My Home Away From Twitter

A Bunker for Surviving the Twitter Apocalypse

[fiercefauna]

Made another vid, this time I got lazy and took forever. I was taking a break from cgi, but wanted to stay sharp so I worked on this again. Also plants, lots and lots of plants. Because it’s spring and dirt is a thing I am able to get ahold of.

[fiercefauna]

One of my tillandsia plants escaped again.

[fiercefauna]

Epic tillandsia spike. I grow these Medusa heads for the cool pseudo bulbs not really the flowers but sometimes I get a flower and man is it over the top. These odd plants are in the grass family so that’s the reason it looks like pink and purple wheat.

[fiercefauna]

Don’t ever let anyone tell you this thing is an annual. I got two small plants last May and not even a year later I get this. Fennel is an absolute beast. In some regions it might even be eco-poison. Thyme was relatively discreet and polite though, at least in my neck of woods. I’ll move it to the back and the black swallowtails can have at it!

[fiercefauna]

2D animation seems at its most breathtaking when I view all the frames aligned, half complete. The bowels of the beast are an art in and of themselves.

[fiercefauna]

Useless plant information below.👇

I got this plant way back in May. Tillandsia Ionantha. It had a small side clone at the time, meaning the main plant could have been about to flower. It might have been stressed though, in shipment, so it just cloned itself instead. The clone grew throughout the summer and flowered near the start of Winter. The flowers took longer to grow in than those of my Medusa Tillandsias, which are one and done in a day. Hopefully the open tubes will hold for longer as well.

That’s Spanish Moss below it. The Spanish Moss is alive and also a Tillandsia. The branch used to display them is a piece of wood from a ficus or weeping fig that died a couple of decades ago. I thought the hole in the center was cool, but then the bark fell off and there was a neat pattern underneath.

Also yes that’s pollen, loads of it. Gets on my fingers when I handle the plant. If it’s like my medusas they will be self-fertile and produce viable seed. The seeds fly like dandelions and sprout in days. Young Tillandsias take like, two years to get bigger than your smallest finger nail though. I do plan to try again however.

[fiercefauna]

Diverse, green and millions of uniquely adapted species strong. They were daft to think, that they could just pave over it.

Hello - The following is a brief written piece inspired by my recent quest to map out what grows wild or feral on the few square miles accessible on foot from my home, be they beneficial natives, benign immigrants, local thugs, or oppressive invaders. I’ve found more than I’d expect. And many have stories. I’ll add that the game Disco Elysium was a strong influence on the style and voice.

The slipstream of trucks hurrying their shipments to parts unknown blasts the yellow plumes of late season grasses on highway hillsides. Feathery hands that wave to the traffic also cast flying seeds to the birds, to the wind, to cats chasing fluffy down through damp ally ways, and to the little girl with her dirty fingers and pots of wildflowers. 

Winter is coming to the subtropics, brief and desperate as it is, hoping to freeze pipes, ruin a few houses and perhaps a few lives, if it’s lucky - before the onset of mid-February and the slow retreat, of the ferns and mosses of the cold monsoon. 

The tepid mists tease out the seedlings of hairy bittercress, a European immigrant that plans to lie low beneath home awnings, riding out the winter only to invade every damp nook and cranny come spring. Beside it, native pony’s foot, whorled pennywort and hoary Bowlesia. Between them, the whisper of a soft, shy green suede that could be either algae or moss. It awaits the wet winter and the remission of more aggressive fair weather fiends. 

Dips a tire into a patch of Bermuda grass, prostrate in spaulding pavement before the drive. It will survive. The grass is not from Bermuda rather - it has overrun the place, and seeks to do the same to the neighboring continent. The Buttonweed however, has been here since before memory, hiding beneath the lawns its leaves impersonate, invisible until it’s iconic white blooms taunt the grounds keeper. 

We are here. 

We are waiting,

in the cracks,

on the wind. 

Come, 

Find us. 

