#sea life 2

[razputinrp]

@the-family-fortune

The ocean was violent tonight.

A trawler had roved far past the usual fishing spaces, well beyond what had been deemed safe for humans and deep into dangerous waters. This was siren territory, among many other powerful and terrifying creatures of the sea, and few crews dared to venture along even such boundaries. Everyone knew, of course, that the best fish could be found out there, but sailors feared the monsters that could easily lure them to horrific deaths for such a transgression as trespassing.

The only exception was this particular ship, who often saw bountiful hauls for its risk-taking and boasted not a single casualty from ocean cryptids no matter how far or how late it traveled. And the reason for that incredibly “luck” was standing on the very top deck, staring down the tumultuous waves as if he could calm them through sheer force of will.

Razputin Aquato, twenty-six years old, was barely bothered by the ship’s severe swaying. He stood with only one hand on the railing for balance while the rest of his crew hurriedly anchored themselves with harnesses and jacklines. A powerful wave crashed into the side of the boat with the force of a furious whale, sending people sprawling and shouting and stumbling. Razputin’s eyes darted down for a moment, counting them all to make sure no one had fallen overboard or had gotten hurt, then looked right back up at the sea.

The sky was cloudless; stars dazzled in a hypnotic display across the vast darkness, surrounding a half-moon, but the water itself raged as though they were in the midst of a hurricane. Many of the crew were superstitious and feared the ocean was finally punishing them for their hubris; putting them in their place as land creatures who had no business being out in this world yet had traipsed so merrily through it all the same.

Razputin knew better.

He stared at the ocean and knew that the unnatural storm came from something below the surface. Be it squid, siren, selkie, or something else entirely, there was no doubt in his mind that the waters raged because something – or someone – had commanded it. He didn’t know if they were targeting the lonely ship of humans, or if they were not even aware of its presence.

So he kept watching, looking for the slightest sign of a cryptid’s swimming shadow, simultaneously hoping that the storm would pass without their ship being noticed at all and wondering whether the source of the storm might be the one he had been searching for all these years.

[plesiosaurys]

getting emotional over footage of an amateur scuba diver interacting with a coelacanth. they are hunted by large deepwater predators, and here comes a large creature bearing the brightest lights it's ever seen, making strange noises, but it does not shy away. it hovers, calmly, as the diver reaches out and trails a hand down its back. im strongly against the anthropomorphizing of real life animals but the stupid emotional part of me loudly insists this is because it recognizes us, the alternating movements of its four paired limbs matching the diver's four paired limbs, & it is thinking, "hello, cousins, we missed you these 66 million years, it's so good to see you again. welcome back, welcome home."

[opens-up-4-nobody]

Suspirium - Thom York

[river-taxbird]

The Endless Ocean games on Wii!

Endless Ocean 1 and 2 are an awesome duology of Wii games where you scuba dive, learn about fish, and collect treasure. The main gameplay loop consists of exploring vast underwater environments, find hidden treasure, and interact with fish to fill up a fish-dex. Playing it as a kid even encouraged me to try scuba diving!

They look fantastic too, it's like, still the PS2 era graphics, but it's on Wii so it is like, the peak of that. It has that charming low poly look I have seen a lot of people craving.

Most of your time in the game is just exploring and taking in the environment, but there is always something to find. When you interact with fish, you fill up a fish-dex, and you can learn real world facts about them. If you play it, you'll have so many fish facts to share with people. (When they're accurate, the games are old)

They even have a story with pretty good human characters. The environments are fantastical, you visit ancient ruins, ship graveyards, even sunken castles, but the human characters means it always stays grounded and has some pathos.

If you are into older games and you're looking for a shorter length game with low-fi graphics, gameplay that doesn't really resemble anything before or since, and to learn a bunch of cool fish facts, I can't recommend Endless Ocean enough. I think they might be kind of rare these days, but they work great, and are thematically appropriate, on Dolphin, and should work fine with a normal controller, especially Endless Ocean 2 as it had Classic Controller support.

[hellsitegenetics]

From Portal 2:

"Alright, I've been thinking. When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade - make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons, what am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's manager. Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons. Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons. I'm going to to get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!"

String identified: Agt, ' tg. g , 't a a - a ta t ac! Gt a! 't at a , at a t t t? a t ' aag. a t a t tgt t c g Ca . a? ' t a ' ga ! t t . ' gg t t gt g t t a ct tat !

Closest match: Lepeophtheirus nordmannii genome assembly, chromosome: 3

(no image could be found of this organism, so here is an image of L. salmonis, which is closely related.)

[mothman-stolemyeyebrows]

Has somebody done this yet?

[strangetownfungus]

Everyone’s favourite wannabe deep sea welder!! 🐬

[mystery-salad]

The world is safe now.

You tell yourself that as Zhaitan clings to a tower of decay, crumbling beneath its claws as the canons aim true. The shots hit, cheers raise as the dragon topples down. Falling from view through the miasma it created below. No one can hear it hit the ground over the relieved shouts of victory ringing across the airships. But everyone feels it in a resounding rumble that shouldn't have carried through the air like that. The celebrating falters, confusion rising but not fast enough to prepare for what follows. The shockwave hits like nothing you've ever felt. Everything goes dark as the screams begin.

