#oops also for the tag

[gammaraydeath]

it would have been really hard for him, but i think joker should have seen the wreckage too

[macbethz]

He wonders what age he’s finally reached. The Time War used years as ammunition; at the Battle of Rodan’s Wedding alone, he’d aged to five million and then regressed to a mewling babe, merely from shrapnel. Now, the ache in his bones feels… one thousand years old? Well. Call it nine hundred. Sounds better.

In the same way RTD's 'Doctor Who and the Time War,' where the above quote is from, is a page from a novel that doesn't exist, this is a splash page from a comic that doesn't exist. Time War PTSD, much like the war itself, is multidimensional.

Now available as a print by popular demand!

[flickering-nightfall]

Playing with some ideas mostly regarding gender/reproduction in RW, and slugcat colonies.

Full transcript under the cut!

Creatures in Rain World are typically simultaneous hermaphrodites but require partners to reproduce, with either individual capable of being a genetic donor or carrier. Alongside what we are familiar with, this has lead to interesting reproductive strategies such as rotating donor/carrier roles, or dual/simultaneous genetic swaps.

Rotating donor/carrier roles - A K-selection reproductive strategy. One partner carries the first child, the other partner carries the next child, and so forth. Allows each partner to recover from the demands of childbearing.

Rain Deer aren't quite monogamous, but they tend to choose the same breeding partner whenever mating season rolls around. They serve as a donor one season, then bear and raise a child the next. Calves are raised away from the rain and worm grass, in places that have less food but more safety. Calf wool is softer, not yet gunked up by the dirty rainfall. Their legs are sturdier as children, allowing them to run for cover while the parent wards off threats.

Dual/simultaneous genetic swap - An r-selection reproductive strategy. Parents fulfill the donor and carrier role for each other. The more children you make, the more likely some are to survive!

Multiple batflies lay thousands of eggs in a single "blue fruit." Several eggs congeal and become nutrient paste for the surviving eggs (and for hungry slugcats). Like some plant seeds, batfly eggs that are consumed before pupating can survive passing through the digestive system. Ew.

Ancients also fell under this umbrella. Their genders (and the genders of iterators by extension, who have no sex anyways) could have been determined by a variety of other factors, such as societal role, donor/carrier preference, or simply different categorizations of personal expression.

It's difficult to say how well their common pronouns would translate to ours, but it seems they can translate to an extent, given what Moon and Pebbles use canonically.

Slugcats, like real slugs, can have children with a partner or self-fertilize. Unlike real slugs, they are often known to adopt.

In the case of self-fertilization: children who are born from one parent may display a large amount of genetic diversity despite the circumstances. Maybe slugcats have some sort of... genetic reservoir independent of their own genetic code?

Slugcats live 20-30 years on average... if they manage to reach adulthood. Their mortality rate is sadly rather high, especially in pups. If they were to develop as a civilization, it's likely their lifespan would increase dramatically.

Slugcats in a colony are more likely to have more children, and to successfully rear those children to adulthood, than those who wander alone or in small groups. The safety and stability of a colony cannot be understated.

Colonies either have a set, cycling migration path, or wander continuously. Survivor and Monk's tree home was a nesting site that their colony frequents about once a year. So it's likely that they'll see their family again!

...also, the strength of large colonies are why scavengers are likely to become the dominant species. In the time of Saint's era, continuous migration has become more of a risk, and it has become more difficult to support large populations. Slugcat populations have shrunk back to the more forgiving equatorial zones.

Saint's tongue is pretty unusual and probably unique to them, or to a small population that they hail from. Fur (of varying thickness) is much more common.

Meanwhile, scavengers are bulkier and covered in thicker insulating fur. They:

have seemingly massive populations

have a burgeoning society (the existence of merchants, tolls, bartering, elites and leaders)

are adept at communicating (non-verbally)

manipulate their environment

can build structures (scavenger-made structures were a scrapped idea from Saint's campaign)

can create complex weapons and tools

may have agriculture behind the scenes (unsure if scout parties prioritize exploration or hunting)

I would wager on scavengers developing more quickly than slugcats, but it would be nice if there was a future where both could co-exist.

