#very unique and iconic

[8uny]

Ordered an ice coffee and received Sludge.

[metamatronic]

What is the best animatronic? Not even by like, mechanics or lore. Just which one can you look at me and be like “yep. Thats probably the best one.”

the metal spaghetti is my favorite. they’re a 4 for 1 deal!!! 💜💜💜

[harriertail]

i wish we got more stuff on leaders struggling to come up with names and clans reacting to them; firestars first two warriors were thornclaw and brambleclaw thunderclan must have thought he was unoriginal as hell

[zhoras-bitch]

Making your single female LI one of the most interesting characters in your book and one of the most unique on the app only to sideline them to fucking hell. Call it the Jester-Remy effect. 

[steve-brules-rules]

I saw @khrysalisposting do a tier list based on music, so I had to do one too lolol ❤️

[eldritch-strawberries]

Sleep deprived thought but in light of the dragon this blog is named after having been dormant for months and will probably continue to be for some time what if we re-themed this blog around pixies since our current primary fronter is one

[srirachaz]

how do voice actors feel about chris pratt? (and by extension other celebrity voice actors) like imagine spending years honing your craft and learning how to do crazy things with your voice only for major blockbuster roles to go to a guy that can’t be bothered to even pitch his voice differently or add any kind of inflection that’s different from how he usually speaks

[starswallowingsea]

Half of the tag is Shu birthday and the other half is "MITSURU'S VA GOT ARRESTED FOR FRAUD" so thats how enstarries are doing today

[azrantimes]

I love how everyone in & Juliet including the ensemble has these amazing costumes and then there's Frankie who's basically wearing a tracksuit most of the time

[mariocki]

Inspector Morley, Late of Scotland Yard, Investigates: The Case of the Scarlet Letters (1.3, WGN-TV, 1952)

"Mr. Mullins, I have in my possession sixty-eight letters, none of which has begun to outlive its usefulness. I'm quite prepared to admit that blackmail is risky, but then murder has its disadvantages too - that is why I gave up murder."

[axvwriter]

Tsum-Tsums Design Observations

So I looked through the Tsums fandom page for the tsum mobile game. I did this as I wanted to look at all the different type of tsums to see what the general rules are for how tsums look.

There does seem to be some rough guidelines, some ignored for stylistic choice. Some of the rules that sometimes aren't followed, I can't really tell why. Perhaps it's just the artist behind the design.

Like one common rule seems to be that eyes are just dots. The exception is sometimes stylistic like when it's a major part of the character's design like Pleakly from Lilo and Stitch or like Perry the Platypus from Phineas and Ferb. Part of Perry's look when not an agent is to look in opposite directions which is a bit difficult to show with no whites of the eyes, the sclera. Some that I don't understand is Timon from Lion King. I don't think the sclera is that big of a major identifying detail about Timon and the Pumba tsum has the usual dot eyes.

There is at least one tsum that has normal eyes, The White Queen from Alice in Wonderland (Live-action Tim Burton directed one). It just feels cursed compared to all the other tsums. There's also Mushu from Mulan who has cartoony eyes going on which seems weird as his eyes weren't drawn like that in the movie. That just seems like a random design detail randomly thrown onto him. It's like the Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons eye shape. Which works for the Cars tsums and for Goofy since the originals have similar shapes. So the exception to dot eyes seems to be if the original has an iconic look associated to that part, though sometimes it's broken for no clear reason? I can only guess artistic choice.

Another common rule seems to be that tsums don't have mouths. The only ones that break that exception and make sense to me are ones with beaks, Pacman, and that one dog from the Coco movie. I haven't seen the movie (though I do intend to watch it some day) but I recall from the trailers it always has its tongue sticking out. So that tsum having a tongue makes sense.

If the character has buck-teeth then they're given mouths. Or if they're like Jack Skellington and Oogie Boogie, both from The Nightmare Before Christmas, then that also makes sense as they do have unique mouths as well. The ones that don't really make sense to me is when there's a random smile? Judy Hopps, Zootopia, has a smile while Nick Wilde, also from Zootopia, has no mouth. I don't usually think of smiling as a unique character identification trait unless it's perhaps that the character can only smile.

Another common rule seems to be a round dot for the nose. Yet this is rather flexible, usually changing for animals. Some characters get a bit more shape to their noses. Though I have noticed that if the original design of a character has a sharp-pointed nose, that's rounded out. At least, that's the case for Pinocchio. Of course some have no noses like the fish tsums.

