Sha’an: Not What You Think

Information

Class: Sociology
Wc: 1,006

Publishing

Aut: Kaniovac ‘Andyda
Dt: 986 A.T.
Ogn: N/A

Related Links

• Sha’an

As early as the mid 630s A.T. academics as a whole and many varieties of sociologists specifically understood that the contents of Are They Who We Think? to be careless extrapolations of less than a handful of interactions to a whole species. This kind of research has long since been seen as irresponsible, and the long-held public misconceptions of Sha’an that still persist are evidence of the harm that this research can do.

Despite a few centuries of research almost exclusively disproving the assertions and assumptions from this work, if you ask most Omneuttians today what they think about Sha’an they will respond with ideas presented in little to no other research, showing that these ideas are still held in public consciousness. In light of not only centuries of research disproving these ideas and active efforts by academics of many fields, the public still largely believes these not just inaccurate but damaging portrayals of Sha’an and their culture. Do these ideas persist because of some inefficacy for active efforts to detach the public from them, is there some deep-seated desire for the public to hold onto exclusively negative ideas about the Sha’an, or was some of the first writings on the Sha’an and their culture able to root itself into the mind of the public so effectively that it anything contradictory appears unbelievable?

Published in 384 A.T., Are They Who We Think? is constructed from one firsthand account of a Sha’an, one purported firsthand account, and three more secondhand accounts: interviews with other omneuttians who have seen Sha’an. No shani were interviewed or contacted directly. This would be inexcusable in modern research, but the context of the time must be understood. The Sha’an were first contacted by the Poria in 42 A.T., yet over the next 300 years, few pori travelled to The Blade, and it is unknown how many shani traveled out of The Blade and unfair to make even educated guesses about this number.

However, we do know that the celestial travel capability of the Sha’an was limited to deconstructing and reassembling scraps of crashed and stolen ships, or outright loans from other Species based on contemporaneous records of crashes in the Egur-cluster from the late-200s through the period when the work was written. Contextually, encountering a shani in Omneutta would be rare in this period so the number of encounters presented in the book are not out of the realm of possibility, such that two firsthand accounts and three secondhand accounts collected over the span of a decade are possible.

I will abridge the assertions made in Are They Who We Think? for reader understanding. Chronologically, a sha’an is said to have scaled a vertical wall and been able to immediately jump from roof to roof to disappear. The purported firsthand encounter centers around claiming to see an avoc with the tail of a shani. Even though it is widely believed that shani can change their form, this account claims to have seen a much taller and lankier avoc – around the height of a pori – with a tail of a shani, a claim that according to modern knowledge and records of shani shapeshifting ability is not to be believed. The three secondhand accounts claim a shani stepped out of some kind of portal on a wall—not through a door but a portal on an exterior surface of a building—that appeared and disappeared without a trace, that a shani picked up a xiruen by itself, and that a shani turned a pori to stone. These three claims are secondhand, have no corroborating anecdotal evidence in other literature and were never seriously considered in research.

As modern ethnologists and sociologist can verify, these claims have led to assumptions about shani and their culture that are still leading to active harm in Omneutta. With modern knowledge and understanding of how implicit biases of “other” cultures can be formed, the claims presented as factual accounts of a handful of shani are overdue to be examined by the populace at large.

Though it is well-understood that shani are generally among the more athletic and spry sentient species, at the time of this claim (estimating roughly the mid-300s A.T.) buildings in Parallelium were made with smoothed metal, rendering any vertical wall impossible to climb given the physiology of shani. There are no ridges or textures for their claws or pads to find traction on, so this specific feat would not be possible. A similar claim that a shani could with enough vertical force to begin a series of jumps between two buildings close enough would in theory be possible.

The claim of shapeshifting is referred to as a purported firsthand account due to issues with the presentation of the context of the claim not to be addressed here. The issue with the claim itself is centered on the tail. To our current knowledge of the few shani with the ability to shapeshift into another Sentient Species, if the transformation is not fully complete—for a number of reasons not entirely understood due to translations of sparsely available literature and the secrecy of shani willing to discuss it—it renders the shani in considerable pain, all but forcing the shani to return to their normal form. We are to believe that a transformation into the form of an avoc with the tail of a shani would be so painful to endure that any shani in this state would not be able to continue locomotion.

These two claims, along with the other secondhand accounts have contributed to documentable misconceptions of shani in cultures outside their own. It is a regular occurence to encounter an omneuttian holding a stereotype of a shani that not only “other”s them by default, but characterizes all shani as closer to beast than sentient species, and how we discuss them in their public absence explicitly impacts the biases we project onto them should we meet one. Sha’an are not who we think they are.