Due to my father's infamously questionable children's media choices: the original Godzilla
No, really, it was a heritage art showing. We were thiiiiis close to being scarred for life by the chilling nuclear horror, and then the guy in a rubber suit showed up and it was fine. Our mother was not impressed.
Other gems include cluelessly showing Princess Mononoke to toddlers and letting a still-single-digits sibling watch Jaws right before the start of swim camp.
what's the first movie you remember seeing in theaters? don't try and be all edgy and cool and say like tetsuo: the iron man. be honest.
Go!!
Reblog if you write fic and people can inbox you random-ass questions about your stories, itemized number lists be damned.
All of the Prehistoric Pride guys in one collective post to celebrate pride month. Choose your fighter and have an awesome time :D
More suggestions are always welcome, I sadly was not able to cover everyone, but I will do more of these in the future!
I am going to add more and more to the collection as I get them done :D
If you would like to support my silly little dinosaur art, then you can buy any of these Prideaurs as stickers from my Etsy shop, which I just set up recently. I am pretty new to this entire business side of art things, but I am trying my best :D so a like or a reblog would go a long way. Thank you guys so much for all your kind words and support!
The sheer incongruity of the last line never fails to make me snort.
There's a reason retellings of the Green Goblin's origin tend to skate over his exact reasoning for his aesthetic choices. The Lizard he ain't.
I do appreciate that they acknowledge Norman has no logical reason to become the Goblin. By being a millionaire he already commits more crimes than the Goblin could get away with in a lifetime! Amazing Spiderman 40
People forget that you can light a bonfire with a candle; that's what this felt like to me.
Hey, y'all. It's...been a rough couple of weeks. So, I thought--better to light a single candle, right?
If you're familiar with wildlife conservation success stories, then you're likely also familiar with their exact polar opposite. The Northern White Rhino. Conservation's poster child for despair. Our greatest and most high-profile utter failure. We slaughtered them for wealth and status, and applied the brakes too slow. Changed course too late.
We poured everything we had into trying to save them, and we failed.
We lost them. They died. The last surviving male was named Sudan. He died in 2018, elderly and sick. His genetic material is preserved, along with frozen semen from other long-dead males, but only as an exercise in futility. Only two females survive--a mother and daughter, Najin and Fatu.
Both of them are infertile. They still live; but the Northern White Rhinoceros is extinct. Gone forever.
In 2023, an experimental procedure was attempted, a hail-mary desperation play to extract healthy eggs from the surviving females.
It worked.
The extracted eggs were flown to a genetics lab, and artificially fertilized using the sperm of lost Northern males. The frozen semen that we kept, all this time, even after we knew that the only living females were incapable of becoming pregnant.
It worked.
Thirty northern white rhino embryos were created and cryogenically preserved, but with no ability to do anything with them, it was a thin hope at best. In 2024, for the first time, an extremely experimental IVF treatment was attempted on a SOUTHERN white rhino--a related subspecies.
It worked.
The embryo transplanted as part of the experiment had no northern blood--but the pregnancy took. The surgery was safe for the mother. The fetus was healthy. The procedure is viable. Surrogate Southern candidates have already been identified to carry the Northern embryos. Rhinoceros pregnancies are sixteen months long, and the implantation hasn't happened yet. It will take time, before we know. Despair is fast and loud. Hope is slower, softer. Stronger, in the end.
The first round may not take. We'll learn from it. It's what we do. We'll try again. Do better, the next time. Fail again, maybe. Learn more. Try harder.
This will not save the species. Not overnight. The numbers will be very low, with no genetic diversity to speak of. It's a holding action, nothing more.
Nothing less.
One generation won't save a species. But even a single calf will buy us time. Not quite gone, not yet. One more generation. One more endling. One more chance. And if we seize it, we might just get another after that. We're getting damn good at gene editing. At stem-cell research. In the length of a single rhino lifetime, we'll get even better.
