🌍🦦 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!

i recently went to the actual WH website, saw the cannon Barnaby after months of tumblr brainwashing *cough cough more realistic barn cough* and was taken aback, like i had to look at him for a few seconds. I choose to blame you and that Weevmo feller' for this

you. you haven't. you haven't looked at the actual website? you haven't looked at The Actual Project? i. im.

respectfully,

What.

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

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)

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).

🐾 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)

New OC :3

Meet Kay/Thirteen - Subject K-13 - An experimental spiruling kraken created to become a destructive weapon

He's just really tired though

I feel like I'm going to throw up, there's something so wrong with me and with the world. It's not okay, how can anyone be okay

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

the revalation that Conared (C'rizz's actor) is gay (at least to me its a revalation) explains so much because it explains that C'rizz's annoyance at everything can just be explained through annoyed gay energy tm. coming from expiriance, it all makes sense now

Mass Effect is this really interesting case study of male-as-default vs female-as-default in non human species, because they give us such prominent examples of both.

Turians, salarians, and krogan all have women, yet none are seen on screen until the third game, and even then we get like, one of each in minor roles. Less prominent species like hanar, volus and elcor all have male voices, despite hanar being canonically genderless and volus' gender being considered a 'mystery'. It would've been easy to include female voice actors to any of these, or have an alien with a typically "male" sounding voice be referred to by she/her pronouns (frankly that would make sense for elcor and krogan, but by the time we finally get a krogan woman she sounds just like an ordinary human woman). And this isn't even getting into referring to genderless aliens with neutral pronouns, which seems to never have occurred to anyone as an option (fair enough, they/them pronouns weren’t exactly mainstream in 2007).

But no. The idea of gender as removed from human defaults to male, either visually, vocally, or in terms of pronouns. Voices meant to sound genderless, such as Legion and the hanar, still have male voice actors. None if of this is ever in-game commented upon. It’s just How It Is. The only species other than human in which we see a fairly equal balance of men to women is the quarians, interestingly one of the most human looking aliens outside of asari.

With the all female asari however, not only are they designed to look explicitly human (which they then in-game try to weasel themselves out of by going 'but ALL species find the asari hot, not just humans!' as if we don’t all have eyes), we are also beaten over the head with it constanly. Every single bar you walk into, there are half naked asari dancers. You are constantly hearing background chatter about how hot they are. A genderless character coded as female HAS to be explicitly and traditionally hot, while anything removed from that defaults to male.

The closest we get to non-human looking women is the rachni queen (which I'm guessing is only because of the age old trope of the queen of an insect hive mind) and EDI before she is given a body (at which point we are again beaten over the head with 'non-human coded as female (EDI) has to be hot' vs 'non-human coded as male (geth) get to be actually removed from human').

The only thing more cringe than being horny on main is being wrong on main, and I'm here to say I'm covering both with the expertise and finesse of those people who used to spin plates on prime time tv

Never posted my funny half life guy. Feast your eyes on Hokua

Looking a bit more into the Dinaledi story, looks like the team excavating the site is vehemently defending that Homo Naledi did ritualistic burials, and it's a big deal because it challenges the idea of "human exceptionalism" and I understand that that's a big sticking point for Religious ReasonsTM, but oh my God, I personally find the idea so so so so ssssoooo stupid

Like, who CARES if humans aren't the only ones to do X? Or do Y? Who cares if humans are not nature's most special-est little guys? I can't imagine being so invested in wanting humans to be UNIQUE(TM). I for one would fucking love if we had evolved on a planet where we weren't the only fully sentient species. Can you imagine the kind of comparative studies we could do if there was even one other species as intelligent as us??

i wish steven universe went more into the watermelon stevens (said no one ever, but hear me out!) i wish they went more into how steven made a whole society and abandoned them, just like the diamonds do, just like rose did. and how it demonstrates that having such immense powers very easily leads to a disregard for life.

so I have been thinking about why I hated the Spock Is Turned Human episode of SNW so much and I think I've nailed it down

cause like. Vulcans are a specific flavour of autistic, right?

Throughout 60 years of Star Trek, and particularly through Strange New Worlds, we've had it impressed on us that Vulcans absolutely do not feel less than humans. On the contrary, the reason that Vulcans prize logic, ritual and objectivity is that their emotions are deeply intense and overwhelming. In fact, like one episode prior and in the fuckin. Previously On... for this episode, Spock's saying "Vulcan emotion is too intense to handle and what might happen if I don't suppress it scares me."

