Watching Spirited Away as a kid, you think "wow what the fuck was that", and figure that while it doesn't make any sense, it's a movie all about atmosphere and vibes, it doesn't have to have a coherent plot and morals. I'm still pretty sure that a lot of the exact details of what specifically is going on in the story itself was just lost in translation and would make perfect sense with context clues that someone more familiar with japanese culture and folklore would have picked up on the first watch, but as an adult, it does have a lot of clear, distinct lessons written into it.
- Your parents aren't infallible, and sometimes they can also make mistakes and not only can't help you, but can't help themselves.
- When that happens, you gotta step up and look after yourself.
- But that doesn't mean you have to do it all alone - every once in a while a passing stranger may help you out for nothing in return, and in return you should sometimes help out strangers just because you could, without gaining or losing anything yourself.
- This is how you make friends. Being independent doesn't mean that you do everything yourself, you can crowdsource being helped by having people who help you out, and also helping them however you can, whenever you can, in return.
- You don't always have to know exactly what your plan is, the clear and solid plans you made might just get washed away by an unexpected rain. Sit down, eat something, have a cry about it if you need to, and enjoy the vibes.
- Love isn't always "happily ever after" and "till death do us part". A brief but intense summer romance with a boy who doesn't have his shit together can still be a true and significant experience that played a role in defining who you're becoming as a person, without being a permanent fixture in your life. It was true, it was real, but you still need to go and never look back. Sometimes things that are forever are only things that remain forever in your heart. Neither you nor that boy had your shit together back then.
- Having your first job in the hospitality industry makes you grow up real fucking fast.
Alpha Camelopardalis, Runaway Star
I’m not the only one who sees A Creature in this, right?
"Before I ended up in Amphibia, I didn't care about right or wrong. I just did what was easy. I let people walk all over me and I think that's because I didn't love myself. Not really. But meeting you three has changed all of that, and these months we've spent together have shown me the person I really want to be." 💙🌟
happy 1 year anniversary to the series finale I'll never be able to forget :')
Meet the Queen of Diamonds, the aromantic pride knight! ⚔️🌈
Iconic seafarer beards became a trend to scare away pesky mermaids.
Mermaid, seeing a bald pirate: Zero threat…! Mermaid, seeing a hairy, bearded pirate: If I get too close their face tentacles will eat me…!
Most mermaids only grow short beards as not to scare baby mermaids (longer beards look like the tentacled mouths of hungry squids and octopuses).
Pirates use this innate fear to their advantage to protect themselves from mermaids, hence the iconic beards and hat:
I like how this is presented as factual information
WHAT COLOR ARE MIRRORS
let’s reflect on this
fun fact! mirrors reflect each color equally, except for green. if you have ever seen a mirror perfectly aligned in front of another mirror, a.k.a. an infinite mirror, you can look through it and see that it becomes greener and greener. therefore, mirrors are technically green!
holy shit
The glass is greener over here. Not a typo.
If you look edgewise through a sheet of glass you see that it’s green because of iron impurities (Google for it). Reducing the iron reduces the green.
Perfectly aligning mirrors to multiply reflections also multiplies the apparent thickness of the glass, and the green tint becomes more apparent the “deeper” each reflection seems to be.
Science is like history: it was never this interesting at school. :-)
Yep! And this is because - I’m sorry to say - mirrors are not a unique or separate substance with magical properties. Mirrors are silvered glass. They have two colors: the color of the silver, and the color of the glass. The “silver” doesn’t have to be silver, though it usually is because mirrors are traditionally made with silver nitrate, because it’s a whitish metal. You can have mirrors silvered in gold or black or red. You take literally any piece of glass, pour a coating of silver on it, seal it, and call it a mirror.
You have to seal it because otherwise it tarnishes and spots. Even though the glass protects it from air, the silver oxidizes just like any other silver, which is why antique mirrors have that funky age-spotted look.
Mirrors used in science are usually pure clear glass with no impurities (so the glass has no color) and are silvered in gold or aluminum, so they are white or gold. A warm-toned mirror would have a pink glass and would make things have a rose-gold look. Phryne Fisher, in the books, has a mirror with pink glass.
(Mirrors silvered in silver - that is, most mirrors you’ve seen - are probably faintly grey from the silver and faintly green from the cheap glass, but it doesn’t need to concern you at all - even if you noticed a strong color, you’re often so used to looking in them that your brain edits out any discrepancy - like how your nose doesn’t get in the way of your vision even though it’s right in front of your eyes all of the time.)
