#I need to post more on here

[tertain-the-original]

Roller skating fellas

[woobliedooblie]

i got hungry so andy barclay eating

[bloomback-slink]

got a nice gene for her yesterday :]

[thenerdy-artist]

More au stuff

I keep forgetting to post on Tumblr, my bad

Donnie (original post) Raph

[honeyspotpie]

It's my 1 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

HELP I DIDN'T EVEN REALIZE THIS IS FUNNY

[mischa-makowka]

[asgardian--angels]

Planet's Fucked: What Can You Do To Help? (Long Post)

Since nobody is talking about the existential threat to the climate and the environment a second Trump term/Republican government control will cause, which to me supersedes literally every other issue, I wanted to just say my two cents, and some things you can do to help. I am a conservation biologist, whose field was hit substantially by the first Trump presidency. I study wild bees, birds, and plants.

In case anyone forgot what he did last time, he gagged scientists' ability to talk about climate change, he tried zeroing budgets for agencies like the NOAA, he attempted to gut protections in the Endangered Species Act (mainly by redefining 'take' in a way that would allow corporations to destroy habitat of imperiled species with no ramifications), he tried to do the same for the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (the law that offers official protection for native non-game birds), he sought to expand oil and coal extraction from federal protected lands, he shrunk the size of multiple national preserves, HE PULLED US OUT OF THE PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT, and more.

We are at a crucial tipping point in being able to slow the pace of climate change, where we decide what emissions scenario we will operate at, with existential consequences for both the environment and people. We are also in the middle of the Sixth Mass Extinction, with the rate of species extinctions far surpassing background rates due completely to human actions. What we do now will determine the fate of the environment for hundreds or thousands of years - from our ability to grow key food crops (goodbye corn belt! I hated you anyway but), to the pressure on coastal communities that will face the brunt of sea level rise and intensifying extreme weather events, to desertification, ocean acidification, wildfires, melting permafrost (yay, outbreaks of deadly frozen viruses!), and a breaking down of ecosystems and ecosystem services due to continued habitat loss and species declines, especially insect declines. The fact that the environment is clearly a low priority issue despite the very real existential threat to so many people, is beyond my ability to understand. I do partly blame the public education system for offering no mandatory environmental science curriculum or any at all in most places. What it means is that it will take the support of everyone who does care to make any amount of difference in this steeply uphill battle.

There are not enough environmental scientists to solve these issues, not if public support is not on our side and the majority of the general public is either uninformed or actively hostile towards climate science (or any conservation science).

So what can you, my fellow Americans, do to help mitigate and minimize the inevitable damage that lay ahead?

I'm not going to tell you to recycle more or take shorter showers. I'll be honest, that stuff is a drop in the bucket. What does matter on the individual level is restoring and protecting habitat, reducing threats to at-risk species, reducing pesticide use, improving agricultural practices, and pushing for policy changes. Restoring CONNECTIVITY to our landscape - corridors of contiguous habitat - will make all the difference for wildlife to be able to survive a changing climate and continued human population expansion.

**Caveat that I work in the northeast with pollinators and birds so I cannot provide specific organizations for some topics, including climate change focused NGOs. Scientists on tumblr who specialize in other fields, please add your own recommended resources. **

We need two things: FUNDING and MANPOWER.

You may surprised to find that an insane amount of conservation work is carried out by volunteers. We don't ever have the funds to pay most of the people who want to help. If you really really care, consider going into a conservation-related field as a career. It's rewarding, passionate work.

At the national level, please support:

The Nature Conservancy

Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation

Cornell Lab of Ornithology (including eBird)

National Audubon Society

Federal Duck Stamps (you don't need to be a hunter to buy one!)

These first four work to acquire and restore critical habitat, change environmental policy, and educate the public. There is almost certainly a Nature Conservancy-owned property within driving distance of you. Xerces plays a very large role in pollinator conservation, including sustainable agriculture, native bee monitoring programs, and the Bee City/Bee Campus USA programs. The Lab of O is one of the world's leaders in bird research and conservation. Audubon focuses on bird conservation. You can get annual memberships to these organizations and receive cool swag and/or a subscription to their publications which are well worth it. You can also volunteer your time; we need thousands of volunteers to do everything from conducting wildlife surveys, invasive species removal, providing outreach programming, managing habitat/clearing trails, planting trees, you name it. Federal Duck Stamps are the major revenue for wetland conservation; hunters need to buy them to hunt waterfowl but anyone can get them to collect!

THERE ARE DEFINITELY MORE, but these are a start.

Additionally, any federal or local organizations that seek to provide support and relief to those affected by hurricanes, sea level rise, any form of coastal climate change...

At the regional level:

These are a list of topics that affect major regions of the United States. Since I do not work in most of these areas I don't feel confident recommending specific organizations, but please seek resources relating to these as they are likely major conservation issues near you.

