#circles we're just going in circles

[egophiliac]

have you been keeping up with gozyuger? it's just... truly wild to watch

OKAY I'm finally caught up! and...wild is an understatement, huh! getting some real Donbros energy off of this one (in the best of ways though really) (just all kinds of super weird and super fun! 💍) (...also the blue ranger might have murdered a child?) (I mean probably not) (they wouldn't. but.) (what if)

I'm especially fond of Bouquet and Fire Candle, just because they encapsulate the two modes of my brain at any given moment

[ficandkaboodle]

Take the fanon interpretation of Primo as a parentified but well-meaning older brother trying his best; and the canon of Primo being fucking off the rails and messing with dark magic for shits and giggles; and you'll have Primo putting an eight-year-old Terzo in the middle of a pentagram while insisting this is exactly how you cure someone of their chronic hayfever. Now stop moving, if that blood smears then year-round allergies will be the least of our problems --

[sforzesco]

decimus wanted to wind cassius up a bit just to see how he would snap

uhhh. what else. you know!! caesar was collecting (and discarding) a new generation of romans, operating a new kind of roman imperium. political manipulation. "good" governance. conspiracies are forming in reply.

the collage art is all public domain/open access stuff from the met collections!

[crypticcanidae]

veilguard's kinda like. the monkey's paw of videogames i think.

[thestarfishface]

What is something you always wanted to mention but no one asked yet about blorbitos?

I have gotten some questions about something mentioned in my many doodles so I am using this opportunity to talk about The Botched Proposal (mentioned in this post)

SO BASICALLY what happened goes like this:

Verity and Rodin knew each other and were Blacksmith Buddies (TM) for several years pre-adventuring, and started dating once they left town to quest and such. Verity kicked the bucket 2-3 months into Questing, after which the rest of the group spent a few years trying to revive her. Nothing worked* and they eventually gave up.

Rodin, later in life, started building up his political influence, eventually becoming a Very Big Deal and getting the title of Lord. He did end up getting married to a dwarvish woman as part of this, but it was very much a political marriage and it didn't last long bc his (now ex) wife "didn't like playing second fiddle to a dead woman". There's some baggage there. Yikeronis.

Part of dwarvish custom is that you can symbolically pass on titles to the deceased to honor their memory. Rodin wanted Verity to be honored and share his lordly title, so (assuming she was Super Dead And Never Coming Back) he did a post-mortem symbolic marriage to her to pass on his rank and title.

*Turns out, one of their resurrection attempts DID work, it just took 200 years to kick in.

Several decades after marrying her post-mortem, Verity shows up, unexpected and very much alive, on Rodin's doorstep. And he has to explain all that to her. It is awkward as hell.

The Most Awkward Proposal In The World happened not long after Rodin explained all this to her. He was super flustered and defensive and told her he would NEVER have gone through with what he did if he had known she was going to come back someday, and says that they can get the marriage annulled. Verity DOES like Rodin, but marriage was a bit much, and she needed some time to waffle over her feelings. There was A Quest she and the current party had to go do and she said they'd talk when she got back.

So she gets back after the quest a day or two later and goes up to his room to talk things over. She manages to surprise him and, as she walks in, sees him chuck something shiny across the room. There's some awkward stammering conversation wherein Rodin understands if she wants to get the marriage annulled, and has already had the paperwork drawn up- all she has to do is sign it. BUT if she thinks she DOES want to keep the marriage, he wants to propose for real. With some fancy engagement jewelry he has already made. And threw across the room in surprise when she came in. So. That's. Awkward.

Verity says she still cares about him but things are real awkward and weird now and she needs time to adjust and figure out her feelings. She likes him, but marriage is too much too fast. Rodin is disappointed but understands (he's just grateful she doesn't hate him after All That), then manages to... exit the conversation by leaving the room and skedaddling away. Despite the fact that they were in his private quarters when they had this conversation. So he just. Left her. In his own room. As a way to escape the awkward convo. (Cue Mira and Willow's ghosts screaeeeaaaaaming, not that anyone can hear them.)

