Practicum: Tsxobjez
And so here we are again, with your favourite alien Limax, Vivian! This time I am going to tell you about a species I made and their society!
Quick note is that to make them alien, like I do many species, I have plural(s) and adjective forms that do not follow English standards. For this species it is
Sg: Tsxobjez
Pl: Tsxobjezn
Adj: Tsxobjit
Worldbuilder intent
Seems like the best place to start, doesn’t it? Why did I make these fellows? A trope I have always loved in althist (Alternative history) fiction is that of Soviet Superscience! It is an entirely unrealistic trope but with the Red Alert series, I was so sold on it when I grew up. Now I am by no means a socialist; my beliefs and views cannot easily be categorised. But I felt like I wanted a socialist state like the Soviet Union was for the world. The issue is that the incentives and structure of Communism and how it has been applied in real life on earth is to put it mildly…rather catastrophic.
But I wanted a socialist one to add more diverse views and points, politics, beliefs and people. So I asked myself “How would I make a socialist state that can rival the rest of my superpowers, and it is not completely brainlessly stupid?” So this was the goal, the purpose, my aim. From this goal they developed bit by bit, and in the other sections, I will go into why decisions were made and how it relates and how it does not and why I made them anyway.
Biology
Biology is often when I draw on a mixed bag of ideas from my intent and at complete random where I let my gut and crazy mind wander around. In this case for the Tsxobjez, it was more of the latter. Given I wanted a socialist inspired one, sure I could go with a eusocial animal like ants, termites or bees, but honestly, how trite, isn’t that? It is predictable and boring! No, I ran my metaphorical spinner of animal species and classes and it landed on…🥁🥁🥁…Squids! Out of nowhere, I decided it. It was not a big deal, and I figured having them as a basis for ideas would be fun, so after that I ran off to check for ideas for physical designs of them as humanoids!
Now, if you want to do humanoid species where you are essentially working from a Terran animal, that in some sense anthropomorphises them, there is one source for ideas I would recommend if you know which species to take: the furry community. Okay, okay, calm down! I know what you are thinking and the reputation they have. Some of it is earned, some of it is not. So let me dispel a myth or two. The furry community is not all about sex, fursuits, and sex in fursuits. There are a lot of other things too! But I will admit, there is an enormous amount of pornographic art that they do make. Well over 90% of all art is porn, porn and more porn. Barely anything is fursuits–only a few own one, relatively speaking. And sex in fursuits, even less so. So if you can stomach lots and lots of porn while browsing for inspiration for your species, it is a great resource! If you cannot or fear the depth of depravity, then yeah, don't use them.
General body
So after this kind of debauchery that was burnt into my retinas–not like I ain’t been on you human’s internet long enough to be desensitised to it all or anything–I had come up with my design! Unfortunately, I am still looking to make this into an art commission so bear with me as I describe it instead. Physically, they are bipedal and lack a tail (quite a few of my species do have them). They’re humanoid, what do you expect? Their skin is generally red-orange-like and some versions of them take on bluish hues. Their feet look similar to us in the beginning before splitting into squid and octopus-like tentacles. The split from foot like structure you are familiar with to tentacles is about half way down it. They lack bones and use a hydrostatic skeleton. They have dimorphism similar to humans, including around hips, shoulders, face and chest. Their hands are similar to human’s as well except their fingers are squid-like tentacles with suction cups on them. Their facial structure am I still working on, but they have an 8 shaped pupil.Typical eye colours include teal, blue, cyan, green, purple, and red. On their head, they have 3 backward going tentacles that give a semblance of hair on them. These tentacles are only capable of limited movement and are mostly decorative. A distinct feature they have is that like a kangaroo, they have a pouch on their stomach.
Reproduction
I ended with the pouch because we all know the association, and as you'll learn in due time and my friends know, I have a morbid fascination with all things possible with reproduction. I am a diverse pervert! Jokes aside, I find it very fascinating in general as I have said many times so I try to spice things up! But I have in general a design principle of uh…”fornicatable” aliens so I still went internal fertilisation which makes sense as they are all land animals anyway. The squids can! Just give them a few million years to try!...okay I am bored waiting for them so let's move on with this.
I hear you now say:
Pouches are used to host the severely underdeveloped kangaroo baby until they grow big enough, and humans and the like take over 9 months of gestation! It is not possible!
