#it might be gone by the end of the week

[nellasbookplanet]

I know that after Downfall the perspective of 'the gods are a FAMILY' has permeated fandom on both sides of the kill-all-gods argument, but frankly that isn't all they are and acting as if it's suddenly their only motivation flattens both them as characters and the narrative they (and bells hells) are in.

The Wildmother and The Raven Queen didn't 'let' Lolth get away with nabbing Opal and killing Cyrus because she’s their sister. Come on man, we've already seen that the primes are plenty capable of opposing and fighting their siblings on the side of mortals (is the calamity a joke to you??). I'm not saying the primes aren’t capable of picking the lives of their betrayer siblings over mortals (downfall showed as much) but that's not what the situation with Opal and Lolth was about in the slightest.

They let Lolth 'get away with it' not because she’s family, but because this is the very rare instance of them not only having the same goal, but of them actively fighting for their lives. As far as we know that has only happened once before on Exandria, and that time they also entered a truce to defend themselves. The vast majority of the time, the primes picking their siblings over mortals won’t happen because mortals can’t actually threaten the gods (normally), making the 'they're family argument' a moot point. The primes won’t necessarily agree with Lolth's methods, but they won’t go throwing away both hers and their own champions in a meaningless struggle when they need all their strength to stop the fucking apocalypse.

[iliothermia]

Anons are off because I'm done with people lying in my inbox, insulting me, and just piling on. I am one person who is trying to deal with hatred from multiple sides but those sending these messages see themselves as just one person throwing in their opinion because you can't see the other 15 messages I get insulting me for the same thing. I feel like I've been clear about my stance and why I function how I do in my small space online. If you find issue with how I function then please just unfollow me and leave me alone. I'll be offline for a while but I appreciate everyone who's sent me caring messages and things to consider a lot. I'm genuinely disappointed though, that this all comes from me saying I love my Jewish community and I hope they're doing okay- My first message directed at supporting other Jews I've made, after months of reaffirming my care for Palestine. Stay safe yall.

[deoidesign]

.

[aflawedfashion]

If this season ends how everyone expects it to, I feel like I have two episodes left in my Wheel of Time obsession, and I’m excited for the episodes, but it’s an ending, and that’s a little sad. Doesn’t mean I won’t watch season 4 or even enjoy it, but it will not be the same. Still, I’m going to enjoy the last two episodes. I don’t feel a need to preemptively stop enjoying the things I love most about the show, even if they won’t be there next season.

[skrunksthatwunk]

how do i tell my roommate that her cat repeatedly pissing on and destroying my things is something that people usually offer to clean or replace or apologize for instead of shrugging off

[junkissed]

Hi! Where did you go for the past couple weeks? Are things okay for you rn?

hi! i put junkissed on private for a while so i could take a break since there is a lot going on for me rn. it's very unlikely that i will write on here anymore but i haven't decided for certain yet. i won't delete this blog, but it's possible i might private it again. if i do, i'll repost some of my fics on ao3 (i think it's linked in my pinned post - but the username is also junkissed there). i'm also still active on my main blog @wenjunehui but it's only for gifs.

[likedaylighht]

I didn’t get to the beach this month and that’s honestly so tragic. What about the salt air? The rust on the door? I never needed anything more

[mourntheantagonist]

.

[hideyseek]

complaining about. acting technique in blood of youth under the cut

tbh, it's all fine / i can't really say for the most part. i am just Annoyed about how the actors are interrupting each other lol

like, im not an actor (AT ALL lmao)! i know so little! but oh god the pacing of the interrupting is killing me lol! there's a full beat, every time, between the speaker being cut off and the speaker who is interrupting and this keeps happening! sure, it breaks my immersion every time when the guy being interrupted stops talkong in order to be interrupted, yes, annoying for me but its tv, time passes. but worse (imo) this acting choice keeps reading as 'the character cutting themselves off' which is a totally different action than 'another character in the scene cutting them off' — totally different dynamic, totally different way to build tension in the scene!! aaargh, haha.

and the fixes for this are really straightforward! a note i have heard theater directors give a lot is "inhale a few words before your next line so you will be ready to talk" — this helps keep the pace of the scene (and in theater, prevents the runtime of the show from being longer than what's printed on the show programs ahaha). the other note i've often heard given is for the speaker being interrupted to have something in mind for the rest of the sentence — something they probably want to know for character work anyway (lol, i say as i frequently interrupt characters in fic BECAUSE i have no idea what i want then to say next, but that's beside my current point). again w this technique the goal is to eliminate that space of silence between the lines, and preserve that feeling of "being cut off" for the audience. but it's such an easy note to give, its just timing!