[fiercefauna]

My trumpet vine decided to try out generative AI. 😆 Actually it’s sick. Green aphids and maybe something else. However, nothing really stops a trumpet vine. (It’s THAT evil.)

Cool mutations aside, we landscaped over it, I even dug it up and gave it to a family friend - warned her that it never goes away but she insisted on a (plant you can’t kill.)

The neighbors seem to love it. Never flowered on our side but it flowers on theirs. Perhaps it likes that northern exposure.

Note - I seem to live in the native range of this plant - if you do not, definitely steer clear. (Big, destructive, mildly toxic, spreads far underground before resurfacing.)

[fiercefauna]

Currently doing an art thing that’s kind of big. Linked to my desire to work with video and sound. For now, check out my house plants.

Wow! Thanks for taking an interest in my other hobby.

Okay, the vine on the side is a Golden Pothos. Duh, but I like to provide ALL the information. The glass container is a small cat food dish resting atop a large cat food dish. I could not find anything like what I wanted at the store so I nicked these from my bro, who owns a cat. (Don’t worry he was cool with it and has more than enough of these.)

The moss is Slivergreen Bryum, the plant is Carolina Ponyfoot. (According to several Google searches and the use of my mom’s plant identification app.) Both were nicked from my yard and neighborhood. (With permission of course.)

Golden Pothos is a common houseplant, not sure where it’s from but probably South and Central America.

[fiercefauna]

I may take a break from Blender now - and focus on another 2D You Tube thing. This tested my limits more than anything else, being the 3rd of three projects created in an effort to learn 3D animation. See the assumption was - no characters makes more easy.

The above Blender video was done on a gaming laptop using a track pad - the track pad may have been compromised after I made 3 of these, but it is an older computer, might want to spring for a mouse. The flashes in the water were achieved by carefully positioning about 50 pin lights, other wise it looked like tar. Texture is modified from a node tree I copied from a tutorial - it looks different from the original but was built on top of it. My computer seemed to struggle more with this as well, but it may have been due to my inexperience managing the data load. All assets other than the texture I modified are entirely original, save for some customized geometry trees on the plants.

If you have no idea what any of this means and want to know, ask me in the comments. Difficulty of 3D art seems comparable to 2D and it might be considered more digital resource intensive, though blender itself is free. Hard to learn though - NOT intuitive! 😆 Though it might be if you used these programs before.

[fiercefauna]

Blender Experiment Beta. This is another Cryptid of mine “The caped Cresent” (I’m working my way up to Plague Doctors. Can you tell?) This one came with a challenge, CAPES! The Cardboard was the result of an instructional video. Ask me if you really want to know - it seems like one of the first things that comes up if you ask google how to cardboard texture on blender, and it seems the guy is kinda famous. As for the glass - much easier, too easy, that’s why I went looking for the cardboard- really wanted to work those scary texture nodes. Face my fear and all that.

Never ventured into my usual universes yet, this guy was a one off without much lore, but it’s simplicity when you discount the mantle made it a good candidate for a model based around a cloth effect. Basically it’s a guard, summoned by mysterious groups and often left to its own devices after its purpose is served. It seems to have mistaken its reflection for an intruder, and feels cheated.

[fiercefauna]

Another Air Plant - the 2 oldest ones I own, at least 5 or six by now I assume, spent flowers half visible near the top of the picture, young side clones looking nice and healthy. The pot is over 20 years old. It once held a small Cactus from a road side attraction called Hodges Gardens. My Brother bought the cactus. At the time it seemed disrespectful- cactuses are wild things aren’t they? Like zoo animals. But then I was five, and unaware that keeping them wasn’t uncommon. I recall it lasted awhile before eventually dying - either too much or too little water or light. That happens sometimes with succulents. You just have to take a chance on them - immediately repotting them is good advice also. The cutesy pots they might come in can be used for other things. Bro gave me the pot years ago. It’s gorgeous- and Hodges was abandoned last I checked making this a real relic.

