#at certain points

[androidboy]

my brain is. so incredibly busy

[rivalkieran]

HEARTBREAKING: character actually mildly interesting to think about but I Dont like their fans

[littlemizzlinguistics]

Studying linguistics is actually so wonderful because when you explain youth slang to older professors, instead of complaining about how "your generation can't speak right/ you're butchering the language" they light up and go “really? That’s so wonderful! What an innovative construction! Isn't language wonderful?"

[tofixtheshadows]

I've been thinking a lot lately about how Kabru deprives himself.

Kabru as a character is intertwined with the idea that sometimes we have to sacrifice the needs of the few for the good of the many. He ultimately subverts this first by sabotaging the Canaries and then by letting Laios go, but in practice he's already been living a life of self-sacrifice.

Saving people, and learning the secrets of the dungeons to seal them, are what's important. Not his own comforts. Not his own desires. He forces them down until he doesn't know they're there, until one of them has to come spilling out during the confession in chapter 76.

Specifically, I think it's very significant, in a story about food and all that it entails, that Kabru is rarely shown eating. He's the deuteragonist of Dungeon Meshi, the cooking manga, but while meals are the anchoring points of Laios's journey, given loving focus, for Kabru, they're ... not.

I'm sure he eats during dungeon expeditions, in the routine way that adventurers must when they sit down to camp. But on the surface, you get the idea that Kabru spends most of his time doing his self-assigned dungeon-related tasks: meeting with people, studying them, putting together that evidence board, researching the dungeon, god knows what else. Feeding himself is secondary.

He's introduced during a meal, eating at a restaurant, just to set up the contrast between his party and Laios's. And it's the last normal meal we see him eating until the communal ending feast (if you consider Falin's dragon parts normal).

First, we get this:

Kabru's response here is such a non-answer, it strongly implies to me that he wasn't thinking about it until Rin brought it up. That he might not even be feeling the hunger signals that he logically knew he should.

They sit down to eat, but Kabru is never drawn reaching for food or eating it like the rest of his party. He only drinks.

It's possible this means nothing, that we can just assume he's putting food in his mouth off-panel, but again, this entire manga is about food. Cooking it, eating it, appreciating it, taking pleasure in it, grounding yourself in the necessary routine of it and affirming your right to live by consuming it. It's given such a huge focus.

We don't see him eat again until the harpy egg.

What a significant question for the protagonist to ask his foil in this story about eating! Aren't you hungry? Aren't you, Kabru?

He was revived only minutes ago after a violent encounter. And then he chokes down food that causes him further harm by triggering him, all because he's so determined to stay in Laios's good graces.

In his flashback, we see Milsiril trying to spoon-feed young Kabru cake that we know he doesn't like. He doesn't want to eat: he wants to be training.

Then with Mithrun, we see him eating the least-monstery monster food he can get his hands on, for the sake of survival- walking mushroom, barometz, an egg. The barometz is his first chance to make something like an a real meal, and he actually seems excited about it because he wants to replicate a lamb dish his mother used to make him!

...but he doesn't get to enjoy it like he wanted to.

Then, when all the Canaries are eating field rations ... Kabru still isn't shown eating. He's only shown giving food to Mithrun.

And of course the next time he eats is the bavarois, which for his sake is at least plant based ... but he still has to use a coping mechanism to get through it.

I don't think Kabru does this all on purpose. I think Kui does this all on purpose. Kabru's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder should be understood as informing his character just as much as Laios's autism informs his. It's another way that Kabru and Laios act as foils: where Laios takes pleasure in meals and approaches food with the excitement of discovery, Kabru's experiences with eating are tainted by his trauma. Laios indulges; Kabru denies himself. Laios is shown enjoying food, Kabru is shown struggling with it.

And I can very easily imagine a reason why Kabru might have a subconscious aversion towards eating.

Meals are the privilege of the living.

[pangur-and-grim]

Hope you don’t mind unsolicited kitty cat pictures of my new worm-beast! Forcibly reminding myself that randombred cats can look like anything and that this elongated fella I found living at the local zoo is not in fact an oriental-type/lemur hybrid.

I'll be honest, this is the first cat I've seen that could actually be a Balinese cross.

if you'd only shown me the first photo, I would have 100% believed that was a Balinese. the fur and body type are so specific. and then the last photo couldn't be a Balinese (because of the white spotting), but I'd still believe it was an Oriental Longhair.

it's only the second photo that made me go oh......that's not quite right.....that's not how that should look.........

so I'd say the possibilities are:

you found a cat that has coincidental similarities to a Balinese/Oriental (cool!! awesome cat! the breed had to get the traits from somewhere, makes sense!)

you found a badly bred Oriental Longhair with a wonky face (not likely, OLHs are rare and tend to have a more standardized show-type appearance)

you found a Balinese cross (cool!! awesome cat!)

in any case, they are very beautiful and I'm an admirer of their special white stripe.

