#and do a lot more world building and general build up

[ot3]

top 10 pokemon that are girls

'gender'.... much like 'animals' this is a concept from our world that has made itself present in the pokemon franchise. all pokemon began having genders (except for the ones that don't) in the second generation of games, in order to facilitate the pokemon breeding mechanic which has become a staple of the main series

you may think this means the issue of which pokemon are girls and which ones aren't is already settled. but do we really trust game freak to be the deciding voices on this one? i certainly don't. so here's a nonexhaustive look at some pokemon that are doing their best to be role models for young women everywhere who have been picking up and enjoying these games for decades.

#10 - NIDORAN♀

Not only is Nidoran♀ canonically a girl, she is the first pokemon to be canonically a girl as the gender distinction between Nidoran types predates the introduction of gen 2's breeding system that gendered all pokemon. she broke the glass ceiling, and for this we salute her.

#9 - KANGASKHAN

Both culturally and in media single mothers are subject to a lot of scrutiny and scorn, but kangaskhan breaks the mold. powerful, responsible, yet loving and joy-filled. the look on her baby's face tells us all we need to know; she holds on tight to the pouch, clinging to the safety she knows her mother can give her, but gazes awestruck and wide-eyed at the world around her, knowing its wonders will be there waiting for her as soon as she feels ready for it.

#8 - CELESTEELA

Technically, celesteela's gender is 'unknown', but it's obvious that celesteela represents what life can look like for a woman who truly has it all. As one of the largest and heaviest pokemon ever discovered, she's not afraid to take up space. she doesn't feel the need to soften herself to be more accepted by the world around her, but she's also comfortable enough with her feminine side to let it shine through where and when she wants. nobody tells her how to live her life but her and also she has big lazers

#7 - MISMAGIUS

Well she's not called MISTER magius now, is she?

#6 - LYCANROC

Perfect embodiment of the wolfgirl you knew (or, perhaps were?) in middleschool. There are many doglike/canine pokemon in the dex, but something about lycanroc's exaggerated unkempt mane and lanky, awkward posture evokes the physicality of a teenager who exists as a beast beyond the boundaries of her own body.

#5 - CHIKORITA

This saultry little binch...

#4 - RAYQUAZA

It's an uncomfortable truth in life that many women find themselves in the position of needing to play the mediator in order to stop the people around them from acting in destructive or harmful ways. But just because mediating conflict can be a difficult and unfair position to be put into, that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Rayquaza just goes to show us all everywhere how a real woman can still thrive under these circumstances, doing her best to build a more peaceful world while not letting that push her into the shadows or make her take a back seat in her own life. she is a community leader and an innovator.

#3 - SALAZZLE

She's the archetypal femme fatale. A dominatrix. A baddie. Does she make me uncomfortable? Yes, absolutely. But I'm not a furry so I'm not really the target audience of what's happening here.

#2 - SLAKING

I know so many butches who look exactly like her. you love to see it.

#1 - MEWTWO

as one feminist philosopher has said: "I see now that the circumstances of one's birth is irrelevant, it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are."

I think any woman living in a patriarchal society can sympathize with mewtwo's story. enraged at being treated like the property of the people who created her rather than her own fully realized person, she goes on a rampage where it quickly becomes obvious that she is even more powerful than that what she was originally created in the image of. Although this takes her down a dark path, she eventually learns to self-actualize by working on herself rather than pointlessly lashing out at people who had nothing to do with hurting her. it's empowering stuff. doubly empowering because she killed all those clowns who DID hurt her

now, of course, there are plenty more pokemon that are girls than just what i've listed here today. but i hope youve learned a little something from this.

