliation with Patricia Taxxon is recognition that I don’t want. I don’t want her endorsement, and I don’t want her audience.

I cannot control what Patricia Taxxon says or does. She can do whatever she wants with her life and career, but leave me and my art out of it.

aka a silly stack of three characters that are basically just old tvs/computers that i really like atm that i decided to doodle on the very very long drive for vacation :}

Im unsure if these fandoms collide, but I had fun :D

the implication is that the circus IS her most traumatic experience, that losing her autonomy, her NAME, her humanity, is the most traumatic experience she's ever had. it's the fact that she lost the first person that understood her existential crisis at the time, because gummigoo just had learned that he wasn't real, and pomni found comfort in someone who wasn't afraid to talk about it.

because the others were too absorbed on their own matters due to it, and pomni really had no one to talk to. (ragatha was there, yes, but we already know what her problems at the start of the series were, as pomni NEEDS someone who's not afraid of talking about things, while ragatha was coping with toxic positivity).

my point is that pomni's trauma isn't some ai love interest thing (which i am aware is a joke but it's annoying to see such a meaningful friendship be described as such), but that the loss of the first person that understood her in such a vulnerable time was what marked her the most. it is also the dehumanization that caine portrayed with turning gummigoo into a real animal, and making him (and his brothers) attack pomni.

because she still feels guilty about it.

Caine's not gone- he's just in the bin!... for now...