#Even in a changing ecosystem

[superneightural]

this next chapter of superNAYtural is eating my ass ggggrrrrrahhgrhhgrgggrowlgrr barkb bark

here have a silly guy wearing a badass jacket and a anthro guide on some pony visuals for the fic. Also I have decided they all wear clothes now unless I want to draw all their patterns and markings bc fashion makes no sense in this world but I need to put them in OUTFITS in a way that is concerning for my friends and family

very based on the cartoon logic of magic pastel ponies and also my desire for the characters to have large ranged weapons

Obvi there is more nuance to how human-ponies and monster-ponies get around, like flying or different ways of transport! Ignore how the legs look in the sitting position I did not try at all

[comfortfrogblog]

so i went inactive here because life got busy as i finished high school, and then i started posting about autism on instagram in my senior year and just random things and i kind of amassed a huge following after a year and i learned so many things about myself and the world (some good and some bad) and i’ve grown a lot. but that’s over now because there is a lot of the world that is scary and bad and it’s hard to be vulnerable for that long in front of an audience and i frankly got sick of it and my body and mind became sick of it too. there were so many good people and i built a good comfy community of neurodivergents and such, but it’s still impossible to filter out the bad noise. then there was the fact that i was a young girl being pushed into the feeds of men aged 18-35, with only less than 9% of my audience being female, so that made it strange and parasocial with most of the people who were watching me. so in case you ever need anyone to tell you that blowing up on social media with your face is not as good a time as you may think, listen to me! i can tell you many stories that will make you very certain you do not want to post on big social media if you were not sure before!

so hey im back maybe and i may start comfyposting here again, or at least reblogging good stuff. there are still so many things in my inbox that i never got to answer, and even recent things—i’ve read them all. i apologize that i can’t answer at the moment or at all, but i see you. it’s still always a place you can dump thoughts and burdens, just to know someone sees it and is thinking of you, even for a minute.

here’s to tumblr’s beautiful anonymity. here’s to the comfort of being Social on Media without the horrible parts. i love tumblr so much. tumblr i love you

[torchickentacos]

The world may change at rapid paces that induce constant emotional whiplash, but at least there's one constant (pokemon xy anime discourse on twitter)

[toadsrbutch]

BUTCH WORKING ON MY LITTLE CAR?????????

[screambirdscreaming]

At the bus stop one time there was a gaggle of preschoolers waiting to catch the bus for a field trip day, and someone walked past with a couple of friendly little dogs, to great general delight.

But after a little bit, the dogs were getting overwhelmed, and the preschoolers were gently coaxed to back off so the person with the dogs could continue on. Specifically, one of the preschool teachers said, "Sometimes, when you're small, being surrounded by big people can be a bit scary and overwhelming. Even if they are friendly."

This was recieved as great wisdom: after all, the preschoolers were also small, and understood how scary and overwhelming big people could be! And the dogs were indeed even smaller than the preschoolers, so it made sense.

What was funny and charming was that, upon absorbing and reflecting on this wisdom, they all felt the need to tell it to one another. In tones of great insight, they turned to one another and said, "Did you know? Sometimes when you are small, being surrounded by big people can be scary and overwhelming! Even if they are friendly!" Back and forth, without any particular concern that they were all saying the same thing. Have reached comprehension of an insight, it must be shared!

I must say that this behavior is less charming in tumblr users than in preschoolers. Not least because tumblr users, having gained a little analytical skill to misuse, insist on Summarizing and Generalizing and Unifying the insights they repeat, quickly turning any interesting new information into formulaic dogmatic mush.

[alex-strike-is-transgender]

Sometimes I really just wish things didn't change so much. Yeah the world changing and improving so fast is great and all but I'm tired and just really want something familiar to go to.

[sereniv]

I saved a daddy long legs!

i was scared and (i know dont @ me) was considering spraying him because I still fear spiders and spider-look-a-likes

up until past few years ive been working really hard on figuring out how to save them rather than kill bc ofc, it doesnt align with my views to kill them

normally i let my dog eat them to justify it- ironically, bc "im not killing them, my dog is"

but he was in one place, not moving and i was on the toilet, so i took the time to read up about him.

i named him, forced myself to, and to call him cute, so that it would make it harder for me to go through with killing him

i tried to imagine him being curious, or scared, or relaxing. Though i know most likely they arent capable of it in a way we can understand, it still helped me see him as no different than my dog or cat or me, rather than "just a bug' or some type of 'scary thing'

and in the end i saved him! container and a folder.

i still was scared, but seeing the (idk another word) humanity in him, the value he has and that he has for himself as a living being, helped make it possible to save him

its still really hard, and on occasion i do end up killing spiders or having my dog eat them when its quick scenarios where i dont have time to think it through

but compared to years ago ive gone from saving 0 to maybe 80%

and this is one of those moments where, its not exactly possible for me to push myself because it can undo all the work ive done. and thats ok.

this is the best i can do right now and im proud of myself.

my best, is not how i imagine my best being. in my mind, i could push myself harder but thats not practical.

doing your best is strategic.

im just so glad i didnt kill him. reading about him, learning about him, appreciating his role, and labeling him cute and giving him a name helped a lot

and sometimes, anthropomorphizing animals can be beneficial. i know he doesnt feel fear and curiosity like i do, but if it means not unnecessarily taking a life, then he does to me in that moment

[pyrriax]

having such a hyperspecific au concept that borders on becoming completely original work.

