#resting cat mouth

[hjonko]

PT.2

They’re like this to me

Alternatively

[sysig]

*You’re starting to feel very sleepy... (Patreon)

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

puppets can be considered arthropods

[coquelicoq]

[ID from alt: Two pages from chapter 101 of the Natsume's Book of Friends manga. Natsume faces Matoba, holding Nyanko-sensei and standing in front of Hiiragi. He says, "Mr. Matoba?! What are you doing here?" Matoba says, "I came to rescue you." Natsume, surprised, says, "What?" Sensei says, "Here they come" as he looks at the sky behind Matoba. Matoba smiles without turning around as Ban's wooden puppets fly toward his back. He turns his head as a paper doll whizzes past, toward the puppets. As Matoba stands there calmly, several paper dolls whoosh past him to collide with the puppets. Sensei says, "Paper dolls?!" Natsume thinks, "Those are…" and turns to look behind him in the direction the dolls came from, where Natori has appeared. Natori says, "Good, you're safe! This way!" /end ID]

matoba trusts natori so completely to handle the puppets that he just stands there totally relaxed as malevolent entities target his unprotected back. doesn't lift a finger to defend himself. okay. hot.

also what's funny is this is the exact same energy matoba was giving off in world unbent when their positions were exactly reversed - back then it was natori who was standing right in front of the threat and matoba who was shooting around natori to attack it. matoba is now confident in natori's abilities in the same way he's confident in his own - though as we see later in this same arc, he's also aware that he's capable of things natori isn't. he doesn't need natori to be exactly on his level, he just understands what natori can do and adjusts his behavior to leave those things to natori and to focus his own efforts on the things he's better at. he's strategizing as a team, under the assumption that natori has his back, under the assumption that they're working together and that they know how to do that. the competence & confidence & compatibility & trust! three whole chapters before he and natori do their incredibly sexy joint spellcasting, matoba is already fully in battle couple mode. not to put too fine a point on it but hot hot sexy hot.

[ganymedesclock]

So that #Syrin the Dread Blade tag, thats a new one. Seems like a interesting character, a sentient sword, how did Tyler happen upon them? What does the sword look like, and does it have any special magical abilities? How do they like the other members of the party? Do they actually speak or do they have a telepathic voice?

Technically it's just a tagging misconception; I haven't tagged Syrin reliably before because his nature as a sword does mean he's kind of attached to Taylor. But he is his own dude!

A short primer: magic items in this setting tend towards a level of awareness. Magic is essentially what souls are made of, ergo, if you stuff enough magic in anything, it starts to have a soul, and behaves accordingly. Entities as fully developed and chatty as Syrin are rare; far more common is that magic items tend to feel just a little bit haunted, inclined towards some things and away from others. It's a bit creepy if you're not used to it; enchantments are commonplace and widely accessible, so that 'not being used to it' is more a statement on if the individual is used to handling a particular thing.

Syrin himself is the ostensible opus of the previous Lord of Darkness, a Dark Sword that was meant to contest and cancel out the legendary sword of light wielded by the hero. Ostensibly, because for unknown reasons Syrin was left in storage the eve of the fateful battle. Being groomed exclusively for this purpose by someone he regarded as a father and then abandoned for ten years definitely wasn't traumatic or terrifying for someone with the cognitive level of a child, we promise. Especially since Syrin needs to eat.

Syrin's construction, and what leads Taylor to point out he's a bit like a 'needle', is a crystal-bladed thrusting sword with a hollow core. Despite its delicate looks, the blade is actually both quite sharp and highly durable; the thin tube at the center being essentially his mouth, by which he is supposed to drink blood. His victims', if he can get it, or, failing that, magically drawn from his host. As a result his blade itself ranges from grayish translucence to dark red if he's gorged to fullness.

From there, he has the power to generate and shape a kind of magical flesh, allowing him to weave more elaborate forms around his core body, the sword.

As you can guess, this gives Syrin a somewhat unpleasant and brutish first impression on people, as he has no verbal filters, was raised by a would-be conqueror of the world, and is dependent on blood and thus interested in more fights than not. I've described him before as like a preteen on xbox live who talks up a nasty game mostly out of loneliness and a need to be liked, where you can tell the kid themselves is not as bad as the people who taught them all those words and that they were "funny".

Deep down (and not all that deep, like I said, no filters), Syrin is a vulnerable child who was groomed to do violence and got no experience with it until strangers came to loot the dangerous ruins he was held in, at which point he did what you'd expect a strong but sheltered child to do faced with a home intruder, and killed/devoured that individual in a panic. His first kill being no glorious conflict or victory approved by his father, but essentially a desperate scramble in the dark with himself on the edge of fatal starvation messed him up even more than ten years of silence.

Enter Taylor and party, who happen to pass through those same environments. Syrin makes an attempt to body-snatch Taylor that fails due to the latter's particular properties, and Taylor, being both a good-hearted person and a stubborn busybody, feels obligated to bring this chatterbox with them and attempt to bully him into developing some sense of tact while Syrin attempts to Corrupt His New Wielder To Violence.

This doesn't work because Syrin has no real ideas how to go about corrupting someone besides loudly telling them to stab things more, while Taylor is an apprentice surgeon and mortician who is a lot more desensitized to bodies and their workings such that if they have a weapon, they'll at least consider it as a solution to most problems. So the punchline is that Syrin is more often thrown/flabbergasted by Taylor than vice versa, while the latter just sees him as a sort of annoying kid who's easily talked into almost anything as long as you compliment him first.

[abutterflyobsession]

how it started

how it's going

[spookycattail]

First time making wet specimens! These guys have been sitting in my freezer for a little while while i collected the materials to make them into proper specimens

Theyre stored in a 70% ethyl alcohol solution, injected into the larger crayfish's body cavity to help penetrate that thick carapace, and im going to check back in a few weeks and change out the liquid if it looks gross

if anyone has any tips for making and maintaining wet specimens id be happy to listen!

pictures under the cut

[exile-on-uwustreet]

my parents cat got really sick so they took him, barely conscious and half-dead, to the vet for an emergency visit. where he was promptly revived and proceeded to maul both my parents and all the staff

[dutybcrne]

Kaeya most definitely made at least one joke about how bc Addie and Elzer helped keep him alive during Luc’s Adventurous 4yrs Adventures Abroad, he was gonna make himself their problem.

Addie will never forget to bring up he has yet to make good on his threat every time he visits.

[lorelune]

i am in. such a MOOD 😭

[feynavaley]

A sentence that can turn a peaceful dinner into a warzone within seconds: "Uh... I just saw a rat darting in. I think it's under our table right now."

Which meant that a cheerful conversation turned in: screams, two people teleporting to stand on their chairs, everybody else with their feet tucked on their seats (we were all wearing sandals so we were essentially barefooted. Personally, I'm not particularly afraid of rats but I wouldn't fancy touching one either...) and an army of waitresses rushing in brandishing brooms at the screams of "Close the kitchen's door! Don't let it escape!!"

End result: in spite of the rat's valiant efforts (it tried to climb the wall and at one point literally flew over the room, I didn't know it could do that) it was ultimately felled by the waitresses' brooms. RIP.

[zootoo]

Pulling on the meat by Tambako The Jaguar Via Flickr: One of the lionesses eating a big chunk of meat!

[johnnyslittleanimalblog]

Cheetah cub with mom by Tambako The Jaguar Via Flickr:

[thatpunnyperson]

.

[feliosfarkus]

ctommy makes his dream smile tattoo into a semicolon btw

[averagemrfox]

Adopted this dude today. I’m naming him Vulcan - not for the Star Trek reference but for the Roman god lol