not a bot just lazy to make a title

[dannyfen]

How much would change if something...else landed on the beach of mata nui

[flowercrowncrip]

Disabled adults should get to choose to go to bed whenever the fuck we want, even if the support we need to do so is inconvenient or expensive.

Disabled adults should be able to go on nights out with friends until 5am then sleep in until the afternoon if we want to.

I really shouldn’t be turning down social invites because my care provider and local authority say I need to be in bed by 10pm at 26 years old.

[tieflingkisser]

[lesbianslimefriend]

here's where to find it on windows 10

[the-tiny-dragons-tea-room]

Ugh, it was in mine. It's off now.

[the-tiny-dragons-tea-room]

IT GETS WORSE

I had to turn this off, but it's something that allows Windows and anyone using your device to generate text/images.

LOBOTOMIZE YOUR MACHINES

[tieflingkisser]

[lesbianslimefriend]

here's where to find it on windows 10

[the-tiny-dragons-tea-room]

Ugh, it was in mine. It's off now.

[the-tiny-dragons-tea-room]

IT GETS WORSE

I had to turn this off, but it's something that allows Windows and anyone using your device to generate text/images.

LOBOTOMIZE YOUR MACHINES

[min-ah-36]

Quick fanart for the new game!!

[dannyfen]

[cungadero]

here’s my one whole discourse post for pride month. you fucks will never ever ever wean off the radfem shit if you keep trying to give “cis men are evil” nuance. no, it’s not bad because they could be closeted or questioning, it’s bad because gender essentialism is a fucking brain poison and it makes you stupid

[harrypotterfuryroad]

this is “not all men” cloaked in progressive-sounding vocabulary

[cungadero]

harry potter blog.

[retro-system]

[glasspalacesstoneshop]

Your tags are going on the post prev

[litttleprincess-deactivated2017]

Don't ever hesitate. Reblog this. TUMBLR RULE. When you see it, REBLOG IT.

[trappedinmyoldways]

Depression Hotline: [phone]

Suicide Hotline: [phone]

LifeLine: 1-800-273-8255

Trevor Project: 1-866-488-7386

Sexuality Support: 1-800-246-7743

Eating Disorders Hotline: [phone]

Rape and Sexual Assault: 1-800-656-4673

Grief Support: 1-650-321-5272

Runaway: 1-800-843-5200, 1-800-843-5678, 1-800-621-4000

Exhale: After Abortion Hotline/Pro-Voice: 1-866-4394253

If you ever want to talk, my ask box is always open

[jaydove-writes]

Please reblog this. I don’t care what your blog’s theme or aesthetic is. This is important.

[avatarmerida]

Happy pride month to the tiny cowboy and tiny Trojan man from Night at the Museum

[futurakid]

[leg-stealing-bee]

[closetedguyy]

[knitordeath]

This hands down the best comment in the notes, I will not be taking criticism.

[song-of-sea-and-sky]

happy pride month 2021 I ain’t quittin’ you…

[msue0027]

[maxstarfall]

[gengaritez]

[pumpkin--rabbit]

[minyicho]

[the-punforgiven]

I'm just saying, if you're going to worldbuild magic being a "raw, primal force, akin to and interweaving with nature itself" you gotta explain to me why animals don't use it

[the-punforgiven]

I know the normal answer is "they just aren't smart enough for it" but idk I've seen enough media where a character uses a spell in a moment of brain-off panic ilI feel like animals could probably stumble into a spell or two like, accidentally

[the-punforgiven]

Also how funny would it be to see a completely normal regular bear cast magic missile outta nowhere

[the-punforgiven]

Also there is no way ravens wouldn't figure out spells, tbh

They're smart fuckin birds, I believe in them

Either through observing or just figuring shit out ravens could 100% learn how to cast spells I'm sure of it

[the-punforgiven]

Dogs can also cast Magic Missile but every time they do the projectile is shaped like a bone or a stick and they chase after it

[rathayibacter]

group of wizards who ask this in-universe, and after extensive study learn to their surprise that animals are casting spells all the time, just that their magic is so fundamental as to be unrecognizable to humans. turns out the only reason acorns grow on trees is because squirrels keep wishing for them.