For decades, we have been in a holding action with no hope in sight. Researchers, geneticists, environmentalists, wildlife rehabbers. Dedicated and heroic Kenyan rangers have kept the last surviving NWRs under 24/7 armed guard, line-of-sight, eyes-on, never resting, never relaxing their guard. Knowing, all the while, that their vigilance was for nothing. Would save nothing. This is a dead species--an elderly male, two females so closely related that their offspring couldn't interbreed even if they could produce any--and they can't.
Northern white rhino conservation was the most devastatingly hopeless cause in the world.
Two years from now, that dead species may welcome a whole new generation.
It's a holding action, just a holding action, but not "just". There is a monument, at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, where the last white rhinos have lived and will die. It was created at the point where we knew--not believed, knew--that the species was past all hope. It memorializes, by name there were so few, the last of the northern white rhinos. Most of the markers have brief descriptions--where the endling rhino lived, how it was rescued, how it died.
One marker bears only these words: SUDAN | Last male Northern White Rhino.
If even a single surrogate someday bears a son, we have erased the writing on that plaque forever.
All we can manage is a holding action? Then we hold. We hold hard and fast and long, use our fingernails if we have to. But hold. Even and perhaps especially when we are past all hope.
We never know what miracle we might be buying time for.
NOOOOO! DAMN IT, BILLY-BARD! I love Shakespeare so much, but this one play just will not stop haunting me. I'll never reach the ends of it. It's like a puddle that goes down far enough to have angler fish.
I have been exposed to this more than any other of The Bard's work, and never once by choice. I have been forced to read this play cover to cover four times in school, including for one exhausperated highschool teacher who got the lot of us engaged by giving extra credit to whoever found the most dick jokes. I've seen it performed by every kind of troop from school kids to the actual globe theater. I once got roped into playing a bit part in a performance art street production because I happen to be walking by, and I NEVER CAUGHT THIS?!?
I tip my hat to you, thank you for showing me yet another facet to the peerless jewel I am repeatedly clubbed over the head with whether I like it or not.
It's a perfect sonnet.
14 lines. 3 stanzas in ABAB rhyme, and a rhyming couplet at the end.
It starts off with each of them speaking a whole stanza. Romeo offering up a self depreciating metaphor (a pilgrim at a holy shrine, sinful for wanting to place a kiss on her hand), and Juliet returning it (it's not a sin for a pilgrim to touch the hands of a saint. Pilgrims and the saints hands can touch. )
Then they share a quatraine, keeping the rhyme and rhythm steady, the flirting turning even more overt. (Saints and pilgrims both have lips, yeah? Well, sure, for prayer. Well if a pilgrims hand can touch a saints hand, then their lips...)
Then they each speak half a couplet (the saints dont make the first move, but if its a prayer....well, here I am, praying....), and share their first kiss.
It's flirty and silly and a little irreverent, and they become more and more in sync as they speak.
This is a heightened, fantastical, almost reality bending moment. This is a moment where two lonely teenagers, one who is having her future decided without her and the other fresh from an unrequited rejection, feel the world shift around them.
And the foreshadowing sits at the end of stanza 3. This is an act of faith, but if it cannot be, it will turn to despair.
And I just. The craft of it. The poetry of it. How the form and the rhythm mirror the metaphor and mirror the emotion of it.
normalize my 12th grade English teacher, who admitted that his favorite TV show was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and when a male student suggested that it was because Buffy/Sarah Michelle Gellar was hot, wrinkled his face like he’d bitten into something rotten and dead, and said, “At my age (he was 53), there is nothing less sexy than a teenager. You’re all disgusting messes.” It was 1999, I was 17, and I’d grown up in conservative Christian schools and churches. In my life I’d heard heard dozens of sermons from male preachers and teachers and even some older students, whining about how hard it was to be a dude and not commit the sin of thinking sexual thoughts, and how they needed women to wear long skirts and cover their bodies to not objectify them
and my bitter, misanthropic, atheist Brit Lit teacher, who hated my class because he was obsessed with teaching Tom Sawyer but got stuck with Shakespeare and Jane Austen, was the first, and this day the last man I have ever heard articulate a rebuttal from the depths of his soul to the idea that it was normal for teenage girls to be desirable to middle aged men
My first ask answer! And it was all I could have hoped for! :D I didn't even think of there being security footage, poor Spock XD
Hello, you said your asks were open for McSpirk prompts so how about: due to a mix up with the fire detection system, Spock is unexpectedly fire-hose'd. Which is decently dangerous for humans, probably worse for deserts species, and unfortunately would look absolutely ridiculous. McCoy must valliantly stick to his medical ethics instead of laughing at Spock's wet-cat not-misery.
