#I had a few candidates

[card-queen]

9 Lines 9 People

Tagged by @mister-writes over here! Thanks!

Rules: Share 9 lines from your writing and tag 9 people!

Just a piece from Chapter 2 from Memories of Aether. I still need to get back to Chapter 3 but the days have been a little too unpredictable.

The other tent, while similar to the previous two, housed a figure with the power to eventually shed light on this mystery. Across from the sea of slain Ethelian elites, stacked in the corner as the rest had been, was a body unlike the others. While the uniformed bodies had been cast aside with little regard, this one had been bound to a chair and seemed to have been tortured before death. The dead man appeared noble in garb, with ornate robes, furs and jewellery unlike anything Cas had ever seen before. The man’s face was mostly undamaged but utterly unrecognisable to Cas, who was familiar with all the local nobility and their family. While Cas did not have any familiarity with his High Lord, he would surely have been aware if High Lord Rodger Peren’s family had gone missing or gone rogue. The dead nobleman wore no signet ring nor any jewellery with an insignia; he displayed the appearance of nobility but with nothing specific to mark him out as belonging to any family. The dead man’s face was unlike any nobleman Cas had ever heard of, with rough features, a previously broken nose and missing teeth. Whoever he was, this man was clearly a key figure within this unit; either as their leader, or their key prisoner.

And I.. actually don't know if I have 9 people to tag or if they're actually able to reply to tags. So, if you see this and you want to be tagged, pretend I tagged you so that I know I can tag you in future!

[hyperlexichypatia]

I am begging people giving U.S. politics commentary to have, just, a basic, basic, 6th grade citizenship class level of understanding of the relationship between the branches of government. Please. You will not get icky electoralism cooties if you learn that "Whoever is the president right now is responsible for decisions the supreme court hands down right now" is nonsense.

[television-overload]

Didn't know how much I wanted that job until I got the rejection email 🥲

[goodplace-janet]

please answer this silly little poll of a me who was confused in a history lecture today

[lord-squiggletits]

Even though Pharma got a random cameo in one of the TFA side books (which means nothing to me because I don't care about supplementary material and anything that isn't shown in the main canon material, aka the show, is basically just paying for useless trivia that has no bearing on the main story), I kind of doubt he'll ever show up for any other stories in the future, and even if he does I'm not sure exactly how they'll play him.

I mean, Pharma in MTMTE got the reputation of "token evil Autobot" + "mad doctor who's a crazy murderer", and the general trend of TF media is that the character's first appearance in the franchise informs the way they're characterized in future continuities (for the most part). So I imagine that any future appearances of Pharma would just stick with the "mad doctor" characterization, and whether that characterization is interesting or not depends on the rest of the continuity's story. IDW1 had Pharma as a tertiary character whose days of being a normal good guy were shown in flashbacks, and his descent into madness was mainly offscreen/implied in exposition dumps, which was pretty good because it allows for a lot of theorizing and interpretations of his character. But considering how Pharma is otherwise a pretty obscure character, I think the odds are low that he 1. ever shows up in a meaningful story capacity again, and even if he does, 2. he'll probably inherit the "evil Autobot" characterization and not much else precisely BECAUSE that's the main standout feature of his character, and as an obscure character he would need to be "branded" in a way that puts his most stand-out features first.

[dancedance-resolution]

i apparently have Severe Vision Impairment? bitch i knew my eyes were bad but wtf??

[fragmentedblade]

Very interesting that Fu Xuan was regarded as the peak of efficiency and yet now we see her struggling with the position she has at hands, something noticed by the other characters, that worry and wonder how she'll fare

[whentherewerebicycles]

congratulations on the job! so glad that someone who's really passionate about teaching and learning is going to be in this role. can i ask about the application process and your approach? i just defended but i also have accumulated about two dozen ac-job rejections this semester and i feel like maybe i'm going about this wrong.

thanks so much and congrats to you on defending!!! so exciting!!! i'm not sure how much actual insight i have re: the job application process (i mostly live my professional life by just doing do everything @bottleupandexplode tells me to do) but i would be happy to discuss with you via DM if you want! and can also take a look at job materials if you think another set of eyes on them might be helpful, or share my materials if you want to see someone else's

[kumeko]

There's a lot of "but they have to earn my vote, so just blame X politicians" messaging going around right now and it's just...no. That's not how that works.

Yes, a candidate has to earn your vote. They certainly should be spreading their messages and going door to door and more.

No, that doesn't absolve you if you don't vote at all. You have to put in the effort too--learn policies, candidates, etc. You're still living in your country. You are still impacted by the policies of the winner. You are still dealing with the election results regardless. You're not living behind a magic wall, incapable of doing your own research.

It is called civic duty for a reason.

If you don't want to have a voice in it, then fine. Don't vote. But don't act like that erases your part in the process and whoever wins. Because by not voting at all, you automatically vote for the winner. And you'd better hope others aren't so apathetic that you get someone you hate.

"I don't want to see anyone blaming abstaining voters for this!"

