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@danimalx
if you’re having a bad day, here’s a cute little marching band
It just keeps going and getting better. *^^*
Me two minutes ago: “cry with joy? an animation of cats playing instruments made someone cry with joy?”
Me now: (sobs into a tissue) “OH MY GOD THAT ONE IS PLAYING TWO RECORDERS AT THE SAME TIME” (blows nose)
CAT PARADE IS BACK
cat parade on 1,105 days left
“If there’s nothing wrong with me, maybe there’s something wrong with the universe!”
It is hard to convey how much I adore Beverly Crusher. When I was a kid, I always stopped what I was doing to go and watch TNG when it would come on in the evening, and I was always excited when it was a Bev episode. There she was, a woman strong in her convictions, always facing something unknown and dangerous but never giving up - not on herself and not on those in her care. Whenever she was faced with adversity, she snapped open that tricorder and found a solution.
I don’t think Bev would be this amazing if it weren’t for the amazing job Gates McFadden does bringing her to life. Much like her character, Gates never gave up in the face of adversity. She fought hard for her character and all the other women characters and actors involved in TNG, standing strong what she knew was right and never backing down. I look up to both Bev and Gates for strength, especially when the universe wants me to back down.
I wanted to capture a moment of realization, a eureka moment in this piece: the dawning of an idea, the split moment before she says she’s got it. And as we all know, you can always count on Bev to solve the problem and save the day.
__
I was asked to make a portrait of one of my favourite women from Star Trek for the initiative Women Make Trek, which launched its website today, and immediately I knew I wanted to make a portrait of this amazing woman
@scientificpokedex Can you please provide an alternate explanation for Frogadier’s weird neck thing that isn’t “that’s it’s tongue”? Because that’s weird and gross to me and kind of ruins the whole design.
I always thought they were bubbles like this:
[image credit to renecampbellart]
If you’ve ever held a frog, you know they’re pretty slimy. This “slime” that covers their skin is actually mucus, which they use to keep moist out of water, and it helps them dissolve oxygen because frogs can “breathe” directly through their skin. It’s more of a direct absorption process and less of a breathe-in-through-nostrils kind of thing, but a frog’s skin is pretty directly tied to it’s respiration process.
So, maybe Frogadier not only absorbs oxygen through it’s skin, but (at least around its neck), it exhales too? This would cause the mucus on its skin to bubble up in those areas. Which, admittedly, isn’t any less gross than it being a tongue. Sorry.
Or it could be more like this.
Ribbit.
Ok now explain greninjas neck scarf tongue thing
GRENINJA IS THE ONE I MEANT OH MY GOD OOPS :’(
Oh Okay :)
Well I’m not sure how much I can do here, because Greninja’s scarf is very canonically it’s tongue.
But what’s wrong with it being it’s tongue? Not as weird as Lickitung in my opinion. Frogs, of course, have long and flexible tongues:
(Not a frog, but still super cool)
If you stick your tongue out as much as Greninja, it would no doubt get dry after a short amount of time. But, as greninja is covered in mucus, this isn’t as much as a problem for him.
So why stick the tongue out all the time? I think it’s likely that Greninja, like a snake, uses it’s tongue to “smell”/taste the environment around it. Perhaps its other senses, such as it’s sight or its hearing, isn’t quite up to par. But with it’s tongue out, it can adequately perceive what’s around it. And that’s obviously important for any animal.
Slurpuff is another pokémon we know that keeps its tongue out all the time. And Slurpuff has probably the most complex olfactory (smelling) system in the whole pokédex.
A bigger tongue for Greninja would mean more area for sensory receptors, which leads better sensing. Over time, Greninja evolved to have bigger and bigger tongues, until it hardly fit in its mouth anymore.
Some pokémon are just weird. Sorry I can’t be more help. :)
Hii can you please explain the real ending of Arthur in the legend? I've heard from it but never really knew the full story :)
~~~ Updated 01/05/2023 after some further reading on my part, because apparently I’m obsessed with Arthurian legend now 😅 ~~~
Hi Anon! No problem, here’s a summary. Disclaimer that I originally made this post using just the Encyclopaedia Britannica, but I now can’t find the articles I originally referenced & I kept coming across contradictions to them in other articles, so I’ve decided to cross-check everything against CliffNotes & sections of original text. If anyone reads this and finds things that still need correcting, please lmk ☺️.