This was an EXCELLENT prompt. It ended up longer than I usually make these, because I was having fun playing in the space. Thank you for sending this in!!
“Well, that’s no good.”
“Mr. Scott, the engine of the Galileo 7 is smoking.”
Scotty peeked his head out of the shuttles door to stare at Spock with tired eyes. “Aye, Mr. Spock. I am aware that the engine is smoking.”
They were in the shuttle bay, making some necessary repairs after their most recent mission.
“I suggest you remedy that immediately,” Spock said firmly.
Scotty sighed. “Your suggestion has been noted, Mr. Spock. Though some assistance may help me remedy the situation faster.”
Spock paused for a moment, a brow lightly arched. And then, with a nod, he said, “Understood. I will examine the exterior.”
He stepped around to the front of the shuttle and trailed a careful hand across its surface. Scotty retreated back into the shuttle, and within moments, Spock could hear the clanging and banging of repairs.
There was a spark, and heavy, dark smoke puffed out of the shuttle. Spock’s brow furrowed. “Mr. Scott–”
His words were interrupted by the sound of an alarm. Red lights began to spin around the shuttle bay. Spock barely had time to process what was happening before the walls opened up, and the anti-fire apparatus settled into place.
Spock’s eyes grew minutely wider with realization as the system turned on, and a wall of icy cold water smashed into him.
It was powerful enough to send him flying; his back hit the windshield of the Galileo 7.
When the water pressure finally ceased, Spock found himself drenched to the bone, with his back against the cracked windshield of the shuttle, and a soreness already seeping into his bones.
Scotty jumped out of the shuttle. “Mr. Spock! Are you alright?”
Spock took a deep breath and blinked as he tried to get his bearings. He sat up slowly and slid off the front of the shuttle. His boots hit the ground with a squelch.
When Spock offered no immediate response, Scotty frowned. “You’d best head to Sickbay, Mr. Spock. I’ll get things cleaned up here.”
–
McCoy had seen all sorts of things in his years as a doctor.
A sopping wet Vulcan was a new addition to the list.
As Spock stepped into Sickbay, McCoy had to turn quickly to stifle a laugh. Now’s not the time, he reminded himself. He was a doctor, and if Spock was here, that meant he actually needed him.
And so, he gathered his senses and turned back around as straight-faced as he could manage. “So,” he said, “what happened to you?”
“A fire system malfunctioned in the shuttle bay,” Spock responded shortly, as if that answered all his questions. “I only wish for you to check me over and confirm I am able to return to duty.”
McCoy motioned towards the nearest biobed. “Have a seat.”
He had to turn around again as Spock made his way across the room. Each step caused his boots to squeak, and there was a puddle left behind when his foot lifted again.
“Looks like the fire system really got you, huh?” McCoy pulled out his medical tricorder as Spock sat on the edge of the bed. His usually perfect hair was sticking in all sorts of directions, and there was an indignant pout on Spock’s face that brought McCoy a quiet joy. He scanned him in silence, because he didn’t trust himself to keep from making fun of him.
“You’ve got some minor bruising, but it looks like you’ve avoided any sprains or strains. Being Vulcan certainly helped.”
Spock made a quiet non-committal hum in response.
“My biggest concern,” McCoy continued, admiring the irritation on Spock’s face with a silent delight, “would be hypothermia. You’re from the desert– you’re not used to getting wet, and you’re not meant to get cold.”
