#giant hornets

[chernobog13]

Murder hornets are really BIG in the Xenozoic Age!

[wormycomic]

[jeanjauthor]

This is a good solution. As much as I'd love for them to just live and be happy in the wild, we have an infestation of those things here in WA and we NEED to learn how to do things like this to save our honeybee colonies, until such time that the honeybees can learn how to handle the giant predators themselves.

[culturevulturette]

This gal's got ovaries of steel.

[lilybug-02]

So much responsibility...and they failed everyone.

Bug Fact: Surprisingly, few insect species live in the oceans. Scientists around the globe are still figuring out why.

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Masterpost

[proxycrit]

Au where Hollow and Ghost survive and then SILKSONG happens but- hear me out, hear me out-

Hornet was so, so young when the infection destroyed Hallownest. All her abilities in silk are derived from violence and hunting— unlike her weaver brethren, she never delved deep into the arts or healing beyond the basics to survive the destroyed husk of the kingdom.

This has direct consequences when Hollow survives in HK. Despite Hornet’s best attempts, Hollow’s wounds don’t heal quite right.

Hornet can’t forgive herself, never mind the insane reality she managed to save a voided godling from the brink.

(When Pharloom steals her, when she realizes there’s a history of thread, where she can learn how to spin silk maybe to heal-

-at the terrible cost of herself to save people she loves?

Hornet’s never been great about self preservation. All her life, she’s watched other people throw themselves into the abyss.

Now it’s her turn.)

Alas. Her siblings do not agree with that mindset. And they’re going to get their sister back, hell or high water.

ANYWAYS SOME OTHER DOODLES

Here’s more of this au if people wanna see!

[viledictorian]

Stuck Inside Slender Verse

Greetings Marble Hornets and slenderverse people! Behold my offering to you and your nostalgically profitable community! A friend of mine pitched the idea to me, and I owed him for helping me cause the endangerment of the bee species, so he wrote the lyrics, made the story board, I recorder, we both made the art, and all in 20 days! Sorry if the audio isn’t the best. I threw my microphone at the wall in a fit of rage.

[kiaryn-ledgem]

Fusion Mecha

[sp0ng3art]

mockup for an embroidery piece i wanna do

the asian giant hornet deserves more respect. so do trans and nonbinary people. i feel like we're a lot alike in that we exist even though there are swathes of people who don't want us to (and also we're really cool and beautiful)

[lunaris-the-hummingbird]

Imagine how terrifying it would be to be swarmed by mind-controlled HiveWings like this. May Clearsight have mercy on your soul.

[cursed-tale]

Very controversial writing opinion, but sometimes, when your feel your writing is bad, it’s because it is bad. 

I’m so tired of seeing writing advice that tells you to just keep pushing through whenever you feel that your writing is bad, or that it only appears bad to you because you’re the one who wrote it, or whatever, because a lot of the time, the solution is not to just keep plowing your way through but to take a step back and figure out why it’s bad. 

Subconsciously, you know something is off, which is why you can’t shake the feeling that the writing is bad, but (especially when you are first starting out) you can’t articulate why it’s off. Figuring out how to do so is an important skill, because how can you get better without being able to identify what’s wrong?

Don’t just keep writing despite it feeling bad; figure out why it’s bad, correct it, and improve. Storytelling is a skill that doesn’t come by forcing your way to the end but through deliberate practice, and you cannot get better at this skill without being mindful of what you are doing. 

I know this sort of writing advice is given to people so they don’t give up writing entirely, which I do agree with! But just saying “just keep writing” isn’t actually useful to improving it, and I’m tired of only seeing that advice without any instructions for how to make it better. 

[wormycomic]

[stoicmike]

Scream at me all you want, I’ll just sit here and imagine you being dismembered by Giant Japanese Hornets. -- Michael Lipsey

[lilybug-02]

Hollow has never experienced such kindness in their life.

Bug Fact: Some ants have been able to pass the Mirror Test! Similar to dolphins, elephants, and chimps.

