along-the-devils-backbone

[along-the-devils-backbone]

[along-the-devils-backbone]

i hauve a cold

[along-the-devils-backbone]

[along-the-devils-backbone]

“I don’t want to be a burden” you’re more like a relief, a gift, a blessing actually

[along-the-devils-backbone]

archers gloves vs digital artist gloves being opposite of one another

[along-the-devils-backbone]

[along-the-devils-backbone]

while kissing my cat's little head: you're a problem *smooch* you're a terror *smooch* you're a menace to society *smooch smooch smooch*

[along-the-devils-backbone]

@beastlyart 👀

Bobby pin with a needle felted rat by byMagic

[along-the-devils-backbone]

pnw rainforest canyon hikes >

[along-the-devils-backbone]

[along-the-devils-backbone]

There's actually an EXCELLENT YA series of books called "The Enchanted Forest" by Patricia C. Wrede (Dealing with dragons, talking with dragons, etc) that is similar to this, in which a princess becomes the charge of a dragon named Kazul. She learns witchcraft and repairs armor and all kinds of stuff. It's incredible, very terry pratchet-y and i adored it growing up!

Digging through my WIP folder and I found notes for a story idea I had about a dragon adopting a human.

Not on accident, mind you, the dragon doesn’t just stumble across a human infant and adopts it. The dragon decides it wants to adopt a human.

The dragon explains this to its lich friend: “I want someone to take care of me in my old age! A human would be great! Imagine how easily it could talk the other humans into leaving me alone! And– and it might decide to grow up and become a goldsmith, right? Some humans become goldsmiths. My human might decide to go into goldsmithing too!”

“I think you’re overestimating the percentage of humans who become goldsmiths,” replies the lich friend, who is not terribly discouraging of the idea, but also not particularly invested in it at this point. It seems like a plan with a lot of potential points of failure.

The dragon is undeterred, mostly because it has a whole hoard of gold coins and goblets and jewelry and trinkets that seem to indicate to it that there must, in fact, be a great number of humans who know goldsmithing to have produced all that.

Anyway, the dragon decides to shapeshift into a humanoid form, go into a city, and adopt a human child. It needs the lich’s help, because it doesn’t know anything about human fashion. The lich’s knowledge on the subject is a few centuries outdated, but they attack a few fancy carriage on the road and reverse-engineer an outfit from what the humans inside them were wearing. (Those humans were nobles, it’s fine, it’s a victimless crime)

The lich fusses a lot with the humanoid appearance of the dragon until everything looks just so.

(“Am I actually doing it wrong, or are you just making me shapeshift into something you find more attractive?” the dragon asks.

“If you want me to pose as your husband, this is the price to pay,” the lich replies.)

They go into the city, anyway, and they find an orphanage on the shady side of town, where the tired, overworked and underpaid matron clearly sees there’s something not right about these two, but not in any obvious way she can put her finger on. She’s just happy to have one less mouth to feed.

Anyway, child get! 

She comes along quietly, and doesn’t even comment when she’s taken to a dragon lair.

The dragon is ecstatic with its new acquisition.

(“Does it know any commands?” the dragon wonders. “Sit! Stay! Roll over?”

“You may be thinking of dogs,” the lich points out. “Children do not perform tricks.”

They both looked at the human child, trying to figure out how to approach her.

“So, what scam are you running here?” the little girl asked suddenly, startling both the dragon and the lich.

“I was wrong,” the lich says, “they’ve definitely been teaching children new tricks since I was alive.”)

[along-the-devils-backbone]

[along-the-devils-backbone]

I don't know I'm not done talking about it. It's insane that I can't just uninstall Edge or Copilot. That websites require my phone number to sign up. That people share their contacts to find their friends on social media.

I wouldn't use an adblocker if ads were just banners on the side funding a website I enjoy using and want to support. Ads pop up invasively and fill my whole screen, I misclick and get warped away to another page just for trying to read an article or get a recipe.

Every app shouldn't be like every other app. Instagram didn't need reels and a shop. TikTok doesn't need a store. Instagram doesn't need to be connected to Facebook. I don't want my apps to do everything, I want a hub for a specific thing, and I'll go to that place accordingly.

I love discord, but so much information gets lost to it. I don't want to join to view things. I want to lurk on forums. I want to be a user who can log in and join a conversation by replying to a thread, even if that conversation was two days ago. I know discord has threads, it's not the same. I don't want to have to verify my account with a phone number. I understand safety and digital concerns, but I'm concerned about information like that with leaks everywhere, even with password managers.

I shouldn't have to pay subscriptions to use services and get locked out of old versions. My old disk copy of photoshop should work. I should want to upgrade eventually because I like photoshop and supporting the business. Adobe is a whole other can of worms here.

Streaming is so splintered across everything. Shows release so fast. Things don't get physical releases. I can't stream a movie I own digitally to friends because the share-screen blocks it, even though I own two digital copies, even though I own a physical copy.

I have an iPod, and I had to install a third party OS to easily put my music on it without having to tangle with iTunes. Spotify bricked hardware I purchased because they were unwillingly to upkeep it. They don't pay their artists. iTunes isn't even iTunes anymore and Apple struggles to upkeep it.

My TV shows me ads on the home screen. My dad lost access to eBook he purchased because they were digital and got revoked by the company distributing them. Hitman 1-3 only runs online most of the time. Flash died and is staying alive because people love it and made efforts to keep it up.

I have to click "not now" and can't click "no". I don't just get emails, they want to text me to purchase things online too. My windows start search bar searches online, not just my computer. Everything is blindly called an app now. Everything wants me to upload to the cloud. These are good tools! But why am I forced to use them! Why am I not allowed to own or control them?

No more!!!!! I love my iPod with so much storage and FLAC files. I love having all my fics on my harddrive. I love having USBs and backups. I love running scripts to gut suck stuff out of my Windows computer I don't want that spies on me. I love having forums. I love sending letters. I love neocities and webpages and webrings. I will not be scanning QR codes. Please hand me a physical menu. If I didn't need a smartphone for work I'd get a "dumb" phone so fast. I want things to have buttons. I want to use a mouse. I want replaceable batteries. I want the right to repair. I grew up online and I won't forget how it was!

[along-the-devils-backbone]

[along-the-devils-backbone]

[along-the-devils-backbone]

[along-the-devils-backbone]

Leaded stained glass spiderweb door