Worldbuilding | Acorn Babies

[@nuadathesilverhand3563]

A literal family tree... I am incredibly intrigued and touched by how innately sacred this notion is. This is gold.

[@Mr.HowardEatsPants]

"I'm all for bizarre reproduction" Ewa, 2019

[@masicbemester]

should i make a video of Worlbuilding Notes without context?

[@itacom2199]

​@@masicbemesterYES PLEASE

[@MyriadSkies]

I guess you went with the less horrifying implication of an abandoned orphan tree =P. Although if the falling of an acorn didn't break or damage it, or kill the unborn baby inside, then you might occasionally have a 'wild child' sprout up, one raised by wild animals. Might even get cultures of wild children in ancient forests!

[@elodin756]

Maybe if there is a lake or river extremely close to the tree, some acorns will fall into the water, giving them a much higher chance of surviving. Then, perhaps even a whole family of different age "orphans" will emerge as a new civilization deep in the woods...

[@ohmhasmeaning7292]

@@elodin756 Legend has it that one of the wild brotherhoods is actually from he abandoned tree of the founder of the whole race

[@merrittanimation7721]

*sees title* Huh, why does this sound familiar... *Lucian of Samosata is mentioned* Finally, my knowledge of obscure Roman literature can be put to use!

[@Grockstube]

Damn, i thought i was clever by making my elves grow on literal "trees of life" that are part of their lifecycle, and here the dude from two thousand years ago appears and slaps me in the face! I'd love to see a continuation of this idea from you, Ewa! :)

[@ESCL2004]

Hey, great minds think alike, no?

[@TSBoncompte]

you could say this conworld is... nuts :D

[@cosmopoiesecriandomundos7446]

If you don't stop with these puns, I will hunt you and I will cashew.

[@MangaGladneerd]

Don't let anyone hazle you. This is a peanut of art.

[@eddie-roo]

Oh no, a double pun!

[@soupo-sandwich]

haha! this is so cool. i wonder if an orphan tree could turn out to be the tree of some lost royal bloodline or ancient genius. if there was proof somehow that it was the right tree, it could make for a cool story.

[@merrittanimation7721]

I'd read that.

[@glanni]

Heck yes

[@riaalto9488]

Someone write it! :D

[@WhirligigGirl]

In the video game Kerbal Space Program, the protagonists are little green men and women (the titular Kerbals). It is a common meme among fan circles, though never explicitly stated in canon, that Kerbals are part or entirely plant-life, due to their green color. A while ago, a subreddit called r/KerbalCulture (currently mostly just being used by the moderator as a repository for her dark fan webcomic--which isn't bad, but which is definitely strange) sprung up, allowing a small portion of the fanbase to discuss non-spaceflight based worldbuilding concepts about the kerbal universe and the kerbal planet Kerbin. Many people return to the partly plant-based model, and when I tried my hand at explaining Kerbal biology, I decided to take it somewhat seriously. The short version is that early on in the evolution of life on Kerbin, animal cells "discovered" "agriculture." They entered a symbiotic relationship with plant cells, in much the same way lichens do. The plant cells were more rigid and could be used as armor, they generated their own energy by photosynthesis, and they could create a closed feedback loop where oxygen generated by the plant could be respirated into carbon dioxide to fuel the plant. This eventually results in something very similar to the trees in this video. Trees which look just like oak trees but which hatch kerbals as one of two methods of reproduction. (The other being sex between two Kerbals) I go into more detail about this Kerbal Plant Hypothesis in the reddit post, and if anyone is interested in taking a look, here is a link: www.reddit.com/r/kerbalculture/comments/9rgbba/my_take_on_the_kerbal_plant_hypothesis/

[@rancidprince3133]

How would the procedure to chop off a teste happen? I imagine there’s some sort of ceremony surrounding it, if it’s so important to reproduce

[@maccychee3858]

@Astha Thakur and it's a crime to chop off another man's nuts

[@pseudomonad]

What a bizarre but endearing world! KZbin is recommending loads of baby videos after watching this. I'm not sure it's quite got the idea.

