If you use arab.org like I do please consider taking the extra 30-60 seconds to click on ALL of their causes. Palestine is important but so are the environment, refugees, children, women, and the impoverished across the middle east and it doesn't take away from Palestine to click for multiple causes. The arab world faces a lot of problems and they only get worsened by how western nations have oppressed and attacked them. Clicking is small but it generates something and overtime it does benefit the greater good. It takes all of us clicking as often as possible but we can do it! It's really easy and safe and they have proofs on their site on how they do make an impact and are donating your click money
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I don't know why it took me a couple re-readings of this scene to realize they're in Laios & Falin's room at the inn. I wanted to use background details to piece together where each of them are standing.
The first time I read it, I assumed everyone was crowding around outside like the ending of how to train your dragon, but since they're on the second floor, they're actually all crowded in the hallway! somehow that detail is a lot cuter to me :D
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If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...
Start helping with citizen science projects
What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!
You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases
Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.
Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.
Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.
Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.
Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.
Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.
--
I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.
Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help
Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.
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Hot take
Night furies are actually perfectly evolved for hunting and killing other dragons and the only reason they aren't a dragon-hunting species like the death song or deathgrippers are is because DreamWorks couldn't have their adorable main character dragon be a "cannibal"
(below I'm gonna try to summarize what we've figured out in a convo with friends on discord)
(also tw animal death via predator)
First of all yes I'm aware that pretty much every decision made about their design was with consideration of the effect it would make on human audiences but hear me out
Night furies are most iconically known as dive-bombers. They are built for speed, high maneuverability, night-time camouflage and for striking targets from above. If we remove human settlements out of the equation (which would not have existed long enough to actually influence night fury evolution, come on), what does that leave us with?
They aren't built for catching fish for sure, they aren't very hydrodynamic and their head is round, wide, and their teeth are dull. Honestly, the monstrous nightmare is much better suited for catching fish, with its long neck, almost pelican-like jaw and rhamphorhynchus teeth
Compare to
Yeah the jaws look kinda like a porpoise of some sort but for that the whole body would have to be a lot more aquatic imo. The light fury looks a lot closer to an aquatic diver, it has a sleeker body, rounded fins instead of spikes, and a long neck.
I don't really see them hunting land animals either, they just don't look like they're adapted for that minus the resemblance with large felines and even then, they're too large to effectively hunt in forests.
The one thing I can kinda imagine them hunting is large mainland megafauna, but we're working with a setting that takes place pretty much exclusively on islands. And overall, dragons are the only abundant species there with the exception of fish and human-bred sheep and chickens.
In general, night furies have duller teeth, smaller claws and are smaller than most dragons. Disregarding the movies making Toothless weirdly OP, a night fury would be disadvantaged against most dragons in a 1v1 fight and besides, it has four huge weak spots that would highly discourage it from a direct physical fight - the primary and secondary tail fins. One unlucky rip in the membrane and the night fury is fucked.
The night fury however noticeably resembles falcons, given their dive-bombing ability and high maneuverability.
Falcons too have smaller beaks and weaker claws compared to most birds of prey, and for that they compensate by simply picking up speed, balling up their talons and Punching. Really. Hard.
And they use that ability to kill other birds, even much larger ones, by knocking them right from the sky.
Here, the night fury's plasma blast works the same way as a falcon's punch. Dragons are fire-resistant, so what the plasma blast does is really just a densely packed bolt of energy that has the effect of either stunning or outright killing prey by damaging its spine. And what the plasma bolt doesn't do, rapid contact with the ground would finish. And if even that doesn't do it, the night fury's wide jaws and dull teeth are just fine for simply clamping around the unlucky dragon's neck and strangling it, like a lion or a pitbull.
The night-time camouflage allows the night fury to soar for extended periods of time perfectly unnoticed in the night sky, and by the time it strikes, the dragon wouldn't even know what's coming.
Unless
Say the hunting night fury is aware of other dragons sleeping under the trees, as most dragons probably would at night (village raids aside, most dragons seem to be diurnal), so how does the night fury get them in position where it can use its signature attack? Well, there's That Iconic Screech Of Death. Since in the movies it tends to appear not just during dive-bombings but also when charging up a blast, I imagine it's something the night fury is able to control to some degree. So by simply fake-diving in close proximity to sleeping dragons, it can effectively terrify them into leaving their hideout and fly out into the open where it can easily take them out.
I dunno, the possibility of night furies as predators to other dragons just makes so much sense to me, I really don't know what other reasons there would be for them to evolve these particular adaptations.
And one more little headcanon to add to this whole rant - since night furies are significantly smaller and less equipped for dragon vs dragon fights and are primarily speed-based predators, I imagine there is this very likely scenario:
There is one dragon who resembles a hyena, a lil bit
Ok, rant over
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Guess who just picked up Minish Cap? :)
I'm almost at the 3rd dungeon now but needed to momentarily pause my playthrough to get this out of my system. Everything about this game is so darn cute, omygod!! Been seriously sleeping on this little gem. I'd only read the manga before now and that was too long ago. I'd forgotten how funny this pair could be!
Since I adore Jojo's Link designs from her @linkeduniverse AU so much and could not for the life of me get these ideas out of my head, I thought I'd try imagining what her Minish/FSA Link and Ezlo might look like in this world and time-frame. I can't recall if she's doodled this Link's companion before, but hopefully I managed to capture a little bit of her flare here.
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