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Keni
tannertan36
styofa doing anything
DEAR READER
oozey mess
NASA
Monterey Bay Aquarium
sheepfilms
shark vs the universe
Cosimo Galluzzi
titsay
Misplaced Lens Cap
YOU ARE THE REASON
JBB: An Artblog!
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i don't do bad sauce passes
Discoholic 🪩
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Show & Tell
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@raliasnox
Dwarves do NOT drink foaming tankards of ale, as some would have you believe. Dwarves drink foaming tankards of foam. Dwarvish ale is like 90% foam, and master brewers can get it to a mousse or whipped-cream-like consistency. They say that as the craft advances there shall one day be ale you need to eat with a spoon.
Elves drink hand sanitizer with cranberry flavoring.
I just got described as an "ad hating commie" by someone because I said a minute of youtube ads is unpleasant. fully spent 5 minutes arguing and defending youtube ads. insane stuff
reblog if you are an ad hating commie
I saw an anonymous ask that got sent to an artist I follow that was along the lines of "I need an outlet for my stress, and being mean to people makes me feel good" and I would really like to say. to anyone who is mean to others for the thrill of it. I understand you completely and I was EXACTLY the same a few years ago. you're right!! it DOES feel good!!!!
for a few minutes.
and then you feel even worse than you did before. you're not "letting off steam", you're building a dependence on bullying, and you WILL end up with misery as your default emotional state. even if you don't behave this way to your loved ones, it WILL start showing.
I've had to distance myself from friends whose main form of entertainment seemed to be upsetting strangers over harmless disagreements. play a stressful video game. join a sports team. get into media analysis and get angry at a shitty tv show. there are ways to blow off steam that won't make you a miserable person who has a hard time finding ways to relax.
if I got out of that "get angry -> take it out on people -> feel good -> feel worse and need an outlet -> repeat" cycle, that means it's possible.
as soon as my efforts to escape that cycle started paying off, I was NOTICEABLY less stressed, I was VISIBLY healthier, and the urge to fight with people died down.
these days, I'm quick to delight, I find it very easy to be kind to people, and I can calm myself down before jumping to conclusions. and I can tell you with absolute certainty that life feels IMMEASURABLY more enjoyable this way. my good days outnumber my bad days 10 to 1 despite the fact that I still deal with the same things I used to, and those bad days are much easier than they used to be anyway.
but how do you even escape? what's the first step?
the next time you find yourself itching to lash out at someone to get that good rush of anger, try taking it to private dms with a friend who gets you! this stops the person you're angry at from responding and continuing the argument, which helps that reward-response feeling fizzle out.
from there, try a high-focus-high-stress fun activity instead of talking about it AT ALL. like I said earlier! video games! horror movies! go for a bike ride at full speed! let the cortisol and adrenaline or whatever it might be course through you until you feel calmer.
once you've got that down as a skill, you could even try flipping that anger on its head. MAKE something out of it. someone's artstyle pisses you off? make your own art the way YOU think it should be. someone hates something you like? talk with your friends about how that same something brings you joy, and why!
best of luck. been there. this isn't meant to be patronising or condescending. I don't know better than you. I only know how good it feels, and how bad it can be for you and the people you care about.
i have a suggestion for relieving stress
you know what that's a good outlet too probably
ah yes, because crabs are renowned for their soothing therapy sessions.
looks like someone hasn't tried acupincher
With Your Support...
He Can Be Yours.
It's Ivan The Elephant, now in the process of being turned into a marketable plushie! With your help and a cool $2 (as a deposit to purchase the plush if this campaign reaches its pledge goal), this 9" tall version of Ivan can rampage and murder within your very own home! Thank you to Gimme Swag for making this possible!
Pledge your $2 here and make Ivan The Elephant REAL!
Ivan's right! If the goal isn't made, you WILL be refunded your $2!
THIS CAMPAIGN LASTS 10 DAYS!
New comm post with more up-to-date info! I was able to get a new laptop last semester with the help of FAFSA, so I'm back in illustration shape babeyyy!!
The two types of comms I have listed on KoFi are sketch and lineart:
Sketch:
- 10USD for simple, uncolored sketchwork
- 25USD for colored and minimally shaded sketchwork of a bust or halfbody portrait of a character
- 35USD for a fullbody character!
Linework:
- 25USD for clean, uncolored linework
All have add ons for extra detail and characters you can add directly through ko-fi; please dm if you're unsure if a design constitutes as needing the extra detail addon!
