A Full Plankton Moon: What glows in the night? This night featured a combination of usual and unusual glows. Perhaps the most usual glow was from the Moon, a potentially familiar object. The full Moon's nearly vertical descent results from the observer being near Earth's equator. As the Moon sets, air and aerosols in Earth's atmosphere preferentially scatter out blue light, making the Sun-reflecting satellite appear reddish when near the horizon. Perhaps the most unusual glow was from the bioluminescent plankton, likely less familiar objects. These microscopic creatures glow blue, it is thought, primarily to surprise and deter predators. In this case, the glow was caused primarily by plankton-containing waves crashing onto the beach. The image was taken on Soneva Fushi Island, Maldives just over one year ago. Credit & Copyright: Petr Horálek / Institute of Physics in Opava Explanation 

[Robert Scott Horton]

* * * *

“Those roads were echoes and footsteps, women, men, agonies, resurrections, days and nights, half dreams and dreams, every obscure instant of yesterday and of the world’s yesterdays, the firm sword of the Dane and the moon of the Persian, the deeds of the dead, shared love, words, Emerson and snow and so many things. Now I can forget them. I reach my center, my algebra and my key, my mirror. Soon I will know who I am.”

— Jorge Luis Borges, In praise of shadow

[alive on all channels]

COUSSÉE & GORIS ARCHITECTEN, GAFPA - ZWIN

"Blah blah blah Laerryn's only record in history ever is from Ludinus blah blah blah how tragic blah blah blah history forgot her blah blah blah"

I'M SORRY EXCUSE ME YOU THINK LOQUATIUS SEELIE DID JUST ONE RECORDING TALKING ABOUT LAERRYN??? YOU THINK IT'S JUST THOSE LAST ONES IN HIS LAST 12H OF LIFE???

YOU'LL TRY AND CONVINCE ME HE DIDN'T LEAVE A TRAIL ACROSS EXANDRIA OF HIS LOVE FOR THIS WOMAN!?

YOU THINK NOT EVEN ONE EXANDRIAN HISTORIAN FOUND HIS YEARS OF REPORTING HE DID ACROSS THE PLANET AND YOU THINK NOT ONCE HE MENTIONED THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD HIS IMMEASURABLY BRILLIANT WIFE

LAERRYN WANTED TO BE REMEMBERED AND DAMN IF QUAY DIDN'T MAKE SURE OF THAT

I just saw your Graves with a tall reader, which I loved, so funny at times. So you know I gotta do it, can I request Graves with a short reader? Gotta boost that man's ego 💜

Glad to hear the Graves simps are enjoying my writing and want him to be doing well mentally! And I agree, sometimes you just need to make Graves happy since he, too, will notice your efforts and try to make you happy as well, even if he does it the Graves way!

Graves with a Shorter!Reader

Graves will have hit the jackpot with someone shorter than him in all honesty. As mentioned already, it’s in his blood to be bigger and stronger and scarier than his partner, which means he gets to protect them at all times. I can see him actually going for shorter people as well. While, if asked about it, he would always tell you that it’s because you have an easier time seeing just how reliable he is, in reality he just wants to feed his ego. He used to be taller than everyone else until he stopped growing, he really just wants to feel good about himself in all honesty. Every time he looks at you, he becomes aware of the height difference and sometimes the sly bastard even starts smiling about it. The bigger the height difference the better.

If he can literally tower over you, maybe trap you between him and the wall while he looks down at you, then all is good in his life. The shorter you are the better the angle at which you view him. He can toss his hair back and it will look as though he was in some series or movie with an attractive lead, in his eyes. Besides, he also gets to tilt your face so you’ll look at him when he’s talking. In all honesty, he genuinely believes he can fluster you more easily when he’s the taller one, and he genuinely just wants you to be speechless at least once in a while. Will sweet talk you while putting his fingers under your chin.

He’s also more prone to letting you be the big spoon, or lets you hold him more often in general. You being his backpack is funny to him, as mentioned before, so he will take his sweet time enjoying the feel of you being tiny. Again, if it was up to him, you’d be roughly 1,50, or something around that. That way there would, at the very least, still be 15cm between the two of you. Graves is a very touchy person in general, so don’t be surprised if he walks up to you and puts his head on top of yours, maybe even trying to put some weight of his on you as well so you can feel just how powerful he is. You’re more than welcome to try and shake him off, though. He will feign hurt, but it amuses him anyway.

