#exceptional preservation

[alphynix]

Apatemyids were a group of unique early placental mammals that lived during the first half of the Cenozoic, known from North America, Europe, and Asia. Due to their specialized anatomy their evolutionary relationships are rather murky (they were traditionally part of the convoluted mess that was "Insectivora"), but currently they're thought to be a very early offshoot of the Euarchontoglires, the branch of placentals that includes modern rodents, lagomorphs, treeshrews, colugos, and primates.

Living in what is now western Europe during the mid-Eocene, around 47 million years ago, Heterohyus nanus was a small apatemyid about 30cm long (~12") – although just over half of that length was made up of its tail.

Like other apatemyids it had a proportionally big boxy head, with large forward-pointing rodent-like incisors in its lower jaw and hooked "can-opener-shaped" incisors in its upper jaw.

Example of an apatemyid skull from the closely related American genus Sinclairella. From Samuels, Joshua X. "The first records of Sinclairella (Apatemyidae) from the Pacific Northwest, USA." PaleoBios 38.1 (2021). https://doi.org/10.5070/P9381053299

The rest of its body was rather slender, and fossils with soft tissue preservation from the Messel Pit in Germany show that it had a bushy tuft of longer fur at the end of its long tail.

But the most distinctive feature of apatemyids like Heterohyus were their fingers, with highly elongated second and third digits resembling those of modern striped possums and aye-ayes. This suggests they had a similar sort of woodpecker-like ecological role, climbing around in trees using their teeth to tear into bark and expose wood-boring insect holes, then probing around with their long fingers to extract their prey.

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References:

Kalthoff, D. C., W. Von Koenigswald, and C. Kurz. "A new specimen of Heterohyus nanus (Apatemyidae, Mammalia) from the Eocene of Messel (Germany) with unusual soft part preservation." Courier Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg 252 (2004): 1-12. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263714512_A_new_specimen_of_Heterohyus_nanus_Apatemyidae_Mammalia_from_the_Eocene_of_Messel_Germany_with_unusual_soft-part_preservation

Koenigswald, W. V., and H-P. Schierning. "The ecological niche of an extinct group of mammals, the early Tertiary apatemyids." Nature 326.6113 (1987): 595-597. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232761846_The_ecological_niche_of_early_Tertiary_apatemyids_-_extinct_group_of_mammals

Samuels, Joshua X. "The first records of Sinclairella (Apatemyidae) from the Pacific Northwest, USA." PaleoBios 38.1 (2021). https://doi.org/10.5070/P9381053299

Silcox, Mary T., et al. "Cranial anatomy of Paleocene and Eocene Labidolemur kayi (Mammalia: Apatotheria), and the relationships of the Apatemyidae to other mammals." Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 160.4 (2010): 773-825. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1096-3642.2009.00614.x

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

I think Duke Thomas should get to give off eldritch horror vibes to all JL-associated magic users. As a treat.

[wasteland-wrecker]

Back to Fizztop Grille ⬇️

Well, now he knows…

[curapicas]

I thank Ryoko Kui from the bottom of my heart for making Kabru's TWO descents into the depths of (desire) the dungeon to go after Laios and the dungeon' secrets be possible because:

1- he met a man who was running himself ragged after the woman he loved and

2- he met a man who was running himself ragged after the sinister demon that he's obsessed with.

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 220

Danny has made a delightful discovery. Blob ghosts can in fact change their shape! Sure it’s simple shapes, but still! He has a school of flying blob fish and blob cats following him around and they’re adorable. And it’s not like most people can see them outside of Amity anyway, so they’re fine to follow him around as they like. 

Though maybe he should have remembered that the most doesn’t mean no one can see them. Um, hello? Feral stabby child?? No you can not steal some of his friends??? Where are your parents???? 

