just muddling through

Tired, queer, full of fear

[mens-rights-activia]

[mens-rights-activia]

I would like to note that I left flowers for her afterwards, just as a “sorry for using your grave for content”

[pangur-and-grim]

there's this book written in the 1870's by an abolitionist minister, Moncure D. Conway, and I find it super interesting. it's called 'Demonology and Devil-lore', and it's basically this guy's theories as to how various deities evolved. keep in mind this is all just a single dead dude's opinions, so a big spoonful of salt is required, but he says that older deities (like Old Testament God) rarely have a clear split between good/bad, and can deliver both with the same hand, and that the later splitting of good vs evil (like New Testament God, who's quite a bit nicer) can sometimes be attributed to politics. because if you're attempting to use religion as a form of control, it's better to position your guy as the Good guy. and he goes over how various demons are just the bastardized remnants of gods from conquered/colonized religions that have been swallowed by christianity, and then makes an attempt to exhaustively categorize them by type (this is where the book gets a bit dull. as an aside, this guy would have loved Pokemon.)

anyway, it got me thinking about how religious syncretism would work in a world where gods were REAL, and so that became the subplot of The Ignoble Invasion of Prince Proculo.

it's set in 'fantasy Britain', which is a land that has experienced wave after wave of conquest and colonization. about mid 1500's, so we've had the Bell Beaker people, the Celts, the Romans, all the way to the current spread of Christianity, sorry, I mean The Goddess of the Resurrection. and she has to ability to literally demonize worshippers of other religions (which is why there's so many fun animal-people hybrids around), which makes it mentally easier for the crusaders of the Goddess to mop them up. easier to kill people if you don't see them as people.

her ultimate goal in all this is to swallow up all the gods she can and incorporate them into herself, because that's just what every god wants as part of their life cycle. and she's had great success, so far!

tl;dr The Ignoble Invasion of Prince Proculo might be an isekai yaoi monsterfucking book, but I couldn't have done it without minister Moncure Daniel Conway and his autism-fuelled theory book.

[200mgcaffeine]

a persistent... unwelcome feeling that I've been dealing with, is how very, very badly I want to submit my life for review to some sort of Authority. am I doing good enough, given the circumstances? is this okay, am I okay, or just kind of pathetic? where should I improve? what is my performance improvement plan, for life?

the fact is, though, that no one's really watching but me. no one's keeping score or will honestly give a damn for good or ill but me. I chart my own course, and steer my own ship, etc etc even if I'm subject to the weather and the ocean currents, same as anyone else. maybe at the end of the day all I can say is that I am not harming anyone, I am not acting maliciously, and all I've managed to do is act sincerely and tried my best. even if my best isn't very good or praiseworthy, I have to believe that means something.

[spin-the-wheel-polls]

You are an adventurer in a generic fantasy world and you use this weapon!

Do you like it?

YES!!!!!

yes

Eh it's okay

No

NO!!!!!!!

Voting ended onJul 21

[todaysbird]

a rare closeup of a black swift, found throughout north america and small parts of south america. swifts are rarely seen up close; they spend more of their life in air than any other species of bird - they eat, drink, mate and sleep while in flight. they are incapable of perching like other birds; they must cling to vertical surfaces.

(x)

[curlicuecal]

I had to look this up because “sleep while in flight” ????

but yeah, apparently completely true.  these birds stay aloft for as much as 10 months nonstop, feed on insects, spend more energy at night (when there aren’t warm thermals to ride) and at dawn and dusk climb to 10,000 ft altitude where the 30 min slow descent is probably when they catch their sleep.

they’re unusually long-lived for such active critters (20 yrs) and they may be limiting energy expenditure by being extremely aerodynamic and narrow bodied.  Also a single bird travels the distance of about 7 roundtrip journeys to the moon in its lifetime (>3 million miles).

[x]

[200mgcaffeine]

pros: I am currently in possession of a job

cons: I'm pretty sure they hired me because they thought given my previous job title from 2 yrs ago that I would not need any training... this is not in fact the case because despite holding the job title I did not in fact spend much time at all doing the work associated with the title for reasons outside of my control... nor was I trained in these processes... anyway folks keep coming up to me like "oh! you already have experience with ___ right?" and I have to keep saying "no... can you walk me through it and I'll write it down..." this is humiliating. if they don't think I'm stupid past saving already (or a liar? idk) they're going to think it real hecking soon. but hey, I can just keep my butt planted in place until and unless they decide to fire me, right?

[whetstonefires]

You know, judging by how fast Wen Qing caved on Wen Ning's showing up in Yiling with wwx and jc, even though she was real mad about it, I bet he has been doing this to her for years.

Probably started by bringing her injured animals to doctor on as a kid. Later on, not necessarily a lot later, he started dragging in bullied disciples to patch up and hide from Wen Xu or somebody, and then probably he'd just kind of...fold a lot of them into his canonical personal retinue of loyal subordinates, however that worked exactly.

Wet kitten Wen Ning constantly dragging smaller wetter kittens back to his big sister to protect. She has tried all the arguments already. She knows there's no budging him.

