#and of course there are so many other lovely terrestrials

[prionz]

i've decided i'm gonna get the tarantula(s) as a christmas/birthday gift for myself. still not 100% sure what species i want since the store i'm looking at mostly sells slings and some of the arboreals i was looking at are sensitive as slings plus i'm probably gonna end up getting a tarantula enclosure rather than using the aquarium i have

[queenpiranhadon]

A/N: Was missing my baby so I decided to type this up <3 Here's the masterlist!

Warning(s): Katsuki’s down bad but to be fair, so are you lol, you’ve been married for over a year, you two live together, pre-established relationship, anti social Katsuki, you have a lot of Dynamight merch, Katsuki publically simps for you <3, f!reader, Katsuki refers to you as his wife and vice versa, reader’s a little childish lol

Pairing(s): Bakugou Katsuki x Reader

•────•°•❀•°•──── ᴛᴇᴅᴅʏ ʙᴇᴀʀ ────•°•☁︎•°•────•

It's no surprise that Bakugou loves to talk about you, his pretty wife.

Ever since the two of you got married, the public could definitely see the impact you had on him- even though you didn't come fully public with your marriage. He's kinder now, softer in a way, still the powerful hero he used to be, if not even stronger, but he's not the same person who flips off a camera once paparazzi flock to him after a mission.

Instead he gives a slight nod of acknowledgement before moving on- he had places to be.

Places being back home, to you, in your awaiting arms, where you would greet him with a smile that could heal the world of its sins if it wanted to, a smile that to him, was the purest and most beautiful thing in the world.

Bakugou Katsuki wasn't a man who truly believed someone was better than him, having enough confidence in himself to become was he was not with enough determination, but you...

You were his heaven, his haven, his home. You were the sun and the moon, and land and the sea, everything beautiful in the world, it was you.

And the whole world could tell. Probably even extra terrestrial species on other galaxies.

Well, everyone but you.

You, being the absolute angel you are, didn't think of yourself that way. You were just… you - trying to achieve your goals and have a happy life, alongside your Katsuki, who you'd support no matter what, and him, you.

You knew Katsuki loved you, of course you did- though the blonde wasn't well versed when it came to expressing his feelings through words, he was more than adequate in showing it through his actions instead.

You probably wouldn't be able to even comprehend the amount of love Katsuki held in his heart for you.

Until one special night that is.

Katsuki's been invited to one of your favorite talk shows, and after a lot of convincing ( read: pleading ) he gave in. He couldn't say no to you anyways.

Katsuki had left for the filming a while ago, leaving you to deck out in your limited edition Dynamight merch while turning on the TV to watch your husband.

The familiar opening plays and you see the set of the show you always loved to watch- pride warming your heart as you see your beloved on the screen.

"Live from Tokyo, it's your host, Seiko Nishimura and tonight, we're here with the only and only, Pro Hero Dynamight!- also known as Bakugou Katsuki."

Your husband nods, and mumbles out a "Thanks for havin' me." and you feel your heart melt at his adorable attempt to be social on camera.

Seiko grins, and turns to her stack on notecards nodding to the audience. "Well, I've got a set of questions from the audience all around the world! And we've got a lot, so let's get right to it!"

The night goes on smoothly enough, with Katsuki answering questions about his career and his schedules signing events that were coming up. You hug your Dynamight themed teddy bear closer to your chest as you feel overflowing love for your husband. You were more than proud of him, overcoming trauma from his high school years and bad habits that you know still plague him to this day, no matter how hard he tries to hide it. He overcame it all- and you were just truly happy to be by his side.

All the questions are relatively the same- nothing really sparking your absolute interest (your focus was really just on Katsuki and how stupidly good he looked in his muscle shirt and cargos, matched with glossy jet black Prada boots)- until Seiko asks a question that makes you perk up.

"Many fans have noticed a ring around the chain you always wear when you're out fighting - do you perhaps have a special someone at home?" the host asks with a cheeky grin, expecting the blonde to give a flustered outburst but instead, Katsuki shows a hint of real emotion for the first time that night, a small genuine smile stretching across his face.

He takes out the chain in question, and runs his callused thumb over his fondly.

"Yeah, I gotta wife at home" he says, love seeping into his gruff voice. "She's probably on the couch watching this with that stupid Dynamight bear she got me for our last anniversary."

You gasp and look at your bear incredulously. "He did not call you stupid." you grumble, hiding half of your face into the plush of the stuffed animal but still peek over it to watch the screen.

You felt giddy, like a schoolgirl- wondering what Katsuki would say about you on live television. It was silly, you knew- but even after all these years Katsuki still had you flustered like he did all the way back when you were both sixteen.

"Damn woman uses that thing more than I do." he grumbles playfully and sighs."But...I don't think I would be where I am today without her."

You feel your cheeks heat, unable to be tear your eyes away from your husband on the screen.

"She's my rock, the breath in my lungs, the blood in my veins, the fire the keeps my goin'- I don't think I'd ever be able to tell her how much I really do love her."

You feel unbelievably hot, overwhelmed by love and affection even though he's not here with you. A watery smile forms on your face as you wipe away the tears that slip down your face.

You hold the teddy bear tight, breathing in Katsuki's scent- though he claims that you use it more than he does, know you that he sleeps with it whenever you're away.

Katsuki never failed to make you feel loved, through his actions, and right now, through his words too.

ʙᴏɴᴜꜱ:

this was one of the 247 posts Mina and Ejirou sent you the day after- Katsuki didn’t leave the bedroom once he saw, taking the teddy bear to cover his red face

[obsessivevoidkitten]

Love is a Many-Legged Thing

Yandere Squid Merman x Gender Neutral Reader CW: Noncon, tentacle noncon, light tentacle bondage, stalking, kidnapping, squid-based merman, big slimy prehensile merman dick, reader fucked senseless, merman fantasizes about receiving oral sex, general yandere behavior, delusional yandere, voyeurism, exhibitionism Word Count: 2k (Happy MerMay!!!! I really hope you all love the fic, would have been done weeks ago had the ac not died. But still 40min left of MerMay! I wrote this fast without a beta reader so please forgive any mistakes! The name Onyk is a reference to Onykia Ingens, a deap sea squid with an astoundingly long dick.)

Seaspark Aquarium was a very unique establishment. Not only did it contain the usual attractions that an aquarium housed, the tide pools, the sharks, a seemingly unending variety of colorful fish and corals and nudibranchs, but it also housed transient merfolk. The aquarium was situated on a flat outcrop of rocky land. Via submerged tubes it granted access to a huge tank to the ocean and merfolk below.

The tank was absolutely massive and had many different areas including a reef, a seaweed forest, a beach, and even a secluded sea cave. There were underwater cameras in most of the areas that live streamed what was happening on screens for the humans. Though the sea cave feed was restricted to adults only since the merfolk sometimes mated there.

The aquarium was just as much an exhibit for the merpeople as it was for the humans, they had underwater screens that allowed them to view the humans at play and at the food court. They enjoyed seeing and even communicating with their terrestrial cousins. There were several areas where humans and merpeople could talk face to face or via the cameras. Many of them visited quite frequently and made friendships with regular customers and their favorite staff members.

You had been blessed with landing a really good job at Seaspark Aquarium. Though it was entirely because you were the cousin of the curator of the establishment. You did janitorial tasks, including sometimes scraping the tanks, and occasionally you had to provide food for an exhibit. Even though interacting with animals or merfolk was not a common part of your job, there was one squid-man who had become quite friendly with you. Onyk.

Most of the squid type mermen shied away from human interaction, and really the aquarium as a whole, but not Onyk. He had always been a frequent visitor. A knowledgeable observer might even say it seemed that he had been hoping to find something there. The first few times he had gone had been out of pure curiosity about humans after hearing tales about them his entire life. But after his first couple of visits he was enthralled. Everything about the land walkers amazed him.

And then he met you and felt his heart flutter every single time he looked upon you. He frequently tried to engage you in conversation whenever he could and was always watching you, though often it was in secret. Onyk cherished your chats with him, he found you so interesting, even more so than he found other humans. He loved seeing you go about your tasks, it made him think of you cleaning his home as his mate while he went and got food for the two of you.

Of course if you had any say, that would never happen. Onyk, for some reason you couldn't quite place, creeped you out. No, it wasn't the head of tentacles he had in place of hair, nor the dark purple tentacles he had from the waist down, it wasn't his smile that showed off his dangerously sharp teeth, or his cyan blue eyes. No, it wasn't anything physical, just a weird energy he seemed to give off. Like a hungry animal hunting its prey.

You tried to be nice to Onyk, though you always tried to keep conversations brief and hurry on to other tasks that would take you out of his reach. Unfortunately he took your awkward stammers and clumsy rushing to zip away from him as you being extremely shy because you liked him. He sighed and stared at you longingly, head resting on his hands, as you rushed off once more. Clearly you were simply too embarrassed by your emotions to act rationally around him. Onyk had to find a way to get you to stop running off. As adorable as it was that you kept scampering off from your shyness you really needed to be closer to him.

Onyk had a brilliant, though simple, idea. It came to him right as you were in the middle of making another excuse to run away from him while the two of you were chatting in the beach area. He'd simply grab you. It wasn't the first thing he'd normally do, but you were just too prone to running off. It was more than obvious you needed him to make a firm and forceful first move.

"Well uh... it was nice seeing you again Onyk... but um... I gotta go check on the tide p-"

Onyk lunged at you suddenly with the speed and ferocity of lightning. He pulled you into the water and swiftly took you into the empty sea cave and sat you on the dry ground within. Yes, this would do perfectly for his purposes. It was a huge room that had an area for him to swim and enough space for you to run about and get exercise. This would make a lovely home for the two of you, he'd have to keep all the other merfolk out from now on but that wasn't an issue, they were respectful of claimed territory.

Once you caught your breath you were confused and angry at the sudden relocation.

"What the f-"

He interrupted you again, this time by pressing his hungry lips to yours in a passionate embrace. His long tongue slipped past your unsuspecting lips and explored every inch that it could reach. His saliva pooled in your mouth, claiming it. The offending muscle snaked down your throat before finally retreating as he broke the kiss, you struggled to find your breath once more.

"Heh, sorry for interrupting, I have just been waiting to kiss you for so long I couldn't hold back any longer!"

“What!? Why did you do that? Why did you bring me here!?”

“Well your shyness was making it hard for us to take things to the next step in our relationship, now you can’t let your nervousness get the better of you and make you run off!”

“Next step in our relationship? We have no relationship, you creep!”

“Don’t say that! Y-you just have the jitters because moving in is such a big step! Yeah, they’ll wear off soon I’m sure.”

“There won’t be a soon, I am going back to the beach!”

You started to head back to the water, but Onyk closed the distance between the two of you easily.

“But you can’t go! You’re just in denial and nervous, but you’ll love living with me, I promise. M-maybe I’m not moving too fast but too slow. That must be it, you must be all pent up and eager for my dick! So naughty~”

Onyk’s blush was evident even on his light blue skin. He swallowed your complaints in another deep kiss as he stood behind you and rubbed your crotch gently.

“We’ll do it in front of these cameras so everyone knows you’re mine now~”

And, indeed, the screens in the adults only section of the aquarium definitely picked up some viewers as the scene between you and Onyk unfolded.

