#truly a species

[infernal-lamb]

some rushed doodles of our new goat darling........I have so many plans for them

[red-moon-at-night]

After doing some research on the types of pets people had in ancient Greece, I'd like to imagine that Helen is the sort of person who has a whole menagerie of birds — and she loves each and every one of them very, very much.

It fits well with her being good at mimicry, you know. Talking and imitating and singing with her beloved birds 💜

Close up under the read more:

I had to include that one necklace from the minoan 'saffron goddess' fresco because it's my favourite thing Ever

[neopianbiologyproject]

one of my favorite item jokes on neopets is fruit and veg items having "Organic" counterparts that are identical in every way, except that they are categorized as "Healthy Food" and are slightly more expensive

also the descriptions tend to be a little different:

[montereybayaquarium]

🌍🦦 We’re otterly excited to sea-lebrate World Otter Day! 🦦🌎

Whether they're floating, sliding, or just being their mischievous selves, these adorably aquatic, pawesome pals never fail to bring joy to our musteliday.

It’s time to  unleash your inner otter and join us in a round of ap-paws in celebrocean of World Otter Day!

[burst-of-iridescent]

Writing a Final Battle: Kung Fu Panda vs ATLA

every day i think about how the po & shen battle at the end of kung fu panda 2 is everything the aang & ozai battle at the end of atla should have been and get frustrated at the wasted potential all over again.

i’ll cut the show some slack in that the personal nature of po & shen’s relationship was never going to be possible in atla given the 100 year time jump, and that ozai himself wasn’t personally responsible for the air nomad genocide, which naturally undercuts their individual connection. but given that the final agni kai fulfilled the character-based conflict of the finale anyway, it fell to the aang-ozai battle to represent the thematic one, and it fell incredibly short where kfp 2 absolutely delivered.

it’s threaded throughout the narrative of the movie that po and shen are two sides of the same coin: black and white, yin and yang, goodness and madness. they both see themselves (po in kfp 2, at least) as orphans, plagued by fears that they were abandoned and unloved. both flee from a past they’re too afraid to face, tormented by wounds they believe won’t heal, shackled to a destiny they refuse to give up. the existence of one threatens the survival of the other; shen is foretold to be defeated by a warrior of black & white, while po cannot be the dragon warrior, the title that gave him a home and identity and belonging, in a world without kung fu — the world that shen is trying to create.

even without po’s personal connection to shen as the one responsible for his mother’s death and the loss of his community, thematically the two mirror each other perfectly. and it is this mirroring that makes the moment of their divergence so impactful and essential to the narrative: that while po stops running from his past, shen is never able to do so. it’s in making the choice to accept what happened to him & find peace in who he is that po triumphs over shen, and so illustrates the themes of the movie perfectly: that your past need not determine your future. that you cannot avoid your destiny, but you can shape the road you take to meet it, and that choice is yours and yours alone.

where po exemplifies the choice for peace, for healing, for acceptance, shen represents the choice to perpetuate violence, pain, self-loathing — and the brutal, inevitable self-destruction waiting at the end of that path. a classic writing technique for a thematic conflict, executed brilliantly: to have the hero and villain rise or fall by the virtues they stand for.

now compare this to aang and ozai.

i’ve talked before about how this battle fails from a character perspective for aang, but it also fails thematically as a result. following the constructed narrative up to the southern raiders, what should have happened in this battle was aang winning because he drew wisdom from different places, using bending techniques and knowledge from all four nations, and ozai losing as a consequence of his own destructive pride and reliance on firebending alone. instead, the unity vs individualism, balance vs domination theme set up from the start with the idea of the avatar falls completely by the wayside as the battle focuses on air nomad pacifism vs fire nation violence instead — an unsubstantiated, last minute ass pull of a conflict chucked in for no good reason.

but fine, we’ll bite. it’s not a bad conflict, in theory, just poorly set up. the execution might still have worked, if not for the fact that a) the means of this pacifism is entirely unearned and b) the choice to save ozai’s life is not about ozai at all, but about aang.

po’s victory feels earned because not only did the movie set the means of this victory up well in advance — introducing the chekhov’s gun of the dew drop and inner peace in the first ten minutes — it also perfectly aligned his external conflict (defeating shen) with his internal conflict (coming to terms with the pain of his past). in other terms, it’s the classic Want vs Need: po’s want (saving kung fu) is only achieved through first meeting his need (accepting who he is and where he came from, in its entirety).

