#or adjacent

[spockandawe]

Lord of the rings! Again! I'm fond enough of this story, but what this project definitely taught me in contrast to things like svsss is that I have I have basically no patience for repeating myself unless the thing I'm repeating was a passion project from the start, haha. But after I finished my first take last year as a gift for my cousin's wedding, like a fool, I told my brother he could pick what handmade gift he wanted for his wedding and he said... lord of the rings.

I wasn't going to give my brother a less extravagant version than I gave my cousin, so I went all in! And I really think i nailed it with the edge art. Watercolors are classic, but I was the type of sketchbook kid who stuck to pencils and pens. It was originally going to have watercolors also, until the lines turned out this detailed and I started worrying about making things muddy. And honestly, doing lines like this where you don't miss the watercolors worked out REALLY well, and I'm going to keep that strategy in mind going forward. I want to get good at watercolors, but I also know it's valuable to play to your own strengths!

I'm really pleased with how the elements of this came together! The last book was black and blue, so flipping the palette to reds was a lot of fun, and I really enjoy these endpapers. Leather endbands against a leather spine remain one of my fave effects. And as painstaking as drawing the siege of gondor was, and as hard as it was to scrape together references for a spread that 1) showed the cool stuff and 2) had the aspect ratio to cover an 18"x4" surface area, it was really rewarding to see it all come together. I'm really delighted with how this turned out! Two last indulgent pictures to show off the art without those covers getting in the way:

[lovesodeepandwideandwell]

Oh and yesterday I woke up to an email that my article was accepted for publication with only minor revisions needed!! "Crisply written" the reviewer called it. That's joining the list of favorite affirmations in my heart.

[lesbianraskolnikov]

I sincerely can't tell if the house md ds game is genuine or a scrimmy bingus situation

[danceydancejk]

[whumpshaped]

i switched the toggle on being searchable on tumblr and suddenly i am gaining followers more rapidly- i hope no one is very disappointed AJSJSKSK

[krawdad]

Protip: learn how to remove spirit gum before gluing something to yourself or someone.

[randomfoggytiger]

For everyone wanting more of Tooms in 2023

Here are two fics that had Tooms mentions--

@agirlcallednarelle's-- Scully relaxing until Mulder calls with a similar liver case

Pattie's-- Genetic Appetite: Tooms had raped a woman before he was killed; and his biological daughter is running rampant for her five livers.

@anders-hawke's -- Scully is 2023 Director of FBI, and Mulder shoots her a "remember when???" message. (Here's how she got her position, btw.)

Will probably make a longer list later, but there you go~

[astriiformes]

One hill I will die on is that it's always infinitely funnier for mad scientist characters to have an actual area of expertise, and the narrower it is, the funnier it gets. Like, they're mad scientists. They can branch out from it. But it's a very special thing to be able to point to the person who built a death ray/engineered life in their basement/etc and be able to confidently state what they got their PhD in.

"Doc Brown is a mad scientist" Well yeah, obviously.

"Doc Brown is a mad physicist" Now we're getting somewhere!

"Doc Brown is a mad nuclear physicist" Specifically conjures up images of a guy who spent his PhD doing a million repetitive cyclotron tests and eventually said fuck this, I'm building a time machine instead. Comedy gold.

[bettalbimarginata]

Shouldn’t go walking around on stony creekbeds, either, as a general rule. Walking on regular ground is fine- that’s usually way less delicate, since it’s not made entirely of nooks and crannies and moveable objects. Plus, feet walking around on the ground is a normal thing that the ecosystem is adapted for. Rocks being picked up and entirely removed from the water to make pretty stacks is not.

I’ve seen a few ~aesthetic~ photos of rock stacks in rivers recently and this is just a reminder that you are destroying habitat when you move rocks around in rivers and streams.

In addition to dragonfly nymphs, rocky river beds are home to lots of other larval invertebrates like damselflies, mayflies, water beetles, caddisflies, stoneflies, and a bunch of dipterans. Not to mention lots of fish and amphibians!

Plus large scale rock stacking can change the flow of a stream and lead to increased erosion.

Anyway dragonfly for admiration:

Calico pennant by nbdragonflyguy

[sreppub]

jason ignored the clearly labeled tupperware and ate tim’s leftover garlic chicken pasta

[hinamie]

oversaturate

[savaralyn2]

[bacchuschucklefuck]

no more fan-ta-sizing about it! everything's already changed~

[thethirdromana]

Broke: vampires are vulnerable to the trappings of Christianity only, particularly Catholicism, no matter how dubiously applied. (See: Van Helsing's Communion wafer grouting).

Woke: vampires are vulnerable to sincere faith of all kinds, and atheist vampire-hunters need to believe very strongly in the Power of Friendship or their love of Star Trek to get by.

Bespoke: vampires are vulnerable to the faith that they followed when they were alive, and hunters tracking down an ancient vampire are obliged to learn about Neo-Babylonian theology or Middle Palaeolithic bear cults.

[quacaserous]

an old doodle of the lady herself... gale is ur mom single