[sesamenom]

AU where Aredhel founded Gondolin and Eol nabbed Turgon (and little idril)

(click for quality)

[thebrainrotsreal]

Thinking about de-aged Bruce via magical shenanigans being a bit of a menace. He will bite you if given the chance, and will draw blood. Slippery as an eel to catch. Don't even think you can corner him in his own home, he knows every single secret room and deep tunnel in the manor. Your eyes are scratch-able to him. Try telling he's the future and he's demanding you tell him who killed his parents. Can't tell him? Alright then, you're lying. He would've found out by now if this really the future.

[stompandhollar]

something something, the symbolism of how Stan and Ford were only able to see eye to eye when they were wearing one another’s clothes.

something about Ford in Stanley’s clothes, staring at his mirror image in his, and finally seeing Stan for who he has always been— a hero. who saved his family with his bare hands simply because of how much he loved them. a hero who has been protecting that family since he was a child and hasn’t ever stopped. Something about it finally clicking to Ford in that moment.

[literallyjusttoa]

Left this abandoned in the drafts (which is a bit ironic) but it's a spin on this post, where instead of Apollo just being locked in some room on Olympus somewhere, he's bound to the ruins of an abandoned Ancient Greek city. Maybe somewhere near Delphi, maybe Troy, idk.

[jerreeeeeee]

i don’t know if i’m ever gonna write the fic but i’ve been thinking abt like. the eternal stockade. the implications. lup, a lich who was trapped in a dark featureless cell for a decade completely isolated with nothing to keep her sanity but her own mind. she has to put people in the eternal stockade. how many liches does she see herself in. how many liches started out just like her. how many liches are truly too far gone. and the only liches we ever see other than her and barry are edward and lydia. they’re certainly evil, but mad? they seem pretty sane. they’re not, like, tattered echoes of souls, they’re definitely still people. even as much of a grudge as lup surely has against them, wouldn’t they remind her incredibly strongly of herself? do they deserve to be trapped just like she was? for eternity? isn’t eternity what turned john to existential despair in the first place?

[danishphoner]

recalling that one time when i got obsessed with tlsp interviews and might have gathered (almost) all of them for further cataloguing on tumblr but wasn't quite sure if they'd still be somewhat relevant in the present day lmao:

[mielwriting]

"Inazuma is poorly written" meaning the worldbuilding's great but the plot needs a rewrite. "Natlan is poorly written" meaning the worldbuilding needs a redesign but the plot is great.

[insteading]

As someone who’s done bereavement care for almost 20 years, I’ve observed again and again and again that it is not staying with grief that cuts us off from other people, it’s suffocating grief and suppressing grief. It’s impossible to repress grief without also repressing all sorts of other things like joy and memory. Actually, expressing grief naturally connects us empathetically to other people. It is not an accident that right now when there is such a profound suppression of global grief, we’re also finding ourselves in a moment of such isolation.

Rabbi Elliot Kukla, in them magazine

I sought out this piece because Rabbi Kukla was quoted in today's sermon in reference to the ongoing genocide in Gaza ("It is lifesaving to mourn our humanity in inhumane times").

But this paragraph about grief hit me so hard I wanted to single it out to share. It is relevant to corporate grief of the sort we might experience when a state is doing harm in our name (police brutality, displacement, execution). It is also relevant to individual griefs.

In the bereavement calls I do for hospice, I have noticed, this is precisely what gets people stuck in grief: the feeling that there is no safe space and time to express grief. Companies tend to give very little accommodation for bereavement, if they give any at all. Culturally we're expected to get over losses in a matter of days. But grief rewires us, and some losses-- particularly losses like war, displacement, and police brutality where a state or institution does the same kind of harm repeatedly-- are complex and ongoing.

Grief impacts sleeping, eating, executive function. (I don't ask people in bereavement calls, "How are you doing?" I ask, "How are you sleeping?" "How's your appetite?" Maybe "Are there moments from your caregiving, or from your [loved one's] dying, that keep coming up for you?" Because of course you're not fine! You just lost someone essential to you. What I want to know is, is your body getting a chance to repair itself as your mind and heart process what you've experienced?)

