#easier on my brain

[aquared]

yknow what again im feeling real nice heres the room i made i am so goddamn tired

[stealingpotatoes]

realised over dinluke week that the reason i always draw din w the helmet isn't bc i'm respectful of his religion or anything cool, it's purely bc i have a perry-the-platypus-like reaction to seeing his face and am easily confused

[warmfuzzyanimal]

start of the day vs. end of the day

[egophiliac]

A-anime?

you know, sometimes I forget that Twst is actually an isekai that starts with the protagonist getting run over by an inexplicable horse-drawn carriage. and every time I'm reminded is a delight because that's AMAZING.

also. look. okay. there's a lot of very fun stuff in the trailer but I am obsessed with that Crowley surprised pikachu face. me when I spend all my keys and gems literally hours before they announce overblot SSRs and drop the anime trailer:

[nuclearanomaly]

Spite Loves...

[risingsunfish]

FOMOtiis

Bluesky

[romizari]

drew my boywifehusgirlfriendband (*ﾉωﾉ) i love sdv sam so much ill fight to the death for him. my silly sammie wammie.......... <-<-<-<- ramblings person who has NOT slept a wink in the past 20 hours

will drop my sam hcs and thoughts at a later date. savor my silence while you can. i Am crazy just a tiny lot about sdv and ESPECIALLY sam ........ but that is for another day i have sm work😭😭😭RELEASE MEEEEEEEEEEE

[erinwantstowrite]

i've spent almost five hours on this WIP and i'm alllllmost done i think but i have to wait until tomorrow to try and finish it </3

[lilybug-02]

Doomed by the Narrative.

Bug Fact: Each species of Firefly have their own pattern of light flashing.

First || Prev // Next

Masterpost

[timethehobo]

Tiny companion professor is proud of you for making it through half the week! 👍

[is-this-even-relatable]

Misfortune Teller

tldr: An older Danny, apprentice to Clockwork, does a lot of field work across dimensions, resetting the timeline, queuing future events, and who knows what else. Occasionally, he warns people about such upcoming possibilities, to set them on the right path. How, you might ask? Well in this case... as a wandering fortune teller.

Crack-fic (oh god, it's getting long and my logic brain won't let it remain as crack) where Danny becomes Clockwork's apprentice after getting his GED. Living his infinite afterlife to the fullest. Inspired by this tumblr post.

Working for Clockwork had been... interesting so far. At first, Danny got frustrated by how vague and cryptic Clockwork was. He'd just shunt Danny off to some ancient time with a few words, his own time medallion (Danny carried it everywhere with him now), and then pop back into the portal, leaving Danny with only the faintest idea of where to go.

Eventually, after enough time (ha!) spent around Clockwork, Danny figured out that it just basically meant that he had free reign and to do whatever he wanted. Because if he went on the wrong path, (like that one time in Pompeii when he had almost caused the volcano to explode a few years too early), Clockwork would just pop on by, say another few cryptic words, and then it'd all be fine and dandy, or as he liked to say, "All is as it should be... Now stop practicing your wail by an active volcano."

After telling Jazz about that (it was supposed to be funny, not concerning), she just sighed and shook her head, with a forlorn "think before you act, Danny!" but hey, it'd turned out fine so far, so who cares how he does what Clockwork asks him to do, as long as it gets done, right? Even if it's with a liiiiitle more mischief than strictly required.

Besides. Danny was the one who had been doing time shenanigans across millennia, not Jazz. And he thought he'd been getting pretty good at it too! He'd actually started giving himself a different made-up background for each universe he visited. Sam and Tucker were helping him keep up with the identities on a spreadsheet, so if he had to go back to one he'd already visited, he'd remember who he'd said he was supposed to be.

---

He was on a call with them one evening while haunting Jazz's apartment, doing just that, when he felt a familiar tingle in the back of his throat, as well as a heightened awareness of the seconds passing by, that always accompanied his mentor's appearance.

Sam was talking about his past stint posing as a god of death when he cut in. "Hey- sorry to interrupt, Sam- Clocky's here, guys, I gotta dip."

"Aw, come on! We hardly talked any this past week since you passed your certifications, man," Tucker complained.

Danny rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "Yeah, yeah. Partly on you too though, you've been caught up outside of class, and Sam's schedule is nearly the opposite of yours."