Anyway Verity was nosy and went digging for the jewelry after he left and found out it was a platinum and amethyst armband. Very pretty and matched the crystal of her horns. She ends up leaving it on his desk.

And thus begins The Situationship (and many many divorced jokes).

[babisawyer]

Ben coming back to the cabin to see yet another cannibalistic ritual

[enigmaticvariation]

I think they put drugs in los campesinos songs because whenever I listen to them I need to loop them over and over until I have them memorized and have fully absorbed the song into my body and soul.

[luminaryofblood]

Aw man, I've been diggin' around for this particular image of mine for some several months and it's been eatin' at me because I could not for the life of me find it.

Well I couldn't find the original, but I finally found the image and re-made the thing!

[abirddogmoment]

I love seeing Rory run in the field!! Bird dog doing bird dog things!! You said in the tags you had different training and priorities with her vs Mav re: offleash running like that. What kinds of things did you do differently with Rory to be comfortable having her offleash at a distance with reliable recall?

I was writing a whole novel but really it boils down to this chart. Under the cut because it's (vertically) long.

In short, it's just as much about what I didn't do with Maverick as what I did do with Aurora.

(Edited to add: I am extremely fortunate to live in the prairies where the kind of visibility I need is easy to find. Use my experience to inspire your own training if you like, but don't use it as a recipe. I have my own goals and my own priorities and those are likely different than yours.)

Maverick:

🔵 Supremely confident from day 1

🔵 Came home in August (extremely good and exciting time for outdoor adventures)

🔵 Prioritized specific sports behaviours over foundational building blocks like engagement and cooperation

🔵 Learned bad habits from my older dog at the time (prey drive > recall)

🔵 Was indiscriminately prey driven. If it moved, he wanted to kill it.

🔵 I phased out treats too fast and didn't want to use an ecollar or long line

🔵 I focused on "social media dog behaviours" (think like walking extremely close to me on trails) and got frustrated when we couldn't meet these rather than meeting my dog where he was at. This created a lot of frustration in our dog adventures.

🔵 I practiced recalls constantly when I didn't have to, making them a tedious behaviour for him. I would recall him 20-50 times a hike for everything from "you're too far away from me" to "I want to take a photo".

Aurora

🟣 Came to me a little insecure and looked to me for reassurance

🟣 Came home in December (a cold and relatively boring time for outdoor adventures)

🟣 I prioritized engagement, cooperation, and name recognition from day 1

🟣 Practiced good habits by walking offleash in the snow either alone or with Pike (amazing recall)

🟣 Is extremely birdy, but is very very focused. She easily calls off deer or people/dogs in the distance because she mostly cares about birds.

🟣 Literally always gets offered a high value snack for recalling or voluntary check ins (I will never phase this out, I will carry chunks of cheese on offleash walks for the rest of her life)

🟣 I never practice recalls if I don't need them. This one is hard to explain, but once Rory understood that long whistle = come back as fast as you can, I don't whistle unless I really need to. I recall her an average of 0-3 times per hike (*based on visibility or wildlife*) and trust her to make good decisions otherwise. I keep my eyeballs on her 100% of the time and choose areas with good visibility, but I don't recall her just for being far away.

🟣 I limit hikes where I have to nag her often (think, in the woods where I dont have a great line of sight and have to remind her to stay close to me) to a few times a month or less so she doesn't start getting frustrated about it.

🟣 I trust the training I put into her and choose to run her in areas with (relatively) reduced risk if she makes the "wrong" choice. I don't nitpick everything she does and I let her make her own choices, within reason.

🟣 I have an interrupter cue to ask her to stop doing something before I call her back (if she's digging a hole and I want her to move on, I use "Rory, enough! Here!") instead of whistling at her.

🟣 I don't force her attention on check ins. If she runs back to me and doesn't want a snack and wants to run straight back out, I let her run back out.

🟣 I have anticipatory cues for the end of a walk so I don't have to recall her when we get to the end of the field.

I want to say that it's nerve wracking to watch my dog sprint at full speed hundreds of yards away from me. I have to fight the impulse to recall her just because she's far away. It's an exercise in trust because I'm always worried about her going over the horizon, or running into a wildlife, or falling into a hole, but it's an important thing to work on if you have a dog that needs that trust to thrive.

