Tiny Tabby Toebeans

Some more #art. Loose marker sketches on Reracks from #Stellarmass. I'm planning to change them around a bit cause they haven't been updated since 2019. But yeah, a friend asked if they could be pastel colored so I doodled up some variations the species can have.

Color is sex-linked, so natal males will have wild, bold, and bright colors while natal females will have dull, speckled colors with paler brighter color accents. These accents are there as an identifier for individuals.

As we all know, however, genetics aren't always binary and things can get weird fast. Some individuals are intersex or chimeras and will have color patterns that split down the middle (which can happens irl to birds!) or muddle together into blotches.

Pastels come about from a dilute gene and it completely washes out their colors. It can occur in any sex. Sometimes pastels are prone to health problems, especially in their eyes, but it's not always the case.

Dec 9, 2024 at 2:53amWeb
Show threadTiny Tabby ToebeansDec 9, 2024

Of course we got albino's, which are incredibly rare and tend to have health problems. Leucistic individuals do happen, but they are just as rare as melenistic Reracks, so not often seen. melenistic Reracks are an iridescent blue/black like ravens! They may also have darker speckling or markings too.

Now Reracks have sex-linked colors as a form of dimorphism but they are fine with practicing concepts like feather dying to match gender identity. With the advent of post-contact, they now have access to gene-manipulation therapy to turn on and off some markers to make new feathers come in as the colors that suit them best. They will still have dimorphism in that the more X chromosomes you have the bigger and beefier you are, but Reracks in general are so laid back they don't really have it in them to be discriminatory.

Show threadTiny Tabby ToebeansDec 9, 2024

For non-binary individuals they choose to either dye or gene-manipulate themselves to have solid neutral shades, the most common being grey. This is a signal that they don't want to be addressed with gendered language.

This is because Reracks are a visual people so they rely on visual cues to address each other, mainly with colors. Those born albino, melenistic, ect will wear something/dye themselves on their faces to indicate the gender they want to be addressed as.

They are terribly confused by humans, which are technical all neutral colored (to a Rerack at least). They also all hate being rude and un-friendly, so they will call non-Reracks 'they' until told a pronoun so there isn't any hurt feelings.

They are not very good at nuance since they are all so flashy and communicate very strongly with each other visually. They all do their best though, and they do have a rep for being the friendliest species in the galaxy besides Zuraki (which i have to draw again soon ;_;

Show threadProfesseur RenardDec 9, 2024
@KeetahSpacecat Very interesting.