dumbassonmars

[dumbassonmars]

[dumbassonmars]

You wake up suddenly to find an androgynous being by your bed, congratulating you on your ascension to godhood and vanishing without explaining your domain or power set. Now you have to figure out what kind of god you are, and why you're a god to begin with

[dumbassonmars]

I am watching a mouse make a series of what I can only describe as Fuck Around Choices, and the Find Out is VERY excited to continue this little experiment.

[dumbassonmars]

They found that the bat noises are not just random, as previously thought, reports Skibba. They were able to classify 60 percent of the calls into four categories. One of the call types indicates the bats are arguing about food. Another indicates a dispute about their positions within the sleeping cluster. A third call is reserved for males making unwanted mating advances and the fourth happens when a bat argues with another bat sitting too close. In fact, the bats make slightly different versions of the calls when speaking to different individuals within the group, similar to a human using a different tone of voice when talking to different people. Skibba points out that besides humans, only dolphins and a handful of other species are known to address individuals rather than making broad communication sounds. The research appears in the journal Scientific Reports.

[dumbassonmars]

need a bi4bi t4t m/f pairing where the girl is a giant freak and not in the "cute manic pixie" way but in the "unethical experiments in my fucked up laboratory" way and the guy is a golden retriever who thinks he can fix her. and he brings her cute bento lunches and she's like "bradley shut up put on your fucking gloves and hold this possum down so i can graft these giant grasshopper legs to it"

[dumbassonmars]

My favorite fish at my new job is Diva she’s 35 years old and bigger than my hand and she eats directly out of the pipette and has a tiny little husband

I can walk up to this tank and be like “do you want shrimp” and this fish who is TEN YEARS OLDER THAN ME swims up all excited and wiggles around because she does want shrimp

[dumbassonmars]

4000cc breast implants :)

[dumbassonmars]

Some of the new items from my fave D&D NPC’s refurbished Slightly-Cursed Items Shop, in which she sells my players items ranging from effectively useless to legitimately deadly – but always entertaining. Feel free to use these tragedies!

[dumbassonmars]

op turned off reblogs due to getting harassed over this post but i agree with this too hard .m y post now

[dumbassonmars]

Human: Deal.

Fey: Very well. When you return home tonight, your mother will be in pristine health again. It will be like she never fell ill at all. Even the memory of her suffering will fade…

Human: Thank you so much. She means everything to me.

Fey: I know, I know. Let’s hope the price wasn’t too much for you after all… Only time will tell.

Human: So, when do we start?

Fey: …If I may ask you to elaborate?

Human: You said you wanted my firstborn.

Fey: Yes? And you agreed?

Human: Yeah, so, when do we start?

Fey:

Fey, blushing: Ah.

[dumbassonmars]

Imagine Pevensies at Hogwarts

So imagine that when tiny Hermione Granger walks into that train compartment looking for Neville’s toad, another girl follows her in because as soon as she heard the problem she got up to help. “I’m Susan Pevensie,” she says. When the subject of school houses comes up, she says “My brother Peter is in Gryffindor, but I’m not sure I’d like it.”

Susan is sorted into Ravenclaw, but she and Hermione, the bossy mothering ones, stay friends.

Two years later, Edmund is sorted into Slytherin. Any Gryffindor making nasty comments about Slytherins from that point on finds out that Peter can throw a heck of a punch if it’s called for. Susan worries about him down in that damp dungeon and knits him green sweaters trimmed with silver.

When Harry is in his fourth year, Lucy Pevensie is sorted into Hufflepuff, to her family’s absolute lack of surprise. Harry meets her once or twice, a tiny firstie with flying golden hair and a smile that lights up her whole face, Susan’s sister. (Pretty, gentle Susan with her dark hair and soft smile and patient kindness, the Ravenclaw who’s as ready to help Neville with his homework as Hermione with hers, and he hardly notices Cho Chang at all. Hermione helps him ask Susan to the Yule Ball, and she says yes.) Cedric is a friend of Peter’s, but Harry is a friend of Susan’s and the Pevensies cheer for both Hogwarts champions.

Imagine that after the terrible ending to that year, Harry receives several letters from Peter and from Susan, but that they suddenly stop during the summer. Angry, hurt, frustrated Harry is brought to Grimmauld Place, comforted by Sirius and kept in the dark by the Order, and not long before school starts, all four Pevensie siblings are brought to the house to see him.

And they are all… changed. Harry is so restless that he can hardly endure his own skin, but he is shaken into stillness by the change in them. Peter’s good cheer has vanished into quiet watchfulness, and Lucy’s smiles are all edged with sadness now. Edmund the Slytherin is quiet and haunted, but at peace in a way he has never been before. And Susan hugs him when they meet, but she looks at him as if she hasn’t seen him in so long that she hardly remembers him.

And in a quiet room in a forgotten house, they explain why. They tell the Boy who Lived about another country, inside a wardrobe, where the name everyone feared to utter was that of a Queen, of endless winter and the reality of war, of the years afterwards as Kings and Queens of Narnia, of decades passing and their own world almost forgotten… and then a stag, and an open door, and coming back to a world that didn’t know they were gone.

Imagine Harry believing them implicitly, because he can see the kings and queens looking out from behind young eyes, the way Susan lifts her head as if it still wears a crown, the way Peter’s hand sometimes reaches for a sword hilt that is no longer there, the marks of sorrow and of wisdom on Edmund’s once-petulant face, the way Lucy turns her head to listen for something no-one else can hear.

And imagine how everything changes. Imagine The Boy Who Lived with King Peter the Magnificent teaching him about warfare and leadership, with Queen Susan the Gentle teaching him diplomacy and patience, both truly understanding how it feels to be a child entrusted with the fate of a whole world. Imagine small, valiant Lucy telling him about Aslan, about Mr Tumnus, about sacrifice and love and small kindnesses that change the world.