[azurityarts]

cat guitar

[excali8ur]

Weird dream.

[crimson-rain-smoked-flower]

I’m not trying to attack you, but do you know that proshipper means someone who supports and romanticizes pedophilia, incest, and abuse? Your reblog on that post seems to read that you think antis just hate on people for having ships they don’t like. But it’s completely different than that. Just looking on the proshipper side of Tumblr and the internet and you can see people happily shipping children and adults and making nsfw content of such things.

i appreciate that you're not being outright hostile, but i have to say, that on its own put you above basically every anti i've interacted with.

i understand where antis are coming from, i really do. there are a lot of things on the internet that make me deeply uncomfortable, including the minor/adult ships that you mention. i don't want to anything to do with those kinds of ships and i would be happiest if i never saw them again. which is why i'm proship.

nine times out of ten, if i see that kind of ship brought up on my dash, it's because i was following an anti without realizing it, and they brought it up unprompted and untagged, to talk about how bad it is that they exist. they are the ones putting that kind of content in front of my face and making it harder to avoid.

the thing about people who ship those ships is that they're generally very aware that not everyone wants to see that kind of content, and so they tag it. they make sideblogs to talk about it. they don't go out of their way to shove it in people's faces. that means i, and everyone else who doesn't like it, can avoid it.

what antis want is for it to not exist at all. they want the tags to be purged and blocked, and for anyone who uses those tags to have their accounts deleted. and sure, that might get rid of some of it, but do you know what would happen to the rest? it would stop being tagged. people who don't want to see it wouldn't have the tools to avoid it. this isn't just a hypothetical, that's what's happened any time a fan space has tried to do that.

that's not even getting into the rabbit hole of what should be banned and what shouldn't. obviously any content that depicts real children or real life abuse shouldn't exist and shouldn't be allowed to be posted, but basically any platform that people use already enforces those policies, and there's not much of a slippery slope to go down there. if it involves real living breathing people being abused, it's bad. end of discussion.

but the same can't be said for fiction. ask ten antis for a specific list of all the content that should be banned, and you'll get ten different answers. what about kink? what about roleplay? what about horror and murder and anything that involves fictional characters being graphically tortured? what about people using art to process terrible things that have happened to them? what about art that uses dark themes as a horror element? if you just want to ban anything questionable to anyone, that's the line of thinking that gets any mention of lgbt existence banned. and again, this isn't just a hypothetical, this has happened before, and that's generally where it leads.

i know, from personal experience, that antis do, in fact, send harassment to people just for shipping things they don't like. i've gotten accused of absolutely vile shit for shipping two fictional characters who were both consenting adults. i've seen ship wars turn into moral battlegrounds, over ships that an average person wouldn't bat an eye at.

the thing about "romanticization" is a whole other can of worms. the anti logic goes like this: if someone sees something (even if it's very obviously fictional) in a positive light enough times, they will start thinking it's okay in real life, and go on to hurt real people. the problem with that is that it's just. blatantly untrue.

if it were true every horror movie fan would be a serial killer, every person that studies dark media would be an unhinged psychopath, and everyone who is into ddlg would be a pedophile. but they're not. they just aren't. people have directed movies just as fucked up as the darkest shit on ao3, and are still capable of being normal human beings who know right from wrong in real life.

even if someone is that impressionable, scrubbing away the existence of every piece of questionable content isn't going to solve their problem, because they're still going to be vulnerable to con men, scams, and cultists. the only thing that would actually materially help someone like that is developing their own morals and critical thinking.

children are also more impressionable, and there's a lot of content that's not suitable for them, but that doesn't mean that content shouldn't exist. it just means that they should stick to spaces designed for them (which most social media sites, tumblr included, are not) or, if they're old enough to be responsible for their experience online, they, or a trusted adult in their lives, should block and filter out things that they aren't comfortable with.

