#earth things

[captainjonnitkessler]

You know I used to think "tumblr's absolute refusal to actually engage with the Trolley Problem in favor of insisting that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is just a short-sighted idiot is really fucking annoying, but I guess it's not actually doing any harm".

Anyway that was before we asked tumblr at large to decide between "guy aiding a genocide but making progress elsewhere" and "guy who would actively and enthusiastically participate in a genocide and would also make everything else much, much worse for everyone elsewhere" and the response was that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and that anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is a short-sighted idiot.

[sleepless-in-starbucks]

guy who's stuck in a timeloop for so long he stops wanting to leave it. guy who started out trying to escape but slowly grew used to and became comforted by the familiarity of the repeating day. guy who is no longer who he was before the timeloop. guy who is offered a way out and violently refuses it because he can't leave, doesn't want to leave. guy who escapes the timeloop by chance or force or accident and doesn't know how to live anymore. guy who keeps going through motions that don't match the situation and keeps having conversations that aren't actually occurring. guy who panics every time he realizes he can't predict the next instant. guy who left the timeloop but still lives with it.

[neptunejheart]

The one thing I've learned on this planet is that the people meant for you will always stick around no matter what.

Love wins no matter how much I try to deny that.

[bbqhooligan]

kendrick lamar murdering drake live on tv continues

[poeciles]

couples t shirts that say “please ask me about birds” and “please for the love of god don’t ask her about birds”

[inkskinned]

i love when words fit right. seize was always supposed to be that word, and so was jester. tuesday isn't quite right but thursday should be thursday, that's a good word for it. daisy has the perfect shape to it, almost like you're laughing when you say it; and tulip is correct most of the time. while keynote is fun to say, it's super wrong - i think they have to change the label for that one. but fox is spot-on.

most words are just, like, good enough, even if what they are describing is lovely. the night sky is a fine term for it but it isn't perfect the way november is the correct term for that month.

it's not just in english because in spanish the phrase eso si que es is correct, it should be that. sometimes other languages are also better than the english words, like how blue is sloped too far downwards but azul is perfect and hangs in the air like glitter. while butterfly is sweet, i think probably papillion is more correct, although for some butterflies féileacán is much better. year is fine but bliain is better. sometimes multiple languages got it right though, like how jueves and Πέμπτη are also the right names for thursday. maybe we as a species are just really good at naming thursdays.

and if we were really bored and had a moment and a picnic to split we could all sit down for a moment and sort out all the words that exist and find all the perfect words in every language. i would show you that while i like the word tree (it makes you smile to say it), i think arbor is correct. you could teach me from your language what words fit the right way, and that would be very exciting (exciting is not correct, it's just fine).

i think probably this is what was happening at the tower of babel, before the languages all got shifted across the world and smudged by the hand of god. by the way, hand isn't quite right, but i do like that the word god is only 3 letters, and that it is shaped like it is reflecting into itself, and that it kind of makes your mouth move into an echoing chapel when you cluck it. but the word god could also fit really well with a coathanger, and i can't explain that. i think donut has (weirdly) the same shape as a toothbrush, but we really got bagel right and i am really grateful for that.

grateful is close, but not like thunder. hopefully one day i am going to figure out how to shape the way i love my friends into a little ceramic (ceramic is very good, almost perfect) pot and when they hold it they can feel the weight of my care for them. they can put a plant in there. maybe a daisy.

[knifearo]

being aromantic is like. hey btw you're going to live a life that is the culmination of most of society's worst nightmares. sorry lol ✌️ but then you turn around and take a really good hard look at it and it turns out that living in that nightmare is fucking awesome and you get to wake up every day and take that fear that other people have and laugh and hold it close until it's a great joy for you instead. and being happy is a radical act that you define instead of someone else. and you're sexy as fuck that's just a fact of life i don't make the rules on that one

[notquiteaghost]

re: that fucking staff post. obviously death to algorithms, but i also wanna interrogate the wider underlying assumptions of their logic there cuz. is 'success' having lots of followers & lots of popular posts??? why is that the end goal of using this website. i don't open tumblr to get attention from strangers, i open tumblr to read funny jokes and interesting commentary and to see cool art. encouraging clout-chasing will only increase user engagement if you successfully get people literally addicted to the associated dopamine hit. what if we didn't have to do that!!! what if a website could be a place you went to on purpose because you had fun there!!!!

