dragon wings and flagella

i like books and bacteria. made this to track my reading progress and be a microbiology nerd. main: @mostdeadliestpants

[booksandbacteria]

Friendly neighbourhood lab tech here. I don't really know how this will go, but i want to track my reading progress and show some cool pictures from my job 🥰 i work in a microbiological hospital laboratory, mostly with bacteria, but i also love parasites (even though we don't usually have positive samples).

My name is Isa, pronouns are she/her, 27, queer ace. I mostly read fantasy but sometimes I venture out into the dark waters of other genres.

Feel free to talk to me about books or bacteria, maybe even both <3 i always wanted to be part of a book club, maybe screaming my thoughts into the void of tumblr will feel similar.

Currently reading: Qwert by Walter Moers (sorry to the non germans, i don't think it is translated into english)

Planned after that: Harrow the Ninth (please talk to me about Gideon the Ninth, none of my friends have read it and i loved it 😭)

Before you go enjoy a picture of my judgy cat Kiri

[bioluminesced]

the xenomorph from alien drawn in bacterial culture on agar plates

[booksandbacteria]

I finally finished qwert ✨️ it was a really fun read, i really enjoyed the absurdity of it all. I kind if wished that the end battle would have been a bit longer, but i was real happy to see the wooden knight return.

While i missed Jadusa being a bit evil (bc in this house we support womens wrongs), her turning into a muse and basically saving everyones asses with giving ideas and creativity as a muse was very cool.

I will also never complain about seeing my boy hildegunst, he is my favourite protagonist of moers. I even based a d&d character a bit off him. She was a part time wizard, full time best author of faerun and she was the most fabulous.

If i had to rank this book out of all the zamonien books it would be on position 3 with the 13 and a half lives of bluebear (kind of funny bc qwert is introduced in this one). Number 1 is city of the dreaming books and 2 is rumo. Like i said, i love hildegunst.

Now that i finally finished this book things will get a bit darker and gayer. Harrow the ninth has been waiting for me and i'm prepared to be confused.

Don't know if anyone even reads this, but if you do i hope you are have experienced some joy and whimsy today. If not maybe a book like qwert could help with that 🥰

[booksandbacteria]

I still haven't managed to continue reading, but i just had a fun (most likely untrue) theory about qwert. Maybe we know the lonely thinker. Maybe it's a lindwurm. Maybe it's Hildegunst.

Anyways, i look foward to finishing the book and reading my theories while laughing about them

[booksandbacteria]

GUESS WHICH PART OF THE BOOK I'M READING RN. I told my partner about this unlikely theory and we laughed about how it would be cool, but probably won't happen.

And now i have to wait for them to get to this part so we can talk about how fucking hildegunst von mythenmetz is the lonely thinker

[booksandbacteria]

If dangerous for health, why so fluffy and baby pink? Enjoy some pretty mold we found in one of our reagents that should be sterile 🥰

[booksandbacteria]

I finally got around to reading again ✨️ I was very stuck playing tears of the kingdom, but i read a bit of Qwert. Finished the chapter where he fought the thorny tentacle, it was really fun.

The book basically confirmed that the lonely thinker is the voice inside Qwerts head. I'm so excited to see him actually meet the dude in a lot of chapters probably 😅

The voice in his head mentioned lindwurms, so they have to be from Zamonien. Also a Nachtigaller mention, one of my favourite characters from Bluebear <3

The world Qwert fell into is called Ormea, that must be some wordplay on the concept of the Orm. And a reference that we are in a fictional world of a fictional world. Bet the lonely thinker was real proud of himself when he came up with that, just naming the continent after the concept of creativity in literature.

While Snowstorm can be a bit of a deus ex machina every now and then i can excuse that because he is super cute and i love him

Look at this GOAT, he is perfect 🥰

[booksandbacteria]

One of my favourites to find, mostly because it actually smells pleasant and is ✨️shiny✨️. Pseudomonas aeruginosa on blood agar is greyish and a bit translucent sometimes, but on our chrome agar it's this brown color. The shine is still there and that makes me happy. I think in another life i was a crow.

The colonies apparently smell like the flowers from lime trees, but tbh i don't even know what they look like. But it's funny when you walk around somewhere with different types of trees and it suddenly smells like bacteria

[booksandbacteria]

Failed balloon animals, or just yeast cells? Who knows 👀 (it's yeast, now you know 🥰)

Fun fact: molds and dermatophytes form hyphae to grow into a mycelium, yeasts can only form pseudo hyphae.

Hope this gives you something to talk about during awkward silences. From experience i can say that it's not very successful, but maybe it works better for you.

[nieapolitan]

[booksandbacteria]

Streptococci look a bit like beaded necklaces to me. Been a while since i saw long strands like here. This one is from a spit sample, so nothing out of the ordinary, but it still looks cool to me 🥰

[booksandbacteria]

My lab is gonna have a machine for putting our samples onto the plates and the streaking is so smooth and uniform, it's gonna give me an inferiority complex. Just look at the beautiful Klebsiella (blue) and Pseudomonas (translucent) 😍.

This is from an urine sample, poor patient. That UTI must hurt while pissing

[booksandbacteria]

I still haven't managed to continue reading, but i just had a fun (most likely untrue) theory about qwert. Maybe we know the lonely thinker. Maybe it's a lindwurm. Maybe it's Hildegunst.

Anyways, i look foward to finishing the book and reading my theories while laughing about them

[booksandbacteria]

Staph (small greyish ones) and Bacillus (bubbly clear ones). Bacillus always grosses me out if it grows like that, like why are you like that 😭

[booksandbacteria]

This book is great. Haven't finished it yet, I am at page 200 of 570, but it is so much fun. If you like absurd worldbuilding and fairytale-esque writing you should definitely check out this author. He doesn't just write, he also does illustrations for the books and it really enhances the reading experience without feeling like you are reading a childrens book.

This one is a spin off about a character from "The 13,5 lives of Captain Bluebear", Qwert Zuiopü. He is a gelatinous prince who falls through a dimension hole and lands in the world of prince Kaltbluth (coldblood), the protagonist of a book series. His first action in this semi strange to him new dimension is freeing a meduse (mix of medusa and muse) who now wants to turn the whole world into stone. They also kind of fall in love and are very confused by their feelings. There is also his pet riding worm called snowstorn, who is the cutest little baby and i want to cuddle him <3

Book was already worth it for him, look at my grumpy son.

There has been some talk of "the lonely thinker" inside the book, who is kind of treated biblically. Anything good happens in the world then apparently the thinker is having a good day. Bad things also get blamed on his changing temper. Most people believe he exists and lives on the tallest mountain in ormea (the world qwert landed in), but there are also big thinker deniers. My current theory is that he is the author of the Prince Kaltbluth books, but who knows what Moers has come up with.

Very excited to keep reading ✨️