[unpretty]

not keeping an ad-free tier is bonkers imho, it was at a perfect price point where you could say, "yeah sure that's not too much money" and spring for it even if you didn't actually need it (i've got adblockers on desktop and mobile, i'm never going to see an ad regardless). hell. they could have let ad-free subscribers get grandfathered in at their older price and then announced the change in advance. people would have RUSHED to get the lower price point locked in. instead... this.

[muggle-born-princess]

Reblog if you're LGBT and are against MAPS/Child Groomers

[inkskinned]

the thing about art is that it was always supposed to be about us, about the human-ness of us, the impossible and beautiful reality that we (for centuries) have stood still, transfixed by music. that we can close our eyes and cry about the same book passage; the events of which aren't real and never happened. theatre in shakespeare's time was as real as it is now; we all laugh at the same cue (pursued by bear), separated hundreds of years apart.

three years ago my housemates were jamming outdoors, just messing around with their instruments, mostly just making noise. our neighbors - shy, cautious, a little sheepish - sat down and started playing. i don't really know how it happened; i was somehow in charge of dancing, barefoot and laughing - but i looked up, and our yard was full of people. kids stacked on the shoulders of parents. old couples holding hands. someone had brought sidewalk chalk; our front walk became a riot of color. someone ran in with a flute and played the most astounding solo i've ever heard in my life, upright and wiggling, skipping as she did so. she only paused because the violin player was kicking his heels up and she was laughing too hard to continue.

two weeks ago my friend and i met in the basement of her apartment complex so she could work out a piece of choreography. we have a language barrier - i'm not as good at ASL as i'd like to be (i'm still learning!) so we communicate mostly through the notes app and this strange secret language of dancers - we have the same movement vocabulary. the two of us cracking jokes at each other, giggling. there were kids in the basement too, who had been playing soccer until we took up the far corner of the room. one by one they made their slow way over like feral cats - they laid down, belly-flat against the floor, just watching. my friend and i were not in tutus - we were in slouchy shirts and leggings and socks. nothing fancy. but when i asked the kids would you like to dance too? they were immediately on their feet and spinning. i love when people dance with abandon, the wild and leggy fervor of childhood. i think it is gorgeous.

their adults showed up eventually, and a few of them said hey, let's not bother the nice ladies. but they weren't bothering us, they were just having fun - so. a few of the adults started dancing awkwardly along, and then most of the adults. someone brought down a better sound system. someone opened a watermelon and started handing out slices. it was 8 PM on a tuesday and nothing about that day was particularly special; we might as well party.

one time i hosted a free "paint along party" and about 20 adults worked quietly while i taught them how to paint nessie. one time i taught community dance classes and so many people showed up we had to move the whole thing outside. we used chairs and coatracks to balance. one time i showed up to a random band playing in a random location, and the whole thing got packed so quickly we had to open every door and window in the place.

i don't think i can tell you how much people want to be making art and engaging with art. they want to, desperately. so many people would be stunning artists, but they are lied to and told from a very young age that art only matters if it is planned, purposeful, beautiful. that if you have an idea, you need to be able to express it perfectly. this is not true. you don't get only 1 chance to communicate. you can spend a lifetime trying to display exactly 1 thing you can never quite language. you can just express the "!!??!!!"-ing-ness of being alive; that is something none of us really have a full grasp on creating. and even when we can't make what we want - god, it feels fucking good to try. and even just enjoying other artists - art inherently rewards the act of participating.

i wasn't raised wealthy. whenever i make a post about art, someone inevitably says something along the lines of well some of us aren't that lucky. i am not lucky; i am dedicated. i have a chronic condition, my hands are constantly in pain. i am not neurotypical, nor was i raised safe. i worked 5-7 jobs while some of these memories happened. i chose art because it mattered to me more than anything on this fucking planet - i would work 80 hours a week just so i could afford to write in 3 of them.

and i am still telling you - if you are called to make art, you are called to the part of you that is human. you do not have to be good at it. you do not have to have enormous amounts of privilege. you can just... give yourself permission. you can just say i'm going to make something now and then - go out and make it. raquel it won't be good though that is okay, i don't make good things every time either. besides. who decides what good even is?

you weren't called to make something because you wanted it to be good, you were called to make something because it is a basic instinct. you were taught to judge its worth and over-value perfection. you are doing something impossible. a god's ability: from nothing springs creation.

a few months ago i found a piece of sidewalk chalk and started drawing. within an hour i had somehow collected a small classroom of young children. their adults often brought their own chalk. i looked up and about fifteen families had joined me from around the block. we drew scrangly unicorns and messed up flowers and one girl asked me to draw charizard. i am not good at drawing. i basically drew an orb with wings. you would have thought i drew her the mona lisa. she dragged her mother over and pointed and said look! look what she drew for me and, in the moment, i admit i flinched (sorry, i don't -). but the mother just grinned at me. he's beautiful. and then she sat down and started drawing.

someone took a picture of it. it was in the local newspaper. the summary underneath said joyful and spontaneous artwork from local artists springs up in public gallery. in the picture, a little girl covered in chalk dust has her head thrown back, delighted. laughing.

