Kaeru nyōbō (蛙女房) — "frog wive", a shapeshifting character in Japanese folklore. The frog turns into a woman in order to marry a human man, but retains some of her froggy qualities — Kaeru nyōbō is very fragile, small, and is unable to do heavy work due to her little strength.
The life with her can be perfectly ordinary and peaceful, unless the curiosity of a husband & family discovers her true nature, and she hops away.
The stories about frog wives exist all over Japan with some variations of the plot. The motive itself — of a girl "with a secret" and a family ruined by prying into it — seems to be extremely popular in Japanese folklore in general.
Imagine you’re some little evil woman sitting in Hades’ throne room when Orpheus walks in to make a deal to get Eurydice back, and Hades is like “yeah ok, just don’t look back otherwise she has to stay here” then walks out of the room. Almost immediately after hearing the conditions, Orpheus breaks his own neck so that is is physically impossible for him to turn it, and then demands that you gouge out his eyes for good measure.  Eurydice then gets really upset because she’s convinced this is a sign that Orpheus hates her and never wants to see her again, and Orpheus is completely convinced that this was a normal and logical thing to do.
You are literally the only person in the universe who recognizes this as an act of love. They both then insult you to your face for thinking this is anything other than very normal (Orpheus), or petty hatred (Eurydice).
[VIDEO AND PHOTOS TAKEN: MARCH 10TH, 2026 | Video and Image IDs: A video and six photos of a spiny brown and grey larval Pyractomena firefly crawling around on a human hand, its head looking around curiously and its back end curling up and pushing forward almost like how one would use a cane/walking stick /End IDs.]
The first I've seen of this kind's larvae! What a badass looking beast this thing is, and so curious too! It's like a doggy to me
Fish detect turbulence in the water around them; among other things, this helps them avoid colliding with objects. Here, researchers are looking to understand how fish interact with underwater turbines. (Video and image credit: H. Seyedzadeh et al.)
locked tomb modern au but its us politics. john is a congressman or governor or even president or smthn and the mithraeum team is his political staff. this is the worst timeline btw
okay i abstained from posting while high too much last night but here are my thoughts re: what everyone is up to in this au...
john gaius: now i know the first thought is to make him president of the united states but I simply don't think that fits. the presidency is by definition limited to a specific term and then they retire to a life of giving commencement speeches. that man needs a forever job. john gaius I declare thee speaker of the house.
augustine and mercy: chief of staff and legislative director respectively. mercy could alternatively be comms director if i wanted to make her suffer more. this imho means that Augustine is top dog and johns right hand but mercy does the actual work. mercy also manages the legislative aides.....
ianthe and harrow: legislative aides. to quote @literallygideonav, legitimately harrow and ianthe were born to be congressional interns together. ianthe is from a megadonor family with vast political connections and harrow got her start mostly with church organizing. she was involved in a major pr spin post-church scandal which is what got her this job but it also means shes deeply closeted (this will not stop ianthe). and as an aside, harrow is canonically a good public speaker and i think we should appreciate that more.
gideon nav: newly discovered daughter of the speaker who by coincidence, grew up in the same small town as harrow. not a political bone in her body but is being forced to do a whole publicity campaign to spin the scandal of the speaker having a gay and out-of-wedlock daughter. and since they seem to already know each other, harrow is tasked with prepping gideon before public appearances and keeping her in line. what fun :) wonder what those two get up to ;)
okay apparently this au has taken over my brain, so, other members of the cast below the read more.
gideon the first: hear me out. scheduler. that's where the real dirt is.
pyrrha: campaign manager. unofficial side babyyy.
palamedes and camilla: representative and chief of staff. clearly. nearly identical to their canon dynamic except it involves like a million more binders. I'm thinking palamedes is a relatively new representative but from a political family. he probably has a law degree or at minimum an MPA.
judith: staffer for some executive agency, probably DoD. presumably marta is also there. judiths dad is the secretary of defense so shes a bit of a nepotism hire.
coronabeth: i keep going back and forth on her. currently I'm going with she was all lined up for a very high-paying job at her familys political consulting firm but then suddenly turned it all down. now works for the political arm of an advocacy org. probably a registered lobbyist. idk im still workshopping her
naberius: babs is so well suited to a us politics au that it is almost too hard to place him anywhere specific. he's just one man in a sea of white guys in brown shoes and blue suits. whatever he was up to, he took the downfall for something ianthe was doing before she got her job at the speakers office and she killed his career to advance her own. very trag.
abigail, magnus, Isaac and jeannemary: abigail and magnus are also a representative/chief of staff pair and they are still married. yuck. isaac and jeannemary are their interns, obviously. isaac actually likes it but jeannemary is only doing this because magnus is friends with her dad.
silas and colum: again, representative/chief of staff pair. silas is a freshman representative and so fucking religious. personal vendetta against harrowhark for her involvement in her church scandal and would love to end her political career.
ortus: does not work for congress but grew up with gideon and harrow and worked with harrow during the church organizing days. gideon used to have a video on her phone of harrow yelling at ortus until he cried but was forced by johns team to delete it. gideon still sulks about it. she loved that video.
haven't yet decided what to do with boe...... tbd.......
whats cool about being trans is my parents are totally right. i did kill their beautiful son. im the thing that animates his corpse in an ever more convincing parody of a happy girl. i devoured him from the inside out and now there is nothing left of him and he is dead dead dead and there is only me, with my hollow eyes and dark eyeliner and long hair, and my big smile. my limp, effeminate gestures belie the marionetting of the boy they loved. my fagginess is his death. already his body becomes a fitter home for my parasitism in full; the tits, the hips, the thighs. sorry about your kid. thanks for the biomass <3
