You're Right And You Should Say It - Tumblr Posts

Keeper inexperience and lack of research is often so much more punishing to exotics than it is to truly domesticated animals. Canine experts and breeders rightfully spend so much time begging first time (and sometimes longtime) owners to understand the unique needs and expectations of their type of dog before committing, because the difference between some pure breeds is literally night and day regarding everything from activity levels, grooming requirements, health risks, to general temperament, etc. And this is just for different breeds within the same species. Imagine the catching up one has to do to familizarize themselves with what to expect from not just a completely different species, different family, but whole different phylum than the majority of people are familiar with. Caring for Old world tarantulas vs. New world tarantulas are completely different games to sign up for. Same with tarantulas generally vs jumping spiders, even more so for arachnids vs. mantids vs. whip scorpions. All of the above times 500 for arthropods vs anything like a guinea pig.

This exact thing is also what makes me nervous from time to time keeping an ear to the reptile community. Leopard and crested geckos are frequently touted as beginner friendly introductions to herp keeping. I’ve known children who had leos. “Beginner friendly” in pet husbandry means relatively easy/cheap to keep alive and healthy. It says NOTHING about the general tolerance of the animal to human handling or the amount of dedicated time and care you have to put in to desensitize said animal to human contact if your provider didn’t. These things will literally amputate their tails if startled too badly or handled wrong once, and tolerance to handling is not something anyone should be taking for granted from a new reptile. Times 500 again for athropods. There’s a huge reason that near every video of a smart keeper handling a defensive arachnid is preceded by moments of them testing where the line is with a pencil/stick and what sort of mood their pet is in before human hands come anywhere near it. You think owning cats is a strict lesson in respecting boundaries? Try and see how little leeway for harassment you’ll be granted from a cornered arachnid. That’s the thing- they’ll always be the one in a corner if they feel threatened, and their instincts are not unjustified to remind them of that. In terms of size alone, you’re basically Cthulhu in comparison to them.

It’s amazing and awesome to see enthusiasm for invertebrate keeping on a rise, but first and foremost as long as that enthusiasm is matched by a willingness to treat them with no less respect and humility than any other exotic. Loving invertebrates means loving them for what they really are instead of some anthropomorphized ideal of them. It’s part of what makes them truly unique and in their own category of experience, and maybe that’s not for everyone and okay! You can still find them cute without needing them to be cuddly.

I am somewhat happy that jumping spiders are becoming popular as pets and even people who normally don't like spiders seem to find them cute, but people have GOT to stop acting like they are miniature mammals who want love and affection and pets and want to hang out with you.

I have seen countless posts in jumper groups from people asking why their jumper tries to escape when they're holding it or seems skittish or threat poses at them. It's because you are a giant predator and they want to get away from you. They don't get any happy chemicals from handling like mammals would.

I'm starting to see this in millipede groups as well. "Why is my millipede secreting this liquid on me?" Because it does not want to be handled. It's stressful for the animal, and stress can kill them.

Not only does it stress them, but often taking them out of their enclosure is dangerous for them - I have seen a lot of posts from people whose spider escaped and was injured or was crushed in the door of the enclosure because they were taking it in and out frequently. Drops can also be harmful, especially for larger invertebrates like tarantulas and bigger millipedes.

In general, invertebrate pets are not going to be a good option if you want to handle something frequently. There are definitely some species and individuals who tolerate it more, and if you're an experienced keeper, you can learn the signs of a stressed animal and only handle ones that are chill about it. But the majority of the time, they should be left alone and observed only.

Hiromu Arakawa’s genius is obvious throughout all of FMA but her first and biggest leap of genius was in how she crafted her protagonist. 

Arakawa realized the burgeoning youth of the early 2000s wasnt interested in another plucky spry optimistic young shonen protag. Instead she gave us a short ugly egotistical asshole smarter-than-you atheist with so much money and power that people could no longer best him in arguments by telling him “dude shut up ur literally like 12″ 

Five pages in we’re told Edward’s famous and rich and powerful. Five more pages and he’s calling some girl stupid for thinking God exists. Five more pages and he’s proven right. Five more and he’s kicked an evil priest’s teeth in. And no one can tell his mom on him.

Hiromu Arakawa figured out the dream of every edgy young weeb discovering internet arguments for the first time and she cast them an idol made of gold.