[catboybiologist]

I'm sorry I'm going fucking insane over trans people in sports issues the anti trans crowd has lost the fucking plot and then has the audacity to act like its the trannies who are ridiculous

I used to be of the "well the sports issue isn't really important to me its w/e I just don't want it to be a gateway into other transphobia" but oh my fucking god we are so far gone. The fencing shit is sending me over the edge. What the fuck.

[catboybiologist]

I can't even articulate my words so I'm just going to tell a story in screenshots

I am so fucking tired of being gaslit about this

[catboybiologist]

I'm also still so fucking pissed that we have to include "ooo the trans fencer only finished in X place" because its a reminder that trans women will never be allowed to excel at anything in the public eye without being cut down. Fuck OFF

[asexualzoro]

i hope you don’t mind me adding to this post op but i’ve got a sorta personal connection to this story. for ppl who do not know this about me, ive been fencing for like five years and am trans. i also used to fence in the same circles as this woman

this woman—stephanie turner is her name, because i think people should know it so this shit can ruin her life—regularly fences cis men and wins because fencing is fucking co-ed

i know that is in the screenshots already, but what i can add which isn’t in the screenshot is that i personally know and have fenced some of the people listed in that “competition history” screenshot, including some of the cis men which she beat. i know from fencing them myself that these guys are good, smart, capable fencers

that said, even if i didn’t know them, i could tell you a lot of these guys are solid. do you see that column labeled “rating”? being rated means they’ve placed very well or won medals at prestigious or decently sized tournaments—E is the lowest rating (but still difficult to get) and ratings go up to A (and U means unrated). if you look, you can see she beat a few rated fencers in that screenshot, some of them male!

another thing i know about stephanie turner is that she fences at a club my friend’s brother works at. she regularly beats said brother, who is 6’4 and 200lbs. i’ve never met this brother, but if he’s anything like my friend, he’s a damn good fencer with years of experience. stephanie turner is GOOD. per my friend, she probably would have won the bout she took a knee on. she really did not need to pull shit transphobic shit and i guarantee she knows it.

all this shit about fencing cis men really does not matter, to be clear. being a woman beating men doesn’t make stephanie a good fencer—it doesn’t even make her a notable fencer. every afab fencer who is good enough to beat other fencers beats amab fencers. the first fencer i beat as an afab person was a cis man who started the sport at the same time as me just bc we were at the same general level. because again, fencing is co-ed. i just am explaining all this to show how damn stupid dying on this hill is (and the fact she for sure knows how damn pointless and hateful it is)

because fencing is NOT a strength sport! being stronger or taller than your opponent, like how a cis man would stereotypically be vs a cis woman, isn’t necessarily an advantage—strength can absolutely fuck you up if you don’t know how to manage it, and if you know how to use it, being shorter than your opponents can actually be an advantage

if anything, fencing a stamina sport, which something you can very much train no matter your gender if you put in the work. more than anything to do with strength or speed, though, fencing is a strategy sport. there is really no reason to gender segregate it. a lot of tournaments do, but plenty tournaments DON’T, and most clubs you go to for practice and drills and learning fencing will be co-ed and have you constantly fencing against “opposite sex” fencers

(half related—one of the best foils on my fencing team is a trans woman who sometimes fences in the men’s brackets in tournaments and regularly beats cis men)

if stephanie turner is a good fencer—which she definitely is—she knows all of this. that fencing is more about stamina, that strength and height mean nothing, that the only thing that really matters is your strategy.