The legend of King Arthur is set in 5th-6th century Britain, although the details of the time & the geography are more fiction than fact. As with all folklore, it developed over hundreds of years through a mostly oral storytelling tradition, so there’s no one version of it. However, most of our modern adaptations are based on a book called Le Morte d’Arthur (The Death of Arthur), written in the 1400s by an English knight named Sir Thomas Malory. Malory basically compiled as many pre-existing stories about Arthur as he could, and also tweaked them to suit his time period. He was the first person to add a lot of the themes of chivalry and brotherhood that are now considered central to the legend. (As a side-note, Malory also went to great lengths to link the legend to his homeland, which can make his descriptions of geography even more confusing. He frequently mentions England and reports that Arthur became King of England by pulling the sword from the stone, when actually, ‘England’ didn’t exist yet in Arthur’s time. Instead, the island of England/Scotland/Wales was divided into many independent kingdoms, like Camelot and Carmelide, and the only way to collectively refer to them was as ‘Britain’. In this post, I’m going to be mirroring Malory’s language, but it’s worth noting that when he says England, it’s more accurate to say Britain, and when he says that Arthur was the King of England, it’s more accurate to say that Arthur was a King of Camelot who began to unify Britain through his influence & may have been destined to eventually rule it all. In fact, Camelot is usually identified as being in modern-day Wales rather than modern-day England. I know that all of this is tangential, but it confused me a lot during my reading & I wanted to help clarify it for other people, so 😊).
Le Morte d’Arthur sets up Arthur & Guinevere’s relationship very differently to Choices. For a start, they get betrothed earlier in the story, before the Knights of the Round Table are established – in fact, the physical Round Table & the first hundred of its knights are an engagement gift from Guinevere’s father. Secondly, they do know each other a little before they get betrothed – they meet a few months prior, while Arthur is helping defend Carmelide from attack – and although Arthur getting married is a political decision driven by his advisors, his choice of Guinevere as his wife is inarguably a personal decision driven by love. According to Malory, Arthur loved Guinevere from first sight & refused to let Merlin suggest any other brides when the time came, instead sending him to Guinevere’s father to ask him for her hand. We never really learn if Guinevere returns Arthur’s feelings, but honestly, the point is kinda moot – and that’s because, in perhaps the most important difference from Choices, Malory’s Arthur walks into the relationship knowing that Guinevere will betray him. When Merlin suggests choosing another bride, he explicitly warns Arthur that Guinevere will fall in love & cheat with a future Knight of the Round Table named Lancelot, and Arthur puts that aside, marries her anyway, and befriends Lancelot anyway.
I could go on such a long rant here about how complicated Merlin’s characterisation is in Le Morte d’Arthur – even more so than in Choices – and about what the symbolism might be of him making that prophecy & of Arthur ignoring it. But there’s tons more background reading that I’d have to do about that, and it’s also not the point of this post. Suffice to say, I think we’re given enough clues that Arthur ignores the prophecy not because he doesn’t believe it, but because he loves Guinevere and later Lancelot so much that he’d ignore anything just to have them by his side. When the two of them do start their affair, it’s stated that Arthur suspects what’s happening but ‘[won’t] hear of it’ from other people, particularly because of how much he loves & trusts Lancelot. It is left up to the reader whether that means that a) Arthur is deliberately overlooking the affair to protect his wife & friend or b) Arthur is burying his head in the sand about the affair happening – most critical sources go with Option A, but I personally think that both are presented as equally plausible. A similar trend continues throughout the book, with Arthur making several ambiguous decisions that Malory never directly explains, instead leaving us to judge him for ourselves. It’s quite a cool literary technique for a character who lives under public scrutiny, and who has had his story told in so many different ways over the years.
Before I move on, it’s also worth noting that Malory’s Arthur is… not quite as saintly as in Choices, so it’s not inconceivable that he’d struggle to handle the affair gracefully. Don’t get me wrong, he’s still incomparably noble & brave, but he’s also a young man under a lot of pressure who’s prone to dichotomous thinking, bursts of impulsivity, and difficulty telling people ‘no’. He himself has a few affairs between meeting Guinevere and marrying her, including one with a woman whom he doesn’t know is his half-sister with whom he conceives a son, Mordred. Like in Choices, Merlin then prophesies that Mordred will be Arthur’s downfall – more specifically, he prophesies that a boy with Mordred’s birthday will be Arthur’s downfall – but unlike in Choices, Arthur actually endorses Merlin’s horrific plan to prevent that. All baby boys with Mordred’s birthday are exiled to sea in a ship, until Fate, in one of its inevitable twists, sinks the ship and has Mordred wash up on shore. He eventually ends up in Camelot as a Knight of the Round Table, where he plays a big role in everything falling apart.
