#The Pond Beast

[furmity]

Skölpaddan

People are always afraid that I'm bitten by my pet python. Of course I have been- once quite badly- but it happens so rarely. Really he's a good boy who doesn't even bite the vet.

The turtle on the other hand. (Chelodina longicollis)

Everyone seems to like turtles and understand why I'd want to have one- so goofy and fun!- never suspecting that it is HE who is the real menace. If the snake bites me I deserve it but this guy, THIS GUY.

Hamburger was an adult when I took him on. An ad on Gumtree. He was exiled from his former home for the crime of eating goldfish. His old home was close to the Happy Valley Reservoir (real place) and since you rarely see baby longnecks for sale, I think he was probably plucked from the wild.

They kept him in this small green hole without an island. They said they wanted to breed goldfish in there. They were sick of how he'd escape (reptiles will turn their back on you whenever they get the chance, it's not personal), and I learnt turtles can climb chicken wire.

He is a biting snake- necked pond beast whose pupils don't dilate. He has no teeth but long sharp claws for tearing his prey to shreds. He is food obsessed and strictly carnivorous. He actively tries to eat my fingers. It only happened once but he can musk when he feels threatened (smells like acrid stagnant water and lingers on the skin all day).

His upper skin is black and his pond is also black. When he spies on you from between the reeds it's like the whole pond is looking, he feels a hundred times his size. He is the pond, lurksome, kelpie- like (the Swedish näck even sounds like "neck"). It's sort of funny when you pick him up (from behind with the other hand distracting him) that his shell's only about 20cm long. Naaww.

We should all be very grateful that he is very small.

Hold him and he'll reach around to try and bite you, but pop him on the ground and he's a much shyer beast. You can even sit with him if he's on the land. He has a thing about boots, comes right up to them. He'll follow me around. Sit him on my lap and he'll climb my clothes (it is very surprising to me how well an animal his shape can climb), looking at my face.

He has communicated with me beyond food only once. It was a courtship head- bob. I, and my boots, are turtles to him... but my fingers are clearly prey... or at least the fingers bring the food. Who knows what he thinks. At any rate he knows a face when he sees one.

He is of uncertain age but could live for decades more. Very soon a youngin will be joining us (not going in with Pond Beast yet, though). That baby will probably outlive me.

[notyoujamie]

[kimiko24]

Wolves going for a dip

[couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name]

SKSJDDMSMDM WAIT HANG ON A SECOND.....

[khruschevshoe]

The Haunting of Amy Pond

Amy Pond, Doctor Who | aletterinthenameofsanity, there are lessons in life no one should have to learn (pretty little things wilt away)

(In which I read @aletterinthenameofsanity's Amy Pond character study and I just had to pull out my favorite lines and put them to images from the show because the imagery kicked me in the nuts.)

[amybugz]

behold! my shop launch

✨ amybugs.bigcartel.com ✨

ever wanted a wii play fish of your own? preorders for my latest vinyl stickers are up right now!

to celebrate my new shop opening, you can get 10% off your order by using the code LAUNCH10

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[comicaloverachiever]

We are in space! Whoo!

Doctor Who | The Beast Below

[loveisinthebat]

A Skrunkly Beaste

[boxedwinedean]

[Voting As Fire Extinguisher]+[The Beast Below]

[come-along-pond]

OC PRIDE MONTH CHALLENGE 2024. week four: queer artists week. day twenty-eight - june 28th.

My LGBTQIA+ OCS + 'The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess' by Chappell Roan who identifies as a lesbian!

'Uh-huh, I'm through With all these hyper mega bummer boys like you Oh yeah, I need A super graphic ultra modern girl like me We're hot, we're drunk Wow, look at her moving, baby, she's the one Oh yeah, I need A super graphic ultra modern girl like me'

For this week, you’re invited to create edits or write pieces inspired by all your favorite LGBTQIA+ artists. Whether it’s a Sylvia Plath poem, a Hayley Kiyoko song, or a Warhol painting, this week is all about celebrating the creatives that paved the way through our own creations. Good Luck, Babe!

+ BONUS

taglist: @bravelittleflower @ginger-grimm @dancingsunflowers-ocs @foxesandmagic @shrinkthisviolet @wordspin-shares @oneirataxia-girl

Send an ask/message if you wish to be added or removed!

[furmity]

Equinox chores

Hamburger the eastern long neck turtle lives in a pond in my garden. Hammy was a present from my parents for my nineteenth Christmas. For my birthday three weeks earlier they gave me a big aquarium and told me I should research and prepare for the turtle's arrival.

I knew I wanted a long neck, which is a native species in my region. Since he was adapted to the climate I decided he should go outside for full sunbathing privileges. Ood the carpet python (then Noodles) was upgraded into the new aquarium.

To create a turtle home I bought a large plastic in- ground pond. It sits above ground like a big bucket, ideal for renting. We have it still. I am quite attached to it because at $350 it was the first big purchase I ever made with my own money.