People have talked to me after a loss about feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by daily life. It's not unlike recovering from a major injury and having a sizable portion of your bandwidth given over at all times to the tasks of bone, muscle, and nerve repair that are not under your conscious control. When tasks you're used to thinking of as having one part suddenly make it clear how complex they are? Cooking a meal takes more out of you. Doing a load of laundry takes more out of you. If you're already an introvert, the cost of social engagement goes up, at a time when social engagement might actually be very helpful.

Doing some of our grief work with other trusted people shares the load. It recovers some bandwidth. But many folks learn early in the grieving process that they have fewer trusted people than they thought. Or that it feels like the wrong time to deepen an acquaintanceship they'd hoped might become a friendship. Or that they aren't as comfortable asking loved ones for help as they thought they would be.

And the bereavement model I'm trained in assumes that a grieving person has experienced one recent loss. We know that a recent loss might poke us in the tender spots left by earlier losses. But that's still different from the experience of a tragedy that affects a whole community at once (as in an entire region's population losing multiple loved ones in a very short time and being forced to flee).

I don't really have a conclusion here, but I'm finding the activism that feels most healing and hope-filled to me has lament built into it: a chance to name the people who've died in our county's jail, while advocating for better communication with families of people inside. A chance to call out the names of people lost to covid while advocating for policies that will mitigate risk to vulnerable people.

Maybe it takes days to name all the people impacted by ongoing genocides in Congo, Palestine, Yemen, while urging our government to end its role in those genocides. Maybe our systems and structures, which aren't even good at honoring our grief for members of the nuclear family we're taught is our primary world, are disinclined to give us that time. Maybe we ought to take it anyway.

[storyteller-aprendiz]

So maybe I am wrong but I don't think you can gendered Louis & Armand, the way you do Loustat.

Because neither Louis nor Armand are really the "housewife" in the situation. In Dubai and SF is Louis' initiative and therefore his business but Armand does have an equal role on it, tho Louis is the more capitalist/investment savy, Armand is like the one to schedule talks with buyers, help fix the houses etc. It is not Armand's home, like Louis moving into Lestat's, is THEIR home, both in Dubai and SF.

And like even if the bullshit with the books (which tf) and the tree are definitely Armand, the art, the furniture even the gray are Louis' (cause he's grieving). Like for me the Dubai penthouse is like a reflection of Louis' self/soul "You are in my coffin" as much as a manifestation of Armand controlling tendencies.

I saw a post about exactly this, like how Armand & Louis relationship is a Depiction of how even in the queerest of models and types of relationships abuse can still take part if people are not willing to question the systems, dynamics or just plane different levels of power their members have.

And then we have the D/S dynamic. Kink and BDSM are already shamed upon in our heteronormative society, because they play with the power dynamics that already exist in the relationship, and they create a separte extructure through safe-words and after care and good old communication in which both member can consent to those dynamics, be safe and most important GET PLEASURE from them.

And like, Armand as the powerfull abusive partner Technically, considering our heteropatriarchal lense should be dominant, but he gladly relinquished it to Louis. Which is a role we don't expect from the patriarch of the house.

Plus all of Louis' boys, means he has a sexual freedom that is not allowed to the "housewife". Though, of course that extend of freedom is still determine/manage by Armand, but not in the sense of Louis is sexually his, ergo he can't be with x. But rather Louis might get Hurt, so I need to control him, for his sake.

Which is why Armands abuse looks more to me like care-taker abuse than like the heteropatriarcal shit Lestat does.

Which I think, is also because Armand being a racialized man with a learned helplessness ingrained to him, really can't like inhabit the same role Lestat does in a home. He will always be a step down, cause masculinity and male privilege gets further away (or like changes? I think that's a better way to put it) the more marginalization you inhabit. Which also makes a lot of men of color double down in what little power it does grant's them (sometimes going to bigger like displays of power than the subtler types of white men), which you could argue Armand also goes for/participates in with the staging of the trial.

