#sorry Cypress

[flywolfarchaeology]

When I say I LAUGHED SO LOUDLY MY DOG TOOTED

[reflectionsofgalaxies]

Okay y’all, Yellowjackets is filming at the mall by my house, they are apparently filming on Wednesdays (either on the 10th or 17th). I hate the mall, but I love Yellowjackets. 💛

Should I lurk at the mall on Wednesdays in hope of seeing them filming?

(I do really really REALLY wanna see Melanie Lynskey)

[lottievanclaire]

YELLOWJACKETS (2021–) The cast and crew behind the scenes of 2.09 "Storytelling"

[novelconcepts]

Do you ever just lay awake at night, turning over in your head the stark difference in delivery between Hewson's Van saying--steadily, unshakably--"it's just something that's happening to you...happening to us" and Cypress' Taissa saying--imploringly, whiningly--"this was not just my dream, this was our dream"?

Do you ever just turn it over and over, how often Tai tried to scare Van away, and how it only made Van set her feet more firmly? How Taissa's first love was this person who saw a problem fall into Taissa's lap, a problem that was quite literally trapped inside Taissa's body, and decided unflinchingly: No, that's an us problem now? How she refused point-blank to walk away even with blood in her mouth, how she flatly informed Tai "I'm never gonna be scared of you", and promptly turned a moment of pain into a declaration of love? And how this would etch itself into Taissa for the rest of her life? How she'd take these things that worked with Van--with the person Van was, with the bond they shared--and try so hard to run through an identical script with Simone?

Except Simone is her own person. A completely different kind of person. A person who hasn't been offered any of the context, any of the realities going on inside Taissa. So: naturally she doesn't respond the way Van did at eighteen--and will go on to do all over again in her forties. Naturally, she hears our dream as the excuse it is, not as a plea for connection. Naturally, she is scared away when Taissa pushes, and shouts, and begs. Because there isn't blood in her mouth, not yet, but there will be. And they have a son to worry about. And she isn't eighteen and a special kind of immortal, a special kind of romanticized. She's a grown woman with responsibilities, with priorities, with an understanding that you can't fix someone just because you love them. And Tai can't just perform a revival of the play she and Van had memorized twenty-five years later with a whole new performer in the works, and expect it to shake out the same.

Of course it doesn't work. But look at Taissa trying it. Look at Taissa trying to reframe her first love through a new lens. Trying to recast it. Trying to play it through again. Van taught her love was sticking out the blood, shaking off the pain, making a you problem into an us problem. Does it ever just eat at you, how tragic it is, watching Taissa try to shape her marriage around a woman who isn't even wearing a ring?

[harundraws]

if you can't love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else? 💋

[cypressure]

Have you got any recommendations for dinosaur nonfiction books?

Your art makes me so happy 🥺

hey thank you, i appreciate your saying so (and also giving me the opportunity to talk about dinosaur books)! under the cut for length--

starting off with an overview before getting down to specific topics, my first recommendation is Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved by Darren Naish & Paul Barrett. this was first published in 2017, but the third edition was just released with plenty of updates to reflect new discoveries and hypotheses. it's very thorough and accessible, and takes you through all the major clades of dinosaurs and everything we know about their evolution and ecology. this is definitely the best starting point for getting up-to-date with dinosaur science.

the end-Cretaceous extinction has been getting lots of popular attention lately (thanks to DePalma and the Tanis site I suspect), so if you'd like to learn more on this subject, I love The Last Day of the Dinosaurs by Riley Black, also from 2022. this is the scariest dinosaur book i've ever read--she paints an incredibly vivid and horrifying picture of the aftermath of the meteor impact, and of how the animals which survived the event managed to live on.

if you want to read about how exactly we know all these things about dinosaurs, I just recently picked up Dave Hone's How Fast Did T. rex Run? (titled The Future of Dinosaurs in the UK i think), published in 2022. he delves into what we know from the fossil record and how paleontologists work to figure these things out, as well as what we don't know yet and what we probably will never know, and the difference between those two. i suggest it for learning about paleontology as a scientific process, and it's a very interesting read.

