Sweet Tooth

[valtsv]

blood being frequently described as having a "coppery smell" in fiction is kind of funny considering that there is a metallic component to blood and it's not copper

[valtsv]

in fact if your blood smells or tastes like copper you probably have more urgent things to worry about than it being outside your body. it's probably better that it's not inside you anymore actually.

[valtsv]

story where blood is described as smelling or tasting "coppery" and it's actually early foreshadowing that all the characters are suffering from heavy metal poisoning

[valtsv]

[friendlyfrankenstein]

dear fiction writers: 

as far as I know, there is no large carnivore who would abandon actively eating a killed meal to chase live prey. chasing and hunting live prey is a risk, as a healthy live creature has the capability to injure a carnivore, or tire it out through the chase. If there is, say, a giant pile of dead bodies to eat, which abandoning would allow other carnivores or scavengers to steal and eat instead, it makes no sense at all. 

please stop doing that thing

[wallycaine]

The sole exception I can think of is if the large carnivore thought the live prey was another carnivore or scavenger, and was chasing them as a threat display to ensure they didn’t steal the dead bodies. Even in that case, though, it would only be a short, mock charge followed by returning to the pile if the opponent fled. With possibly whatever the animal’s equivalent of “and stay out” would be. 

[roachpatrol]

Another thing: most carnivores don’t like to fight. They have to mug something to death for every single meal, they have to stay in top shape while conserving their energy. Meanwhile, herbivores have plenty of extra energy because they eat stuff that comes out of the ground and doesn’t fight back, and they often live in big social groups, so they’re better at handling stress and more used to having to actually come to blows with other animals to get their way. 

So like, a zebra will try kick your ass just to see what’s up. A tiger won’t do shit unless it’s damn sure it can take you. I’d rather come face to face with a cougar than a stag— have you seen videos of what happens to hunters when a stag catches a dude on the ground? the stag tears the dude apart. Not even to eat him. Just because the stag didn’t like what was going on and decided it was time to curb stomp a motherfucker. 

So if you’re deciding what kind of Big Scary Animals to have be a threat, like, forget wolves and lions and eagles and velociraptors. Go drop in a moose.

[kaldurcalm-deactivated20240513]

This is why loud noise can scare bears away. It’s a threat display that normally convinces them that the charge isn’t worth the effort.

[fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment]

-Exception:  

If a carnivore is Not That Hungry it might drop something dead to chase something that is doing Extreme Prey Behavior– but it’s not going to be serious about it. I’m thinking of things like a domestic cat that chases birds and mice for kicks. Honestly, I think that the t rex in Jurassic Park was a good example of predator behavior– she abandons something difficult (like the kids in the jeep) for the bright shiny thing she has been conditioned to understand means food (tightpants math guy with the flare + gruff dino man with flare). For the rest of the film, she chases things that run, and then quits and chows down once she has something. This has been one of my biggest beefs with the later JP films, especially Jurassic World– rather than the scares coming from being treated and stalked like prey by animals, the scares are based on monsters killing and eating randomly. (And what’s with the treatment of all the herbivores as good and gentle? Herbivores will fuck you up because they got scared or because you pissed them off and those are the two primary emotions of large herbivores– they won’t eat you, but they’ll still trample you).

+Addition: The predators that aren’t snipers (like cougars or herons) tend to test individuals in a herd– they want to gauge your health and willingness to fuck somebody up before they commit to you as a target. If you stare them down with your cold dead eyes and gear up to wreck their shit they’ll piss off unless they’re completely desperate. (Like I said, the main emotions of prey animals are Time To Fuck Shit Up and Time To Run).  So, I’m desperately tired of all these people running and screaming away from wolves and velociraptors and bears oh my. 

Consider:

How much scarier fiction could be if predators acted like actual predators that can be intelligent and patient and are pressing around the edges of your party to find weakness and fear. 

[anglaised]

u can tell the 4chan migration on here was successful / we lost the culture war bc anytime i even touch a post regarding autism i automatically get recommended more post about it and the post will literally have phrases like “total neurotypical death” with 20k notes and a bunch of high functioning white autistic ppl rbing it happily and giggling and whatever not even caring that “tnd” is a racist dog whistle no not even a dog whistle just straight up a racist chant but if u ask them to stop using it they go “so now we cant even complain about neurotypical?????” as if thats whats being criticized instead of the fact that yall r extremely open to fascism as long as its fun

[anglaised]

to clarify any variation of “total ____ death” is just a rebranding of the nazi slogan “total nigger death” like. ur just using a nazi slogan, u cannot swap out black people in that phrase and think its okay to use now, especially if ur still using a word that starts with the letter n like im kinda sick of yall being so okay with hating black people

[muntzerism-diggerism]

[transhuman-priestess]

the thing about "people have talked about it you're just 21" is that it's not really "young people are stupid" it's more "if you come into an academic discussion you should know what people have said on the matter lest you talk out your ass"

[transhuman-priestess]

#literallyyy like babygirl you just got here of course you haven't seen it#you didn't even know to look

[analogdelight]

If you see a post by a woman, talking about another woman, and you think to yourself "i should add something nice about men :)" consider:

don't.

you literally don't need to.

everything is about men all the time.

you don't need to do this.

this doesn't change when the women are trans, btw.