[@G_4J]

Who would've known? A video on Acorns that actually reflect Lucian of Samosata's flashbacks and where me makes a story about how a lunar society only filled with male inhabitants that have trees that are shaped into a phalloobaloo which grows trees and acorns, where a baby is hatched out of it? Perfect! *Anyway, amazing video. I see that you really dedicate your effort into these videos. Keep up the good work! Dzień dobry!

[@creamCarnivalJones1234]

no one: Worldbuilding notes: *Acorn Babies*

[@ReeshxX]

This is a wonderful fantasy story idea, best of all it brings new meaning to the phrase "Destroy their family - root and stem"

[@edwardnigma9756]

Ah, Lucian, the best (retroactively labelled) fantasy author of his time. I love stealing his wacky ideas for my stories and RPG campaign.

[@jackschiro6269]

I love your videos because they are unique but this has raised the bar so much higher than it was before. Keep up the unique work!

[@twistedtimbers]

fun fact! in older times, thighs were sometimes used as euphemisms for the male genital area! it comes up a lot in greek mythology specifically, so i dont know if that was the case here, but i think it's pretty funny!

[@Myzelfa]

One of my favorite things in the Twelve Kingdoms story is that people are born from fruit on special trees. Other than the presence of magic, it's the biggest oddity in a world that is otherwise fairly normal, and everyone takes it for granted. There are different trees for humans, animals, and monsters, which are heavily protected and generally considered a great crime to interfere with, since everyone in an area needs the same trees to reproduce. Sometimes a mistake happens and a person picks the wrong fruit, resulting in a child that is half-animal.

[@deepstonecostco]

I love this idea! I wonder how inheritance and lineages would work, if at all

[@chago5624]

YES NEW VIDEO, I recently found your channel (like yesterday) and watched all your videos. I not only love your egg world but your videos, art style, and analysis on everything keep up the good work!

[@sully9767]

I love this idea 👌 Not only because it's completely and absurdly ridiculous but also (Stargate fan alert) is basically how the Asgard in Stargate reproduce, just with a little less technology. Plus habitable moons. Gotta love them.

[@powernade]

D I C K T R E E

[@mrpellagra2730]

Ew

[@marcetteb6064]

Wood

[@lesteryaytrippy7282]

Okay...I will never look at an acorn the same way again.

[@shaunbrowne9870]

Yet another idea that it turns out I didn't invent.

[@questonickevalido]

I am going to steal this idea acorn and plant it in my world to grow a strong idea-tree

[@HamiltonIsLife]

I just found u now, I LOVE your world building series ❤️

[@a-bird-lover]

I'm a little acorn crown, lying on the cold cold ground, everybody steps on me, that is why I'm cracked you see...

[@thomassankey9845]

This is fucking amazing ewa. Glad I stuck around for this last year so I could listen to you talk about acorn babies. I would be truly incomplete had I not heard

[@AnkhAnanku]

Wow, I really didn’t t pay attention in Sex Ed...

[@zenkomenhi]

Ahh, Lucian. You absolute madman.

[@Ratchet4647]

Oh, Ewa! You never fail to impress! Very good video!

[@odanemcdonald9874]

Do this. Drop everything and do this!

[@Yalen.The.Untaggable]

Thank you so much for so much effort on each of your videos, Ewa!

[@kairon156]

Very cool idea. Would they be a type of plant species than? I have a plant race in my world who have the mother carry the baby in a pouch until it can be planted into a garden full of saplings. There's no normal family structure but instead a Community cares for it's young equally and teaches them the local values and customs as they grow up. Elders of the species wonder away from where people live into the forest and when they "die" they become a tree.

