with some bugs it really does feel less like the larval stage is the ‘baby’ stage and more like its the ‘normal’ stage and the bug’s final form is just their extra special final form they use to fuck
I was actually distraught as a child when I found out that an antlion was “just” a “larva” to something else but later I learned that they spend two to three entire years that way and the adult only lives for a couple of months.
Butterflies are also shorter lived than caterpillars; we can think of them more as the caterpillar dispersal system.
We also always hear about how “mayflies only live a few days” but that ignores the fact that they, too, spend years as aquatic nymphs.
same for dobsonflies, which live for maybe a week as adults, but for years as enormous highly predatory aquatic larvae called hellgrammites.
except with dobsonflies, all forms feel a bit extra. If they were pokemon they would be some late generation multi-form legendary
Pretty, graceful adult dragonflies live only for like seven months, but beforehand they spend five years as this
aquatic predatory incarnation of bullshit, which hunts other aquatic insects and even small fish with its big fucking xenomorph mouthparts.
not to make a long thread longer but i think the ultimate manifestation of powered up final fuck form is 17 year periodical cicadas
like they arent just hibernating or something, they spend the length of a human adolescence as these nymphs living underground and feeding on fluids from roots. and after 17 years their population group emerges in eerie synchronization and they all molt into their adult stage, which only survives for a few weeks . like 99.5% of their life is spent in their “baby” stage and the final .05% of it is a powered up flight capable adult form that exists solely to scream and fuck
To live your whole life as a child, then spend your senior years as an extremely horny twenty-something. Bugs live the life everyone on tumblr wishes they had.
It’s quite common in Latin American Spanish-speaking countries for children to get both their parents’ surnames, it used to be pretty common in Argentina too then for some reason got changed during the XX century and now is coming back again (thankfully). As far as I know, the convention goes father´s surname first, mother’s after, so yeah, his full name should be Poe Dameron Bey (and if we are going with conventions, because why not, either he has a longer first name and Poe is actually his second name, or he has a second name as well, in either case the one not used would probably pay homage to a family member).
Maybe the other name is that of the maternal grandfather who raised him while Shara and Kes were fighting with the Rebellion, or maybe L’ulo. I love the thought of tiny Poe being called L’ulito as a nickname.
We live in a world where white men are given infinite benefits of the doubt, where white mass shooters are taken safely into custody while innocent Black people are shot by police. SW is a franchise that has the precedent of Vader as a war criminal and mass murderer who was “redeemed,” as Kylostans love to remind us. Everyone and their grandmother can see a Kylo Ren redemption coming, which is exactly the expectation that both JJ and, rather redundantly, RJ set up and then fucking wrecked. The shock was not that the power-hungry murderer-torturer-genocidaire went on being exactly those things, but that the nice Skywalker boy refused the redemption that was handed to him on a silver platter. Twice. It’s the same thing with romance: we expect a white guy to be the romantic hero and hence we get reylow and the strenuous insistence that somehow Kylo Ren is the male lead of the franchise against the evidence of everything that actually happened in the movies.
Reylow and Bendemption are not unexpected in any sense. They are in fact everything that global pop culture has primed audiences to expect. That’s why fandom is the way it is. The true subversion would be to show the white fascist murderer be held accountable for his actions and to make it clear that he is not, in fact, entitled to the forgiveness, love, and emotional labor of the people he hurt over and over and never actually cared for. Large sections of the audience will predictably melt down if that is the endgame. Now that’s actually subversive and unexpected.
photoshop when I go to save a gif: 3.023 Mb me, trying to reduce the size: deletes 40 frames, decreases brightness, ups the contrast, crops canvas, makes small offering to a local deity photoshop: 3.022 🙂
PSA: Photoshop’s methods for optimizing gifs are seriously outdated and it’s better to use EZgifs.com (link).
I’ve seen it suggested that without Bendemption and Reylo, IX will be nothing but a moral-conflict-free romp for our heroes. And seriously, wtf?
Finn is a walking moral dilemma all on his own. Because for him and everyone who loves him he raises a terrible question about every enemy Stormtrooper they kill – could they have been another Finn in the making?
The First Order is an organisation run by powerful people who made terrible choices. But its wars are fought by child soldiers who were never given any choice at all.
That’s what makes the battle we’re set to see happen in IX so fascinating. It’s not that the causes themselves are morally grey. The Resistance are clearly fighting for good and the First Order is unquestionably evil. And yet good can’t fight its cause without slaughtering innocents, and I think that’s the most interesting possible dilemma we could be asked to see play out.
And hell yeah I want to see Finn try to resolve it by leading a Stormtrooper revolt. And I want conflict among our heroes too. I want Rey, with her absolutist morality, to oppose Finn. I want Rey to show her love for Finn *through* her opposition – it’s because she believes Finn is so very special, so brave and so good-hearted that she doesn’t think any other Stormtroopers can live up to his example.
And I want Finn to want to believe that what she thinks about him is true – while doing everything he can to prove her wrong. And in succeeding, in leading his fellow Stormtroopers to freedom, he’ll show what *is* special about him as well as what’s special in everyone, if you can find a way of calling it out.
I want IX to explore every crack and fault line in Finn and Rey’s relationship so they can discover together how strong its foundations are.
This makes perfect sense because you know what else would have hardened Rey against the idea of redemption for fascist killers?
The incident with “Ben” would have only confirmed in Rey’s mind that Finn is one of a kind, and that expecting others to follow Finn’s example would only end in heartbreak and destruction. She was burned badly when she trusted in Kylo Ren’s goodness and wouldn’t want Finn to risk his emotions and life in the same way, on a far greater scale with potentially deadly consequences at that. She barely made it out herself and can’t bear the thought of losing him.
If the story went this way it would be yet another parallel to Anidala, except much more robust. As seen in a clip from AotC (link), Padmé believed steadfastly in democracy–for some people anyway, Clones, Tuskens and other undesirables need not apply–while Anakin did not shy away from advocating a dictatorship in the face of democratic dysfunction. Similarly, we would get to see Finn believe in ordinary people’s ability to make choices for the good, with his vision being actually democratic and not just thinly-disguised aristocratic rule like the Senate that Padmé believed in. Rey’s healthy skepticism in the idea that non-Finn people brought up to evil could turn away from it would be sympathetic and rational under the circumstances.
Under this scenario it’s interesting that Finn and Rey are confirmed to be together for all or most of IX. Depending on how early this conflict starts we could watch them in truly interesting arguments yet still bound together by the mission and mutual affection. And man would I love it.
L.J.'s Obsessions 