(And before we move on to that, just one more aside: the half-sister with whom Arthur conceives Mordred is not Morgana, although modern adaptations of the story often conflate the two characters. Her name is Morgause, and she also has four other sons – Arthur’s half-nephews – who are Gawain, Gareth, Agravaine, and Gaheris. I mention them not just because of the nod to Choices, but because they’re also very important in what happens next).
The trouble starts when Lancelot & Guinevere get extremely obvious about their affair, to the point where it becomes common knowledge among the Knights of the Round Table. Most of them ignore it, but there are two – Mordred & Agravaine – who insist on formally bringing it to Arthur’s attention, thus obligating him to deal with it. Arthur initially refuses to do anything unless somebody catches Lancelot & Guinevere ‘in the act’, but Mordred & Agravaine then suggest a plan to achieve that – they ask Arthur to spend a night away from the palace in the hope that Guinevere will invite Lancelot to her chambers, where Mordred & Agravaine will lie in wait for him. And this is the point at which Arthur makes his second ambiguous decision. The facts: Arthur agrees to the plan, and even tells Mordred & Agravaine to take more knights on their stakeout as backup, because Lancelot is more than capable of killing them in a rage. The question: Why would Arthur say that? Is he genuinely still unsure about whether an affair is happening, and eager for his wife & friend to be investigated and captured at any cost? Or is he trying to dissuade Mordred & Agravaine with threats about Lancelot’s wrath, while also making sure that there are witnesses to whatever happens so that nothing gets too out of hand? There are a couple of subtleties in Malory’s writing that might imply Option B – for a start, the conversation about the plan goes back & forth for a while, with Arthur giving three separate warnings about Lancelot before Mordred & Agravaine literally tell him to shut up and let them deal with it. So it’s not hard to read some reluctance in Arthur’s voice, and to consider that maybe he’s grasping at straws trying to stop this disaster he’s been backed into. Secondly, Mordred & Agravaine are explicitly said to be very unsubtle about their plan, to the point where Lancelot’s supporters at the Round Table suspect it and try to warn him. So it’s possible that Arthur is counting on Lancelot & Guinevere recognising and avoiding the trap, meaning that the stakeout will come to nothing and the ‘rumours’ of an affair may actually be put to rest. That said, it’s not like Arthur tries to warn Lancelot or Guinevere himself – sure, he can’t be seen to do that in public, but you’d think that he’d be able to catch Guinevere in private at least. Instead, he goes out hunting, Guinevere summons Lancelot to her chambers, and Lancelot goes, ignoring his supporters’ advice. The two of them are together when Mordred & Agravaine’s 14-knight party starts banging on the door, and everything immediately goes to hell. Lancelot & Guinevere know that they’ll be put to death for treason and agree that Lancelot should escape while he can, so he can return and save Guinevere later. Lancelot does make a show of wanting to resolve things peacefully – he says he’ll voluntarily stand trial in the morning if the knights let him walk away – but by now, everyone is raring for blood. Lancelot ends up killing all the knights except Mordred, who runs off wounded, then escapes Camelot with his supporters in tow. He does offer to take Guinevere with him now that her captors are dead, but interestingly, she turns him down – she actually says that he’s done a lot of harm by killing Arthur’s knights, and she doesn’t want him stealing her as well unless Arthur goes through with her death sentence. This is probably the first sign of doubt that we see from Guinevere, and it’s a cool, subtle hint of what’s to come.
Of course, Arthur does go through with Guinevere’s death sentence, and for once Malory actually explains his reasoning. Arthur has founded his entire reign on principles of honour and equality – on the idea that no one, not even a royal, is above morality or the law. Guinevere has committed treason – has even contributed to the deaths of 13 knights – and the punishment for treason is death, so Guinevere must die. What Malory does leave somewhat ambiguous is Arthur’s actual wishes for Guinevere & Lancelot. The facts: when Arthur first hears what’s happened from Mordred, he mainly expresses grief, both because Lancelot has torn the Round Table apart & because he now has no choice except to put Guinevere to death. He doesn’t express any anger until later, when Gawain tries to convince him to spare Guinevere in case her interactions with Lancelot have been misconstrued. At that point, Arthur says that Lancelot will have a ‘shameful death’ if he ever gets captured, and orders his knights to stand guard at Guinevere’s execution in case Lancelot attempts a rescue – even Gawain, who begs to be excused, and Gareth & Gaheris, who agree to be present but refuse to carry weapons. Now, it is possible that Arthur is doing all of this because he genuinely wants Guinevere & Lancelot dead. But there’s another popular interpretation that actually, it’s all just for show – Arthur knows that Lancelot is going to rescue Guinevere, and by setting up a public execution with sympathetic guards, he’s maximising their chances of a successful escape while also ensuring he can’t be accused of letting them go. Essentially, he’s giving them a clean break away from Camelot, while also still trying to maintain the laws of the kingdom & his integrity as a king.