Most mermen would have had trouble traversing land, but Onyk’s strong tentacles allowed him to maneuver easily enough. He peeled off your wet clothing and wrapped his arms tightly around your bare chest, rubbing and caressing you with greedy hands. His prehensile cock wrapped partially around your waist, held you close as it rubbed against you. At first you mistook the sensation for a tentacle before looking down and seeing it, the cock was tapered, icy blue and glowing at the tip, with the rest of it being dark purple.

Your shouts and screams were ignored as Onyk convinced himself they were just you being grumpy or maybe playing hard to get. The merman’s sharp teeth bit carefully at your tender neck as you squirmed. Most of his tentacles had wrapped around your legs, powerful suction cups firmly adhered them to you. They held you staunchly in place despite your best efforts to struggle.

The remaining two writhing appendages were busy with another task. They gently prodded and massaged your tight hole, slowly worming their way inside you. Your efforts to clench and keep them outside of you were rendered futile as they finally worked their way inside of you. They began thrusting in tandem back and forth within you, loosening you up well.

Your next attempt at protesting devolves into several lusty moans as he ministrations begin to elicit pleasure. It’s all the confirmation he needs that he has been right all along and definitely went about everything in the right way.

“Your mating sounds are so lovely,” he said as he nipped at your ear.

His tentacles suddenly withdrew from your lovingly stretched hole, leaving you involuntarily whimpering at the sudden removal.

“Awe, don’t worry, love. I have something far better to put into you~”

You snap out of it when you hear those words and feel his cock move itself from your waist and start wiggling against you in search of its target.

“What!? No, please do-oooh~ Aaah!”

When it found your entrance it deftly slithered right in. Much to your unwilling pleasure.

Onyk chuckled.

“I knew you just needed some good dick~ You feel soooo good. You were made for this!”

When you happened to look up at one of the cameras you blushed and looked down. The room that monitored the sea cave was now packed, everyone enjoying the sight. The aquarium was already at work recording with plans to put it on their website for sale.

You couldn’t help the lewd cacophony of noises that tumbled from your mouth as the thick slimy cock thrust back and forth inside of you.

“I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you!” Onyk chanted louder and louder until he slammed into you hard, filling you up with warm viscous semen at the same moment that you were shuddering from the strongest orgasm that you had ever experienced.

You were far too dazed and overstimulated to realize what was going on in that moment or what you were saying, but on autopilot you mumbled back what your brain thought it was supposed to when someone told you that they loved you.

“I l-love you too…”

Onyk was overjoyed to hear those words from his beloved human. He pulled out of you and laid down on the floor of the cave, pulling you close to him and resting your head on his chest. His webbed fingers gently caressed you as did both the tentacles that made up his "hair" and the ones below his waist. Cum slowly ebbed out of you and onto him but he didn't mind, the two of you would just get messy again the second you came to your senses. He nuzzled into your hair and gave you dozens of little kisses. Your mind was too blank and your body too exhausted to do anything but drool a bit on his chest while he cuddled you.

His head was swimming with all of the things the two of you would do together. Sharing meals, chatting, mating. He couldn’t wait to wrap his cock gently around your neck while at the same time plunging it down your throat and having that pretty mouth of yours suck it until he was feeding you his cum. Maybe the two of you could try it when you woke up.

Meanwhile onlookers on the viewing screens were putting away their cocks and slipping their fingers out of their pussies with the spectacle now over, but word soon spread and tourism was up over 300 percent! Scientists the world over were interested in documenting this rare species of merman having sexual relations with a human. Grants were given. A great raise and credit to your cousin, the curator.

It was even considered a diplomatic victory for merfolk and humans!

Everyone came to the consensus that on all fronts, but yours, it was far too beneficial and lucrative to make sure you had to permanently stay in the sea cave for the rest of your life with Onyk. At the very least they equipped the habitat with amenities like a proper bathroom, tv, video games, and human food. The sea cave area was also expanded, and you were afforded some privacy, except for most of the times that your “husband” Onyk was spilling his seed into you. That’s what people wanted to see.

[deep-space-netwerk]

please please please PLEASE share more on your Thoughts about gas giants!! i'd love to learn in a way that doesnt leave me baffled and half my brain leaking from my ears! you explained things so well in the psyche post and also i think things are generally more fun to learn from someone who is Excited To Share than from Published Research Papers where everything has been dried out For Professional Reasons- understandably so, mind, but i am not In The Field and dont know the terms lol

Okay it's taken me forever to get back to this but I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED.

Like other planets, it all starts with a disk made of gas and dust orbiting an infant star, called a protoplanetary disk. Like these in the Orion Nebula, discovered by the Hubble!

To form terrestrial planets (rocky planets with relatively thin atmospheres like Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars), the gas in the protoplanetary disk coalesces to form hundreds and hundreds of rocky bodies called planetesimals, about a kilometer across. These planetesimals collide, and form dozens of protoplanets about the size of the moon. The protoplanets then collide as well, and stabilize to form the solar system as we know it today.

But, in the case of gas giants, colliding protoplanets don't form fully-finished planets. Instead, they form a core, or a seed.

We think the only thing that determines whether a planet will be terrestrial or a gas giant is simply how far away from the sun it forms - that's it. As a new sun warms its evolving solar system, it heats up the material in the protoplanetary disk. Close to the sun, the disk gets hotter, and things like water and other ices melt and evaporate into gas, making them difficult for the protoplanets to gravitationally capture. However, further away, the icy compounds stay cold enough to remain solid and coalesce along with rocky particles.

That boundary in the solar system - where ices evaporate to gas on the sunward side, and remain solid on the other - is called the "Frost Line". In our solar system, the Frost Line is right between Mars and Jupiter.

The protoplanets that form past the Frost Line turn into gas giant seeds, and are able to (kinda literally) snowball, picking up both rocky and icy material. With all that solid ice available, they grow far larger and far faster than planets in the inner solar system, and their gravity gets stronger and stronger. More gravity causes them to collect even MORE material until they're heavy enough to capture extremely lightweight elements like hydrogen and helium. Which, of course, makes them get even bigger and even heavier! Runaway growth!

But weirdly, as we study more exoplanets (planets that orbit stars other than our sun), we keep finding these huge gas giants incredibly close to their stars! Like, even closer than Mercury is to ours, which is insane. These "Hot Jupiters" break so many rules - gas giants "should" only be able to form where ice stays frozen, but here they are up close and personal with their stars, like this artist's concept!

It's possible that these planets are in the process of migrating closer to their stars, and we're managing to see them before they evaporate, but we just! Keep! Finding them!

One of my favorite parts of planetary science is how much we still have to learn. We'll think we have a pretty good idea of how things work out there, and then suddenly we'll find something that we can't explain. And there's an entire universe of weird shit - we've barely begun to scratch the surface!

[maniculum]

Bestiaryposting Results: Rabyeang

This one's posting a few hours later than usual, because due to various circumstances, we ended up recording an episode of the podcast this evening, so I didn't have time to get to it until now.

Anyway, odd and somewhat uncomfortable entry, some parts of it seem clear though. Genuinely interested to see what comes up because I haven't gotten around to checking in on it until right this moment.

Anyone who isn't sure what I'm talking about can find out at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting.

The entry our artists are working from can be found here:

If you want to join in on drawing the next one, that entry can be found here:

Art is below the cut in the order in which it was posted.

@silverhart-makes-art (link to post here) decided to go with an aquatic creature to make it easier for it to interact with lampreys, specifically a shark because they give live birth. I think the post here is pretty great, and including a lamprey is quite nice actually. Extremely cool-looking all around -- I encourage anyone reading this to check the linked post for a more detailed description of what's going on here and how the artist reached this design.

@cheapsweets (link to post here) has drawn two snakes in the act of twining around each other as the female bites the male's head off. Kind of like a caduceus that's gone wrong somehow. Going in a snake direction makes sense, and the entwined pose I think makes it work. They have also included a rather cute bonus sketch in the linked post along with the explanation of their design, which I encourage y'all to check out. (Also thank you for providing alt text.)

@coolest-capybara (link to post here) has made a very eye-catching but also somewhat... worrying creature by taking inspiration from Surinam toads and orchid mantises. The way those two inspirations are merged is really clever, I think, and as usual I love the medieval-inspired style. This is a creature I appreciate in drawing form but would probably find quite off-putting in real life, which I think is a sign of good design. (Also, thank you for providing alt text.)

That's it this time around, I'm afraid -- this particular entry doesn't seem to have sparked inspiration in many people. (Understandable.) So let's check in with the Aberdeen Bestiary.

So, as I'm sure you've all guessed from the highly accurate illustration, this is the viper.

(I'm getting increasingly curious about what the deal is with this very specific head design you see on so many medieval creatures.)

So yeah, the bit with the lamprey is presumably complicated by the fact that one is an aquatic creature and the other terrestrial -- breath is going to be a concern, at the very least.

I think knowing it's a viper explains a lot of the entry: in the medieval metaphorical space, a viper is of course Very Wicked, so they really run with that here.

I wasn't aware vipers gave live birth, so I Googled it (apparently they do), and interestingly one of the top results was this Quora post:

So apparently elements of this are still hanging around, if someone is asking on the Internet whether vipers really eat their way out of the mother. Also interestingly, the answer makes note of other medieval myths about vipers, including both the head-biting and the lamprey thing. (And also one that female vipers look human above the waist, which is a new one by me.) Instructional.

[fatehbaz]

A thing that I love to do is to intentionally unlearn English common names for plants and animals. Ascribing of strict formal names to living things for processing through institutionalized knowledge systems is an act of capture. And I am not interested in capturing, possessing, any creature.

What do some English common names teach us about a creature? Names are powerful. These are things that I often contemplate together in relation to each other: “folk” taxonomy, animal naming conventions, erasure of local environmental knowledge, the theft and extraction of Indigenous language and knowledge, and rare and endemic species with specific microhabitat preferences.

---

You might come to find that a creature, like a frog in the tropical Andes, is named for a museum curator in London who had never visited the Andes, or the frog is named after an eighteenth century plantation owner who contracted the European land surveyors to map the area.

There are so many creatures named after racists, eugenicists, violent colonizers. Of course, Linnaean taxonomic naming conventions were being established alongside the height of European maritime dominance, plantation slavery, and colonization of the American hemisphere, Australia, South Asia, the tropics.

A frog might be named after an imperial British adventurer who recorded the creature for audiences at European museums. They called “dibs” on the frog, despite the fact that local Indigenous communities may have had an ongoing relationship with the creature for centuries. So instead I’m interested in trying to learn a “folk” name for the creature, or instead I would apply a new name for an animal based on the geographic area, ecoregion, plant community, or ecocultural region that the creature was most closely associated with.

---

Here’s a situation:

There is a relatively little-known salamander species. It is superlative. The terrestrial adults are enormous, and can be purple-ish in color, marked with gold speckles that seem to glow like glitter. They’re one of the only salamanders on the planet that can vocalize. They live in habitat alongside grizzly bears, mountain lion, wolverine, moose, unique lichen-eating mountain caribou, land snails, big ferns. The aquatic larvae can reach lengths of over 30 centimeters (1 foot), and they live not in still water like ponds and lakes as most other salamander larvae, but instead they swim around in fast-flowing streams.

