#of hope and survival

[renesassing]

ok no but te taylir is the mandalore who endures. who survives. te ani'la is resplendent with glory and honor, bronzed in blood and song, but even beskar yeilds under enough pressure. the mand'alor is broken upon the jedi's blade and his children break with him. so in the days under the yoke of the empire, in the hazy, melancholic dawns that follow the night of a thousand tears, it is not te ani'la the children of mand'alor turn to, but what follows. the reclamation. preserving what remains like scraps of beskar, melting them down and reforging them into new armor. to be mandalorian is to be both predator and prey and taylir defines the honor in simple survival, makes sacred the days where the spirit of mandalore is naught but embers scattered across the galaxy, too dim to see one another in the black. when sacrifice must be made for the future of your clan. this too, te taylir says, is the way of mand'alor. and so his children look upon each other in the dark corners of the galaxy and tell their stories and sing their songs and rifle through the ashes of what came before, knowing even a single scrap of what survives will be for a better tomorrow

[positivelyqueer]

You have options. I promise you, you have options. Even if you blow up your whole life, change your name and train hop half way across the country- you still have options. So long as you are alive you have choices and chances. If you can’t see them, ask someone else. Ask a stranger or someone who loves you. Anyone not in your situation will have different a perspective. Stay safe and stay alive.

[chloesimaginationthings]

Michael Afton draws FNAF tape girl for Vanessa,,

[timelessbian]

actually that ao3 post about calculating kudos-to-hits ratios to decide if a fic is worth reading has me so pissed off. someone put real time and energy into something they are SHARING WITH YOU FOR FREE on a site where you can quite literally filter and search by anything you want and you're STILL trying to find a foolproof method to find stuff that's "good enough to read"???

YOU ARE NOT THE TARGET AUDIENCE FOR EVERYTHING

you don't have to like or read everything in a given fandom or tag, but you also don't have to be a cunt about it and imply that it's not worth reading. this is the kind of shit that moves people to stop creating altogether, and to see people agreeing in the tags is so disheartening. absolutely unserious behavior.

[tawnysoup]

the fritter (frin critter)

[feral-ballad]

Alex Dimitrov, from Love and Other Poems; “Love”

[uncanny-tranny]

If there is only one thing I would want to tell all trans people, it is this:

Please make it. You are worth it to see a better future; we will make this world kind. You are so needed, you are so wanted. We will make this world somewhere worth our light. I hope you can be by my side forever, I hope we can bask in the beauty of this world. I love you, trans person reading this.

[da-janela-lateral]

Dia dos namorados? Today!? NO!!!! Post aro Tsubomi right now

[pien-art]

So in love with this chalk drawing i saw at the train station 😭 I want to be this happy. creacher….

[jinstronaut]

happy 27th birthday, jeon jungkook (전정국) ! (cr. dwellingsouls, namuspromised)

[reasonsforhope]

You don't need to believe that people as a whole are good or well-intentioned to be an optimist about fixing climate change.

A lot of the time, it's enough to trust in this: people hate being screwed over. And even more than that, they hate feeling screwed over.

Climate change is actively screwing over almost every single person on this planet, whether they know it or not. We just need to keep making sure that people do know that they're getting screwed over, along with all their loved ones, and who's doing it.

Spite and righteous anger will honestly do a lot of the rest.

[positivelyqueer]

all you’ve got to do is pick one activity to do tomorrow. One thing to look forward to. Find a new movie or tv show you want to watch. Check out if there are any local bands playing gigs nearby. Find a random new skill to teach yourself. Do your grocery shopping at a different supermarket. Play stardew valley with someone. Find a new recipe to learn how to cook. See what movies are in cinemas near you. Find a niche museum or community centre in your town. Explore a new park. Go to a thrift store. Go sit in the library for a few hours. Get coffee with a loved one. You can’t leave yet, you’ve got that activity to go do. Keep picking activities. I love you. Stay safe.

[damianito]

They are canon your honor

| Commissions open | [Click to help Palestine]

[neofolk-telvanni-wizard]

*proceeds to rant about humankind on omnichan*

(idea for the last line came from here)

[ruubesz-draws]

Happy New Year 2024!!🎉

Wanted to draw the OG Gang for my first 2024 art.

Don't worry, they will return in my future comics!

