#I just plain don't know what I want

[inkskinned]

hey btw if you're in the USA at  2:20 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Oct. 4, they're testing the emergency broadcast system. your phone is probably going to make a really loud noise, even if it's on silent. there's a backup date on the 11th if they need to postpone it.

if you're not in a safe situation and have an extra phone, you should turn that phone completely off beforehand.

additionally, if you're like me, and are easily startled; i recommend treating it like a party. have a countdown or something. be surrounded by your loved ones. take the actions you personally need to take to make yourself safe.

i have already seen mockery towards any person who feels nervous about this. for the record, it completely, completely valid to have "emergency broadcast sounds" be an anxiety trigger. do not let other people make fun of you for that. emergency sounds are legitimately engineered to make us take action; those of us with high levels of anxiety and/or neurodivergence are already pre-disposed to have a Bad Time. sometimes it is best to acknowledge that the situation will be triggering for some, and to prepare for that; rather than just saying "well that's stupid, it's just a test."

"loud scary sound time" isn't like, my favorite thing, but we can at least try to prevent some additional anxiety by preparing for it. maybe get yourself a cake? noise cancelling headphones? the new hozier album? whatever helps. love u, hope you're okay. we are gonna ride it out together.

[mammoth-clangen]

It makes me so happy to see how passionate you are about paleo!! That kind of dedication is so lovely to engage with

Oh I'm glad! I worry I'm rambling aimlessly so knowing that at least some people are enjoying it is nice to hear c:

For some paleo related fun, here's a huge Eurasian Pleistocene Big Cat sketchdump from 2023 when I was brainstorming for White Cat, Gold Plains

I still like a lot of these, though I was obviously trying to lean more into realism than I do in Kindred Also they're not Fleet Fangs, they're a different species within the same genera, Homotherium latidens and Panthera (leo) spelaea

Past me was some kind of madlad trying to put spots on things, no wonder the comic died after 10 pages c':

[shadowduel]

all i wanna do is untie all your knots, dissolve all your thoughts

[hop3isaprison]

insp. by this still from Eerie Tales (1919)

[demaparbat-hp]

The Line is out now, and...I wasn't expecting the song to be quite like this.

To be soft and uttered. To be gentle and clear and soul-breaking. I don't really know what I was expecting... Perhaps a song similar to Backslide, or Heathens, or Lane Boy—something more in tune with Arcane's upbeat, let's-break-some-bones hits.

And instead of Snakes or Sucker but-in-TØP-style...we got this.

It's not Sting's voice shattering hearts in What Could Have Been, or Woodkid in Guns For Hire or To Ashes And Blood. But it's Twenty One Pilots. It's Tyler, and the waver in his voice feels so much closer to his early songs than I could have ever thought possible.

The feeling is there. It's in the whispered Did I disappoint you? It's in the soft-high notes of I can feel the light shine on my face. It's in the pleading, in the despair of someone asking if you would still see the best version of them, even after they have crossed the line.

I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say or write. This song has carved its way into my heart and my throat and my head, and I don't think it wants to let go.

(I don't think I want it to let go.)

I just want to ask: who would stay by your side if you ever crossed the line? Who would you be there for? Is it easy to love a monster, to remember them as they once were? Is it easy to plead —not for absolution or forgiveness—but for being remembered as the most innocent version of yourself?

I don't know what will happen in Arcane. I don't know in which moment will this song be used. And, to be honest, I don't really care.

I'm already broken.

(And have already been mended.)

[youandthemountains]

it probably is insane how much I wish I could express the thing about spones. the vibes about spones. Like there's the joking fun fandom vibes and I love them, I love to play with them, of course of course. but the THING. the CORE to me. i wish i could capture it and share it.

[polydamnory]

Redactober Day 10: Damien

I miss my boy.

I swear to God, if something comes out in like an hour that means I have to redesign him too I will sob.

[keeps-ache]

it's so cool having my own phone now bc i Did realize i can take as many seemingly pointless videos and photos as i want :3 here's my lettuce from earlier cuz i thought she was pretty

[ikemenomegas]

"Don't call me Anaxa" ... but /looks at his character splash art/... okay?

