it is not what it is

here there be monsters. and esports. and talk of books i haven't written. and some bad music. you've been warned now.

[prokopetz]

Not only is having worldbuilding threads that are mentioned once and never picked up again not a flaw in fantasy media, I'd go so far as to say that a lack of such threads is a flaw. If everything ties up in one neat little package, you're missing the point of fantasy worldbuilding. Like, don't do it on every page, or your setting is going to be an overstuffed mess, but every so often you are not only allowed but obligated to casually drop some utterly batshit worldbuilding detail and then just never follow up on it. Maybe some rocks are sentient. You don't owe your reader an explanation. Just fucking go for it.

[saintofpride201]

We really fucked up when we made checkov's gun mandatory instead of just a high recommendation.

[unsolids-your-snake]

Chekov's gun not chekov's armory

[plantnerderyallday]

Annual deer post:

If you see a fawn laying down on the ground all alone, leave it alone. It is not lost, it does not need your help, do not pick it up, do not move it.

This behavior evolved to keep deer young safe. The baby is very small, very quiet, and hard for most predators to see. A young fawn cannot keep up with a fleeing mother deer, which is their primary problem-solving strategy. So while the mother goes elsewhere to graze, the fawn stays safe and hidden. The mom will be back.

Leave the fawn alone.

[sea-salted-wolverine]

This is always good to pass around this time of year, but I would like to add something for the few of us who might be encountering the moose kind of deer.

Moose are deer, but moose have the opposite strategy. They stay close to their babies, and their primary response for anything getting close to their babies is immediate violent murder. If you do see a baby moose by itself, leave. Leave the baby alone and leave the area, preferably quickly. Momma is at most 30 yards away and has already kicked on the kill bill sirens.

[shigure]

i'm sorry i never did your tag game. i love you

[pawthorn]

Really hate that most people don’t understand the difference between “self-expression” and “artistic-expression.”

I say this as someone who sells pottery, and many people who see my art assume I am using art as an outlet to “express myself.”

I am not.

I use art to challenge myself. A lot of what I do is the equivalent of doing a hard sudoko or a half marathon, answering the question of “can I do this?”

I use art to question things and explore ideas. Finding physical synthesis between concepts and working out a design to its end state.

I use art to make money. I make some things just because I suspect they’ll sell well, and I keep making them when they do.

This idea that an artist is “putting themselves out there” every time they create is not only stupid, but harmful, and it kills critique and analysis.

Yes every creative work is influenced by its creator, but the most preliminary step of analysis is to define the purpose of a work of art (functional, narrative, entertainment, persuasive, decorative, ceremonial, etc.) and a vanishingly small percentage of that is self-expression. Even then, it’s generally tied to the self’s relationship with something else—perception, society, etc.

It’s very tiresome to have people assume they know you because they like (or dislike) your art, to make assumptions about who you are and how you approach the world. It’s nothing new— people called the Impressionists insane and the Fauvists degenerate. And now people are expected to hand out their identities and traumas to prove they have the right to explore certain subjects.

But to actually understand art, you have to contextualize it beyond assuming it’s just what the artist felt like making at the moment and it’s somehow coming from their deepest soul, or you’ll badly misinterpret most art you come across.

[kosmogrl]

[varanusniloticus]

Pet dragon 🐲 [by Ryoko Kui]

[kompajunior]

Blacker Sheep. The brilliant project of Lernert & Sander who trimmed a sheep just like a poodle.

[benzohoarder]

[figural]

#google translate does not capture the tone switch so i have to say. first two sentences are like. normal maybe kind of feminine posting tone #& the last is like. shounen manga protagonist. action movie hero. jojo's bizarre adventure character. #the tone you would use if you were holding a gun with the safety off (– @chadlesbianjasontodd)

[minothtime]

Basically, a translation could be:

I just think it's so interesting that people end up falling in love with their friends' boyfriends! I absolutely despise every single one of them. give me my fucking homie back you goddamn bastard

[liminalweirdo]

translation tags by @minothtime because they are so so good

[dikdikpronouncedxylophone]

[nemfrog]

The winds. The baby's own Aesop. 1887. Walter Crane, illustrator.

Internet Archive

[herpsandbirds]

Mini mum, male, family Microhylidae, found only in the Manombo Special Reserve, southern Madagascar

Described by science in 2019.

Measuring only 8.2–11.3 mm (0.32–0.44 in) in snout–vent length.

Little is known of its natural history.

It most likely feeds on Oribatid mites.

The herpetologists that described it propose that it should be classified as Critically Endangered.

The 2 other species in this genus are Mini ature and Mini scule.

photograph via: Mark D. Scherz , Carl R. Hutter, et al.

[negatinginfinity-deactivated201]

[asras-archive]

Img transcription:

442

Books for general reading always smell bad; the odor of common people hangs about them. Friedrich Nietzsche (1828-1900)

Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal. Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

[Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Anna Karenina are] loose, baggy monsters. Henry James (1843-1916)

Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

[aromanticduck]

[kayadraws]

The unboxing video of all time

[riversurface]

barn owl at monastery of santes creus, catalonia, spain

[paintingsandhistory]

The Death of Chatterton

Artist: Henry Wallis (British, 1830–1916)

Date: ca. 1856

Medium: Oil on panel

Collection: Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, United States

Description

Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770) was an aspiring poet and author of a brilliant series of forgeries that he successfully passed off as the rediscovered work of a medieval English monk. The dishonor of his eventual exposure led the teenaged poet to commit suicide in a London garret. He became revered among nineteenth-century poets as a martyr of frustrated genius.

[hellsite-yano]

definitely one of the weirder DNI criteria I've come across

[extremenegativeforce-deactivate]

SLUTS

[clusterduck28]

DNI if you think that reblogging before marriage is okay

[corviiids]

the best death note joke format will forever be L asking light a simple question in which logical answer A might increase the likelihood of light being kira and logical answer B similarly might increase the likelihood of light being kira and after a short internal struggle light comes up with answer Y, which no human being has ever thought of as being a normal response in all of living history

[ave-aria]

AU where L doesn't suspect Light at all and only keeps him around because the batshit crazy answers always tend to ping-pong around his neurodivergent brain for like an hour straight afterwards

[scleroticstatue]

Yes, that is my circus, and, yes, those are my monkeys, but I am not on shift yet.

[the-beard-of-edward-teach]