#Half a degree

[astro-b-o-y-d]

Nightmare realm prom is sort of sad if you think of it as Bill trying to do the things he isn't able to for one reason or another. (in this instance, he never reached highschool, and whatever school he might've been to is ashes by now) it would be heartwarming to see him have that experience if it wasn't for the fact he's evil, learned nothing, and also 300 people died.

HEY ANON, I love this thank you. But also AUGH

[yellow-yarrow]

Dolores Dei web weaving / art history connections

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 271

“Grandmother is visiting,” Damian suddenly said with no warning and with his usual not-quite demanding tone. 

“Who?” Tim wasn’t the only one to startle, seeing as Bruce had practically froze, a downturn to his lips in a silent show of confusion. 

Damian scowled. “Are you deaf Drake? Grandmother is coming to Gotham to, quote, make sure I am being properly cared for.” None of them had known that Ras was with anyone actually. At least Tim was pretty sure that would have been in the files. 

“Oh?” Dick didn’t quite crouch to Damian’s height but it was a near thing. “She-” “He,” Damian corrected, interrupting him. They all exchanged a glance before Dick continued. 

“Is he coming to the Manor or…” 

Damian scoffed again, a tiny bit of a flush against his face. “No, Grandmother will most likely be staying with Akhi-”

Now wait one moment-

“YOU HAVE ANOTHER BROTHER?!” 

[karlydraws]

The Sweater Season is now in full swing

[dollya-robinprotector]

Once upon a time... Reference: Hylas and The Nymphs by John William Waterhouse

[renshengs]

beyond evil (2021) occupies a very interesting space in the larger expanse of crime shows. like, it is a Cop Show. it is undeniably a Cop Show even if the two main characters, who are both cops for very different reasons, are handled with significantly greater awareness and intention than usual.

it is also, impressively, a show that pierces the real ugly rot of 1) police corruption and its overlap with capitalism 2) atrocious real-life lawmaking 3) the poor handling of femicide in stories. i cannot express how abruptly shocked i was to discover that i did not hate the way this show was carrying itself, despite its crime drama genre, narrative about two homoerotic cops, and its murder mystery premise featuring a plot about a serial killer with solely female victims. here is a story that understands its purpose and is so clear-eyed about it that i did in fact tentatively suspend all my wariness about Cop Shows to watch it—and what i got was a scathing response to every serial killer and true crime documentary out there. a narrative that said: enough. enough. look at the way grief rots people from the inside out. look at the way loss ruins lives. do not forget the sufferings of the innocent.

far too many crime dramas possess an incredibly dehumanizing analytical tone to them that goes, “what if these poor women died in brutal gruesome tragic ways? anyway, look at these men and their heroic journey for justice!” it’s why i can’t fucking stand to watch them for the sake of my blood pressure. while beyond evil is not exempt from using such gruesomeness as a part of its horror aspect, the women in this show, particularly the women who were murdered, occupy such a heavy weight over the narrative that it is impossible to reduce them to what they’re usually reduced to: numbers in files, or cold cases. and because the purpose of beyond evil is to examine the ways grief and loss bring about destruction to people’s lives and communities, these women cannot be seen as numbers. they need to be vivid and real; the audience needs to feel their loss as deeply and gnawingly as the townspeople do. as we would in real life.

personally i’m still surprised at myself for liking a Cop Show this much—because the law enforcement sympathy is unavoidable in a cop show—but then i’m also shocked at how immediately this show establishes its awareness of police power. i don’t mean it gives a passing nod, like a brief disclaimer. i mean that you watch until the end and you’re like: oh! the entire fucking show is about police power and its consequences! this entire goddamn show is about cops’ potential for harm and how it destroys lives! the main character only ever became a cop out of desperation because he realized it would protect him from suffering further at the hands of the police. because he realized it was the only way for him to get access to both the information and the legal power needed to take his own steps to solve his sister’s murder. it’s not radical—it’s a cop show. but it is novel. a cop whose relationship with his own occupation is bitterly resigned at best and traumatic at worst.

this is far from an original thought, but truly i think what makes beyond evil worth watching is that it is so incredibly careful with itself. its meta awareness of its own genre heightens it to a tier above other crime dramas—it knows and rejects voyeuristic perspectives into the lives of people who’ve suffered real loss and tragedy, and so it makes the loss inescapable. every direction you look, someone’s life has been irrevocably altered by the murders you learn about in the story. it gives you no space to push away the murder—no, you need to sit directly in its field of impact. all the fucking time. you are not watching the town suffer, you’re suffering with the town. the story sucks you in and makes you live alongside the rest of them; it's why the first watch hurts so raw. because the story refuses to let you take a true-crime approach. because it refuses to prioritize the narratives of perpetrators over human lives. you are there, and you are hurting.

man. really, if you're going to watch anything, watch this.