stephanie turner was literally just doing this to be an asshole. the fact she’s getting money for it is fucking disgusting. i hope she faces some damn consequences for this shit, because it’s such stupid, hateful bullshit, especially for a sport where that “biological advantage” shit really and truly does not matter

i do want to end this addition on a nice note tho, so i want to add: a few days after this story broke—this weekend, actually—i attended a two day tournament as a spectator. while it wasn’t everywhere, i definitely saw a lot of refs and staff wearing trans pride/support pins, as well as a few people in attendance wearing trans supportive shirts and accessories. all of the people ive spoken to in the fencing world about this—which is quite a lot—have thought it both appalling and monumentally stupid, and im hoping that will lead to consequences for stephanie turner and anyone else who tries to follow in her bullshit idiot footsteps

[catboybiologist]

I don't have anything to add, but this is more insight than I could ever have so I'm RBing for visiblity

[fennalfennec]

Any time something like this comes up, I also think about chess being segregated by gender. There's no reason for it, and I think that extends to most sports (including fencing, which thankfully is largely unsegregated).

Why do we need - or even want - two separate leagues for men's sports and women's sports? The gender pay gap, the recognition gap, the trans sports "issue" are all solved by having only one league for these sports (except, of course, for bigotry like we see above).

Men have the advantage - on average - in some sports, sure, that's the argument. But time and time again, stories show that the best female athletes can and often do defeat the best male athletes (in fact, that's why competitive skeet shooting was gender segregated in 1992).

It all seems pointless to me, especially on an activity that is supported to be fun.

[alarajrogers]

Has anybody noticed the lack of cis women competing at high levels in sports that, realistically, cis women should own?

For example, car racing. Danica Patrick being smaller and lighter than the men she races against is such an advantage that the league made a lot of noise about handicapping her by putting extra weights in her car. (To the best of my knowledge this did not happen.) Why is she the only cis female car racer anyone's ever heard of, when being small and light is an advantage in driving fast?

Or horse racing! Practically every teenage girl in the world used to want to own a horse, or loved horses, or wanted to ride horses. Jockeys are small men, typically, because being small and light is an advantage in racing if something is carrying you. And the strength difference between men and women is a. all in the upper body, which is basically not really used in racing a well-trained horse and b. negligible in comparison to the strength of the horse. I don't care how strong a dude is, he's not using his manly strength to guide the horse. The horse is much stronger than him, full stop. It's the horse's training and the trust and respect between horse and jockey and the jockey's strategic mind that wins horse races. All of which are traits cis women have just as much as cis men if not more so in some cases, considering how many cis men are subjected to an upbringing that trains them to think empathy for an animal is a weakness. Why are all the top jockeys not cis women?

Long distance running. Over a distance, speed doesn't matter as much as stamina and endurance, which science has proven cis women have a slight advantage, on average, over cis men in. So... why do cis women not dominate marathons?

Also, why is long distance swimming not a popular sport? Is it just because we don't have mile-long swimming pools? Because we could use natural bodies of water and have boats coming behind the athletes to grab them if they falter and look like they're gonna sink. Could it possibly be because women, with higher endurance and more body fat for better floatation, would be better at it?

Or -- a slightly different angle. Men's professional basketball has become all about "how tall are the athletes you can recruit." Women's professional basketball is still about skill and strategy, not about absurd heights and which team can field more incredibly tall people. I'm not saying short women dominate in women's professional basketball, but I am saying that women exist at the upper extremes of height much more rarely, so women's professional basketball is basically "normal human professional basketball." Why is it so unpopular and unhyped in comparison to men's? Why do the men make so much more money, when they're playing a sport that the vast majority of fit and trained athletes couldn't win in, because those fit and trained athletes aren't in the 99.9% percentile for height? Women's basketball ought to be more interesting than men's... but funny that.

Soccer (aka football everywhere but the US) is a sport where a low center of gravity is valuable. So is hockey. In fact, I, a short and unathletic autistic girl, did incredibly well at floor hockey in high school, in comparison to the taller girls who were better athletes, because I could get under them to get the puck. Therefore why do cis women not dominate those sports? Particularly soccer! Cis men excel at upper body strength but the strength levels of cis men and women's legs are pretty close to equal, and you're not allowed to use your upper body strength in soccer! Women should have an advantage over men there. They do not.