aang, on the other hand, is given the solution to his external conflict through lion turtle ex machina, and Rock of Mega Convenience, neither of which was found as a result of his own choices or autonomy. it’s like if po showed up at the final battle with shen having skipped the entirety of the scene at the soothsayer’s, and yet is able to redirect the metal balls anyway because… well who the fuck knows, just go with it.

and that’s bad enough, except then it’s compounded by the fact that aang gets his Want (maintaining his people’s values & his moral purity) by doing… uh… *checks notes* Fucking Nothing. there is no Want vs Need here at all; aang didn’t have to sacrifice anything, or undergo any internal struggle, to receive the power of energybending. (and no, being “pure of heart” in order to energybend doesn’t count — a potential moral decline or losing air nomad values through assimilation to a changed world was never an arc set up for aang, and so cannot be counted as a feasible Need.)

and as the cherry on top of this clusterfuck of terrible writing comes the moment where aang chooses to spare ozai, a scene intended to convey the triumph of the air nomads’ compassion and pacifism over the fire nation’s brutality, a scene meant to have incredible pathos and meaning… and which accomplishes neither of the above.

po trying to spare shen is genuinely moving because the scene is framed around shen. it’s about the fact that despite every terrible thing shen has done — in that moment po sees in him only someone as lost and confused and pained as he was, someone clinging to a grand destiny to cure, in vain, the wounds of the past. someone po himself might have been in another life, another time. po’s compassion is for shen and shen alone, with no ulterior benefit to himself, and you get the sense that deep down — at least for a moment — shen wants to believe in the kindness and hope po is offering. that’s what makes it genuine and gives the scene such gravitas.

by contrast, the scene between aang and ozai is framed around aang, not ozai. aang is the one who wants to spare ozai. aang is the one who benefits from leaving ozai alive, because he doesn’t need to sacrifice his morals or beliefs. aang is the one getting his wish, not ozai — who would likely choose death over defeat and losing his bending anyway. this isn’t helped by the fact that the fire lord is inherently a far less tragic & compelling figure than shen because a) he exists largely as an antagonistic force than a character in his own right for most of the series, and b) aang and ozai don’t have an existing relationship to add depth to this moment, the way zuko and azula do.

as such, the one-sided nature of the conflict only strengthens the impression that saving ozai’s life is all about what aang wants, not ozai — which makes the message of the scene seem a lot more “if you’re the hero, you’ll get everything you want with absolutely no cost or consequences” and a lot less “compassion always triumphs over cruelty” (which was probably the intention).

ultimately, the po vs shen battle works where aang vs ozai fails because:

1. the themes embodied by the characters manifest beautifully in their individual arcs, and in their eventual victory and defeat, respectively

2. they contrast each other thematically and narratively, and their individual endings are earned through their own agency from start to finish, with their external conflicts being linked to and resolved through their internal character struggles

3. the set up of the conflict is carefully planned and thoughtfully executed, and the payoff follows through perfectly every step of the way

tldr: kung fu panda will always be the superior asian-inspired fantasy about a chosen one confronting his destiny as the saviour of the world & the day we can acknowledge as a society that po’s character arc is a thousand times better and more well-written than aang’s is the day i will finally know peace.

[isa-ah]

does anyone else miss the mornings after big sleepovers when all the kids would wake up at different points in the morning, whispering and wandering out for breakfast

[acoustic-crayons]

He's here to turn in the Wanted Dead or Alive Bounty(dead) and even brought some flowers as well, much to his brother's embarrassment

Hickory could've gone without seeing his brother's strange attempts to flirt.

[longagoitwastuesday]

I keep thinking that this Gojo is just like Sukuna. I truly don't see much of a difference between them beyond the human/curse point of view

[owlsdrawinglair]

a colored and lined sketch of a friend of mine as a togeuta! Really proud of this one!

[theshadowrealmitself]

Not to sound like a broken record, but fuck I love thinking about how things would change in the future, especially horror movies

“I actually really enjoy horror movies, especially the slasher kind. Did you know that many of the tropes found in it are the result of things that were condemned in the late 1900’s in western society? Many of the plotlines of the time were “teenagers have premarital sex and do drugs and get killed off, and the one that lives is the “good” girl who doesn’t do those things.” As you can imagine, those things were very looked down at the time.”

