zetabrarian
thischick25
Just saying: If you’re boycotting something, you should know what you’re actually boycotting.
Terry Pratchett would have loved this.
good-omens-fanart
ren-nolasco
Collab with @dinkythings for the cover of Here’s to The Next Time: An Ineffable Zine (◕‿◕) (A/C lineart by Dins, background and colors by me) I don’t usually put that much effort into prop, this was so fun to make.
zetabrarian
hereeatthiskitten
Obviously we all love Michael Sheen’s ineffable softness and David Tennant’s boneless limbs but can we talk about how fucking good Miranda Richardson was at playing three separate characters and an entire soundboard?
zetabrarian
kindaoffkilter
anyway!!!! allow me to present michael ealy as clark kent:
he’s got the baby blues:
he’s got the great smile:
he’s a dork:
here he is in glasses:
pls imagine this face directed at lois lane:
and this one:
he can do serious too:
look at him:
these gifs:
and finally:
michael ealy as clark kent 2k17
… how are you gonna talk about Superman qualities and not mention his jawline?
…whoa.
I AM HERE FOR IT!
Already had me with the blue eyes.
terrypratchettappreciation
aeshnacyanea2000
Vimes stood up. ‘You know what I always say,’ he said.
Carrot removed his helmet and polished it with his sleeve. ‘Yes, sir. “Everyone’s guilty of something, especially the ones that aren’t,” sir.’
‘No, not that one …’
‘Er … “Always take into consideration the fact that you might be dead wrong,” sir?’
‘No, nor that one either.’
‘Er … “How come Nobby ever got a job as a watchman?” sir? You say that a lot.’
‘No! I meant “Always act stupid,” Carrot.’
‘Ah, right, sir. From now on I shall remember that you always said that, sir.’
niceprophecies
kedreeva
I’ve kind of been hanging out, watching the discourse re: Neil Gaiman at al. pertaining to Good Omens and their extratextual interactions, and there’s been a lot said by a lot of people, and I want to add my own voice here, shine a light on my own perspective in case it might help anyone else.
I’ve spent well over half an hour at work today, crying my eyes out. I saw the tweet from Michael Sheen saying that he would unashamedly engage with the soft, joyous fan community, and another post here by Gaiman talking about the freedom of interpretation of his work and his refusal to tell us what to think, and for a little while, it just overwhelmed me with happiness.
For a very long time, or at least for as much time as I can remember, I haven’t faced any particular focused discriminations for my (a)sexuality. I’ve seen the discourse here and there, I’ve seen people that are nasty human beings lashing out unnecessarily at my people, and I’ve had the odd comment here or there (but not more than any other thing people come tell me off about). I know that this sort of active discrimination exists and happens often, but my personal experience has been fairly peaceful. My partner is aware of it, my friends are aware of it, my family is aware of it, my followers and readers are (usually, mostly) aware that I am ace. It’s just something that exists, like having hands. No one really comes to me to tell me my hands are a problem, but also no one ever really comes to tells me my hands are good, either, you know? It’s been the same thing, for me.
I have, in my lifetime, seen I think one ace person that was acknowledged as asexual on TV- one of the girls in the brief ambulance team sitcom Sirens. I know there are others, a small handful of them out there, but that’s the only one I’ve seen. I’ve seen headcanons about so-and-so being ace, but most of them haven’t really rang that true for me (not saying at all that people shouldn’t headcanon whatever makes them happy, just that when I watch the same thing, I don’t recognize myself). I haven’t felt its lack (it was definitely lacking, but I haven’t had that bone-deep craving for representation I think a lot of people do have, but give me a moment). The fics I’ve read where there are supposed ace characters, don’t seem to generally be written by ace folks, and often center around the idea of coaxing the ace person into having sex with the right person (sigh), or make the character’s asexuality the focus of the story (which isn’t bad, necessarily, but it’s not what I want, I’ve already paid my dues in the “gays can only have stories about being gay” department and I’m ready to move on).
I say all of this because I want you to know where I am coming from when I say that when I watched Good Omens, I saw myself. Now, I may not be intentionally represented, but what matters to me is that the path was clear enough that I, beyond the shadow of a doubt, felt their story resonate in my bones as true to me and what I wanted to see written about me and people like me. I saw two asexuals hopelessly in love, ready to face down heaven and hell together in order to stay together and to protect everything they loved. And the story was not exclusively or even specifically about their asexuality; they got to be people (sort of?? supernatural people, but still people!!) first and foremost, having this wild adventure together.
Now, you may not have the same impression as me. Maybe you saw a different show when you watched the same thing. I’m not here to argue about that. What you saw is what you saw, what I saw was what I saw.
What I want to lay bare here is that Gaiman has come forward to say that he’s not going to take either of those things away from either one of us. As long as he maintains Death of the Author as his belief system, we both get to look at the same text, take from it what we want and need, and be happy. If he did anything else, confirmed you or me were right, the other would lose something that is possibly very, very important to us. There is no greater gift than the freedom to imagine in this case. On top of that, he and the others have been standing their ground and doing their best to make sure no one ELSE can take that away from us, either. They don’t have to do that, that’s not their job, but they’re doing it anyway. Sheen’s really out there telling people they can fuck off if they want to be mean to us, and that he absolutely wants to and enjoys interacting with the warm joy of fandom.