It's because all of the "men are better at sports" bullshit is the patriarchy talking. Men have to be better at sports than women because women have already proven we can compete with men in every other way. Individual female athletes who are excellent cannot be allowed to compete with excellent men because what if they win? What does that say about men and women?

And that's why this "trans women shouldn't compete with cis women" thing was bullshit from the getgo. (Particularly when it's applied to trans girls, who if they are under 13 or they're on puberty blockers don't have significant advantage over their agemate cis girls.) Trans women do not have systemic advantages over cis women in most sports -- not if they've fully transitioned, because you need a continuing supply of testosterone to have the muscular advantage over cis women -- and a fuckton of sports are ones where cis women should own trans women because on average trans women are taller, and sports exist where greater height is a disadvantage.

And then shit like chess. Seriously? The only way a trans woman could be better at chess than a cis woman for a reason to do with her agab (as opposed to, she just happens to be better at chess) is that, growing up as a boy, she was encouraged to play chess more often. Well, you know what, at high level athletic competitions, that's not allowed for a separator. You don't get to say "rich men who grew up with chess tutors are not allowed to play with poor men who only had public school chess club, because they had more opportunity to play chess." Also, it's not provable. My dad practically pushed me into playing chess, and I'm cis female. (I'm not any good at it, not because I am a cis female, but because I don't think multiple steps ahead; my intellectual strengths are in analyzing what has already happened, not in predicting what people will do next. I might be able to beat Elon Musk, though.) If a cis woman is competing in chess at a high level, she is probably very capable of trouncing a cis man. And probably has, many times. So... bullshit.

[catboybiologist]

This is all a FANTASTIC perspective

[amaditalks]

This is all fantastic, and I only want to add this: the official reason that there is a separate division for women in chess is "to promote women’s participation and achievements" because women have been historically underrepresented in competition. In reality, it's because men had such horrible attitudes when women beat them that they created the women's division as a refuge from male egos.

[maimonideznuts]

You should look at why Olympic shooting is gender segregated when it was originally mixed gender... If you guessed protecting the egos of men in the sport, 10 points.

Edit: I totally missed that the shooting topic had already been mentioned

[fleshdyketwo]

why is "mummies are so rare bc the british ate them" always presented as like a morbid fun fact and not an example of heinous racism and dehumanization of people of colour to the point of cannibalism. a little bit odd if im honest.

[just-a-glowy-octopus]

just wanted to add that this is the first time i've seen "british people ate mummies" referred to as "cannibalism," which is a really interesting thing because like. so many times in history classes growing up, "natives" and "indigenous peoples" were purported to engage in "cannibalism" as some sort of explanation for why they were colonized/murdered/etc., but. i just googled. cuz i was curious when british people started/stopped eating mummies, which is definitely cannibalism, yep, human eating human = cannibalism, and.

oh.

would you look at that.

England’s King Charles II took medication made from human skulls after suffering a seizure, and, until 1909, physicians commonly used human skulls to treat neurological conditions.

huh.

Noble’s new book, Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern English Literature and Culture, and another by Richard Sugg of England’s University of Durham, Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians, reveal that for several hundred years, peaking in the 16th and 17th centuries, many Europeans, including royalty, priests and scientists, routinely ingested remedies containing human bones, blood and fat as medicine for everything from headaches to epilepsy. There were few vocal opponents of the practice, even though cannibalism in the newly explored Americas was reviled as a mark of savagery. Mummies were stolen from Egyptian tombs, and skulls were taken from Irish burial sites. Gravediggers robbed and sold body parts.

Same source:

the poor, who couldn’t always afford the processed compounds sold in apothecaries, could gain the benefits of cannibal medicine by standing by at executions, paying a small amount for a cup of the still-warm blood of the condemned. “The executioner was considered a big healer in Germanic countries,” says Sugg. “He was a social leper with almost magical powers.” For those who preferred their blood cooked, a 1679 recipe from a Franciscan apothecary describes how to make it into marmalade.

so. uh. yeah.

