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  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/black-nerve/apocrypha/duality-of-mantids",
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  "path": "/posts/black-nerve/apocrypha/duality-of-mantids",
  "publishedAt": "2023-01-26T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "> Every mantis has fluff on her antennae and spikes on her arms. You\n> don't know her until you've seen both.\n\nA heartlands mantis has two personas, known classically as their fluff\nand their spikes.  Or, as arthropods with a long history of relations\nwith mantiskind would put it, the mask and the monster.\n\nTraditionally, entomologists characterize mantes as having a hunting\nmood, focused and liminal, and a dancing mood, social and\nself-conscious. One finds the behavior of a diamantis in the dancing\nmood quite familiar --- it is, after all, what most interact with, the\npublic-facing persona.\n\nIn the hunting mood, however, a diamantis becomes a creature animated\nby singular motivations, near-mute and paradoxically aloof and\nalert. When a diamantis describes the experience, the words chosen are\ninvariably those of flow and clarity. \n\nWhen hunting, a diamantis may effortlessly slide into a kind of\nhyperfocus on tasks which catch their interest, doggedly keeping at it\nuntil reaching some sort of conclusion.  Should this hunt yield a\nprize --- if only wholly by analogy, such as an artistic creation or a\nsolved puzzle --- the hunter will be overcome with by a kind of\noverflowing pride, urging them to show off the fruit of their work.\n\nThus, they are driven to seek out other diamantes for accolades, and\nthey transform from hunter to dancer.\n\nIn the dancing mood, a diamantis becomes themselves again, and they\nare able to look upon other diamantes and feel kinship, recognizing\nthem as more than objects to be analyzed with regard to their hunt.\nFor all its virtues, the hunting mood is, after all, not without\ntradeoffs.  It's only when back in the dancing mood that a diamantis\nregains a sense of empathy, social modeling, indeed even a sense of\nself entirely. (All, arguably, impediments for the singular focus of\nthe hunt.)\n\nThe greatest virtue of the dancing mood is the capacity for abstract\nthought.  When hunting, diamantes report that it feels as though\nconscious understanding retreats away, the boundaries of the world\nfalling down, until all they experience is a stream of immediate\nsensory experience, to which they marshal only intuitive reactions.\n\nAt an extreme, some diamantes will return to the dancing mood as if\nawakening from a fugue state. They have no memory of what their hunt\nhad entailed.\n\n(Indeed, this is the folk etymology for why it's called the dancing\nmood. Not for the analogy that talking is like dancing, but for the\nritual of reenactment: traditionally, a dancer may express their hunt\nthrough a kind of dance to relive and remember their hunt --- though\nsuch lyrical dance is, to many, primitive and embarrassing.)\n\nAs you can imagine, talking to a hunting diamantes so often results\nin, if not silence outright, then blunt and brusque responses. They\nstruggle with the abstractions of language, unable to express their\nclarity of thought in words, and likewise struggle with the\ncomplexities of etiquette, unable and uncaring to be proper. \n\nThis has a ramification: the anxiety of what one might do without\ninhibition and consideration is enough to keep a diamantis in the\ndancing mood --- trying to hunt around another diamantes, especially\nones you don't know well, is embarrassing, inducing a kind of\nperformance anxiety.  Conversely, a willingness to hunt with another\ndiamantis is intimate, a sign of trust.\n\nWhat defines the dancing mood, and distinguishes mantes from other\nnoubugs, is ephemerality.  It's fleeting, just like the hunting mood,\nbut lasts shorter still.  Dancing is a brief exercise; rare is the\nmantis with any patience for talking.  It's a species-wide expectation\nthat socialization is draining, that everyone needs time in private to\nrecharge.\n\nIndeed, long sustained social interaction is, if anything, felt as\nthreat to a diamantis. You wouldn't be dancing for this long, one\nmight think unconsciously, so the other only conclusion to draw is\nthat you aren't dancing --- you're hunting.  Hunting me.\n\nIt's not a misplaced worry.  Diamantes can hunt many things, and the\nhunting mood's difficulties with abstraction and social interaction\nare matters of skill and it being ill-suited to task --- not\nimpossibility.  A diamantes who hunts other diamantes as they dance is\ndangerous, a defector who wouldn't have qualms exploiting others.\n\nFor this reason, interaction among mantes tends to grow ritualized,\nconvoluted in ways that trip up hunting mantes or yank them out of the\nmood. This may be the very reason why social interaction is so\ndraining for mantes.\n\nWhen a mantis is drained, they retreat to hobbies. Every diamantis has\na ravin, some activity they've latched onto as a hunting trigger,\nsomething engaging that draws them trance-like into the mood whenever\nthey need the release of striving and seizing a new prize.  You can\nsee how this forms a loop, a cycle mantes continuously live through.