which is what everyone on the internet should be doing. it's what i do, and it's made the internet a much more pleasant place to be. and it's why i sometimes worry for antis mental health, especially teenagers, because they're being told it's right and moral to seek out content that makes them uncomfortable and to engage with the people making it. and that's just. really bad. it's not good for the creators that they're harassing obviously, but it's also really bad for them! it's not healthy to seek out things that make you feel bad, and it's a terrible internet safety lesson to teach minors that it's okay for them to seek out and engage with people making adult content.

individual harassment and crusading is never going to succeed at removing dark content from the internet. it just isn't. at best you might get a small percentage of people who create that content to stop sharing it, at worst you're just going to make people stop tagging it, and either way, you're exposing yourself to things that make you feel bad, when you don't have to.

if you want to materially change the type of content you see, you can. the block button is your friend, use it liberally. same with content filtering and tag blocking.

[torchvic]

that one ship dynamic but with levi and mc

(credit to @litriu! here is the original post (lmk if the link doesnt work pls))

[davinciae]

"i've been thinking about this lately. that the people i work with, or everyone i have to see daily, are all really good people. i'm very blessed, and i'm lucky to be in a situation like that. i think that a lot lately. whenever we get the chance, the eight of us always say, "let's go hang out together." it's nice since i'm not alone. there are moments i want to be alone, where i want to think by myself, of course, but i think all of that is under the premise of already having people by my side. since i have such good members by my side, i feel less lonely. being able to do something together is what happiness is, in my opinion."

stray kids on stray kids | [INTRO "ATE"]

[ohbuggy]

She’s just a girl~

[ursamajori]

god i love being SOOO obnoxious about my ocs everyone should be 50% more obnoxious about their ocs right neow

[s-aint-elmo]

took a crack at @laikabu's template! i have a type and it's women <3

(ID in alt text)

[onenicebugperday]

Pink feather boa millipede, Gosodesmus claremontus, Andrognathidae

Found primarily in California

Photos 1-3 by mhedin, 4 by kueda, 5 by merav, 6 by yetikat, 7-9 by chloe_and_trevor, and 10 (for scale) by biosam

[kenchann]

conked tf out 💤🩸 rkgk

[mossterious]

Something really poignant about Lisa Frankenstein, to be at least, is the fact that when the creature attacks Janet, it’s not when she’s being rude to her. It’s not when she’s just saying rude things, or beoittling Lisa, or anything. It’s when Janet says that she’s going to admit Lisa.

Because the creature is from the 1830s. And even if he knows about modern culture and inventions, which he sort of seems to?, he’s still FROM the 1830s. And when Janet says the word admitted, he hears the word committed. When Janet says Serenity Manor, he knows that that means an asylum. And he knows what asylums are. They are dangerous places. They are places where you’re stripped of all autonomy. They are places where you send people away to become someone else’s problem, and they normally don’t come back. And so he attacks. He protects Lisa.

And I think that draws a really important comparison between what asylums were, and what mental care is now. Because in a lot of ways, it isn’t much better. There’s still a lot of abuse in the system. There’s still a complete lack of autonomy. There’s still so much ableism and bias within the system. And people are still sent there to get them out of other peoples ways, rather than strictly to help them. And, sure, this movie is set in the 80s, so it’s not exactly modern. I mean, the movie points out that times are different. But with Janet, it almost seems intent on pointing out of similar everything is. Sending Lisa to a psych ward. The diet culture. The “intuitive person” thing. That one line about narcissists needing to be vanquished. And all these things are still a pretty big issue now.

There’s just a lot of comparison. ESPECIALLY a lot of comparison when it comes to disability and madness in these three distinct time periods. And like, it’s obvious that mental health was used as a weapon against people, and especially WOMEN, in the 1830s. But Lisa Frankenstein highlights that in the 80s, it was still a weapon! And that psych ward programs still poses a threat. Theres a comparison between how Janet and Lisa’s dad erase Lisa’s grief and say that she’s “acting out” compared to female hysteria of the creature’s time. There’s also the creature’s reaction to being physically disabled vs Lisa’s, with Patch and everything, but that honestly is another post entirely.