Literally what other Irken even does this?! Refresh my memory if I’m wrong because Irkens actually do have a working construct of morality. Like they’re not actually that far and away from human psychology at all, other than the hyper militarized, imperialistic culture. On the whole they can be a cruel and very destructive people, but out of a tribalistic belief in their united supremacy. They have empathy- selectively applied to their own kind. They have respect- conditioned to yield literally upwards the chain of command. They understand loyalty and justice and even something akin to friendship.

Yes yes Zim’s a living symptom of a very diseased system, but it always grazes me just a little wrongly at how much I see other fans blaming all Irken society for the degree of Zim’s antisocial tendencies. Every bit of cruelty and scorn they have thrown his way, he has literally been earning from them since the day of his birth without a single hint of regret or intention to stop. Sizz-Lorr and Red and Purple and Poki are not a pack of bullies to him, they’re terrified and appalled of him, and they see him as the maniacal criminal he is. Red is, for all intents and purposes, also grossly callous toward his subjects and downright tyrannical to conquered races, and even he would call zim a monster for killing two previous Tallests. You’d think if he were some true purely self-interested dictator he’d maybe see the silver lining that it got him into his current position.

I don’t remotely think Zim even buys the idea much of Irken supremacy inherently, just Zim supremacy, and a little of that trickling down onto other Irkens abstractly, because they are lucky enough to the same species as ZiM. The harm he causes his brethren, though? He’s proud of it, the same as he is for acts of sadism against lesser kinds. He wants commendation just for showing off that he has the capabilities to destroy their entire way of life unchecked. He feels no remorse for the deaths of Miyuki and Spork, no shame for his devastation on their home planets. Skoodge (who I can only assume is cracked in the head for this) offers himself up to the guy as a faithful compadre again and again only for Zim to throw him to the wolves and unnecessarily endanger his life. Over and over we get shown the primary motivation behind his attempts to win the Tallests favor actually being fear of retribution from them, not any ernest desire for redemption. I swear a time or two, the longer he is away from his society the more times he lets slip his honest regard toward the flag he flies, and Dib is blissfully not listening carefully enough.

If Skoodge or Poki or any of the others didn’t make a stark enough contrast to Zim’s chaotic evil ass, there we always have Tak. Tak who did everything right, save for ending up an unlucky collateral of this idiot’s antics. Tak who arrived determined and bitter, barely holding back righteous fury, and doing all of the things that Zim isn’t- the actual work involved with repairing her status and earning her place back in Operation Impending Doom II. Zim thoroughly screwed up this poor soldier’s career and dream and he doesn’t have so much as an excuse or apology to offer when confronted. He completely understands Tak’s vendetta against him, and he doesn’t care.

Tak herself isn’t the kind of monster he is. To humans, yes, she’s the same if not an even worse threat because of her competence; and yet, she would have been a hero to Irk if she had succeeded and gotten Zim out of the way. She presumably had the explicit clearance of the Tallests to do this, she did her due dilligence in tracking down Zim and taking over an otherwise “unclaimed” world, and she truly believes she is acting above petty revenge- she uses all the logic of fairness and the rightful way of things to justify what she’s doing. She shouldn’t even be here and she shouldn’t have to be taking someone else’s assignment. Zim is the unhinged supervillain, and she’s taking back what he in a sense stole from her. She actually wants to serve her empire to her fullest capability possible.

Zim on the other hand just wants to see the world burn. Any world… Earth, Devastis, Mars, Irk, it truly does not matter that much. The sick pride in being the one who can burn the most things is its own reward to him.

Infamy and veneration are exactly the same feedback to this guy, as long as all eyes are on him while the crowd screams.

I mean, okay, the funny thing is that it’s a very common Trope to have the Evil Villain who does a lot of Evil things but is so deluded and full of bullshit self-justification that they earnestly believe that they are Good, even as on some level they know this is wrong. It's just something they cannot admit to themselves, and this denial is a fundamental part of their psyche. And Zim Invaderzim is… not that kind of character. Zim is very proudly and shamelessly horribly evil.

But also on some level he is that Trope…. for the other axis of the D&D Alignment System. Zim is a Chaotic Evil Villain who is obsessively dedicated to maintaining the self-delusion that he is Lawful Evil. 

watched sonic 2 and full of guts tonight let’s make myself cancellable on tumblr AND twitter

Im so sorry for what im about to say...

