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We need to bring back free the nipple

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every time i go outside i am astounded by the power of sun and air

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One of my favorites TES hcs : young Martin Septim is Champion of Sanguine 🍷 ❤️

It makes me feral.

Another drawing for @tes-gala

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manifesting...

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After noticing patterns over the years, I created this list with 13 points to score the level of stereotypes about sharks present in a work. I believe that most of these stereotypes have their main origin in the film Jaws (1975).

With the scarcity of works that explore other creative approaches to sharks, beyond the “man-eating ” narrative, Jaws ended up consolidating itself as the greatest source of inspiration and creative reference for many productions to this day. This was called “The Jaws Effect”. 🩸🦈

I've noticed that certain patterns in the creative world repeat themselves to the point of being tedious, which bothers me. Not because they're bad, but because in many cases they're harmful. With these points, I hope to show sharks in a new light.

🩸1 - Great White Shark Popularized by the Jaws movie, the Great white shark has become the dominant archetype in the representation of sharks in fiction. Often, works choose to use this shark or a generic gray version of imprecise anatomy, with no defined species. However, there are over 400 species of shark, and very few are explored creatively.

🩸2 - Man-eater The persistent idea that sharks have humans as a natural part of their diet is one of the most widespread stereotypes. Although there are reports of incidents, most attacks are isolated and often by mistake. Any animal, including humans, could turn to unexpected sources of food in a situation of desperation or starvation.

🩸3 - Forced Behavior It's common to see sharks portrayed with distorted or exaggerated behaviors that don't match their nature just to cause tension, such as:

Hunting small fish, ignoring the fact that sharks avoid expending energy on low-energy prey.

Abandoning easy prey just to arbitrarily chase the protagonist.

Going crazy at the smell of blood.

Showing a wild and constant hunger.

Obsessively pursuing a single prey.

Making aggressive shark species known for being peaceful or timid.

Attacking and destroying objects, structures or vessels with disproportionate fury just to reach someone.

🩸4 - Monstrous appearance It's common to see sharks' appearance exaggerated to intensify visual fear, making them look like monsters rather than real animals:

A gaping mouth, with huge, crooked teeth that are constantly stained with blood.

Menacing, demonic red, black empty and soulless eyes.

Body covered in grotesque scars, exposed wounds and even weapons embedded in the skin.

A disproportionate figure, with pointed shapes, a swollen or deformed body.

Bizarre mutations that completely alter their anatomy.

Technological modifications to make them more weapon-like, emphasizing the idea of the "Killing Machine".

🩸5 - Shark de-characterization Especially in children's works, in order to be accepted by the public or the other characters in the plot, the shark is often forced to change its identity. It is transformed into a “domesticated” version, such as:

Becoming a vegetarian or a toothless shark, losing its ecological role as a predator.

Taking on exaggeratedly “funny” behavior, becoming a caricature.

Having its behavior and appearance altered to look more like a dolphin or other friendly shape, excluding striking features such as prominent fins, visible gills or a fusiform snout.

Choose to portray a specific species of shark because it seems more “friendly” to the public, such as the whale shark.

🩸6 - Limited Nature The representation of sharks in fiction is usually limited to sensationalist aspects, such as the power of their bite, the old phrase that they "smell a drop of blood in 2 million liters of water", or things like "killers from the womb".

However, sharks have some very interesting characteristics that are little explored creatively:

Acute hearing, capable of picking up sounds more than a kilometer away in the ocean.

Their electroreception, which allows them to perceive tiny electrical impulses emitted by living prey and even sense the electromagnetic field around them.

Possible link between their migrations and the lunar phases.

Incredible healing capacity and immune resistance.

Skin made up of denticles made of the same material as our teeth.

They constantly change their teeth.

Longevity and they never stop growing.

Many fish such as rémoras and pilot fish depend on and live alongside sharks.

Sensitive to pressure changes and can even predict hurricanes and tropical storms.

🩸7 - Red Presence Striking presence of red, either with the presence of blood or the color present in the design. This emphasis on red reinforces the shark's direct association with violence, danger and death, contributing to the construction of the “bloodthirsty monster” stereotype.