Sam hummed in agreement despiter Tucker's scoff.

Danny missed hanging out with them as much as they had in high school, but hey, life goes on. Or at least, theirs did, to college. After finally flunking out of Casper High, he'd taken some time to get used to his responsibilities in the ghost zone, and when he had, he realized that he didn't really have much enthusiasm or timeleft for his human life.

And he didn't really want to go back home either.

But Jazz had made him tie up any loose ends before he noped-off to god knows where, which frankly, he had to thank her for. Getting his GED took a few years, but it was an accomplishment that could be attributed to Danny Fenton, no ghostliness required. Then he was able to let that tether go free.

Pulled out of his musings by a few more grumbles from Tucker, Danny said his goodbyes, promising to call the next time they were all available.

After hanging up, Danny swiveled around, anticipation already lighting up his eyes an ethereal green.

Clockwork, for his part, had been waiting patiently through Danny's lengthy goodbyes. Although he supposed that it tracked for the watcher of time to be patient. With his job, it'd be a nightmare if he wasn't.

"Phantom," Clockwork spoke, calm as always. "I have some tasks I need you to complete as my apprentice."

And Danny, always ready for adventure, didn't need him to explain any further. "Sure! When do you need me to be?"

Clockwork smiled at that. "I am fortunate you are eager. Follow me."

---

Danny popped into existence in this universe with a burst of cold air and static electricity. He found himself hovering by a clocktower above a sprawling, gothic city. Smog and light pollution obscured the stars above him, to his disappointment. He comforted himself with the fact that he'd probably have all the time he wanted to fly someplace less populated to see them later.

He started off by familiarizing himself with the city. As he flew, he followed the trail of power and met the resident city-spirit, a spooky- but kind underneath- woman draped in black lace, who told him her name was Gotham. He spoke in length with her about this universe, its heroes, and her knights. On that, she was very enthusiastic... or at least Danny thought she was, her projected emotions belaying much more than her gloomy exterior. She told him how her knights had been through a lot and would need some guidance fighting the darkness that pooled in her deepest corners, smiling with too much glee, filling lungs with fear, and terrorizing with cold hard bullets.

Danny could sense that the dangers she spoke of were growing in power, ever slowly. The longer they shadowed people's minds and hearts, an intangible thing grew that lent them more otherworldly pull than their physical forms had right to hold.

That must be what he was sent here for.

But... they were weak, pitifully so for him, infinite king as he was. And besides, he wasn't here in that sense. He was a messenger, a simple apprentice. And he could do this however he wanted.

Cue his talk with Lady Gotham, and subsequent idea to arm her knights. With what? Well, he figured knowledge would be a start. Flying high above the city invisibly, Danny noticed a sea of colors and lights by what appeared to be the city's pier. He flew down, noting that it appeared to be the setup spot for a travelling circus or carnival of some kind.

He considered what to do. One of Lady Gotham's troubles was a madman clown, right? Well maybe he'd be attracted to his ilk here... and with the danger came the knights. Maybe he could catch one of them here?

Danny was floating around at the entrance and beginning to formulate a plan when a flyer caught his eye. Looking for a mystic to read fortunes. URGENT!

Hadn't Clockwork said something about fortunes? And he hadn't made an identity in this universe yet...

A mischievous smile crept across Danny's face, splitting it in two with far too many teeth.

---

Half a city away, a man in all black, perched on the very same clocktower that Phantom had Appeared by, shivered as he felt an ominous premonition about his sanity in the near future...

Said man quickly opened his comms to check in with his many, many kids. Yet even after hearing back from each, he still felt apprehensive.

Somewhere even further, Clockwork laughed.

---

And that's how Danny found himself seated at a fortune teller's booth at a pier in Gotham, two days later, for the Tricksy Traveling Circus's grand opening.

[chappellland]

Oh, I... I wish I was with you. Lisa Frankenstein (2024) dir. Zelda Williams.

[mammoth-clangen]

D’you perchance have any thoughts on the morphological (for lack of a better word?) dire wolves that Colossal Biosciences just revealed to the public? 👀

Oh my god Aenocyon, you can't just ask someone why they're white!