Of course you don't. The entire idea of abstaining was that you could pretend this didn't involve you. Not getting blamed was more important to you than doing any kind of damage control, more important than protecting any of the people you said you wanted to protect. And in this moment, I don't really care what you want. Of course, this isn't entirely your fault. Of course other people made this worse. But if you're going to pretend you had nothing to do with this, forgive me if I ignore you.

[mylordshesacactus]

on endlings, and despair

Hey, y'all. It's...been a rough couple of weeks. So, I thought--better to light a single candle, right?

If you're familiar with wildlife conservation success stories, then you're likely also familiar with their exact polar opposite. The Northern White Rhino. Conservation's poster child for despair. Our greatest and most high-profile utter failure. We slaughtered them for wealth and status, and applied the brakes too slow. Changed course too late.

We poured everything we had into trying to save them, and we failed.

We lost them. They died. The last surviving male was named Sudan. He died in 2018, elderly and sick. His genetic material is preserved, along with frozen semen from other long-dead males, but only as an exercise in futility. Only two females survive--a mother and daughter, Najin and Fatu.

Both of them are infertile. They still live; but the Northern White Rhinoceros is extinct. Gone forever.

In 2023, an experimental procedure was attempted, a hail-mary desperation play to extract healthy eggs from the surviving females.

It worked.

The extracted eggs were flown to a genetics lab, and artificially fertilized using the sperm of lost Northern males. The frozen semen that we kept, all this time, even after we knew that the only living females were incapable of becoming pregnant.

It worked.

Thirty northern white rhino embryos were created and cryogenically preserved, but with no ability to do anything with them, it was a thin hope at best. In 2024, for the first time, an extremely experimental IVF treatment was attempted on a SOUTHERN white rhino--a related subspecies.

It worked.

The embryo transplanted as part of the experiment had no northern blood--but the pregnancy took. The surgery was safe for the mother. The fetus was healthy. The procedure is viable. Surrogate Southern candidates have already been identified to carry the Northern embryos. Rhinoceros pregnancies are sixteen months long, and the implantation hasn't happened yet. It will take time, before we know. Despair is fast and loud. Hope is slower, softer. Stronger, in the end.

The first round may not take. We'll learn from it. It's what we do. We'll try again. Do better, the next time. Fail again, maybe. Learn more. Try harder.

This will not save the species. Not overnight. The numbers will be very low, with no genetic diversity to speak of. It's a holding action, nothing more.

Nothing less.

One generation won't save a species. But even a single calf will buy us time. Not quite gone, not yet. One more generation. One more endling. One more chance. And if we seize it, we might just get another after that. We're getting damn good at gene editing. At stem-cell research. In the length of a single rhino lifetime, we'll get even better.

For decades, we have been in a holding action with no hope in sight. Researchers, geneticists, environmentalists, wildlife rehabbers. Dedicated and heroic Kenyan rangers have kept the last surviving NWRs under 24/7 armed guard, line-of-sight, eyes-on, never resting, never relaxing their guard. Knowing, all the while, that their vigilance was for nothing. Would save nothing. This is a dead species--an elderly male, two females so closely related that their offspring couldn't interbreed even if they could produce any--and they can't.

Northern white rhino conservation was the most devastatingly hopeless cause in the world.

Two years from now, that dead species may welcome a whole new generation.

It's a holding action, just a holding action, but not "just". There is a monument, at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, where the last white rhinos have lived and will die. It was created at the point where we knew--not believed, knew--that the species was past all hope. It memorializes, by name there were so few, the last of the northern white rhinos. Most of the markers have brief descriptions--where the endling rhino lived, how it was rescued, how it died.

One marker bears only these words: SUDAN | Last male Northern White Rhino.

If even a single surrogate someday bears a son, we have erased the writing on that plaque forever.

All we can manage is a holding action? Then we hold. We hold hard and fast and long, use our fingernails if we have to. But hold. Even and perhaps especially when we are past all hope.

We never know what miracle we might be buying time for.

[onrainynights]

🕯️manifesting my promotion🕯️

[rival-the-rose]

Just woke up from a dream where I was riding my beautiful Síf out on the trail and was conditioning her for endurance... My sleepy brain even made up a training schedule for her :(

[coolfoxykitkat]

Me: I have real actual experience for this job.

Job: That’s pretty good. We’ll definitely consider you as a viable candidate.

Me: I can pass a drug test immediately and I’m reliable.

Job: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE COME WORK FOR US PLEASE PL-

[pompommepurr]

[ID:

tweets by Shaun (shaunvids on bsky) @shaun_vids: liberal defenders of the status quo feel no sadness or anger when the deaths are caused by their guy, their thin platitudes about equality are contingent on which team is in office. if it is theirs they will make excuses and dehumanise the same as any open racist would

they actually feel positive about it. their ability to accept such injustices signals maturity and level-headedness to their fellow monsters. 'ah, but you see, it must be this way' - but of course if the other team were in office they would be crying injustice from the rooftops

end ID]

[britneyshakespeare]

this is my honest exhausted political hot take on the biden resignation situation. i don't fuckin care that we didn't get a dem primary