[analogdelight]

Trust me on this:

someone else will bring up men

it doesn't need to be you

you really just don't need to do it

it's not infighting to say "you don't need to bring up men"

this doesn't change when the men are trans, btw.

[tahthetrickster]

just so we’re clear if you’ve never actually seen a cybertruck in person and have only seen photos of them i cannot stress enough how much worse they look in real life. like i honestly don’t know how it’s possible. most things look basically the same in pictures and in real life. but as stupid and ugly as cybertrucks look in photos, every person i’ve spoken to who has seen one in real life agrees that they somehow look even worse in person. and i know you’re thinking to yourself “tah they already look so bad in photos, how can they possibly look even worse in person?” I DONT KNOW. the first time i saw one on the road i was on a phone call and i literally cut myself off in the middle of a sentence just to be like “oh my GOD.” just an incredibly, laughably, unbelievably bad vehicle. i’ve never experienced anything like it. they’re just so bad

[krshush]

Oh, yeah, I wonder how that map's progressed si--wait MISHA COLLINS?

[sunspotpony]

Tags passing peer review, gonna share.

Anyway, homie is, like all wealthy white dudes, egregiously imperfect, but he’s definitely fucking trying. So in that regard, he’s valuable because he’s reaching audiences that you personally probably wouldn’t be able to reach, and if you find he has specific stuff on topics you need to persuade people on, he’s a valuable avenue.

[teaboot]

I live in the northwest coast of Canada so we walk everywhere and do stuff outside in the rain and swim in whatever lakes and rivers we find so imagine my smug sense of Canadian superiority when I met a USAmerican Midwesterner who was horrified at the very thought

And then I went to the USAmerican Midwest

And I understood

[teaboot]

What I mean to say is that it's very easy to delude yourself into believing you are more in tune with your environment when your environment is not actively hostile to your existence in every conceivable way

[teaboot]

BC, Canada:

Rains frequently, but the worst is like standing under a bathroom shower. Genuinely inhospitable rainstorms are uncommon.

Along the coast, it's pretty easy in most areas to walk to at least one store, or else there's usually a bus or shuttle available. There are sidewalks and bike lanes everywhere.

It's a temperate boreal rainforest, so while there are many freshwater lakes and rivers, they're usually pretty cold. The biggest danger is typically getting caught in a strong current, and the most dangerous animals in swimming distance are on land.

Earthquakes happen almost every day, but the vast majority go unnoticed. Buildings are designed to withstand bigger seismic activity, so unless it's a 5 or higher it just kind of feels like having low blood sugar for a second. There are no tornados

Rural Illinois, USA:

One minute it's sunny, then ten minutes later that distant smudge on the horizon has swallowed the entire sky in black clouds and the water is coming down like waterfall and you literally CANNOT SEE. Then there's a crash like cymbals and you need to get indoors because the thunder and lightening are on TOP of you

No sidewalks until you are in the smack dab center of town, which is a three hour walk or twenty minute drive from wherever you are.

There aren't many natural bodies of water other than small ponds and creeks, and because the environment is so much warmer, those are filled with snapping turtles that can grow bigger than a nine year old child and water snakes that are incredibly venomous. These are paired with leeches and mosquitos for that sweet umami flavor.

Sometimes Jupiter, Lord of the Heavens decides to jam his finger into the side of your house just to fuck with your whole shit and throws your truck a thousand yards into the nearest church

[ryan-sometimes]

Working an office job will truly make you have the wildest enemies, bc why is my nemesis rn a woman I’ve never met and who exclusively haunts me by sending diabolical emails, and also a specific guy who left my company before I even worked here and made the system so fuckass that it ruined procedures for like a year

[ryan-sometimes]

Yesterday my nemesis (woman I’ve never met and whose face I’ve never seen) sent my office an email so rude, basically saying we had fucked up every project she ever ordered from us, one of the worst emails I’ve ever read in my life.

And it pissed me off so badly that I spent the ENTIRE WORK DAY today compiling evidence from every project my team has ever done for her, pulling past emails she’d sent us, putting together an entire case proving that she had been the problem all along. That she got projects mixed up, that she’d made requests that were nonsensical, literally everything you could possibly imagine. Screenshots of emails, reports we’d submitted, EVERYTHING.