[j-esbian]

genuinely don’t know if people are being willfully ignorant or if climate change is boiling a frog faster than any frog has been boiled before, because every time i remark about the temperature, everyone around me goes “michigan weather amirite folks??” and it’s like. actually i don’t think that’s what’s causing it to fluctuate 30-40 degrees week to week. try again.

[birchbeer]

just thinking about climate change and weather patterns shifting again and wondering if there will be a day late in my life when i wake up and realize i havent seen snow fall in my hometown in several years

[blossombloodcurse]

wow zoe wasn’t lying, all the people in the alex strangelove tag acting like alex considering he might be bi before he accepts that he’s gay is the height of biphobia and personally wronged them. um, who give a shit.

[pyrriax]

its so funny comparing the different pseudo-gods that have been created so far (currently only two have proper drawn forms but there areeee.... give or take five fleshed out ones?)

even just comparing the foxes .... the difference between these two is. impressive

while fundamentally the same thing, one of them is significantly more obvious on purpose while the other is just trying to seem like a regular fox (even though sometimes she does choose to walk bipedally, its usually to grab attention)

[neverendingford]

.

[sleepingdragoninn]

Switchy: server-side pluralkit for minecraft

Switchy lets players swap between presets of player data and customizations by utilizing the existing features of other well-established mods in the ecosystem - nicknames, skins, origins, and so on - plus vanilla data like inventory, position, and spawn point.

It's for systems, RP servers, account sharing, genderfluidity, furries, even mapmaking - everything is toggleable on a per-player level and built to be extended with mod compatibility addons.

It works with vanilla clients, but adds the GUI above when modded.

[inbabylontheywept]

she was dead silent on the drive home, but that was okay. sometimes, after band practice, she was just out of words. it was a short drive to her house. the only part where it actually felt weird was after i pulled up her parent’s driveway. 

after that, the silence stretched so far it smeared and left a weird residue. she kept looking at the car door like she wanted to leave, so i looked at the door too, then she looked at me, and i looked at her, and my first thought was that she was going to tell me that the door was stuck. i was used to that car always doing some damn thing. it was the car me and all my siblings had learned to drive in, and it was really beat to hell. there were dents all over the body, which we’d unsuccessfully tried fixing up with spackle. it had looked nice for maybe a week, but then the sun wrecked it - the spackle cracked up like the mud on the bottom of a dry riverbed and turned a sort of off yellow-white that made the car looked like it had been molded out of chicken shit. it also had a bullet hole it through the cabin that whistled like a toothless old man whenever the car went above 40, so loud it could drown out the radio, and a cabin that smelled so strongly of bugspray that even the arizona summer we drove everywhere we could with the windows down.

(if you have kids one day, you will maybe, possibly, begin to understand how much i loved that car.)

anyway, i was thinking about what else could possibly be wrong with the chickenshitmobile, and she just kept looking at me, and then i wondered if there was something on my face, and she just kept looking at me, and then the penny dropped and i realized she was trying to work up the nerve to break up with me. 

now, i’d seen her work up the nerve to do things like this before – it could take quite a while. and knowing it was about to happen made the waiting immediately unbearable. 

so i said hey. 

and she looked at me, very startled, and said hey back real small. like she’d been caught. and in a way, i suppose she had. 

and i said it’s okay. you can just say it. i’ll be okay.

i’m always okay. 

and she said: i’m really sorry. 

i loved her, you know? it was highschool, but teenagers are capable of love. the way people love changes over time just as much as the way they stand, or the way they talk, but things don’t stop existing just because they're different. opposite really – a thing only stops changing when it's fully gone.

and i said, nothing to be sorry for, and i meant it. she looked a little relived, and i was happy to give her that peace. then she left. i watched her make it through the front door, because that was just habit at that point, and then i sat there a while afterwards, checking how i felt. and the answer was not good, but good enough to make it home. good enough to limp on. 

so i put my car in reverse, took my last look goodbye, and immediately backed into her neighbor’s car. 

crunch. 

air bags didn't go off, which was good. i left a decent dent in the bumper of the other car. genuinely couldn’t tell if i did anything to my car – anything wrong with it just kind of blended together into the general ecosystem of hand mottled, sun cracked, chickenshit spackle. 

i checked my glove box, and my car insurance info was, of course, out of date. my phone was dead too. as a teenager, my phone was less my lifeline to my friends, and more my tether to my parents, so i wasn’t particularly conscious of keeping it charged. both my fault.

i sat there a few minutes, trying to think of the best way to handle things, and there was only one answer i could think of, and i hated that answer, so i spent a few more minutes trying and failing to think of a better one, and then a few more coming to peace with what had to be done. 

then i went back to knock on my now ex’s front door. 

her dad opened, which i was very relieved over, even if he seemed less than thrilled. he looked me over, and in a firm, but slightly apologetic way said: she does not want to see you right now. 

