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@lawfulgoodchozo
The Chozolorian After finding a vulnerable youngling during her dangerous bounty hunt, stoic huntress Samus Aran is tasked by the Chozo Elders to search the system for its people. But danger looks in the lawless territories, and many eyes have fallen upon the value of this mysterious creature… Here is a commission I did of a mashup of Samus and The Mandalorian
How it feels, listening to my Players’ theories about my game:
Black cats are lucky. (via leahweissmuller)
MAN [IN THICK ACCENT]: Black cat bring good luck. Not bad luck. I have black cat - See, him face - And I am not dead today: Good luck!
“See him face”
I sure fucking do see him face
Him face
Reblog him face for good luck in 2021
Reblog him face for good luck in 2021 (2)
@melisscan
i don't really understand why you would be pro-zoo. like i understand nature reserves and sanctuaries where people can observe from afar, but it doesn't seem right to me when they're locked up in generally small confined areas for people to watch them do nothing all day. idk maybe i'm getting this wrong, and i still really respect you, i just don't understand this. like i interned at a zoo and felt uncomfortable with how small their living areas were and how they had no stimulation
Zoos don’t look like this anymore.
They look like this:
Good zoos do not keep their animals in “tiny spaces” with no enrichment. I’m not pro-roadside zoo. I’m pro-accredited zoo. Zoos are incredibly important for conservation and education.
Are Zoos Necessary?
The Importance of Zoos: Resource Post
Why Zoos and Aquariums Matter: Assessing the Impact of a Visit to a Zoo or Aquarium
Why I Want to be a Keeper
Why I Believe in Zoos
There should be way more pictures of modern zoos so i just add some more
Seriously zoos do so much important conservation work as well I hate when people shit all over zoos as if the animals are locked up and not looked after
The SF Zoo has two sea lions. Now, if you know SF, you know that sea lions are a Thing. They’re all over Pier 39 and various other beaches in N California. In fact, the zoo is near the ocean, so there are sea lions not 200 yards from the zoo entrance. So having sea lions in the zoo seems sort of superfluous.
Except the sea lions are blind. One was found as an adult after suffering a gun shot wound to the face that destroyed his eyes. The other was found as an adolescent, weak and starving because it had been blinded and unable to hunt. So they were rescued and introduced and the zoo built them a nice pool where they can swim and sunbathe and people toss them fish. It’s not the biggest exhibit, or the fanciest. But it’s a home for them, where they’re safe and well fed. Sea lions aren’t the most romantic of animals, but they’re a part of SF culture and a lot of us have a soft spot for the loud, bulbous things. And because of zoos, these two get to live long, happy lives.
Whenever anyone complains about zoos, I think about Silent Knight and Henry.
I think it’s St. Louis zoo that is saving big cats in Africa. Scientists couldn’t figure out what was killing off the local lion population. They were dying off from Canine Distemper. The local unvaccinated dogs of the towns would spread the disease to other animals or have it themselves. When the lions ate the infected animals they would catch it as well. You know what that Zoo is doing to stop this disease? They are going over to those towns and vaccinating the dogs for free. The community loves it and people from other villages comes for miles to get their dogs vaccinated as well.
They also do work with camel populations because the local human population use the camels for food sources the zoos help monitor the camels health.
Another zoo, I want to say it’s the Oregon zoo but don’t quote me on that, is helping female inmates. The zoo works with the female prisons by encouraging the inmates to assist in the breeding and raising of endangered species of butterflies. They plant the specific plants that the butterflies and catapillars need, raise them, and release them. These inmates get noted in any scientific journals that get published. They are giving these inmates a sense of accomplishment and validation.
Zoos not only save species but bring together and assist communities in an effort to save the environment. Zoos, good zoos, are essential to the future and I will fight anyone who tries to say otherwise.
PS you don’t see PETA doing any of this.
One of the local zoos in my area at one point rescued a bald eagle that had been shot and kept it in the zoo to let it recuperate until they freed it again. Some of the zoos in my state will keep injured animals there until they heal again.