It’s an endemic species. It lives in just a few small rivers’ watersheds, mostly in small, fast-flowing, cold, clear mountain streams in temperate rainforest ecosystems in the Columbia Mountains of the Northern Rockies, almost entirely within the arbitrary political borders of the US state of “Idaho,” on the traditional land of Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) people and Schitsu’umsh (Skitswish/Coeur d’Alene) people.

And it’s official common name: “Idaho giant salamander.” Not cool. Does the salamander have a meaningful reciprocal relationship with a political entity less than 200 years old, or does the salamander have a relationship with the ancient cedars of the rainforest? Which has existed longer: the arbitrary political entity of Idaho, or the Nimiipuu people? What do some English common names teach us about a creature? Names are powerful. Is the salamander named after the streams, the source of its life? Is it named after the temperate rainforest ecoregion, this safe harbor of fertile vegetation? Does its name refer to the endemic tailed frogs or other aquatic creatures that it relies on for food? Does the name reference the Nimiipuu, who have known the amphibian for centuries? Even the region’s name (”Columbia Mountains”) is a reference to one of history’s most notorious celebrities.

---

Here’s something from Robin Wall Kimmerer:

In the English language, if we want to speak of that sugar maple or that salamander, the only grammar that we have to do so is to call those beings an “it.” [...] In Potawatomi, the cases that we have are animate and inanimate, and it is impossible in our language to speak of other living beings as “it”s. [...] [W]hen we name something, often with a scientific name, this name becomes almost an end to inquiry. We sort of say, well, we know it now. We’re able to systematize it […]. It’s such a mechanical, wooden representation of what a plant really is. And we reduce them tremendously if we just think about them [solely] as physical elements of the ecosystem. […] This comes back to what I think of as the innocent or childlike way of knowing. Actually, that’s a terrible thing to call  it. We say it’s an innocent way of knowing, and, in fact, it’s a very worldly and wise way of knowing. That kind of deep attention that we pay as children is something that I cherish, that I think we all can cherish and reclaim, because attention is that doorway to gratitude, the  doorway to wonder, the doorway to reciprocity.

Words of Robin Wall Kimmerer. Interviewed by Krista Tippett. “On Being with Krista   Tippett - Robin Wall Kimmerer: The Intelligence in All Kinds of Life.”   February 2016.

---

It’s also important to me to clarify that, when referencing an Indigenous name or term for landmarks, places, plants, animals, etc. I only really feel comfortable doing so if the name is explicitly used by and/or confirmed to be accurate by speakers, researchers, knowledge-holders, etc. from that Indigenous community. And I also don’t want to use/share a name/term if the name/term was “collected” (appropriated, extracted) by a chauvinistic white academic or paternalistic Euro-American “ethnologist” or reproduced in a 1950s ethnobotany book or something. I especially don’t like relying on the testimony of, like, Euro-American missionaries or “traders’ who recorded terms in their personal journal in the 1750s or something.

How were those terms encountered?

How were they “extracted”?

Under duress?

Were these names, this environmental knowledge, willingly shared?

What ethical implications are there, of accepting secondhand information from an invading “pioneer”?

Many times, I’ll be reading a paper, maybe a “contempoary” paper from the past 10 years, and see references to a cool-sounding place-name or alternative name for a creature, and I’ve thought “wow, the connotations of the name sound really interesting, I wonder where this was learned,” and I’ll check the bibliography, and the “Indigenous name” was taken from a 1965 academic article, which itself was taken from a 1922 ethnology article sponsored by the F0rd Motor Company in pursuit of stealing local plant knowledge and land titles for rubber plantations or something, and that info itself was taken from an 1874 report from settler-colonial surveyors interviewing “locals” while traveling in company with an ex-government employee “cowboy” who had previously murdered at least 5 of the “locals.” So that, often in Euro-American “Knowledge” or “Science”, when trying to determine the Source Of A Fact, there is this blatant lineage of theft and violence and roundabout superficial self-referencing.

Even in relatively modern academic journals. Let’s say, in the 1990s, a European academic does “field research” in Amazonia. Maybe they record an “accurate” term, and I read about it in a paper. The academic says that they have a “profound respect” for “the culture”. Does this make it OK to “take” their terms? Does this make it more acceptable to “extract” a language as if it were a resource, a possession? Does it change the fact that the sponsoring academic institution or the publishing journal are both entangled with corporate extraction and ongoing (neo)colonial financialization, dispossession, debt, etc.?

So (1) you’re presented with names/terms which are probably inaccurate and which you have no way of confirming because of the convoluted way the term was passed down through settler-colonial knowledge-systematization institutions; and/or (2) more importantly, you’re presented with names/terms stolen, often at threat of violence; or (3) even in “good” scenarios with an accurate term and a so-called self-professed “respectful observer”, you’re presented with names/terms which have great power, connected to a specific culture and landscape, which should be treated with reverence and deep care, but which can easily be stolen and appropriated by popular media, wielding the power of the name in contexts where it doesn’t belong, a betrayal to the people, place, and/or creature.

---

Names imply or explicitly reveal the life of a creature or place, and also imply the connections between the creature/place being named, and the other worlds and relationships it influences and interacts with.

If i am not from the community that conceived the term/language, (1) it doesn’t feel honorable appropriating their language for myself, especially if I don’t have ongoing personal connection to people, places; (2) it doesn’t feel honorable, or all that reliable, to accept at face value the accuracy of a language/term if it’s being reported secondhand by a Euro-American academic intermediary, especially if that language was recorded during periods when Euro-American observers were actively engaged in colonization; and (3) it doesn’t feel honorable to use what might even be accurate Indigenous language/terminology if it was recorded/learned/stolen/promoted by Euro-American observers, unless there is explicit permission from native speakers to use the word, or unless native speakers actively encourage the acknowledgement of the words, maybe for purposes like language revitalization.

There is power and knowledge in a name. using a name involves serious responsibility. i feel that some names aren’t for me to invoke.

---

I think that maybe no name can do justice to the entire rich existence of a creature, but we can really do better than some English common names, especially in those cases when an animal is named after a lone individual human. And so, in naming, there might be a difficult decision to make. Do you name a creature for its behavior, its location, its appearance, its season of activity, its prefered habitat, its companion species? Maybe you have your own, personal, relationship with the creature. A living thing has so many interweaved relationships with others. Maybe its “meaning” changes with context or season or emotional state of the human observer. Maybe I will sometimes call the  “Idaho giant salamander” something more fitting. Maybe I’ll call it “the cedar salamander” or the “guardian of the waterfall pools” or “the giant of the stream” or “moss dragon” or whatever. Depends on the mood, context, whatever.

We are all of us, salamander and human, more rich and complex than associations with mere behavior, appearance, habitat preference, or the surveyors that try to capture and catalogue us. And sometimes, I’m uncomfortable enclosing us with a singular denomination, with a strict name. I don’t assume that I know enough about a living thing to possess it through formal naming conventions.

[skyler10fic]

Alter Ego

Summary: Daisy Johnson might be falling for her new roommate, but she has to hide her secret identity as the masked vigilante Quake. Her superhero rival, Captain Marvel, gets hurt one night on the job, and behind the helmet lies a surprise!

Notes: For @ficwip All Ships Ship Week. Prompts: Domesticity / living together, Sickfic / hurt/comfort / whump, Double life, and “Who did this to you?” Yup. I worked all of the prompts into this one!

Read on Ao3

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Quake may have been the city's most mysterious vigilante hero, but that didn't pay the rent. In her normal life, Daisy Johnson was just an IT girl at Stark Industries during the day and she needed a roommate if she was going to keep her apartment. She sighed at the bills piling up on the dining room table. 

A notification pinged on her phone. “Hi, this is Carol Danvers. Are you still looking for someone to sublease your second bedroom? My uncle is Nick Fury. He said it was exactly what I'm looking for.” 

Daisy sat up straighter and typed a response back that yes she was and that Fury had mentioned he might know of someone but hadn't said who, which ended up in Carol scheduling a day to come over. Fury was Daisy’s dad's friend, former boss, and longtime mentor at “the US State Department” aka the top secret spy agency Shield. She'd assumed Fury was just being polite when she mentioned her roommate search at a family barbeque and he seemed to have someone in mind. Now his own niece was on her way over. 

Daisy just hoped Carol didn’t ask too many questions if she noticed Daisy went out at night. The last thing Daisy needed was for Carol to mention it to her uncle and then for Fury to pass the suspicion along to Daisy’s retired spy dad and agency-contractor pilot mom. No one could know about Quake and her illegal vigilante crime fighting.

—---- Carol loved the apartment, but as Daisy finished the tour, Carol’s phone beeped at her. She enjoyed being Captain Marvel, but her uncle emphasized no one could know, for her own safety and that of their spy agency that she technically worked for. Her paychecks said the US State Department, and the story she told everyone, including Daisy, was that she was a low-ranking assistant to the physics specialist of the federal scientific policy advisory board. That was usually sufficiently impressive and complicated enough to satisfy other people without having to answer too many questions. Meanwhile, she was flying around the world and beyond as her alter ego defending earth from terrestrial and extraterrestrial villains. 

Today, however, she wished she didn't have to answer the call to duty. At least not right this second. They were having far too much fun already after a few hours of conversation and coffee. Daisy was so smart, kind, and generous, not to mention exactly Carol’s type, and Carol could already picture her bedroom furniture in the empty room Daisy had to offer. 

“I am so, so sorry,” Carol said, glancing at her phone. “I have to go, but send me the lease and I'll get it back to you ASAP.”

“That's a yes then? Good. I was hoping you liked it. We have to have that Mario Kart tournament after all. If you're brave enough to challenge me.” 

Carol didn't miss the hope in Daisy's teasing smile. 

“Oh it's a plan.” Carol stopped herself from pecking a kiss to Daisy's cheek. She'd never done that with anyone else before, and it would be even weirder to start now with a near-stranger she was about to move in with. 

—----------------------- 

An exasperated sigh sounded from behind Quake in a dark alley where she’d just prevented a hate group member from setting off a shrink ray. “Not you again.” 

“You’re welcome!” Quake retorted, voice muffled by the black mask covering her mouth and nose. She finished hogtying the criminal and he grunted, nearly coming back to consciousness. 

“I’m serious.” Of course she was. It was Captain Marvel, the head-to-toe red, blue, and gold do-gooder. She was like the stereotype of Supergirl, Wonder Woman, and “truth, justice, and the American way” comic book perfection come to life. She stood watching Quake from the roof of a parked delivery truck, as if to show off that she could fly and Quake couldn’t.

“Oh I know. Captain Mighty here to save the poor criminal,” Quake sassed.

“It’s Marvel,” the blonde annoyance grumbled. “And I have to take him in. Ever heard of the justice system? A fair trial?” 

“Don’t need a civics lesson, Girl Scout. He’s all yours.” Quake built up vibrations with her palms toward the ground and blasted off to the rooftop of the nearest building, high above the alley and even Captain Marvel, who was now checking that tonight’s evil henchman was still alive. He always was. Quake knew her own power. She could take out the whole city, maybe more, if she tried. She’d taken down a dozen of these ordinary criminals and never left them with fatal damage. Not that they didn’t deserve it. But that was the vigilante in her talking. 