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Masterpost

[navree]

ik you said you wouldn't do it can i have that comparison between alicent and daenerys pretty please i'm personally fasinated

Alicent and Daenerys:

Both got married off far too young to men much older than them (Viserys and Drogo)

Both experienced marital rape within those marriages (which leads to either thoughts of self-harm, as seen when Dany literally contemplates killing herself as a result of Drogo raping her every night, or actual self-harm, as seen with Alicent doing her nail picking thing, which is canonically a self-harm/anxiety response, while being raped by Viserys)

Both are identified primarily through maternal symbolism (Dany as the Mother of Dragons, Alicent as both mother to her children and also the Seven, which she is very publicly devout to, having an aspect known as The Mother)

Both have loyal personal knights who are obsessed with them (Jorah and Criston Cole)

Both have controlling older male relatives who use (and abuse) them in service of their own ambitions (Viserys III and Otto, though Viserys is significantly more abusive to Dany than Otto is to Alicent)

Both are pushing regnal claims that are seen by large swaths of people as illegitimate (Viserys has a proclaimed heir who is not Aegon, and the Targaryen overthrow is widely viewed as legitimate and just throughout Westeros therefore Dany has no legitimate right to rule)

Both are deeply attached to their children and their wellbeing (Alicent's actual children for her, and both Dany's dragons and originally Rhaego before he was killed in utero)

Both abhor violence done in their name (as seen most specifically with Alicent's reaction to Criston murdering that old guy and with Dany attempting to mitigate the violence happening to the Lhazareen, especially Lhazareen women, after Drogo sacks their villages to get her the Iron Throne)

Both have kinda gay shit happening??? (obviously Alicent has Rhaenyra, and Dany does have a sexual tryst with Irri in the books, although the consent issues surrounding that are A Lot and also it doesn't serve any kind of narrative purpose like Rhaenicent does, I think GRRM just thought it was hot)

Both have (absolutely kickass) personal themes as composed by Ramin Djawadi that have since grown to encompass their entire House/faction (Dany's theme became the dragon theme which became literally just the House Targaryen theme, and Alicent's theme in The Green Dress has burgeoned out to include all of Team Green)

Both have female rivals for supremacy who are, among a myriad of other similarities, attempting to pass off three bastards as trueborn products of their marriages (Rhaenyra and Cersei and quite honestly there are a HUGE amount of comparisons to be made between Rhaenyra and Cersei, I'd make the gifset but it would take me ten thousand years to catalogue it all)

Both have experience ruling nations (Dany through ruling Meereen, Alicent through ruling Westeros during Viserys's infirmity)

Both have a tendency to lash out in moments of temper (Alicent has some moments where she freaks out at Aegon after the first time jump, and Dany literally has to tell Whitebeard/Barristan that sometimes she just has a "dragon's temper")

Both have experience being the only woman in a decision-making room full of men, but still the ones with the most authority (Dany's council in Meereen is almost entirely made up of men but she's the legit queen, the Small Council is all men but Alicent is operating as a stand-in for the king and therefore has his overarching authority)

Both are well-loved by the commons of their areas ("Queen Alicent, beloved of the smallfolk", and Dany is of course mhysa and hailed as basically the Second Coming of Christ by the lowborn slave population of Slaver's Bay and broader Essos)

Both have a keen sense of justice (it's literally part of Dany's whole arc so far in Slaver's Bay, and I know people like to ignore it but 1) Alicent avoided pressing Aegon's claim out of fairness to Rhaenyra for a while, and even appears to have thought about backing off before she misinterpreted Viserys's final words 2) Alicent only turned against Rhaenyra after she felt she had been wronged and wanted to seek recompense)

Both have sexual relationships out of wedlock once widowed (Dany has her fling with Daario Naharis, and if the leaks are true, Alicent's gonna have a fling with Criston, which I'm fine with because after having been repeatedly raped starting from the age of fifteen I think Alicent deserves some consensual orgasms from whoever she decides to choose for fucking once)

Both have a propensity for forgiveness when it comes to their loved ones (Alicent was clearly willing to try and rebuild with Rhaenyra in episodes 4 and 8, and Dany says in her internal monologue that if Jorah had been contrite rather than defiant after she found out about his spying in ASOS, she likely would have taken him back, and she did take him back and flat out forgive him in the show where he was less of a giant douchecanoe)