[surreal-duck]

some business to take care of

[tentacleplains]

harper m.d. (2004)

[dear-ao3]

thinking about this one authors note that i read on a fanfic awhile ago that was like "hey guys pls leave feedback i hate when people write stuff like 'the older man' or 'the englishman' or stuff like that to refer to people but idk how to not do that" like. just write their names. they're their names. no rules against using them a million times.

[shokujin-art]

Also don't forget to give some love to the old man 💖👌 ~

[eddis-not-eeddis]

In my early twenties I know more theology than most men in the churches I've attended who are twice my age. This isn't a boast, I am no scholar. I say this in abject horror and despair.

[from-here-from-me]

Congratulations to the cast and crew of "The Bear," for a record-breaking 23 Emmy nominations!

THE BEAR — Season 2

[anyroads]

British people: these avocados must go they're past their prime please won't someone eat them

The avocados:

[st4rstudent]

Winn + Mac fusion idea. lalala.

[numberonetribble]

Oh you KNOW that thing is going to taste 100% like food coloring 😭

[giulliadella]

Speculative Biology of Euclydeans (and Bill Cipher) part 3

Part 1, Part 2, Part 4

Reproduction and growth

I highly recommend reading the second part before this! This part is the continuation of second part and it talks about Euclydean reproductive system. I separated it because some people find reproductive anatomy NSFW.

As always, this analysis is based on two assumptions:

Before Bill Cipher became a demigod, he was a biological, living organism and so were the rest of his species.

Even after Bill Cipher became a demigod, he still retained some physical characteristics of his biological form.

There will be anatomic diagrams and discussions of pregnancy in this part, so content warning if you're sensitive about those topics.

And without further ado, let's get into it!

Reproductive system

One thing that we know for certain about Euclydeans is that they reproduce sexually. Bill has parents, a mother and a father and that is only possible in species that sexually reproduce. Because we know that we also know that males have testes and females have ovaries. This is because of biological definitions of male and female - a male is an organism that produces a lot of microgametes (small reproductive cells that don't have nutrients to feed the embryo) and a female is an organism that produces far less macrogametes (large reproductive cells that contain nutrients for the embryo). Hermaphrodites produce both types of gametes and some organisms produce neither - those are sexless.

Euclydeans most likely had males and females. Bill understands concept of gender, but also the one of sex. He claims that his species had 14 billion genders, but when talking about sexes, he only uses two: male and female. Now I don't know for sure whether Bill is a biological male, however, most of the insane shit he says points towards it. Whether it is him making inappropriate jokes about knocking up your mother or adopting toxic masculinity traits that humans have and also refusing to possess women all point towards him being a male.

Bill gets extremely uncomfortable when someone wants to touch or measure his sides, especially his "hypotenuse". Bill is an equilateral triangle, so he doesn't have a hypotenuse, but I tend to believe that what he calls hypotenuse is actually his base. Since touching Bill's base makes him incredibly upset and he calls people who do so "creeps", it's fair to conclude that that is where his reproductive organs are located. And it makes sense: in vast majority of animals reproductive system is located on the body side opposite of the brain.

I believe that Euclydeans give live birth. Bill is usually grossed out by humans and when he is, he is very vocal about it. There are only two human body parts that he isn't grossed out by: the brain and the uterus. I believe that's because those parts are similar to their equivalents in Euclydeans. Bill said that he was born, not hatched and he seems uncomfortable around the idea of laying eggs. He is completely comfortable with the idea of a live birth and uteri, so much so that he has actually depicted himself inside a human uterus which is an honor only brain has gotten from him.

This means that Euclydean females probably have a very similar uterus to humans and they give live birth. This also means that the fertilization happens inside the female, so males very likely have some kind of copulatory organ. Copulatory organ is basically a means for a male to deposit his sperm inside the female. In mammals it's called penis, in reptiles a hemipenis and so on. I don't know how would Euclydean copulatory organ look like, but it acts like a hemipenis - it's coiled inside their shell when it's not in use.

