So I confess that I have a bit of a specialization in ants. I’m struggling with a collective noun for the fandom that likes to take on ant role playing, though.
Can we call them ant-hropomorphic?
I swear I really have studied ants quite extensively and I didn’t make that up for the pun.
Honestly, I don't know if "the fandom that likes to take on ant role playing" is enough of a thing to need a specific term. Bug furries are a tiny proportion of the overall fandom, and what few there are mostly pick species like bees and moths. I do like the pun, though.
Anyway, the releases of Bug Fables and Hollow Knight were pretty big boons to us.
That makes sense. And honestly, being an ant wouldn’t be a lot of fun unless you wanted to do a Bug’s Life version of what an ant is. Being an ant would be like being a liver cell. You get some inputs that map directly to outputs, and you’re not an individual so much as tiny part of a colony, which itself is closer to what we’d call an individual. I could go on for hours, or literally a semester. Ants can be told “We need you to be a girder. We’re building a big nest, and we need you to bite this other ant on the ass and stay there until you die so we can have a superstructure.” And the ant is like “Cool, on it!” And there’s all kinds of levels and differences and everything, but most of it isn’t aspirational except insofar as cooperation is a good idea.
If I might suggest something for the potential bug furries, using the term loosely, I’d say take a look at the jumping spiders. They’re very intelligent - like they can learn to solve puzzles. They’re beautiful and friendly and there’s an absolutely brilliant science fiction trilogy by Adrian Tchaikovsky called Children of Time that is based on the idea of that kind of civilization spiders would create if they kept their spider nature but were given human-scale intelligence. It’s extremely well written both from a literary perspective and as science.
there’s an absolutely brilliant science fiction trilogy by Adrian Tchaikovsky called Children of Time
I've had this series on my 'to read' list for a while, but I don't remember adding it and didn't remember anything about it. Thank you for this great description that doesn't give anything away with the story, you have helped move this series to be my next read.
Glad I could help! I’ve been reading science fiction for 45 or so years now, and this series - from the first book - entered into my top 5.
You almost never find a book that does hard sf on biology. Physics and engineering, sure. The only other book that comes to mind is Legacy of Heorot, where the authors went hard sf on biology and ecology.
I was constantly surprised how often in the first book I expected to scoff derisively but did not because he actually knew what he was talking about.
That makes sense. And honestly, being an ant wouldn’t be a lot of fun unless you wanted to do a Bug’s Life version of what an ant is.
Yeah, that's the approach I usually see. "Anthro" implies some level of humanization after all, and that includes human cognitive ability and ways of thinking. Something like this pic is a lot more representative of typical ants (and other bugs) in the fandom than what you're describing.
Never heard of those books, though, they sound pretty cool. Might have to check them out.
On the one hand, I feel like this is a betrayal of true ant nature in the same way and to the same degree that I felt with the introduction of the Borg Queen instead of having the original colony-identity emergent phenomena of intelligence and behavior type Borg.
On the other hand, they look cool and like they’re having a great time.
I could swear I once read a scifi book which had a spaceship with an uplifted ant colony living in the walls and serving as a crewmember but I can't remember any of the plot or what it was called
We're just another subset of furries, really
So I confess that I have a bit of a specialization in ants. I’m struggling with a collective noun for the fandom that likes to take on ant role playing, though.
Can we call them ant-hropomorphic?
I swear I really have studied ants quite extensively and I didn’t make that up for the pun.
Honestly, I don't know if "the fandom that likes to take on ant role playing" is enough of a thing to need a specific term. Bug furries are a tiny proportion of the overall fandom, and what few there are mostly pick species like bees and moths. I do like the pun, though.
Anyway, the releases of Bug Fables and Hollow Knight were pretty big boons to us.
That makes sense. And honestly, being an ant wouldn’t be a lot of fun unless you wanted to do a Bug’s Life version of what an ant is. Being an ant would be like being a liver cell. You get some inputs that map directly to outputs, and you’re not an individual so much as tiny part of a colony, which itself is closer to what we’d call an individual. I could go on for hours, or literally a semester. Ants can be told “We need you to be a girder. We’re building a big nest, and we need you to bite this other ant on the ass and stay there until you die so we can have a superstructure.” And the ant is like “Cool, on it!” And there’s all kinds of levels and differences and everything, but most of it isn’t aspirational except insofar as cooperation is a good idea.
If I might suggest something for the potential bug furries, using the term loosely, I’d say take a look at the jumping spiders. They’re very intelligent - like they can learn to solve puzzles. They’re beautiful and friendly and there’s an absolutely brilliant science fiction trilogy by Adrian Tchaikovsky called Children of Time that is based on the idea of that kind of civilization spiders would create if they kept their spider nature but were given human-scale intelligence. It’s extremely well written both from a literary perspective and as science.
I've had this series on my 'to read' list for a while, but I don't remember adding it and didn't remember anything about it. Thank you for this great description that doesn't give anything away with the story, you have helped move this series to be my next read.
Glad I could help! I’ve been reading science fiction for 45 or so years now, and this series - from the first book - entered into my top 5.
You almost never find a book that does hard sf on biology. Physics and engineering, sure. The only other book that comes to mind is Legacy of Heorot, where the authors went hard sf on biology and ecology.
I was constantly surprised how often in the first book I expected to scoff derisively but did not because he actually knew what he was talking about.
Yeah, that's the approach I usually see. "Anthro" implies some level of humanization after all, and that includes human cognitive ability and ways of thinking. Something like this pic is a lot more representative of typical ants (and other bugs) in the fandom than what you're describing.
Never heard of those books, though, they sound pretty cool. Might have to check them out.
On the one hand, I feel like this is a betrayal of true ant nature in the same way and to the same degree that I felt with the introduction of the Borg Queen instead of having the original colony-identity emergent phenomena of intelligence and behavior type Borg.
On the other hand, they look cool and like they’re having a great time.
I could swear I once read a scifi book which had a spaceship with an uplifted ant colony living in the walls and serving as a crewmember but I can't remember any of the plot or what it was called
"Myrmidons" lets go classy with this one