My grandmother had a mirror that was silvered in gold. It was a little disconcerting. The silver in mirrors is why vampires don’t have reflections. (And why the cutlery at Castle Dracula was made of gold.)
IS THAT TRUE ABOUT THE REFLECTIONS BECAUSE IF SO THAT CHANGES ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING???
It’s true! (Source is The Journal Of I Read It Somewhere One Time, so take it with a truckload of salt, but I’m pretty sure it was a published book and not the internet, so like, only a pickup truck, not a dump truck.)
Watsonian explanation: Silver as an entity and/or concept was upset about being used to pay Judas, so as some kind of compensation God gave it evil-fighting powers, and this is why vampires don’t have reflections in silvered mirrors as well as why werewolves are killed by silver bullets. (Also works for vampires not showing up on film, because silver nitrate, although obviously that isn’t part of the ~*~original folklore~*~ and also doesn’t explain digital cameras.)
Doylist explanation: A lot of things that are traditionally anti-vampire turn out to have antibacterial properties- the only ones I remember are garlic and silver, but I think there were others- so supposedly when anti-vampire treatments helped somebody out of a decline or whatever they were actually helping fight off an infection.
Ahahaha I love the conversations we have
A lot of things that are traditionally anti-vampire turn out to have antibacterial properties
So would that mean vampires are weak to antibacterial soap?
The power of hand sanitizer compels you!
antimicrobial soaps were just banned by THE VAMPIRE CABAL
Does that mean that a vampire would see themselves in a gold mirror but not a silver one?
What about a gold mirror with antibacterial soap or something sprayed on it?
And if it’s the silver in the cameras that made them not show up on film, that means that digital is entirely different (unless they use silver in the manufacturing - which i’m pretty sure they don’t - or if some rich person has a silver encased camera - but that still probably wouldn’t work because the lense couldn’t be encased in silver otherwise it wouldn’t work) so basically we need a modern story where the Vampires are having to come up with clever things to stay out of photos where possible because DIGITAL, but there’s that one vampire who photobombs everything and is famous on the internet for it because he’s literally everywhere.
Some good scientific discussion in this thread
I’m 100% here for vampire hunters ferociously wielding hand sanitizer and cheap plastic spray bottles full of cleaning fluid.
“THE POWER OF WINDEX COMPELS YOU!” *spritz spritz* *vampire hisses like a wet cat*
{(Side note: I left this tab open, scrolled to the bottom, and completely forgot how we got here from the color of mirrors. Tumblr science is fun.)}
Fun addition: DSLR digital cameras still use mirrors to flip the image into the viewfinder (and do some fun light flippy shit). The Vampire would not show up when you look through the scope but would appear in your finished photo because the mirror gets flipped out of the way when you take an actual picture. Most digital cameras now are mirrorless (there’s no viewfinder, you look directly at the screen to see what you’re photographing). HOWEVER there are some trace amounts of silver in traditional LCD displays (mostly in the receptor strip… which may impact?) and plasma displays contain a lot of silver so the only way you would be able to see the vampire is if you printed a picture out on paper.
This gets more interesting and convoluted every time it crosses my dash… :->
*thinks about my allergy to rubbing alcohol, regular iron deficiency, and preference for rare steaks*
….hm…..
As a trans woman I can confirm that they indeed found an ancient forest inside a 630ft deep sinkhole in China
cis people can reblog this but keep it on subject, please
Happy pride month everyone always remember that the sinkhole has an ecosystem large enough to house not only insects but likely several species of small birds or mammals
this tweet hasn't left my mind once in the two years since it's been posted
okay i need to actually post stuff here, heres an anne sketch from a bit back
No one:
Me: NO BECAUSE he’ll ALWAYS turn around and she’ll ALWAYS be there and there is no other version of this narrative; it doesn’t make either of those things less of an act of love, but it’s not enough to save them either. We’re just as trapped as witnesses as they are as participants, but we retell the story again and again because the urge to believe in a version where everything works out is as fundamentally human as a love so strong that dooms itself every time.
idk who needs to hear this rn but suffering is not noble. take the tylenol
One time when I was younger I was refusing to take headache medicine and my mom said “the person who invented that medicine is probably so sad you won’t let them help you” and now every time I find myself denying medicine I just imagine the saddest scientist making those big wet eyes like “why won’t you let me help” and whoop then I take the medicine
amphibia? more like dragon…. ia (based on @/cutetanuki_chan au cause I’m low key obsessed with the concept)

