[selkies-world]

Something something, Trump's vice saying that they need to execute people who don't support Trump, something something, Trump banning abortion & reproductive health care & birth control, something something, Trump saying Puerto Ricans just multiply and have lots of babies, something something, Trump being funded by Elon Musk, something something, Musk openly stating that the economy will suffer because Trump will give him free reign to have his Meta wetdream come true at the expense of the entire country, something something, Trump wanting to put transgender kids in "homes" away from affirming parents & wanting to have transgender adults "imprisoned" or put into "homes" or "camps", something something, Trump & Putin & Farage, something something, Trump & the big red button, something something, does nobody else remember Trump threatening Nuclear War with Russia & China & North (?) Korea over petty or racist things BEFORE RUSSIA THREATENED THE WORLD WITH NUCLEAR WW3 IF WE INTERVENE AND STOP RUSSIA INVADING UKRAINE, something something, Trump's supporters seeing him as the mesiah and saviour and King David and other god-like personas rather than a deeply flawed and power-hungry man with mental health issues who is not fit to run one of the biggest and most powerful and influential countries in the world, something something, leaving disabled and chronically ill people to die or suffer without medicare, something something, making it illegal to miscarry (& probably to have a stillbirth), something something, didn't somebody say it'd be okay under Trump to euthanize people who can't / won't contribute to the industrial capitalist society? Something something, Trump saying he wants the generals Hitler had, something something, the Nazi Euthanasia Programme (T4, I think?), something something, look in a history book and tell me what happened to the Jews & blacks in Germany when they were taken to centres & divided into those who could provide labour (& who were taken to concentration camps to becomes slaves and endure torture) and those who could not provide labour.

Look in a history book, and you will see that WW2 started in the 1930s, but there were signs of it coming on the 1920s. There was a build up, there was a gradual inclination towards it, and it was that inclination which put Hitler in power - before that inclination happened, he was the leader of a very unpopular party whom nobody paid much attention to. There were signs, there were bridges crossed, there were decisions made, there were votes won and there were more and more slippery steps to take before Germany announced war in the 1930s. And throughout all of that time, it was the minorities, those who would suffer the most just for existing, who felt the pressure first while the rest of society began to celebrate Hitler. It was these people who were growing uncomfortable with the fact regular education had been replaced by swastikas in schoolbooks, and with Hitler being featured in children's rhymes as a friendly father figure to guard over them all - and more so with the fact this was mandatory for every child to learn, and that teachers had two choices: teach children what Hitler wanted them to learn, or lose their jobs, in the best case scenario.

WW2 didn't just 'happen' in the 1930s; it was already being created in the 1920s.

We know this. We also know that we can match Trump's movements almost exactly to the steps taken by Hitler in the late 1920s & early 1930s. We know where this path leads, because we saw it before. We know where this path leads, because we have been down it before. We know where this path leads, because we were swept along by the current last time it happened.

It hasn't even been 100 years since WW2 began. It hasn't even been 100 years since the Holocaust; there are people who survived it who are still alive today.

It hasn't even been 100 years since the world went through what was perhaps the worst war in human history, to date.

Please do not make the world go through it all again. Because this time, there is different technology, different threats, and I promise you, it will not be the victory you want.

I know you're angry at the world. I know you're hurt, hurt to the point of being numb. I know you're tired and I know you're scared. I know you're scared of the unknown, which is why you might not be sure about voting for Kamala. Better the devil you know, and all that. But, America, I promise you, if you vote for Trump on Tuesday, you will damn your country, your people, and the rest of the world, to Hell. This election isn't happening in a vacuum - none of your elections have. Did you know that the UK celebrated when Obama legalised gay marriage? Did you know that multiple countries now celebrate 2 pride months, June and July, since Trump changed when the USA would celebrate it last time he was on power? Did you know that Scotland, Ireland and Wales study your civil war and your resistance and your wars of independence as intensely as we study the French revolution? Did you know that when JFK was assassinated, there were memorials and vigils held in multiple countries? Did you know that the global variation of English, AKA Globish, is more strongly influenced by US-English than British English, Australian English or Canadian English? Did you know that people who barely speak English can sing country songs word for word, with an American accent? Did you know that up until 2016, a lot of people in other countries saw the USA as the land where dreams come true - a whole country with the magic of Disneyland, where anyone can become anything, where the wildness is still free and where there are sights and sounds found nowhere else in the world? Did you know how influential you, your people and your country is to the rest of the world?

You're not voting in a vacuum, because the USA doesn't exist in a vacuum. I know you're scared - you know this election is important. I know you're hurt, because you haven't been listened to in the past, and Biden betrayed your trust, and you have no reason to vote blue this time around because you don't think Kamala will keep her word. I know you're reluctant to vote for her because she isn't openly stating that she will help Palestine; but the truth is that she and Biden have been trying to negotiate a ceasefire between Isreal and Palestine for a while now, while Trump has been in frequent communication with the leader of Isreal and has been encouraging the genocide to continue. This is what he does without the backing of your country behind him; what do you think he would do with the power of the Whitehouse backing him, when nobody can tell him no, when he will be seen by many as being above the law? Do you really believe that he'll save you, or anybody but himself, when push comes to shove?

