There is a sign before a cavern, in Niorve in the Thousand Nadirs. It is written in the star-symbols that people wrote in before they learned the Perfect Language, and it says:
“Truth placed a treasure in this cavern. It belongs to any who have enough faith in him to heed the message he placed here, and turn right at the crossroads. But the Lords of Noise, to keep men from the treasure, placed a ghost at the crossroads, whose job it is to urge men to turn left. The ghost is more clever than men think, and their faith weaker. Beware, for if you turn left you will die.”
Many people entered the cave seeking the treasure, sure their faith was strong enough. None ever came out.
Kadmi Rachumion came to the cave when he was clearing the land of mysteries. For three days he fasted and meditated in front of it. Then he called down the Perils of the Northern Lights and asked them to test his faith. For another three days they tested it, and finally they told him that no power in human lands or the ultimate north could move him, because his resolution was perfect.
Then he lit a torch, entered the cavern, and walked down a long corridor. As he walked, he thought of how the ghost might tempt him. Money he could refuse. Power he could refuse. Threats he would shrug off. Arguments he would dissect. Reason he would meet with reason. And he held the Spear That Burns Illusion before him, so no trickery could confound his path.
Finally he came to the crossroads, and there stood a ghost, dressed in the rags of Shinomai. “Go on,” he told the ghost. “Try your best.”
The ghost said: “Truth placed a treasure in this cavern. It belongs to any who have enough faith in him to heed the ghost he left to lead them, and turn left at the crossroads. But the Lords of Noise, to keep men from the treasure, placed a sign in front of the cavern, whose job it is to urge men to turn right. Beware, for if you turn right you will die.”
Kadmi thought for a long time, then laughed. Then he made the sign of Kasi Elution Lighting The Sun Beacon, and the ghost disappeared. Then he turned around and walked out of the cave.
Niderion-nomai’s commentary: Kadmi won the treasure, which was Invincible Doubt.
The eyes-in-the-front thing (usually) only applies to mammals. Crocodiles, arguably the inspiration for dragons, have eyes that look to the sides despite being a predator.
This isn’t a mammalian thing. When people talk about ‘eyes on the front’ or ‘eyes on the side,’ they’re really talking about binocular vision vs monocular vision. Binocular vision is more advantageous for predators because it’s what gives you depth perception; i.e, the distance you need to leap, lunge, or swipe to take out the fast-moving thing in front of you. Any animal that can position its eyes in a way that it has overlapping fields of vision has binocular vision. That includes a lot of predatory reptiles, including komodo dragons, monitor lizards, and chameleons.
(The eyes-in-front = predator / eyes-on-sides = prey thing holds true far more regularly for birds than it does for mammals. Consider owls, hawks, and falcons vs parrots, sparrows, and doves.)
But it’s not like binocular vision is inherently “better” than monocular vision. It’s a trade-off: you get better at leap-strike-kill, but your field of vision is commensurately restricted, meaning you see less stuff. Sometimes, the evolutionary benefit of binocular vision just doesn’t outweigh the benefit of seeing the other guy coming. Very few forms of aquatic life have binocular vision unless they have eye stalks, predator or not, because if you live underwater, the threat could be coming from literally any direction, so you want as wide a field of view as you can get. If you see a predator working monocular vision, it’s a pretty safe assumption that there is something else out there dangerous enough that their survival is aided more by knowing where it is than reliably getting food inside their mouths.
For example, if you are a crocodile, there is a decent chance that a hippo will cruise up your shit and bite you in half. I’d say that makes monocular vision worthwhile.
Which brings us back to OP’s point. Why would dragon evolution favor field of view over depth perception?
A lot of the stories I’ve read painted the biggest threats to dragons (until knights with little shiny sticks came along) as other dragons. Dragons fight each other, dragons have wars. And like fish, a dragon would need to worry about another dragon coming in from any angle. That’s a major point in favor of monocular vision. Moreover, you don’t need depth perception in order to hunt if you can breathe fucking fire. A flamethrower is not a precision weapon. If you can torch everything in front of you, who cares if your prey is 5 feet away or 20? Burn it all and sift among the rubble for meat once everything stops moving.
Really, why would dragons have eyes on the front of their heads? Seems like they’ve got the right idea to me.
this is some good dragon discourse right here, 10/10, and i dont mean to derail the whole thing away from the eyes, but i feel obligated to mention that in many stories and accurate to some reptiles, dragons have an extremely acute sense of smell/taste which would definitely help narrow down the depth perception issue. things smell stronger the closer they are. and i feel like i read somewhere that a blind snake can flick the air with its tongue and track its target mouse with no trouble at all. gotta imagine the “great serpents of the sky” had some pretty advanced biology. enough to make field of view win out against depth perception.
anywho. cool stuff. fear the dragons even if they are the prey cause they still beat us on the food chain.