Eddie talking about Steve to Gareth

Via

here’s another hot take:

I don’t think Campbell is even remotely redeemable until he tells David what actually happened to Jasper. Like that should just not be thrown under the rug. Then it’ll be up to David whether or not he forgives him and I hope to GOD HE DOESN’T

"average person goes through 3 gender affirming procedures a year just for fun" factoid actualy just statistical error. average person goes through 0 gender affirming procedures per year. Trans Icon Hua Cheng and Trans Icon Shi Qingxuan, who live in a world with shapeshifting magic & shapeshift just for fun 10,000 times each day, are outliers adn should not have been counted

not to be like that but i genuinely believe there will never be another idol like yoongi. he can not only rap and dance but also sing and play piano and guitar plus write lyrics and compose AND prouduce songs. is well-spoken and polite and smart and offers comforting words to fans. he is open about his mental health struggles and wants to study psychology so he can help people like him. he also openly supports the lgbt community. he can cook and build things and fix things and he takes care of others. works hard and is always looking for ways to improve himself. he enjoys the silly things fans come up with and will do anything they ask AND he has the cutest smile in the world

How Tamsyn Muir Uses Information

I've been trying to pinpoint exactly why I've been so obsessed with The Locked Tomb for the better part of a year by now, and I think I've finally been able to draw some useful conclusions. Here's my analysis of Tamsyn Muir's writing, and, specifically, how Muir uses information to drive a plot.

For me, and for most fiction writers, one of the most critical elements which drives the plot of a story is the information you choose to give to the reader, and the information you choose to withhold. It is my opinion that no one uses (and arguably misuses) information as beautifully as Muir does. Muir is surgical both in the way she delivers information to the reader, and the way she fails to deliver information to the reader. Most writers aim to feed the readers information about the story, bit by bit, letting the reader finish the picture. Muir uses this idea, but her writing is so lush and so sharp is that the information she gives us is distorted almost beyond recognition, but just coherent enough that the reader can guess at the bigger picture. This method of delivery persists from the inciting incident, basically up until the climax.

By the climax, we, the readers, have recieved just enough information to guess at the direction of the story, but we recieve so little information that we are still scrambling for more. It is at this point where Muir finally reveals one or two critical pieces of information, and when she does, the true stakes of the conflict hit the reader with, as Muir would put it, the inexorable weight of a gravity collapse. The truth is that Muir has been building suspense for an entire novel, but it's hard for the reader to conceptualise truly how dire the situation for the characters is because we have been left in the dark. We were crawling at a snail's pace, and so we didn't sense the danger until we stood before the precipice.

I was going to include specific examples of what I've just described, but I changed my mind, and I'll explain:

If you've read The Locked Tomb, you know what I'm talking about (my heart shall never be whole again).

If you haven't read The Locked Tomb, read it! It is lush, dark, vivacious, and many other adjectives which make it unclear whether I'm describing a book or a person.

Ahem. Anyway. TazMuir, I love your writing, and Alecto the Ninth will be my end, as swift and sure as the hammer to the oxygen-sealant machine of my childhood.

cracking open the laptop to make this post bc i have THINGS to SAY and typing on a phone keyboard can be a bitch. anyways. maybe someone else has already said these things before, but i haven't seen those posts or whatever so. we all know that scene near the end of s5 where martins all like "jon we are only compatible bc of trauma and we never would have worked otherwise" etc etc, and if i'm remembering correctly, the main thing he says to justify why he thinks that is how much, from martin's perspective, jon hated him. which is a completely valid and understandable conclusion to draw from martin's pov and if i were martin i'd probably think the same thing!! but bc i get to view their relationship from outside pov as a viewer i still think hes wrong and here's why:

(heres a cut bc this ended up much longer than i thought it would)

i'm sure there are plenty of y'all out there who agree with me on this, but i really don't think jon actually ever hated martin. i think jon saw martin as an easy scapegoat to project his own insecurities onto, mainly being how incompetent and unprepared he felt after having been promoted to head archivist, and. well. it was a shitty thing to do on jon's part but one way to draw attention away from your own shortcomings is to make someone else look even worse. i really don't think his motivations had anything to do with martin or a pre-existing hatred of him - i think jon just couldn't stand the thought of being "found out" and was making awful choices in how he went about trying avoiding that

already somewhat mentioned above, but both jon and martin were under extreme stress after being promoted to the archives. jon, knowing he was struggling with the position but desperate to be seen as competent anyways; and martin having lied on his CV to get a job he was *also* underqualified for and desperate to keep it because he really needed the money. both of their feelings of inadequacy created tension between them that their shared trauma was able to break down, yes, but might not have even existed had they met at a normal workplace in normal cirumstances.