“Now, even though those things are no longer condemned, those character types still exist in slasher films, and have even evolved. There’s still the “slutty girl”, but instead of it being a Human playing a character that’s meant to be “punished” for premarital sex, it’s now always played by an Orion woman. In fact, the current most popular slasher franchise in today’s time involves an Orion woman who does everything right by playing up the “slutty” stereotype. So rather than being condemned for her sexuality, she’s venerated for it.”

“Do you think the Orion director was aware of the Human history of these kind of slasher films and did this purposely to subvert the trope, or do you think it was a natural outcome because of the difference in how Orions view sex and sexuality? As a director, it would make sense that she’d do her research, but also it’s been so long since the 1900’s on Earth, I wouldn’t be surprised if information like that is too difficult to find, I wish I could ask her myself.”

- person from the 21st century who’s not aware of how much of their knowledge is still common or not

[shoechoe]

i wonder if you could hypothetically make a specific stone mask body upgrade for human-pillar man hybrids

[adolin]

If you’re still doing the ship rating- Camilla/Palamedes because I’m sorry but fusing into one being in a Catholic inspired text is just not a platonic thing to do and “yes, my whole life, yes; always and forever, yes” is not a platonic thing to say before said fusing

I MEAN... I have no idea what "platonic" or "shippy" means in the context of Camilla and Palamedes, because they are the apex of codependency. In a series that's all about codependent relationships, they raise the bar to new unparalleled heights. They are obsessed with each other. Quite literally two halves of a whole (Paul. Just Paul)

I'm struggling a bit to articulate this but, basically: I get why other people may not read them as romantic or sexual, but ultimately I think it doesn't even matter because they're so much MORE than that. They are such a disaster gordian knot of fucked up and devotion and overwhelming feels that reducing it to whether or not they're fucking seems ??? kinda pointless to me??? because they're each other's whole world. They lived in each other's pockets for years and they shared a body for months. They are each other's whole universe and decided to fuse their souls forever rather than letting one of them live on while the other died. They have SO MUCH going on; what does "platonic" even mean in this context?

tl;dr: I personally do read them as shippy. But also that's not even in my top 3 most noteworthy things about Camilla and Pal, because every facet of their relationship is so rich. I don't even see it as a question of "shippy", I just see it as "it's impossible to disentangle them from one another." They're just. THE MOST complete package. Absolutely completely life partners. Deeply fucked up and they wouldn't have it any other way

(On that note, when I see posts about how the Sixth House have therapy, I think... they absolutely do not. Just because Camilla knows how to do breathing exercises it doesn't mean they are in any way well-adjusted. When Pyrrha Dvue tells you to dial it back, you know you have an issue!

Anyway. Nobody is well-adjusted in this series. Love that for them)

[luckyashes-art]

🐾 Agent 8 and Agent 3 species swap?

‼️ Ngl I've actually thought abt this concept before (but never posted anything abt em)

Here they are tho !! They went out on a coffee date :3

Hairstyles aren't final ngl ☹️ Mainly cuz I'm!!! Struggling to make them unique yet still pertain to the special design their original hair has

Here's also some headshots w/o any gear (even tho the doodles are kinda janky)

[haloraptor]

Mass Exodus

I had feathers once, that much I know. I was covered in feathers, though their color escapes me. My slim fingers were topped with talons, both my feet carrying a hooked claw made famous by Hollywood. I had a tail, though I can’t remember the feeling of it at all, perhaps because I could never move it. I was smaller, closer to the ground, sported lighter bones and sharper teeth. I ran through arid plains and deserts, pouncing on small creatures under the warm Cretaceous sun. At least, I suspect I did. I have no clear memory, have nothing but sparse paleontological records and speculation to use to help me. Even then, to much of the world I am a Boogeyman, a monster that only knows to kill and eat. 

I am no monster. I am but an animal. I am an animal, and I am real. We are real. We are wild, we are free, we have been hunting, playing, surviving and having families millions of years before anyone could think to imply we were mindless.

