Here for Peggy Carter.

assume people are trying their best, want to be good and treat others well, and that when their behavior doesn’t align with those goals, it’s because of outside factors that are pushing them to their limit

i have a patron who is mean as a snake. won’t respond when you greet her, barks orders at you, and is generally nasty

i couldn’t stand her & dreaded the moment she walked in the door, until i stopped one day & went “wow, to walk around feeling unhappy enough to treat people so horribly every day. what a difficult way to live.”

and so my tactics changed. i made a point to be extra kind & friendly to her. she changed her hair color one day & when i complimented her on it, she was very caught off guard & said “oh, thank you. my whole life i’ve thought i was ugly.”

now we’re at the point where she shows me pictures of watercolor paintings she made & says hi when she walks in the door. she’s not my favorite patron, but she’s perfectly okay. most unpleasant people aren’t inherently rotten, they’re just unhappy & coping with it poorly

Anyway apparently Mr. Eclipse made 5000 years' worth of solar eclipse graphics, which you can find the simpler versions of here

But if by any chance this post reaches anyone who hasn’t read this marvelous, delightful book, let me tell you what you’re sleeping on:

A perfect example of how to write the most oblivious protagonist while still making things clear to the reader what’s going on

A competent protagonist who still has relatable self-esteem issues

Oblivious p I n I n g she wants Howl so bad and is in SUCH jealous denial

Misunderstandings related to that obliviousness

The most ridiculous Drama King to ever slime his own house

But who also is head over heels for that adorably oblivious protagonist

Like he dotes on her and she just thinks the whole time he doesn’t like her

Okay it’s not exactly enemies to lovers, but like, Sophie has such an impression of Howl’s reputation due to his own efforts to blacken his own name that Howl has a lot of work to do to correct her impression of him

and besides which, he really is a slitherer-outer so you can hardly blame Sophie’s frustration with him

and besides which Sophie does meddle an awful lot so you can hardly blame his own frustrations with her

I mean she basically just barges into his home and insists on staying an indeterminate time, like just tonight or you know, forever?

On that note, it’s not fake dating but these two are essentially living in a domestic relationship before they even kiss

File under: how to write a romance without needing the protagonists to kiss!

When Sophie insists on cleaning all the time Howl is just like “??? why??? do you want to clean when you are so awesome and powerful and could do so much better??? i keep telling you there’s a spell for that and you do not have to clean???? but if it’s what you want to do I guess?????”

like for real he’s just disappointed that she seems to only think she’s good for serving and doing chores and wants her to want more for herself

you can reread the book and try to pinpoint when Howl starts loving Sophie but then you cannot and for sure it just must be a case of ‘he was already in the middle before he knew he begun’

like he cures her aches and pains and he buys her nice clothes clearly trying to cater to her taste and

when he has to redo his whole HOME he asks her what kind of shop she wants to run and he buys her old home like as if they’re already married and they’re building a new home together

and Howl tries multiple times to break her curse, but in the end only SHE can really break it bc like I said this story is brilliant

and the WHOLE TIME, the whole time ALL OF THIS doting and pining is going on, Sophie looks like a 90-year-old woman and Howl is just head over heels for her 

I mean with tropes like these???? what are you waiting for?

"why do the trills change appearance between tng and ds9?" Mistake in the logs

their big eggs are actually that size for a similar reason to human babies having massive heads!! being bigger at birth can be important.

kiwi are trying SO HARD to become mammals. fur-like feathers, whisker-like feathers, little beady eyes, nocturnal, great sense of smell.... that's basically a mammal!! they're well suited for life on the forest floor.

their big eggs work alongside these adaptations to give them a leg up in the bird world. their young hatch already feathered! they're precocial, which means they're born with the ability to open their eyes and move around. like foals.

big egg = more powerful offspring from the get-go. babies don't need to spend precious time vulnerable while they develop on the ground when they've already done all that in the egg!