I just think that the discussion of mental health in this film is really important and, frankly, really well done. Especially especially especially through the lens that Lisa is a girl. And Lisa Frankenstein is a movie about GIRLHOOD. And so the movie took the extra step to talk about the denial of women’s feelings and specifically grief, and the pathologization of them. When women feel in a way outside of a norm, they’re wrong. They’re crazy. They’re dangerous. And idk I just think it’s done really well and the comparisons are all right there.

And this is all in a movie based on Frankenstein. This is all about a character based on Victor Frankenstein. The MAD scientist. So I feel like it all fits together incredibly well.

[kiwinatorwaffles]

the pushback against the discord mobile update shouldn’t be based upon “if you can get used to it” or not. some people might like it. some people might get used to it faster. but a lot of people won’t. and the point of the pushback is that discord keeps thinking they can change this shit and get away with it.

nobody asked for discord to change its color to a brighter blue. remember that? we all got used to it. but that was one of the first instances of the userbase just tolerating a useless change.

later came the dreaded username change. nobody asked for that. in fact, it caused a fuck ton of trouble. remember the markipkier username situation? yeah. but we all just “got used to it.” i don’t hear anyone talking about it anymore. we moved on, even though it really fucking sucked.

now it’s a complete overhaul of the mobile app that removed pretty much everything people liked about discord in the first place. removing the right swipe to see members and pins just made everything clunky and slow. the swipe to reply they replaced it with doesn’t even work all the time. the nice and cozy gray is now colder and darker, which would be fine, but there’s literally a midnight mode that they just released out of beta after 7 years. (edit: i actually used the app for a little more and realized just how fucking hard it was to read anything with the new contrast. it's a genuine accessibility issue. jesus)

they removed the community. want to see which friends are online? fuck you! click the top of the channel that is much slower and cumbersome than just swiping! want to see the funny and/or important messages you pinned? too bad, because we’re cutting off longer messages and hiding links/images that were attached to the message. and also, you can’t see who sent the message in a dm or group chat. also^2, you have to click into the channel and click into ANOTHER tab to even access the pins. fuck you.

regardless of if you like the changes or not, the point of protesting isn’t due to personal preference. it’s that discord keeps thinking they can change this shit that nobody wanted and get away with it. staying complacent will just let them know they can roll out changes and their userbase will still stick around, even if they hate it. which is not true. because users (including my friends and i) and even NITRO USERS are considering jumping ship to alternatives that don’t hate its userbase.

don’t let discord think it’s invincible. send feedback (go to settings and appearance, and there will be a button), even if it’s likely they won’t read it. review them in the app store. if there’s enough genuine feedback that outlines the faults and focuses on the performance and usability of the app, there’s a chance they might change Some things. because we don’t WANT to move and leave all our friends and communities, but a lot of us will have to if the situation gets worse.

the best case scenario is that they let us choose the format we want, but considering that this is discord we’re talking about, i don’t think it will. the least we can do now is to make sure at least some things get changed back for accessibility and convenience.

[caramellody]

Yall i dont think im gonna be able to stop thinking about usha and g13, actually.

Ushas an old old woman, clueless with tech. Lived long enough to develop various bonds with a LOT of people and relies on them a lot for help. In turn, shes VERY loyal to her close conpanions (a great example would be how she tends to back paula up a LOT, the way she sets up russel and paula to 'fake date' wink and all). She's very warm and very emotionally intelligent even if she's a bit clueless sometimes. Her logic is borderline incomprehensible, but it has heart.

G13 on the other hand, is a hacking prodigy. Hes young, hes sought after for his skills for better and for worse. But in turn, he's essentially lost himself in the process. He may be able to scrape nuke codes, but he'll never make a friend. He lacks any loyalty for anyone and anything except for himself and his interests, and if they dont satisfy those two points, then its worth nothing to him. His logic may be sound, but its cold.