so far, all of these books have been about dinosaurs as a whole; if you are looking for popular publications about specific groups, there are not as many options unfortunately (for some reason there isn't a huge audience for 200-page books about obscure thyreophorans. sighs disappointedly). most of what we get is about the large, more familiar clades; you will see books on tyrannosaurs, and there's a few field guide-style books about Mesozoic birds (which tend to be very beautifully illustrated but kind of technical; see below for titles). my pick for clade-specific books is The Sauropod Dinosaurs: Life in the Age of Giants, by Mark Hallett and Matthew Wedel, from 2016. this one goes into serious detail about every conceivable aspect of sauropod paleobiology, which as you can imagine is a huge and fascinating topic, and all the artwork is gorgeous. caveat: it being 8 years old means there's some science in there which will be outdated by now, but as far as i can remember it's still worth checking out.

and finally, as a paleoartist, i have to mention paleoart books! if you're interested in the science behind the choices paleoartists make when reconstructing extinct animals, especially for your own practice, i cannot recommend enough Mark Witton's The Paleoartist's Handbook, from 2018. he thoroughly explains how to interpret fossil evidence and paleontological research from an artist's perspective, and covers about everything from soft tissues to composing a scene. this is one of less than a handful of books on this particular topic, and it's definitely the most in-depth.

with any scientific subject you have to be careful with older books; this is especially true with paleontology since the discipline has accelerated so much over the past few decades and shows no signs of slowing down. i would even hesitate to recommend anything published more than 10 years ago, since new discoveries and technology have made so many questions and hypotheses moot (and in turn created new and more interesting ones)! the only exception to this is a recommendation for historical significance: Robert Bakker's 1986 The Dinosaur Heresies is essential to understanding what modern paleontologists call the Dinosaur Renaissance, or how our perception of dinosaurs changed from lizardlike evolutionary dead-ends into the active, successful bird ancestors we see in reconstructions now. this book kickstarted that change, and it's easy to see how: it's a very engaging read, Bakker argues his points very effectively, plus there are cute dinosaur cartoons. (i also love a lot of older works for their personal significance, but gushing about formative dinosaur books is something for another post.)

finally, thanks to the wonders of the internet, books are not the only way to learn about current dinosaur science! the best way is always by reading paleontology papers, where scientists directly describe and illustrate new discoveries or hypotheses. however, i know jumping straight into the technical literature may be overwhelming: fortunately a lot of paleontologists have social media, blogs, and/or podcasts where they write about their work and new developments in the field. the heyday of science blogs is kind of past, but there are still a few very good ones out there: this list on Feedly has a good selection to browse. being just self-published material, all of these don't have the benefits of peer review that papers and books do, so always be willing to take things with a grain of salt and do your own research.

of course this is a non-exhaustive list, especially limiting myself to both works recently published and which i have actually read. i've certainly forgotten or missed out on many new paleontology books (Dean Lomax's Locked in Time is one of these which i still haven't gotten ahold of yet, but which im very excited to get to); i welcome any additional recommendations or thoughts from the rest of paleoblr!

i hope this was helpful and i wish you luck in your reading :)

[whitherwanderer]

10 // stable

// 591 words. A memory from the First.

Amesha was missing.

Not in the sense that should be worrisome, necessarily, but that Sawyer had hardly been talking to the hunters at their billboard for less than five minutes to warn them of a particularly large fiend wandering the Thirstless Shore, and when she turned back, the drahn was conspicuously absent. Hide nor hair (nor scale or wayward noulith) was left to offer her whereabouts.

The hunters insisted she had walked over to the rookery while Sawyer was on business, and after that, they became too engrossed in taking notes about the fiend’s description to see where else Amesha had gone. But it was a starting point, and thus she crossed the short distance to the rookery to seek her out.

Sawyer leaned up against the paddock fence to watch what amaro were enjoying their leisure time, waiting to see if Amesha would make herself known before she had a chance to find the drahn or if she’d spy her first, but instead she was waved down by one of the beastmasters, a towering, black-scaled zun whose fangs were flashed in a momentary grin.

“Sawyer!” she boomed out, and the hume raised a hand in greeting.

“Knem,” Sawyer returned. “You haven’t seen Amesha about, have you? She was with me and then…” A shrug. Poof. Gone.