Mav and I were a good team, but I never fully trusted him outdoors. I always had my finger on the ecollar buttons ready for him to do an evil and need to be vibrated. It was exhilarating to watch him in the field, but it wasn't really fun or relaxing.

Rory and I built a much stronger foundation of trust (I personally never would have been able to do this if I had more than one dog). She doesn't know any tricks yet, but I'm super confident in her recall and ability to take direction in the field, even when she's sprinting as fast as possible.

[vaguely-concerned]

sophia seeing cailan's body hanging there when they go back to ostagar, and suddenly all she can see even through the rot and the ruin is just how much he looked like alistair...... :'(

a mental image that totally will not haunt her through alistair's many years on the throne as rebellions and assassination attemps come and go. doesn't send her unhinged and unwise even a little

[sforzesco]

you know that post about how scholars talk shit about each other when they write the phrase 'one might be tempted to assume,' or however it went. the entirety of crassus scholarship is like this.

[primus-why]

Post-war mutual pining megop but it's the messiest fwb situation in the history of Cybertron.

[zombi3slobb3r]

instead of drawing an attack (which I couldn't do because I am in complete bodily agony), I decided to just recreate this with Wheatley because... pertal.

OG image and another dumb thing I made today vvv

yayyyyy

[hauntingofhouses]

mizutaigen is literally like. the first "toxic" m/f ship i've ever cared for. cuz like usually my taste in m/f ships is basically "unhinged baddie" x "badass wifeguy" *

* (see:yen/geralt. trevor/sypha. adolin/shallan. kataang but katara is sane and they're literally so wholesome like theyre traumatised kids in love who are each other's emblem of hope in a war-torn world! so basically they don't count. anyway. i'm rambling.)

and to that end my friend called mizutaigen yaoi-adjacent and im like. yeah you're right actually cuz like hell yeah non-binary mizu and bisexual taigen rights and all the gender fuckery in the show in general

but also like.

theres just SOMETHING else about mizutaigen that just GETS me. like there's a special secret sauce like the pheromones in that one sephora lotion attracting spiders and i am the silly spider!!! there's just something about it!!! it's not even the enemies to lovers trope cuz i personally am not even usually into that (obv it's fine if you are. but yk.)

so as i keep rotating these thoughts around i thiiink it's the fact that, yknow, theyre so similar. like i honestly truly think they could be besties in another universe: a kinder universe where taigen was not taught to hate. a universe where mizu was not born a girl in a deeply misogynistic society or half-white in a xenophobic homogeneous society.

yeah now that i think about it that really just might be THE secret sauce!!! like the fact that they COULD be perfect and happy together, if only things were different, if only they werent themselves.

smth v bittersweet about that's just driving me insane and makes me want to root for them to overcome all those obstacles, to say "fuck all that" (re:the world and all its fucked up shit) and find each other in the end. to eventually become each other's fav person and confidant. who obv still bicker and tease and insult each other all the time but they dont really mean any of it and over time it just becomes a running gag between them and no one else has to get it because it's just between the two of them.

[bunnyboy-juice]

awawawawawawa

[buckingham-ashtray]

The Invisible Clubber........................ SMILING. CAN'T STOP SMILING. LIFE SO HAPPY. LOVE. LOVE LIFE. BEAT GETTING FASTER. CAN'T STOP SMILING. NOW JUST HARMONY. NO BEAT. MELODY. STOP MOVING. SMILE TO THE SKY. ALL STANDING STILL. BEAUTIFUL. NEVER BEEN SUCH HARMONY IN ALL HISTORY. WANT TO KISS EVERYONE. THEY WANT TO KISS ME. BREATHE IN. BREATHE OUT.................

Sebastian's Story.......... Sometimes I wonder what it'll be like to die. I'll find myself drifting off, staring at something, anything and I'll stop blinking. I feel my whole body slowing down... My heartbeat... And I wonder how long it'll be broken

*Sorry that I couldn't find the source where I got this from and have no idea when this was released. If anyone has the link I will be very glad to insert it!