Self Care Is Listening To Astro On Repeat

Dark times all around but there are still people out there who love you

Do not hurt yourself, do not hurt others, get help, talk to someone, anyone. Humanity has survived before and we can do it now if we all just support each other. My country and my people let me down and endangered my life but there’s nothing I or anyone else can do about that so let’s try to spread the love that is so clearly lacking.

My brother just sent me this on snapchat I can’t fucking stop laughing this is so stupid I hate him

On the months my research team and I were allowed to live on Earth and observe their habitat I noted the following about human young:

- human young will turn anything into a weapon to mock battle their peers, broom sticks, straws, even their food

- when in large groups human young will display games of mock hunts against each other. The two most common being “tag” where one young will try to catch the other young acting as prey, and “mob” where all of the young will try to catch a single young who acts as the prey. This suggests an instinctive ability for both pack and solo hunting

- human young will often hone their stalking and hunting skills by hiding or attempting to sneak up on others and pouncing with loud sounds meant to intimidate and frighten. This is considered amusing for the attacker and victim  

- adult humans will often mock attack their young with their hands or objects to train the young to protect their vital areas and avoid injury. The young find this amusing and will quickly learn to train each other in this manner

- young humans will often attack and attach themselves to an older human’s legs, arms, or back, hanging on despite being dragged or carried while the adult human walks away. Both humans seems to find the experience entertaining 

- young humans are extremely territorial and will attempt to drive off others from food, toys, and areas they have claimed as theirs with physical and verbal attacks. Fortunately, most adult humans actively try to train this behavior out, insisting the young come to an agreement or share resources and territory. 

- young humans constantly search for new territory, dens, and resources. They will climb trees, shelving, anything they can reach. They will climb under and behind things. If there are no suitable hiding areas they will construct them out of blankets and cushions or any other available item. 

- young humans display a strong pack instinct, quickly forming social groups and defending their group against other groups. Often they will split their own group in order to mock battle each other in contests

- HUMAN YOUNG WILL BITE IF DISTRESSED OR ANGRY AND EMIT LOUD NOISES THAT CALL MATURE HUMANS TO AID THEM

- human young will beg for domesticated carnivores as companions, and if gifted with one will pack bond with it to an extreme point.

- human young will carry a toy and try to protect and nurture it as if the toy was their own young

- human young require constant stimulation in the form of games or information. They will constantly question things and can spend extraordinary amounts of time asking “why”, often while poking the subject in question

- human young will try to eat anything at least once. Anything. If it will fit into their mouth they will attempt to eat it. If it will not fit into their mouth they will lick it. 

-human young will voluntarily deprive themselves of oxygen to the point of unconsciousness in an attempt to trigger protective instincts in older humans so they get their way

- human young display great interest in mimicry, often dressing up as different professions, species, and objects. They also display great skill in mimicking the calls and body language of other species.        *Example: one human young had me quite concerned there was another Treawalbil in distress and I searched for quite some time before I discovered that the young was mimicking a Treawalbil distress trill with complete accuracy.       *Second Example: Human young have begun to wear wear “hats” with artificial crests similar to a Treawalbil and some have begun painting colorful patterns to their arms in imitation of our camouflage. 

- human young communicate constantly and spread information quickly not only among their own social group but other social groups as well.     *Example: The human young who mimicked a Treawalbil distress trill taught their social group and soon I was surrounded by human young calling out in distress. This caused the Treawalbil researchers much anxiety so the adult humans suggested teaching the young other calls. The human young learned enough for basic communication at an astonishing rate, but then other social groups we had not taught began using the same calls as well. Even adult humans began using the calls to communicate with us without translators. 

- Young humans will gift beings and creatures they believe to be in their social group with handmade objects, interesting specimens they have collected, or food. Strangely enough, a being does not have to be human in order to belong to a human’s social group. 

This is important.

Reasons why I need the A in LGBTIAQ to stand for Asexual, not Ally

Because my mother told me that all I needed to do was get drunk and lie back and let my husband have his fun. Because if I was drunk, I’d be more relaxed and it’d be over sooner

Because my sister told me that I was trapping my husband in an abusive marriage, and that one day he was going to leave me

Because both of them looked at me in disgust

Because my asexuality is considered to be as great a crime against my husband as a woman who has affairs and cheats on her husband

Because my cousin didn’t even try to understand, and just kept asking ‘but what about in five years? how will you feel then?’