Remember how I said Graves would be even more butthurt if you crack a few too many jokes about his height when you’re taller? He’d have his fun with someone who is sensitive about their height. You will constantly hear him refer to you as his little something, whether that be little sweetie, little honeypie or even his little pile of sugar. As long as he gets to emphasize you being the shorter one he’ll be happy. If you’re dysphoric about your height, then he’ll stop, but if you’re only mad because of a relatively harmless reason, you’ll never hear the end of it. Might even crack a joke such as pointing at a skittle on the ground and saying it’s almost as small as you are. The bigger your reaction, the better. Force him to sleep on the couch and he might stop for a day or two, but you can never get him to permanently stop.

Loves picking you up and throwing you over his shoulder. You can struggle all you want, this man can carry his own Shadows over his shoulder while they’re struggling, so you don’t really stand a chance against him. He gets all the more smug if you do struggle since he knows you won’t be able to escape him. It’s things like that where he wants to show you that he can easily overpower you, but he can easily protect you as well. Just be his lovely little partner, don’t grow too much and you have a loyal guy at your service until the end of eternity. Also, he will hold you over his head and comment on your cuteness. Graves doesn’t get cuteness aggression, but he could pretend he does and squish your cheeks whenever he feels like it.

Will pick you up and sit you down on his lap as well. Yes, he will wrap his arms around you as well and render any attempt at escaping futile. Besides, getting to hold you does reassure him quite a lot. His world is in his arms, safe and sound, and he gets to pretend he’s still a cool man. He genuinely believes you think him to be a badass, even with all the teasing and whatnot. Graves has a somewhat high opinion of himself on a good day, but you can still reassure him that he is pretty epic. You can comment on how strong he is and he’ll likely flex for you, offering you to touch his bicep. But at the end of the day, barely any of this matters, what’s important is that you wanna stay with him and feel like there’s a future ahead for you. Give him a kiss and tell him you admire him and he’ll be over the moon, regardless of whether you’re shorter or taller than him.

Bruh... first Sonadow prime and now Sonadow generations, there's no way they aren't doing this on purpose/j

2024 is officially the year of Sonadow. Cuz we're also getting Sonadow the movie 3.

I think it's really interesting that the fandom widely goes along with the headcanon that Ingo is more popular than Emmet because of that one irl popularity poll, because if this comment from Ingo is anything to go by then it implies that it actually could be Emmet who's the favoured twin in-universe, as since when do you call someone "too stiff" in a positive context?

mmMmEEEEE~~!!! SHADOW MILK CCOOOOOIKKKIEEE~

I kin him so bad. Hes on my kinlist now

Everyone praised my drawing at school! Even the teachers thought it was cool... it was the first time that people in the classroom praised me because of a drawing... I'm happy!! and I feel like I'm getting better at traditional drawings

it is just calling out misogyny. calling baghra abusive and not darkling because you want to fuck him.

i imagine this is about this post, in which case i want to be very clear here about a great many things. first of all, you are factually incorrect, and misconstruing the situation. it is not just calling out misogyny, because there would have to be misogyny occurring in the first place. which there was not.

second of all, i want to go over what exactly you did that fundamentally undermined your argument. what you were doing in that post is called a red herring. it is the act - in a debate or intellectual discussion - of diverting focus away from the original topic with an irrelevant one. what you are bringing to the table is a bias; it is the misconception that one must always be discussing what you believe is the more serious topic when addressing other issues - and it is the equivalent of, say, bringing up men's rights on posts about feminism.

to argue that there is a double standard occurring, one would have to have sufficient evidence that the template used to judge one side is being completely discarded or changed when judging the other. in that case, the biggest argument to be made in this fandom about double standards is the double standard of watering down the female loyalists while holding the male revolutionary accountable to an entirely radical degree.

but that's beside the point. because the post referenced didn't come close to showing any type of double standard in any direction.

now, i want to be very clear here: a woman being brought up or critiqued in any space does not equate an automatic attempt at misogyny. that one cannot discuss a woman's complete actions without also - by social consensus - bringing up a man to divert attention away from her, is more damaging in that regard than the initial discussion about the woman to begin with.