Both have/will outlive their children (Rhaego is killed in utero and in the show Viserion and Rhaegal died before Dany did, and Alicent does outlive all of her kids by a good few years)

Both are played by supremely hot actresses

Both have super long princess hair that would be practically impossible to grow on a real person's head but it's a tv show and wigs exist therefore it's allowed

Both follow a trajectory from minor nobility dependent on the men in their lives for power (Dany as Viserys's heir in exile, Alicent as the daughter of the Hand) before becoming powerful and mighty in their own right (Dany is a ruling queen, Alicent basically is king while Viserys is bedrotting and is a pretty heavy advisor to her son once he's king)

Both govern through a lens of deep care and prioritization on what is best for the people (Alicent has multiple lines about always prioritizing the people and Dany frequently talks about how she wants to rule in a way that's just and fair for everyone, unlike her piece of shit dad)

Both remove old regime symbols from their areas of control and their own bodies once they gain power and autonomy (Dany despises wearing the tokar and uses it as little as possible as well as removing harpy heraldry and replacing it with Targaryen imagery, Alicent stops wearing Targaryen reds and asserting herself more through her own fashion choices and replaces some Targaryen symbols and those stupid sex tapestries with heraldry of the Faith, which is still centered in Oldtown where her family comes from)

Both have used false charm when dealing with opposing forces (Dany in her dealings with the various people defending Yunkai from her oncoming sack, Alicent in being petty bitchy to Daemon and Rhaenyra which, queen slay)

Both have engineered death and chaos through actions taken to protect loved ones (Alicent's determination to press Aegon's succession due to legitimate fears over what Rhaenyra and Daemon would do to her children creates the circumstances that leads to the Dance, and Dany's determination to save Drogo to the point of having Mirri Maz Duur use blood magic kills her unborn child and also leads to the violent fracturing of Drogo's khalasar)

Both have experienced what can amount to pyrrhic victories (Alicent's side does technically win the Dance but everything is still much worse off than before and there was a lot of violence, which show!Alicent is clearly trying to avoid, and Dany did technically get Drogo's life saved, just at the expense of everything else in her life, and in the show she did technically get the Iron Throne before being murdered like thirteen minutes later)

Both have affection and compassion for those who have abused them (Alicent is a fucking angel for being as kind and caring towards Viserys's ancient ass as she was even though he sucked ass as a husband and person, and Dany both was able to find a love for Drogo and also repeatedly talks about how she misses who Viserys used to be, along with her moment in ADWD where she hallucinates both him and Jorah and thinks on them kinda fondly)

Both experience a reclamation of power after seeing them at their lowest thus far in the story, complete with a visual transformation component (Alicent, after watching her be dismissed, raped, talked over, manipulated, and otherwise literally treated as an object by the men in her life, especially once she's married, asserts her agency as a woman in her own right with her own power, complete with the green dress, and Dany, after losing her child and her husband and a good chunk of the power she had thus far in the loss of the khalasar, along with having been abused and raped herself by Viserys and Drogo, hatches her dragon eggs and asserts her power in her own right, and in the books literally transforms visually by losing her hair as well)

Both have dead mothers who get no fucking backstory (we know fuck-all about Alerie Florent other than that she's dead, and Rhaella gets no interiority beyond being a victim of her psycho husband and then dying in childbirth)

Both bear strong resemblances to older relations (Otto says that Alicent looks a lot like her mother, and Dany is said to bear a strong resemblance to her ancestor Queen Naerys)

Both have four children, including one that everyone forgets about (Dany has her dragons and Rhaego, and everyone forgets about Rhaego, and Alicent has Aegon, Helaena, Aemond, and Daeron, and literally everyone is forgetting about Daeron I think the actual show forgot about Daeron at this point)

Both are subjected to misogynistic slander by men in story (Dany has a lot of rumors spread about her once she conquers Slaver's Bay that are based in absurd lies about her sexual life and "deviancy", Daemon literally calls Alicent a whore, I guess for being loyally married for twenty years, just because he doesn't like her and then accuses her of murdering Viserys, who had half his face falling off the last time Daemon saw him, because Daemon is a fucking moron)