[@Dracheneks]

Honestly, Just the thought of having to do that made me cringe 😂 I wonder what would have happened if the story was told and people believed him.. Like, would it be part of ancient history today? How interesting would that be! Great idea to use this, I really enjoyed watching 😁

[@GeneSch]

Phallus shaped tree? I already love this idea!

[@Runix1]

Love the video! I'm really curious what sort of family structures would come from this. Maybe some branches would be considered better than others, as they were grafted from a healthier or famous ancestor's tree.

[@alexemy2463]

They must really hate squirrels

[@jzaar7483]

edit III: This is a really long comment of me going on thinking of ideas for my own world. I did actually comment on the video but it's like half way down. So do with this information what you will. ooh I might nab some ideas from this. I'm trying to think up a baby producing method that doesn't evolve such physical activity. I was thinking maybe each person has like a spiritual life plant that they can seed and grow a new life plant which will be their child's spirit. Basically Lucien's idea but without the... uhh... tree pruning activity and thus also without the physical tree. One only needs to be spiritually pollinated by their loved one and thus can produce life fruit which they can plant and grow their child. edit: nice video as well btw :3 edit II: I know noone's going to read this far down but I'll write here anyway. To murder someone is to also kill their spirit plant life tree thing. However, you take on it's weight. All trees are parasitic to one another and thus if you killed someone and did nothing about it, their tree might win, you would drop dead, and they would jump back up alive and well. Maybe an adaptation on the Grim Reaper could be some creature that retrives these parasitic souls in return for pay from the killer. idk I'm gonna go and do some worldbuilding outside of a KZbin comment.

[@globin3477]

If you introduce the concept of speculative evolution, this concept could be made a bit more plausible. The people involved are not human; rather, they are an alien species with several different forms. There are three kinds of "people" in this society: Workers, who cannot reproduce; Drones, which are not sapient and live for only one year; And queens, who will one day bury themselves alive and become a new tree. Because the "tree" is actually a highly derived animal, it cannot photosynthesize on it's own. It might have symbiotic algae embedded in it's body, but most of the tree's energy comes from food, which workers toss into the tree's mouth and stomach, which it has retained from it's time as a queen. The "tree" generates eggs from it's branches, which, when ready to hatch, fall into a pool of water which the workers maintain below the tree. Hatchlings are born aquatic, and will not develop lungs until seven years of age. If a tree is doing especially well, it may produce a drone. Drones grow much faster than workers, although their adult size is far smaller. Adult drones have wings, and as soon as they can fly, they leave home to seek out another tree. When they find one, they will fertilize the tree's "flower". when they are done with this, they will usually fly off to find another tree. This continues until they die, usually from exhaustion or predation. A fertilized tree can produce queens. Queens grow larger than workers, and become much larger. All non-drone members of the family are educated on matters of history and culture, but while workers learn how to do essential tasks to keep the family alive, queens learn how to identify the ideal spot to settle a new family. A queen will remain with her parent family until she is fully grown, and, if the family is doing well, she will take a number of workers with her to found a new family. Ideally, she will be able to find a pre-existing house, whose tree has died. However, when a tree dies, the house surrounding it is usually claimed very quickly by another queen, so a new queen is often forced to either settle untamed land and have her workers build a new house around her, or to conquer another family and take their house. Unless this queen came from an incredibly wealthy family, and has a huge number of escorting workers with her, conquering another house is unlikely to succeed, so most queens choose to build a new house. When a queen first buries herself, she and her house are incredibly vulnerable. Her house will, at this point, often be little more than a few bamboo walls. Many queens are killed before they can fully transform into a tree and begin producing eggs, either by starvation, a nearby family who does not want the competition, or by predators. In addition, a nearby family with a new queen may choose to send the entire family over to conquer a new family, so that a friendly tree can grow there and take advantage of the original builder's work. However, if a family is well connected, they might be able to create an agreement with other, nearby families for their queen to build a house in a specific location, so that her family can collect certain goods to trade with the parent and neighbor families. When a tree dies, any remaining workers are orphaned. If the family has good relations with their neighbors, these orphaned workers will often be able to join neighboring families. If the family is disliked, however, the workers are forced to fend for themselves. Sometimes, orphaned workers will become traders, who transport goods between various families. These traders are often viewed with suspicion, but because they carry valuable goods from far off, they are allowed to enter family territory. Traders must be careful, however, because a greedy family might choose to attack the caravan and take all of their goods by force. If a trader caravan meets a new queen, she might choose to adopt them; All those goods will increase her odds of founding a successful household.