"Morphological dire wolf" my ass. Which is coincidentally where Colossal pulled the white coats from…

Give me an example of a modern temperate/grassland predator that's white*, I'll wait. *Excluding white lions, which are an uncommon but resilient morph resulting from leucism.

I based my Aenocyon design off bushdogs and dholes. They are called Masked Wolves in Kindred's setting, because I enjoy a good pseudo hyena niche uvu-b

Extremely extremely long 'thoughts' below the cut lol c':

Preface: in this discussion the term "dire wolf" has too many meanings, as such I will be referring to them as follows:

Thrones' wolves: for the huge, white, fantasy animals from Game Of Thrones GMO wolves: for Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi, Colossal's creations, Canis lupus Aenocyon: for Aenocyon dirus, the true, extinct dire wolf known from fossils across North America

----

Part 1: That's not a dire wolf-

The first question everyone has been asking is "So, are dire wolves de extinct now?" The answer is an emphatic "NO!" from anyone with knowledge of genetics, palaeontology, or taxonomy.

Aenocyon dirus were actually not wolves, nor dogs, but a secret third thing.

They are canids, but last shared a common ancestor with grey wolves and their lineage some ~5.7 million years ago.

For context, this paper suggests a similar divergence time between genus Homo (humans, Neanderthals and co) and Pan (chimps and bonobos); animals that look and behave markedly differently from each other.

The genomes of Canis lupus and Aenocyon dirus being 99.5% similar may sound like a lot, but again, humans share 98.8% with chimps, and 99.7% with Neanderthals, and yet are very distinct from both.

Skeletally, behaviourally, in soft tissue, etc, you could tell any of the three apart; the same goes for Aenocyon and Canis members.

Additionally, Colossal made 20 changes in 14 genes.

The grey wolf genome has 2,447,000,000 base pairs. Does that maths seem a bit off to you?

That's not even enough to change a grey wolf into a domestic dog, let alone an ancient outgroup!

This would be akin to modifying a lion to have bigger teeth and saying you resurrected Smilodon fatalis.

Or editing a Asian Elephant genome so they retain their juvenile hair and calling it a Woolly Mammoth.

It's a bold-faced lie.

Beth Shapiro says "they look and act like dire wolves" but that, too,simply isn't true.

Visually, the GMO wolves simply aren't what Aenocyon would have looked like. It's what a Thrones' wolf looks like.

Hmmmmm, funny about that, seeing George R R Martin helped fund the 'dire wolf project'...

As with many fossil animals, we don't know much about Aenocyon's behaviour.

You can't say the GMO wolves (who are also still pups) act like Aenocyon, because that's based off nothing.

What we do know is Aenocyon were likely pack animals (from the sheer number found in La Brea Tarpits), and crunched more bones than modern wolves (from their many broken teeth).

Also, crucially, they had Wild Sex Lives (from the many, huge, broken and healed bacula... youch).

Colossal is also being colossally shady by: doubling down on their bs use of the outdated "morphological species definition", blatantly misleading the public with their use of the words 'cloning', 'dire wolves', and 'de extinction', and refusing to share their methods in a peer reviewed paper before going public with a clickbait headline.

Do not trust them with your Red wolves either. They're using coyote hybrids and considering what they deem 'close enough' for a dire wolf, I wouldn't put any money on the quality of their GMO red wolves either...

Also can I just say, whatever genes they modified to "make the skull larger" clearly didn't impact the lower jaw...

No, I'm not sorry for this image uvu-b (But for real look at that poor pup and his overbite jfc)

Part 2: -and if it was, that wouldn't be good either.

I fundamentally do not support de extinction.

No, not even for the Thylacine, not even for passenger pigeons, nor the dodo. Even my beloved Homotherium should be left in the past.

This might be an unexpected stance because I am, surprising no one, a big fan of extinct animals, megafauna and otherwise.

But the thing is, I'm an even bigger fan of actual, living animals.

The animal ethics of de extinction are dubious at best.

The surrogate dog mothers of the GMO wolves likely won't live good lives.

I wouldn't be surprised if they were destroyed after being used, because their bodies could contain feto microchimerisms and Colossal absolutely doesn't want their special wolf genome getting out.

I doubt the GMO wolves themselves will live a full life before they outgrow their hearts, like Ligers.

This would likely be the case for any modern animal genetically modified into megafauna; a body not adapted to deal with the increased size.