To which I say, great, you know your biology! This is where the aforementioned quirk I was aiming for comes in. You see, you are right about both gestation and pouch’s purpose, so I was thinking, how could I make this work together? Well actually, I decided on the quirk first then made the pouch after as a justification to make it all work out, but meh. Anyway, what is this enigmatic quirk? Let me tell you a story about some animals. There are species on Earth that are born as all one sex, no matter what, no matter how, all individuals are always born one sex on earth. Male in some species, female in other species. Which it is depends on many factors. Then later, they CHANGE to the other sex! Which also depends on factors that they determine as individuals. So imagine, start as a male and then later, when time is right, you become female with organs and everything. This is called sequential hermaphroditism! I know as a hermaphrodite myself, I find it offensive they would use our bothness on these! Oh well, you humans!
Anyway, seeing that and thinking I went “if they can go one way…why not go back again? And then back and forth, over and over?”. EUREKA! I had a fun thing for them that became quite crucial! I called this “Cyclic hermaphroditism”. The Tsxobjezn are cyclic hermaphrodites and shift between the sexes every 3 months. Roughly.
So when they are female, there is a short window of about 2 weeks at the start where they can get pregnant and have a few months of gestation before having to get the baby out and they phase (as I call it when they change sex) to male. So the baby Tsxobjez comes out heavily underdeveloped and goes into the pouch where, like a kangaroo, they can get “milk” like stuff and continue growing for months until they are ready to come out. This day is called “unpouching” and is viewed like their real “birthday”. On top of this, I also decided that due to their cyclic nature, they are not born into one or the other sex but are actually sexless until they hit puberty. Which sex is first and how the population regulates itself to maintain a close to 50:50 split on sexes is done by pheromones that nudge the timing this and that way, but I won’t go into details here, it is too long already!
Ideology
As stated, the whole point of this species and faction was to make a socialist state, yes yes I know I am doing the cliché space operas but I love it and I genuinely believe it is a good thing with unification, overcoming differences in unity! Anyway, what were the fundamental issues with Soviet and Communism in general as I see them?
It all essentially boils down to the system not responding to or being responsive to the needs of the people. If we are all honest, this is the general issue with most forms of garbage governments. As bad as democracy can be, it has, when done right, the benefit of answering to the needs of the public people, though how it responds is a different matter.
So from this I decided to base their version of socialism on Syndicalism, which is a socialist movement that once existed. It died out in the wake of the Communist Revolution when hatred for socialism increased. I decided to call their ideology however “Unionism” to emphasise that the central thing they believe in is the importance of labour unions. Each factory, store, office or whatnot have their own local labour union that all workers are part of, and this labour union, collectively, owns a supermajority, or usually ⅔ of the local factory, office, store etc. Supermajority simply means “more than half by a significant margin”. This way the labour union and worker are the focus, own most of the relevant stuff together, and still allow investment by others if they so choose.
History
This is still a work in progress. Ancient times and such I have not decided much on because it really doesn’t matter that much. Later, I will inevitably do it, but for now, I have focused only on crucial aspects. Their world developed along a similar but different course to Earth’s. The big difference occurs during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution. In Earth’s timeline, the states and nobilities still maintained the power and control of the nation and such. In their world, things took a different turn. As the capitalists, the owners of the factories and means of production, gained more power and took control over entire markets, their power grew and eventually usurped nobilities, government heads and more. Because of their enormous amount of money and control of the markets, the capitalists were the de facto rulers of the industrial part of Tsxobjit homeworld.
As bad as human conditions were during the Industrial Revolution, the Tsxobjezn had it much worse. I won’t go into details here because it doesn’t matter beyond “it sucked”. During this a figure called Kwxents Mjakx (I will make a pronunciation guide later as I do conlanging as well but for now, go along) became a champion for people and workers rights. After many tumbles with authorities, it sparked a massive public outrage and all hell broke loose.This quickly spread through the city and a full blown revolution was soon enough a fact. This revolution turned into a war that lasted many years before they had control over their native nation. After that, I am still working on it. But after centuries, the revolutionaries came to be the unifying force that united the world under one government, and eventually they took to space to continue spreading their ideology and beliefs of equality and the importance of the workers.
As you can see, I am taking inspiration from both the French Revolution and Communist Revolution for it, and that is by choice. They are both fascinating to read about.