She’d dropped out of Shield agent training as she hit against protocol again and again, ashamed she couldn’t live up to her family legacy but unable to excuse the politics driving who got their help and who didn’t. Her father’s retirement and subsequent declassification of several of his missions in which he had similar concerns only reinforced her choice. She was better on her own. 

When she got home, Carol was in the shower and it was easy to sneak in unnoticed. Having a roommate added difficulty to the whole secrecy thing, but Carol was so easygoing and fun, she probably wouldn’t even be phased by the truth. Daisy realized she was considering telling Carol, if nothing else, just to make herself feel less ridiculous when sneaking into her own home.

—------------------- 

Home from superhero duty, Carol couldn’t shake the feeling that she knew Quake’s voice. She could never hear it clearly because of the mask, but there was something about her that niggled at Carol’s sense of familiarity, beyond their crime-fighting run-ins of course. Carol had never gotten close enough to see Quake’s eyes, and besides that, they were heavily lined with black makeup. The pain in the ass usually wore a hooded leather jacket or hoodie as well, covering her ears and hair. Carol hated that the vigilante got into her head like this. Sometimes the obsession felt like jealousy over Quake’s freedom, and other times it felt like lust, if she even dared admit it to herself alone in the shower. Seeing Quake use her powers, even in frustrating ways that made Captain Marvel’s job harder, was just plain hot in all the ways that turned Carol on. Which made Quake even more obnoxious. 

She heard Daisy come in and hurried to get out of the shower. After dealing with Quake the Reckless, it was refreshing to think about Daisy’s gentle smile and quick wit. She grounded and comforted Carol in ways no one else did. Even when she couldn’t know why Carol needed it. 

—-------------------

Quake heard the telltale thump behind her of Captain Marvel landing forcefully on a car roof. 

“Ugh, I didn’t even get there in time tonight—” Quake spun around to defend herself from Captain Marvel’s scolding. By the time she had arrived at the top-secret lab, the glass greenhouse roof had already been shattered with black goo everywhere. A hovercraft was flying away, hauling a screaming alien blob covered in giant flowers. Quake was left staring up at them in the parking lot, having only just arrived and discovered the empty lab. 

Captain Marvel didn’t land on her feet, however. The thump was her body falling from high above. She cried out as she rolled to the ground. She was protecting herself by falling with her body tucked in, so she had some awareness of what was happening, but by the time she hit the asphalt and Quake rushed over, she was slipping in and out of consciousness. 

“Who did this to you?” Quake panicked as she looked over a bleeding, prone Captain Marvel. While she wished they stayed out of each other’s business, she certainly didn’t want any harm to come to Little Miss Perfect. The bleeding seemed to come from the neck, under Captain Marvel’s helmet. 

“Shit,” Quake swore. “I’m going to have to take off your helmet. Is that okay?” 

Captain Marvel groaned and slowly crossed one hand over to the opposite wrist. It must have been a release button because the helmet retracted, leaving Quake in true shock.

Quake’s hands shook as she tried to find the source of the bleeding. She kept looking back to her superhero rival’s face. It was Carol. This wasn’t just a woman who resembled her. Her voice rasped out a sentence Quake didn’t quite catch. 

“It’s going to be okay. I’ve got you.” Quake looked around helplessly. There was no one to pass this one off to so she could maintain her cover. No nearby crowd to call to for help or off-duty nurse running their way to take over. She was alone. 

Carol tried to speak again and the lines on her brow furrowed. The bleeding had stopped, and her neck looked intact. The blood had to be seeping up from her shoulder. That was a good sign. Quake had repaired her own shoulder injuries more times than she could count. 

“What’s that?” Quake leaned down, as Carol seemed really adamant about her mumbled phrase.

“Call an ambulance, dumbass.” 

Quake almost laughed. “Right. Sorry. I forgot you are all legal and everything, not a secret from the government.” 

Carol grimaced again and pulled up a holographic number pad from her forearm. Quake dialed 911 and immediately hated herself for wondering if she should wait around. Of course she would. This was CAROL. The realization was still sinking in. Captain Marvel was Carol. Her roommate and friend and crush Carol was her greatest annoyance Captain Marvel. But Carol was so laid back and cool. And Captain Marvel was so all-business and by-the-book. 

In an effort to look more like a normal person and less like a vigilante superhero, Daisy made minor adjustments to her appearance as the ambulance loaded Carol in. Daisy noted the truck had a government license plate, not a standard one, and one of the EMTs glanced at Daisy like he knew her. 

“Are you coming?” the familiar EMT called. She placed how she knew him: Shield. He was one of her dad’s former coworkers from Shield.

“Um, yeah? Yes.” Daisy’s mind was made up. She would be there for Carol through whatever came next. And if Carol hated her for it when she realized the truth, then at least it was better than this secret eating at her alone. She sat on the bench by Carol’s feet as the EMTs sedated her and worked to get the supersuit off. It certainly wasn’t cuttable by anything they had in a standard ambulance, but with the disengaged helmet and some quick guessing on Daisy’s part at the buttons on Carol’s wrist, they managed to get the top off without causing further injury. 

Without the supersuit, Carol’s white ribbed tank top further hammered home the situation. Daisy had seen her wear it around their home a dozen times at least. She’d even folded it, or one identical to it, as they did laundry together last weekend. 

Carol was rushed off to triage care as soon as they arrived at the emergency room, leaving Daisy to pace the waiting area. Eventually, the nurse at the reception desk cleared her to go back to Carol’s newly assigned hospital room. She’d been here so many times with her parents that it took a second to realize she hadn’t needed directions. They were at the Shield ward of Walter Reed’s classified Agent Care Center. Everyone in here was current or former FBI, CIA, NSA, and the like. But only a few knew how to even access the Shield floor. She punched in the Shield-only access door code from pure muscle memory, and when the check-in desk receptionist tried to stop her, she simply kept walking and greeted a nurse by name. 

Even with her mask off, the Quake professional-badass energy was still coursing through her. That is, at least, until she saw her roommate/friend/crush bandaged and badly bruised in a hospital bed. 

A nurse stood at Carol’s bedside holding a Shield tablet, and he startled and then softened as he saw Daisy. “Hey, you’re Phil and Melinda’s kid, right? I have here you’re also on Carol’s emergency contact call sheet and approved disclosure list.” 

Daisy nodded. She hadn’t known she was one of Carol’s emergency contacts, much less on the list of safe people to communicate declassified information to. In fact, she was only just realizing that Carol’s job sounded suspiciously like a cover story for the agency. As the puzzle pieces fell into place, Daisy watched as Carol’s body glowed slightly, healing itself.

“Damn, I’m jealous of you even when you’re sedated in a hospital bed,” Daisy quipped, more Quake than roommate. 

Carol grumbled as she awoke but didn’t open her eyes yet. “And it’s still somehow never you taking the hits.”      

“I’ve got bruises to prove that’s not true,” Daisy countered.

The nurse, satisfied with Carol’s slow waking, said, “I’ll leave you to it” and closed the door discreetly behind him. 

Daisy scooted closer and took Carol’s hand to coax Carol to stay awake. This time her voice came out softer, more love-smitten friend than bitter rival. “Hey there, Girl Scout. Turns out we need to talk. Roommate to roommate.” 

Carol struggled to open her eyes, but then blinked hard when she did. “Daisy? But I thought…?” 

She was about to say “never mind,” to blow off the confusion as part of her injuries, but Daisy watched the excuse die on Carol’s lips as she took in Daisy’s outfit and makeup. Black eyeliner, hooded leather jacket, tight black ripped skinny jeans and dark grey shirt. The hood was off and the gloved gauntlets were stored securely in her inner jacket pocket, but recognition clearly passed over Carol’s face. 

“You’re? But you can’t… You wouldn’t.” Carol’s glowing body, meanwhile, was rapidly fading her many bruises and repairing the damage as they spoke. She tried and succeeded with great effort to push herself up to sitting. 

Daisy choked back a half-laugh half-cry. Carol was going to be okay. “I’ll tell you the story later, but it’s really me, both your Daisy and the Quake you chase around, making sure I am always doing the right thing, even when we disagree on what that is.” 

“My Daisy,” Carol sighed and laid down again. The IV in her arm sent painkillers that along with the super-healing was sending Carol back to dreamland. 

“We’ll talk when you’re better. Just get well okay? Maybe we can even find a way to work together.” 

For now, Carol didn’t fully process these words as she slipped back into recovery rest. But eventually, Daisy would make good on that promise. 

—-------------- 

Fury had known the enhanced division couldn’t operate as ordinary Shield agents forever. This latest development proved it was time. Phil had always told him he needed to let superheroes be superheroes, as dangerous as they could be. It’d be more dangerous to have them out there unsupervised with no backup. His thorough, proposed revisions to Shield policy had recently been unanimously accepted by the governing board as well. 

That said, no one was more shocked than Phil to find out his sweet baby adopted daughter turned fully grown superpowered adult was the masked vigilante no media outlet could get a picture of. Humble pie was eaten by all that day, as Fury reinstated Daisy as a provisional agent of Shield’s enhanced division, with full honors upon finishing her remaining training courses. Only this time, the training was suited to her learning style and experience as a hero. The mutual compromise came with maturity on Daisy’s part as well as she learned to work as part of a team and put trust above impulsivity, even when she offered constructive, instead of explosive, feedback. 

The key in all this, of course, was the newly mellowed Captain Marvel. Whether it was the time in physical therapy rehab or making things official with her roommate/girlfriend/superhero partner, Carol and Captain Marvel blended more seamlessly into one another, with Carol more confident and Captain Marvel more flexible and less anxious about perfection and pushing herself beyond her limits. Daisy helped her bring her full self to the job, and Carol helped Daisy find belonging and attachment, each helping to heal part of the other. 

The only people who didn’t enjoy this partnership were the villains, henchmen, and run-of-the-mill supernatural criminals they encountered. For them, it was a nightmare ending behind bars as two superhero girlfriends holding hands walked away into the sunrise of a safer, happier new day for all.

[silentstaresfanficandfanart]

THE GAME IS DONE aside from some art :)

free to play and yes i know its on google docs im sorry I had no idea where else to upload this to, it had too many files for itch :( for those who don't know yet this is my mermay video game! just a game im trying to make over the course of mermay as a challenge thing me and a few of my readers are doing in the discord chat to make a cool creative concept for mermay. mines based on the prompt 'marine biologist' In this game you play as a sort of go-between for merfolk and human relations at an aquarium that often helps merfolk in need in the area as well as doing other aquarium duties

Its a visual novel and it has a LOT of endings and I will state theres special endings and diologue you get based on whether or not you laugh at Nikko's jokes at the beggining.

