Model of a decomposing Tyrannosaurus rex at the Altmühltal Museum by Aart Walen. Bavarian Forest, Germany
What a wonderful, evocative, REAL sculpture. It really brings home how these were living thing, flesh and blood, not immortal. Fellow earthlings.
Did you know Star Fruit grows from vine dreads? Imagine photosynthesizing with your own hair and never having to buy food again.
For years I've heard that those booby mousepads are actually really good for a person with carpal tunnel syndrome but didn't decide to test that knowledge because I don't want to buy a booby mousepad that would make me some sort of sex pervert, I was raised Catholic I'm a good boy not a sex pervert. But earlier this year I bought a Gigan body pillow as a joke only to find out body pillows are actually really comfortable sleep aids, so... so I bought one... I bought a booby mousepad.
...and my wrist feels so much better when I'm using it.
How many other comforts and aids have I forsaken because they're embarrassingly horny? How many discomforts have I endured purely out of a societal shame about expressing anything sexual? This world is fucked man.
For those curious why exactly this is, it's because booby mousepads are pretty much the only ergonomic mousepads which still use silicone gel. Basically everything else has switched to either air-filled memory foam or a cured silicone rubber – like the kind used in silicone bakeware – because it's not prone to springing leaks and oozing everywhere; unfortunately, it also doesn't work nearly as well.
(In theory, if you're not a fan of boobs you could get a silicone gel wrist pad without the booby design. In practice, good fucking luck; consumer fraud is rampant in non-prescription medical and assistive devices, and the overwhelming majority of non-booby mousepads which claim to use silicone gel are straight up lying – what you actually receive if you order one will be air-filled memory foam or solid rubber at least 80% of time, regardless of what the product description says.)
Model of a decomposing Tyrannosaurus rex at the Altmühltal Museum by Aart Walen. Bavarian Forest, Germany
What a wonderful, evocative, REAL sculpture. It really brings home how these were living thing, flesh and blood, not immortal. Fellow earthlings.
california dmv plate: "POTENT CUM" Customer: CHECK OUT THESE ROPES DMV: HE'S NOT LYING. PRETTY THICK Verdict: APPROVED
Everytime Lae'zel tch's at me when i annoy her, i love her even more
Ever think about how vulnerable Edelgard must have felt with her missing memories? A preteen crown princess with freshly healed scars thrust into the middle of a sensitive political situation, not being able to remember which of the people around her she knows, which she trusts, which treated her well when she wasn’t the declared heir?
How she’d know when people are lying to her but struggle to determine why they were lying. Is the maid who claims she’s served in the palace for years lying because she’s trying to make a good impression on the new princess, or because she’s a spy? (If she’s a spy, who on the endless list of possibilities is she a spy for?) Is the noble expressing sympathy over the sudden death of her brother (”a fever they say, how sad, didn’t your sister go the same way?”) insincere because he knows the truth of how and why her siblings died, or is he insincere because he’s an asshole? Is the too-old man courting her hand claiming he’s known her since she was a child because he is trying to gain her trust or because he really is that creepy?
Does she remember the uncle who raised her? Her real uncle, the one who gave up everything to go into exile with his niece? Does she remember him well enough to know the difference between him and the creature who wears his face?
Does she remember her siblings as anything other than children crying in the dark? Does she look at paintings of them and try to guess at which names match their faces? Does she recall which sister taught her how to tie those ribbons in her hair? Does she know which of them held her hand the longest in the dungeons?
How paranoid she must have grown, questioning every gesture, mistrusting every kindness. No wonder she is disdainful of expressions of sympathy. No wonder her only friend and confidante for so long was somebody who deals in facts and logic. Notice how Edelgard recites facts about noble houses as though she memorized them in a book, never embellishing with personal anecdotes. How even the story of how her parents met one another is like a fairy tale written out of rumor and speculation, one she acknowledges might not be accurate. How much of her own life did she have to read up on?