Also lmaoooo hang on, Wen Ning had Wen Qing outnumbered a lot of the time, didn't he. She didn't have personal minions she could trust like that. These people just extracted a high-status prisoner from the custody of an erratic and violent superior pursuing a personal grudge without blinking, for their Wen-gongzi.

Wen Ning's ability to get up to shenanigans due to all the pathetic life-forms she'd allowed him to accumulate must have dawned on her with belated horror.

[whetstonefires]

@falsegrailwar was like #please. please read op's tags oh my god

and i was like hmmn what did i say??

#they were supposed to watch his back! #and keep him busy! #and take a sword for him if the opportunity arose probably; wen ning wouldn't want that but wen qing would

#these unnamed subordinates with no lines are rapidly becoming my favorite mdzs supporting cast #like what did they think about the plot #wen ning got pressganged by jin zixun in the company of his subordinates #so some of them probably lasted all the way to the Siege

#there might have been a guy who personally carried jiang cheng out of the charnel house of lotus pier #or retrieved his parents' bodies from the corpse heap #and roughly four to ten years later#watched jiang cheng come to kill him #and had his corpse dumped in the blood pool #and knew for a fact that jiang wanyin did not even know he existed and wouldn't care if he did

#it all goes in circles and some of us get ground up in the gears

i can see why i left that out of the main post but yeah. i stand by these tags a;sldjsdfkl;

[sunderwight]

#this is one of the reasons i really like fics that go#'hm we could do a big war to depose a tyrant oooor#'we could do a coup? current ruling family blows but look! a niece and nephew who hate their uncle and just want to do medicine!'#i'm sure there are reasons why this wouldn't work but hey#wen ning would make an excellent sect heir! he wins people over so well! (tags by @spookymirrorsprite)

Wen Sect Leader Wen Ning lives rent free in my mind. Saves everyone from Wen Ruohan. Frees Wen Qing up to do her medical research to her little mad scientist heart's content. Makes Wen Yuan his heir. Depending on where it falls in the timeline, he can two-birds-one-stone reconciliation with the Jiang sect and getting rid of his own rivals by handing the likes of Wen Chao to them, or just prevent a bunch of tragedies altogether. Time traveling fix-it fic Wen Ning going hmm I wonder if I still have some corpse powers and then punching through his uncle's ribcage to test it.

Seems he does!

[whetstonefires]

....man, time travel Wen Ning murdering Wen Ruohan with his bare hands and seizing power would be such a twist from everyone else's perspective.

like. you could not tell he was the kind of guy who would quietly and unapologetically rescue his sect's enemies out of moral conviction, but he was. people contain multitudes. so same way, in this scenario the political world is rocked by this mediocre, sweet-tempered, unassuming teenage Wen cousin purging the upper ranks of his family and usurping the sect by force.

Wen Qing's reputation before the war (at least the part Wei Wuxian bothered to recall) notably consisted of one part 'medical genius' and one part 'only normal person in the Wen leadership.' Wen Ning turning out to be the most insane murderer in his family would be accepted as narratively coherent, despite being a shocking twist.

bets would be on about whether he and Wen Qing would go on to kill each other off. i feel like they'd lose a lot of vassal sects and guest disciples on account of the sect doesn't seem as stable or powerful suddenly.

diplomatic relations would not normalize for a while, unless he managed to do this during the war so all the other sects felt it was a favor to them, because killing family members for power tends to be frowned upon. nie mingjue in particular i think would be of the opinion that Sect Leader Wen Qionglin was a mad dog.

i feel like Jin Zixun would suddenly be getting a lot of side-eye in case he had similar ambitions lmao.

[sunderwight]

#the implications of his having corpse powers in his normal body intrigue me#in that this suggests something wwx did fundamentally altered his soul#which cannot have been the intent#also he was in fact a cultivator so i wonder how his body is going to handle having normal cultivation#and whatever resentment-based nonsense he brought back with him#many interesting plot threads from wn doing this insane thing!#not a boring fixit concept lol (@whetstonefires)

The tension in the long term of Nie Mingjue and most of the rest of the cultivation world holding their breath to see what other horrible things Wen Ning would do in the name of ambition, while Wen Ning mostly just doesn't do any of them would be great, I must say.

[artifacts-and-arthropods]

Baby Horseshoe Crabs: these eggs contain tiny horseshoe crab embryos, and the hatchlings typically emerge after 2-4 weeks, but it takes another ten years for them to reach adulthood

These photos show the embryonic form of Limulus polyphemus, commonly known as the Atlantic horseshoe crab. The eggs of this species are initially opaque, with a grayish-blue, green, or pink coloration, but they become increasingly translucent as the embryos mature, providing a glimpse of the tiny horseshoe crabs developing within.

Above: several embryos twirling around in their eggs

The legs become visible roughly five days after fertilization, and the embryos begin to move shortly thereafter, eventually flexing their legs and twirling their bodies. They molt for the very first time just a few days later. Each embryo will shed its skin and grow a new one four times in total before it even hatches from the egg.

The color variations are likely related to the growth rate of each individual embryo, which can differ slightly based on the temperature, salinity, moisture, and oxygen levels around each egg. Certain colors can also arise from bacterial or fungal growth in the egg membrane.