(i think he assumed i was going to try and talk her out of the break up?)

and i said not here for her. i just backed into your neighbor’s car, and i need to call my dad, but my phone’s dead. could i borrow yours?

and he looked at me, then back at his neighbors car, which sure enough was dented, then he looked at the chickenshitmobile, and if there was something wrong with it, it just kind of blended into the general Wrongness of the car, then back to me, and i could see him imagining the last ten minutes from my pov: getting broken up with, backing into a car, having to walk up to your exes door and borrow a phone, calling my dad to tell him that i just reversed into someone.  

and his expression shifted from stern and apologetic to truly sad, which felt more kind that i deserved. things only got here because i kept fucking up - forgot to look behind me, forgot to replace the insurance forms, forgot to charge my phone. it was my mess, but his sympathy meant the world to me. i probably would’ve cried if he said sorry, or patted me on the back or called me sport, but instead he said

stay out here – i’ll bring you a phone.

and then he left.  

i found a nice spot on the lawn in the shade under a sycamore, then settled into his grass.i was trying not to freak out, and was doing an okay job. he came out a minute or so later, not just with a phone, but a juicebox and a jar of green olives, which really threw a wrench in the whole try not to cry thing. soon as i saw those, a few tears squoze out. i was still hoping i could pass them off as Manly Tears but then he told me that he’d gotten the olives a few weeks before and had been meaning to hand them off to me, and that this was his last chance for that. then i made a sound like a horse drowning in a bog, and he patted my back pretty rough, four solid thumps, like he wasn't sure if i was crying or choking on an olive, and was trying to cover both bases at once.

then he went back inside, and i made a few more bog horse noises while finishing off the rest of the entire jar of green olives, and then i called my dad.

he was about ten minutes away that day, and luckily was home. he drove over, and we went to the neighbor’s house, and from there things actually went quite nice. the neighbor was a retired man who actually said he could fix the dent himself, no need for insurance. he said he appreciated that i didn't just drive off, and i said i was really sorry about his car, and he said he was really sorry about my car, and then he gestured to the chickenshitmobile and i laughed because it really was a disaster on wheels.

then we left.

i thought we were going to head straight home, but instead we went to a gas station, and we both got several slim jims that we folded into thick enough coils that we could put them on a hotdog bun because the growing up mormon equivalent of having a sad brewski with your dad is just choosing to make bad decisions sober. then he took me to the canals and we watched the sun turn all orange and pink, and he looked over at me and said:

brains are good at remembering bad days. so you gotta make sure that a bad day has a good part in it, so you can remember that too. remember that when you have a kid. try to do a good job on days like that - they're going to be a big part of how they remember you.

and then he gave me a big hug and said he was never going to eat another slim jim again.

---

the year after that i went to college, which kicked my butt in new and exciting ways. and on a lot of those bad days, after a test that went sour, or a faux paus that was particularly embarrassing, or some other hardship of my new adult life, i’d stop by the gas station and pick up leathery, half jerkied hotdog before heading to the canals to watch the sun set. i’d take a bite and imagine my dad next to me, grimacing through the slim-jim wad, asking what good thing i was going use that time to remember. 

and in my head, i’d say you, dad. 

i’m going to remember you.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

If you aren't following the news here in the Pacific Northwest, this is a very, very big deal. Our native salmon numbers have been plummeting over the past century and change. First it was due to overfishing by commercial canneries, then the dams went in and slowed the rivers down and blocked the salmons' migratory paths. More recently climate change is warming the water even more than the slower river flows have, and salmon can easily die of overheating in temperatures we would consider comfortable.

Removing the dams will allow the Klamath River and its tributaries to return to their natural states, making them more hospitable to salmon and other native wildlife (the reservoirs created by the dams were full of non-native fish stocked there over the years.) Not only will this help the salmon thrive, but it makes the entire ecosystem in the region more resilient. The nutrients that salmon bring back from their years in the ocean, stored within their flesh and bones, works its way through the surrounding forest and can be traced in plants several miles from the river.

This is also a victory for the Yurok, Karuk, and other indigenous people who have relied on the Klamath for many generations. The salmon aren't just a crucial source of food, but also deeply ingrained in indigenous cultures. It's a small step toward righting one of the many wrongs that indigenous people in the Americas have suffered for centuries.