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90s anime women were so fucking beauitful god bless. i miss them so much

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birds that look like fruit <3

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Cannot even express the extent to which I am at the end of my rope right now. I'm in survival mode. I'm dealing with work cutting my hours to two days a week explicitly because I'm gay while trying to figure out if there's any legal recourse possible while trying to bring in money via sw and fucking up my joints even more when they're already debilitatingly bad and only bringing in enough money for groceries while also trying to pay off my THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS in medical debt (and this is just the stuff I need to pay off in order to keep seeing my doctors!) and I need to get my dog into the vet for her shots that I can't afford and my rent is being increased by a lot and my baseline emotion is near tears at any moment in time

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im normal about ISAT why do you ask

[MAJOR SPOILERS!]

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AU where Siffrin was with the King prior to canon, but genuinely had no idea about the whole "freeze Vauguard in time forever" plan and was not happy when they found out about it.

Yes, they knew he was working on something big with wish craft, that he'd talked about making sure Vauguard would never suffer the fate of their home- but he thought that this was about using wish craft to find out what happened to the Island, maybe bring it back! You know, like a sane person! Not this.

They were away for a couple weeks- out on another odd job they'd picked up, because someone has to bring in rent money around here! Hiding away in your room researching lost forms of craft rituals might be the key to saving their home and letting them return someday, but it doesn't exactly pay the bills. They always supported him.

They come back to find Corbeaux beginning to freeze, and rush to find him, thinking that it all must have gone horribly wrong, that whatever ritual he used must have backfired in some catastrophic way.

And then they find him... triumphant. Happy.

First they beg him to stop. Then they try to stop him. Then they try to survive him.

(The dangers of trying to solo the final boss before you've even gone out and level grinded your way up to endgame!)

The King seems very regretful about what happened, when Siffrin regains consciousness.

Not that it's going to stop him, oh no, of course not. But he doesn't want to freeze them in time yet, not until they've had a chance to recover. He loves them, after all! He wants to make sure they're preserved forever in perfect condition, so his beloved will never fade.

So they can just rest and heal up here, in this nice safe locked-from-the-outside room in the House of Change he's taken over, and then once they've made a full recovery they can get all dressed up in their best outfit and he'll take them somewhere nice and scenic, so they can spend eternity somewhere pretty, looking their best.

Won't that be lovely? :) See, he really does care about you so much!

Siffrin waits until the exact second they're recovered enough to stand up again, and then immediately breaks themself out of the House and runs for it.

The sensible thing to do would probably be to attempt to flee the country! As evidenced by their taste in men, Siffrin is not entirely sensible. They're going to level grind, and then come back for round two and a fucking divorce.

Maybe this "chosen of the Change God" they keep hearing rumors about could be helpful with that...

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Older than history itself

What if the oldest vampire was a Neanderthal girl 🤔

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when you tag me in posts you think i’d like this is what it looks like

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so many creatures putting SO much effort into putting ‘special’ fluids that TOTALLY aren’t water through every organ possible to clean them so they can use them again 2 seconds later. like why not simply sit on a damp substrate and pull water through your body by evaporating the extra out pores in your leaves lmaoooo

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can we please please please learn to differentiate between things that are good but devalued because of their association with women (caring for children, being compassionate), things that are neutral but seen negatively because of their association with women (the colour pink, having long hair), and things that are bad but associated with women because of misogyny (being materialistic, being stupid) because otherwise we’re gonna keep getting takes like “being gender nonconforming is anti feminist” and “not studying for your classes is feminist”

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@renzanix Aww, thank you so much, your tags are very sweet. :D Another thing I like about this headcanon is that it could explain why Siffrin's time craft seems to be stronger than the King's.

After all, Siffrin can very much make the King loop back in time like everybody else, but the King can't freeze Siffrin without him just looping his way back out of it. He only manages in act 5, when Siffrin loses the will to keep fighting- whenever Siffrin actually struggles against him, their time craft always wins out over his.

So if we go with this headcanon, maybe that's because Siffrin's wish is more aligned with what he's drawing power from. The King's desire to freeze Vauguard in time fits the letter of the law for "save Vauguard from the fate of the Island", but it's bending the spirit pretty hard at this point. The King is pushing a wish that actively goes against the true desires of the people he's drawing power from: for their friends and loved ones in Vauguard to truly be safe and happy.

