Pota - Blog Posts

Planet of the apes is so cool woahhw

The four great apes (minus humans)

More ape facts!

-There are five species of great apes: Orangutans, Gorillas, Bonobos, Chimps, and humans.

- All apes but orangutans and humans live in tight nit groups. Gorillas and chimpanzees typically live in patriarchal troops led by one dominant male. With bonobos, their groups are typically led by a matriarchal system; multiple female bonobos hold the authority rather than one dominant male. Orangutans on the other hand completely, live semi-solitary lifestyles

- Although in the movie franchise planet of the apes bonobos are often depicted as more violent than chimps in the cases we’ve seen them, it’s usually the other way around with bonobos being the chiller of the two ape species

Caeser

Gaia my beloved, she is a very distant relative of Caesar through a sibling of the wife of Proximus Caesar (yes i headcanon that proximus is ironically the real descendant of Caesar and no he did not realize this was actually 100% either). She is very loosely inspired by Dr. Zira and Ari, as well as having some inspiration from Jordan Baker in the Great Gatsby. I forgot to specify this in reference but she is from one of the handful of “Old Money” chimpanzee families, and she holds a lot of prejudices that she doesn’t even realize are offensive (inspired by Dr. Zira’s blatant hatred for gorillas and orangutans in the og films).

Georgiana another one of my favorites ✨ A gorilla beauty standard in this AU includes them painting their teeth black (reference to how irl wild gorillas often have black teeth due to their diets that are high in tannins), and you also get to see Georgiana without her makeup and with visible freckles on bottom left yippee

More roaring 20s AU ‼️ This time showcasing three more characters (designs will be tweaked a bit since I’m trying to get more comfortable with drawing apes in my art style) and focusing on the complicated relationship between two of them

- Russell “Rusty” McGowan (Chimpanzee): a bushmeat hunter that works directly under Georgiana’s husband, Edward Cavendish. He lives off of the money he receives from the illegal trade for the sake of supporting himself and his young son, Forge, following the tragic death of his late wife, Ambrosia Callaway. Tends to be a bit reckless and is willing to do anything for a quick buck but is overall considered to be pleasant to be around, and is a bit of a hopeless romantic. Affair partner to Georgiana following what was originally meant to just be a one night stand but, they’ve continued seeing each other ever since; he enjoys/admires Georgiana’s feistiness and resilience.

- Georgiana Cavendish (née Leigh; Gorilla): “new-money” owner of a popular speakeasy, a former “Gibbon Girl” model (reference to irl “Gibson Girls”), and is considered to be a highly respected socialite due to her connections with Virginia and her husband being a feared gangster. She has a young daughter, Ortensia, who she genuinely loves very much and at best, simply tolerates her marriage to Edward but as time passes she finds herself becoming more and more miserable about it. She is a very flawed individual with many biases that she finds hard to overcome due to the way she was raised but ironically through her affair, finds herself slowly becoming more willing to understand other points of view.

- Virginia Seymour (née Callaway; Orangutan): “old-money” heiress to her late parents’ fortune and niece of controversial political/religious leader, Phineas Callaway, who is currently limiting her affluence with the excuse of “a young woman like herself just wouldn’t know what to do with all that cash!”. She is the childhood friend of Georgiana, a former “Gibbon Girl”, and is a well known socialite among those who follow the “Order of Caesar”. She is married to Finnegan Seymour—a bit of a corrupt lawyer, and is the loving mother of their baby girl Cornelia Faye—named in honor of the first ape queen Cornelia. She is cousins with the late Ambrosia Callaway, who she was raised with like a sister due to orangutans low birth rate and high rates of miscarriages/still-borns.

My silly art account 👆 where I shall discuss pota stuff

No one asked but i shall slowly deliver my Roaring 20’s themed Planet of the Apes (future) AU starting with one of my personal favorites, Dorothea May the Bonobo.

Bonobos by the time this AU is set, are uncredited for inspiring the flapper look which includes styling fur into a bob-cut style and shaving off most of their hair off as a reflection of their society’s view of hairlessness as a status symbol (seeing as back in the day, alpha female bonobos were typically hairless from over-grooming by subordinates). The majority of them have French surnames and were heavily isolated from the other ape species—minus Gibbons who they’ve had friendly relations with for centuries—resulting in them sometimes “Americanizing” their names when they move to the main setting of this AU, Soror, which is dominated by the other apes species.

I’ll probably go more into depth about Bonobo culture in this AU in a separate post mainly because it’s quite long and I have many thoughts 😭 also the symbol on her necklace is meant to be an ancient emblem for Bonobo beliefs that has long since been interpreted in many different ways, it is the Yerkish symbol for “hide”

For a vague idea of the AU, it’s very loosely inspired by the original POTA novel which is vaguely based on early 20th century America and the concept of flapper apes came to me so here we are. I plan on taking inspiration from the original novel, the reboot films (seeing as this is meant to be set maybe around one to two thousand years after), some bits that I genuinely enjoyed from the Tim Burton adaption of POTA, “The Humans” comic series, and unsurprisingly the Great Gatsby lmao