and lets be honest here, i do think jon was the main contributor to the problem. even if, at another job, martin had still had to lie on his CV to get it, in s1 he was always amicable towards jon and tried his best to be friendly and i think he would have acted the same way in another job he'd lied his way into. jon did not act the same way. i think if they had met in a workplace that even just jon had felt more comfortable in (and was also not full of Horrors), he never would have felt the need to project onto martin, he never would have developed such intense paranoia towards his coworkers, and they would have been able to get along better etc etc etc.

and jumping back to martin's pov i think that his final opinion that no, they wouldn't have been compatible, stems from the insecurity that even in the world they are actually in, jon still might leave him (see: "i thought you left me behind" in mag 170). he believes that their shared trauma must be the reason they're together and worries that that might still not be enough. so like, he's already having to deal with anxieties about his relationship in their real life AS WELL AS the literal end of the world...my guy truly doesn't have time or probably the energy to take all of these other perspectives/hypotheticals into consideration.

tldr jon contributed to a large part of the problems with their early relationship, but once things started going really bad and his initial insecurities became less and less relevant he was able to start making things right; however if jon's experience in his workplace had been easier (and to a lesser extent, if martin had had more time to work on his self-esteem issues) in the first place i think they still would have been able to be together eventually. maybe even sooner

hope that makes sense!!!!

i stan one(1) firefighter paladin

unpopular opinion but dine out should've come with a french world inspired by the cinematic masterpiece ratatouille

I 100% believe Sage can cook but I also 100% believe that if you know how to cook, he will pretend he can't even hold a spatula right so that you can teach him. Spends the whole time flirting. And if you stand behind him and hold his hands to guide him to do something? Instant KO.

regina during world burn is kinda like ok who’s the pyro lez now

Unpopular opinion but I didn't like Rose and Ten's dynamic as much as I liked Rose and Nine's. I found Rose and Ten just a little bit too much. Nine and Rose just had this really sweet relationship, like it was the balance of a good friendship and something that was a little bit more and it was perfect. Ten and Rose were more like the really annoying couple you knew in high school, the one where you saw them walking down the hallway and you'd roll your eyes and go "oh, it's That Couple" because they were always just a little too much, imo.

Nine and Rose were just easier to like. They fit together easily. Ten and Rose were kind of smug and just a little unbearable, and felt just a little bit forced.

sorry maybe this is a bit of a stretch idk but there's something so fascinating to me about how ten takes donna to the creation of the earth and tells her "this whole process is beautiful but only if it's being observed" right after staring at her like this

for about 6 seconds straight, and it mirroring donna's arc of being seen as stupid and unloveable by so many people that she started believing it herself, and then the doctor seeing past all of this and showing her that he sees more and what he sees is beautiful because he took the time to really look at her.

Look, I'm not saying murder is ok or that Jason is completely right, I'm just saying he has a point that the rich bat furry doesn't

Little spoon Charles Rowland, reblog if you agree.

Im owning up to this one lol

I don't get Cattail hate. Like why she should care about Clay, Mudwings allow there dragonets to raise themselves and the parents don't take a big role in there upbringing . It's just how her culture works. She is not a bad person for not acting like the average mother meeting her long lost son. And sure maybe selling him off wasn't the nicest thing to do knowing he would grow up away from his tribe and sibs but I'm sure the Talons would have stolen him anyway and she assumed Asha would be watching over him.

And I know when you read it from Clays perspective she is single handedly crushing all of his dreams about his parents and family and not the kind of mother he expected or wanted. She is not likeable to him because therefore she is not presented as likeable to us because the book is written in his perspective. But she is not a bad mother for Mudwing standards.

She is not mean or rude to him in any way she tells him the truth about what happened to his egg and how Mudwing culture works. She is kinda cold but its what Clay needs to hear. She's not going to pretend like she missed him or that Mudwings are loving parents to spare his feelings. She never uses her son's fame for her own gain or tries to take advantage of his attachment Not a big fan of her design in the comics tho.

I have also heard the take that Glory should have made the Rainwing keep and raise their own eggs After she became queen. I believe that there is nothing wrong with the way Rainwing raise their dragonets. None of the dragons in the rainforest seem neglected, unhappy or even care about their bioparents. (Except Glory but she got over it)It's much better then Sandwings that have starving orphans running around the Scorpions Den.

I would go on but this is getting long so I'll just say that Rainwings and Mudwings aren't bad parents.

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