Of course, even if that is Arthur’s intention, this story is a tragedy & things can’t go according to plan. This time, the complicating factor is that Lancelot goes on a violent rampage while rescuing Guinevere, killing another 24 knights including the unarmed Gareth & Gaheris. When Arthur hears about this, he’s openly devastated, and I think it’s impossible to argue that he doesn’t have at least some anger for Lancelot from that point on. He does make an attempt to prevent further violence, asking his knights to shield Gawain from his brothers’ deaths so that he doesn’t swear a vow of vengeance, but when Gawain goes ahead with the vow Arthur is quick to offer support. He musters an army from across England and lays siege to Joyous Gard, where Lancelot has hunkered down with Guinevere, his original supporters, and an accumulated army of his own. What follows is an all-out civil war, and Arthur’s emotions are quickly torn from anger & righteousness to heartbreak & regret. There’s one particular scene burnt into my brain where he and Lancelot are duelling one-on-one, Lancelot refuses to kill him despite the fact that it would end the war, and Arthur breaks down in tears, because he just doesn’t want to be fighting anymore. Eventually, the Pope gets involved to bring about peace, and decrees that Lancelot & Guinevere’s death sentences be lifted, that Guinevere be returned to Arthur, and that Lancelot be exiled to France. This leads to a tragic scene where Lancelot delivers Guinevere to Arthur before leaving England forever, and every single character cries except for one: Gawain. He refuses to retract his vow against Lancelot & insists on pursuing him to France with Arthur and his army, leaving England in the care of Mordred. Mordred, of course, has been out for trouble since the beginning, and this is the point at which he truly goes off the rails. He forges a letter saying that Arthur has died, gets himself officially coronated, tries to claim Guinevere as his wife (she refuses, fleeing to London & barricading herself in its Tower), and drums up discontent about Arthur’s past reign until public opinion is on his side. It helps that he also inherits most of Lancelot’s supporters, although a few of them do follow Lancelot to France.
When news of Mordred’s treason reaches Arthur & Gawain in France, they return to England to fight him. However, Gawain is already badly injured from repeatedly duelling Lancelot, who always refused to land the killing blow. On his deathbed, Gawain writes to Lancelot, granting him forgiveness and begging him to come to Arthur’s aid. And Lancelot does come, as fast as he can, but – he’s destined to arrive too late. On his final night alive, Arthur dreams of Gawain, who tells him that Lancelot will arrive in a month & that Arthur will die if he goes into battle before then. The next morning, Arthur meets Mordred on the battlefield to negotiate a month of ceasefire, but then a snake slithers out onto the field and a knight unthinkingly draws his sword to kill it, breaking the peace. Arthur rides into that battle knowing that he won’t come out alive, and watches in despair as all but one of his knights are also slain. Eventually, he sustains his mortal wound while killing Mordred. His only remaining knight, Sir Bedivere, tries to carry him to safety, but instead Arthur asks him to return Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake & to place Arthur in a boat being rowed by her attendants (including Morgana), who take him to their mystical isle of Avalon. In many versions of the legend, Arthur is said to still lie on Avalon under Morgana’s vigil, being healed from his wounds by a magical slumber from which he will eventually wake up immortal – a ‘once and future’ king. In Le Morte d’Arthur, that rumour does circulate, but Malory is ultimately clear about the fact that Arthur dies on Avalon, and is returned to a forest outside Camelot for a quiet burial. His throne is taken over by a distant half-nephew, his Order of the Round Table dies with its knights, and his dream of unity & honour across England dissolves. Guinevere, filled with grief & guilt, retreats from the world to join a convent, where Lancelot eventually finds her after his return. The two of them still love each other, but Guinevere refuses to renew their relationship, and Lancelot ends up joining a monastery himself as a way of honouring her & showing his remorse. When Guinevere gets sick a few years later, she prophesies that Lancelot will come to perform her funeral & to bury her beside Arthur, and sure enough Lancelot sees her death in a dream & rushes to her side. Six weeks later, he also dies of a broken heart, and is buried at Joyous Gard.
