roach-works:

thejakeformerlyknownasprince:

monstrousgourmandizingcats:

durpacerangerrogjro:

thejakeformerlyknownasprince:

Okay, look, the reason I’ve never managed to write this one is that heists are so dependent upon competency kink, and Animorphs is completely defined by how well it depicts kids with no competencies to speak of being forced to fight in a war. Does anyone else know how to square this circle?

Yes

Turn the heist into a comedy of errors that only accidentally succeeds

Also the Animorphs ARE good at things. They’re just really young.

Truth! Jake’s really good at understanding and encouraging people, Rachel’s smart and highly responsible, Marco can do mental math (and come up with jokes) at lightning speed, Ax is one of the best in his class at tail fighting, Cassie’s a budding biologist and medic, and Tobias has a knack for spacial alignment that makes him good at pool and at drawing. However, I’m not sure how well that all translates to hacker-hitter-thief-grifter-mastermind.

i feel like i’ve argued this before somewhere but the kids never morph raccoons and that’s a huge shame, because ‘a bunch of raccoons burst into somewhere and stole some shit’ would be a flawless heist maneuver. like, the animorphs can’t just go mug people in battle morphs in broad daylight because that makes the news. a tiger can’t just eat the damn vice principle of a random school.

but like. five raccoons can absolutely break into basically anywhere, grab a weird shiny piece of technology, and scramble down the nearest storm drain. it’ll probably make the news, especially if they pull this somewhere with security cameras, but no one will be able to definitively conclude 'raccoons don’t do that’ because, actually, raccoons do that all the time.

they could also do it with four raccoons and one Very Official Animal Control Officer with a grabby pole and a kitty carrier, to clear the way and open doors.

how do they get the animal control officer’s uniform, you might ask?

five raccoons.

lumsel:

Of all the weird contrivances that superhero media have by virtue of genre, I think the no-kill rule is one of the easiest to justify. “Why don’t these paragons of virtue extrajudicially murder people?” fuck dude, I wonder.

cuntnikida:

Zohran becoming mayor in his 30s will actually have harmful effects on poc in nyc. And y'all wanna know how?

the-cimmerians:

afloweroutofstone:

kropotkindersurprise:

kropotkindersurprise:

afloweroutofstone:

I was not the guy in khaki shorts and a golf polo who threw a Subway sandwich at an FBI officer on U Street last night and is now being charged with a felony. But free my mans

Godspeed sandwich man 🫡

Brett is in court today for this walk-by sandwiching of what turned out to be a Border Patrol agent, not an FBI agent, and the trial reporting is full of amazing quotes. [link] #freebrett

Big day at U.S. District Court in D.C. where Sean Dunn Brett Afloweroutofstone, the D.C. Sandwich Guy, is on trial for misdemeanor assault of a federal officer. Border Patrol agent Gregory Lairmore is on the stand narrating surveillance video of the sammie toss. ’Now he’s struck me with the sandwich,’ Lairmore says.

Border Patrol agent Lairmore testifies that he was not injured by the sandwich, but he felt the impact through his ballistic vest. The sandwich came apart and “kind of exploded” on his chest upon impact, he says. “I could smell the onions and mustard.”

Defense tells judge they want to question Lairmore about ‘gag gifts’ he received from fellow officers after the alleged assault, including a Subway sandwich plush toy and a patch that (unless I misheard) said 'Felony Footlong.’ Prosecutors object. Defense argues they reflect CBP 'state of mind.’

Defense is now questioning Lairmore on cross-examination. They show a video still of the sandwich and wrapper on the ground, post-throw. “Do you recognize that sandwich?” the attorney asks. Lairmore won’t confirm. “I did not go back to collect it,” he says.

The defense team presses Lairmore on whether the sandwich really 'exploded.’ They return to the photo of the sandwich and wrapper on the ground. “That sandwich hasn’t exploded at all, has it?” defense asks. “It looks like a little bit is coming out towards the bottom,” Lairmore replies.

Lairmore testifies that other agents gave him a plush sandwich toy, which he placed on the shelf in his office, and a patch that said “Felony Footlong,” which he put on his lunch box. Lairmore has chuckled with the rest of us at times. Defense really trying to underscore the unseriousness of it all

Not guilty! Feds had to downgrade his charges and they still failed to get a jury to convict #I’mFree

NPR:

Subway sandwich thrower found not guilty in D.C. jury rebuke

A bystander’s video captured Sean Charles Dunn in August calling federal officers racists and fascists. He thought they were about to do an immigration raid at a gay nightclub on Latin Night.

disgruntledexplainer:

sometimes when I think back on the Deltora Quest series I am struck by how mind-bogglingly PETTY the shadow lord is. He has basically infinite magical power and is immortal, and he spends his life

-infesting the city of Hira with giant rats and traumatising it’s people so much they leave, build a new city, and form an entire RELIGION around avoiding rats, all because the city was the site of his first military defeat

-turning Withick Mire into a garbage dump to spite the artist and author Withick, despite the fact that Withick was long dead

-making Doran Dragonfriend immortal and trapping him on an island as the “guardian” of an object he was trying to destroy, fully conscious of his fate but unable to do anything about it and constantly in pain

-nearly exterminating the Jalis people completely, and keeping the dozen or so remaining tribesman as slave gladiators, because they were the only tribe to resist his second invasion with arms.

