victorian trans guy who goes to beloved local barber sweeney todd and presses half a crown in his hand and says “begging your pardon sir, i know it ain’t much but i was hoping you might tell my employer i get me shaves from you should he ever come around. only he’s been asking me how i keep my chin so smooth and i haven’t the heart to tell him i can’t grow a beard, so i might have told him a little lie, sir, and said it’s all due to your wonderful skill, sir” and sweeney todd goes “no problem. by the way would you say your employer deserves to die”
after the truth comes out about sweeney todd people start asking this guy how come the demon barber never killed him, so he has to think fast and come up with some story about how every time he came in for a shave mr todd would ask him if he had a new pie recipe to share, and every time he did mr todd would think a clock tick and say “yes, that will do,” and ain’t it just chilling, sir, to think that i weren’t just telling recipes, sir, i was telling recipes for me life and i didn’t even know it! and people gasp and nod and then people start asking him if he could share one of his pie recipes with their missus. and he’s never baked in his life
for background, Transparent is a cosmetic option one can change their Neopet to. for the mostly mammalian cast of Neopets, this typically shows the internal anatomy of the Neopet as if their skin and cartilage were transparent, displaying their skeleton and visible internal organs.
there are some notable examples among them: the Transparent Lenny has bones in its primary feathers, explaining their hand-like dexterity with those feathers! (other bird Neopets, like the Pteri, do not have these bones).
there's also the Grundo's alien organs, and the Ruki, which is an insect and thus has an exoskeleton, has a much different internal structure from its mammal counterparts
there's a lot we could get into here with the perceived anatomical correctness of these designs; the number of bones and placement or lack of certain organs is definitely not one would expect in a detailed anatomical diagram. but none of that is really important beyond what these designs signify about the species classification-wise, and the one new major outlier: the Transparent Chia
the Transparent Chia is unlike all other Neopets who have received Transparent designs. it is green; it does not have bones; it has unique organs; it resembles a plant cell.
below is my attempt to label the Transparent Chia as if it were a textbook diagram of a plant cell. I'm only an amateur biologist, so I discussed with some friends, including professional biologist @stackedcrates who taught me a lot!
(footnotes are below)
1 - Root Hairs: As I've been told it, root hairs would typically 1) comprise the full green shape of the hair and not just the pink inside, and 2) a cell with root hairs would not have chloroplasts. So if we accept the hair as root hairs, this is either a "novel evolutionary adaptation" or possibly the Chia is comprised of two to four large cells and potentially a colonial organism, which I find exciting.
2 - Vesicles, Peroxisomes, Lysosomes: It's impossible to actually distinguish these things from each other so I labelled them half based on evidence and half arbitrarily. Lysosomes are typically larger than peroxisomes, but both could also be most any other 'some. (Vesicles are not 'somes but they look similar in this type of diagram).
3 - The Endoplasmic Reticulum & Large Central Vacuole: In normal cells, the endoplasmic reticulum would touch the nucleus, so this ER is in a very unusual if not impossible spot. We floated the possibilities that we were wrong about the nucleus, the nucleus was actually what we'd labelled as the LCV, and even that our ER was just the rough ER and the yellow noodles (now labelled "Cytoskeletal Structures") were a very unusual smooth ER. But it seems overly likely that we're correct about the LCV and the nucleus, so I preferred this admittedly unsatisfying option compared to the rest.
4 - Chloroplasts and Mitochondria: You might notice that the chloroplasts as labelled have two different designs: one is striped while the other is simply green. The committee found the two similar enough to group them together, and I'm told it's common for the chloroplast to be depicted either way (I found more than one diagram that this art seems to be cribbing colors and design choices from). As for the mitochondria, it's possible that we have the chloroplasts and mitochondria swapped, and it's just as possible possible one of the three labelled is some other plastid that we didn't consider.
5 - Cytoskeletal Structures: We have no idea what these are. They're not really the right shape to be skeletal structures. Oh well!
6 - Amyloplast: @stackedcrates suggested this was an amyloplast, for storing starch, but that it could be another kind of plastid.
this attempt has many issues, but the real purpose of it is to prove that the Chia very closely resembles a plant cell, rather than correctly identify each part. @stackedcrates also emphasized that biology is full of exceptions, and with the Chia necessarily representing an unusual example, it doesn't behoove us to be beholden to statistical typicality. a few mistakes or professional disagreements are okay! in the end, it matters more that the parts are roughly represented.
I think we did well!
What does this mean for the project?
we'll be hereforth categorizing the Chia as among Plantae rather than Animalia. there was evidence for this before as the Chia is the only Neopet to have the unique Magical Chia Pop colors. the Maraquan Chia is also an anenome, which is an animal, but definitely the most plant-like of the aquatic animals.
maybe one could argue the Chia is a fungus, or even an animal-plant hybrid! where does that go in our taxonomy? I don't know! but science is exciting, isn't it?
Everyone should be entitled to a free little treat once per day when they leave the house. A hot beverage, a cookie, whatever. You should have government issued daily tokens and you should be able to go into a shop or a cafe and pick what you like and take it to the counter and hand them your token and say "this is my free little daily treat" and then you don't have to pay for it. please vote for me as your local mp in the next general election.
True: I once waited tables for a high-end steak and wine place that was called The Strip Club. Whenever someone asked where I worked, it required some explanation. Especially when my dad asked.
don't ever look up what your childhood friends are up to now!!!!!!!!!! like girl you're a nuclear safety engineer. i put on matching socks today. we played tag a thousand years ago.
I think you carry the people you’ve loved with you forever, not in a ‘you can never get over them’ way but more like loving them changed you and it meant something and you have to make peace with that
The heavy implication that historical ‘abstract’ poetry that people have been analysing for ages without being able to conclude the meaning could have just been shitpost level in-jokes between poets is sending me.
kind of obsessed with the idea of the rest of the gaang leaving Toph and Zuko to watch over some cooking food and when they come back its burned and Katara starts fuming but Toph and Zuko are like “we’ve never stepped inside a kitchen in our lives and only have one eye between us, if anything it’s your fault”
jacobvanloon
turnnoffyourmind
kianamaiart
janainaart
discoholicmusic
annaxmalina
titsay
origamiaround