It's my first full game and I admit its also the thing that got me trying to do backgrounds. expect later releases to include visual changes and better art as well as improved sprites

theres a lil game in there like dressing up your little guys (sadly i cant figure out how to keep them in the costumes you put them in but at least you can put them in cute outfits) (you later unlock more options as well as another character to dress up by the second time going shopping)

and lots of fun antics with the characters :)

you do have to go down every route to get all the lore

and unlike most dating sims you dont really have the usual setup for building character relationships its more so a chose your own adventure style dating sim

theres a platonic route thats fully fleshed out too and is meant to be just as compelling as the romantic routes and the game is ENTIRELY SFW though there is mention of murder and possible cannibalisim amongst merfolk. mention of large storms. but its mostly a chill game where you get to befriend merfolk and your human companions

theres nikko, the human marine biologist who loves puns and is trying his best to be your friend

Nanonari the moon jellyfish emperor of the waters who has lost all faith in himself

and ketsueki the strange black tipped reef shark terrestrial biologist and human researcher

he cries a lot please be gentle with him If any other game developers or gamers know good websites for uploading your games (pay or for free) where theres an in browser feature especially id love that. I'm considering using GOG since I prefer their business practices (from what little ive seen) for things (if you havent checked out gog its just as legitimate as steam , ea games, etc. but it doesnt do the stuff with forcing you to be online to play, if i remember correctly its also the only place you can really get acess to the spore online services properly anymore (or easily? i think) and just generally feels a lot friendlier

things the game needs now: more soundtracks

more sound effects (considering trying to record myself playing my trusty slide whistle for several, several things ketsueki does. that shark just will not stop moving-)

I really hope you like it, if you play please comment below on your thoughts!

[sugarzandsweetz]

I’m Yours (Jeytiri x OC)

Elena is a scientist who was one of the few that were chosen to stay on Pandora. As time passes, she catches the attention of the resident Olo’ekytan and Tsahik

Jake x Neytiri x OC

______________________________________

Elena creeps carefully through the thick brush, staring up at the tree saplings above her head. In her hands is her camera, ready to snap photos of the creatures that are in her sights. A concentrated look is on her face as she observes the stingbats that are hanging off of branches.

Every now and then, she takes photos of the aerial creatures.

‘I never realized how much easier it is without being under the RDA’s watchful eye.’ Elena thought.

After the fierce battle for the Tree of Souls, the RDA was forced off of Pandora. A select few of scientists were chosen to stay. Elena was one of them.

Elena Britworth is a zoologist that specializes in terrestrial animals. Mainly Pa’li, sturmbeests, and thanators. She was chosen to be apart of the Avatar program to study the animals on Pandora.

Except, the RDA wanted to use Elena as a means to find a way to weaponize the animals. It fueled her rage as she helped with Jake to save the Na’vi.

Now, she was happily living on Pandora. Free to study all of the animals she wants.

As Elena absorbs herself into her work, she is unaware of two individuals approaching her. Her eyes are focused into the lens of her camera when someone taps Elena on the shoulder.

A startled yelp leaves her lips as Elena whirls around. Her racing heart soothes as she sees its Jake.

“Jake, you scared me!” Elena laughed breathlessly. “Oh, hi, Neytiri!” she said, noticing Neytiri is with Jake.

After the battle and the village started to rebuild, Elena had gotten close with Jake and Neytiri. She was already friends with Jake as she helped him understand the animals. But befriending Neytiri was a bit of a struggle as the Na’vi princess still had her misgivings about humans.

It took some time but Neytiri warmed up to Elena and saw the small human as a friend. Although, Elena has been getting mix signals lately from Neytiri. And Jake as well.

For the past few weeks, Neytiri and Jake would eye Elena whenever she was in the village. They would whisper to each other and stop when Elena approaches. It’s odd and slightly worrying.

Do they know how I feel about them, Elena has asked herself many times.

Before Jake became involved with Neytiri, Elena developed a bit of a crush on the marine. She saw the man for who he was, not the person in the wheelchair. So when Jake mated with Neytiri, Elena was saddened. But she would never dare to get in between two people in love.

Except as Elena got to know Neytiri better, she started to become attracted to the alien. It confused and terrified Elena.

“Are you busy? We were hoping to talk to you.” Jake said, nervously.

“Oh, of course! I was just wrapping up my observations for today anyway.” Elena said as she packs up her camera and notebook. “What is it you want to talk about?” she asked.

“Let’s go somewhere more private.” Jake said, gesturing for Elena to follow him and Neytiri. The entire time, Neytiri has been silently watching Elena.

The three of them walk far enough so that no one could potentially hear them. Elena becomes a confused and concerned by how far they’ve walked.

“What did you need to talk about that has us travel this far out?” Elena asked worriedly.

“We just wanted privacy.” Neytiri said.

“What did you want to talk about?” Elena asked.

Neytiri and Jake share a look with each other.

“Elena, for awhile now, Neytiri and I have been thinking about you. We care for you dearly and want you to be with us.” Jake revealed.

Elena is caught off guard by the confession. Her heart starts to pound heavily against her chest.

“We wanted to ask you if you thought of us . . . in a romantic way.” Jake said, shyly. It is a complete turn from the usual stoic leader he is.

As Elena tries to think of something to say, Neytiri speaks up.

“I have seen how you look at me and Ma Jake. The desire in your eyes,” Neytiri spoke softly as she approaches Elena. She reaches out and rests a hand over Elena’s chest, feeling the human’s racing heart. “We desire you too.” she finished.

Elena feels as if she might faint at Neytiri’s words. It depends on if it’s from excitement or panic.

Neytiri pulls away and returns to standing next to Jake. The couple want to respect Elena’s boundaries and await for what she has to say.

Finally, Elena finds the words.

“You really feel that way?” she asked shyly.

“Yes,” Neytiri said, smiling softly. “We want you in our lives.” finished Jake.

Elena’s cheeks grow hot as she blushes at the two Na’vi. “I-I’m flattered you feel that way about me.” she said honestly.

“Does this mean you accept us?” Neytiri asked hopefully.

A shy smile spreads across Elena’s face as she nods. “Yes.” she said.

“Then it is settled.” Neytiri said before pulling Elena into a kiss. Elena almost loses her breath as she feels Neytiri swipe her tongue over Elena’s lips. ‘Someone has learned tricks from Jake.’ Elena thought as she melts into the kiss.

Elena swoons when Jake’s lips replace Neytiri. His kiss is much softer and sensual. Jake manages to slip his tongue into Elena’s mouth.

The kiss ends after a couple of seconds but it felt like it lasted an eternity. Elena is panting, feeling incredibly warm.

“Are you okay?” Jake asked.

“I’m fine. It’s just been awhile since I’ve been physical with someone.” Elena said, blushing.

Neytiri smiles as she wraps her arms around Elena’s waist. The alien pulls Elena into another kiss, this one much slower and passionate. As the two kiss, Jake rests his hands on Elena’s waist and holds her between him and his mate. He kisses and nips Elena’s neck and shoulders, enjoying how she mewls and whines.

Breaking the kiss, Neytiri looks Elena in the eyes. “I’ve been wanting to taste you for a long time.” Neytiri admits as she runs her hands along Elena’s sides, tracing the contours of her body. Jake’s hands move over Elena’s chest and cups her breasts.

“Be patient, Neytiri. We don’t want to pressure her.” Jake advised his mate.

Elena feels a rush of boldness as she wants to prove that she’s ready. To prove to them, she pulls Neytiri and Jake down to the forest floor to make themselves comfortable. Then she climbs on top of Neytiri and starts to play with her.

Sending a wicked grin to Jake, Elena directs her attention to Neytiri.

Running her fingers along Neytiri’s chest, Elena plays with the princess’s small breasts and tweaks her nipples. Elena bends down and begins to kiss and lick Neytiri’s blue skin. As she starts to play with Neytiri, Elena trails down the Na’vi’s chest to her stomach.

Neytiri gasps softly as she arches her back in response to Elena’s touches. It’s delicious watching such a strong warrior come undone. Elena looks up to see how Jake is responding.

The Olo’ekytan is watching them intently. Jake’s eyes are filled with desire for the both of them. As Elena is running her hands over Neytiri’s body, Jake reaches out to touch Elena. He plants his hands on her waist and kisses the back of her neck, gently biting down.

Elena moans as she feels Jake’s mouth and hands, but she keeps her attention on Neytiri. With a hard yank, she removes Neytiri’s loincloth and reveals the woman’s soaking cunt.

“I’ve always been curious as to how Na’vi women taste.” Elena purrs as she bends down and licks a stripe over Neytiri’s pussy. A loud moan resonates from Neytiri as she feels Elena lick her pussy. The Na’vi warrior watches Elena with hooded eyes filled with desire.

Grinning, Elena starts to lick and suck on Neytiri’s clit, circling her tongue over the nub as she sucks. She reaches out for Jake, urging him to touch and play with her.

As she pleasures Neytiri, Elena smiles seductively at Jake. Her fingers find their way into Neytiri’s wetness, exploring her folds and teasing her sensitive spots. Neytiri is trembling in pleasure as Elena plays with her.

Jake hesitates for a moment before touching Elena. His fingers slip underneath her loincloth and feels the warmth and wetness of the scientist’s pussy. He starts to stroke her gently, mirroring Elena’s movements on Neytiri.

The three of them move in sync as they give into their desires.

Elena moans against Neytiri’s skin as she feels Jake’s thick fingers play with her pussy. Her moans vibrate against Neytiri’s cunt as Elena keeps sucking.

As her moans fill the forest, Jake becomes more confident in his touch. He slides his fingers inside of Elena’s tight pussy, watching in awe as Neytiri's body shudders under Elena’s skilled tongue. The scent of arousal fills the forest, making it difficult for them to think straight. Their hearts race, and their breathing becomes labored. This is what they've been craving - this intense connection and mutual pleasure.

Elena plunges three of her fingers inside of Neytiri as she circles her tongue around the Na’vi cunts. Her fingers scissor inside of the alien woman, feeling Neytiri’s walls clench.

“you feel so good on my fingers.” Elena moaned as Jake’s fingers slip into her pussy. The scientist’s walls clench around his digits, practically sucking on it.

Jake watches as Elena’s fingers move inside Neytiri, his own fingers sliding in and out of Elena’s wetness in response to the sight. He can feel his cock throbbing against his loincloth, eager for release.*

"Fuck, Elena," he whispers, his voice hoarse with desire. “You're so fucking hot."

“I want your big cock inside of me, Jake!” Elena whined. She pulls away from Neytiri’s pussy so she can look at Jake. “I want to know what it’s like to be fucked by a Na’vi.” she said before returning to fucking Neytiri with her mouth.

Jake's heart races at Elena’s words. He can feel his cock pulsing heavily, aching to be inside her. He looks into her eyes, filled with desire and curiosity.

"You're so beautiful," he whispers, his voice hoarse with need.

“Come on! Fuck me!” Elena gasped as she speeds up her ministrations with herfingers. She fucks Neytiri senselessly with her mouth and fingers, wanting to see the Na’vi female come undone. As Elena does this, she leans her ass against Jake’s cock, begging to feel him.

Jake can't hold back any longer. He grabs Elena’s hips and begins thrusting his cock into her tight ass, groaning with pleasure.

"Fuck yeah," he grunts, taking Elena roughly from behind as she continues to pleasure Neytiri.

A loud moan tears from Elena’s lips as she feels Jake thrust into her. His cock is the biggest that she has ever taken. Her pussy spasms around Jake’s cock, clenching down like a vice grip. Elena gently bites on Neytiri’s nub and sucks down on it, feeling it quiver under her tongue.

Neytiri cums with a whine, her juices spilling onto Elena’s tongue.

Jake growls, his hips pistoning harder as he takes Elena roughly from behind. He grabs her hair, pulling her head back to expose her neck.

"Tell me what it feels like," he demands, his voice rough with lust. “Tell me how much you want it." he growls in Elena’s ear. Jake sucks on the soft part of her neck before biting down.

