The Queue: I have no idea what this is

Look, all I know is every time Commander Shepard is going anywhere, these guys are in the way, and I feel ridiculously guilty if I run them over in the Mako or the Hammerhead. Why are they on so many different planets? Why do they have weird little arms up front of their legs? Can they pronate or supinate those arms? How useful are they, can they grip tools? Are they sapient beings? What’s the deal with them? They’re apparently called Space Cows, but… I mean, that’s not a cow.

People eat these things. That feels like a mistake.’

Anyway, this is the Queue. I don’t think that’s what a cow should look like.

I mean, yes? That’s the entire message of the Kyrian campaign, ultimately, and it ends with you bringing the Forsworn back into the Kyrian and the Archon admitting that it turns out they were wrong to purge their aspirants of emotion. The Forsworn were dupes, there’s no question, and the Mawsworn are beyond saving — they are down with Zovaal no matter what he does, they’re completely under Helya’s domination — but the Forsworn were at least right in their initial objection to what the Kyrian asked from their aspirants, and as the focus character you get to show them how your memories make you stronger.

You are of course intended to sympathize with the Forsworn, that’s why you get to be friends with Kleia and Pelagos, who are also sympathetic to the idea of retaining your memories.

Wolves without Teeth by Of Monsters And Men

Can’t Feel My Face by The Weeknd

Immortals by Fall Out Boy

There are lots more but these are the three I have on repeat play right now. Immortals is extremely driving but its ultimate message is that no matter what you do, you’ll only be able to live forever after you’re dead. We can be immortals, just not for long.

Wolves without Teeth, I mean, just listen to it. The lyrics are all about giving up, letting go, moving past loss and the effort that it takes. And Can’t Feel My Face is at least tangentially a drug addiction song about how you know disaster is coming but you can’t stop. They’re all dark and depressing and yet upbeat and energetic at the same time.

The word centaur is descended from the Greek word kentauros, which is of uncertain origin — some suggest it means piercing bull or bull slayer, but there’s also evidence to suggest it derives from the name of a Thrakian tribe of horsemen who were considered to almost be part horse. At any rate, there have been modern attempts to name beings like the Keepers of the Grove and Dryads from WoW.

It should be made clear that Dryad in Greek Mythology is a tree spirit, not a tauric deer-elf mix the way they are in WoW. Dryads in Greek myth are the Nymphs of oak trees in particular. It’s fair to say that World of Warcraft has sort of kept the idea of Dryads as nature spirits but pretty much abandoned the whole ‘spirit of a tree’ thing for their own construction.

I personally like Cervitaur myself.

So since the Dryads and Keepers of the Grove are more generalized nature spirits with the parts of deer or stags, I’d go with some variant of Cervitaur or Elaphocentaur, both of which have been used in modern fantasy to describe beings with the general body plan of a centaur, only with deer instead of horse body parts. Elapho being the ancient Greek for deer. The modern Greek word is Elafi. Or you could just call them fauns, after the Roman term for satyr-like beings, even though deer aren’t goats.

Lefty left a comment that was a screencap of a canard about T-Rex not being cool because it had feathers now. The phrase was Nah actually they looked like giant idiot birds because, I don’t know, some people (whoever the original poster was) think a seven to eight ton carnivore somehow isn’t scary or cool because it had feathers.

People need to get over this. A lot of dinosaurs had feathers or feather-like structures. Some of them were more like bristles or spines than flight feathers, the majority of feathered dinos had what we’d call dino-fuzz, and a lot of the dinosaurs in the family T-Rex was in were feathered. The legacy of feathers on dinos dates back at least 150 million years, well into the mid Jurassic.

I don’t get people sometimes. It’s like saying that tigers aren’t awesome predators because you can’t see their skin under all that fur.

Okay, that’s the Queue for today. Dinosaurs were cool, and many of them had feathers. Mammals are cool, and most of them have fur. Integument is a good thing.