[a-sketchy]

in commemoration of reload, here’s the full hamuko paintover from november

[halogalopaghost]

TIL that you can assign an AO3 next of kin to control your account in case of your death???

[critterbitter]

Revisiting relatives at chargestone cave! Here’s tynamo’s cousin, here’s tynamo’s cousin, here’s tynamo’s cousin, here’s-

Anyways I like to imagine chargestone cave’s magnetic fields are so strong it causes rock islands to float and gravity to get a tad funky. Or maybe it’s due to the thinning barrier between the material world and the distortion world…

Master list for more pokemon shenanigans!

[egophiliac]

I DID IT I GOT MY PINK HAYATE now I am never doing that again!

(at least until they give me, like, a frilly unicorn Kamui or something)

[thestuffedalligator]

I read Fat Face by Michael Shea last month and it was. Fine? It was a Cthulhu Mythos story written in the 80s, it was very edgy and it had a lot of tropes I’m not a fan of, I don’t really recommend it, but I have to talk about one detail I have not stopped thinking about since I read it.

So. I knew Fat Face through reputation because it was the story that inspired Shoggoth Lords from the Call of Cthulhu TTRPG, shoggoths that can control their cellular makeup to look like humans. And the twist in Fat Face is that shoggoths have been hiding amongst humans in Los Angeles, and at the end of the story one of them eats the protagonist.

The tone of the story is grit. It’s grime. It’s sleaze and sexual violence and drug abuse on top of cosmic horror. It wants to be taken seriously so bad.

But here’s the thing about the shoggoths: they have a business.

They have two businesses they run out of an office building in downtown Los Angeles. A shoggoth is a primordial blob of eyes and mouths and flesh and hunger, and the idea of one of them at the LA Office of Finance registering an LLC is already. Great. Perfect. No notes.

The business is a front — and again, that’s great, a shoggoth went, “I want to do some nefarious deeds and not get caught by humans; I know, I’ll register a fake business that’ll be a front, and no human will ever suspect” — because the actual interior of this office is a room of pools of water made from black and ancient Antarctic rocks so that shoggoths can relax in their original blobby forms and eat stray animals that they’ve caught.

So it’s basically just. A place for shoggoths to unwind after a long day of pretending to be human. It’s portrayed as cosmic horror, but it’s shoggoth Cheers. Sometimes you wanna go where nobody knows your shape.

Here’s the kicker. The front of the business is a hydrotherapy clinic and stray pet rescue.

When they decided to make a front for their secret lair in an LA office building where they hang out in pools of water and eat stray animals — the front they prominently display and advertise — they decided to go with a hydrotherapy clinic and stray pet rescue.

That is Goosebumps shit. The rest of the story reads like a tone poem about the sleaze and violence of Los Angeles, and the main twist of the story reads like R.L. Stine.

But that’s not even the detail I can’t stop thinking about. Because the story reveals that this business — which again, is a front made by alien blobs to eat stray animals like an ALF-themed buffet and hang out in jacuzzi tubs of Antarctic rocks in an LA office — has a flyer.

Which means there’s a shoggoth with a passion for graphic design

[lemonlimestar]

*taking you by the shoulders* janet drake is dead and died before tim even officially became robin. lex luthor being involved in kon’s creation in any way was a badly executed retcon. cassie sandsmark is not and never will be the exasperated mom friend. bart allen is the same age as all of his friends and isn’t an innocent baby. can anyone hear me it’s so dark in here

[pangur-and-grim]

I had two colonies! my scabers were in a beautiful planted terrarium with a bark wall. unfortunately after I went on a trip, they suffered a colony collapse - I'd asked my housemate to spritz them with water in my absence, but I'm guessing she either spritzed more or less than I usually do, and the shock killed them.

a third of them survived this event, so I gave the terrarium away to someone with invertebrate knowledge.

and then there's my vulgare colony! they thrived for years - at one point, there were so many that the ground oscillated like water when I lifted the lid up. and then.....within a month this year, they all died. no clue why. I didn't change any part of my care.

unfortunately, if I don't understand how I killed them, then I won't be able to prevent their deaths in the future, so I'm done with invertebrates for now. they brought me a lot of joy while they lasted, though!

[fl00mie]

ink and blackberry

ink by @/comyet

blackberry/error by @/loverofpiggies