Because I was so afraid of my body and so afraid of sex that I didn’t seek medical help for a legitimate question for over a year for fear of being labelled a deviant or something broken

Because I still ask myself at least once every day if my husband wouldn’t be better off without me

Because I still ask myself at least once every day if I’m broken

Because I still tell myself at least once every day that I’m pathetic and useless and an abnormality

Because I love my husband with every fiber of my being, but everywhere I turn I’m told I really don’t, because love = sex

I need A to stand for Asexual because nobody ever talked to me about asexuality even when I was an outpatient at the women’s hospital for 18 months, and everyone told me desire would come in time

I need A to stand for Asexual because we are literally invisible, and so unimportant that people assume we don’t even need representation, because everyone assumes our lives must be bland and unimportant and lacking in challenges or bigotry

For every asexual that wants a relationship, for every asexual that does not want a relationship, for every asexual who has not yet come to terms with their identity, for every asexual who was told we were abnormalities, for every asexual who was told we just weren’t doing sex right, that we needed a good fucking, that we needed to be drunk, that we needed to relax, that we needed to be raped

We need representation, and we need visibility

That is why the A needs to stand for Asexual, and never for Ally

1st june// 17

have a save and happy month ❤️💛💚💙💜

Man human imprinting is crazy. My friend’s roomba zoomed by me and I got this intense urge to reach down and pat it. Like it’s just a machine? But it’s a good boy? It spends all day cleaning and sleeping and exploring the house and never complains and it’s just so good little robot? Pet robot?? Pet the robot????? Why am I like this???

moments jihoon was particularly breathtaking  ♡  (2/?)

Maleficent??🤔🤔

Cr: mintbreeze Cr: anggle

on fanfic & emotional continuity

Writing and reading fanfic is a masterclass in characterisation. 

Consider: in order to successfully write two different “versions” of the same character - let alone ten, or fifty, or a hundred - you have to make an informed judgement about their core personality traits, distinguishing between the results of nature and nurture, and decide how best to replicate those conditions in a new narrative context. The character you produce has to be recognisably congruent with the canonical version, yet distinct enough to fit within a different - perhaps wildly so - story. And you physically can’t accomplish this if the character in question is poorly understood, or viewed as a stereotype, or one-dimensional. Yes, you can still produce the fic, but chances are, if your interest in or knowledge of the character(s) is that shallow, you’re not going to bother in the first place. 

Because ficwriters care about nuance, and they especially care about continuity - not just literal continuity, in the sense of corroborating established facts, but the far more important (and yet more frequently neglected) emotional continuity. Too often in film and TV canons in particular, emotional continuity is mistakenly viewed as a synonym for static characterisation, and therefore held anathema: if the character(s) don’t change, then where’s the story? But emotional continuity isn’t anti-change; it’s pro-context. It means showing how the character gets from Point A to Point B as an actual journey, not just dumping them in a new location and yelling Because Reasons! while moving on to the next development. Emotional continuity requires a close reading, not just of the letter of the canon, but its spirit - the beats between the dialogue; the implications never overtly stated, but which must logically occur off-screen. As such, emotional continuity is often the first casualty of canonical forward momentum: when each new TV season demands the creation of a new challenge for the protagonists, regardless of where and how we left them last, then dealing with the consequences of what’s already happened is automatically put on the backburner.

Fanfic does not do this. 

Fanfic embraces the gaps in the narrative, the gracenotes in characterisation that the original story glosses, forgets or simply doesn’t find time for. That’s not all it does, of course, but in the context of learning how to write characters, it’s vital, because it teaches ficwriters - and fic readers - the difference between rich and cardboard characters. A rich character is one whose original incarnation is detailed enough that, in order to put them in fanfic, the writer has to consider which elements of their personality are integral to their existence, which clash irreparably with the new setting, and which can be modified to fit, to say nothing of how this adapted version works with other similarly adapted characters. A cardboard character, by contrast, boasts so few original or distinct attributes that the ficwriter has to invent them almost out of whole cloth. Note, please, that attributes are not necessarily synonymous with details in this context: we might know a character’s favourite song and their number of siblings, but if this information gives us no actual insight into them as a person, then it’s only window-dressing. By the same token, we might know very few concrete facts about a character, but still have an incredibly well-developed sense of their personhood on the basis of their actions. 

The fact that ficwriters en masse - or even the same ficwriter in different AUs - can produce multiple contradictory yet still fundamentally believable incarnations of the same person is a testament to their understanding of characterisation, emotional continuity and narrative. 

Alien: how did you humans survive long enough to form a functioning society? You have no claws, sorely lacking physical strength as a species, no physical defenses…

Human: we just walked quickly after things that were faster than us until they died or got too tired to run away anymore and accepted death.

Alien: what the he-

Human: Yeah, badass, right? There’s a reason we’re top dog on Earth.

Human: *trips over own feet, gets foot caught in a bucket, yanks ladder down onto self trying to stay upright, falls in a pile of limbs and pain*

Alien: …are you sure