What I can do:
Anthro, feral, fantasy, armor, simplified mecha, humans/humanoids, etc...
What I will not do:
N/S/F/W of any kind, complicated mecha, or extreme gore.
I am also happy to take on projects not within the kofi listings; please dm me and I can work out a quote based on budget!
Commissions Open! Click to see Ralias N. Howl's commission menu.
If you can't comm, donations are still hugely helpful. I'm also working on making a throne account in the future when I am consistently making content again.
My homelessness status has not changed; but I finally have a rough timeline for HUD related things, and should hopefully land a place somewhere around August. That being said; I still can't work a normal job due to my health, and am still working on getting EBT and, eventually, SSI.
Comms largely go towards meals; I don't have access to a kitchen and the food provided at the shelter often makes me sick, so being able to get easy to access snacks and meals is hugely helpful. Comms will also be going towards my storage unit, that has a majority of my belongings.
Its my borthday you should. Throw coins at my face
You ever see something innocuous, minding its own business on the clearance shelf at Michael’s and before you know it, it takes over your life for a few weeks?
So it was with this desktop greenhouse.
I took it home and after taking an appropriate time to “season” my idea in my mind (read: a month or two) I set to make my vision of a mini botanical garden a reality.
I started by removing the heavy glass panels and building a raised floor above the latch. I wanted to use the base as a foundation on the building.
I wrapped the foundation in plastic stone textured flooring (meant for Christmas villages) and built a pond at one end of the same. I then gave it a more realistic paint job and designed a rough layout for my plants and displays.
I also knew I wanted to make the ironwork significantly more intricate, but I wasn’t sure how just yet…
Up next - PLANTS! I went wild making all kinds of plants. Some were specific species and some were more conceptual.
I made several trees with polymer clay and moss, cacti out of beads and flocking, cattails out of raffia, hot glue and coffee grounds, and giant monstera leaves out of paper and wire.
This part should have taken me a long time, but it really came together fast. I loved finding ways to replicate natural shapes and patterns using bits of this and that.
I did make adjustments to my plans as I went like eliminating benches in favor of a simpler overall design.
Then I needed to fill my pond with water. For this I used resin. Lily pads were added to the top layer, and I wired in simple LED fairy lights. The batteries are kept in the box under the foundation.
In a weekend frenzy I added more plants, metal (paper) steps, new (plexi)glass windows, a roof, wrought-iron vines (paper again), doors that open, and a hose reel disguising the latch. Suddenly, a project I thought would take months was finished…
I love my desktop botanical garden. Right now it sits on a simple lazy Susan in my office. But I’d love to get it a proper display box to protect from dust.
Thank you for coming on this little journey with me. This piece packs a lot of joy into a tiny space. I always love building miniatures, and I’ll be doing more in the future I’m sure.
reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics
@dragonpyre any chance you could elaborate on this
I grew up learning about land formations. Seeing fictional maps that don’t follow the logic and science of them makes me upset
What are the most common sins you’ve seen relating to this? I wanna know
Mordor.
Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.
And then the misty mountains!!!! Why isn’t there a rain shadow!! And why is there a FOREST where the rain shadow should be!!!!!!!!
So what is a rain shadow?
Wind blows clouds in from the sea, but mountains are so tall the clouds can't get past 'em, so you get deserts on the windward side of mountain ranges because clouds can't get there to water the land, or do so only very rarely.
this is because, as clouds are forced upwards by rising land, they cool and dump their rain. so the side of the mountain facing the ocean (or an inland sea, or a great lake) gets all the rain as the clouds are squeezed out, and the opposite side gets nothing.
my favorite thing is the american great lake snowbelts! so, the 'flow' of weather across north america, in very general terms, blows from the northwest on down south and east to the gulf of mexico.
so the wind is blowing from west to east, and in the winter it's a dryer wind than in the summer because it's colder. but after blowing across a great lake for a hundred miles, the wind is wet again. and that wet turns into snow. so for all of these lakes, the big cities are on the west side, not the east sides, because the east sides absolutely suck to live on.
the sole exception is buffalo, NY, which literally has to be there because, unfortunately, that's where all the important canal stuff between lake ontario and lake erie is happening.
also this always strikes me as cool, check out where cleveland is:
it's right at the edge of that snowbelt. and you see way more cities west of it than east, too.