Knem Cheleim-In’s wooden beads rattled with her laughter. “As a matter of fact, I have seen her. That’s why I came to fetch you,” she explained, then pushed the gate open to beckon Sawyer through. “Come. I’ll show you where I found her.”

Sawyer offered the zun a puzzled look, but followed her lead towards the far end of the paddock where it wrapped around a small stable. Already, Sawyer spied a dark, green tail flicking idly in the shaded grass behind the far wall of it.

“Half the amaro all wandered off without warning and what should I find that had drawn them away from grooming and playing but this…” Knem started, and lifted a claw towards a small group of resting amaro, wings and long necks all piled over one another, and a barely visible Amesha peeking out from beneath a green-gray carpet.

Sawyer blinked, and she couldn’t help but laugh at the sight of Amesha looking rather… not flustered, but in a state of acceptance. “Are you comfortable, Heartlight?” she asked the drahn.

Amesha pondered this with a furrow of her brows. “The oasis did but settle in the shade, and found oneself at the mercy of a creature who found under her branches a place to lie a weary head.” She paused.

“To wake such a gentle creature would be unforgivable. Help…”

“Thus did the herd gather,” Knem chuckled, then put two claws to her lips. A sharp whistle saw four horned heads to rise, brown-black eyes all turning at once to their caretaker, and with a word from the zun, away they began to shuffle off, stretching wings and khrr-ing contentedly. Amesha (and all her nouliths, also apparently pinned) rose and brushed herself off to join Sawyer and Knem, grateful to be able to move.

Sawyer leaned over to kiss her head, but drew back after a moment with a look that, perhaps fortunately for Amesha, only Knem could interpret between the three of them. She crossed her scaled arms and shook with silent laughter.

“Oh, I think I understand why you wanted out now,” Sawyer mumbled, and Amesha nodded slowly.

“Soft and gentle wings that bear us thanklessly across endless sky,” the drahn granted. “But… they are pungent.”

[deepforestdarling]

I NEVER POSTED THIS LMAO

I drew a wonderful friends ponysona in a jar i think as a joke from something in call and i love this silly piece

Violet knows what you are

[cat-of-doodles]

music for an RPG i will never release

i just uploaded the raw files, expect them to be loud

[jellybeanartt]

how did your oc’s meet ? I bet it was a really funny exchange heheh /gen

We haven't really talked about Cypress or Wisteria's backstory yet, but there's a couple layers to how they met, lol. Very glad you asked!!!!! 🌾🌻

Fynn: Firstly, Cypress and Wisteria are runaways, and are both from royal/high-class families. Both families were also very abusive, and both of them ran away for different reasons having to do with their families. Cypress specifically used to own a pet canary that he'd take great care of and spent time with, as it was one of his only escapes from his family from time to time. Because of this, Cypress became good at making bird calls. Very good in fact- and, out of habit, started whistling to himself out of boredom.

Jelly: Wisteria had been living/residing in the forest for a couple weeks-months longer than Cypress and had started catching miscellaneous animals to eat. They got really into catching birds because it was challenging!!

Fynn: See where this is going?

Jelly: So imagine this: a dirty, hungry 11-12 year old hiding in the bushes, not really being able to see their prey but assuming it's a bird because who the heck walks through the woods imitating birds??? So they jump out EXTREMELY quickly, faster than they can even THINK about it, tackling their future dinner, only to realize that this is an actual human being they're tackling and NOT food. Not food at all 😅

Afterwards, Wisteria and Cypress had a "conversation" (aka, Wisteria gesturing vaguely to Cypress while he yaps) and decided to continue hanging out together because of their circumstances :>

That is how they met 🦌🦊

[beyondthegame]

hi it’s me again 😭 i tried to fight the urge to not send another prompt because i already sent one shsjakak 😭😭 but if it’s okay, “being overprotective of them in front of prospective partners” or “defending them against everyone, even when they’re not there to witness it” for cypress please? thank you <333

“You’re doing it again,” you tell Cypress.

“Doing what?” they ask, glancing to look over at you.

You smirk. “That resting bitch face you do.”

They snort and slip a hand into their pocket. “It’s not something I do, it’s just my face.”