Above: Limulus polyphemus embryos

The hatchlings finally emerge after 2-4 weeks. The freshly-hatched larvae measure less than 1cm long, and they look just like miniature versions of their adult form, except that they do not yet have tails (which are actually known as telsons) and their exoskeletons are still soft and translucent. These young horseshoe crabs are often described as "trilobite larvae."

Above: a young horseshoe crab discarding its egg

Atlantic horseshoe crabs generally spawn in May and June, with hundreds of thousands of individuals gathering along the coast on the night of the full moon and new moon. Each female lays up to 100,000 eggs per season, but very few of those offspring actually survive to adulthood. Most of the eggs are eaten or destroyed before they can even hatch, and many of the remaining larvae perish at some point during the 10 years that it takes for them to reach full maturity (i.e. the age at which they begin to reproduce).

Above: the freshly-hatched larvae

Wild horseshoe crabs can live to be more than 20 years old, and they can measure up to 60 centimeters (2 feet) long. They have 10 eyes in total, including two compound eyes that are specifically adapted for the purpose of finding a mate:

The most obvious eyes are the two lateral compound eyes. These are used for finding mates during the spawning season. Each compound eye has about 1,000 receptors or ommatidia. The cones and rods of the lateral eyes have a similar structure to those found in human eyes, but are around 100 times larger in size. At night, the lateral eyes are chemically stimulated to greatly increase the sensitivity of each receptor to light. This allows the horseshoe crab to identify other horseshoe crabs in the darkness.

Above: a close-up of a horseshoe crab's compound eye, which is covered in tiny hatchlings for some reason

Horseshoe crabs have been around for at least 445 million years, which means that these creatures are about 200 million years older than the dinosaurs and at least 50 million years older than trees, and yet their morphology has changed very little in that time. In fact, modern horseshoe crabs are frequently described as "living fossils," because they still look strikingly similar to their fossilized ancestors.

Above: the juvenile form of Tachypleus tridentatus, commonly known as the Chinese horseshoe crab

It's important to note that horseshoe crabs are not true crabs. In fact, they're not even crustaceans -- they belong to a completely different group of arthropods known as chelicerates, and they are more closely related to spiders and scorpions than they are to crabs.

Above: Tachypleus tridentatus and Limulus polyphemus

This is a revised/updated version of a post that I published about two years ago, with much more information, photos, and sources.

Sources & More Info:

iNaturalist: Horseshoe Crab Eggs

Maryland Department of Natural Resources: Horseshoe Crab Life History

Current Zoology: Developmental Ecology of the American Horseshoe Crab

PBS: Once a Spawn a Time: Horseshoe Crabs Mob the Beach

Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute: Limulus polyphemus

National Wildlife Federation: Horseshoe Crabs

Maryland Department of Natural Resources: Horseshoe Crab Anatomy

[vibrantstarfire]

more women whump. more women pushing themselves and passing out from sleep deprivation and exhaustion. more women training until their knuckles bleed and their legs give out from under them. more women being held prisoner and remaining stoic until the very end or perhaps when they’re rescued. more women under truth serum and terrifying hallucinogens. more women waking up in a pool of blood, their own and others’ and not knowing what happened but that something is terribly wrong with them. more women falling apart o ly when rescued. more women pushed to their breaking point. more women whump.

[seren-starlight]

Unoriginal sin. Derivative sin

[200mgcaffeine]

this one was for the pose, and really drove home the how bad I am at everything deal with drawing. but the expression has the right mood, and I thought the hand shape was solid

[200mgcaffeine]

Whenever I see an interesting outfit or a compelling pose I make a note so I can make fanart of our ttrpg ocs... currently, only drawing occasionally when I'm particularly stressed and have free time (and my free time is going to VANISH until the end of the year...)

This guy lying to his employer about punching a man in the face. Why did he punch this man? Apparently the victim said, upon being questioned about a person in a photograph, "I don't pay attention to appearances. It's what's on the inside that counts." Proportional response, surely.

[localpubliclibrary]

If I ask nicely will people reblog this and tell me what their most common breakfast is? Not your favorite necessarily, just what you have for breakfast most frequently? 🙏🏽

[quasi-normalcy]

Mel Brooks on taking studio notes:

[quasi-normalcy]

Mel Brooks on taking studio notes:

[merrymorningofmay]

"omg i LOVE it when love between characters is so strong it overrides the boundaries of flesh and selfhood, merging them into some sort of (un)holy chimera" — person who's uncomfortable with the idea of permanently sharing a bedroom with someone else

[thisauthorisscreaming]

Does it count as 'sword in the stone' if it looks more like 'sword in the cairn'...?

[miujones]

Image Description: Sword in stone motif which is adorned by lavendar colored flower embroidery in an oval wood frame. The tendrils and hanging flowers trail around a braid that serves as a trellis and warous greenery is sprouting between the stones, all done with embroidery. The semi-preicus stones in different shades of green forming the stone moundare stiched down like pearls and the model sword is stuck inside in King Arthur style.