I hope anything I wrote here makes sense. But yeah, I think that the patriarchal husband/edwardian wife comparison even if it works as a lense to analyze Loustat, it falls apart for Louis & Armand.

[profounddestinyrebel]

Pretty much my ideal dcxdp coexisting world

Danny had all his canon happen before Bruce and the JL started their vigilante careers

Before Bruce was born or Martha and Thomas even got married

Phantom Planet never happened and the world never realized that they were almost dead in the first place (I apologize for mentioning it)

Danny retires after blowing up the portal and designing a new system of gov for the Infinite Realms (why the hell is that a monarchy anyway? Fighting being a way of communicating AND the way of determining a ruler does not make sense so I'll choose the better one)

Danny still visits the Infinite Realms but mostly lives his life

He still has interesting things happen to him but more because he apparently has a curse placed on him than anything else 'may you live in interesting times'

Danny manipulates the curse by getting into situations on purpose and then resolving them without getting attention drawn to his civilian id and normal life

He keeps track of immortals and big names that deal with death magic so as to lower the chances of being summoned

The more powerful the Realm Being the more powerful the summoner has to be to summon them and with how powerful Danny is there aren't many he has to keep an eye on

Ra's has been losing Lazarus water at a steady rate for over a decade but only now has it become a noticeable loss. The day the that he notices is a Very Bad Day for the League of Assassins (the day Danny lets himself get caught satisfies his curse for 2 whole months)

Danny hasn't aged much at all since he left Amity at 17. He's still short but mimics the effects of age with stage makeup and other tools used by actors to look older they actually are. This is how he meets a certain Alfred P. who remains a good friend even though they never really meet in person.

His parents blow themselves up and wipe their house off the map when tinkering with a device designed to lure realm beings to them. Danny isn't really sorry they're gone. He finds out after leaving Amity that he wasn't really their kid and he wasn't even adopted. They made him in their lab while distracted from their obsession with ghosts then completely forgot they had done so when they refocused on ghosts. His growth chamber (terrible name) was coated in ecto which allowed the device to reactivate and allow Danny to finish incubating into a toddler then (suspicious) it mysteriously popped him out before his the fentons noticed the growth chambers success.

His parents never took any notes on the clone experiment out of the house due to it being a (perceived) failure. After going back to their ghost obsession they completely forgot about it so no one knows. Jazz only found after Danny told her and he only found out after growing older and continuing to look less and less like either of his parents.

Danny finds the notes and that's what inspires him to leave Amity, to start looking for his bio parent. The Fenton's had no clue that the clone they grew was Danny. They dismantled the growth chamber when Danny was four (actually two) and never realized that the toddler they adopted was the clone of wonder woman they made. They never said anything to anyone about Danny being adopted so Vlad has no idea that Danny isn't Maddie's child.

Vlad starts to age drastically after the portals are destroyed and Danny figures out that Vlad isn't a halfa after all. He's just a normal ghost who can prey on people like spectra but with an obsession directed at Maddie originally and then Danny. Afterwards Vlad gets shunted off into Walker's prison because of all the toxic and human crimes he's committed among them brainwashing, mind control and mind wiping various wealthy and not so wealthy individuals into giving Vlad their money and companies.

Ellie has to explore the Infinite Realms (literally Infinite though so she's not confined) only because she can't really produce her own ecto. She has to absorb it from her surroundings so she can wander safely all over the Infinite Realms (so long as she calls for help when she gets in over her head) but not the human realms unless she takes a buddy who can produce a steady stream of ecto for her.

Vlad makes Danny his heir so now he's rich enough to travel even after giving all the people Vlad stole from their money back. It turns out that Vlad was good with making more money once he had it.

just Danny being a crptoid for the entire magical community and them being unable to talk about it if they even know of him

while danny runs a NASA and space account where he talks about NASA's recent achievements, newly discovered stars, planets and new alien races that Earth has been in contact with