But now there’s none of us left, none that I have been able to find. I am far from those deserts by both distance and time, far from the sights and smells that might jog my memory. I can’t remember my face. I can’t remember my home. I can’t remember faces of any others I knew, or if I ran with others at all. I can’t remember anything. All I can recall are the faintest sensations, instincts, feelings. Distant and buried like the bones of my brothers and sisters under the baking sands. 

I can’t remember my voice. I’ve been trying to, though my new vocal cords occasionally protest my efforts. I have been trying to find my old voice since I was new to this life. I chirp, growl, hiss, squeak, bark, and trill, searching for a sound that I’ll remember. I grow frustrated when the sound is misclassified, when I’m misclassified, steer my efforts in another direction. Maybe if I chirp just right, another will hear me, another will call back to me. Then I will know I am not alone in this fate, in this strange new body and strange new world that I never should’ve been able to see. 

I look into the hollow eye sockets of long-dead skeletons that I might’ve known once and I can’t remember them. Their calls, their eyes, their scales or plumage, it’s all been lost. I cannot carry their stories. I cannot even carry my own. Why I am here while they are on display, I do not know. I do not understand. 

I weep for those who have no one to live for them, all those other species that have gone before and after me but have gone all the same. I weep for those last survivors of them most of all, because their pain is one that I understand to my core. We all live in a world that has changed beyond us, that has run away without us. That has no more need for us, or has deluded itself into believing as such. None of us can understand why or how it has come to be this way. 

Others with my affliction are luckier than I. They have others they can see, either around them or in special places where creatures are gathered and put on display. Or even still on camera, professional or amateur. I am happy for them. They are not the last of theirs. I hope they take comfort in that. 

It is a cruel fate. To be the last of your species, but not even having the face to prove it. I have hair now like those little mammals I used to pin under my talons. I walk upright on heavier bones, far taller than I was ever meant to be. I can’t sit or move like I used to, my bone structure won’t allow it. Gone are my feathers, my talons, my tail and my teeth, my voice and my memories themselves. A mass exodus of everything I was, and everything I no longer find in my reflection (a reflection I can’t remember clearly). 

Still, I am a velociraptor. I looked the part, once. I had feathers. I had talons. I had a tail. I had fangs. I would run across arid plains and deserts under the warm Cretaceous sun. I hunted, played, and survived millions of years before the words I use to convey all of this could’ve been conceived. 

All of it is gone. The world I knew is gone. The rest of my kind is gone. All but me.

I am one of the last velociraptors left in the world, and I ache for a home that doesn’t exist anymore from a time I can’t remember.

[turtlesandfrogs]

One big thing that gets missed in the conversation about native plants is that when considering a plant, you really should ask two questions:

1. Where, specifically, is it native to?

2. Within that region, what ecosystem conditions does it live in? Will it thrive where you intend to plant it?

I cannot tell you how many times I've come across a plant labeled as native that doesn't even grow in my state. Sure, it's native to the continent, but not this side of the rocky mountains! That's not nearly specific enough if your goal is to support endemic animal species and the overall ecosystem.

You also need to consider what conditions that plant needs to thrive. One example I see a lot of here is planting understory plants in full sun. They're stressed out, they're getting sunburnt, and they're slowly dying. People will also try the reverse, planting praire plants in deep shade, and wonder why they're all floppy and anemic looking. Plants may be native to your area, but they still have specific needs and you will have much greater success if you match the conditions you have to a plant that will thrive there.

A third, extra credit question is a two parter: is it endemic (aka, unique to your region) or does it have a a broader, or even circumpolar distribution? I mean, check out the range maps for Henderson's shooting star & twinflower:

Twinflower is found across the northern portions of Eurasia as well.

The second part is, are any of the vulnerable species in your area depending on it? An example from my area is Viola Adunca, which has a pretty broad range,

But is also host to multiple fritilary butterfly species in my area, some of which are on the decline and some of which are no longer found in my state. Due to habitat loss. Both due to human activity (agriculture, subdivisions, etc) and human inactivity (banning the intentional burns the Native peoples did, that maintained the Oak savanna ecosystem, leading them to be "invaded" by non-fire adapted Douglas firs, another native species. Also at the same time making the region more vulnerable to bigger and more devastating wild fires).

[inkher0]

You ever just stop and realize Palestinians are dying en masse because a lot of white people really loved the Left Behind book series

I do

Constantly