🩸8 - Dark Music It is common for sharks to be associated with tense, dark and threatening soundtracks whenever they appear on the scene. More often than not, I notice that when sharks are mentioned in song lyrics, it is to express some sort of comparison to some negative stereotype.

🩸9 - Threatening setting Scenarios with sharks are almost always represented in a gloomy, dark, desaturated way, empty of marine life. The environment is treated as a dangerous place by nature, shipwrecks, dark caves, areas full of garbage, explosive mines or the inhospitable depths of the sea

🩸10 - Masculinization The theme involving sharks has always been very masculine. Shark characters are rarely female, while the human characters who interact with these animals, scientists, hunters, divers or specialists, are almost always white men. Women and minorities almost never occupy central or specialized roles in these narratives.

🩸11 - Villainization Sharks are often portrayed as villains by default, carrying negative and caricatured stereotypes, for example:

Gangster or mobster

Aggressor or school bully

Criminal or loan shark

Brutish idiot or dumb henchman

Corrupt politician or authoritarian fascist figure

Indomitable monster or irrational beast

Recurring enemy, obstacle or final boss in video games

🩸12 - Objectification Sharks are often treated as mere resources or utilitarian objects in fiction. They are represented as trophies, rewards, collectibles or consumables, as if they existed only to be hunted, exhibited or eaten.

This objectification also appears in the constant presence of jaws decorating environments, teeth used as accessories, fins amputated as an ingredient, and in the display of the animal's body in a morbid way: corpses exposed, dead body hung and displayed as a trophy in harbor, parts dissected or being devoured by other creatures.

🩸13 - Death As if it weren't enough to have become a symbol of death incarnate, even in animations aimed at children, sharks almost always have the same fate: death. What's worse, their death is usually celebrated as a relief or a victory.

Impaled, butchered, set on fire, crushed, blown up, fished out or killed by another "heroic" creature, tossed about by hurricanes… In many cases, these scenes are treated with humor or graphic exaggeration, turning the destruction of the shark into a spectacle.

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I was unsure about publishing this list as it is just personal observations from someone who loves sharks. A few people asked me for this list and said it would be worth posting, don't take it too seriously.

These stereotypes are not necessarily bad or invalid, after all, we are talking about works of fantasy and fiction. However, they could be resignified through new creative ideas that arouse feelings other than fear and terror.

Although many people's passion for sharks arose precisely from movies like Jaws and the stereotypes it popularized, it's important to remember that these same elements have been repeated almost unchanged for decades. This exhaustive repetition was largely because it was profitable, turning sharks into yet another victim of entertainment capitalism. Over time, this type of representation ended up distancing ordinary people from the reality of these animals, reinforcing fear rather than curiosity. Nowadays things are a little better, but not better enough.

The reality of sharks goes far beyond that. They are mysterious and fascinating animals, older than the first trees or dinosaurs. They have survived five mass extinctions, incredibly adapted from the abyssal depths to mangroves and freshwater rivers. They have unique senses and behaviors that are still shrouded in mystery, as well as a biology so singular that it inspires advances in science and technology. For many ancient cultures, sharks are revered as true gods of ocean balance.

I dare say that by looking after the health of the seas for millions of years, sharks made it possible for our own species to emerge from the depths of the primordial ocean. They are, in a way, guardians of our cradle of origin. And so we owe them a great deal of respect and preserve them at all costs.

To date, no creative work has managed to surpass “Jaws”. Who will be creative enough to create a new work and transform the collective imaginary of sharks from fear to fascination? 🦈✨

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@importantanimalmemes

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may we live to see the day where the first photo results of your intersex variation aren't graphic photos of igm

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The thing that abled people who advocate for the disabled community don’t get is that there are times when disabilities/accommodations clash. Horribly.

Like I spent years having to come up with a solution to get therapy dogs into a series of residence halls. Why years? Because we had to decide who got to stay and who got to leave: the people who needed therapy dogs or the people with severe allergies to animals. Who got the alternative housing? 

