#it would cure all of my problems

[corvuskidd]

tfp soundwave my beloved…

it was silly and quick but the comfort of it made me a lil teary i stg i need to touch grass LMAO

[notthiscoolkid]

Just saying:

"The calling" singing by Joey and "The Old Witch Sleep and Good Man Grace" singing by Madeleine would cure all my problems (even back problems)

[whoisspence]

oh to be at the beach on a summer night in july having deep talks with matthew gray gubler

[withlovelia]

[kunshokunsho]

i NEED jay to be in the trailer PLEEEASSEEEEE IM BEGGING YOU LEGO PLEASE PLEASE I WOULD SOB REAL TEARS OF JOY. EVEN IF ITS FOR .00005 SECONDS I NEED IT

[ceoofglytchell]

The „conceptual episode“ in season 3 but it’s just one full hour of Aegon and Larys living their best life in Essos. I think I need that.

[wikitpowers]

me with herongraystairs:

[deservedgrace]

I don't think that framing "Marginalized™️ Atheism/Deconstruction" and "Cishet White Male Atheism/Deconstruction" as inherently ~separate and distinct~ is super effective (and disclaimer I'm specifically speaking about my experience with christianity, atheism, and ex christian atheists/deconstructors), but also... okay so I was raised in a cult, and cults are oppressive for all its members. Nobody gets out unscathed, everyone experiences the abuse tactics, everybody is a victim. But within the cult there is a hierarchy, and cishet white men are at the top. So while the cult is oppressive to everyone, and everyone is harmed in some way, it is also uniquely oppressive to queer folks, to BIPOC, to disabled folks, to women, etc etc. And the thing that happens to some of those cishet white men is they leave an oppressive cult, where they are considered the "default", and they go into the ~real world~, where they are also considered the "default", and even in atheist/deconstruction spaces, their bodies and experiences are often the leading voices.

The men that leave go from an oppressive patriarchal culture to a far less oppressive (to them) patriarchal society. The white people that leave go from an oppressive racist culture to a far less oppressive (to them) racist society. The people that leave go from an oppressive culture that does not value marginalized voices to a different, less oppressive culture that also does not value marginalized voices. And if you personally do not experience [xyz] oppression, it can be difficult to even realize there are things surrounding that you have to deconstruct unless you listen to the voices of the oppressed. But some cishet white men go from being considered the "default" in an oppressive culture, to being considered the "default" in a less oppressive culture (to them). Their experience of "overcoming systemic oppression" comes from leaving the church, and it can be really easy to fall into the trap that the church, specifically, is the sole oppressor and enemy of everyone.

Of course this doesn't happen in every single case and it's also not exclusive to cishet white men. But those blind spots are why I think it's important for everyone to listen to a variety of voices when they're deconstructing, especially if those voices are talking about oppression you wouldn't have experienced firsthand.

No, our deconstructions are not inherently different, but the experiences and circumstances prior to it often are. It's okay to acknowledge that and beneficial for everybody to listen to each other's experiences.

[222anderson]

i need to be ethan hawke’s suspiciously young boyfriend right about now

[alta1312]

shameless self-insert......... :))

i really want to hug and smooch that robot and give him all the love he deserves ♥

[pinacoladamatata]

if they Tamlen solas' ass, that might just be IT for me

[barzyhughes]

CAPTAIN QUINN 🔜🫡

[hirodraggg]

Hey I totally undesrtand if you stop following me now i just wanna declare my unspeakable desire to be crushed between wyll and karlach this would honestly fix my whole life

[joels-shitty-puns]

I just really want a hug from him.

