Bloodyraven1001 - A Raven Under A Weirwood

"True power can reside wherever the hell it wants but not with me! Now let me swing my sword around" is the only acceptable answer to Varys's riddle from the sellsword's perspective and Jaime wins the game

it’s soooo crazy that after jaime killed aerys they ASKED him who he was declaring king was he naming himself or tywin or robert or viserys. because so much of the power politics so much of the crown power is this long absurd constructed legitimacy oh the baratheons have a targ ancestor it’s almost continuity that’s why it’s ok. you can’t kill a king and get rid of all that power it was more inherent than that. but when the kings dead on the floor that doesn’t fucking matter at all ask the kid who killed him if he’s king now it’s a moment out of reality. he might as well be isn’t that the way it worked back then. none of that was real it’s all violence might makes right and momentum and jaime says i don’t care name whoever you like. it won’t be me

To anyone who follows me, I don't care about nor trust Colossal Biosciences anymore (The people behind the "Wooly Mice"). They have proven themselves to be headline-chasing grifters after this latest stunt. They are claiming to have de-extincted *Aenocyon dirus*, aka the Dire Wolf, by editing just 20 genes from the the DNA of a Grey Wolf (*Canis lupus*) to make this thing:

If it wasn't clear from their scientific names, Grey Wolves and Dire Wolves aren't remotely related to one another aside from being Canids, despite what pop culture like Game of Thrones would have you believe. If they did look like each other, it would have had to be via convergent evolution, as they only shared a common ancestor over 5 million years ago.

This distinction, however, isn't found in the publicized articles about this so-called resurrected Dire Wolf and makes their claim that they brought the Dire Wolf back by simply editing *20* genes from the genome of a Grey Wolf laughable. A Dire Wolf would have shared more in common genetically with a Maned Wolf (*Chrysocyon brachyurus*) or Bush Dog (*Speothos venaticus*) than it would with a Grey Wolf.

Bottom line, don't fall for whatever this company is trying to tell you. If the Dire Wolf were to be brought back, it wouldn't be via something like this, and certainly wouldn't *look* like this. If you want an idea as to how a real Dire Wolf would look like in life, here is some fantastic paleoart by artist Mauricio Antón:

Addendum: I seem to have partially miscalculated Dire Wolf genetics. They were not closer to Maned Wolves or Bush Dogs, but they were still not closely related to Grey Wolves. They were basal members of Canini, related to canids like Jackals (genus Lupulella) but distinct from them. I am sorry for this misinformation in my attempt to correct other misinformation. My main point, however, is still correct.

Wonder what it'll be like this time around on this site...

Your friends watching something for the first time and getting to that scene VS you, the knower.

sooo poetic that dany exists as this figurehead this one last scion of old valyria and the dragonlords that conquered a whole continent and yet she rebukes the valyrian legacy of slavery and actively works to dismantle the biggest piece of their colonial legacy. the last remaining child of a cruel father devouring his corpse. cruelty cannibalizing itself. epic and based

Princess Elia Martell by artist adelikashere

Free TMA desktop

Well, hello, everyone!

I finally finished my TMA inspired desktop design! (I will never set my own deadlines again in my life ☠️).

You may have noticed that the wallpaper changed a little bit from the sketch stage to the final stage. Somewhere along the way, I realized that the original design didn't match my vision, so I decided to start from scratch 😅. I am very happy with the final result and I hope you will like it too. (I think I will eventually finish the original design if I get inspired).

Thank you all for the nice words and comments! 💚💚💚 They motivated me not to abandon the whole thing. I'm very happy to know that I'm not the only one who liked the idea of a TMA style desktop so much.

I plan to make a couple more sets of wallpapers and icons based on other characters and fears in the future. (But definitely not in the next month hahaha).

I will be very grateful if you want to support me and my work with a penny. My Ko-fi

Icons and wallpapers you can download here.

Thanks again for your support!

you guys are so annoying. why do i have to see discourse every year that's like "was tolkien really a woke king or was he your conservative uncle?" the guy was a devout catholic and a genteel misogynist who maintained lifelong friendships with queer people and women, and this isn't even paradoxical because that was part of the upper-class oxford culture he was immersed in. tolkien told the nazis to fuck off (and in doing so demonstrated a real understanding of what racism is and why it's harmful, beyond simply "these guys are bad news because they're who my country is at war with right now") but his inner life was marked by internalized racism that is deeply and inextricably woven into the art that he made. he foolishly described himself as an anarcho-monarchist, and it's kind of crazy to see people on this website passionately arguing that he likely never meaningfully engaged with anarchist theory, because...yeah, no shit, of course he didn't. tolkien didn't have to engage with most sociopolitical theory because as an upper-class englishman of his position, he was never affected by any of the issues that this theory is concerned with. what is plainly obvious from reading both his fiction and letters is that tolkien's ideal political system was that the divinely ordained god-king would rise up and rule in perfect justice and humility; he didn't want a government, he wanted a king arthur, even though (obviously) he was aware that outcome was impossible. why is it so hard for people to accept that he was just some guy! his letters aren't a code you have to crack. no amount of arguing or tumblr-level analysis is going to one day reveal a rhetorically airtight internally consistent worldview spanning jrrt's fiction, academic work, and personal writings, thereby "solving" the question of whether he was a woke king or your conservative uncle. his ideology was extremely inconsistent because, at the end of the day, he was just some guy.

Betelgeuse, Dying Star

Close enough. I love you nurses on the Tardis <3