[fire-on-fuel]

@verpineshatterrifle your tags are literally so true and real!!! Wanted to post them because they're related to what I've been talking about with what makes someone aro or ace and how it is to live out being those things and because the exploring aspect of this is really underappreciated in fandom imo, both in the context of exploring the character and the character exploring themself. The nulls are such a great example of this because of their Situation, there's so much stuff they know about the world and so much they don't. The idea of them trying things out and it working or not working or working in an extra twisted way feels comfortable and likely. It's messy being anywhere on the aroace spectrum, especially when they live in a society that (I'm assuming) doesn't really know where to place those things

[shoechoe]

current progress of my first attempt at a large survival minecraft build (SevTech Ages modpack singleplayer)

[longagoitwastuesday]

.

I'm only two episodes in right now, and thus far I find the show neat, but nothing unforgettable; which is a normal occurrence, I'm after all just two episodes in.

I was told the anime had both a sort of noir film and western air and I think it's interesting how the music reflects that (it so reminds me of Morricone and spaghetti westerns specifically at times). I do love the mix.

Something else I find very interesting, and the is quite common of old scifi, is how the development of futuristic aesthetic has changed through time alongside the evolution of our technology in real life. Futuristic aesthetic used to be way more mechanical and manual than it is now, not in a steampunk kind of way but in a manner that in hindsight does somewhat recall that. It makes me think about how cars' engines, while at their core remaining mechanical, have become more and more electrical with time. You can see in these old futuristic renditions that cars used to be more mechanical. I do prefer that. I like machines because of their machine part. I also find extremely interesting how one can dream up a whole new world or technology, yet it is hard to get rid of what is considered at the core of the functioning of that technology; wasn't there a Jules Verne book in which something like the Internet worked similarly to wired telephones?

Spike is neat. He's very funny and goofy in that actually-he's-sad-and-haunted way. I must say I do love those things. Pretty sure he's going to die. The very beginning of the first episode seems like a flashback, which I think is kinda confirmed by the ending's imagery. And yet it also seems like a flashforward, as if past and future converged in one, and the present were just a necessary thread stitching them together. He was there once, but he'll be there again; it will be for the same reason, and he will die again in a second death that will be but one, since it's the same. You know, that kind of deal. That's the feeling I'm getting out of him, especially given the whole "You'll meet a woman and you'll die / Again? I've already done that" scene in the very first episode.

In that regard, in a way it reminds me a bit of Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez, or some other play on repetition of one's life in which you can foresee the ending from the beginning because they're the same (in general GGM has this happen a lot through his writing). Following that same line, the first flashback, despite giving big noir film vibes aesthetically, also reminded me of the western High Plains Drifter. I rather like that film.

I think of the song "Blue", which is part of the reason why I'm watching this. I think of it now with what I've seen. Hard to tell the difference between life and death, dream and reality, once you've already died and are on borrowed time. Like a watch stuck always on the same hour, the same minute, the second hand trembling but never advancing.

[saph-yells-into-the-void]

i know n*gisagi has its fans and while for the longest time I've considered myself neutral towards it, I think I'm realizing that this is the only ship in bllk that truly gives me the ick

which is weird bc platonically, I actually fw it pretty hard. romantically though....

[brothersonahotelbed]

my dad straight up told me yesterday that he doesn't support my wanting to transition but he'll still offer me the same love and respect he's always given me. and then later in the conversation, while he's telling me i can't receive the eucharist at mass because i'm transgender, he says he doesn't even know if what he's telling me is right. like just outright admitted that he's not confident in the religious advice he's giving me about how to balance my faith and my transgenderism. i don't know what the fuck is happening anymore

[victorluvsalice]

-->While Victor was wrapping up with Shadow, Alice woke from her nap – I sent her to also get pumpkin spice waffles for breakfast (as they were the thing most likely to go bad in the fridge). Which she fetched from the minifridge in the greenhouse. Because why wouldn’t she. *shakehead* Sim autonomy sometimes... Anyway, I decided this meant she could help Victor in the greenhouse (as you could see, there was plenty to do), so once she was done eating and had put her dish away in the new dishwasher (and petted Surprise), I had her go help Victor with the weeding –