Imagine Edmund the Just going into the Slytherin common-room when they go back to school, a thin, deep-eyed boy of thirteen with his calm voice that speaks of justice, of peace, with the bearing of a king and deeply personal knowledge of evil and betrayal. Imagine him telling them ‘you are better than this, you are better than He Who Must Not Be Named can ever be’ and believing it.

Imagine a hunt for Horcruxes organized by Narnia’s finest hunters, imagine Susan’s arrows and Peter’s sword against wizards who can dodge a hex but have never had a weapon turned on them before. Imagine Neville Longbottom’s rebellion at Hogwarts aided by Edmund and his Slytherins who have learned that they are worth more than this, imagine Lucy flinging knives and curses against the teachers who would hurt them. Imagine the Slytherins rising up and making the other houses eat their condescending dismissal, once and for all.

Imagine Harry Potter telling Lucy, when it’s all over, “I remembered what you said. That a sacrifice willingly made is different, that it changes everything.” Lucy asking ‘did it help?’ and Harry telling her that it did. Because he didn’t want to die, but he could sacrifice himself to save others, to undermine Voldemort’s power in a way he couldn’t understand, and that helped.

Imagine Peter and Susan and Edmund and Lucy coming back not to a mundane world, but to one in desperate need of them, of the knowledge they have, of adult wisdom in friends young enough for Harry Potter to trust. Imagine them rebuilding Wizarding England the way they rebuilt Narnia and understanding ‘this is why. We needed to do it there so we could do it here’.

And imagine that they don’t die. Imagine that they live, and prosper, in a world that has enough magic to hold them there, and Susan grows up and wears her lipstick and her short skirts and so, in time, does Lucy. Imagine that Peter is the finest Minister for Magic in centuries and that Edmund is the Head of Slytherin that the House always needed, that Susan can achieve more with a smile in International Magical Cooperation than lesser diplomats can with a week of words and Lucy plays Quidditch and studies magical healing because she never quite got over the loss of her cordial but this, this is close. This is enough.

And imagine that the weight of the world is gently lifted off Harry’s shoulders and he can be just Harry Potter, with his world-saving done, knowing it’s in good hands.

[dumbassonmars]

In The End, Victory

I think we all know that I spend a lot of time thinking about tropes.

#

It’s happened a million times.

It will happen a million more.

Darkness and light, they call it. But that’s not it. That’s never been it.  

I never thought about it like this before.

We grew up as ordinary people, with the simple understanding of good and evil that children have. And then…

And then…

Then it got more complicated, like it always does. When you get older, you see the complicated under the simple. You learn that there are no easy answers, and realize how badly you want them. Especially when bad things happen. And terrible things are happening now.

I love my sister. I have always loved her. But she wants the answers to be easy so badly. She’s clinging to the idea that there’s a right solution, an easy answer, a simple way to make all this suffering end. Hers, and mine, and others’. And I know, deep down, that she’s wrong.

We tried over and over to persuade each other, with pleas and coaxings, with reason, with angry words. Our arguments got louder, and harsher. We both sought out others, the friends and strangers who agreed with us, who told us we were right, and our sister was wrong. I want to believe that I’m right, but we’ve never opposed each other before. As long as she believes in her path as truly as I believe in mine, how can either of us be quite free of doubt?

I know she had doubts too. I know it because of how hard she swears she doesn’t, this last time, of how passionately she insists that her way is right, with the fervour that means she’s trying to convince herself as well as me. How angry she gets with me when I argue back. We end the argument screaming at each other across the room, and this time the words are bitter-edged, final words, words we can never forget, perhaps never forgive. This is our last attempt to reach out to each other, I know it even as it ends. It’s over now.

And in that one moment of time, I feel it. A certainty that is more and less than a memory, the knowledge that it would always have come to this. That it always has, and always will. I don’t know if she feels it too, and I don’t know if I’ll remember it a moment from now, but I know. I know that some part of what we are is as eternal as the wind or the sun, the flow of the tide and the shadows of mountains.

I look at my sister across the room. Across the battlefield. Across throne rooms and deserts and bloody stones, across broken promises and nightmares and reconciliations full of regret. Across thousands of echoes, and eons of time.

The good one. The bad one.

Darkness. Light.

It’s never been a matter of good and evil. Of darkness or of light. What we are, what we have always been, is war and peace. The fight, and the negotiation. The open hand, and the closed fist.

And sometimes it’s the peacemaker and the warmonger, and sometimes it’s the freedom fighter and the collaborator, and sometimes one of us dies, and sometimes it’s both, and sometimes it’s neither. Sometimes we can forgive each other, and sometimes we always loved each other. Sometimes we’re brothers or sisters, and sometimes we’re enemies from the beginning.

But it always comes down to this. The two of us, facing each other. And we both believe we’re right.

One of us is wrong.

There’s only one way to find out who.

But I don’t have to hate her, and she doesn’t have to hate me. We are two possible answers to a thousand, a million problems, including this one. It doesn’t matter, in the end, which of us is right.

One of us will be.

And we will end this.

*

Note: Originally inspired by Faith and Buffy, but also a reference to Thor and Loki, Caramon and Raistlin, Peter and Edmund, Emerson and Sethos, and all the others who have faced ‘the enemy in the mirror, the friend across the field’.

[dumbassonmars]

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[dumbassonmars]

You’re strapped to a table. Surrounded by cultists. They’ve summoned their demonic deity and are preparing to sacrifice you. You’ve decided to go all-in on the only way out you have left. Make the demon an offer the cultists can’t match.

[dumbassonmars]

This is how the golden age of piracy ended.