[boxturret]

They Use Every Part of the Crab

Mata Nui Online Game is one of the most core parts of Bionicle for me, I'd even go as far as saying I'm more of a MNOG fan who is also a fan of the tie in action figures.

I think one of the most endearing things about it is its art style, its sometimes quite rough, but it just comes together to make some very evocative imagery.

One of the most interesting examples of the very economical way in which this game was made is, I think, the Ussal crab.

The Ussal is first introduced in the Onu-Koro chapter of the game, an area focused around a large mine, and in keeping with this there's a lot of machinery. A few years ago I 3d modelled a lot of them, which is where I first had the realisation that the bulk of them are actually reusing Ussal graphics.

Its something that's come up quite a bit since so I feel I'd like to have a document that covers it all in detail for future reference.

To begin with: this is the Ussal. Its a cute little crab. It has a little rubber band function that lets it do little punches. Even though it first appeared as a set in 2002 it was all over 2001, from MNOG, to the card game Quest For The Masks, to the video games Quest for the Toa and the cancelled Legend of Mata Nui, and its even one of the first creatures you see in the comics!

MNOG, being a flash game, constructed the Ussal out of several simplified collections of parts that could be animated separately. They then reused these parts, flipping them around, overlapping them, scaling them, all sorts, to make all the various machinery you see throughout the area.

So I thought it would be a bit fun to tear apart a couple Ussals for purely demonstrative purposes.

These are all the main usages that I'm aware of. Note these aren't 1:1, there's some scaling involved in some plus extra little bits here and there.

Small Lava Valve

Large Lava Valve

Lava Pump-aka Tower of Crab Corpses

Drill-This one also contains parts of Whenua!

Light Stand-As I recall this was the what made me finally realise the Ussal connection, the bent beam was confusing me until I worked it out.

Lever-Yeah every time you ride this thing you're grabbing an Ussal's eye.

Elevator Winch-its up there, looming out of the darkness.

This object also includes many parts seen in the ziplines.

And while that may be it for the Onu-Koro chapter the Ussal bits make one last surprise appearance in the little electric bug from the next chapter, Le-Koro.

This one is playing a lot with scale, and its using the back of a Kewa bird for the abdomen. it means that the little guy isn't really buildable, but I've tried.

These are all the usages I'm aware of, I'd love to know if anyone's found any others! I'd also like to quickly note where the Ussal was not used, as I find it interesting.

When the Toa Kaita fight the Manas, a much larger, treaded crab, they end up having to smash these large control towers. The towers are full of miscalaneous mechanical bits, but no crab bits.

And at the end of the game, the void features entirely Toa bits and tubing, so no crab bits there either.

I just wanted to make a note of that since it was something I once wondered when looking in to this.

In conclusion, I find it so inspiring how effectively they used their assets. Like, did you know that Lewa's head here when he gets the infected mask knocked off is just reusing the foot graphic?

Wild stuff. Its just very in keeping with the whole building system Bionicle is based on and I love it.

Hope everyone filed their taxes on time. Good night.

[atopfourthwall]

This was a interesting debate I saw recently and I was curious what your opinions were: If another of the Trek show captains (and let's throw reboot Kirk in too because why not?) had been in Sisko's place in "In the Pale Moonlight" would they have been willing to do what he did to get the Romulans involved in the war or would they have completely refused, either finding another way or even done nothing? Could they have lived with it?