[@alexemy2463]

Is it bad that I’ve spent several days making a basic culture and biome map of the Southern Continent of the Egg World based on the concept that the moon these oak men were on was the outside of the egg shell?

[@WorldbuildingNotes]

Could work as an alternate universe :P

[@scaveranasaur1897]

Wait, this is basically how jellyfish reproduce.

[@MmM-sd1yn]

Awsome video! Can I ask you two questions? (maybe for a future Q&A) Do you have any tips for starting a worldbuilding youtube channel? And can you consider maybe doing a river basin lore and mythology video? Im so interested in their culture and infertility situation I really want to see how they explain the world around them!

[@WorldbuildingNotes]

I've not had any good ideas for mythology yet, but if/when I do, I'll make a video about it. As for starting a worldbuilding channel, the only tip I have is always doing your best! Because when you post stuff on youtube, you're basically competing for the viewers' attention against literally every single other video that exists on this website, some of those videos being produced by whole film crews with funding etc. So making the best videos you can make is important.

[@VulcanTrekkie45]

Interesting idea! I’ve always wondered actually why you like to mess around with reproduction so much in your worlds. Is it just because people generally don’t touch it?

[@WorldbuildingNotes]

It's because it completely breaks everything, and it's fun to try building things back up.

[@paualamar]

Worldbuilding Notes Interesting mindset. And Sorry I totally readed that in your voice. 😜

[@VulcanTrekkie45]

Worldbuilding Notes That’s a good point and I never thought of that. Cool!

[@voidinkstudios8753]

I know this video is old by now, but I'd like to share a quick note about the "gestating the baby in the thigh" thing. There's actually mythological precedence for something like that to be mentioned, especially around the Mediterranean. Zeus gestated baby Dionysus in his leg after he accidentally vaporized Dionysus's mom. And this idea was probably much grosser than the wording implies. In Greece, leg injuries (especially the thighs), where oblique ways to refer to ball injuries. So, that might be in the same ballpark as what Lucian was talking about.

[@WorldbuildingNotes]

That moment in the video was actually a mistake on my part -- I had misremembered what Lucian had written. The babies were gestated in the calf rather than the thigh. (I've been kicking myself for this mistake ever since.)

[@person2225]

So did video game makers get inspired by Lucian's ideas too? Because the whole disappearing when dying does seem quite familiar..

[@ViridianForests]

Well, it probably by necessity (not enough memory to keep the very first ones there) and by design (a pile of bodies would take up too much space and ruin readability) in the first games with violence, which were arcade games

[@PalatiunsSharpshield]

This remind of the world of the anime "twelve kingdoms". There sacred tree in each village where a couple can tie ribbon in one of its branches and pray, and one baby will be born from the fruit of that banch, the baby will even look like the parents. the funny thing its, a good part of the plot is that our world exists in that universe, and sometimes people from our world would be taken there by "magic natural disasters" and the people of that world find the idea of growing a baby in a woman belly disturbing.

[@motc8238]

My mum walked in on me during the testicle tree part

[@cameoshadowness7757]

That is awesome to expand upon but it does leave to more questions. Hopefully some can be explained later. *fixed an error, thanks for the help bud!

[@Samuel_J1]

Expand upon** :)

[@cameoshadowness7757]

@@Samuel_J1 thank you so much!