as such, what you are also bringing to the table is another bias - an assumption. that anyone critiquing a woman when there is a man right beside her is automatically ignoring his crimes. and not only that, but they are ignoring his crimes due to sexual intent.

this assumption often arises if one believes their own worldview is superior to anyone else's. and if one ignores how the delineation of focus and critique in fandom spaces operates. furthermore, this is rooted in the belief that moral pandering must be done at all times to remain acceptable in social (fandom, in this case) spaces. which i have already mentioned before as being incredibly harmful and engaging in a black and white worldview that simply does not comport with reality. people do not operate in boxes, and they do not need to give all of their focus all of the time to the things you have issues with. if they are so pressing to you, you should discuss them yourself.

in fact, this brings me to a recent post i made about cross-tagging, which seems strangely relevant to the way you and many others operate within fandom - and believe others should operate as well. and that is this: there is an obscene amount of inflammatory hate posts cross-tagged with irrelevant topics. they're always tagged with the groups or fandom spaces assumed to be similarly minded just because the media or character they engage with are more acceptable and "pure".

i've seen anti darkling posts tagged with genyalina. completely unrelated in any capacity to the subject of the main post. i've seen even more hate posts tagged with six of crows, when their only subject matter was shadow and bone. do you know why this is? it's because these people (when they are not simply trying to attract attention) believe wholeheartedly that their views on morality are homogenous with the whole, and that if one hates this amoral character in the ways they do, they must also like the morally acceptable things as well, and condemn others similarly. it is an automatic slide into 'us vs them' based on a shared impression of ethical ideology.

this is how people with little real capacity to decipher nuance end up getting their wires crossed about the complexity of literary discussion and personal interest in fandom. and how this somehow correlates to one's inherent goodness.

which is the long way of saying that a person does not have to raise every other issue when discussing one subject. they do not have to always mention the darkling when they talk about baghra - and they do not have to (as i am well acquainted with this fandom's obsession with female purity and gender essentialism) automatically support every female character spat out of those books just to make the people incapable of media comprehension and basic critical analysis feel better. they are not beholden to you, or your egocentric worldview of a homogenous social sphere. you are not the authority on operating in fandom spaces, and you are not - believe it or not - the authority on acceptable behavior in fandom spaces.

“Kiss me like you don’t need air. Hold me like you can’t let go. Love me like you’d die without me.” - Sarah Doughty

Broke: Mario movie sequel with a subplot of Luigi now being stuck in Mario’s shadow and unappreciated by others while Mario is basking in his newfound fame and oblivious to his brother’s sadness

Woke: Mario movie sequel with a subplot of Luigi wanting to get stronger and feel more confident in himself so he can protect himself and his brother while Mario has become extra protective of Luigi ever since he nearly fell into lava

Rangi has officially entered the Order of the White Tank top! (bonus: painted lady edition)

My cousin, a published writer, a well-known poet in my country and a literature professor, for whom I've always been no.1 support ever since her first attempts at writing in high school, told me that I must stop writing as a hobby because that's her thing and since I'm writing fantasy mostly my writing could never have any important artistic value anyways.

The way Alina and Mal linger on one another, like they are drawn to one another like a flame, smoldering for moments on end really speaks to how intensely powerful the chemistry between these characters is onscreen. It’s the little moments: the smoldering, lingering gazes, the way they don’t release one another after they kiss but just linger on each other - noses brushing, foreheads touching, the way they are drawn physically and emotionally to each other in any given instance. When Mal calls Alina his flag and his nation, we’ve known this since the very beginning of the show: it’s evident in his every gaze towards Alina, in his every action, really. I have to commend how beautifully Jessie Mei Li and Archie Renaux have brought Mal and Alina’s relationship to life, because there is such commitment to every scene and to every moment that these two characters share.

I don’t need to be told that Alina and Mal are each other’s home; I can see it so vividly in just how they are around one another. How they hold each other. How they linger on one another. How they are always so tactile and tender and inherently romantic with one another. And it’s a real testament to what Jessie and Archie achieve as actors in their scenes together.

Talking about how the show adapted Nina vs how the show adapted Alina

this is my favourite Batman video essay btw- and also the first that made me feel SEEN with so many of my opinions

something something disney siblings something something daddy issues something something julius the cat would've loved shadow the hedgehog