Whereas "save Vauguard from the King" and "stay with the people I love" are at worst totally unrelated wishes, and at best complimentary ones- after all, Siffrin can't stay with their family if they're all frozen in time forever. He starts to lose the plot a bit in act 4, when he's beginning to consider if just being together in the loops forever is good enough, but ultimately he keeps at least trying to save Vauguard from being stuck in time forever right up until he tries to fight the party.

Which… is also the point he gets real big like the King did and seems to be losing his grip on the power of his wish entirely, to the point where Odile can just straight-up counterspell their dumb self-sabotaging ass.

Okay, so: here's my overly elaborate unnecessary headcanon/theory for what's going on with the Northern Island, and how exactly the King can use wish craft.

Now, we also know that getting enough power to get Siffrin the ability to use time craft took most of a country all wishing for more or less the same thing. But the King apparently just did rituals by himself for years, and managed it?

Odd... unless maybe he didn't manage it just by himself.

After all, Siffrin didn't really tap into all that power intentionally- it's just that no one in Vauguard knew how to wish properly, so all that power was kind of... stored up. Like a lake all dammed up, a huge reserve just waiting to be tapped. And Siffrin's wish, the first one finally performed with the correct ritual, was the crack in the dam that let the water out, all that power filtered out through him.

We don't know what happened to the Northern Island, but we know a wish did... something. Now, imagine that whatever it was, whatever thing devours part of reality and leaves it forgotten, someone on the Island sees it start to happen, and they realize two things:

It's too late to save their home now.

It's not too late for everyone else.

And they rally anyone they can find in those last few desperate moments, send out messages to anyone close enough, and ask them all to make a wish:

Make this stop here.

Whatever this thing is, whatever doom is about to befall us, let it stop at our borders. Don't let it happen to anyone else.

After all, these people wouldn't have been strangers to Vauguard, right across the water from them- these were their friends and neighbors, people they knew and loved. They would have had family over there, maybe. They would have cared, enough to want to save them, even if they knew it was already too late for themselves.

The wish holds, pushing back against whatever twisted and disastrous wish caused the forgetting to begin with. The whole thing is swift and terrible, over before news even has time to reach people living further out on the coast of the Island, let alone off it. The forgetting goes exactly to the edges of the Island's shores, and no further.

Everyone past that point forgets them, but is not forgotten. They are safe.

...And then along comes the King, with his wish:

Save Vauguard from the fate of my home.

It wasn't what they meant. The way he wanted to do it was never something they would have chosen. But it was close enough to count.

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Ok this isn't a bug but I need to share - LOOK at these absolutely minuscule precious little poppies

White pygmy-poppy, Canbya candida, found in Southern California

Photos by keirmorse, mojavedon, and pokemon_master

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https://x.com/ThePCRF/status/1920628823873245303

By the by, the PCRF is still operating in Gaza, in spite of difficulties imposed by the blockade. They are currently 75% of the way to their goal for the Gaza Relief Fund. They also do company matching, so if you work for the sort of place that might offer that, be sure to take a look.

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"If you use em dash in your works, it makes them look AI generated. No real human uses em dash."

Imaging thinking actual human writers are Not Real because they use... professional writing in their works.

Imagine thinking millions of people who have been using em dash way before AI becomes a thing are all robots.

REBLOG IF YOU'RE A HUMAN AND YOU USE EM DASH

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beginning to suspect one of my four elemental generals may be showing sympathy to the heroes and allowing them a fair fight instead of following my orders to destroy them at any cost

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**URGENT** HELP SAVE THE USGS BEE LAB!

PLEASE circulate this as widely as possible, as soon as possible.

Hi all, you may not know me but I am a native bee researcher in the eastern US. People like me work to study and protect the 3600 species of native bees in North America, many of which are in severe decline.

We just received devastating news, that unfortunately was not surprising. The Trump administration's proposed 2026 budget is set to defund most of the ecological research happening at the USGS, and that includes zeroing out the budget for the USGS Native Bee Inventory & Monitoring Lab.