PRAIRIE CONSERVATION & PRAIRIE POTHOLE WETLANDS

DRYING OF THE COLORADO RIVER (good overview video linked)

PROTECTION OF ESTUARIES AND SALTMARSH, ESPECIALLY IN THE DELAWARE BAY AND LONG ISLAND (and mangroves further south, everglades etc; this includes restoring LIVING SHORELINES instead of concrete storm walls; also check out the likely-soon extinction of saltmarsh sparrows)

UNDAMMING MAJOR RIVERS (not just the Colorado; restoring salmon runs, restoring historic floodplains)

NATIVE POLLINATOR DECLINES (NOT honeybees. for fuck's sake. honeybees are non-native domesticated animals. don't you DARE get honeybee hives to 'save the bees')

WILDLIFE ALONG THE SOUTHERN BORDER (support the Mission Butterfly Center!)

INVASIVE PLANT AND ANIMAL SPECIES (this is everywhere but the specifics will differ regionally, dear lord please help Hawaii)

LOSS OF WETLANDS NATIONWIDE (some states have lost over 90% of their wetlands, I'm looking at you California, Ohio, Illinois)

INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE, esp in the CORN BELT and CALIFORNIA - this is an issue much bigger than each of us, but we can work incrementally to promote sustainable practices and create habitat in farmland-dominated areas. Support small, local farms, especially those that use soil regenerative practices, no-till agriculture, no pesticides/Integrated Pest Management/no neonicotinoids/at least non-persistent pesticides. We need more farmers enrolling in NRCS programs to put farmland in temporary or permanent wetland easements, or to rent the land for a 30-year solar farm cycle. We've lost over 99% of our prairies to corn and soybeans. Let's not make it 100%.

INDIGENOUS LAND-BACK EFFORTS/INDIGENOUS LAND MANAGEMENT/TEK (adding this because there have been increasing efforts not just for reparations but to also allow indigenous communities to steward and manage lands either fully independently or alongside western science, and it would have great benefits for both people and the land; I know others on here could speak much more on this. Please platform indigenous voices)

HARMFUL ALGAL BLOOMS (get your neighbors to stop dumping fertilizers on their lawn next to lakes, reduce agricultural runoff)

OCEAN PLASTIC (it's not straws, it's mostly commercial fishing line/trawling equipment and microplastics)

A lot of these are interconnected. And of course not a complete list.

At the state and local level:

You probably have the most power to make change at the local level!

Support or volunteer at your local nature centers, local/state land conservancy non-profits (find out who owns&manages the preserves you like to hike at!), state fish & game dept/non-game program, local Audubon chapters (they do a LOT). Participate in a Christmas Bird Count!

Join local garden clubs, which install and maintain town plantings - encourage them to use NATIVE plants. Join a community garden!

Get your college campus or city/town certified in the Bee Campus USA/Bee City USA programs from the Xerces Society

Check out your state's official plant nursery, forest society, natural heritage program, anything that you could become a member of, get plants from, or volunteer at.

Volunteer to be part of your town's conservation commission, which makes decisions about land management and funding

Attend classes or volunteer with your land grant university's cooperative extension (including master gardener programs)

Literally any volunteer effort aimed at improving the local environment, whether that's picking up litter, pulling invasive plants, installing a local garden, planting trees in a city park, ANYTHING. make a positive change in your own sphere. learn the local issues affecting your nearby ecosystems. I guarantee some lake or river nearby is polluted

MAKE HABITAT IN YOUR COMMUNITY. Biggest thing you can do. Use plants native to your area in your yard or garden. Ditch your lawn. Don't use pesticides (including mosquito spraying, tick spraying, Roundup, etc). Don't use fertilizers that will run off into drinking water. Leave the leaves in your yard. Get your school/college to plant native gardens. Plant native trees (most trees planted in yards are not native). Remove invasive plants in your yard.

On this last point, HERE ARE EASY ONLINE RESOURCES TO FIND NATIVE PLANTS and LEARN ABOUT NATIVE GARDENING:

Xerces Society Pollinator Conservation Resource Center

Pollinator Pathway

Audubon Native Plant Finder

Homegrown National Park (and Doug Tallamy's other books)

National Wildlife Federation Native Plant Finder (clunky but somewhat helpful)

Heather Holm (for prairie/midwest/northeast)

MonarchGard w/ Benjamin Vogt (for prairie/midwest)

Native Plant Trust (northeast & mid-atlantic)

Grow Native Massachusetts (northeast)

Habitat Gardening in Central New York (northeast)

There are many more - I'm not familiar with resources for western states. Print books are your biggest friend. Happy to provide a list of those.

Lastly, you can help scientists monitor species using citizen science. Contribute to iNaturalist, eBird, Bumblebee Watch, or any number of more geographically or taxonomically targeted programs (for instance, our state has a butterfly census carried out by citizen volunteers).

In short? Get curious, get educated, get involved. Notice your local nature, find out how it's threatened, and find out who's working to protect it that you can help with. The health of the planet, including our resilience to climate change, is determined by small local efforts to maintain and restore habitat. That is how we survive this. When government funding won't come, when we're beat back at every turn trying to get policy changed, it comes down to each individual person creating a safe refuge for nature.

Thanks for reading this far. Please feel free to add your own credible resources and organizations.