Maybe Kamala isn't a Saint. Maybe her rule won't be perfect. Maybe it won't give you back the America you remember from your childhoods, and maybe she won't give us back the America we imagined your country to be. But she will save the planet from desolation, she will protect your people, she will protect your land, she will offer a chance for us to survive the climate crisis, and she will protect your sisters, daughters, wives, mothers, aunts and grandmothers.

If an 8 year old girl is raped by a neighbour, does she deserve to die in labour? Does she deserve to live with the changes forced on her body for the rest of her life, before it was ready? Does her mother deserve to watch her daughter go through that? Does her father deserve to watch his little angel suffer like that? Or does that little girl deserve a doctor who is allowed to save her life and what's left of her childhood?

Trump will condemn that little girl to death if she carries the baby to term and isn't provided the best medical care available. Trump will have that girl imprisoned if she has a stillbirth or miscarries. Trump will have that girl and her family imprisoned if she tries to have it aborted. Trump will condemn that girl for the rest of her life, due to something she had no control over and did not want or deserve. And he will say it's alright, maybe even good, that she suffered like that, because it's what she deserved. He will make up lies about her and her mother and her father. He will make them all into monsters for the rest of your people to hate, condemn and mock.

Kamala will save that little girl's life. Kamala will give that mother her little girl back, safe and healthy. Kamala will give that father his little angel back for him to protect.

Please, America. Please vote blue on Tuesday. Please vote for Kamala. Please vote for Harris. Please. Please, please, please.

Voting BLUE doesn't mean that you're saying "I agree with everything Kamala says, and I think she is a Saint, and I think she's going to save the world, and I think her plans are perfect."

That isn't what you're saying, if it isn't how you feel.

Voting BLUE means that you're saying "I disagree with Trump, and I don't want to turn the USA into the West's Russia, and I don't want to lose everything I know to the third world war, and I don't want to subject the USA to another civil war," because I promise you, that is what he will do if he gets your vote.

[ranticore]

I've often seen people ask you for drawing advice(which yes absolutely!) but what kind of writing advice could you give someone who wants to start? (or just narratives as a whole)

Ok my biggest advice and the thing I always spend most time on when editing is that u should tell the audience way less than you think you should tell them. Provide information sure but don't draw connections and don't hold a reader's hand. Like for example one minute ago I was reading over a paragraph with the final two sentences (paraphrased): "The word 'faery' didn't quite make it out of his mouth [in reference to himself]. He'd never thought of himself in those terms" and my editing comment was to nix that last sentence entirely because it's just saying out loud what the previous sentence is telling us, like holding ur hand and pointing at it saying "hey this is what that last sentence meant btw". it's easy to end up with a lot of that but you need to go back and cut all of those out. think about a reader drawing their own judgements, how much more engaging it is

Other random stuff I've picked up over the years

Kerb your worldbuilders disease ur writing a story not an encyclopaedia

Read your paragraph aloud to identify repetitive or weirdly structured sentences

There should be a clear causal chain running the length of the narrative - x happened because of y, which happened because of z, and so on. No matter how many links in the chain you should know it start to finish

Written media gives you an unlimited time budget, a reader can take as long as they like with it. You don't have to make it quick and snappy. You get to show & explore things that visual media can't, so take advantage of it. Also ditch every piece of writing advice which is like "trim all the fat and also imagine camera angles and scene cuts like it's a movie" because it's not a movie and you aren't constrained into a short runtime.

First draft is rough it's supposed to be rough just write it

It's impossible to write dialogue that nobody would ever say.. easy to scoff and think "nobody talks like this" but they do

I can't in good conscience advise everybody do this but the slush draft (draft 0 as it were) of stbh was narrated entirely in first person by the pov character in each chapter, with the framing device that they were explaining their actions to a judgemental third party. This was just done for fun before any other world building or even plot it was just to get the characters right first & to sort out how they would attempt to justify their actions, when they'd try to make themselves sound better (or worse), and just their voice in general. It ended up being absolutely invaluable

[desmon1995]

Female Warriors, Broadway, and the American Dream.