“I am aware.” Even now, it was evident that Spock was trying not to shiver. “Am I allowed to return to duty or not, Doctor?”
“Go get yourself dried off and warmed up, Spock.” McCoy finally let a grin creep onto his face, just so Spock could see it. “And then I think you’ll be fine, if not a bit sore.”
Spock let out a quiet grunt of acknowledgement before sliding off the biobed and walking wetly to the door. He said nothing else before leaving the room.
Immediately, McCoy made his way to the intercom. “Sickbay to Captain Kirk.”
“Kirk here. What is it, Bones?”
“Jim,” McCoy smiled, “I’m gonna need to see the security footage from shuttle bay. Immediately.”
very accurate depiction of the domestic canid, actually
sleeby pubby.....
Scooby-Doo (1977) #7
The administrators at my school did this with Justin Beiber's "baby" (fundraising for a sketchy charity) and the entire student body rallied to sabotage all speakers over and over again until the bureaucrats could take no more and yielded.
Hands down one of my worst experiences in high school was when the seniors decided to extort the entire school by using tactics that were banned by the UN to get them to pay for the senior party! If that sounds like a wild sentiment stay tuned because this shit got crazy.
I was living in Arizona at the time and I was a freshman. Our campus was largely open air, with walks between class room buildings and some covered outdoor tables. Our event began with a morning announcement. The seniors were collecting donations for the senior party, and when they reached their goal, their fundraising method would stop.
Their fundraising method:
To pipe the entire schools speakers with "If You're Happy and You Know It" on loop. To this day, I cannot hear this song without experiencing a degree of rage and madness that is frankly alarming. One of the worst parts of the entire thing was that the recording they chose had the female singer do a little clap and say "Yay-ha-hey," at the end. So it wasn't just the song, it was this awful little cooldown stinger at the end.
If this sounds a lot like psychological torture you'd be extremely correct! This practice has been banned in some countries, but the good old US hasn't ruled it a human rights violation, and what a fun silly way to raise money, that definitely wasn't damaging to adolescent psyches!
Every morning for 15 minutes before school began, every passing period, every lunch, and after school for another 15 minutes they blasted that fucking song on unceasing repeat through every speaker in the school. Everyone found different ways of coping with this and mine was to observe my classmates descent into madness and categorize the stages.
The first stage was almost completely consistent, and it was a smug almost exasperated eye rolling phase. Often accompanied by derisive comments about the song or the tactic, this phase was extremely mildly annoyed. Most people figured it would blow over soon, and no one anticipated this continuing for a week and a half, creating a miasma of fraught tension.
The second phase was elevated annoyance, starting to snap and be less amused characterized this level of irritation. People would try to cover their ears or put on headphones, humming aggressively to block out the syrupy repulsive children's performer with her loathsome little clap. This phase had people picking their absolute least favorite part of the song. Her inflection on certain words, her timing between verses. I think it's pretty clear already which part I hated most.
The next phase was a bounce back out to absurdity. It became funny how annoying it was and people would sing along as if to challenge the song's authority over their psyche. This paired exceptionally poorly with people in phase two as they'd often lash out at the people giving more voice to their hell.
The fourth phase was a dead-eyed madness. People would stare straight ahead and their lips would silently mouth the familiar words. The song had pounded its way into their very soul and was inextricably linked to auditory output. They often didn't even realize if they began chanting along.
The fifth and final phase was pure uncut pubescent rage. Kids would scream, attack each other, and in a truly epic end to the event hurl a cafeteria chair with such force at the speaker in the cafeteria to irreparably damage the sound system.
The seniors got funding for a party, but some of it had to go to repair the damages, which were substantial.
A fantastic point! Never made the connection to the real world 'everyman' duelist, but it makes so much sense.
Although I did always think it was hilarious that in a universe where chance outcomes can be demonstrably affected by circumstances (morality, determination, rule of cool...), a guy with neither destiny nor money on his side pulled ahead of the competition by *building a deck around gambling.*
big fan of how much of a bitch he is