#since I do them mostly for myself

[muppenthings]

Cetus, a freshwater mer with gigantism.

Age: young adult

World: Jordh

Timeperiod: Modern time, 2020's

Personality: Childish and willful. Very sensitive. If he's around people he likes he can be relaxed and amiable. He's tactile which can be an issue due to the size difference.

As a freshwater mer he's very sensitive to the mood and energy of others. If he's met with nervousness or frustration, he'll be stressed or agitated. He'll then engage in behaviour such as chewing on things, flicking his fins or tail, fidget with things. Or people if they're not calm and assertive with him. Which can be quite problematic.

Gigantism: Due to a genetic mutation, Cetus has a very special case of gigantism. He'd be growing indefinitely if not medicated monthly. There's a slightly more elaborate answer about it in this post.

Background: As a baby, his parents left him with humans as he was growing too big too fast due to his gigantism and they didn't know what else to do. At the time humans didn't know much about freshwater mers either as they are elusive (and dwindling in numbers). Initially it didn't go very well with the humans failing to properly handle the young mer. And the trial and errors with medications to stop the growth led to him feeling quite sick. It all led to a young Cetus escaping the humans for a while. He was later found and lured back into a bay where he's still kept. The humans that work with him have a better understanding of him now so it's easier for both parties.

Other notes

Communication: Due to his gigantism, the membranes in his syrinx (that produce sound) have thickened so much they can only produce a deep rumble, leaving him unable to speak mer or human language. There's still variation to his rumbles; ones that resemble thunder to ones so deep the human ear can't hear them (but oh can you feel them vibrate through your bones).

Senses: Cetus has low vision in both of his eyes so he often keeps the nictitating membrane (third eyelid) over them to focus on his other, much stronger senses. He also has electroreception which is very keen. It allows him to sense electric currents, meaning he can detect muscle contractions, like heartbeats, twitches etc. All this gives him an uncanny ability to now exactly where a living being is and if they're calm or not. This ability only works in water however, since air is a bad electrical conductor. Outside of water he relies more on his sense of smell and hearing.

Scars: The scars along his sides and back are from motorboat propellers. Freshwater mer rubs their bodies against eachother as a sign of affection. Given his size, Cetus struggles to satisfy this instinct properly so he'll rub against the objects that "his" humans are on. If they're on a boat and the engines are running... welp.

Also freshwater mers live in pairs, which can be romantic or platonic. So Cetus is quite lonely, often staring out at the open sea.

[icewindandboringhorror]

On average, what is the total MONTHLY amount that you spend on dining out*?

*(This doesn't only count going out to restaurants, but also stuff like picking up fast food to bring home, getting a coffee on the way to work, getting a premade sandwich from a grocery store deli during lunch, buying a quick snack from a convenience store or food cart whilst walking somewhere, ordering a pizza or any other food to be delivered to your home, etc.)

*(If you often dine out in groups/as a household: calculate and divide the costs so that you get a Per Person average. This is for YOU individually, NOT the total household/group costs)

(I'm sure polls similar to this have been made before (very common topic), I just haven't personally seen one that I can remember, so, I was curious to do my own! I was discussing this with a group of people today and it was very interesting to see how widely the number varied between individuals. :0c )

(Reblog for bigger sample size if you can, and feel free to explain your answer in tags if there's anything extra to add!)

[waterghostype]

i have so much to say about them not in a good way not in a bad way but a secret third thing way.

[corviiids]

complaining about creative writing post

[venstm]

i have updated my rules and encourage my mutuals to have a look.

[theghostofwilburtheworm]

im a he in the same way an animal who u do not know the gender of is a he i think

[roisnoir]

The most recent batch of swatches

the triangle piece is for a doily ("d'oyley") - you make seven of them and attach them to a cloth center, as far as I can guess. I think it would make a very pretty, very maybe-wear-it-over-something-solid (or at least wear good sunscreen), top when paired with one of the deeper borders. I would need to work out how to increase the size of the triangle pieces, though - they're currently only the one size. Which might be worth doing - the motif in the middle might make for a pretty lace on it's own.

[wormchaser]

you are complaining about complaining too much while complaining about the fact that maybe people dont like you because you complain too much while complaining about being alone. just stop complaining and do something about it. talk to people. reach out. dont just wait for someone to come to you first.

i have tried reaching out to different people in the past year or so but it never works. i understand its my own fault for letting relationships decay because of my own insecurities and issues but that doesn't mean i can just will myself to think or believe different things about myself. it's a self fulfilling prophecy ; i think people don't like me so i don't reach out so people don't like me etc . i am sure you do not want to hear me list all the things i want to say in response so i will put them in the tags.