Things like fidget toys might seem great for some disabled people but having them in the room could be distracting/overstimulating for others. The same goes with stimming. It can’t be helped but neither can the anxiety that another person in the room feels as they watch/hear it. Additionally, something like a weighted blanket might immediately calm one kid down and send the other one into a panic attack due to the claustrophobia it causes. (*Points to myself*)

Every Metro bus in New York City has a series of seats at the front that can be lifted up to accommodate people in wheelchairs but if I’m in one of those spots then someone with a cane/walker has to journey even further to sit down.

The flashing lights of a fire alarm are there to help deaf/hearing impaired but if they’re not properly timed, they can also cause a person to have a seizure.

The worst part about all of these is that there is rarely a concrete solution that makes everyone happy/safe. And I’m not here to offer any because I don’t know them. I’m just here to remind you all that as you’re taking your education/health classes, as you’re reading your textbooks, as you’re preparing to go be an advocate, just remember that there is rarely ever such a thing as a one-size-fits-all solution to advocacy and that something you do that can help one disabled person might actually hinder another.

Food for thought.

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Comic by Kelly Bastow on BlueSky at ‪@moosekleenex.bsky.social‬ 💚 See also: wildflowers, mushrooms, water striders and more. I walk around the woods with star in my eyes.

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I have no explanation for this other than it's what pops into my head whenever I hear this on the radio

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My coworker said he was having a bad day and I said 'it can't be that bad you haven't started howling like a sad dog yet' and he let out the saddest most pathetic little howl I've ever heard and I was like 'damn ok do you need to have a break?'

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I recently was thinking back about how much I loved The Care Bears Movie II as a kid, and how much I had wished that Dark Heart would get some sort of follow-up appearance in the TV show to give some sort of epilogue to his situation and his friendships with Christy, John, and Dawn, and what a shame and a missed opportunity it is that that never happened not even once!

But then I remembered that fanfiction exists!! And I was very happy to search AO3 and find that there's not just one but several really good fanfics from various authors on the topic, tackling the concept with respect for the characters, and keeping in the mood of the Care Bears, and really lovingly thinking it all though, and even staying accurate to the available technology of the 80s, hah.

I really enjoyed your series, and especially how you handled Dark Heart. (spoilers behind the read more)

I like how you highlight his troubles with his newfound emotions and his difficulty with identifying and regulating them. I really like how you show the Care Bears in the role of really good therapists for him and all the other kids. And the scene where Dark Heart wished for the Care Bears to hit him with the Stare again, thinking it would "fix" him, and he has to come to terms with, there's nothing to "fix", he's a person now and he's got human troubles that he needs to deal with inside himself, with no easy solution, and just… aw man… I do joke that I'm the sort of person that cries easily by saying I cry at the Care Bears movie, but still, you got me all teared up.

I never watched more than a few episodes of the Care Bears TV Show, so I am not very familiar with Shreeky, but I am glad I kept reading your series for the chapters that focus on her, because I also enjoyed her storyline in your fic. I am not quite sure what is canon vs. your interpretation, but I like how you tackled her complicated family situation and her role as an apprentice to the dark arts, and I was really really happy when she decided she'd had enough of the abuse and accepted care from Grams Bear.

I think it's also cool that even though in your story they are both reformed villains who are neighbors in Care-A-Lot, you put some animosity between Dark Heart and Shreeky. As much as I would want them to all be friends and get along, it makes sense that there would be distrust there, and narratively I think it gave you some cool opportunities to explore both characters.

It's been a few weeks since I read your story, yet I am still specifically haunted by the visual of the kids all having a sleepover party, and the others are asleep, and Shreeky looks out across the room, and sees Dark Heart's eyes in the dark watching like a cat. And I love that he's actually concerned about her and trying to help, but does so in such an unsettling way that she can't trust yet.

Also, Bright Heart Raccoon was my favorite as a kid, so I was really happy he got a big role in the latest installment.

So yeah, I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your story and give it a share on tumblr!

back on writing my care bears series again <3 care bears but only the deplorable characters

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Well what the fuck now