Despite having a uterus, Euclydeans are for sure not placental mammals and they definitely don't feed their babies milk. Thanks to Bill asking Ford why he didn't eat Stan while they were in their mom's belly, I have a theory that Euclydeans feed their fetuses via adelphophagy. Also referred to as "intra-uterine cannibalism", adelphophagy basically means that the mother produces a large amount of yolk-rich eggs and deposits them in her uterus. Some of those get fertilized and the others serve as food for her embryo. However, the goal is to nurture just one embryo while the rest will get used as food for it! This is a technique used by some sharks and it fits so well with Euclydeans too, since they, just like sharks and humans give very few births throughout their life - less than 10 and it's almost always to one baby. Adelphophagy is very hard on the mother because she has to produce a huge amount of yolk for her baby to eat, so she will have to have a "recovery period" when she won't be able to get pregnant again.

This also means that Euclydean fetuses have developed teeth and ability to kill and digest their unborn siblings. That is fucked up, but it's normal for them. Hell, human pregnancy could be called "intra-uterine parasitism" because our babies feed on mom's nutrients. And the baby that turns out to be stronger that the other embryos has already passed the natural selection test and is viable to live outside of mom.

Euclydean babies are born with teeth and they are capable of eating the same things that their parents do. They are also born with a very soft shell. Since the mother has to push the baby out of her vagina, just like we do, their babies are super soft and squishy so that they could leave the womb with as little trouble as possible. That super soft exoskeleton is why baby Bill is shown having yellow arms. The shell is as soft as skin and when baby's limbs are retracted into it they can actually use it as skin. Besides, Euclydeans are cold-blooded so babies, who are smaller and thinner than adults and have very little protection might want to keep their limbs inside the shell as a means of keeping warm.

There's one part here about males that I didn't talk about and that's the hat. The hat is a living part of a Euclydean and out of Bill's parents only one is shown having it. Since Bill has it too and he's a male, his father was the one with the hat. But what is the hat? Well, "if it doesn't make sense it's used to attract females" is a saying in biology for a reason. Euclydean girls are seemingly attracted to males who have long and muscular hats. Besides, Bill himself says outright that he has a "seduction hat" and it's just a comically large cylinder.

So Euclydeans are sexually dimorphic species: the males are characterized by having a large growth in a shape of a cylinder hat on top of their head which females lack.

2. Growth and development

Baby Euclydeans are all soft and squishy, but they will harden as they grow. The shell gets more triangular as it hardens. The babies probably have very soft skin on their limbs too and that's why their parents give them shoes to wear to protect their little feet.

Interestingly, Euclydean eyes grow with them which is a rarity among Earth animals.

Also, I am aware that Bill said that he's a preteen, but he's lying. He has adult proportions and a fully developed hat. Hat develops as the male matures, so preteens wouldn't have it. Bill is an adult with emotional maturity of a preteen and he's using that as an excuse for his behavior. He sucks.

Also they aren't born without limbs, I screwed that up, the limbs are inside the shell, that's what I wanted to say, but I'm not English.

One very interesting thing that I noticed is that Bill's juvenile form has two rows of bricks, but his adult form has three. This means that he adds segments as he grows and there's only one way for that to occur - MOLTING!

Like all animals with exoskeleton, Euclydeans molt. Molting is a process of replacing the old, small exoskeleton with a new larger one as the animal grows. Some animals, like millipedes, add extra segments during molting process until they reach adult size. This is the case with Euclydeans.

This is confirmed to me by that little bit about Fiddleford seeing Bill remove his exoskeleton to feed. Removing the exoskeleton to eat would be the worst adaptation ever, not only because removing the exoskeleton takes a lot of time, but also because the animal would be completely unprotected during a very vulnerable time such as feeding. So what I think happened was that Bill was changing his exoskeleton to look all shiny when he comes out of the portal and, since molting is a very energy demanding process, he wanted a snack afterwards. And Fiddleford barged at the worst moment.

The exoskeleton of Euclideans contains their pigments, so they need to wait for it to fully harden until they gain color and the skin becomes invisible under it again. They are soft and vulnerable in this stage. And, considering how Alex Hirsch draws Bill in human form, I headcanon that Bill is a bit chubby, which you can see here XD

But, I know what my freaky fanfic authors need to know: Could Euclydeans and humans have sex?

Well, since Euclydeans are as intelligent or even more intelligent than humans, you can discuss consent. And with that, have fun. There are definitely ways Ford could have fucked that triangle.

@unoriginal-starwalker thank you for your support with this. My degree is burning in hell together with me after being used to write this.