Note - These may get less impressive, my last two are solitary’s.

[fiercefauna]

Another Air plant glamor shot. I got some new ones a while ago. As for art I’m doing another blender thing.

[fiercefauna]

My brother made a bird house (for ducks).

[fiercefauna]

My Blender Journey thus far . . .

It’s important that they are flipping because at first the whole body would distort throughout the video if I tried to move the torso in any way, the correct answer was the 3rd option, location rotation and scale. Also sometimes the model would be ripped off the armature if I didn’t remember to select it. Basically this could have been a lot funnier/scarier if I had included my goofs.

[fiercefauna]

BLENDER!!!!!!!

Hey, I downloaded Blender! It’s been taking up a lot of my screen time and art time. I feel it’s something I should have been doing years ago. It was so much easier to download than I thought, using it however - remains to be seen, lol. 😅 But I’m confident I’m getting better.

[fiercefauna]

The Boys are Back in Town Peace of mind dictated I make another Afflicted Lands episode to recover from recent burnout over figuring out videos and YouTube. Basically this is an illustration accompanied by a brief written tale. I haven’t numbered the episodes because I may not write them in order and am attempting to create short stories that hold up without exposition or context. Reading more stories might hint at a backstory and reveal world secrets. Depending on how good I am at this . . .

That said, read on for Literate Monsters!

Sometimes a new building would be built, and the distinction between it and the older buildings would be so impactful I would have to react. Not by asking questions but by going out, and finding out. I was no longer so young the explanation that the old buildings just grew into existence in the exact state they were in, satisfied me. There had to have been something here before, before me, before everyone. 

An odd genre of fairytales attesting to a flat-faced people with fur atop their heads was so lore-heavy it occurred to me I might be looking at something that was, at least at some point, very real indeed. A good source for information had always been the old school, it was almost as if any record of anything had been carried in from the old neighborhoods and collected there. 

Carried in by what, should have been obvious. 

It was hard however, to see the powdery, luminescent, frilled things, with their tangled limbs and habit of not ever moving when it was possible to see them do it, as beings with any agency. I’d found the fishers so terrifying as a child that Father could end our arguments instantly by asking if I’d rather talk to them.  

Other things out there in the world, were far more ornery but there was something about fishers  that always sent me running home when a crowd of them blocked the lonely roads at dusk. Though they walked the halls of the school, I crept past them in search of books, files, DVDs, VHS, and unexpectedly - internet! They would cut the old building’s power eventually and drag me out of the mildewed offices after silently moving the furniture I’d piled in the doorways. That these old buildings had power did not seem odd at the time. I knew wires as dangerous weeds in need of control, not infrastructure to be manufactured and installed. As much as the thought of being caught and carried home by the things brought terror, there were secrets in the school I was sure were important.  

The old ledgers with their facts and figures stored in bins made of plastic were the last thing I had investigated because they seemed so prestigiously dull, yet the effect of my inquiries that day were profound, for this was the first time any of the fisher had spoken, or rather written, to me. A piece of chalk met the old green board - a thing whose final lessons hadn’t been disturbed even by the winds blasting through broken windows - and wrote. “Come back when you’re older.” 

After that, it had not been possible to return, not until I was well out of apprenticeship and had almost forgotten about my childhood haunts. I saw the words it had written were still on the board in the room where I had found the ledgers. Time was a very different thing in this place. 

They gathered around me, one holding some ledgers. It seemed they had interpreted my boredom and nosiness decades ago for a deep care and interest in the ledgers, which they seemed to value highly. Assuming I hadn’t really cared that much about the old record books, it was with a very different mind that I looked at those words on the lichen covered green board in a room that was worse for wear but still had pipes humming and yellowed monitors glowing their strange un-death. The weight of my lived years crashed down. The fishers were patient, terrifyingly so, and there was something here they really, really, really wanted me to see.