[jackalhadrurusluvr]

anyone else up feeling like they’ll never have a place in this world

[crossbackpoke-check]

A TREATISE ON WINGS, IN NON-WINGED CREATURES

IF a person were to have wings. the automatic problem with making them avian stylistically is that wings are homologous to human forelimbs. wings are forelimbs. ergo: why people get so mad about dragon designs that showcase four limbs AND wings, because the majority of the time they’re intended to be close to reptiles (tetrapod lineage). likewise, any sort of mammalian basis (bats) also fails*. there is an interesting potential to gain some characteristics that would indicate conversion of forelimbs into wing-like structures but would not be practical because i am setting this in a universe where we need. y’know. hands**. HOWEVER. in the interest of i need to create a functional justifiable mechanic to write (porn. i would love to lie but the odds are really good it's just pwp), i really like the idea of using an insect analog***.

first at bat to narrow down our options: direct or indirect flight. for the sake of limiting the amount of internal bodily anatomy this transformation would have to result in, i think direct flight (sheer muscular willpower to raise and lower wings) works best as a mechanic. in theory, (based on these human anatomy diagrams) the massive elevator and depressor muscles that insects with direct flight use can be loosely translated to a really well developed transversus thoracis (depressor of the rib cage) and potentially pectoralis/levator scapulae. it’s not an elegant method of flight but it does = flight. also, because this method of flight is so stupid and silly, i have fewer options to play with. i think it does fit in this context that of course it would be flight by brute force instead of finesse.

next: how are we getting these wings. my immediate thought goes to hox genes being activated**** and T2 segments. oh did you want smooth shoulders and vertebrae? too bad. extra limbs***** and in particular, ubx (a specific cluster) mutations are famous for resulting in flies with extra wings. ubx would be a good candidate for activation if we can find a similar cluster that is conserved in humans******. really, any gene cluster associated with the development of wings being activated here helps.

[hox genes interlude, tl;dr our body starts as “segments” that are programmed to become different tissues/areas/structures. hox genes = architects of body design at a broad scale, activate other genes for differentiation of radius, humerus, carpus, etc. therefore: major body change, such as adding an entire limb = i’m arguing hox genes involved. what we want to do is the same as those mutant bugs: mutate the T3 segment (vertebrae between shoulder blades in humans -> end of thorax in insects) to be similar to “T2” (site coding for insect wings) using hoxa&d 5/6/9-13::homC to tell it what to do, and you should get another limb. wings, if we fiddle with the genetics. which, given that hox genes are pretty much preserved, i'm sure we could find an ultrabithorax to turn on.]

so we’ve kind of got wings, in an embryonic sense, or at least the mechanism for them. how do we make this happen “spontaneously”? can we generate a series of events that will trigger gene activation and phenotypic change? i mean. yeah arguably. i think the argument becomes whether the activation of our imaginary gene occurs via phenotypic plasticity, local adaptation, or environmental epigenetics*******. in any case, the key fact is that the environment******** leads to an altered phenotype via gene expression and voilà: wings.

ok but girl WHAT are these wings made of??? oh i'm so glad you asked. per our insect friends and also mammals -> mesenchymal stem cells, which adult hox genes code for, and these "buds" can be shaped into wing-like structures according to highly debated insect development (see footnotes). which means: we can have bone. and muscle and cartilage and fat, if we have something to trigger that differentiation, which we just said we can. and what's from stopping our mesenchymal cells from differentiating into keratinocytes? literally nothing. they do it all the time. so... what are feathers made of? keratin. arranged particularly. and in the most enormous handwave i have done in this entire thing, all of the multiple genes i've said "yeah they probably exist and we can have them"********* allow for that keratin to be arranged in a way that makes feathers and that bone and muscle in a way that makes wings. really the only part that will take work is building up those elevator and depressor muscles, but with the growth of the wings it shouldn't be too bad.

and in the end we have circled RIGHT back around to the complete opposite point, which is what i have been arguing towards the whole time: bird wings are plausible if we consider a lot of things that are not birds, like bugs**********. happy wing-ficc’ing!!!

FOOTNOTES (unumbered because tumblr can’t superscript)

*for the sake of horny, i am ignoring this and adding some avian characteristics because a) that’s what people expect when you write wing fic, b) uropygial gland is a major plot point, and c) bird erogenous zones enough said.