This woman in particular has been terrorizing my team for years, her name is almost a slur in my office, I had simply had ENOUGH of her.

I put all of this evidence together and sent it to all of my bosses at 4:30pm. Then I took a long break to eat a sweet treat and drink some tea.

After my break, my bosses all called in an emergency meeting with me and they said they read my report and fucking loved it. And I sat on a teams call with my boss’ boss as she wrote my nemesis the scathing email I had always fantasized about sending, using the evidence I’d compiled, and hit send.

It was the most satisfying workday I’ve had since I got hired.

[winnie-wine]

[covid-safer-hotties]

[diamantefangs]

[xeansicemane]

This is kinda ominous ngl

[vexwerewolf]

Gotta compliment him on his reflexes. No hesitation. Just described exactly what he was seeing, regardless of what it was.

[wherefore-whinnies]

[VD: A weatherman is giving a report and pointing to a map, saying "feel like temperatures really take a tumble too, because after the storm-" before he is interrupted by the screen going black and then displaying a picture of some baby spinach. He says, "um," then immediately points to the screen and confidently announces, "this is baby spinach." /End VD]

[creekfiend]

thing I am proud of: when the doctor started going on a weird rant about long covid not being real I paused and listened to his nonsense for a bit and then very calmly said, in a polite and curious tone, "you don't believe in post-viral illness?" and he like. stammered a bunch and was like OH WELL I'M NOT SAYING -- I DON'T...I just think ..! and backpedaled awkwardly while I just sat there like :3c interesting :3c thank you so much for clarifying your stance on this :3c

[creekfiend]

an important skill for chronically ill people to develop is the ability to treat the doctor as though they are simply a person you are interviewing to find out how much they know about your condition.

[nightmare-from-heaven]

Holy shit op this is LITERALLY in the book 'Never Split The Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depends On It'. Written by a guy who did hostage negotiation and then tried doing business negotiation, and mopped the floor with industry experts.

I'm fortunate enough to have a primary care doctor who knows about hEDS, but it's occurring to me that the skills in this book could be medically life changing for chronically ill folks of all kinds. Like. Literally a matter of life and death, especially for BIPOC and/or fat and/or young people who are having their issues dismissed.

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

Like it triggers me badly how common a take "carceral violence is bad and should be limited, except in the case of really mentally ill people who need it and benefit from it" is even among supposedly progressive people

[anarchistmemedistro]

abolish prisons includes psych wards

[carosbee]

What do you expect should be done to people who are a danger to other people due to psychiatric conditions?

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

I hope they personally come bother you for thinking this vent post of mine is an appropriate place for starting that "debate"

[shinesurge]

gentle psa to new comic artists about a problem i also suffered from: slow quiet pacing is totally fine BUT if that's not what you're deliberately going for, you CAN fit more Story Progression on the page. no, more than that. more than that even. i promise if you don't want it to a single action doesn't need to take a whole page to illustrate each of its steps, a lot of connecting magic happens in the gutters i /promise/ if you draw someone pulling up in a car then skip to them walking in the door with groceries we will Understand that they unloaded the car and unlocked the house you feel me

[shinesurge]

#I am not a comic artist#but I had a similar problem when I was in film school#I call it “the door problem”#in my thesis film I had written that two characters walk out the back of the club into the alley behind the club#and my club location did not have a back alley but did have a side room that we used as the door#but that door opened in#and the location I used for the alley had a back door but that door opened outwards#and I knew it looked weird#I struggled framing the shots#and blocking the actors#and I got really really caught in my own head about how to make this door work#because to me it was really important that you saw every step from club to outside#because even though we had learned in school that you could transition it didn't feel right because it didn't feel like a new scene to me#(this being one of the struggles with a short film. It can all feel like one scene if your script is short!)#AND THEN#when we got into the editing room we just...cut the door transition entirely#initially not on purpose#what happened was that we decided to tighten up the timing by cutting non-linearly to the custom music I had commissioned#which made it much more experimental especially in comparison to my fellow classmates#however it showed me that the story still absolutely worked without needing to show how they got into the alley#the audience can infer the door#so now anytime I can feel myself getting stuck on something when I'm filming I think#“Is this a Door Problem?”#as a storyteller it's always a question of what is the absolute bare minimum you need to convey what you're trying to say#and sometimes that means you just need to already be outside the club

(via @currentlycreating )

Exactly! Film and comics are VERY similar mediums in this way, I love this. We should always be considering Door Problems

[raccoonmilf]

If the only thing that has kept you going was outliving Mitch McConnell, imma need yall to pick a new person to outlive and fast. Your mission is not over.

[raccoonmilf]

Umm hello??? Do u have the death note @sharkgalaxy????

[dankxsinatra]

[dankxsinatra]