The Warriors have been out for about 2 weeks now and it's slowly but steadily building up a pretty passionate following.

I think one of the biggest changes that have been rough for some long time over years 79 fans is that the Warriors are now female, which some argue ruins the point of the original and or softens the story too much.

While I do respect everybody's opinion when it comes to artistic criticism, I do think that dismissing the concept album just because it features women is a little short-sighted IMHO.

Regurgitating the original male cast just in musical album form would not only be repetitive but would make it no different than other Broadway show that focus on gang violence like West Side story or now The Outsiders.

We have so many shows that focus on brotherhood, kinship, and just masculinity not even within film but also on Broadway, but we hardly ever see the same for female characters.

The Female Warriors are very rough around the edges, foul-mouthed, violent at times, and in the case of cowgirl, lustful.

They're also different body types, present themselves differently, and are all played by BIPOC.

I've seen a lot of Broadway shows in my 30 years of living, and we just don't get diverse female characters like this a lot if at all.

If any female character had the above traits they would likely be presented as being the less than ideal woman or flat out villainous.

The girls have flaws, but these are just things they picked up because of how rough the world has been to them, and at the end of the day they're not only friends but a family.

That's a big difference between the female warriors and their male counterparts from the movie and novel.

The Male Warriors are supposed to be seen as what ends up happening when youths get tangled up in gang culture and how it turns them into monsters.

When the police arrest Ajax in the film it's because of how unruly and savage he was acting and likewise Fox getting killed along with Cleon is supposed to be seen as a consequence of them even being a part of this culture to begin with.

I've said it before, but I think while the intentions may be good it's viewing these marginalized groups through a very White and conservative lens.

Nobody wants to be a part of a gang or run away from home but sometimes living in poverty, an abusive household, or just being crushed by the system forces people to do desperate things and more often than not that's banding together with like-minded people.

Another thing is that most of the Warriors in the original film are White and that's largely just due to the fact that an audience back in the 1970s would be less willing to watch something that didn't at least feature several white main leads otherwise they'd be uncomfortable and uninterested.

From a modern-day perspective, a person like male Ajax would likely get away with his sexually aggressive behavior because of the color of the skin ( you can look at a certain orange politician to see that in present day) and we now know thanks to things like BLM that the police do not always operate in good faith nor to protect the people.

I think that's why the concept album is so good and culturally relevant despite having being created nearly a few years ago.

The Warriors consisting of a group of marginalized women that banded together to support one another to conduct a world that really doesn't care for them is a story you really get to hear not just on Broadway but in Hollywood in general.

Luther being a white gang leader and killing a black cultural figure like Cyrus in cold blood to stop any semblance of progress is the tale as all this time and how he mocks the AAVE the non-white groups he surrounds himself with after making life hell for them is especially painful.

Luther and Crosby literally don't have to worry about ever being hounded by the police because of how they look which allows them to get away with literal murder, but it is very telling that he ends up crumbling the moment he's confronted and called out for his misdeeds.

The cops themselves are also completely reworked for the concept album as opposed to them just being the boys in blue doing their job to get rid of the trash that is the Warriors like the original film, they're essentially the biggest antagonist even more so than the Rogues.

Both police officers that appear in the album have a cat calling motif which doubles as sounding like police sirens just to illustrate how dangerous and cancerous they are not just to the Warriors but to the community as a whole.

Captain Victor and Barnes abuse their power and end up nearly subduing the Warriors by killing Fox and sexually a harassing and later arresting Ajax.

In Derailed Victor even tries to kill the warriors with his squadron before they run away to the cemetery and all of this is done because they can.

The fact that these two are portrayed by people from the 1979 Warriors film sort of acts as a double entender because in the original, the Warriors themselves are supposed to be seen as monsters and what happens when kids fall too deep into the sins of the world, so the cops view the women as nothing more than street rats who need to be exterminated .

The Warriors are guilty because they're marginalized women and that's enough for them to be blown away as far as society and the system is concerned.