Don't know them? Maybe you've seen stunning photos like this:

These gorgeous and evocative focus-stacked photos of native bees on black backgrounds - all of which are public domain - come from the USGS Bee Lab (here's their Flickr). Through these, they've helped bring the beauty and importance of native bees to the public's attention. Hundreds if not thousands of news articles, videos, and publications use these photos.

But that is just one tiny slice of what the USGS Bee Lab does for pollinator conservation. Its primary role is much bigger; they provide technical support, research collaborations, and financial & grant partnerships to federal and state agencies, academic institutions and researchers, and much more, so we can study, manage, and protect North America's wild pollinators. They conduct research of their own that has led to species rediscoveries, and produce invaluable resources that have greatly advanced our understanding of wild bees and our approaches to studying and conserving them. They also provide the essential and irreplaceable service of bee identification. For those who don't know, identifying bees is hard. Sometimes Really Hard. And this lab is one of just a handful of places in the entire country who can identify some of the toughest groups of bees, and who sit on the forefront of breakthroughs on taxonomy and identification that the rest of us in this field rely on. Without this service, agencies and researchers trying to survey and monitor bees in order to track population declines, manage land, and get policy changed are stuck with a lot of nameless bees, severely limiting the usefulness of that data.

Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of bee specimens pass through this lab annually, plus the thousands in permanent storage, from long-term monitoring efforts by state and federal agencies, and researchers like myself. They operate at a greater capacity than basically any other institution doing this kind of work. Few if any bee researchers in the eastern US, or even the country, have not benefitted from this lab's work, and those benefits are passed on to you through being able to protect pollinators and the services they provide both in agriculture and ecosystems.

This lab is headed up by scientist Sam Droege, who has dedicated decades of his life to this cause, and whom I consider not just a research partner but, humbly, a friend. I am utterly indebted to him for helping me get my start in this field, and for the support and kindness he has shown me and every other young professional who is passionate about pollinators. The Lab operates with an insanely small budget already, and a very limited staff, yet the impact they have is exponentially outsized. Losing the USGS Bee Lab would be a devastating blow to pollinator conservation in this country, at a time when native bee species are sitting on the precipice, and sustainable agriculture is non-negotiable for our future.

You can read more about the Bee Lab here. The Lab is not well-publicized, but it's a lifeline for the many dedicated people who work to try and protect pollinators and the environment at large.

SO WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Sam Droege has sent out a request for help, and has encouraged us to post on social media. This is what he wants you to do to help us save the Bee Lab.

This is verbatim:

What is Happening: ·       The USGS Bee Lab is at risk of being permanently closed due to cuts in the 2026 Federal Budget and looming federal RIF’s ·       Specifically, the Ecosystem Mission Area (EMA) budget, which funds the USGS Bee Lab and the Eastern Ecological Science center has been zeroed out ·       Thousands of layoffs to hit Interior, National Parks imminently - Government Executive What you can do ·       Write to your representatives, the White House, and the Department of the Interior that they should restore the funding for the USGS Bee Lab ·       Send digital or physical letters, write emails, post to social media What you should be highlighting: ·       Personal anecdotes about how the Bee Lab has impacted you or your organization ·       How important the research the Bee Lab is conducting is to your state Contact Information: 1.      Representatives: Find Your Representative | house.gov 2.      Senators: U.S. Senate: Contacting U.S. Senators 3.      White House: Contact Us – The White House 4.      Interior: feedback@ios.doi.gov Send a copy of the letter to droegesam@gmail.com Pass this email around.  Post your response to social media

IT'S OK if you are not a scientist and have not directly interacted with the Bee Lab. Have you seen the lab's photos? Are you concerned about native pollinator declines? Are you aware of any pollinator conservation initiatives or policies in your own state - those almost certainly have drawn, directly or indirectly, from work the Lab has done. Speak about American food production and agriculture, how the Lab's research and collaborations are essential to safeguarding pollination services (this might help reach across the aisle).

Sam urges that these letters, emails, phone calls, etc, must happen quickly - within the next couple days. This information went out on May 8th and that is the day I am posting this. So please, don't wait.

If 'save the bees' has ever meant anything to you, this is the agency that is playing one of the biggest roles in this country in making that happen. Please, contact your representatives, and pass this call to action along however you can. Thank you.