It's made repeatedly, explicitly, clear that Vulcan emotional detachment is a choice and a cultural practise. It's made directly clear as well that Vulcans don't experience the world as less intense or emotional than humans; they work from birth to suppress it, it's a learned practice.

And they've leant into this really hard elsewhere in SNW! They've talked about Vulcans choosing to reject logic and act on emotion, Spock's seasons-long arc is about his fear of his own emotions - he's even specifically brought up that he hasn't undergone Kolinahr and therefore is suppressing his emotional state only through conscious practice.

but this episode. is a story about someone who's physiologically less able to feel being "humanised" - experiencing touch, taste, laughter and feeling more strongly than they have before.

That's a Data story. Not a Spock one.

Like I get what they're trying to do - push Spock into dealing directly with his human side, empathise with Amanda's strength, etc - but the way they do it conflicts really directly with everything we know about Vulcans, and also kind of confirms Vulcan bias against Spock's humanity by establishing that yes actually regardless of upbringing humans just Are Wired Wrong for Vulcan society. which is weird actually because both Amanda and Michael, humans raised outside Vulcan, can handle Vulcan societal expectations, but Spock, raised fully in the culture, struggles to and has to have everything explained to him.

And also the way they do it I found really uncomfortable and, you know, dehumanising. We're shown a version of Spock who isn't managing his emotions through discipline and will, but who just Doesn't Have Them That Much and, when given the Normal amount of feelings, goes hog wild and is functionally a child with no self-control.

There's a scene where they explicitly say he's functionally a teenager! As if he's not already been through a human adolescence!

Everyone of every species, not just human, is suddenly lecturing him on the nature of Feeling Things, which he receives as new information! despite the fact we know that managing his emotions has been a constant struggle for Spock! and we know that Spock (like other Vulcans) likes food and music and has a sense of humour and experiences friendship and anger and frustration and love.

and I think it speaks to a deeply neuronormative kind of infantalisation - he isn't reacting to emotion the way Normal (here: human) people do so it must be because he doesn't feel it at all. he isn't vegetarian he just hasn't experienced how Bacon bacon is. he isn't suppressing his distress it just isn't there. he doesn't have a different cultural relationship to humour he just Can't Laugh.

like the 'inhuman entity experiences human emotion' plotline is a Star Trek classic and it's usually a fun time - it's fun with Q and with Data and with Odo et al. but it doesn't work with Spock because we know that Vulcans aren't less physiologically capable of emotion than humans, they're less culturally willing to engage with emotion. And that's specifically because they're more sensitive to strong feeling than humans.

like yeah this is nerd griping, but it's also just very galling from an autistic perspective (the same way that having Spock go bacon-mad this episode seems to have been pretty galling from a Jewish perspective). Something that's always been very resonant about Vulcans and Spock specifically with a lot of autistic people is that experience of feeling things so deeply and strongly that you have to develop a sometimes overly-strict discipline of emotional management and cut yourself off from them entirely, and it is often mistaken by those around you as being unfeeling or numb. And the way Spock is portrayed consistently acknowledges that that's not what it is, that it's an (often maladaptive but necessary) practice that's active work in order to fit into a society that doesn't have space for the scale of your emotions or where your emotions might be a risk. And that you can learn to retain the parts that help you but still make close emotional connections through that barrier.

Idk this episode doesn't understand Vulcans which is really frustrating particularly for an episode entirely about Vulcans. It doesn't make sense that being turned human would fully undermine Spock's ability to behave as Vulcan the way it does unless your position is that Vulcans are inherently more numb to feeling than humans, which is explicitly not the case - and the message of the end of the episode partially rests on the idea that it's bigoted to assume his humanity makes him less Vulcan, especially since Amanda is able to perform Vulcanness well, except the entire precept of the episode and its shenanigans are that his humanity does intrinsically prevent him performing his cultural heritage properly and make him irrational and reactive. Like, the episode's failure to understand Why Vulcans Work doesn't just conflict with the rest of the show, it also leaves this episode a chaotic mess cause A doesn't in any way feed into B.

also unrelatedly T'Pring Did Nothing Wrong and she's so right, Spock is a wee bitch.