#but again. mordor looks like that becaue sauron made it#and he's an ass
On a Watsonian level, sure.
On a Doylistic level, Mordor looks like that because plate tectonics was a fringe, ludicrous, laughable theory that nobody outside serious geology nerds had ever heard of until scientists proved seafloor spreading in the early 1960s. The first edition of the LotR trilogy was published in 54-55. We literally did not know that plate tectonics was real until almost a decade after the book was published, so obviously, it was not something Tolkien could have been considering as he made his maps.
I don't know enough meteorological history to know when white people figured out about rain shadows and added it to geology classes, or what would have been taught about volcanoes and such. But any education Tolkien got on the subject would have been in childhood/adolescence; his college education focused on the liberal arts, not the sciences, and his professional study was linguistics and the middle ages. So anything Medieval and earlier European authors wrote about he had a pretty good chance of knowing about. But not much exposure to modern science. So his science knowledge was probably limited to "what English schools taught at the turn of the 20th Century."
I mean, it's true he didn't know about plate tectonics, but he did know what mountains look like, and that it's not normally That. And it wasn't his style to break that kind of norm without cause.
LotR has recurring themes of the reckless imposition of one's will on the natural world creating ugliness, an order you thought was inherently an improvement that in fact is inferior to what you have displaced. (Typified by reckless tree-felling; a reflection of the despoiling of the English countryside and the world by Progress.)
Mordor is a rectangle because Sauron is an asshole.
#the rain shadow thing otoh was undoubtedly total ignorance#but those mountains were made as the fortress of a demigod#too steeped in evil to understand beauty#it's *supposed* to look like something that Shouldn't Exist#like quite often this is something that happens in worldbuilding yes#things are arranged Wrong because a person doesn't grasp the underlying logic#but mordor is a bad example for the same reason it's an obvious one#it's So Very Wrong because it was designed to be wrong#to give you a bad feeling with how much it shouldn't look like that#if he just wanted it unapproachable on all sides it could've been in a caldera formation it didn't *need* corners#the corners were a choice#tolkien's job involved lots of looking at maps and things okay#meanwhile people whose lives revolved around the weather generally knew where the rain happened#long before it was formalized into 'rain shadow effect'#people not having The Science doesn't mean they don't have eyes and brains
I wrote an entire paper in college analyzing the geology of the Misty Mountains and to a lesser extent the White Mountains (the Misty Mountains are easier because we get a cross-section via Moria). One thing I discovered that still knocks me for a loop when I think about it is:
Moria is the only place in Middle-Earth where mithril is found, right? That's kind of a big deal. So, why? What makes that location so special? Is it just random?
I found a paper that had just been published *that year*, 2011 or 2012 as I was writing it, that studied the locations of precious-metals mines in the Pyrenees, the similarly long skinny mountain chain that divides Spain and France. This paper discovered that where there was a bend in the mountain chain, from one of the continental plates having an awkward corner in it that got subducted under the other plate, that had dug deeper into the mantle and caused precious-metal-bearing ores to flow up to the surface in ways they didn't do anywhere else in the Pyrenees.
There's a conversation in The Fellowship of the Ring where one of the hobbits -- I don't have my copy handy or I'd get the direct quote -- asks why they can see the Misty Mountains ahead of them at one point if they're still heading south from Rivendell, and it's explained that south of Caradhras (which you may recall is the surface mountain under which Moria runs) the mountain chain bends and runs southwest instead of due south for a while.
Tolkien had absolutely no way to know *why* this particular feature of a mountain range was associated with intrusions of rare and unique metal ores, but he had gone backpacking in mountains enough to know How Things Should Look.
(And as prev excellently points out, when Jirt made screwed-up geology it was very much on purpose. Mordor shouldn't be square! Mount Doom shouldn't be doing any of the things it does! A composite volcano shouldn't even have especially hot lava! Even the Gulf of Udun, the circular feature at the upper left corner of the square, shouldn't be like that -- perfectly round features should be impact craters or calderas, not The Mountains Just Do This In A Suspiciously Convenient Way. These are all the way they are because Sauron forced them to be, in defiance of the laws of nature. Remember, he's akin to Balrogs and was a Maia of Aulë -- he's a volcano spirit in many ways.)
Amazing work by the LoTR fandom, as always.
This also serves as an excellent example of why worldbuilding needs - more than realism - to be cohesive and work with the themes of your story.