Helsinki Zoo is the world leader in snow leopard and Amur leopard conservation, in their care these endangered species have managed to breed more than anywhere else in captivity and this in turn has enabled the re-introduction of these animals back to their native habitats. https://www.korkeasaari.fi/helsinki-zoo/
I work at a zoo that is instrumental in the California Condor recovery program (among dozens of other conservation projects). We went from 42 surviving individuals left to over 400, over 200 of whom are in the wild. We’re part of the amur leopard species survival plan with two young animals who are eagerly attempting to make babies. We host one of North America’s only bachelor troops of western lowland gorillas, preserving the social structure of wild gorillas. All of our bald eagles are rescues who would not survive in the wild. All our keepers participate in field research and conservation work in addition to a full time team of conservationists. We host the most genetically valuable male Masai giraffe in North America, who has sired 5 offspring with 1 on the way, increasing the genetic diversity of his entire species. If you’re against zoos, you don’t know what zoos do.
Super, SUPER important thread.
Also zoos tend to do a lot of breeding and conservation work with smaller, less charismatic species like invertebrates and amphibians. Those species are extremely important in the ecosystem but don’t get the same notoriety as the charismatic megafauna.
Also zoos are the reason that the Przewalski’s horse, one of the last if not THE last wild horse subspecies in the world went from extinct in the wild to merely endangered.
Samus Aran (Metroid) - Alex Chow
samus aran by 호우자
#if you ask I will write a whole goddamn essay on Boromir #and why his death means more to us as we get older *whispers* babe I want the essay
Why must you always enable me I love it never stop. So. Wow. Where to even start. I rant through my tears about how much I love Boromir every time I watch Lord of the Rings, which I do about once a year with @captainofthefallen. Every time I watch it, his death means more to me, hits me harder, and I think that’s because the older we get, the more we identify with Boromir.
Here’s the thing. In all honesty, as a kid (I first read LotR when I was eleven, first watched the films at that age as well), I wasn’t too fond of Boromir. Oh I liked him all right, he was fine I suppose, but I didn’t connect with him. I was angry when he tried to take the One Ring from Frodo, and I cried a little at his death because death is sad and I was a kid, but it didn’t devastate me.
Because as a kid? I wanted to be Aragorn. The reluctant king who rises up and does the right thing, always. The guy who gets the amazing (be still my bi heart) Arwen, the Evenstar, fairest of the elves. The guy who literally kicks ass. The man who is noble, honorable, thoughtful, good with his words, humble, knows the burdens of leadership, who stands up and says there will be a day when the courage of men fails, but this is not that day.
I wanted to be the hero.
I noticed this trend among my peers growing up. We all loved Aragorn and wanted to be him. Boromir was sort of dismissed.
But then a funny thing happened, called getting older.
I got older, and I fucked up.
I got older, and depression hit.
I got older, and the weight of societal expectations, of being an older sibling, of adult responsibilities, of legacy, of family secrets, of family history, all settled on my shoulders.
I got older, and I learned that men are not always honorable, or kind, or humble, or the leaders they should be. And I learned how hard and desperate it is to continue to believe in the strength of men.
I got older, and I learned how temptation comes for us all, in different forms, and how we hurt people without meaning to, and how sometimes for all our regret and tears and apologies, we cannot mend what we broke.
I got older, and I leaned what it is to be forced into a role I didn’t want, to feel I’d hit a dead end, to struggle against those who had different views, to feel like people could look into my heart and see the anger and fear that I tried so hard to hide.
I got older, and I realized: I’m Boromir.
We’re all Boromir.
Tolkien was very deliberate with his characters. They aren’t just characters, flawed and wonderful though they might be. They also each represent something very specific. Aragorn represents the Ideal. The hero that we all can be, the hero that we should strive to be, the vision of mankind as we are supposed to be, if only we can let ourselves shed our hubris and our doubts. Aragorn represents who we should be.
Boromir represents who we are.
Flawed, frustrated, burdened, tempted, struggling, setback, good intentioned, afraid, angry, kindhearted, noble, loyal, and painfully, beautifully human.
Boromir went to the Council of Elrond reluctantly. He shouldn’t have gone. Boromir is a war leader, as we learn after his death. He successfully fought for and defended Gondor from Mordor for years. That’s where he belongs. Faramir is the quiet one, the diplomat, the “wizard’s pupil,” the soft-spoken and patient one. Note that even in the film version, which shows a differently characterized Faramir than in the books (Tolkien heavily based Faramir on himself), Faramir only wants the One Ring in order to give it to his father and win his father’s pride and affection–he doesn’t want it for himself.
If Faramir had been at the Council and Boromir had stayed in Gondor, everything would have gone differently, and possibly for the better.
But the Steward of Fuckwits aka Boromir and Faramir’s father decides he wants Boromir to go, to represent their family, because Boromir is the son he values and is the “face” of Gondor. So Boromir sets aside what he wants, and he goes. And the whole time he feels out of place, feels like a fish out of water, feels second to Aragorn, feels lost, feels terrified his city will fall while he is gone, feels like the race of Men is being mocked and looked down on as weak.