(How many times did she go to Hubert to ask him what is real? How much of his job is just helping her keep the facts straight?)
How she clings to the facts as they are written when her own memory fails her. “Is it possible that we’ve met before?” she asks Dimitri in Abyss, before quickly rejecting the notion. Impossible. It doesn’t line up with the history that she has pieced together from public knowledge.
(If he’d said yes, would she have believed him? So many people have told her they were so many things to her in the past. So many have lied.)
How paranoid she must have remained still, coming to Garreg Mach. Could she trust her own Black Eagles? Duke Aegir, snake that he is, certainly would have bid his heir to keep an eye on the crown princess. Did House Bergliez enlist their second-born to ensure the war plan was carried out successfully? Is House Varley’s mystery daughter an agent of the church? Is every one of them who they say they are, or are they a house of Monicas, monsters walking around with stolen faces?
(They’re not like the other houses, all wrapped up in each other’s history, full of childhood friendships and rivalries. Edelgard is a stranger to her own house, and – how refreshing that is, that none of them pretend otherwise, that they do not force her to pretend to know them.)
And yet she constantly exudes confidence. She has to. Weakness and uncertainty are not traits she’s allowed to have. So she swallows her fear and feigns absolute certainty, and at night, she reads history books to memorize her own father’s deeds.
See that’s the thing that gets me about Edelgard: she didn’t come to Garreg Mach to make friends.
Well yeah, you might be saying. She was planning to start a war.
But no. No! We’re not talking about the other houses. Yes, of course Edelgard had no intention of making friends with the people she would soon make enemies of. That part is obvious.
But Edelgard didn’t come to Garreg Mach to make friends with her own house.
Dimitri, he’s surrounded by kids he grew up with, people he’s known all his life. The Blue Lions all have a long history with each other and with their prince. Even the ones outside of his immediate circle have connections to him, and all of them have at least some understanding of his history.
But Edelgard? Edelgard never knew any of the Black Eagles other than Hubert.
Edelgard came to Garreg Mach not just to declare war on the church, but to dissolve the noble class. And these kids, her own house, were mostly the sons and daughters of the very people she planned to strip power from. Hevring and Bergliez were convinced to side with her, but Aegir and Varley? Ferdinand and Bernadetta could have posed as much of a threat to her plans as any enemy.
For that matter, being “allies” hardly would have made Caspar and Lindhardt trustworthy either, given both that their own houses were happy to participate in the Insurrection of the Seven and they wouldn’t be the only allies Edelgard has who she doesn’t remotely trust.
For all she knew, the other Black Eagles were all spies or enemies or at the very least, privileged noble kids who would never agree to her plan to dissolve the system that they benefitted from. For that matter, any one of them could have been like Monica, just a Slither in disguise. It’s ironic that Petra, a foreign hostage, was likely the only person that Edelgard could accept at face value.
And none of them knew her. None of them knew of her history, or her plans, or her second crest.
But here’s the thing. They accepted her. They had fun with her. They studied together, they planned competitions together, they danced together, they slept down the hall from one another. For the first time in her memory, Edelgard got to be among her peers. She got to have friends. And not like Hubert was her friend – he served her and he conspired with her and he loved her as only a best friend can, but for years their friendship had revolved around a dark purpose. These were friends without pretence, without goals, who treated her as an equal without politics or backstabbing.
For the first time ever, Edelgard got to be a teenager.
It’s no wonder she treats her house like a precious thing. Why, after they agreed to side with her despite all her efforts to push them away and give them a choice, she stayed up all night to come up with the name Black Eagles Strike Force. Because she never planned, never dreamed, of being part of something so good, and she never wants to let it go.
Seteth: We treat all students the same here at the Officer’s Academy regardless of social standing
The Officer’s Academy: *is so prohibitively expensive that the only commoners who are able to attend had to be sponsored by nobles, are wealthy merchants, or had their way paid for by an entire frigging village pooling money for it*
Byleth: Hmm