I think in some ways, the Warriors is basically the reverse of LMM's other work Hamilton because it shows that the American dream isn't really for everybody and that sometimes you have to find another means to live by.

The system very much failed the Warriors so they had to rely on themselves to make it through the world because nobody else would bother with them.

It's for this reason why I'm sort of against the idea that this album needs to be radically changed in order for it to move the Broadway.

Doing things like giving Luther more complex feelings, adding in things to help the predominantly white audience and critics understand how Urban culture works, and rewriting the characters themselves just to be more stage appropriate seems like it undoes what the musical was trying to say.

I think this story as it is is one worth telling and beyond maybe a bit of polish I don't really think it should be tempered with too much.

If Lin and Eisa were to doll the Warriors up too much it would basically be a completely different story altogether and what we would have is just another Broadway musical that allows the audience to digest certain things that they may not understand nor possibly want to hear.

I think we as a society have moved beyond watering down things so that people who aren't even from the community that these stories come from can sleep better at night.

I think that's why this album and the original movie have dedicated fan bases to them because it does speak to a generation of people.

[autisticlenaluthor]

rory's blind date with a book (supercorp edition)

I've been thinking about how to create a master list of all my fics and thought this would be a much more fun way to do it. here, you will get the basics of each fic, but just like with a real blind date -- the plot & title will be a surprise! i hope you enjoy :)

one or two shots

☀️: domestic supercorp, small town au, lots of pretty vibes, healing, and fluff

☁️: lena centric hurt/comfort, autistic lena, and self acceptance/healing (again)

🦕: domestic fluff, hurt/comfort, and dinosaurs (not real ones). lots of softness and cuddles. established relationship. this was honestly just an excuse to write a story that is 100% supercorp snuggles

🐄: farm house idiots building a life together, coping with anxiety, fluff, and a proposal

👽: explorer lena, useless yet genius lesbians, hurt/comfort, humor, and fluff. also autistic lena if you squint

💜: trauma recovery, hurt/comfort, heavy angst, and very lena centric. be sure to read all of the trigger warnings as this one is a pretty heavy story

😔: sickfic, a story about bad tummy aches written by a girl with chronic tummy aches, lots of hurt/comfort, autistic lena, established relationship

multi-chapter fics

🐙: this fic is if like if the vibes of gilmore girls and "back to December" had a baby. there's angst, there's hurt comfort, there are immaculate vibes and stunning imagery. there's autistic lena, sleepovers, cuddles, ice skating, hand-holding, chess matches, broken fingers, and everything else you could possibly want including a sequel.

🐳: the sequel to 🐙. there's (almost) all of those same things except this also includes lena wearing a dress made out of police tape and some very soft smut.

🤕: this fic is like two stories in one - it follows kara and lena's lives as kids and adults. lots of hurt/comfort, a deep dive into their trauma & healing, friends to lovers, and so much domesticity. both kara and lena are autistic. lena grows up very ill - this is the sickfic of all sickfics.

🏝: lena centric. lots of angst/hurt comfort. vivid imagery, diving deeper than we've ever gone into lena's past. an expansion on her life before the luthor's. autistic lena, of course. this one is pretty heavy, so mind the TWs. it is also the fic I believe to be my best work.

✨: friends to lovers, slow burn, queer platonic relationships, destigmatizing “scary” mental illnesses, autistic lena, trauma recovery & general themes of healing. Lots of hurt/comfort, communication, with a balance of angst and fluff

📚: what if lena nobody knew lena was lena luthor? slow burn but SO soft, so much fluff and hurt/comfort. again, lots of beautiful imagery. kara is willing to learn an entire language for lena before she even knows her last name. she also has an ongoing rivalry with lena’s asshole cat. autistic lena in the sense that - it was not intentionally written that way but every single person i’ve ever spoken to about this fic believed she was purposefully written as on the spectrum

💛: THE autistic lena fic. that’s all i’ve got to say. 

🍞: slice of life sickfic showing two stark realities of kara and lena existing in the same world, but in different galaxies. friends to lovers, eventual hurt/comfort. autistic lena & ADHD kara! 

😱: supercorp if they were wealthy milfs living their best lives until they aren’t. mystery, angst, and some thriller elements!

other:

🐢: a series of oneshots to add to 🤕, including some deleted scenes. just a way for me to add to that universe without clogging up the original fic

[lunadreamscaper]

i miss making comics.