[planariaareneat]

How The Nocturnal Bottleneck and Nipples Make Us Human

Almost every post here considers what humans do have, really. It’s a little tiring; realistically every world has its harsh environments and vicious species and a sophont to match. We probably wouldn’t be unique for our adaptability or our persistence or even adrenaline

But our evolution is fucked up as hell, to put it lightly.

Mammals went through what’s been dubbed the nocturnal bottleneck essentially since the start of the mesozoic right up until the Cretaceous ended the archosaur’s exclusive hold over the daylight. We lost a lot of things from every mammal spending most of its time in either a cramped, suffocating burrow or scrounging around in the faint hours of nighttime. Our blood cells lost their nuclei to hold more oxygen while we spent time deep underground, we lost protections against ultraviolet rays in our skin and eyes, we can’t even repair our own DNA using the light of the sun. Most aliens probably wouldn’t have such traits unless their evolution followed a very similar path to ours. They’d be able to see ultraviolet and wouldn’t have to worry about sunburn and all the wonderful privileges essentially all fish, birds, amphibians, and reptiles enjoy as we speak. 

There’s also what we gained from spending so much time in the dark.

Brown fat is only found in mammals, it’s a special type of fat which bear cells with several oil droplets and are utterly jammed with mitochondria. This lets it make heat, a lot of it, fast. We don’t even need to shiver to induce this heat generation from brown adipose tissue - factor in our downright hyperactive mitochondria, and we can warm up quickly. Sure, it doesn’t have too much use in adult humans, but it keeps our infants warm and still provides a little boost the whole run we have in this universe.

Unless aliens also went through a time where their small ancestors had to face cold nights, they’d have to produce heat the old fashioned way when chilled. Aliens might have to shiver the whole time they’re in a cold room while the human watches in confusion, quite literally unshaken, and wonders if the room is a lot colder than the thermostat set to 60 says. The aliens stare at their companion in confusion, it’s just a normal temperature to shiver at after all, how is the human sitting so still?

Our small ancestors spending all their time out foraging at night is also why we have such a good sense of touch, smell, and hearing. They were more important senses than vision (we’re lucky to have even redeveloped basic color vision, frankly) at the time and place and simply ended up continuing to serve us well. Birds and reptiles rarely have acute senses of smell and the latter especially are lucky to have acute hearing, and birds rarely have impeccable hearing themselves either. Our skin is free of scales and honed to sensitivity, and our external ears and complicated ear bones provide an immense range of hearing (from 20 all the way to 17,000 hertz!).

Aliens might not be able to pin down the chirp of a cricket or the light click of a lock being picked. The human might be the only one on board a ship that can pick out the finer sounds of the engine’s constant thrum and know the critical difference between when everything is fine and when something is wrong. The human could probably pick out the sounds of an approaching enemy’s careless footsteps - they’re only as light enough for *them* to stop hearing them, after all - and be the one to see the horrified expression (well, more on that later) on their face when we get the drop on them in spite of their perceived stealth. 

But perhaps the most versatile, convoluted, amazing, and utterly unique trait we have is right on your face this instant. Lips.

Lips in most animals are a simple seal to hold in the mouth’s moisture and protect the teeth, even if they’re supple they’re NEVER muscular except in mammals, and we have only one thing to thank for it; milk and nipples. Lips evolved exclusively to allow babies to suckle, it required a vacuum to be created in the mouth, and with no other animal having anything like a nipple it never happened in other animals. Many animals make milk, to be frank, but no other animal has nipples.

Your cheeks and lips are a marvel among tetrapods, no other animal can suck like mammals can. Aliens wouldn’t have straws or even be able to sip from the edge of a glass, they’d have to have a proboscis or simply tilt the whole thing back. Aliens likely won’t have woodwind instruments or balloons you can blow into. We take so much about our lips for granted. Hell, our muscular faces are vital for expressions, we’re probably absolute facial contortionists among a cast of creatures with mandibles and beaks and expressionless scaly maws. Aliens might find us ridiculously easy to read, if anything, compared to their own kind (all the better to deceive them) - or perhaps they’d find us hard to decipher anyways, with our lack of color-changing skin or erectable crests of bright feathers. Baring teeth might not be seen as a sign of aggression in most of the universe, smiling would be all too distinctly human. 

Perhaps with how infectious we are sometimes, that’s what we’d contribute to the universe; others might have to make do with opening their mouths just enough to show their teeth or splaying their innumerable mouthparts with just the right curve, but perhaps we’d teach the galaxy to smile, one ally at a time. 

Wouldn’t that be amazing?