Elena gasps and moans helplessly as she grabs at Jake’s thighs to keep herself in place. Her breasts bounce with each violent thrust.

“I-I want it! It feels so good!” Elena whined as Jake holds her in place, letting Neytiri watch as he fucks Elena senselessly.

Jake's hips slam against Elena’s ass, his cock pistoning in and out of her tight hole. He growls, his muscles tense as he takes her roughly. “That's it, Elena,” he grunts, slapping her ass.

“Take it all." he growled in Elena’s ear.

“F-fuck!” Elena cries out as she cums around his cock. She arches her back with a scream as Elena feels wave after wave of pleasure flow throug h her.

Jake groans, his hips bucking wildly as he fills Elena with his seed. He holds her tightly against him, his cock throbbing inside her.

"That's it, Ellie," he pants, kissing her neck. “You're mine now."

“I’m yours, Jake. I’m yours,” Elena pants, shuddering in the aftershock of her orgasm.

Neytiri smirks, her eyes filled with lust as she watches the two lovers. “You belong to him now, Ellie," she says, her voice husky.* "And he'll take care of you. We will take care of you.”

The Na’vi princess steps closer, running her fingers through Elena’s hair and down her back, tracing the line of her spine. “But remember," she whispers in Elena’s ear, “you're not just his anymore. You're ours."

Elena smiles tirelessly as she kisses Neytiri. “I’m both of yours,” she whispers against Neytiri’s lips.

Jake smirks, his eyes full of pride.

"That's right, Elena,” he says, his voice deep and husky. “You're ours now." He pulls out of Elena slowly, his cock still hard and throbbing.*

"And we're going to enjoy every inch of you."

[r-ex-mor3]

Something for your M.I.N.D

Feat. Mikitaka Hazekura

Genre: Fluff (Platonic)

Synopsis: Basically, Josuke and Okuyasu tells you about Mikitaka and you practically adopt him

Reader’s age: 26

Mikitaka’s age: Unknown but presumably 16

(If I ever feel like it, I’ll do more Headcanon’s of you being a mother figure to Mikitaka cause I love it)

(Warnings: None except this not being proofread so it might be ass 💔)

You were at home relaxing as you had a day off and you decided to make the best of it. Sitting on your couch with a cute coffee mug, you heard a knock on your door as you got up PRAYING that it’s not anything that had to be related for work or anything to do with your job.

As you open the door, you looked to see the familiar sight of the two dumbasses and a new friend along with them. Before they could speak, you slammed the door on them and walked back to your kitchen to lean over the countertop as you heard banging and yelling from the other side of the door that you tried to ignore.

You soon gave in and swung the door open and you glared at Josuke and Okuyasu.

“What do you need? I literally get a break from my job and of course you two had to show up.”

Your eyes glanced at the platinum blonde male beside them.

“Now, who’s the new kid?”

Josuke collected his breath from yelling so much and he began to speak up after a good 3 minutes.

“This, this is Mikitaka.. he’s an alien. We can’t tell if he’s a user or truly and alien and we need your help..”

You looked at Josuke as Okuyasu nodded at Josuke’s statement and Okuyasu decide to speak up.

“And, you know stuff about space and all that, so we decided to wonder if you can like, I don’t know, help him settle in and get used to being.. normal?“

Josuke jabbed Okuyasu in the arm causing Okuyasu to whisper-yell a “What??” You mentally facepalmed and looked at the platinum blonde who’s named Mikitaka. He looked to be staring at a butterfly out of curiosity.

“Surprisingly, I understand what you’re saying Okuyasu. For ONCE in a life time. Anyways, I’ll take care of him. Now shoo.”

Okuyasu nudged Josuke in triumph and thanked you before walking away and you looked at Mikitaka.

“Hello Mikitaka, names _____! I’ll be helping you get used to your new home.”

Mikitaka perked up realizing you were talking to him and he blinked twice and he straightened himself up.

“Ah! Thank you for taking me in. I’m grateful for the opportunity.”

You took a mental note of his behavior and let him inside your residence. It was really clean and there were a few papers in a neat pile on the counter. Mikitaka seemed clueless and didn’t know where he was.

“Okay, Mikitaka, let me help you get used to this new life style, alright?”

He only nodded and motioned him to follow and he did so and ended up at a gallery like area that was dark but not too dark. It had information about space and all the little things about it. You begin to talk to Mikitaka, asking a few questions and jotting it down on a paper as he asked questions about his own surroundings. All of this was honestly cute in your opinion.

As time passed, you concluded he was indeed another terrestrial being! It was interesting to you and you decided to care for him and teach him about all the human things around him. You even helped him with writing. He knew how to write but not in Japanese so you had to teach him but thankfully, he’s a swift learner and understood quickly and it was honestly a relief.

As the day slowly turned into days together and days turned into a week. You showed him many things and cared for Mikitaka like you were his mother. He felt comfortable around you and you can’t help but smile at it. Seeing him get used to everything made you ever so happy..

You took him everywhere he wanted to explore as he was a curious mind. It warmed your heart to see him so happy, you can’t help but call him your son!

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

hi!! really liked reading your merfolk post!! if you're okay with questions, i have some for you: is there one merfolk culture, or multiple? you said they have celebrations on things like the harvest, what sorts of stuff do they harvest or farm? also, how do they feel about fish... is it like how humans feel about apes or monkeys, like something fairly similar to us, or is it like how humans feel about fish, nice to watch but also... edible. or some other perspective of fish?

OMG

Thank you so much anon!! I would love to answer, so I will!

There are multiple merfolk cultures, all as varied as terrestrial human cultures! This is because the great big event that made them happened all around the planet, and not just to a single population of humans. It is perhaps misleading to refer to all of them as just "merfolk" when they have very different ways of life... but they do still share many biological features and the same sorts of limitations, so I'm still going to lmao. As it is, most of my merfolk worldbuilding focuses on the merfolk of the Baltic Sea Kingdom, Osmeri, and Finland, since I am Finnish myself and most of my characters are too. Plus, explaining how aquatic humans can survive long cold harsh winters in the freezing water takes some more work than explaining how aquatic humans survive in a tropic ocean where food and warmth is plentiful year round!

Closest to our terrestrial harvest, coastal and inland merfolk tend to harvest fruit, which they get from trees that grow near the water! Important vitamins and all that. Merfolk also grow their own crops, but I've yet to figure out what those crops are — I am not a botanist but I know in my heart that humans will be humans and that if we had to go aquatic, we'd find some way to domesticate the aquatic plantlife through the course of thousands of years. Now on-the-spot thinking about harvest, I think harvest would be celebrated in tandem with terrestrial humans too, the merfolk could trade aquatic goods with them and then they'd have one big party of abundance 🤔

Merfolk feel about "fish" as we feel about "mammals", that is, a wide spectrum that goes from worship to disdain, appreciation to annoyance, material gain to value just from existing. Different species of fishes are their livestock, their pets, their wildlife, the neighbourhood "pests"! It must depend on culture, what's with every merson's tail looking exactly like an existing species of animal (the creation stories of merfolk must be wild) but all in all merfolk recognise that the aquatic life around them is fundamentally different from them, though they look similar.

Though I explained it in words, this is a wonderful opportunity to show a comic I made to answer this very question in 2022! It is a tad outdated, what's with Ahti II admitting that he's from Osmeri, but no matter. The children (me) yearn for the mines (to show my art):

...Too cruel? Not to worry, the domestic pikes that Ahti II is familiar with as pets and companions are a different breed from wild pikes! I'm sure they cleared that up immediately after the events of this comic.

Thanks for the questions! :]

[accursedkaleeshi]

Drugs on Kalee

         There are plenty of poisonous & toxic critters on Kalee all in the midst of trying to gain an evolutionary advantage. Kaleesh are incredibly food motivated & will try to eat anything that moves at least once. They have by now gotten a pretty good handle on what is locally edible. This knowledge is passed down through word of mouth & traditional oral records.

         Kaleesh use drugs for all sorts of things (as, by their own admission, “there ain’t shit to do on Kalee”). Various Hiil clerics have a few poultices, but they don’t have much in the way of traditional medicines comparative to their civilization. (“If I die, I die” mentality.) They mostly use drugs in their ceremonies & rites. A subset of apothecary kaleesh, called venxt, specialize in making poisons for hunting. Poisoning fellow kaleesh is seen as dishonorable. Herbalists arose from the need to make fresh water potable. And, of course, there are “herbalists” & “venxt” that share Kalee’s more fun bounties.

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PLANTS

         While the kaleesh use a fair bit of plant material, there is probably a lot more undiscovered. Since kaleesh don’t like the sweet taste or smell of many flowers they rarely experiment with them on purpose. Most of their plant-based discoveries were made watching other animals rooting around in the foliage & following up to find stuff to pair with their meat dishes.

         Though most kaleesh prefer stimulants that hype them up until they abruptly crash, that is usually a young man’s game. Bark from the swamp dagger tree evolved to strike its predators with the Cozy Sleepytm. It is quite potent. Kaleesh like to burn it & “drink” the smoke. Hard to get though. Less potent but more fun is to hunt the fen nodadiir, a fucked up stilt deer that eat the bark but are able to store the toxin in the fruiting antlers it grows.

         The most common way to chill out on Kalee is to drink. A little bit of bark powder goes a long way in their brews. Kaleeshi drink ranges from citrus-like teas to straight moonshine to alcoholic meat broths. It’s a good way to calm down at the end of a day. Elder warriors often become dependent on the hooch to keep them calm within the community. Hooray, universal language of alcoholism. The long term effects, depending on the drink, are similar to ours.

FUNGI

         Kaleesh have a love/hate relationship with fungi & fungi-adjacent growths. It’s like if plants were meat & they all look like you should eat them! Instead of fruit (they can’t handle much fructose), they make a lot of their booze with fungi & it’s bussin. But just as many kinds of mushrooms will kill a brother. Badly. Most of the bioluminescent ones have proven to be deadly so they have opted not to eat anything that grows & glows as a rule of thumb.

INSECTS

         Kaleesh have observed that some creatures get their toxicity from their diets of offending insects but they have never had the patience to cultivate them to any meaningful extent. Much easier to hunt, catch, & keep the bigger critters that eat them. Even though kaleesh don’t have to worry about most stinging insects due to their scales, it is still a pain in the dicks to try to keep bugs anywhere. Ask any overeager venxt apprentice & the cricket peddlers.

         There is one widely known insect that lives in the Eastern jungles. The gold bead bug is a solitary winged insect that only emerges when the season is just right to find a mate, making it a rarity. Eating one of these bugs is the most potent berserker substance on the planet. The most obvious Kaleeshi thing to do when they find one is to 1: fight for it, 2: head to the arena or middle of town (optional), & 3: have the winner from previous fight eat the bug then fight them again. It’s like giving your biggest friend pcp & then seeing how many of your friends & neighbors it takes to bring them down. For funsies.

OTHER TERRESTRIAL ANIMALS

         Their favorite poisonous dudes are the flower frogs. The buflor & other toad dudes in the same family secrete a mucous of various toxicity. The toads combine acids from their diet with their own potent chemicals & will start oozing this at you from glands on the back of their heads if you bother them too much.