Which, uh, didn’t last long, both because Victor kept pre-empting her attempts to weed by hand with his vacuum, and because this is the point where the game started getting really laggy (just when it started raining in-game too, so I am mildly suspicious this had something to do with the weather. But I’ve had it rain in-game without tremendous amounts of lag before…). Oh, and because Alice suddenly got really tense because her werewolf instincts were demanding she go outside. *sigh* Werewolf instincts sometimes... I thus had her instead go clear a twisted tendril from Moory’s pen, then chat with the cow while Smiler took a break from Servo-ing to feed the chickens and clean their coop. Around this time, I managed to remember that Victor had a bunch of animal treats in his inventory and had Alice take a chocolate treat to give to Moory (resulting in her getting a bottle of chocolate milk along with the regular milk), and Smiler a pumpkin treat to give to white hen Leghorna so she’d lay an orange egg later. I always forget to use those damn things, so – here we are! Me using them!

-->And then, immediately afterward, Alice started showering in the rain. *grumble* Erratic Sims sometimes... I let her get on with it, as she WAS starting to trend downward hygiene-wise, and instead had Smiler try joking around with the rooster to give the chickens some attention. The rooster was not interested in their human humor today, though, so Smiler retreated to the greenhouse to chat with Victor – a decision made much more difficult by the fact that Victor was moving around a lot as he tended his plants (lot needed to be done in there today), and by the massive lag. *heavy sigh* I eventually gave up and had Smiler harvest their plasma fruit, poison fireleaves, and noxious elderberries before sending them back to the chicken coop to get the eggs (two hatchable – immediately sold – and three normal, which I ended up forgetting to put in the fridge, whoops). They then fed Toothy, and bred the Whirlyflower and Spotted Dirt frogs in their inventory in hopes of getting the Dirtwhirl frog they needed for their collection –

And to my delight, they did indeed get one! I quickly sent them upstairs to plop it into the right spot in their collection. :D They now just need a plain Heart frog and a plain Eggplant frog, and they will be DONE, yay!

-->While all this was going on, Alice finished her literal rain shower, so I had her collect her Delicate negative-moodlet-reducing bracelet from the charging grid and complete her Raw “find extra Simoleons doing chores” bracelet. Looks pretty good, huh? :) She then shooed Phantom the fox away from the chickens before chatting with the hens so they wouldn’t feel lonely – fortunately they were much more receptive to her today then Smiler! I then had her go and start repairing all the broken wind turbines in the wind farm (because, as usual, most of them were busted) while Smiler flew down and joined Victor in the greenhouse to start super-selling all the produce as Victor finally finished his tending and did a little evolving. And then knee-walked his way into the house for a desperately-needed pee, poor guy. XD Sorry, Victor – I didn’t realize it was going to take so long to tend all the plants today!

-->Around this time, I had to stop Alice from running in and lighting the fireplace again (seriously, shouldn’t YOU of all people not want to do that?), which alerted me to the fact that we had a visitor – Felipe Sisson, hanging out on the front porch taking photos of Shadow after being sprinkled by one of the local specters. :p While I wasn’t originally planning on greeting any visitors today, Smiler WAS feeling a bit thirsty, so I had them go out and say hi while I had Alice do some painting in the study and Victor (after having a bit of forbidden candy to boost his energy) work a bit more on the piano song that’s been sitting in his inventory for ages. Smiler and Felipe had a nice chat, with Smiler learning that Felipe dislikes yellow but likes blue and works as a Waterperson for The Other Sports Team. *nods* Good info! This exchange and a bit of enthusing about humanity was enough to get Felipe to agree to give Smiler a drink, and they happily chomped down on his wrist for a nice glug before sending him on his way. If only all human interaction were that simple. :p

[blizzardfluffykpop]

why the fuck do i miss pigeons