**a baseline assumption here when prompted with “wing fic” to me is that there should be wings in addition to arms, because most people do not feel morally conflicted about inaccurately portraying the biology of wings because: THAT’S NOT THE POINT or it is accepted within their universe to have these rules (angels, etc). alas. you’re in the torture realm with me and i’m inventing the rules. if this were purely for myself i think it would be much easier and plausible to myself oops! keratin the epidermis and replace hair with feathers or to “evolve” arms into wings or a multitude of alternative biologies (the breakdown about wing possibilities would be another post). but again: we need hands to play hockey and we want full on wings, so here we are.

***insect wings are not limbs!! problem solved!! this also has nothing to do with my love for invertebrates and secretly something to do with botany and also some really big imaginative stretches. i am making all of this up, except for the parts where i have citations.

****i KNOW they teach you hox genes are active only in skeletal development in embryo. see rux & wellik 2017 for studies on expression in adults. if they can aid in expression of mesenchymal stem cells and bone repair i see lots of possibility for new bone growth but we’ll get there.

*****they did a study where they basically did this. insect hox segmentation has antennapedia clusters that control the placement of antennas vs mandibles vs limbs; alter these genes and you get a bug that is baller at heading soccer balls.

******this is a brief aside to say that there are hella arguments about the evo-devo of insect wings despite agreements that it is monophyletic. for the sake of my desired result (fully formed outgrowths of bony wings) i am favoring the idea of the pleural/exite hypothesis or dual origin. don’t ask me to get more specific about the genes i think we’re already pushing it if i co-opt and terribly vague the idea of exites/somites to explain the process of wing growth via “budding”.

*******we really don't need to worry about this, which is why it's going in a footnote that this is kind of a chicken and egg situation where we're not quite sure why phenotype can change in response to the environment with no genome change but people think that environmental epigenetics (influence of chemicals, etc on genome that alter expression/how well genes can be transcribed) may be how phenotypes change. not the same thing; EE -> PP, perhaps, but also perhaps there's some other mechanism.

+ for another side note, i love epigenetics because they're dope as hell and epigenetics are heritable, which could be fun. local adaptation is just there because it is a possibility--given the insular nature of hockey we could see this (founder effect? drift? stress?), although because it's a genetic shift it requires much more Lineage and Generations to things. no single generations here we're not bacteria!!! again, with the wing alternatives paper i am not writing, it would be interesting to see pathways of evolution in different populations and who could be a local adaptation vs phenotypic plasticity.

********normally this would be literally anything like diet or toxins or exercise etc etc etc. behavioral epigenetics is also really cool and i linked a paper (creighton et al 2020). anyway for purposes of the alleged wing fic i have managed to write ??? about without actually writing, we have an environmental trigger in the form of hockey but i am debating a horny trigger. for funsies. like horny weird puberty :) which if i'd gone THAT route--*comedy hook yanked off the stage*.

*********listen, evolution loves to say heyyyy what if i saved that for laterrrr and simply does not get rid of like anything. she just turns it off. don't make me pull out the phylogenetic tree We Were All Fish once and your genes remember. Shh differentiates scales/claws/hair. we could have feathers if we wanted.

**********also don't look at how much of this is secretly plants and not even insects. but do look at all the citations if you want. if you read all that i love you thanks for coming to my ted talk <3

REFERENCES (kind of in order. no direct citations because we treat footnotes like a joke #boochicago and also i can't be bothered to do apa or mla in text we are clowning on every format. you can maybe have afs if you really want it)

Rux, D. R., & Wellik, D. M. (2017). Hox genes in the adult skeleton: Novel functions beyond embryonic development. Developmental Dynamics, 246(4), 310–317. https://doi.org/10.1002/dvdy.24482