Listen, I’ve been tolerated all my life. It’s no so bad, once you get used to it, but today, after seeing someone do better, I realized that I have been used to it. And that being used to low-grade pain kind of sucks. Before now I had not understood the idea of craving something like this. No one had ever told me that feeling represented properly on such a major scale could feel this way, or at least I hadn’t understood it if they did. I had never known how badly I was in need of something so healing and good, and I started to understand some of the comments being left on things I had written about these characters. I began to understand that I have, for a very long time, needed something I was unaware even could exist. And now that I know, I am so, so grateful to hear that it won’t be taken away from me.
Today I saw a post from the creator of one of my new favorite things, a thing which I now hold extremely dear to my heart, tell me, tell the world, that however I interpret what I see, whatever happiness I feel because of it, he won’t correct me. He won’t ever tell me I’m wrong because it’s not like that, it’s this other way in his head. I watched him tell me that the way I feel about a thing is more important to him than making sure his way is the only way his work is seen.
And I literally cannot think of a single thing in the entire world more precious or worthy of protecting than that kind of kindness and understanding.
micromultiverse
alphynix
This photo by Azaz Ahmad shows off a scorpion’s mouthparts better than any I’ve ever seen! You just don’t see much appreciation for the fact that they’ve got another couple of pinchers for jaws.
I think i’ve posted this before but this is a useful guide to the diversity of mouthparts among the chelicerata subphylum, making it real clear that the chelicerae are just derived legs, the same as with insects’ mouthparts.
This also goes to show that out of all arachnids and other chelicerates, spiders are actually really weird for evolving their face-pincers into those singular fangs.
azira-crow
raggedy-spaceman
Aziraphael, about Crowley: One time when we were about 6000 years old he transformed himself into a snake and I picked it up to admire it and he transformed back into himself and was like “MBLERGH IT’S ME!” and I was so happy to see him I kissed him. I love him so much.
labbbugs
asgardian--angels
Insects? Relatively easy to identify. Big gaudy moths especially so. Bugs that people take photos of for identification tend to be interesting, memorable, and easy to recollect information about.
But spiders… spiders are little bastards that can be damnably difficult to one gend apart from another, and I resent this about them and that’s why all my favorite spiders are instantly recognizable species.
dont know whether to laugh or cry at the assertion in the first sentence
I am going to die laughing.
Friend, insects are a class. Spiders are an order. There are many more insects than spiders. So many more insects. More variations than you can imagine. Hyperparasites-upon-hyperparasites until the resulting adult wasps are so small they can’t be seen without a microscope. Hell, there are more species of insects just in and on your spiders than there are big gaudy moths in all of existence.
There is an order of insects that exists only between the abdominal body segments of wasps.
Even some butterflies are visually identical and can’t be identified to species without dissection, just like many spider species.
If you want to lament the tribulations or spider identification, why not point fingers at the spiders for being horny turds who keep inter-species mating and producing viable offspring, throwing a wrench in the whole species ID keys where you look at their privates.
Don’t mind me, I just keep getting thrown into a blind rage every time I see these green planthoppers that have been vastly under-studied and lacking in ID keys. There are three species in my area and they all look essentially the same. I thought I cracked the code and wrote up a big thing on telling them apart. But there are monographs locked away in someone’s desk and according to them, I’m wrong, but without DNA sequencing, I’ll never know. My yard is full of the bastards. They hang out on the sunflowers growing outside my window and stare in at me.
June 20, 2019
MAY I INTRODUCE YOU TO SEVEN BILLION HESPERIIDAE WITH SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT SHAPED DOTS ON THE WINGS NO IM NOT BITTER WHY YOU ASKIN
The genus is Pyrgus, the Checkered Skippers. If you live in an area that has more than one species, you can’t identify the females. If you want to identify the males, here’s some handy tips from Bugguide:
STARE AT HIS PRIVATES, THAT’S THE ONLY WAY
PS: Have you ever tried to catch a skipper butterfly? Good luck!
June 20, 2019
Have you ever tried to identify bees? No? Get ready to mount some genitalia on a slide!
And if you’re using an older key guess what? You get to look up all the name changes and synonyms! Good luck with that! (especially with Lasioglossum).
Don’t even get me started with Lasioglossum. I decided last year I was going to start learning how to ID the Lasioglossum genus. It is so hard!
fishyfishyfishtimes
mallsharks
coworker told me he “hates all mollusks” today. and to each their own obviously but like… theres 100k species of mollusk… you really hate all of them bro? nautiluses and oysters and snails and nudibranches and chitons and thousands of animals youve never even heard of???? what did ammonites even fucking do to you
he hates sea bunny?
AND leaf sheep??
kissthegirl-getthekey