Hair and other details seem rather free. Just make it look like felt. They can have hats, glasses, earrings, and they do have ears. Usually very small and tiny unless the character's original design doesn't have usual human ears. Heck they even take into account if the character has hearing aids. Carl from Up had what I thought was a dark hole on his ear, but then I realized that wasn't depth design but a hearing aid since his other ear doesn't match. A few rare tsums will even hold an item. Like Maleficient from Sleeping Beauty holds a small staff.

The main major rules seem to be that they must look like they're made of felt and have a round pill-shape.

Oh and have a photo of some of the most unusual tsums I spotted and put together in ms paint.

The top left is the Pixar Lamp. I know Yzma's, from Emperor's New Groove, eyelashes are a big detail, but couldn't they still work with dot eyes? I don't know what's going on with Sully, Monster's Inc, as he looks a bit badly patch-worked? Interesting that the Mirror of Darkness from Snow White has a tsum. That basically breaks the common shape. The crab from Moana is the biggest violation of breaking the usual shapes. That red guy on the top right is Sebastian from The Little Mermaid. Need I say more?

The pink one is one of the little oysters from Alice in Wonderland (animated) movie. The one with the regular human eyes is The White Queen from Alice in Wonderland (live-action) movie.

I might redraw some of these in what I view as the rough guidelines from tsums just to see if I can understand the reasoning of why they're so different.

Have a screenshot of the most botched tsum.

This is supposed to be Wall-E. Wall-E isn't yellow. Like they didn't even try to get the details on his body, like perhaps the top part of his square body could be what's seen behind his head-eyes. I would think brown for a main color, not emoji yellow. Just isn't right.

[emile-hides]

Did they remove the icons of people on the dashboard or am I experiencing a glitch? I sent a message to Tumblr support and they are still ignoring my emails, and at this point it's impossible to tell if it's a "quality of life improvement" or something's actually wrong @staff @support

[thisultraviolet]

YOU VOTED FOR SPEAK NOW.....

NOT EVEN THE KENDRICK VERSION YOU HAD TO PICK THE BAD ONE AGDKAGJ

[queerfandommiscellany]

Or if that doesn't appeal to you, or still isn't enough structure, or you just want to make your own for whatever reason but don't feel like you can run rp as well as you'd like/your players are not comfortable enough with rp for 5e to be fun:

Other systems exist!

Many of which have more in-depth rp systems and simpler rules overall!

Op disabled rbs but they’re right and more people need to read this a few times over

[bbbigforehead]

they LOVE that morrigan design

[markscherz]

Meet the seven new frog species we just named after iconic Star Trek captains!

Artwork by A. Petzold, CC BY-ND 4.0

At the right time of year along rushing streams in the humid rainforests that stretch the length of Madagascar's eastern and northern mountain ridges, otherworldly trills of piercing whistles can be heard.

Are they birds? Insects? Communicator beeps? Tricorder noises?

No, they're little treefrogs!

Boophis janewayae. Photo by M. Vences, CC BY-SA 4.0

Until recently, we thought all of the populations of these little brown frogs across the island were one widespread species, Boophis marojezensis, described in 1994. But genetics in the early 2000s and 2010s showed that there were several species here, not just one.

Now my colleagues and I have shown that they are in fact eight separate species, each with unique calls!

These whistling sounds reminded us so much of Star Trek sound effects that we decided to name the seven new species after Star Trek captains: Boophis kirki, B. picardi, B. janewayae, B. siskoi, B. pikei, B. archeri, and B. burnhamae.

Photos of all new species described by Vences et al. 2024. CC BY-SA 4.0

I subtly and not-so-subtly built some Star Trek references into the paper, but probably the best one is this one:

'Finding these frogs sometimes requires considerable trekking; pursuing strange new calls, to seek out new frogs in new forests; boldly going where no herpetologist has gone before.'

— Vences et al. 2024

There’s a real sense of scientific discovery and exploration here, which we think is in the spirit of Star Trek.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that there are at least two Trekkies amongst the authors (including yours truly). As fans of Star Trek, we are also just pleased to dedicate these new species to the characters who have inspired and entertained us over the decades.

On a personal note, this marks a milestone for me, as it means I have now described over 100 frog species! I am very pleased that the 100th is Captain Janeway's Bright-eyed Frog, Boophis janewayae (if you count them in order of appearance in the paper)—she is probably my favourite captain, and I really love Star Trek: Voyager.

You can read more about the discovery of these new species on my website! You can also read the Open Access paper published in Vertebrate Zoology here.