[ash-and-starlight]

hades atla bisexual simulator

[redrobin-detective]

I can't stop thinking about how funny it is that Aang had all this secret lore on Zuko because of the Blue Spirit that he just, didn't share with the Gaang. That boy knew that Zuko was capable of fighting extremely well without bending, was excellent with swords and unnaturally good at infiltration and espionage. And then just never brought it up.

Katara's yelling at Zuko on how he thinks he'd be able to find and break into the Sun Warrior Temple while Aang is fidgeting in the background. Sokka starts giving Zuko a hard time about his swords, asking if a spoiled prince would know how to use them. Aang is vibrating unsure of how to explain that Sokka Might Die if he tried to swordfight Zuko unprepared but now its been too long and it'd be super awkward to bring up.

[littlelightfish]

He cares very much about his elemental just look at this man

He raised this bubble monster since it was a baby and worries about her getting mixed with other water things... Dad behaviour...

It's like he asks her to come out to fight.

He can't ask her that, he alredy sent her to battle. Is it either them or the quimera and he knows it damn well, that's why he looks at Marcille with something close to pity. He can't ask the undine to stop. He needs, they all need, the monster to be dead.

And then his baby droplet gets obliterated by this monster. He's not recovering up emotionally from this anytime soon. He freezes a few seconds in absolute shock.

"I even find it cute now". His baby is dead. It's gotta be something akin to adopt a stray cat since baby and then he gets run over. He starts tearing up. Look at this man's poor face, he's destroyed.

Here he's mourning the loss of his undine possibly, all sad faced. He is, at the end, the only one that lost someone there (many died but revived, and Falin doesnt count because she's alive). Either that or he managed to, somehow, save a bit of her and put it on the bottle and it's feeling sorry for his elemental or saying sorry.

[layzeal]

love how "secret third thing" is genuinely the best way to describe whatever tf teenxian's feelings for teenji were

yes he had a crush and was helplessly infatuated, though not in a romantic way and also not in an entirely platonic way. it's all a secret third thing

[jayrockin]

The avian homeplanet's plants, and worms pretending to be plants.

Plantworms tend to out-compete the true plants in wet climates with nutrient poor soil or unstable substrate (such as wetlands and rainforests) because of their opportunistic carnivory and mobility. The true plants out-compete them in arid climates (such as tundra and deserts) because they have more robust water gathering and anti-freezing mechanisms. While both can form mycorrhizal associations to aid in water and nutrient deliver through the soil, true plants have extensive root systems and are not completely reliant on rainwater and condensation in the absence of mycorrhizal partners.

Both plantworms and true plants have clades that partner with pollinator animals to reproduce, but some plantworm "flowers" are honey traps. They use their colorful genitals as a lure to snare and eat potential pollinators, and reproduce "the old fashioned way," as in, reaching over to their same species neighbors to exchange gametes.

I've posted a little about avian flora before, though this is more up-to-date.

PATREON | Runaway to the Stars

[umblrspectrum]

hi heres art so you pay attention to me now go read the tags

[satsumadraws]

john PLEASE

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 214

“I did an oopsie.” 

Clockwork paused in his work, gaze turning from his work towards his ghostling (it didn’t matter if he was an adult, he’d always be his ghostling) who was smiling nervously, avoiding his eyes. 

“Oh?” He kept his tone light, even as he worked on untangling a time knot. Honestly at least Danny was immune to any effect of time, even if he couldn’t look into his timelines in exchange. It came with being the other half of Infinity. 

“Yeeah… you know that corner of the multiverse you told me not to go to because you’re working on some time problems? I might have stumbled into one of the worlds in the corner…” 

He stopped his machinations, fully turning towards Danny- Space, his Core whispered and quivered in utter delight at having an Equal in power- with a raised eyebrow, leaning on his staff and silently telling him to explain. 

Danny poked his fingers together, giving a nervous laugh. “So uh, I was just exploring right? Well me and Ellie, you know how she gets when she can’t wander, and um… I er, we might have messed with some things in the creation of it… I didn’t know it was part of that universe, I swear! It was so far at the fringes and halfway into the Zone and I couldn’t just let a universe die before it began and-”

Oh- Oh! His ghostling (and his grand-ghostlings it sounded like) had claimed his first universe! He could put off these time knots, this was a grand milestone for any Ancient, nevermind such a primordial force as one of theirs.

And this is how a DC world came into being with humans evolving with more avian traits. Like wings. And claws. Look, Dan thought it’d be funny if they gave baby humanity wings and Ellie started rambling about how much farther they could travel if they had them and Danny thought it could be cool. Oh well, time to keep an eye on their itty baby world now…