The world is safe now, Orr is not.

You wake up in the rubble as survivors try to make sense of what happened. The dragon is dead, but no one accounted for where all the consumed magic had to go. No one planned for this despite generations of preparation. Perhaps there's a reason for the dragons, you hear murmurs through the tents. But you didn't come this far to call it quits, and one land riddled with a decaying radiation can't stop the mission. The contamination in your blood won't stop you.

The world is safe now. Orr is gone.

Mordremoth stares you down from within his mind. You're like a weed that won't die, small and foreign but resilient and ready to take everything. The odds are against you with the team sent away, you can't face the gaze of the dead like last time. They're safe at a distance, you have to hope they got far enough as you defy the odds and strike another dragon down.

The world is safe, but there's a catch.

Trahearne shudders as your mind returns to your body, as you look around in wonder that there isn't a shockwave like last time. He's so calm as he explains the truth of it, defying how terrified he is of dying, of asking a friend to do this and stand at ground zero once again. But you stand just as calm, picking up the blade and telling him to close his eyes. You hope he'll rest well, wherever his life takes him next. As the blade cuts through, you know it's real as the shockwave begins just like last time. You brace for impact as much as you can.

The world is safe now. The desert is gone.

It's almost tempting to let Balthazar handle the rest, let the god walk a path of destruction to each dragon, sparing yourself further damage. But his path leaves so much unnecessary devastation...so here you are alone with another dragon. Well, not completely alone now. You have Aurene, though you're still not sure if that's truly a blessing any more. The two of you corner Kralkatorrik, the perfect trap laid deep underground in old sunspear ruins.

The world is safe now, until the dragon takes a last stand.

Waking up in wreckage is becoming normal to you. When did that happen, when did the panic vanish? No time to think on it as new plans have to be laid out. You chase him down, you and your dragon, to kill her grandfather and save the world again. Setbacks are numerous. It's harder to work alone on this one, so many soldiers are ready to see it to the end with you. You tell them they don't know what they're asking for and send them away again. Aurene, still a child, fights the dragon's minions nearly overwhelmed as you get to his heart and strike. You've never seen the explosion from inside before. It's so bright.

The world is safe now. The island is gone.

Is it worth it all? It has to be, you tell yourself, as people celebrate your victories in a shrinking world. Refugees who have fled the fallout zones don't seem to agree, but at least they're alive right? And you know you're almost done. Jormag and Primordus, opposites and twins, rise together and somehow feel like childsplay after the last one. Perhaps it's because aurene is an equal to them now. You don't dare to think of the devastation that would be left if she were to die now. Thankfully you don't have to as the siblings tear each other apart.

The world is safe now. The mountains are gone.

No one has seen the final dragon in ages, hidden away deep underwater until you stumble into the truth while chasing a lesser threat. Soo Won was so gentle once, but the void ravages all. It feasts on the magic you released so willingly into the world, your devastations have paved the way for this chaos.

The world is safe now, for the void to reform.

You've survived so much despite the odds, held together by the very magic degrading your bones and poisoning your blood. The void pulls at those strings as it taunts you through the voice of the dragon who started it all. It's the hardest fight you've ever faced. As Aurene pumps you full of power to survive, you wonder if your death would bring destruction too in this moment. But it's left a mystery as Soo Won falls and the void fades. There's a moment of peacefulness you've never felt before, the grandmother hanging on long enough to comfort her granddaughter. But she can't prevent the state of her death. The jade sea shatters beneath your feet as she dies.

The world is safe now. But how much of it is left?

[secondbeatsongs]

if anyone's curious what adhd is actually like, twenty minutes ago I paused a video game to look up spoilers for it so I can get the Good Ending™, and yet now I find myself looking at pictures of anglerfish, with only vague memories of what happened inbetween these two points

[arthursfuckinghat]

1899 Arthur Morgan, chronically exhausted, ill, afraid, and working himself to death trying to save what was left of the gang.

1911 John Marston, tired, frustrated, and running himself ragged trying to get enough help with taking down the last of the gang.

1914 Jack Marston, alone, depressed, and not stopping for anything or anybody until he avenges his father. He is the only true remaining tie to the gang.

Arthur didn't care strongly for revenge, but it was important to John, then it was important to Jack. Whether they realised it or not, they fed the cycle of revenge and damned themselves in the process.

[phoenixduelist]

The only S3 opening I accept is Izzy literally clawing out of the grave, yelling: 'None of you absolute TWATS bothered to check for a pulse??'

In a show where every tiny movement has 26280 meanings and possible interpretations, I refuse to believe that this death has absolutely none.

And I also hope after crawling out, his first half conscious journey is into Ed's and Stede's inn, sending both into a cardiac arrest

[deep-jellysea]

Roll or die?

[crafty705]

The thrill to kill

Have a Martyn going feral as a red name for maidtyn monday :D congrats on the win!