How many of us as we grow up are stuck like that? We can’t fix our family (although we try), we can’t fix our broken country (although we try), we can’t get rid of the doubts and fears that whisper to us (although we try), and we can’t stop feeling like we’re constantly second best, constantly failing, looked down on, especially the millennial generation.
(Given what’s happening in the world right now, I wouldn’t be surprised if Tolkien found himself surprisingly similar in outlook and feeling to our generation. But that’s another topic.)
And of course that’s the key. Boromir–darling, frustrated, stuck, fatally flawed Boromir–is so very relatable because he tries. He tries to teach Merry and Pippin to protect themselves and then tries to save them and dies for it. He tries to convince Aragorn (who at that point is more elf than man in his outlook) that there is no reason to give up on his people, their people–and he succeeds in that, although he dies before he gets to see it. He tries to make his father proud. He tries to apologize when he fucks up. He tries and he fails, and he tries and he succeeds. And the most important things he does, the biggest seeds he plants, he never sees them flower.
Like my God, the man’s last words are I failed. I failed you, I failed Frodo, I tried to take the Ring. I’m sorry, I failed. That hits me so goddamn hard in my mid20s and it’ll hit me even harder when I’m older, I’m sure. How many times have we said that to people? “I tried to help him.” “I tried to reach out.” “I tried to apologize.” “I tried to stop them.” “I tried so hard.” I tried, I tried, I tried. For the job, for the friend, for everything, I tried.
And I failed.
I have a laundry list of things I tried and failed at, and God, do they hurt. Sometimes it was something out of my control, sometimes it was my own behavior. And that scene with Boromir, the flawed man, staring up at Aragorn, the ideal hero, and begging him, begging him, “save them, they took the little ones, find Frodo,” begging him for forgiveness, apologizing for his failures?
Talk about a fucking metaphor.
We make our ideals in literature so that we have something to look up to and strive for, for others to strive for. Boromir falls prey to the ring, but Aragorn does not. You did what I could not. Of course Aragorn did. He’s the ideal. And we beg our ideals to be better so they can show us the way and hopefully, maybe, someday, we can be like them.
I had so many heroes growing up, real and literary. Sara from A Little Princess. Aragorn. Lucy from Narnia. Nancy Drew. Harry Potter. And so many times I would look at myself in the mirror and cry because I knew, I knew if I stood in front of them they would be disappointed in me. I knew I wasn’t being the person I could be. I tried, I failed, I tried, I failed, but my God I swear, I tried.
As a kid or even a teenager, we still see mainly who we want to be. Our ideal. And I hope that we never lose sight of that. I love Aragorn and my God am I going to keep trying to be like him, and like all of my other literary heroes. We need those heroes, we need them so badly, and the darker the world gets the brighter we have to make them shine.
As an adult, though–as an adult, we start to see not only who we want to be, but who we are, and who we could’ve been, and how we failed to be, and the paths not taken and the paths that were lost. And that’s important too. Because Boromir died convinced he was a failure. Convinced he was, truly, the weakness we find in men.
And he was… but he wasn’t.
Without Boromir, Aragorn wouldn’t know what happened to Merry and Pippin or where they went. Without Boromir, Aragorn would’ve had no hope in the race of men. Without Boromir, who would have carried the hobbits up the cold mountain, or taught them how to fight, or said give them a moment, for pity’s sake! Who would have defended Gondor for so long, or loved his brother with a ferocity that Denethor’s abuse couldn’t knock loose, and inspired that brother to keep fighting even as the light faded and the night grew cold and long?
Aragorn carries Boromir’s bracers throughout the rest of the trilogy, right up to his coronation, where he is still wearing them as he is made King. Because Boromir might not have seen it–we might not see it–but we tried and we failed but we didn’t fail at everything. Lives are made brighter for our presence. The world is better for our gifts and our convictions. And no fight, even a fight lost, is done in vain.
The remains of the Fellowship ride to Gondor not just because it’s the Right Thing to Do, but because it is the city of their fallen brother, it’s Boromir’s home, the home that above all he gave everything to defend. Boromir doesn’t want the Ring for power, he wants it so his home will be safe, his family will be safe, and God who can’t relate to that, as we grow older and we see our families and friends attacked and scarred, as we have children and want them out of harm’s way. Who wouldn’t be tempted to seize the chance to keep them safe?