[@greatestaxolotl4933]

i suppose this would ensure better parenting since you have to be really sure that you wanted children lol

[@1papaya2papaya]

Ewa: Recycles weird idea into something awesome Me: hehehe penis trees

[@qwertyTRiG]

Holy hell, the related videos are all kids stuff.

[@Samuel_J1]

I know right? I'm so confused.

[@sizanogreen9900]

Good to see you never change:P

[@shadeddreamer6864]

Ewa uploaded nothing else matters.

[@VolkColopatrion]

what is the point of fiction if you don't have an obcene tree

[@dakrakenz5314]

How would you explain this to a doctor?

[@mollof7893]

This is funny and silly but I like it

[@coolepicperson4150]

why are all the moon dudes dummy thicc

[@viorp5267]

Yay Ewa uploaded also also the recomendations on this video are weird. Like iNdian Kids Shows.

[@johannageisel5390]

Btw., in German the word for "acorn" and the word for the glans penis is the same: Eichel. There, that's a thing you know now.

[@gerytabennett86]

Cool video

[@paualamar]

That means a man can plant only up to 2 trees, right?

[@TSBoncompte]

well, you see, there's this rare condition . . . .

[@TSBoncompte]

:o sempai noticed me

[@aliceh5289]

Wouldn't every child be a clone of the father, though? So if one father was susceptible to a certain disease, his entire line could die out from it.

[@moonrockblink]

Who says they'd necessarily have to be clones? Perhaps the children's "mother" is some kind of earth spirit (moon spirit?), and she differentiates them somehow. Or maybe the tree itself makes changes.

[@kathleenwoods8416]

Abiogenesis is usually a bit more complicated than that for organisms that commit to it.

[@JeffersonCalaway]

I'm not sure why, but the side bar/up next/suggested videos I see for this video are weird. Every other video I watch the side bar reflects stuff I normally watch. For this video it's all weird algorithm kids videos for toys, video games, etc.

[@HlootooThunderhammer]

Screwed up reproductive/courtship methods are my jam too, but I’m always wondering what’s keeping everyone from becoming The Habsburgs 2: Electric Boogaloo. How are these guys avoiding creating genetic clones of themselves, but then again does it matter?

[@WorldbuildingNotes]

The trees get pollinated by other trees!

[@glanni]

Sounds like a Sylvari-esque children-of-the-foresty civilisation to me. Bc why would plant people have meaty sex? I love plant people

[@danthiel8623]

Interesting but highly disturbing.

[@ziril3972]

wow, interesting!

[@donovantownshend8783]

nut trees

[@fabiosilva9637]

Cool, a slave-maker

[@WeatherWonders]

Let's give it, say . . . another hour for someone to take this comment seriously.

[@fabiosilva9637]

@@WeatherWondersyou must be joking right? Have you got no perspective?

[@ziril3972]

AH

[@ColinPaddock]

AH! Another lover of alternative reproduction!

[@ColinPaddock]

So as a kid, I was always fascinated by this image. (imgur.com/gallery/v30UEnp) It looked to me like a field of plants gestating embryos. These plants were being tended by what looked to be heavy-tailed bipedal teddy bears. They may have been reptilian, but I doubt the graphic designer that threw this picture together for a cheap plastic playset spent as much time considering the xenobiology of this scene than he spent painting it. But I certainly considered it. This was probably my first study in xenosexuality, done while I could still sing a lovely soprano😐. I figured it was just what it looked like. The plants in this sacred grove were gestating little baby “bears”. Priests of the locally-dominant religion tended the plants and carried off the fetuses when they were ready to “hatch”(“be born?”, “sprout?”). The male and female “teddy bears 🐻” had no personal or social awareness of gender as such. They used an organ that might be considered a penis or ovipositor to place their “seed” in a plant. Any tendency to avoid competition for use of the plant was avoided by their natural unawareness of gender, so as they needed an individual of the opposite sex to impregnate the same plant, an attitude of “the more the merrier” was natural. Ultimately, only two eggs would be gestated by any one plant. There was also, however, a natural spirit of promiscuity among the teddys. Spread your genetic heritage into as many plants as possible to maximize the likelihood of passing on those genes. Some cultures would restrict that promiscuity to a greater or lesser degree among teddy cultures, and some cultures even celebrated and promoted it in great orgiastic bacchanalia. Cultures on either extreme would look upon those at the other extreme and sneer at the benighted perverts. The feeling was utterly mutual.