         The domesticated buflor have been mostly bred for household use. They are slow to anger & their mucous is only very mildly hallucinogenic. Venxt breed lines of a highly toxic buflor sister species. The darts do wonders on medium sized prey animals. They had also done pretty well at stopping bitthævrian in their tracks.

         There are several animals (mostly related but with some outliers) that are angry, drug secreting fruitcakes. With the amphibians being so proliferate, however, they are the most accessible. Kaleesh love to lick toads, man. It is a common young adult thing to do with your homies. Go find a toad to lick & trip with RTX shaders on for a while. Some of the toads mess with kaleesh pheromone systems so they be smelling colors for real.

AQUATIC       

         A disproportionate amount of Kalee’s toxins are derived from her seas. The life in the oceans is not in a calm era. They on that weird shit. As the Yamrii found out, most of the larger organism in there are too bony, too pointy, too specific, or too toxic to industrialize. The seafaring kaleesh have been living off the ocean for thousands of years. They know pretty well by now which things they can eat & which things will kill them. They also know which things will almost kill them in fun & exciting ways.

         The “if it glows, don’t eat it” rule only applies on land. The people’s favorite are the miiryu, a branch of shrimp. There are several species of miiryu & the all glow to some extent, usually in polkadot patterns to break up their outlines. The shrimps cook well as you might expect, but if you eat one whole & raw it gives one a burst of restless energy. Its like a 5 Hour Energy with coke(ain) in it. Sailors have been using it to get their work done for centuries. 2 of them would get a guy through the whole rotation & then crash. Their favorite shrimps are native to the bay of Shrupak, so called holy shrimps. They are the perfect size to pop in their mouths.

         The shrimps are easy to dry out & grind into a powder called zid (jyid). Zid can then be distributed anyway. Kaleesh, with special exception, don’t like the idea of snorting anything into their sensitive nasal passages & usually take drugs with food. The zid for, example, is baked into a flat bread for a lessened effect, like a shot or 2 of espresso. For the full effect they will put it on food already cooked or just lick it directly out of the container like fun dip if you’re less classy.

         The urchins & stinging things of the water are usually paralytic. Kaleesh don’t always notice because, again, their scales are pretty sturdy against the small to medium critters. There are some tidal dudes that absolutely suck to step on, of course. With any creature that is big enough to really do damage to them, they would rather not risk it. There’s a fucked up urchin/sea louse thing that causes numbness so it can munch on things undetected. That little shit makes popular medical poultices & gladiators might take a lot of it. Kaleeshi discourse: is taking the no-feels before a fight cheating?

There is a jaw-slinging bottom feeder called a calm-down crawler that kaleesh like to catch & harass each other with. It has 2 barbs on its lower jaw & throws them like a taser. It can’t get through their scales in open air. Sometimes kaleesh will split the jaw like a wishbone & pierce their tongues with the barb. The venom slows their bodily functions way down. This is incredibly stupid & kills a handful of idiots a year.

         Many kaleeshi ceremonies & rites involve imbibing some kind of drug. Ceremonies that pit 2 kaleesh against each other, usually vying for a leadership position, will have the participants crush a dried anemone in their face to inhale the powder inside. It’s a class of drug kaleesh call frenzy that incites berserker mode, which they love. The gold bead bug is the most potent frenzy drug.

         Other ceremonies will use depressants for reflection. Hallucinogens, sometimes in conjunction with paralytics, are used to encourage spiritual visions. Rust wine is an alcoholic marrow broth traditional at weddings. ETC!

[providencehq]

Hey~! What are your top 5 fave EVO designs from Generator Rex? Also, do you like any of Generator Rex's soundtrack?

Such an easy yet hard question. Without fail my number 1 spot has to go to Weaver. Dude has such a fucked up design and it really pushes the idea of human to monster bounty in Generator Rex combined with the aspect that unlike most EVOs, we see him human first. The visual of the skin tearing to reveal almost puss like growth that is too much for his skin, his BODY to contain shows the horror of EVOs. That in itself, the destruction of the human body molecule by molecule may be recognizable in some fun house of horror mirrors but only in it's base. You have a full monster there. That's fucked up. Love him for that.

Second would probably be the Blimp or how I so lovingly called it Whale Fall EVO. I honestly don't care about how it's used for transportation but the fact that it's recognizable as a whale is oh my god, what amazing world building. A majority of the EVOs seen throughout Generator Rex are either humans or fairly recognizable, every day animals like rabbits or rats or dogs. Before we ever see Rex and Six go into the ocean, we're fairly limited on knowledge that nanites have spread past a terrestrial and aerial means. Like, of course it would have gone into the water ways to some degree considering the Nanite Event effected everything but you see a whale coming out of the sky all messed up, I would have realized that the nanite endemic is so much worse than it initially appeared. It looks like an actual whale fall of an EVO whale with EVO scavengers (barnacles, whale lice, squid???? FUCKING YES) just hitching along it's so gross I can't help but love it.

Next is the Stegerat. I think they look cool, like a gross puppy, and fucked up, that is all.

Fourth favorite is probably Quarry's enforcers or as I've always called them in my head, the maggot EVOs. A lot of the human EVOs don't balance a lot of the monstrous with the human aspect in the more small scale EVOs we see. EVOs like No Face and some of the background no name EVOs have cool designs but don't hit that gross factor a lot of the animal EVOs do, this is truly effecting us on a genetic level and not a slightly more quirky X-Men looking character (I'm looking at you Squidd). These guys though? They're gross, I hate them, solid A+ in my book.

And lastly we have Alpha! Love him for the concept that and EVO doesn't have to pertain to modifying biological matter in order to exist, it just can. Such a dense concentration of nanites given sentience that other nanites don't quite have and manage to come together and create this mirror image of us? A haunting figure of the failures and potentials successes lost through blind pursuit manifested into a quote on quote perfect human? One without disease or death and the ability to manipulate itself into whatever without the cost of losing genetic/biological material or sanity (questionable)???? OH MY GOD I LOVE IT!!! And the fact the denser nanites in my mind make it look almost skeletal form peeking through. (he has little fangies)

In regards to the music I do actually listen to quite a bit of the music from Generator Rex, mostly Orange (though my brother listens to them and I'm fairly sure I stole all my music taste from him). Flashback Heart Attack has some super fun songs and I even made a patch of their band for one of my many patch jackets. I love the song Loser specifically. I don't think I listen to any of the actual music composed for the show however.

[thescions]

you guys were lovely to ask all of us some wol questions so have a scions/mun question! : what are both of yours top three favorite scions? ✨

Aw, thank you so much for this!

For Grey ---

This is SUCH a difficult question. I'll attempt to keep my reasoning brief. In reality, I love all of the Scions for reasons that relate solely to them. How they function as a narrative vehicle, how they've been characterized by their VAs, etc. If I pinch myself enough, I would narrow my top three to Estinien, Minfilia, and Papalymo.

Estinien, because I relate to him so immensely, because his is a perspective I continue to explore in my own writing. I look at his experiences with Nidhogg as a mirror manifest of Complex PTSD, literally and expositionally. The insidious nature of having been trapped in an abusive relationship. Except, your abuser lives in your head as much your world and there is No. Escape.

How must it feel to have a being not unlike a god consistently pumping your heart with venom and vitriol, targeted or otherwise? How must it feel to know that you, likely alone amidst even the others of your role, may have a meaningful impact on the influence driving a centuries long war? The weight of it. The responsibility, self-imposed and otherwise.

As the player progresses through the game, we are deadened to the enormity of having fought hyper-terrestrial beings, just as the characters would be. The other Scions may also share in our experiences, but it is only Estinien who knows what it is to have power to genuinely match ours. At least, for a while. Even Minfilia and Krile only borrow a finite glimpse of the like.

With that said, my affection for Minfilia knows no bounds. Not only do I resonate with her as someone raised femme who also enjoys the feminine on a deeper level than aesthetic, I also deeply vibe with the proposed mentality of someone who would sacrifice their all for the greater good, whether you have faces to assign to it or not.

She may not be lobbing axes at folks with us -- but perhaps that is for the best. Because the moment she has the power to fight, she fights to the point of near annihilation, using every ounce of that strength to achieve her desired outcome. Her restraint to hold out, to do as much as she possibly, possibly could, and then some...

I too, and many of you, I am sure, have burned that proverbial candle. Or perhaps I am dramatic. ;)

As for Papalymo: oh, I just love a nerdy older man who is exasperated by his promising, younger colleagues, of whom he will tend to fullness. Are any of our followers big Buffy fans?

As for Lanna --

Tough, tough question! But I am choosing Tataru, Thancred, and Ryne. (The twins are on the same level as Ryne -- but I couldn't pick one over the other!) My reasoning for all three comes down to growth.

From Tataru the secretary, to Tataru the boss bitch entrepreneur, who even for a time tried to learn how to fight to help protect us! Tataru represents the home of the Scions. Her "welcome home" at the end of EW and anytime she starts crying out of worry for us makes me sob. She isn't a warrior but she is so strong. She took over Minfilia's role of being the Scions' core emotional support while also evolving past that to really become a vibrant individual.

For Thancred --I'll admit, a lot of my reason for him being one of my favorites is because of the headcanons and development Grey and I've put together for him. But those are all based off of his canon interactions and, again, the story he goes through throughout the series. The man is clearly so godsdamned depressed, and (if the story would let him) we can see so much potential conflict with him letting that get the better of him. And of course, allllll the development for him throughout Shadowbringers with Minfilia and Ryne. He has healed so much. I'm a little confused as to where his story/development goes now in DT -- I feel like it is done, and he should be allowed to go retire happily with Ryne on the First. But if there's more for him to do, I'm happy to see it! As long as he's not just the 'flirty naked guy' again. Then I'd be disappointed.

Ryne is such an amazing character because we really only knew her for one expansion. She didn't have the same amount of time to develop as say, either of the twins, and yet immediately her story, her conflict with her self-esteem and sense of identity captured my heart. Her history was like Puella Magi Madoka Magica in Final Fantasy for me, so that totally hit all my vibes. But more than anything, she remains generally innocent even throughout the Eden raids. Innocent and kind, but not weak. And that is so rare to find these days. Ryne is a treasure -- a blessing ufufufu -- and I can't wait for her to rejoin the MSQ. WITH. GAIA. MAKE EDEN RAIDS REQUIRED, YOSHI-P!

[noddytheornithopod]

While the Prehistoric Planet hype is still alive, I might as well express my desire for more and say what I'd personally love to see if they did a Season 3. I’ll put this under the cut because it’s a lot lol.

First thing's first, I'm going to be operating under the assumption we will be following the same format and setting, ie a few segments per episode set in the Masstrichtian stage of the Cretaceous with some loose overarching theme. I need to keep myself grounded in SOMETHING.

So first thing: I've already made fun of "North America" being the title of episode 2.5. What would fix this? If Season 3 did episodes centred on the other continents, of course! South America, Africa, Asia, Europe and... oh uh this might be a bit trickier. Specifically, where do Oceania and Antarctica go? Honestly, just do a vague "East Gondwana" episode for Madagascar, India, Antarctica and Zealandia.