VenturianTale fancomics specifically.

especially since now i have a better understanding of what i'm doing and learned more, i just havent gotten an opportunity to use those skills yet. (im still in all the planning/writing phases of my comics)

most of my old comics didnt have a lot space for background, to help with the settings. it was more focused on the characters and their dialogue, whivh isnt bad but like you know... setting is important, ya know? also i enjoy setting/background, even tho it's difficult and not something im super skilled at but like? thats okay. gotta learn some how.

also a lot of my old comic pages were very compact and had a lot of panels, since i was trying to fit a lot in each page. but like, you dont gotta do that.

you should take your time building up to what you want, and show off your story telling through your art as well and not entirely rely on dialogue

comic making is a form of story telling. which layout, paneling and colors, speech bubbles and text. not just the characters and their dialogue :3

[kagooleo]

my WIPs are so unorganized but rice is forever, in doodles and Even when coding >:]

[puppyeared]

Atla live action 😐

[0fps]

really loving wuwa so far, it still lags a bit here and there but it kinda feels like it just has to marinate for a while? first 10 minutes are painful but after it seems like it has its assets cached or something and it isn't as much a problem anymore. it also looks like kuro games has been working overtime putting in patch fixes asfdjlkadfsj god speed to the devs fr

[wren-likethe-bird]

wren rambles about the borderlands movie in tags

[gibbearish]

dont starve is kicking my ass btw

[termagax]

sighs. yk i dont think it was anything they were ever planning on but i do think they would at least have had a conversation like "do you ever think about getting married" and i wonder how that would go for them

[trainsinanime]

I wonder: Do Americans know about american school buses? Not their existence in general, but how they're seen overseas.

Over here, they're one of the symbols of America, on par with the Statue of Liberty, the flag, the Eagle, and well ahead of any chain restaurant you can name. People won't know any US states, but they will know these vehicles.

The thing is, here in Germany, we don't have dedicated school buses. The general idea is that kids go to school on their own. When that's not practical, they're expected to use (and given free tickets for) public transit. Public transit is designed around this requirement; there are many places where there is a bus, and anyone can get on it, but the route and timetable really only makes sense for school children. In case a dedicated school bus is really needed, that's generally subcontracted out, and the lines either use something like a Sprinter Van for smaller routes, or a normal city or interurban bus (often a used one that's a bit older). School trips are normal public transit, or a rented bus, typically a coach or regional bus.

It's not a perfect system, in the past couple of years there's been an epidemic of people bringing their kids to school in their cars instead of letting them walk, which is less than ideal. It is what it is. But building a dedicated network of public transit lines only for students, and building dedicated vehicles only for that, has never occurred to anyone here.

Of course we know about these buses, from movies and such, but they're as foreign here as cacti or pick-up trucks (actually we're seeing more and more of these here) or yellow cabs (all europeans will assume all cabs in the US are yellow until they actually visit).

You do see these buses here at times, because people still generally like the idea of the US, even if they have a lot of issues with a lot of details, and so folks bring them over, along with stretch limos and stuff (also not really a thing here). And of course, if someone goes to all that trouble, they don't do it to haul school kids, they rent it out for city tours or as a party bus or whatever.

So you see these yellow things as a symbol of faraway places, scenic vistas, some vague undefined idea of freedom that doesn't necessarily hold up to any contact with reality, and it's just a huge part of the whole US aesthetic.

And then you go to a student exchange with the US, and you finally get the chance: You yourself get to ride in one of these iconic chrome yellow buses! It looks just like in the movies! You get in, you drive in them a little…

…and you realise they're shit. Just the worst buses in the western world. Terrible suspension. Uncomfortable seats with weirdly high backs (so they don't have to put seatbelts in, they just restrict how far kids can fly in an accident). Everything made out of the cheapest materials. Turns out the reason why the US uses school buses like that instead of normal modern city buses, which the US has, is to save money and because they just hate kids.

And then it hits you why US Americans say "as American as apple pie", a dish that is made and enjoyed literally anywhere in the world, instead of "as American as yellow school buses". Of course the Americans already knew all this. They got tortured by these things forever. It would never occur to them to see this as a symbol of America, it's just a normal part of life for them. It's a symbol of school and school life and sometimes normalcy, and tells us that these actors getting out of it are supposed to be teenagers, nothing more.

