Dragons Fr Fr

This one kind of ran away with me.

Original under the cut

PUT YOUR LIMBS BACK AND HOLD THIS INSTEAD

me: yeah i know, they’re all primary colors, it’s perfect

When you go for an MLS (Master’s of Library Science, which is a thing, and which is usually required for “professional-level” library work [which is also a weird and contentious concept that I won’t go into here]), one of the things you study is the organization of information. This deals with how to determine what a book or other material is “about"—a concept we tongue-in-cheek call “aboutness"—and how to convey that to a potential user of the item and make it easy for them to find. Things like keywords and subject headings, do I put this book about how often wild birds attack aerial drones in with books about birds or with books about technology, if its a fictional novel do I put fantasy in it’s own section or mix it in with all of the other fiction, so on and so on.

OP is organizing books by how they would look for them. OP’s partner is thinking in terms of aboutness. This is a system that works for OP because it’s their personal library: they know basically what books they own and they only own books that are relevant to them, and if they know what the book looks like, that can be a quick way to find it.

In a library that assumes the public (or people who do not own that particular collection of books) are using the collection, that doesn’t work. Books are often re-issued in multiple covers, or re-bound in new covers when they get worn out, and if the user doesn’t know what the book looks like or is expecting a different cover, they’re lost. That’s why non-personal libraries used standardized cataloging systems like the Dewey Decimal System or Library of Congress System to organize a book by what it’s “about”, and then put books about the same or similar topics together, marked with labels and signage so a person unfamiliar with the book or collection can find their way to it.

Basically, OP’s system works for their own personal library, because it’s best suited to how the primary user—OP themselves—looks for books. OP’s librarian partner is coming from a background of thinking in terms of a public-facing collection, where aboutness is the key criteria and communicating it to a user unfamiliar with the collection is the priority.

I mean full-on khaki-shorts-wearing, traversing-wilderness-with-nothin'-but-a-machete Adrian who yoinks snakes outta trees and pets swamp puppies and will unflinchingly dig around in elephant faeces for signs of a rare parasitic tapeworm if needed.

Oh, humans eat socially? No problem, Adrian has observed many many animals eat. Did you know that an obscure species of small underground dirt creature from the north side of Erid also eats socially? Adrian can give you a not-so-short presentation on them.

Oh, the human has no external carapace and so its internal sounds are absurdly loud, wet and off-putting? No problem, Adrian was just conducting an expedition last month researching the incredible eridian animal, the Wet Loud Worm from the south-east region of Wet Loud Wormland. They're desensitised, it's fine.

Oh, Grace leaks often from many orifices and it can be a bit of a learning curve to get used to? No problem for Adrian, see Wet Loud Worm paragraph again!

in my opinion, tooka are a domesticated species of loth-cat that was then spread across the galaxy.

for starters, loth-cats are wild. they're shown in nature in rebels, and supplementary media talks about their behaviour in a way that makes them seem like wild animals as opposed to feral. they seem like wild animals and aren't shown in a context of being domesticated pets*.

they also biologically match other fauna on lothal. they have the same bird-like feet as loth-wolves. this again points to them sharing a common ancestor at some ancient point. it seems to be a common element the same way paw pads are among groups of real world mammals.

they're also shown in the art of the ancient lothali indigenous groups. it's not impossible that they were simply introduced to lothal by another group (we know ancient lothalite's had contact with jedi) but the way it's depicted in this scene seems to place it alongside loth-wolves and loth-bats, which are both native animals to lothal.

to me it makes the most sense to imagine the first colonists to lothal encountering these animals, liking their appearance, and deciding to bring them with them to other planets (i don't think it's farfetched to imagine them being brought on export ships off of lothal to keep vermin out of produce), in the process domesticating them into household pets. i feel like the bright appearance of the tooka lends itself more to the idea of selective breeding for a coat pattern than the wild browns of the loth-cat. the idea of the reverse happening - tooka being brought to lothal and then thrown aside to the point they go from feral to full wild - just seems like a more convoluted idea. so occams razor applies.