[fakezircon]

hellooo zircon, for no particular reason (/silly) do you have any tips for beginner streamers? Your streams are always clean and well put together esp from a technical side imo so I trust your advice on this one :) - @helsex

This is gonna be long so get comfy.

#1 best tip: Get familiar with your streaming software of choice (most likely OBS) and don't be afraid to play with it. Your first streams are not gonna be a polished as you'd like no matter what you do. You don't need to know the software inside and out to use it well and familiarity will come with use. The best approach (in my opinion) is to figure out what you like in other streams and figure out how to do that for yourself, don't worry about learning absolutely everything right from the start.

Another good tip is to do some mic checks beforehand, if you just record instead of streaming you'll be able to see what your mic sounds like on stream, and there are tons of tutorials out there for figuring out mic settings (this is the one I followed I think, although with some differences just for my own preference).

Yet another helpful resource: this is a link to an obs plugin that will help manage audio sources so you can actually control what plays on stream, instead of it just playing your whole desktop audio. (I think OBS has a version of this going now? But I tried using it and didn't get far) You'll have to add an audio source individually for each application but the greater control is a godsend.

For overlays (things like chat on stream and alerts that play when people follow/subscribe/raid that sort of thing), there's a few routes you can go down. Twitch has their own alerts thing but personally I use streamelements (they also have a very popular chatbot which I don't use myself but may be worth looking into if that's something you want). Whichever service you end up using should give you some sort of link, which will be added to your obs as a Browser Source. (Also if you're using the obs plugin I linked, the browser source audio would be under the name "obs-browser-page.exe" after you set up the browser source)

My final bit of advice is that hotkeys are your friends! It is absolutely worth setting up a few hotkeys to make controlling your stream while in game easy. Personally I have hotkeys set up for toggle muting my my mic and discord audio, as well as for changing between my most common scenes (Also my catcam when my animals deign to show up). Typically if you are just using a regular keyboard you'll want to use key combinations as hotkeys to avoid accidentally activating one while trying to type in game (Something I have done many a time, but hey you never stop learning!).

Shoutout to @addaxbones for teaching me literally everything I know about streaming btw. He's the guy that got me into this mess and also the reason I met most of my friends today. (love that guy)

One last thing under the readmore to cover my shame /silly:

I am flattered you consider my streams "clean and well put together", and you can maybe take this as proof that on screen != behind the scenes, but here is my desktop from a few streams ago, not a tidy look I can tell you that.

It doesn't normally get this bad, but it's also not a whole lot better.

[tangledinink]

Wait wait wait

You do witchcraft???

That's so cool! I had no idea there were other witches in the TMNT fandom!!!

What kind of witchcraft do you practice?? Personally, I deal mostly with divination, but I'd love to hear more about other people's crafts!

I do! ^^ Though admittedly my practice has been a little bit dormant as of late because I sort of fell out of habit after An Event which was a Bit Disruptive to My Life lol. But I guess I kind of dabble in a bit of everything? I dunno if I could pin myself down to just one kind of practice yet, I still sort of consider myself a Baby Witch. But I really like making little spelljars and casting candle spells and things of the like, and I've been trying to learn tarot for a while now! I also really like making and drawing sigils... For a while part of the joy for me has been just Learning New Things.

^ ft. gecko enclosure and tail lol. BoS and altar not pictured.

[sysig]

Party (group) party (celebratory)! (Patreon)

[icewindandboringhorror]

boy in silly sitting positions compilation

[anothermonikan]

Ponee (It is half 3 in the morning)

[okitanoniisan]

new rgg fans will never know what they missed back in ye olden days of the fandom (like, 2019), doubly so now that scott strichart's deleted his twitter and jon riesenbach's privated. twitter was so fucking fun and then whatever-the-hell at sega of america happened and caused a fucking snowball effect and now we have shitass localization and resulting discourse that makes every release nigh unbearable, misinformation, confusion, people complaining about "bad writing/mischaracterization" not realizing it's because of the shitass english loc, i'm sitting here like jesus christ these loc bitches massacred saejima's character voice, people will never see him as he was intended, as original yakuza 5 localization Correctly painted him, and now they're coming for kiryu. god help us. we used to be a proper fandom. before everyone was subjected to the remastered localizations and shaky eng characterization. no one had even played yakuza 3-5, people still called morning glory "sunshine" orphanage, kiryu was our only protagonist and people still called him "boring", it was beautiful...

anyway gaiden uses affective instead of effective because the current localization team is full of careless dumbasses who don't give a fuck about ensuring they're using correct english grammar and this is not an isolated incident

[mcnuggyy]

animnapu't siyam 😏

[minafeu]

Lucinda and Hyria as pagans/witches draw from the vibes of the Norse send post