But most people in Europe have, of course, never ridden on these buses. So when they see them in movies and TV, that's a giant big yellow signifier that we're not in Hessen or Wallonia or wherever anymore. A symbol of a different world, one that may be at most a once-in-a-lifetime-experience for most people, just like a picture of a tropical beach, Mayan Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, or Hildesheim (there's no reason to go there twice). And I think Americans don't know that, and that's fascinating.

[captain-ultimat-doggo]

Humans entering space and realizing we are so small. We are mice compared to these giant races with their advanced machinery and technologies and experiences beyond us- except that we're humans. And our engineers dive into the new tech and once we learn the principles we also soon realize how Inefficient everything is. Their "microchips" are the size of cars, their storage drives are basically buildings, and they somehow store less data than ours. So, human companies take advantage, and tech starts rolling out. Massive and there's a lot of wasted space so that it can be managed with larger hands/pincers/claws/tentacles, but also so much more efficient than anything the galaxy has seen before.

Human technicians start hopping ships and upkeeping the general maintenance, the stuff that most aliens put off or don't notice because they never access the crevices of their ships. As human companies become more popular and lead the tech world in everything from warp cores to game stations ("it's so compact! How are the graphics so good?" Says a 60' tall grimbleback, holding a new VR headset that has all of its components included because it's so BIG by our tech standards), soon many things have accessibility ports for humans to be able to use as well. This means that these shiprats hoping ship to ship cause such a huge improvement in everything running smoothly, and there's a huge downtick in pests on ships because those "pests" are not only big enough and aggressive enough to bite a pitbull or a person in half, they're invasive to so many planets and humans hate nothing more than dog killing planet overrunning monsters.

All the while, from the Aliens perspective, humans are an elusive race that don't fraternize much with them. You almost never see a human as most places aren't exactly safe for the little things to run around in. They do export so much stuff though, and the custodial staff at the Central Galactic Outpost insists that there's more humans around than any other race if you just know where to look.

And sure it's somewhat known that some of the little daredevils hop ships and help out in exchange for room and board, usually without permission, but that can't be that common, can it?

Maybe your ship is running better this cycle ever since you stopped at the last station, that just means that tuneup was better than you thought. And maybe for some reason that program you were working on last night is finished when you wake up, but you're so tired maybe you finished it before you passed out. Somehow that faulty light in the galley has fixed itself as well, which is odd, but maybe the Engineer finally got to it. You'd know if there was someone else on your ship.

Right?

... You leave a little bowl of berries out as a thank you, just in case. You're not sure what humans like but you've heard they have a sweet tooth.

[neverendingford]

.

[wonuhui]

the fact that so many peoples first response to seeing all these palestinian children orphaned is not ‘wow we should really do something to ensure these children live in a world where they don’t have to fear waking up to a bomb being dropped on their parents heads’ and instead is ‘oh em gee how can i adopt these children whose culture i have 0 knowledge of whatsoever and bring them to my homeland thousands of miles away, thereby thrusting them into another deeply traumatizing situation’ is actually kind of wild to me.

please be so serious …. they don’t want you adopting their children. you guys do realize that arabs have a deep sense of family and community right… even with 0 family members left there are still so many people who will step in and make sure those children are looked after. those kids don’t need rescuing from their homeland, they need their homeland to be safe so they can have yknow, a chance at life. they don’t need new families, they need for their families to not be murdered in the dead of the night. why don’t we work on that instead and drop the savior mindset please????? to do nothing towards the cause of palestinian freedom but offer to adopt their children is nuts.

ps. it would benefit a lot of people to do basic research and realize that the process of adoption into a lot of western countries serves to completely erase the identity of the child and also is not in line with the principles / general process of adoption in islam (which is the religion of a fair majority of these kids). ‘offering’ to take them from all they know is disrespectful enough without the consideration that in doing so you would completely be overstepping multiple rules and processes of their religion and culture.

none of us want any more kids to die but ‘save the children’ doesn’t mean the solution is to let anna from florida have them. it means the solution is to make sure they have a future where apartment buildings don’t fall over their heads while they sleep.