ok /rant

[scarycranegame]

sometimes i remember that there are people who followed my blog for urbanspook-related stuff who are still following me to this day and im like "wow how haven't you guys gotten sick of my shit yet LMAO"

[guard-dog-boyfriend]

I wish I was dead

[girl-bateman]

Feeling sick! Like emotionally and whatnot

[what-even-is-sleep]

Can’t wait for my drivers license to arrive so I can be driving legally again for the first time in 1.5 years!

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[yuribalisms]

Okay aaaand someone stole my sandwich from the break room fridge I really am just gonna fucking lose it

[mylordshesacactus]

on endlings, and despair

Hey, y'all. It's...been a rough couple of weeks. So, I thought--better to light a single candle, right?

If you're familiar with wildlife conservation success stories, then you're likely also familiar with their exact polar opposite. The Northern White Rhino. Conservation's poster child for despair. Our greatest and most high-profile utter failure. We slaughtered them for wealth and status, and applied the brakes too slow. Changed course too late.

We poured everything we had into trying to save them, and we failed.

We lost them. They died. The last surviving male was named Sudan. He died in 2018, elderly and sick. His genetic material is preserved, along with frozen semen from other long-dead males, but only as an exercise in futility. Only two females survive--a mother and daughter, Najin and Fatu.

Both of them are infertile. They still live; but the Northern White Rhinoceros is extinct. Gone forever.

In 2023, an experimental procedure was attempted, a hail-mary desperation play to extract healthy eggs from the surviving females.

It worked.

The extracted eggs were flown to a genetics lab, and artificially fertilized using the sperm of lost Northern males. The frozen semen that we kept, all this time, even after we knew that the only living females were incapable of becoming pregnant.

It worked.

Thirty northern white rhino embryos were created and cryogenically preserved, but with no ability to do anything with them, it was a thin hope at best. In 2024, for the first time, an extremely experimental IVF treatment was attempted on a SOUTHERN white rhino--a related subspecies.

It worked.

The embryo transplanted as part of the experiment had no northern blood--but the pregnancy took. The surgery was safe for the mother. The fetus was healthy. The procedure is viable. Surrogate Southern candidates have already been identified to carry the Northern embryos. Rhinoceros pregnancies are sixteen months long, and the implantation hasn't happened yet. It will take time, before we know. Despair is fast and loud. Hope is slower, softer. Stronger, in the end.

The first round may not take. We'll learn from it. It's what we do. We'll try again. Do better, the next time. Fail again, maybe. Learn more. Try harder.

This will not save the species. Not overnight. The numbers will be very low, with no genetic diversity to speak of. It's a holding action, nothing more.

Nothing less.

One generation won't save a species. But even a single calf will buy us time. Not quite gone, not yet. One more generation. One more endling. One more chance. And if we seize it, we might just get another after that. We're getting damn good at gene editing. At stem-cell research. In the length of a single rhino lifetime, we'll get even better.

For decades, we have been in a holding action with no hope in sight. Researchers, geneticists, environmentalists, wildlife rehabbers. Dedicated and heroic Kenyan rangers have kept the last surviving NWRs under 24/7 armed guard, line-of-sight, eyes-on, never resting, never relaxing their guard. Knowing, all the while, that their vigilance was for nothing. Would save nothing. This is a dead species--an elderly male, two females so closely related that their offspring couldn't interbreed even if they could produce any--and they can't.

Northern white rhino conservation was the most devastatingly hopeless cause in the world.

Two years from now, that dead species may welcome a whole new generation.

It's a holding action, just a holding action, but not "just". There is a monument, at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, where the last white rhinos have lived and will die. It was created at the point where we knew--not believed, knew--that the species was past all hope. It memorializes, by name there were so few, the last of the northern white rhinos. Most of the markers have brief descriptions--where the endling rhino lived, how it was rescued, how it died.

One marker bears only these words: SUDAN | Last male Northern White Rhino.

If even a single surrogate someday bears a son, we have erased the writing on that plaque forever.

All we can manage is a holding action? Then we hold. We hold hard and fast and long, use our fingernails if we have to. But hold. Even and perhaps especially when we are past all hope.

We never know what miracle we might be buying time for.