#it's fine i'm not crying

[wrongspacetime]

The Fall of the House of Usher 1.08 | The Raven (2023)

[captainofwonder]

They told you to fix a world they couldn't but you realized you can't fix it with the broken, maliced soaked blocks they leave behind. So you choose to a different way, one that embraces the world and its impurities but you keep a block because to forget is to repeat.

[rockatanskette]

One of the running themes in "humans are space orcs" circles is the idea that humans will bond with anything. I can think of plenty of stories of humans making friends with wild animals, alligators, predators, creatures that aliens would immediately recognize as too dangerous for contact. But I was reading a story about two orangutans released back into the wild today and there's a certain element to that story I haven't seen so often: humans will bond with animals regardless of whether the bond is reciprocal.

For every story of a human making friends with some unlikely creature, there are dozens of stories of conservation specialists tranquilizing animals, tending to their wounds or illness, and releasing them because they're too dangerous to handle consciously. Stories of tagging birds of prey and timber wolves and Siberian tigers. Fat Bear Week? Any of those bears would rip your face off without hesitation. But they're round and fluffy and intimidating and beautiful and we love them even though they hate us. We make an effort to protect our monsters, because we love our monsters.

Imagine an alien planet that's experiencing ecological degradation. Their flora is dying, and they can't figure out why. And, offhandedly, in a diplomatic mission, an allied planet mentions that humans have successfully reversed similar devastation on Earth. So they reach out and Earth sends some experts to check it out. And what do they suggest? Reintroducing an apex predator that used to be a scourge against alien settlements. The species still exists in other regions of the planet, but it is slowly disappearing outside of its native habitat.

The aliens are askance. They've told bedtime stories to their young of these creatures: how they tear apart their prey, how they've eaten their organs and rip apart their homes. Some suggest that it's a trick—that the humans are trying to prompt them into destroying themselves.

But there are many alien cultures on this planet, with many different stories and some of them agree. The world watches in anticipation as the humans help their predators. They seek them out, these fearless otherworlders, putting them to sleep and tending their wounds. They keep track of the beasts, not to harm them, but to protect them.

At first the doomsayers' prophecy seems to come true. The predators devour prey animals like a feast, like a slaughter to people who have never been so close to the circle of life. But then, slowly, not over months but over years, comes change. The prey no longer eat the leaves and buds of every tree; some are left to bloom and fall. The refuse rots in the dirt, and the floods cease as the soil grows thick with compost and rotted bone, thick enough to hold water. The shapes of rivers change to protect their surroundings from the rain. The pollinators rebound.

Decades later, other cities and nations begin to accept this human myth of "conservation." Champions arise, alien champions, now, who go into the depths of the wilderness and the seas to protect those predators from the apathy of time.

Not all of them make it. This is something else the humans teach. Sometimes the tranquilizers are not enough. Sometimes the timing is wrong. Sometimes accidents happen. And when they do, the aliens look to humans for an answer for why they should protect these creatures who have killed those they love?

"Because they knew the risks," the humans say. "Because they would be the first to speak to save them. Because they taught you to see the beauty in the wild and you must not close your eyes."

So, despite themselves, they don't.

[mutantfactor]

Warframe ✦ Jade Shadows

[aletterinthenameofsanity]

There's something to be said about Nine and Twelve as parallels, about them being these seeming grumps with hearts of gold who must relearn optimism while being fundamentally kind at the end of the day, and Eleven and Thirteen as parallels, as these lonely tinkerers who travel with multiple companions at the same time but push people away before they get too close because they are creatures built on grief, and Ten alone, as something that is all and none of the above, who starts out as a creature born of love but who loses said love and is willing to die and must find grounding but loses said grounding and declares himself the Time Lord Victorious because if he cannot have love he has to have something, anything, he can call his own, and about how all five of them are shaped, fundamentally, by their grief and their guilt over the Time War and being the last of their kind and how every companion leaves them and they will always, always be the last one in the TARDIS, always be the last one surviving, no matter what, and yet all of them, at the end of the day, die to save someone. Die to be kind, just one more time. Because that is what ties them all together. That is what makes them the Doctor.

[meriewanderer]

That's all he has left.

[favalerite]

congrats on chapter 109

[spielzeugkaiser]

I fought this very much, but here it is! Watercolour and oil pastels.

[bogkeep]

since there's an impressionist royal portrait in the zeitgeist right now, do you wanna hear about one of my fav norwegian oil painters........ his name is håkon gullvåg and he's painted portraits of the norwegian king and queen and they look like this

which were pretty controversial at the time (the year 2000), but i was too baby to know anything about it!

(the headline says "UNDIGNIFIED!")

i first heard of him when he was on the news for a completely different controversy around the years 2008/2009 - his exhibition titled 'the holy land'/'terra sancta' which was a series of paintings he had painted in a wild unstoppable rage over the injustices he had seen palestinians suffer. at one of the exhibitions in syra, two of the paintings got removed by the french embassy, and i think never returned to him? i'm finding it surprisingly difficult to hunt down the story without knowing exactly what to look for, but i did dig up this article. i was still a young teen at the time so i didn't know much about the context, but in recent times i've been thinking about these paintings a lot. i'll add the Controversial Paintings under the cut:

[welcometogrouchland]

(ID in alt) I literally said I was gonna post this month's ago and then never had the wherewithal to describe it and so I didn't Lmao (said with pain). But since I'm thinking of opening my commissions I figured I should remind ppl that I. Yknow. Can draw.

Lots of Steph here (I had major art block making all of these and my brain worms for her kept me going) + some sprinkles of stephcass for Cass nation to enjoy!

[kerryweaverlesbian]

Cas finally juet goes for it and kisses Dean after one of Dean's infinite I'm Not Giving Up On You Ever speeches and Dean immediately starts crying, like heavy, can't breathe snotty type crying, so Cas backs off but Dean clings to his wrists like 'No, no, no, please, please' and kisses him back. When Cas next manages to tear himself away he goes 'I don't want to upset you'

'I'm not upset, I'm just...I never thought...' (tears overwhelm him again. Cas shushes him and hugs him close and kisses his forehead) 'I love you, man.'

'I love you too'

'Oh yeah? Well how come you're not crying about it then?'

'I could cry'

(Dean, his voice still wobbly with crying)'Prove it'

(Cas, who's been hanging on by a thread since Dean said I love you, his voice breaking) 'I love you' (tears spill over)

'That's- hic -that's more like it'

And they make out sloppy style while they both openly weep with joy and relief.

[lazylittledragon]

i keep trying to think of funny/poetic ways to talk about all the things i'm feeling right now but i honestly can't so. i'm really sad about what happened with my partner. i know he was an inconsiderate prick about it and that i didn't do anything wrong and i couldn't have prevented it but i'm just really fucking sad.

[fairyroses]

He was about to kill you, Lex. Or divulge something you didn't want me to know.

— SMALLVILLE, "Forever" (4.21)

+ bonus from "Arctic" (7.20):

[speakofcompersion]

Key 'Tongue Tied' MV Teaser

[catsharky]

Been playing The Quarry recently and drew this fast last night to send to a friend.

And I mean, I love all of them (though Emma is on thin fucking ice) but I couldn't help but be extra charmed by the tired old man who hasn't had a day off in 6 years

[schoute]

I'm at Impel Down/Marineford in my rewatch. Coping with my feelings by making dumb Buggy memes