Limlife skin design by @/cherrifire

Blank bg, non-bloody versions, etc under cut:

[respect-the-locals]

🐠 Daily Fish Fact: 🐠

Larval Flounder are born with one eye on each side of their head, but as they grow from the larval to juvenile stage through metamorphosis, one eye migrates to the other side of the body. As a result, both eyes are then on the side which faces up. The side to which the eyes migrate is dependent on the species type. As an adult, a flounder changes its habits and camouflages itself by lying on the bottom of the ocean floor as protection against predators.

[lilybug-02]

My trip to Kaua'i, Hawai'i

Yellow Hibiscus: The state flower of Hawai'i. Called the “pua mao hau hele” or “Ma’o hau hele” in the Hawaiian Language (ʻŌlelo).

Nēnē (Hawaiian Goose): The rarest waterfowl in the world. Nearly brought to extinction in 1990 with 50 wild individuals. Captive-breeding programs and reintroduction efforts have given the native nēnē a chance with now over 3,862 birds statewide. I was lucky enough to see wild nēnē goslings. Very special.

Honu (Green Sea Turtle): An endangered species most commonly found near the Hawaiian Island Chain. Typically reaching sexual maturity around 20 years of age, Green sea turtles nest on the same beach where they hatched. This is a photo I took of a female rising up from the shore to lay her eggs.

Landscape photos I took on my trip in Kaua'i.

Kaua'i is one of many islands comprising the Hawaiian Volcanic Island Archipelago. I bought a Kaua'i Geologic History Book to learn more about the island and I am very excited to read it.

[the-family-fortune]

This one wayward ship prowled the waters completely undetected by the creatures living deep, deep underneath the ocean's surface - and even as Captain Aquato surveyed the waters for the mysterious presence thrashing below and churning the deep, dark drink, he was a ghost passing along the veil that separated their worlds.

This was his world, too, of course - but it was a world he rarely inhabited. It was a world he had been forced to leave behind from the moment he was born - a birthright that had been snatched from him at first cursed breath of air. This world underneath the waves had long ago been claimed in a curse of fury and hatred; that the Aquatos should forevermore be cursed to live their miserable lives on land, barred from returning to the sea lest they meet a grisly fate underneath the sea foam.

It was, plainly put, a curse that Guillelmina was entirely unwilling to help carry; she had made that decision many years ago, when she and Razputin had first met. She was not going to be the puppet of the Triton who had cursed the Aquatos, and she had stuck to that principle since the last time the Siren pod had crossed paths with the landlocked family.

Her great-grandfather, the Triton who had cursed the poor selkie family, had maintained his fury until the day he had died. He had remained resentful, as well, until the day he had died - resentful of Guillelmina's refusal to carry out his wishes; it was a month to the day that the Triton Zalto had died to his great-granddaughter's refusal to keep his blood fury alive, to renounce the Aquato boy and continue the hunt to protect their pod and their waters.

As Mina coasted along a coral shelf, looking upwards at the dark and frothy surface of the tumultuous ocean they inhabited, she just hoped that the boy she'd known in her childhood had enough sense to stay off the ocean when it was like this.

@the-family-fortune

The ocean was violent tonight.

A trawler had roved far past the usual fishing spaces, well beyond what had been deemed safe for humans and deep into dangerous waters. This was siren territory, among many other powerful and terrifying creatures of the sea, and few crews dared to venture along even such boundaries. Everyone knew, of course, that the best fish could be found out there, but sailors feared the monsters that could easily lure them to horrific deaths for such a transgression as trespassing.

The only exception was this particular ship, who often saw bountiful hauls for its risk-taking and boasted not a single casualty from ocean cryptids no matter how far or how late it traveled. And the reason for that incredibly “luck” was standing on the very top deck, staring down the tumultuous waves as if he could calm them through sheer force of will.

Razputin Aquato, twenty-six years old, was barely bothered by the ship’s severe swaying. He stood with only one hand on the railing for balance while the rest of his crew hurriedly anchored themselves with harnesses and jacklines. A powerful wave crashed into the side of the boat with the force of a furious whale, sending people sprawling and shouting and stumbling. Razputin’s eyes darted down for a moment, counting them all to make sure no one had fallen overboard or had gotten hurt, then looked right back up at the sea.

The sky was cloudless; stars dazzled in a hypnotic display across the vast darkness, surrounding a half-moon, but the water itself raged as though they were in the midst of a hurricane. Many of the crew were superstitious and feared the ocean was finally punishing them for their hubris; putting them in their place as land creatures who had no business being out in this world yet had traipsed so merrily through it all the same.

Razputin knew better.

He stared at the ocean and knew that the unnatural storm came from something below the surface. Be it squid, siren, selkie, or something else entirely, there was no doubt in his mind that the waters raged because something – or someone – had commanded it. He didn’t know if they were targeting the lonely ship of humans, or if they were not even aware of its presence.

So he kept watching, looking for the slightest sign of a cryptid’s swimming shadow, simultaneously hoping that the storm would pass without their ship being noticed at all and wondering whether the source of the storm might be the one he had been searching for all these years.