[dykebakugowo]

Shout out to the cool ass Kohl's worker who complimented my ice nine kills shirt. I love you

[mymarifae]

dess is the knight. here's why

so, i keep seeing people arguing and being unsure who/what the knight is. lots of people saying that it's carol, or that it's actually none of the holidays and is just connected to them somehow. meanwhile i'm 99.99999999% certain it is in fact DESS. and you know what bumped my certainty levels up from like 75% to that 99.99999999%? gerson.

the dark world was able to use his dust to revive him for a time. he was perfectly himself, and he was in this sort of... limbo state of being a darkner and a lightner. but his funeral rites were followed correctly, minus actually burying his urn. so let's ask ourselves: what happens when the funeral rites aren't followed correctly?

what if they CAN'T be? what if the death is so sudden and horrible and her dust is lost? ... what if a fraction of her dust attaches itself to an object that does not correctly resonate with her soul? what if that's all that you have left of her? this incongruent amalgamation of her-but-not-her? do you throw the object away? no, that's your daughter. your childhood best friend. you're going to cling to the little bit you still have of her and try to bring the rest of her back. let the world end if it must; she's more important.

knight carol immediately falls apart for me for two big reasons, and one is simply that this is not what a lightner would look like in the dark world.

this is a lost, twisted being. this is the other side of the scale gerson was on, of near-simultaneously being a lightner and a darkner.

the other reason i can't buy into knight carol is that the knight was already waiting for susie and kris in the dark world while carol was at home grounding noelle. can the woman teleport? exist in two places at once? no. it's just not her.

anyway, plotholes in knight carol theory aside, there are SO many visual clues that the knight is at least a fraction of dess. if you weren't paying close attention - and good chance you weren't because you had bullets to dodge - you might have interpreted the knight's sword as just a sword. and then later, in noelle's house, you run into carol's katana and it's like, woah wait a SWORD?! that is intentional misdirection. the knight's sword is not a Sword. it's a bat.

here i have a handy and very painstakingly detailed chart just for you

real life + in-game katana vs the knight's "sword" vs real life bats. note the bottom of the knight's sword jutting out in one direction and how the real life black bat does the same thing.

katanas are also not wielded with one hand. the correct posture is with two

now, look how the knight swings her "sword":

if you manage to "win" the fight in chapter three, susie attacks the knight head-on, and chips the sword

and, oh, huh would you look at that-

interesting coincidence. also, the knight turns into a baseball-looking ball multiple times

one more thing. this stained glass window design in the church. it's dess standing below the titan she now shares a body silhouette with

(pardon the shaky outlines i refuse to turn on my tablet right now but hopefully that helps you see what i'm talking about if you couldn't at first)

and this isn't even getting into how dess's song is incorporated into the knight's battle theme. we finally met our girl, guys. it's her

[gravitysoda]

using his cuteness to manipulate the target...

[chiquilines]

Okay small confession to make. Im obsessed with rarijack

[ariadne-mouse]

I feel fandom would get along a lot better if there was mutual understanding that liking a character, agreeing with a character, and thinking the character is well constructed/executed are all separate (if often overlapping) positions, each with their separate tastes and subjectivities. Also: character portrayals are intended to make the audience feel things; this is separate from (if often overlapping with) analyzing/appreciating their actions and role in the story.

[d1sheclectic]

frerard divorce era was legitimately crazy when you think about it

[eggbem]

Currently haunted by @dreamweave01's RotTMNT Separated AU. I couldn't stop thinking about Raph's backstory; it's so horrifying. I had to draw something about it.

Thanks for the shell reference, DW!

Went with the more pointy version of Raph's kraang hands, based on the baby CJ post:

[justiceforplutoo]

fic where steve already knows he's bi but robin keeps trying to tell him. steve's known he's had a crush on eddie for months at this point but today just happens to be the day where eddie walks in during a slow shift at family video and robin looks up at the perfect moment to catch steve's soft, dopey smile.

and in that moment, robin connects the dots. the music in steve's car being just love songs on loop. steve walking into work in a lovesick haze. steve going out of his way to work his schedule so he could always be the one to pick the kids up from hellfire.

oh.

oh.

eddie ducks into the horror section, and robin throws her full body weight towards steve, who yelps not unlike a stray cat.

"you like eddie," robin hisses.

"yeah, no shit!" steve reaches for the collar of his polo like he's clutching imaginary pearls. "jesus christ, robin, what the fuck."

ignoring him, robin continues. "no, steve," she says, soft look on her face, "you like like him."

steve frowns, nodding slowly. "i-i know that, robin. we're not in third grade anymore, you can say 'crush', it's not going to give you cooties," he says, frown falling to reveal a teasing look.

"wait, what?"

"robin, did you...?"

they stare at each other intensely for what could perhaps be aeons.

"YOU NEVER TOLD ME-"

"I'VE ALREADY TOLD YOU-"

[asternomikal]

as someone who's half carribbean (trinidadian!) and a MASSIVE eclipse enjoyer, i thought it might be nice to draw him as afrocarribbean as well, thus became of these few pieces!! little conceptual sketches below :]