“Lies. I’ve seen you smile…like, only twice, but I’ve seen it,” you tease, and to your pleasure now you’re seeing it a third time.

Cypress’s gaze leaves you and falls on the group in the middle that are huddled together and formally dressed.

“I’d be smiling a lot more if we could leave,” they utter.

Today is one of the only times you’re at Inter City’s training centre and you’re…not training. The big money owners of the club are around, alongside other business people that happily flex their financial power when they see fit.

“Just another hour of mingling and rubbing shoulders,” you comment.

“My intuition tells me that some of them aren’t here purely for business purposes,” Cypress throws back, their eyes narrowing and glaring at someone in particular.

You follow Cy’s eyeline and see that they’re glaring at the one person who hasn’t kept their eyes off you all day. You figured it out yourself that the person is definitely considering how to best approach you and talk about…things that are very much not football related.

“I’ll bet you before the end of the day they will come over and ask for your number,” Cypress states with slight venom to their voice.

You blink. “Is that such a bad thing?”

You and Cypress are staring at each other now. Their brows knit together for a moment as they consider their answer.

“No. If that’s what you’re into, I mean,” they reply, throwing one last look to the people they definitely don’t like before clicking their tongue. “I’m leaving.”

Cypress swiftly moves from where they were standing and strides towards the exit. You quickly go to follow them into the corridor.

“Wait,” you call out, matching their steps to catch them. “You can’t leave me here with them.”

Cypress turns around and looks at you. Their expression practically says everything for them, their features are soft and welcoming. You’d joke that there’s no ‘bitch’ in their expression at all.

“Then come with me,” they say simply.

You sigh. “You know the manager wants us here.”

Cypress rolls their eyes. “Okay, if you’re happy getting eye-fucked for the rest of the day and leaving here with someone’s number, then be my guest.”

Your mouth goes agape and for a moment, Cypress waits for you to say something. Just one extra beat, but they turn to leave again.

“That was an extreme statement,” you quickly say, getting their attention back.

“I was just being honest,” Cy says when they look back at you, though they know there’s truth to your words. They sigh softly. “Look, I’m just saying you deserve better than that.”

You’ve known Cypress long enough now to know that being protective is their nature, it’s practically their middle name, even their siblings would confirm that. Whether you actually thought that behaviour would extend to you is something else entirely. You can’t help but smile.

Cy arches a brow. “What are you smiling about?”

“Nothing,” you answer with a laugh before jogging to join them by their side. “I’m coming with you though.”

There’s a pleasant look that goes over their features when you join them in walking outside. Cypress pulls their car keys out of their pocket.

“Where are we going then?”

Not a clue. “I’m sure we’ll think of something,” you tell them as you both walk towards their car. They go over to the driver’s side and click the button to open up the car.

“Food?”

“Sure.” You sit down in the passenger’s seat and you turn to Cypress as they put the key in the ignition. You wait a long minute. “Jealousy suits you, by the way,” you tease.

Cy rests their hands on the steering wheel. They don’t even glance at you. “Jealous?” they question with a scoff. “I don’t know what you mean.”

[aincretop]

injured? good

[ryn-halo26]

.. -. - . .-. .-.. ..- -.. .

Academy file 8.

..Silver?

What the fuck-what the fuck-what the ACTUAL FUCK-

Silver!

YAEL! We almost fucking died!

Well we didn't!

We narrowly avoided death.

What do you want me to do about it!?

Get it through your head! There's something in that forest that could've killed us!

We could've died!

I- I know..

We could've fucking died!

How would your brother feel about that!?

...

My dad!– oh, what would he have felt if I died?..

Silver! We. are. fine!

How sure of that are you?!

..I'm sure-

How sure are you that that thing won't be out to get us!?

[cottagegorevampy]

slough ⋆˙⟡♡

[the-quotable-alberta-hansard]

April 15, 2024

Mr. Wright: Instead of listening to the voices of 70 per cent of the people and 70 per cent of the leaders from across the country, this Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, is acting like a petty child and refuses to listen to any opinion that disagrees with his own or the ideology of his globalist cronies. Mr. Speaker, we’re asking for constitutional boundaries, but right now the federal government is acting like that’s too much of an ask.

[housefreak]

classic moaning closet prank for the new homeowners