[@ColinPaddock]

This was when I was about 10-12. As I got older, I tried to narrow down the physical nature of this planet. The roots on those plants implied swamp or marshland. So for some portion of every local year, the water level rose enough to saturate the soil under those plants. The hilliness in the picture combined with the lack of any visible standing water implied that those water levels could change drastically. In that moment, those teddys changed from bears or reptiles 🦎 to otters or bipedal gators 🐊. This was a wet planet, with limited, but hilly land areas. The plants would grow on areas that had a regular cycle of being engulfed in water and then high and dry. Clearly a planet in an eccentric orbit around a gas giant. Presumably, itself in the habitable zone of its star. Its rotation would be synchronous with its revolution, but probably not 1:1. We want those seas to slosh around rather a lot. The tectonics and volcanic activity are gonna be pretty impressive, incidentally.

[@ColinPaddock]

That’s about as far as I got. Until I watched your video, I figured the teddys and the sacred groves were simply two species with a close commensal relationship. You and Samosata helped to close the loop. This wasn’t simply a birthing ground. It was also a cemetery. When a teddy died eir body would be interred in a sacred grove. There, depending on how you looked at it, a tree would grow from a seed within eir body or ey would go on to eir next stage of life. While genetically identical with the teddys from which they grew, they were no longer individually sapient. A photosynthetic, saprophytic lifestyle could not support a big brain AND two animal embryos. They did, however gather together in an immense sessile dendritic Intelligence, linked by their root systems and borrowing the developing brains of the young teddys they nurture. The teddys retain a shadowy memory of their connection to the dendritic intelligence of the sacred grove, and the sacred grove retains diaphanous shreds of the far quicker, more mobile, but strangely shallow thoughts of the individual teddys of which they are composed. It’s a kind of immortality to subsumed into something far greater, far vaster and much stranger than what they had once been. But they lose a lot in the process. They are melted into an existing soul, and much of what they had once been, what they had once experienced would not make it through the conversion. The teddys, for their part, are sapient, but the minds of the sacred groves are the truly dominant species on the planet. I don’t know how much control either cohort holds over the environment. There’s no reason why the teddys couldn’t eventually create a technological culture as advanced as our own or even more so. Perhaps, they even discover the nature of the sacred groves and learn to communicate with them. While many teddy cultures believe the groves control the storms as well as the seasons and the cycles of life and death on the planet, it’s hard to know how much of that is true.

[@gunjfur8633]

(deez nuts)

[@SupLuiKir]

With the advent of artificial wombs, it could be entirely possible to have a male-only society. With no women around that need to be competed for or provided for, i think it'd be a very peaceful and prosperous society where we could all focus entirely on our life's works and passions.

[@elodin756]

You should read Ethan of Athos, a book about a " Chief of Biology at the Severin District Reproduction Centre on the planet Athos".

[@SupLuiKir]

@@elodin756 needs more atheism. Religion wouldn't be strictly necessary to uphold a male-only society. It can be done entirely with facts and logic.

[@aliceh5289]

Then there'd be competition for men, like in ancient Greece

[@SupLuiKir]

@@aliceh5289 Those in ancient Greece didn't have access to physically and behaviourally realistic sex robots. Sure, they'll still be a minority population of gay men, but they always have the option of using male-variant sex robots. They could participate in the gay dating scene if they wanted to, but they wouldn't need to.

[@theoctopuscats6510]

Hi

[@noheart8409]

Hi lol