-nearly exterminating the dragons because an emerald one once breathed on him

-creating magical devices that slowly kill the crops of deltora so that even if the people throw of his chains they will still starve to death, and making it so that if the devices are destroyed it triggers a “grey goo” event that will wipe out ALL life in Deltora, starting with the cities of Hira and Noradz.

-deliberately starving the people of Del by cutting off their contact with the outside lands and branding all the fruit orchards and farms with his brand so that anyone who enters them will be executed

-enslaving the winners of the Rithmere Games and spreading the rumor that they abandoned their people the moment that they got the prize money so that all their friends and family will hate their memory

-weaving a magical illusion over the sun and moon in the shadowlands so that it looks like they are covered by his brand, so that none of his slaves can even look at the sky without seeing his mark

-turning his own homeland into a blasted heath devoid of most life except flesh-eating snails and forcing them to harvest mutagenic (and probably carcinogenic) clay or face death, all because they rejected him as king over a thousand years ago

-trying to send millions of giant flesh-eating bats to deltora to eat everyone alive for having the gall to resist his rule

he is the king of all haters, truly a miserable old cloud of soot and spite.

lindalofbroome:

Original pride posts
- Lindal and Barda
- Jasmine and Lief
- Steven and Doom
- Josef ii

felt like colouring my guys <3

marithlizard:

ALT

This is the best thing I’ve seen all week and I had to share.

(source)

Explanation in the alt text:

Famously, the Egyptian tyrant causes Egypt to be overrun with frogs because he refuses to free the Hebrew people, but there are additional details that make this a fun one to ponder. For one, the Hebrew says “the frog came up” - ONE frog - even though the rest of the time it says “frogs.” So there are a few explanations rabbis have come up with to explain this. One is that a single frog multiplied to create swarms. A more creative explanation is that there was a singular giant frog who traveled and brought destruction. Jewish social media was sharing videos of the Portland Frog protester with the caption, “One Big Frog! One Big Frog!” Of course the frog protesters did multiply, and many were seen in crowds all over the world on “No Kings” Day. This calligraphic work takes the verses addressing the frog plague and combines them to form a simple rendering of the Portland Frog protester. The frog figure itself is made up of the English translations of the Hebrew around it. At the bottom left my signature is in the shape of a lily pad.

warrioreowynofrohan:

Seeing Protector of the Small fanart reminded me of something I wanted to say.

One of the things I love about the series is that Kel’s life gets better over the course of it. Oh, the enemies she’s facing get tougher - in the first book of the quartet she’s an 11-year-old fighting bullies at school, by the fourth one she’s an adult fighting in a war - but the number of people she’s got on her side and at her back expands immensely.

In the first book, she’s virtually on her own at the start and she has almost no control over her fate - whether she will be able to pursue her dream of being a knight depends solely on the arbitrary judgement of a raging sexist. By the second one, she still has enemies, but also a sizeable group of friends, and is a mentor to younger students. By the third, she has some of the most powerful people in the kingdom on her side, and is virtually never without either emotional support or people willing to go to bat for her. In the fourth, she has dozens of people – including the aforementioned raging sexist, who has some of the best character development in any Tamora Pierce novel – supporting her when she does something that is technically illegal.

She’s never more alone or less in control of her fate than the moment, as an eleven-year-old girl, when she says (paraphrased): “If I want to be a knight in order to help people, then I’m going to help people now even though it will probably ruin my chances of ever becoming a knight; because otherwise what was the point?” And the fact that she sticks to her principles doggedly and refuses to turn aside from anyone who needs help is why she has so much support by the end. With a lot of that support coming from people whom she helped and supported because they needed it, people whom the rest of society ignored and discarded and regarded as useless, and who turned out to be tough and talented and invaluble friends. It’s not an authorial gift, it’s the cumulative effect of the mountains of hard work she’s put in over the previous books, usually with no expectation of any return.

space-dog-from-space:

ALT

Day 22 of Trektober! Today’s prompt was “fake dating/married” so here’s a take on the classic scene from Voyager lmao.

[AO3]

sashayed:

cipherface:

intercal:

the fact that we made it through the Cold War is nothing short of a miracle. I wish we talked about Mutual Assured Destruction more in schools

William Gibson once suggested that the days on which we almost destroyed the world with nuclear weapons should be recognized as international holidays, to raise awareness of how very precarious the situation has been at times.

If you would like to observe such a holiday, October 27th should be Vasili Arkhipov Day. During the Cuban missile crisis he was first officer on Soviet submarine B-59 off the coast of Cuba. When the destroyer USS Beale began to drop depth charges to force them to the surface, his captain decided that WW III must have started, and ordered his men to arm and fire a nuclear torpedo at a group of American ships. Due to a strange circumstance, the captain had to seek Arkhipov’s approval to fire the weapon, because while he was only second in command of the sub, he was in command of the flotilla of which the submarine was a part. Arkhipov, outnumbered three to one, steadfastly refused to give his approval.