Hammy has sun, plants, fish, and can supplement his diet with whatever comes to the pond (generally snails and flies, but there was a year when some honeyeaters nested in a shading tree and...). He has a lovely mossy rock to sit on.

In my current home the pond sits on the pavers beside the shed. In all but high summer the shadow of the shed is enough to shade one end for him. Come autumn the shadow will creep so far that he loses all direct sun, so I move the pond to give him his basking site back. It's moved again in spring when the water is getting too much sun (even solar- powered beasts need shade, and it helps with the algae). Curiously the equinoxes are exactly the points when Something Must Be Done: the height of my shed against the height of the sun at this latitude.

Since this is a good opportunity for a deep clean it becomes a big job. Turtle is moved away for safety. Try and catch the mosquito fish of uncertain number. Pull out all the bricks, pots, and rocks which make up his basking island: they need to be scraped of algae. Cut back the plants who try to fill all available swimming space. Bail out 3/4 of the water so I can move the thing. The bailing has to be done very slowly and carefully through a net so the small fish I missed don't end up in the lawn. Scrape algae, search through mud for lost treasures (once found a missing ring in there). Drag and push heavy object bit by bit across the pavers. Reconstruct the island. Refill water. Replace fish and turtle.

It makes for a nice bookend to the hot and cold halves of the year. And he, a solar creature who spends the winter "in the underworld" like any solar deity, must have his temple moved to catch the last warm days.

He's still active, but sleeps in late after the colder nights. Very soon he will stop eating, and shortly after that he will vanish until the spring.

[notyoujamie]

My children. My screams. I could not save you, little ones. Such pain. And yet, still, still I am not brave enough to die, to let go of this wretched life. I will endure, but no more babies. I cannot, will not, suffer such heartbreak again. From now on, it's me against the world.

[doctorwhogirlie]

Doctor Who - The Beast Below

[aisling-saoirse]

Beaver Dam in Flooded Roadway, Hewitt, NJ - June 4 2024

[khruschevshoe]

You know what really gets me about Eleven’s run? Is that it starts off with an amazing thesis statement in the Beast Below which I think sums up the Doctor as a character more than any other line ever has. "What if you were really old, and really kind, and the last of your kind?...All of that pain and misery and loneliness, and it just made it kind."

Yes, sometimes the Doctor needs to be reminded of that fact, as when Amy has Liz 10 hit the abdication button, but the Doctor is kind. He is the man that cheered that "just this once, everyone lives" and was a "coward not killer anyday" and flung away a gun and even after the Time Lord Victorious arc, died to save a single man from dying from radiation. The Doctor and his companions bring out the worst in each other, yes, but they also bring out the best.

And then comes along The Girl Who Waited and the God Complex, which are just an extension of Let's Kill Hitler and eventually Angels Take Manhattan, which are all about how the Doctor takes people as companions because he needs someone to worship him, that he can't bear to see them age and would rather see them young and beautiful, that he is vain, that he is cruel, that he is a god, and I get that interpretation but at the end of the day, the Doctor has never been about vanity or worship or needing someone to keep him in check.

Because yes, companions have reminded him the importance of being kind as part of what is "necessary." The importance of having hope. But it's just that: a reminder. The Doctor is unlike the Master and unlike the rest of the Time Lords because he is compassionate. Because he hates to see children cry. Because he is a coward who is nonetheless brave enough to keep caring, over and over again, no matter how many people die in front of him, no matter how many times he loses those he loves, because the Doctor is a love story as much as it is a ghost story at the end of the day.

And it kills me that the main themes/character arcs of Eleven’s era boil down the Doctor to someone who is not that. Someone who, as the Power of Three ending/Angels Take Manhattan imply, had to have the Ponds to keep him in check. That he could not let them go, could not respect them and their choices like Ten did with Martha. That an entire religion formed itself, kidnapping a child and making her into an assassin, just to stop him from ruining the universe, because he is a god more than a man. That he is a god just like the minotaur, feeding off of people's faith in him, taking children and companions so that he can be nourished, so that he can feel important.

Because even at the Doctor's worst in the Time Lord Victorious Arc, it has never been about worship. It was about grief and loss and love and compassion, because the Doctor has two hearts because he has too much love to fill just one, because that is the kind of person that the Doctor is.

All of that pain and misery and loneliness, and it just made him kind.

[quietwingsinthesky]

i think so much about amy in the beast below learning the truth of the situation and immediately trying to spare the doctor that knowledge. making herself forget it and telling herself to get him away from there. trying to take away that choice, but also the inevitable pain that will come with it. that even this early, she knows the doctor well enough that if he knew what was happening here, he wouldn’t be able to keep himself from interfering, from doing something terrible trying to preserve as much as he could.

and then i also think about how the episode starts with eleven catching onto something being wrong because he notices a child crying, but amy only prevents him from killing a beautiful, irreplaceable creature by noticing that there are children laughing, too, being loved and being helped.

the doctor tells her she had no right to choose for him, but if he shut her out entirely, he would have missed how he could save everyone… They could only get this far together…