Whenever I revisit Le Morte d’Arthur, I’m always surprised by how subtle & complex a text it is, especially considering how long ago it was written. There are no clear heroes or villains; nobody is blameless in bringing about the tragedy, and yet nobody acts in a way we can’t sympathise with; nobody gets a happy ending at the expense of somebody else. But there is a general idea, reinforced over time by simpler adaptations, that Arthur is the member of the love triangle who suffers most. He loses not just his wife & his friend, but also his kingdom, his dream, and his life. Yes, he makes some questionable decisions along the way, but they’re all made for the sake of other people – he’s torn apart trying to simultaneously protect his loved ones, his country, and his ideals, whereas Lancelot & Guinevere precipitated everything by being publicly affectionate without any regard for the consequences. They also both get at least a chance at a future, while Arthur does not, and I think there’s a public sentiment that it’d be nice to see him end up happy for once. I’m personally really glad that Choices gives us that option, and it seems like some other readers feel the same way. Speaking of which, it’s also nice to see other readers interested in the original legend. Thank you so much for the ask 💕
reasons why innocent is about john mayer, not kanye
This was posted on a Tumblr I saw awhile ago and apparently was deleted, but I wanted to save it.
skyyla:
1) The line, “Wasn’t it easier in your lunchbox days?”. John mentions his lunchbox in his song “83”, which is a song about wishing you were a kid again. Taylor also references “83” in her song “Superman”, which is generally believed to be about John.
2) The rest of that line, “always a bigger bed to crawl into”. John tweeted “And that’s what adulthood is: you wake up from the nightmare and realize there’s no bigger bed to climb into” on Feb. 9, 2010. Which is around the time him and Taylor were “hanging out”.
3) The line, “lost yourself in your warpath”. John’s last album was “Battle Studies”. And she references it in “Story of Us” too. Which we know is about him.
4) The “32” line. A lot of people think that’s the proof that it’s about Kanye because he was 32 during the VMA incident, but John was also 32 when whatever happened with him and Taylor.
5) Taylor didn’t write the song until early/mid ‘10, which was a long time after the Kanye incident. But while something was going on with Mayer.
6) If you just look at the lyrics, not having any idea of who/what it could be about, it really doesn’t sound like it’s about someone she doesn’t know that did something bad to her. It sounds like it’s for someone she knows and cares about that messed up (ie. the Playboy article, which was why he tweeted that “bigger bed” quote) and letting them know she still believes in them, “your string of lights are STILL bright to me”.
7) Yes, obviously she performed the song for Kanye at the VMA’s. But Taylor said in interviews about the VMA performance, that it wasn’t really about performing a song about Kanye/the VMA situation, as much as performing a song FOR him. And I do think that performance was for him. Just like “White Horse” was for Joe when she performed it at the 2008 AMA’s, even though that song wasn’t written about him.
8) People think it’s about Kanye because the secret message was about “little interruptions”. But Taylor’s special message for “Mine” was TOBY and we know that song is definitely not about him. She didn’t even meet him until they shot the video for that song. He said so himself in the behind-the-scenes.
9) John has a new song called “Shadow Days” that he’s performed once or twice, and might be on his next album. I think that song is Taylor-related because there’s a line in it that says “I never meant her harm”. There’s also a line that says “I found myself in pieces on my hotel floor”. There’s a line in “Innocent” that says, “you wouldn’t be shattered on the floor now”. So I think it’s safe to say John knows “Innocent” is about him…
I`ve been listening to this song for hours straight. So peaceful and magical
I guess they’re driving away from a sunset or maybe it’s an explosion but either way it is pretty illegal
Too Many Teens In A Jeep And Derek.png.
*does the anime character with glasses thing*
Does that really work though?
What…?
that’s so cool i wanna do it too!!!!!!
ok here goes
NO
The Zack Files anyone??
When I started watching Degrassi I freaked out because I loved Jake Epstein as Cam on this show.
been listening to a lot of her lately
GOd so I’m re-reading the german Mario comics and I forgot how hilarious they are. Here’s some bits from Wario’s Christmas tale (a comic that follows your run of the mill A Christmas Carol plot, with Wario as scrooge)
You got teen Mario slow dancing with Peach, who is amicably dealing with their height difference by scuffing him by the head and using her super strength to hold him at eye level:
Link, wearing the shortest tunic made by man, shaming Wario for his bad case of dumb bitch syndrome:
And my personal favourite. Wario visiting his own grave:
I like how from the back, Wario looks like a child in a onesie, but when you see his face, it’s just completely disproportionate.