Kirk: No, and he certainly couldn't live with it. While he MIGHT be willing to do the deception, the initial escalating unethical stuff would discourage him from pursuing the matter further. Even when they did the Enterprise Incident, the plan seemed to be about minimizing any loss of life on either side other than grabbing the cloaking device. Picard: No, and DEFINITELY couldn't live with it. He'd hope to find some other way than deception in general. Janeway: Willing to do the deception and keep quiet about it... but Garak would have been thrown off the station and ordered to never return after he murdered the Senator. Archer: Season 1-2 Archer, no. Post-season 3 Archer yes. By that point, he has already done the deception game once and had to do unethical and morally questionable things for the sake of what he hopes is the greater good. He wouldn't like it, but he'd definitely do the deception and he'd keep quiet about the murder. Reboot Kirk: Harder nut to crack since we only have the three movies, but most likely he'd be onboard for the initial deception, but the murder would be where he drew the line and try to expose it afterwards. Modern Trek I've only seen so much of, but I can say from what I have seen (Discovery 1-3, Strange New Worlds 1) Georgieu: No idea, since we only saw so much of actual Georgieu. Saru: Would have strong moral objections to the deception, but would go through with it - not the murder and while he might keep the secret, I see him resigning afterwards in shame. Burnham: Go through with the deception, expose the murder plot and either way would cry a lot about it. Garak would berate her for somehow making this all about herself and not the bigger picture. Pike: Depends on how desperate they are at the moment. I see him going through with the deception if things are severely dire, but not early on. Don't see him letting the murder go through, either - he seems the sort to try to expose it and put Garak in jail.

[scramratz]

Being even mildly politically aware is hell. "Why is gas so high???" Bitch i outta smack you

[byz-was-here]

Jaller is a fun character because he starts out as

And then he ACTUALLY DIES.

And then he comes back, and just goes

"Aren't you tired of being nice? Don't you just want to go apeshit?"

And he has God's braincells go on strike, correctly assumes that the missing toa are in over their heads, and Decides that he, a short-ass general who had one vacation in 1,000 years and DIED at the end of it- is gonna personally drag the nuva out of whatever they've gottent themselves into. He's not completely stupid, so he takes along an Air Force Pilot, a Mad Scientist, 2 Sports Stars, His friend the prophesied glitter hero with the care bear stare, and, as an added fuck you to the turaga, The Only Person Both Able And Willing to translate for Turaga Nuju.

Jaller has lost his ability to give a fuck and he's going to make it everyone's problem.

[crystaltoa]

There was at least one other person who could understand Nuju. So either Kualus absolutely refused to translate for him, or Nuju refused to have him translate, probably because Kualus can’t resist an opportunity to subtly make fun of his accent and grammar.

[byz-was-here]

Kualus' smug aura mocks him.

[tiredspacedragon]

Ah yes, the infamous Gali/Takua mind link.

I'm curious. How many people here know that not only is this mind link canon (and sticks around, it's brought up again in Karda Nui), but that it's something all Toa can do, not just a weird Gali one off?

Yeah, apparently all Toa possess the ability to create mental links with Matoran, and possibly other beings, which allow them to communicate through dreams. I honestly wish this ability was used more. It seems like it would be handy to have all the members of a given Toa Team mentally linked, making them that much more united and in-sync with each other.

[crystaltoa]

I knew all Toa could link with Av-Matoran, but that link generally requires requires physical contact to maintain, whereas Gali and Takua didn’t. If what you’re saying is true it probably requires a ton of mental training for anyone other than a Toa of Psionics to maintain over distance under normal circumstances , but Gali and Takua somehow just diacovered it completely by accident.

The fact that they had met each other on Karda Nui, and possibly established a contact-link back then might have made it easier though. Takua’s mindlink ability didn’t activate when any of the other Toa on Mata Nui touched him because the Order of Mata Nui brainwashed him in such a way as to block his Av-Matoran powers, but it seems Gali could get around that.

Whether a psychic group chat would be a good idea for Toa team really depends on the team. I could see the Mahri putting it to good use, but the Metru would just be a nightmare

[tiredspacedragon]

Here's the quote from the BS01 Toa page:

"Toa can also forge mental links with Matoran. The Toa can project visions of what they see to the linked Matoran. Whether or not Toa can be mentally linked with multiple beings, or with beings besides Matoran, is unknown."

It's pretty vague as is, but that leaves it ripe for headcanons :P

[crystaltoa]

Oh you just KNOW Macku and Hewkii would try this. Or perhaps discover it accidentally.

[byz-was-here]

Axonn, looking at Hewkii staring into the distance with a silly grin: "Is he quite alright?"

Jaller: Oh it's nothing, he's just texting his wife.

Axonn: ah.