Modern Culture
I will be discussing this in extremely broad strokes as per my rules it is bad to have everything monolithic, and I stand by that. So take what I say in this section as broad stroke generalisations and understand there are subcultures and people who will not conform to what I say here.
They do not believe in sexism and honestly have a hard time understanding it as a thing because they spend time as both sexes constantly so viewing each other as differently capable because of the sex strikes them as a very perplexing concept. This along with their ideology has forged a strong sense of equality and egalitarianism. They view everyone as equal and fundamentally so. Even their leaders and rulers have no greater standing socially than anyone else. I know those of you who are Anglo-Saxon in nature would find the casualism between each other frustrating.
One thing to notice however is that despite the perception that many have about socialism being a collectivist ideology and mentality, their culture does not place emphasis on it over the individuals. They are individualistic but generally have the sense to understand that many feats can only be done as a collective, but the collective cannot stomp on the individual.
Pronoun reduction
Just like the English language has experienced a pronoun reduction through history, so has the Tsxobjit language. In English you went from Thou, Thee, Thy, Thine and Ye, You, Your, Yours to only having You, You, Your, Yours. This was in second person (addressing the listener, singular vs plural). For the Tsxobjezn and their history, I thought that the first person (the speaker) would be the one experiencing the collapse/reduction instead. So instead of going I, Me, My, Mine and We, Us, Our, Ours, it would all collapse to only We, Us, Our, Ours. Is it a bit obvious in a collectivist sense? Yes. Are the Tsxobjezn really that collectivist? No, they are the opposite, but they still have this collective sense not because they feel they do not matter as individuals, but rather that they are there together because each individual matters.
Government
The Tsxobjit government structure is complicated to say the least. Like Syndicalism, they have a federalist model, but it works in what I call a “transitive democracy model”. Let me explain. In representative democracies, you vote for someone, through some means, to represent your voice and position in the overarching governmental structure. It can be by voting for a person, voting for a party, it can be many ways, but all of it is directly sending the person to the governing body.
In transitive democracy as I envision it, this is not the case. Instead, for the Tsxobjezn, they vote for a Local Union Leader for their factory, store, office, place (I will now call it place regardless). The place may determine however they want the vote to be done and counted as long as it is codified. Now, the Local Union Leader forms a new union with the leaders of similar Union Leaders within the same industry of a region. These people in turn elect their own leader that is then sent up a stage. With each stage, more and more people, regions and industries come together to vote for the one above. Eventually, it is the entire city, region, continent and planet. Then at the very end, the collection of final planetary union leaders vote for the leader of their entire Federation, called the “Supreme Union Leader”, or SUL. Yes I made it intentionally sound a bit like “Sol”, I may entertain myself in silly ways!
SUL is then the face and the Supreme Leader of the entire Federation, aka United Federation of Worker’s Labour Unions, or just “The Federation''. Decisions they have the right to do are determined by those below, and what they can say is decided by those beneath, and so on. And that is how implementations are also done. They are sent down the chain of voted representatives, and if problems occur for some reason, it starts going back up again. It is a complicated system where dictates and decisions go up and down the chain of leaders and unions, but it is a way they ensure that no place gets trampled on. Each layer may choose to have an election at any moment, but once an election has been had, no more can be held for a year.
Flag
Vexillology time! It is a fancy word that means the study of flags, look below at the Tsxobjit Federation’s.
This is the modern incarnation, I have not done the older ones. The blue background is mostly there because it looks good as a contrast. The yellow 8 pointed stars represent the Tsxobjezn themselves because they have 8 finger tentacles. There are three to show that there are many stars they control, and like many Concert members (I will later go into what this is, but for now imagine it is a group of powerful interstellar players), they govern many different species, so it is not all too inclusive to have the star represent only the Tsxobjezn, but hey, I mimic the later Victorian and Edwardian era, and things are not all happy then! Anyway, the red triangle together is meant to symbolise that Unionism is what ties them together across the stars to make a single whole.
Summa Summarum
This species is by no means finished. I constantly tweak and do things here and there both in details on government, history and minor biological things, but also over all. I quite like them. They are quirky, they are different, and they give people new things to imagine and believe are possible, all things that are important to me when I design species and states. I hope my ramblings here in how I thought about things has helped you a bit in how you can think on things.
My biggest advice to anyone is this: let your mind go where it goes and be crazy! Sometimes the crazy stuff is the most entertaining!
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