I see so much of myself in Boromir. And I take hope. I take inspiration. I cheer through my tears as he is hit again and again with arrows and each time he gets back up on his feet and grits his teeth and you can see him thinking not today. As a child I thought Boromir was selfish but as an adult I hear him use his last breath to apologize to Aragorn and call him his brother and his king and I see he’s more selfless than he ever gave himself credit for being. Boromir sees only his faults, but we can see what he doesn’t, we see his positive impact and we see his virtues, too.
Because as an adult I’ve failed, and I want to believe that like Boromir, I’ve also succeeded, I’ve also been more than just my faults–even if I can’t see that yet.
Aragorn is who we should be. But Boromir is who we are.
And my God, we should be proud of that. Because Boromir is a damn good person to be.
there are 2 kinds of player reactions to monster reveals
MTG Items in D&D: The Arkbow
Arkbow Magic Weapon (Longbow) - Legendary (Requires attunement by a Ranger) The Arkbow is a longbow that grants its wielder the power to carry the souls of beasts within the bow, and summon their spectral forms when loosing an arrow. You gain a +2 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this magic longbow. When you are within 10 feet of the dead body of a small, medium or large beast that has a CR equal to or lower than half your ranger level, you can spend one minute attempting to communicate with the beast’s spirit, achieved through a DC 15 Wisdom (Animal Handling) check. On a success, the creature’s spirit is persuaded to inhabit the Arkbow. The Arkbow can contain the spirits of any number of beasts, which leave the Arkbow if it becomes attuned to by another creature, and return if it is reattuned by a previously-attuned creature. Up to three times per day, you can summon the spirit of one beast inhabiting the Arkbow. You may summon a beast to an empty space within 10 feet of you, or summon it by attacking an enemy. To do so, make a ranged attack with the Arkbow. If you hit the target of the attack, the summoned creature appears in an empty space within 5 feet of the attack’s target, and may immediately make an attack against the target. On a miss, the summoned creature appears in an empty space of your choice which is both within the weapon’s range, and between 10 and 15 feet away from the attack’s target. Beast spirits summoned this way act immediately after you in initiative. They can be commanded as a bonus action. The beast spirits inhabiting the Arkbow count as both beasts and undead, and have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks. Beast spirits remain for one minute after being summoned, after which they return to the Arkbow. You can have up to three beast spirits active at one time, but you cannot summon the same beast twice. You can however, summon more than one beast of the same type, if each of those beasts of the same type inhabit the Arkbow, such as the spirits of two different wolves.
Designing this item, I focused on making it work as effectively an “ark” for the spirits of beasts that the user befriends, it allows you to form a large library of different beasts you can summon with the bow, which balances with the player as the CR of beast spirits you’re able to befriend raises with the user’s level.
You can find more of my magic items here!
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When you roll 2 nat 20’s in a row after hitting sub 10 all night
“My past is not a memory. It’s a force at my back.”
LOTR’s concept artists designed the films as a “journey back in time”
So (according to the concept art book) as the Fellowship travels deeper into Middle Earth, the places they pass through become inspired by progressively older periods of history. The farther along you are in the story, the more ancient the design influences
We begin in The Shire: which feels so familiar because, with its tea-kettles and cozy fireplaces, it’s inspired by the relatively recent era of rural England in the 1800s
But when we leave Hobbiton, we also leave that familiar 1800s-England aesthetic behind and start going farther back in time.
Bree is based on late 1600s English architecture
Rohan is even farther back, based on old anglo-saxon era architecture (400s-700s? ce)
Gondor is way back, and no longer the familiar English or Anglo-Saxon: its design comes from classical Greek and Roman architecture
And far far FAR back is Mordor. It’s a land of tents and huts: prehistoric, primitive, primeval. Cavemen times
And the heart of Mordor is a barren lifeless hellscape of volcanic rock…like a relic from the ages when the world was still being formed, and life didn’t yet exist
And then they finally reach Mount Doom, which one artist described as
“where the ring was made, which represents, in a sense, the moment of creation itself”
I’m screaming why does Mamma Mia fit every fight scene so perfectly ajkaslajjddhhajadkjfh
this video is what dnd feels like
ROLL INTIATIVE
Reblog if your d&d character is a dumbass.
As a Dungeon Master I’m constantly tap-dancing on the line between a) trying to craft an engaging atmosphere with deep, complex characters and b) cramming as many terrible puns and random references my brain can produce.