\nHunt for a prize and feel pride, show off the prize in dance and feel\ndrained, retreat to the comfort of another hunt.\n\nWhen it comes to hobbies, an odd consequence of their duality is that\ndiamantes have much sharper divide between action and drama in their\nmedia than other bugs. Thinking about exciting action or special\nproblem-solving pulls a diamantis into the hunting mood.\n\nA hunter won't really care for subtle story telling; they just want to\ncrunch of skills proven and winners decided. Meanwhile, while a dancer\nwill enjoy very involved and fluffy storytelling, they won't tend to\nenjoy complex rules or involved action as much.\n\nAnything that wants to incorporate both must space them far apart, or\nemphasize only one, or suffer being less popular and accessible to\ndiamantes.\n\nThis raises an question: if what a diamantis wants is so contingent on\ntheir mood, how do other diamantes identify which state another is\ncurrently in?\n\nThe first place to look is the labrum, the upper 'lip' that falls over\na diamantis's mandibles. When it is raised, exposing the mandibles,\nthe diamantis is very likely to be hunting.\n\nAnother place to look is the antennae. If the hairs have stood up just\nenough to give the antennae a more 'floofed out' look, that diamantis\nis likely dancing, especially if the antennae are bent into curves or\nloose spirals. Gently curled antennae are a cue for a relaxed state,\nwhile straightened antennae are serious, attentive, on edge.  (Note\nthat when the antennae stand up fully, making the antennae look as big\nas they can, that often means surprise and agitation.)\n\nA third place to look is the raptorials. A diamantis exposes their\nforeleg spines when hunting, and it is very rare for a diamantis to\nopen their forelegs when dancing; doing so is taken as threat signal.\n\nDiamantes themselves can often read each others' mood state with a\nlook in the eye; but this is largely based on nonvisual sensory cues\n(facets dilate and the dewdrop pupil-lenses change shape; but one\ncomponent is a very minor, innate feat of nouprojection).\n\nFinally, the last general clue as to a mantid's state is their scent.\nDancing mantes emit a particular pheromone, often sweet, floral or\notherwise inviting (though varying greatly depending on the bug),\nwhile hunting mantes (for obvious reasons) have no characteristic\nscent, and emit far fewer pheromones.\n\nObviously, the bimodality of hunting and dancing do not account for\nthe wide variety of diamantis emotions and mindsets, or even explain\nmost of it. But any treatment of diamantis emotions must remain very\naware of the divide, because what may be one emotion in other bugs can\nmanifest very differently between the two moods.\n\nConsider the very simple, 'primal' emotions of anger and aggression.\n\nWhen a dancing mantis is threatened, challenged, or agitated, the\nresult is termed the push or pull response. You might imagine this\nas a relative of classic fight or flight. For a mantis, this is a\ncomplex mixture, with elements of anger, fear and disgust. \n\nWhen faced with something infuriating, frightening, or noxious, a\nmantis can either push it back, or pull themselves away from it. A\ndiamantis giving the push response poses in threat display, hissing,\nunfurling their antennae big and straight, and angling their forelegs\nso the bright contrasting patterns on their the inner side show. If\nthey have wings, their wings unfurl and reveal the eyespots.\n\nIn sum, they look intimidating. When a pushing mantis is particularly\nincensed, they may attack --- said \"attack\" being punching or pushing\nwith the tarsi, without using the arm-spines. Even in the grip of\nthis cousin of rage, a dancing mantis isn't trying to kill, and their\nnatural weapons remain sheathed.\n\nContrast this with a hunting mantid's response. A hunting mantid faced\nwith a threat tightens into danger stillness.  It's the look of a\ndiamantis posed in patient ambush, a spring coiled tight. A diamantis\ncan leap twice their body length and unerringly close their raptorial\nvise around their target; a diamantis gone danger-still is unknown\nseconds away from doing this.\n\nUltimately, the push response is a way of asserting dominance, and\nthere's little dominance to be had over a corpse. When a diamantis\nfeels truly threatened and they really wants to harm, their antennae\nfold up tight and protected, and stand waiting as silent and unmoving\nas death for the chance to chance to strike and kill.\n\nOr consider sadness and despair, what many diamantis cultures consider\nmerely an impotent subtype of rage. A despairing diamantis in the\ndancing mood might cry and whine, seek comfort and guidance from\nothers of its kind.\n\nThe closest a hunting mantis feels to this can only be seen as a\nspecies of frustration or confusion, and the hunter seeks only private\nrumination, turning the problem over in their head. Attempts to help a\nhunter in such a state might be met with aggression, a lashing out;\nalmost certainly, they won't be appreciated.\n\nIndeed, many languages have particular words for such a state,\nparticularly when such a state persists for a spell. Mos",
  "title": "The Duality of Mantes"
}