“A flamethrower is not a precision weapon. If you can torch everything in front of you, who cares if your prey is 5 feet away or 20? Burn it all and sift among the rubble for meat once everything stops moving.”
A) As was stated previously, this rule doesn’t hold for life underwater where binocular vision isn’t worth the limited field of view.
B) Hammerhead sharks hacked the fucking system and spread their eyes so far apart that they have 360 degree field of vision and binocular vision of whatever’s in front of them and behind them.
Anyway, these wiki entries can give you an idea of what documentation of a tumblr post and its responses might look like. We’ll never document every single little thing, and we wouldn’t want to, but we can make a record of major conversations and schools of thought so that fans who come after us know how people were feeling on tumblr back in the day.
Fanlore uses the same wiki markup as Wikipedia et al.
Fanlore has a “Plural Point of View” policy: treat it like oral history where you want to document all sides of a controversy rather than Wikipedia’s attempt at ‘One Universal Truth’. (But feel free to correct factual errors.)
Fanlore is about any fandom history, so minute details of canon don’t belong on there, but minute details of meta, fanworks exchanges, any zine ever, any significant online fic, tropes in fanworks, etc. do.
Since tumblr is getting harder and harder to search, even aside from deletions, now is a great time to document important tumblr posts on Fanlore or add information from tumblr posts to existing articles.
Right now, Fanlore is an amazing resource on pre-internet “Media Fandom”, old print zines, the LJ era, and a lot of slash fandom history.
But it’s only as good and varied as its editors.
In my experience, it could use a lot of help in the realm of anime/manga fandom, including BL fandom, fandom not in English and/or outside of the English-speaking world, fandom on places like Quizilla or Wattpad, femslash fandom, etc. If your area of fandom is not represented, it’s only because the current editors don’t know enough!
You are welcome! We need you!
If you know how wikis work, you’re all set to edit Fanlore. If you’ve never used a wiki, we can help you figure it out.
Fanlore is a valuable and excellent resource for fandom history. Furthermore, it’s really fun to wikiwalk at three in the morning.
#hey sorry I’m late #I originally had this in my queue #but I removed it a couple weeks ago because I heard about bugs in the censor causing queued posts to be published too soon #(also if I ended up leaving I didn’t want my queue to go and publish something on a blog that was supposed to be abandoned) #it is still technically the right day in my time zone so I guess it still works out #solstice #Tumblr traditions #Star Trek #TOS
God said to Adam: you may eat of any other tree in the garden, but you must not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat of it you will die. And Adam fashioned an axe, and he cut down the Tree of Knowledge. And God asked “Adam, what have you done?” And Adam said “I refuse to be complicit in my own temptation.”
God said to Adam: you may eat of any other tree in the garden, but you must not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat of it you will die. So Adam picked the fruit of the tree and planted it in the ground. A few years later, another Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil grew from the place he had planted it, and Adam ate the fruit of that one.
God said to Adam: you may eat of any other tree in the garden, but you must not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat of it you will die. But the serpent told him this was lies, and that if he ate from the Tree of Knowledge he would not die, but would become as God. “How do you know?” asked Adam. “Have you eaten the fruit?” “Yes,” said the serpent. “I have tasted of it, yet I did not die.” So Adam ate the serpent.
God said to Adam: you may eat of any other tree in the garden, but you must not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat of it you will die. So Adam picked the leaves of the Tree and made a delicious Good And Evil Salad.
God said to Adam: you may eat of any other tree in the garden, but you must not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat of it you will die. Adam desired to taste of the fruit, and he decided that if he was going to get in trouble for breaking a commandment he might as well go all out. So he waited until the tree was heavy with fruits, then binged on all of them in one sitting. And the Lord definitely cast him out of Eden – but on the plus side, thousands of years later his descendants had excellent moral compasses and always knew the right thing to do in any situation.
God said to Adam: you may eat of any other tree in the garden, but you must not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat of it you will die. And Adam obeyed the commandment, and instead he ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Cool and Uncool. Then he saw his own nakedness, and found it unfashionable, so he made a snazzy jacket out of leaves and bark. And the Lord saw the jacket, and said “Adam, have you eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Cool and Uncool?” And Adam said “You’re not my dad, you can’t tell me what to do.” And the Lord sent him forth from the garden, but Adam just said “Laaaaaaaaaame”.
Brinens and Things 