Both have detractors who cannot be fucking normal and not only hurl insane abuse at the characters and fans of the characters, but literally at the actresses themselves (those people who went up to Olivia at, like, a fucking bar just to tell her how much they hated Alicent are never seeing Heaven and that's a fucking fact)

Both, as queens and as people in general, want to do the right thing not just for themselves but those around them (Alicent with her aforementioned considerations when it comes to ruling and also trying to be just a good person to those around her, like comforting Viserys and Rhaenyra after he murders Aemma and trying to do right by her kids, and Dany again by wanting to be a better ruler than her father and freeing slaves even though there's no material benefit to her)

Both hav forgiven objective wrongs done by others (Dany forgives a lot of people who are cruel to her in the books, as well as Barristan Selmy after he reveals himself to be Barristan, and Jorah in the show, and Alicent is clement and kind to Criston Cole after he reveals that he broke his Kingsguard vows in sleeping with Rhaenyra)

Both are goodhearted people who befriend the more disenfranchised (Alicent is, again, fundamentally a good person as seen by how she treats those who have been shit to her, and we see her reaching out to people like Larys, who is mistreated due to his deformity, and saves Criston Cole, and Dany's whole thing is helping and befriending the disenfranchised, as seen by the way she tries to create equal treatment with her handmaids and the way she befriends Missandei, and her goodnaturedness towards the people who support her, especially the former slaves)

Both are interesting characters who would be so greatly served in the ASOIAF/GOT/HOTD fandom could, in any way shape or form, understand that fiction is not real life nor is it morality and just enjoy a story and its characters for the story and the characters

There's probably some more similarities but honestly this went far longer than I thought it would when making an offhand tag, so here we are, similarities between Alicent Hightower (primarily show!verse) and Daenerys Targaryen (primarily books but with some show sprinkled in there as well)!

[bonefall]

Can you tell us more about Blizzardwing and Holly's toxic marriage?

Sure! I'll leave the meta reasons for why I feel so strongly about the changes out of this, and just focus on the new HollyBlizzard dynamic

There is brief periods of peace in their mateship, but they're increasingly rare.

Sometimes it seems like Hollyflower is looking for reasons to take out her frustration on Blizzardwing. You can 'feel' it coming.

The kits quickly learn when things are about to get loud, and begin walking on eggshells around their parents

But, there's always a spark that sets off chaos.

Blackkit often feels like it's his fault. He'll do something 'wrong', and then Blizzard is paying for it, and as a result Blizzard makes him pay for it back.

Black dreads Blizzard's visits to the nursery, he wishes they would just stay apart because he can "handle" Holly on her own.

Flintfang and Fernshade were in the older litter, with Blackfoot slightly younger. About one year apart or so.

They were always huge reliefs to him. They would often show up just in time and whisk him away to do fun activities. They showed him how to hunt frogs. They taught him how to skin a vole. Blizzard and Holly would have left him without basic skills otherwise.

But at the end of the day, he would have to go back to the nursery.

Flint and Fern know what it's like growing up in that kind of environment, but at least they had each other you know?

Never, NEVER suggest to Holly or Blizzard that maybe they shouldn't be together. They will unite just to turn their anger onto you.

Blizzard: "She's my mate. I made a promise that I'd always be there for her. You think I'd just play a game with her love? Are you trying to tell me I'm not loyal?"

Holly: "Yeah sure we fight, but that's because I love him. I've never loved anyone else and I never will, how dare you try to drive a wedge between us!"

We're Drowning Together

Coming out of that environment, Blackfoot was a bit of a bully. He wanted to prove his worth to ShadowClan, and sometimes lashed out just to throw his weight around. He was a big boy that came out of the union of The Vicious Hollyflower and Son/Grandson-of-Snowtuft Blizzardwing, and that made a lot of people afraid of him.

That desperation, loneliness, and sadistic streak made him a favorite of the deputy Brokentail, who soon became Brokenstar. He wasn't his first deputy; but it was clear that Brokenstar was preparing him for the role by providing him lots and lots of opportunities for advancement at a young age.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself. The Holly/Blizzard dynamic has been OVERHAULED for BB.