"But we never saw anything from Appalachia!" True. Some generic "Islands 2" or "subcontinents" episode? But Antarctica isn't a subcontinent... maybe some "Atlantic" episode to combine with the European islands? Point is, it would still be messy. This isn't even my main idea, just a vague thought on how to structure Season 3 plus being salty that America gets its own episode (there weren't even any Canadian creatures lol).

OKAY enough fucking around, let's get to what I actually WANT to talk about, the stuff I'd actually want to see. Bring on the list! 

Megaraptorids. We've seen representatives of all the large predatory theropods... except megaraptorids. A strange unique group of predators we don't even know where they fit in dinosaur cladistics, but seemed to be important in South American ecosystems. Orkoraptor actually comes from the same place as Dreadnoughtus so there's an easy excuse already, but I think it would be even more exciting to consider Maip. The size of this thing pretty much confirms they were apex predators, so definitely worth considering.

More notosuchians. It's wild how diverse they were, Simosuchus is just one of many species worth showing. Might as well mention Baurusuchids in particular, especially since they seem to have become significant predators in parts of South America. Dinosaur hunting crocs, guys.

Honestly? I'm down for crocodyliformes in general. Show us dyrosaurs in the seas, and even Eusuchians. Similar to modern crocs like Shamosuchus in Swamps, or something different like the more terrestrial Allodaposuchus.

More Europe weirdness! Whether it be Hateg fauna or stuff we know from other parts of the continent, I think people don't realise how unusual those ecosystems were, especially compared to Laurasia in general. Maybe I just want to see Magyarosaurus in detail, but also think about how Abelisaurs seem to be prominent terrestrial predators, for example? Also all the strange birds like Gargantuavis and maybe Balaur. Also, Asteriornis I see a lot of hype for. ;P

On a similar note, more stuff from Africa could be nice, especially terrestrial fauna! We know dinosaurs from Ouled Abdoun, which had fauna featured in Coasts and Deserts, and it's worth considering especially because you kind of see how some of these animals' ancestors may have led to similar species in nearby Europe. Also, if they ever further described more remains from the continent like that giant Kenyan abelisaur, that could provide cool opportunities.

This is a bit more out of left field but: non-ceratopsid ceratopsians. Leptoceratopsids, and even Protoceratopsids (hey, we have Velociraptor, we can make that stretch). Show how they're different from say Triceratops.

More non-hadrosaur ornithopods. Whether it be Thescelosaurus, more rhabdodontids, or some good ol Elasmarians from the Southern continents, I'd be down.

More India stuff is always fun, Deccan Traps FTW, could show other animals like noasaurs for that matter too.

Also Parankylosaurs, whether it be Stegouros with the macuahuitl, or an updated Antarctopelta (more Antarctica FTW).

Basically, even in terms of dinosaurs, show more stuff you've yet to do. Nodosaurs, Halzkaraptorines (again, see Velociraptor), heck even more of some groups we only briefly saw eg Alvarezsaurs and Pachycephalosaurs.

Honestly? More birds would be cool in general. I know we don't know much about a lot of them like Enantiornithines, but we could still try showing what we do know.

In terms of more familiar and recognisable stuff? I mean, you can't go wrong with well known species, but this is me wishing for stuff that's new. :P I will say though, if you want big names, we still haven't seen Ankylosaurus or Gallimimus...

Hmm, we haven't seen choristoderes, have we? In terms of other reptiles, not much comes to mind, nice we got to see Madtsoia in Islands at least.

Honestly more mammals could be fun. I'm pretty sure we have members of every modern group from the Maastrichtian somewhere (even monotremes, Patagorhynchus was recently described). Also diversity of lifestyles too.

Appalachia. More North America, but we see how life evolved somewhat differently on the eastern side of the continent and how it likely lacked some of the more recognisable animals we know from Laramidia.

I don't know enough about other groups to comment, so I'll leave it at that. Definitely got quite extensive, but honestly I'm all for exploring new places. Hell, look into invertebrates and fish I know heck all about (hmm I'm sure there's some cool sharks, right?).

Anyway, time to address the elephant in the room. What if the next season left the Maastrichtian, or we got a spin-off that did that? Well, I do have thoughts on that. For that, I could easily be SUPER biased and just name stuff that I personally want to see, but I think you'd need to think from the perspective of the higher ups too. In other words, what's gonna get the most eyes on the show? There's that, and also how well known the information of that time is, as well as considering things like cost and practicality. The Maastrichtian was chosen because it filled all three of those needs. You have iconic and charismatic species like T. rex, the Maastrichtian is very well studied and has sites from almost every continent, and because it's the closest to today, it's the easiest to film for. 

I don't really know anything that would fit these three needs perfectly, ESPECIALLY in terms of filming locations (unless they wanna go majority CG, which I wouldn't mind personally but I know the production team likes real locations because of what they add to the show). But anyway, I have two possible eras as my main choices if they choose to do a similar kind of show: the Late Jurassic epoch (I'd name a specific stage but I don't know enough about them lol), and the Cenomanian stage at the start of the Late Cretaceous. 

For the Late Jurassic (insert chosen stage of it here), you have a lot to work with. You have all the other most iconic traditional staple dinosaurs like Stegosaurus, Brontosaurus, Brachiosaurus and well known contemporaries like Diplodocus, Allosaurus, etc. In fact, the Morrison Formation is the main reason I opted for a Late Jurassic option. Sure, it does cover quite a bit of time, but we've seen Prehistoric Planet already take liberties with a six million year time span.

I think my main worry would be that some of the ecosystems on different continents might seem a bit similar, but honestly I doubt anyone would care too much. Plus, you have Asia with slightly different dinosaur groups, and Europe with their island ecosystems (eg Solnhofen). So even if it would be harder to film and some of the best locales for data are in more concentrated areas, I think there's enough to justify it. Also, novelty of early birds and birdlike dinos like Archaeopteryx.

As for the Cenomanian, you already have an easier time filming because angiosperms are now widespread, and you do have data from every continent. And while it doesn't have so many iconic species, there are a few, and some very charismatic animals to explore. Like, you have some of the biggest titanosaurs like Argentinosaurus. Massive Giganotosaurins who are built for hunting large sauropods. Everyone's favourite dinosaur, Spinosaurus. And again, stuff from almost every continent. Like, you could even have freaking Australia show up! Winton Formation is Cenomanian, so it could join the showcases of Africa, South America and others (I don't know so much about Cenomanian Laurasian fauna RIP). And while it would be true for the Late Jurassic as well, this time had especially peculiar nondinosaurs coexisting. Strange mammals. Giant freshwater fish. More unusual crocs. Even the earliest mosasaurs, all while ichthyosaurs and pliosaurs still existed. Basically, even if a layperson might only know Spinosaurus and Giganotosaurus from this time, you still have loads to potentially awe people with.

Anyway, that's a wrap on that. I have no clue what to expect for the future of Prehistoric Planet or what other upcoming palaeo docs will be like, but it's always fun to speculate!

[omahasnakes]

2022: Hi motherfuckers, did you miss me?

(A return to my dumb project of listening to the Billboard year-end top 100 chart and trying to make sense of it as a middle-aged person.)

I’ve been home since 2020. I’ve been twerking and making smoothies. It’s called healing?

There was a period of a couple of months in 2023 where I would wake up in the morning to one of my maddening-to-others alarm clock songs, probably “Rosanna” by Toto, and then I would immediately listen to the first half of Lizzo’s 2022 album Special, just to get myself out of bed. ANYWAYYYYY. “About Damn Time” is the only song from Special that charted in the top 100 in 2022, which surprised me, but it’s clearly song of the year for me by that metric. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXXxciRUMzE

If it was anyone’s year, and we are all starting to learn not to say “this year is going to be MY YEAR”, there were seven songs by Bad Bunny, all from the album Un Verano Sin Ti and six by Doja Cat (four from Planet Her).

“Big Energy” by Latto: runner-up song of the year. This is another defiant tough-girl anthem to listen to while you drag yourself out of bed to continue trying to live your shattered life in early 2023. Of course we can also talk about the prominent sampling of sample-darling “Genius of Love” by Tom Tom Club- I ended up getting more and more into Tom Tom Club based on this, and I played “Genius of Love” for my classes one day when we were on Zoom, and it got a rare comment from a student! The kids are alright.

“Running up that Hill” by Kate Bush: I was an undergrad in the days of Windows share files, and I downloaded most of Kate Bush’s discography that way. Because of that, my Kate Bush fandom always felt very much in a vacuum. So I’m excited that this struck such a cultural nerve when it appeared in Stranger Things! Everybody get on the weird Kate Bush train with me! Next we’re going to listen to a song that pretty straightforwardly explains the plot of Wuthering Heights!

“Unholy” by Sam Smith and Kim Petras. We don’t have guilty pleasures anymore, just pleasures. Sam Smith performs a cool different arrangement of this at the end of their Tiny Desk concert that I also really enjoyed. I can’t defend this or my bad taste, so I can only present it without further comment.

“good 4 u” by Olivia Rodrigo stuck around on the chart from last year, one of a few breakup songs. Well, it’s 2022 and I have no use for breakup songs, so I’ll just file these away for never!

“Bad Habit” by Steve Lacy: a Smart Music Person corroborated that this song and the album Gemini Rights are Good. You can take issue with me and my bad taste, but a broken clock is right twice a day, and you can’t argue with a Smart Music Person.

It is right and correct that “All I Want for Christmas is You” should chart year after year, but you all need to cool it with this stuff that just plays as a mix after that song ends: “Jingle Bell Rock”, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”, “A Holly Jolly Christmas”: we gotta get this outta here by next year!! When I come back for 2023, I expect that you’ll have that taken care of.

I try not to go down too many rabbit holes on these charts, because there are 100 songs and I have to move on to the next chart before I’m driven mad, but my research senpai Rachel pointed out that this chart includes 14 songs that carried over from the previous year, which I am starting to notice as well. My theory is that streaming encourages this more than terrestrial radio, which was always pushing new songs on us. Streaming is perfectly happy to have us listen to the same song over and over, sobbing quietly in the car.

Country music barometer: 26% Our society is truly lost.

“Buy Dirt” by Jordan Davis and Luke Bryan: the single most reactionary song on the chart. You: But it’s just a nice song about traditional values. Me: [seagull inhaling meme]

AA by Walker Hayes: I guess we didn’t all get the memo that sex work is work and pole dancing is art.

Rachel is also great for dumb questions like “Is Morgan Wallen one of the bad ones?” because she’s got the references and receipts and she knows how to Find Things. Also, yeah. He had one song on the chart this year that I thought was fine, “Sand in my Boots” but now he’s a non-starter.

“One Mississippi” by Kane Brown is another one for the country category of “this is fine.” It’s not the genre I object to anymore, it’s the reactionary politics and stagnant style, which now that I put the conjunction between the two phrases, they make perfect sense together.

Lest you think I’m being too hard on country music, this chart also features a song called “PUFFIN ON ZOOTIEZ” (caps lock theirs) and a shocking #9 finish for “Super Gremlin” by Kodak Black, a cool-sounding song that features some real classic homophobia I didn’t expect from 2022 and a prominent r-slur.

On the other hand, 10% of the songs were in Spanish! (Both of these statistics are from my own very rough counts, don’t roast me.)

Programming note: now that my algorithm is truly and permanently fucked, I’m planning to listen to the 1996 chart as a palate cleaner before diving in to the cursed 2023 chart.