Tomoyasu, Y. (2017). Ultrabithorax and the evolution of insect forewing/hindwing differentiation. Current Opinion in Insect Science, 19, 8–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cois.2016.10.007

Holland, P. W., Booth, H. A., & Bruford, E. A. (2007). Classification and nomenclature of all human homeobox genes. BMC Biology, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/1741-7007-5-47

Clark-Hachtel, C. M., & Tomoyasu, Y. (2016). Exploring the origin of Insect Wings from an Evo-Devo perspective. Current Opinion in Insect Science, 13, 77–85. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cois.2015.12.005

Frischer, L. E., Hagen, F. S., & Garber, R. L. (1986). An inversion that disrupts the antennapedia gene causes abnormal structure and localization of RNAS. Cell, 47(6), 1017–1023. https://doi.org/10.1016/0092-8674(86)90816-0

Nelson, C. E., Morgan, B. A., Burke, A. C., Laufer, E., DiMambro, E., Murtaugh, L. C., Gonzales, E., Tessarollo, L., Parada, L. F., & Tabin, C. (1996). Analysis of Hox gene expression in the chick limb bud. Development, 122(5), 1449–1466. https://doi.org/10.1242/dev.122.5.1449

Zhang, B., He, P., Lawrence, J. E., Wang, S., Tuck, E., Williams, B. A., Roberts, K., Kleshchevnikov, V., Mamanova, L., Bolt, L., Polanski, K., Li, T., Elmentaite, R., Fasouli, E. S., Prete, M., He, X., Yayon, N., Fu, Y., Yang, H., … Teichmann, S. A. (2023). A human embryonic limb cell atlas resolved in space and time. Nature, 635(8039), 668–678. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06806-x

Romero-Mujalli, D., Fuchs, L. I., Haase, M., Hildebrandt, J.-P., Weissing, F. J., & Revilla, T. A. (2024). Emergence of phenotypic plasticity through epigenetic mechanisms. Evolution Letters, 8(4), 561–574. https://doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrae012

Gao, S., Mo, L., Zhang, L., Zhang, J., Wu, J., Wang, J., Zhao, N., & Gao, Y. (2018). Phenotypic plasticity vs. local adaptation in quantitative traits differences of Stipa grandis in semi-arid steppe, China. Scientific Reports, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-21557-w

Dar, F. A., Mushtaq, N. U., Saleem, S., Rehman, R. U., Dar, T. U., & Hakeem, K. R. (2022). Role of epigenetics in modulating phenotypic plasticity against abiotic stresses in plants. International Journal of Genomics, 2022, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/1092894

Duncan, E. J., Gluckman, P. D., & Dearden, P. K. (2014). Epigenetics, plasticity, and evolution: How do we link epigenetic change to phenotype? Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution, 322(4), 208–220. https://doi.org/10.1002/jez.b.22571

Kelly, S. A., Panhuis, T. M., & Stoehr, A. M. (2012). Phenotypic plasticity: Molecular mechanisms and adaptive significance. Comprehensive Physiology, 1417–1439. https://doi.org/10.1002/cphy.c110008

Eckhart, L., Valle, L. D., Jaeger, K., Ballaun, C., Szabo, S., Nardi, A., Buchberger, M., Hermann, M., Alibardi, L., & Tschachler, E. (2008). Identification of reptilian genes encoding hair keratin-like proteins suggests a new scenario for the evolutionary origin of hair. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(47), 18419–18423. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0805154105

Liu, Y., Edgecombe, G. D., Schmidt, M., Bond, A. D., Melzer, R. R., Zhai, D., Mai, H., Zhang, M., & Hou, X. (2021). Exites in Cambrian arthropods and homology of arthropod limb branches. Nature Communications, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24918-8

Creighton, S. D., Stefanelli, G., Reda, A., & Zovkic, I. B. (2020). Epigenetic mechanisms of learning and memory: Implications for aging. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 21(18), 6918. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms21186918