Purely conjecture, but I also wouldn't be surprised if Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi have vision/hearing issues from their white coats.

White coats in wolves are associated with hearing impairments, so the gene used for these animals was from domestic dogs. Meaning Colossal has created a very expensive wolfdog.

Again, what kind of life are these wolfdogs supposed to live? As awful pets for the rich? In a zoo? Released to pollute wild wolf genomes? (assuming they're fertile; I hope not)

Regardless, it's not looking good if they ever planned to have them be 'wild animals'

Even true clones (which the GMO wolves are not) tend to have health issues.

Celia the Pyrenean Ibex (bucardo) was cloned, but the clone died after 9 minutes from a deformed lung.

So in 2003, this made the bucardo the first species to go extinct twice, yippee?

There's also the problem of genetic diversity.

How many intact genomes do you have on hand?

For dire wolves the answer is Zero!

To my knowledge, we don't have the full genome coded from one individual, just Frankenstein-ed from many. Which is fine for sequencing the canine family tree's relatedness, but not for cloning.

The absolute minimum individuals to survive a genetic bottleneck is said to be 50 in larger species. Called the 50/500 rule, it states that 50 is enough to survive, but 500 is required to prevent genetic drift.

To which I say, good luck!

Even with well preserved permafrost species (such as woolly mammoths), you'll have a hard time finding 500 individuals with prefect genomes.

And then, where will you put them?

If you were to, somehow, make a breeding population, where are they going? A national park? A zoo? Is their old habitat still available to them?

In Aenocyon, the answer is simply "they don't have a niche anymore".

Unlike the Thylacine or Dodo, humans did not directly cause the extinction of Aenocyon dirus. And even if they had, it was 10,000 years ago!

Would making room for a de extinct species impact the habitat/niche of another species?

Regular grey wolves fill Aenocyon's role as a canine mesopredator, with Puma as the apex (alongside bears as an apex omnivore).

With the loss of megafauna to prey on, a de extinct predator would just compete with other, also endangered species.

Animals also change the environment they life in.

Mammoths will clear trees like modern elephants. This would recreate the Mammoth Steppe, but those trees making up the taiga and boreal forests are themselves crucial habitat.

Other species have moved in since the mammoths' extinction. Siberian tigers, lynx, muskoxen, brown bears, elk, moose, and so many others; many endangered.

Trees also prevent erosion, which is already happening at unprecedented rates due to agriculture and deforestation.

Crucially: What's to stop an extinct animal going the same way it went out last time?

Ask yourself this:

Would the average American appreciate "flocks of Passenger pigeons big enough to darken the sky and whiten ground with their guano"?

Would people suddenly be okay with lions in Europe eating their livestock, when they are champing the bit to shoot Iberian wolves again?

Would Tasmanians suddenly feel the same about the Thylacine, when farmers in Australia still happily kill dingoes and eagles for lamb predation? [citation, I am an enviro technician and have had farmers tell me they shoot Wedge-tails, knowing I'm a toothless lion to stop them.]

I doubt it

At what cost?

Are we going to find 50 thylacine genomes?

If so (doubtful), how much will cloning and/or modifying a relative into a thylacine cost? Now that x50?

Wouldn't that money be better spent on quoll reintroduction?

What about finding 50 gestational carriers for mammoths?

Are you going to use their closest relative; the already critically endangered Asian Elephant?

Wouldn't that time and effort on those elephant mothers be better used making more elephants?

And the social cost:

If extinction isn't forever, what's to incentivize lawmakers to fund conservation?

Really, it comes down to this:

Why bring back the dire wolf when we could put this money into protecting the Iberian and Red wolves?

Why bring back the thylacine when their cousin is dying of a transmissible cancer?

We've already seen the impacts of "extinction isn't forever anymore", with those in power already trying to cut funding to conservation, because you can "just bring them back".

But as we've seen time and time again: there is no Planet B. There is no De-Extinction, not really.

Maybe what was gone should stay gone, so we can focus on what we still have.

[crowberri]

[Fullmetal Alchemist] mini series of just roy being roy

Also bonus roy being a whore <3

[fisherrprince]

Instead of writing a fanfic like a normal person this oneshot turned into two separate, contextless things,

[berry-bread-bakery]

My borgo ever rn🩵💙