Two wolfhound sisters, once triplets now twins, employed by the aftermath of everyone else's dirty work.
Two cleaner ocs for @gorjee-art's world Dog's Dinner :') Currently accepting name ideas
Some recent graphite illustrations I enjoyed :)
as a lil' alien day bonus heres an abandoned WIP of an illustration from 2024 I never ended up finishing.
At the time I was trying to use a joycon as my shortcut key device; it kept disconnecting so much I rage quit the painting. And this was after days of fighting with different bluetooth settings and multiple versions of bluetooth via different dongles.
Now I use a wired PS2 controller the way nature intended.
shakespeare was so funny for that scene where the antagonist tells the protagonist “let the record show that i AM into women THAT BEING SAID holy shit, thou mars, seeing you here is like an even better version of my wedding night. like WAY better. i’ve been dreaming about you every night for years, and in my dreams we take off each other’s armor and beat each other to a pulp and i wake up all hot and sticky 👍”
coriolanus 4.5.126-131, 135-139 be upon ye
i have nothing against Lore Videos etc but i wish people would take the effort to form their own interpretations and conclusions about games like hollow knight instead of going "well i'll just wait for this person to break it all down for me and watch that cause i don't get it and i can't figure it out" like no...every interpretation is inherently biased due to the personal nature of it and how it goes through your brain...don't downplay your own skill!! you can learn it! it can be trained!!
like i promise you that you can do it. you can use your brain to make connections. There are commentary-less playthroughs. There's the wiki. Don't take one guy's word as the one true interpretation, it's so much richer to form your own opinion before you start looking to other people's
It's fun to hear other people's interpretations! Watching a "Lore Video" doesn't mean I didn't understand the plot, or didn't form my own interpretation. It just means I want to hear how other people took it! (I'm most likely to look up videos when the ending was ambiguous)
Sometimes Lore Videos have information I don't have - maybe I missed an important expository scene, or the director was explicit about their interpretation.
Just because I "can" do something doesn't mean I particularly want to spend my time understanding it. Some people enjoy having their media in simple, easily understood pieces, and some media really resents that part of the audience.
But most of all, it feels like this is how we end up devaluing the labor that goes in to those things. Yes, I "could" do this myself. And I "could" cook my own dinner instead of going to a restaurant. I could learn to sew instead of making my own clothes. And probably it would be more rewarding to make my own dinner, or to be wearing hand-stitched clothes... except that takes away time from the things I actually want to be focused on!
It's really cool that people that enjoy these Lore Videos, and are good at it, are willing to provide that service for others who don't enjoy it, or who don't have the desire to develop that skill!
It's like saying, sure, kids running around is great, but they could be practicing professional sports, an as a professional sports fan, I'm just really disappointed by all these kids selling themselves short. But it's not about "selling yourself short" - it's about focusing on what you enjoy!
Ok, like.
First point: I am not saying lore videos are bad i literally say this in the post. Second point: I feel like it's deeply disingenuous to compare having your own opinions about a thing you experienced via playing it or whatever as like Something Only Professionals Can Do. Even "Huh, I'm not sure about it but I think this is happening though" is an opinion you formed yourself.
Also, I'm...I'm sorry, I simply don't think I'm 'devaluing the labor' of people who make lore videos by saying 'I think it's good if you form and have your own opinions instead of taking lore videos as the one and only objective source". I think that's a really weird claim to come onto my post and make. I don't know where you got that from.
I don't think it does any good to frame analysis or even...like...having your own opinions on things as something that's only for people who have sufficient time or inclination or The Right Skill, like it's too much effort to do that, or that skill can't be learned.
I think it's a good thing when people make an effort to understand the things they watch or play. I think that learning and analysing will make lore videos even more enjoyable to watch. It's not for everyone, but I am talking to people who might be scared of Having Opinions Wrong or are afraid to look stupid or don't want to disagree with someone who made a video about it.
Like I'm just not cool with the idea that analysis in itself cannot be fun or interesting to do. That fun must necessarily be 'brainless'. I'm not telling people they have to do these things, I just think people really mythologize and enshrine people as The True Holders Of The Lore like it's not something people can learn to do.
i don't go here but i think it's a little crazy to say 'i don't want to spend my time trying to understand the things i 'like' i need it served to me in easily understood pieces so i can focus on the fun stuff
like, what is the fun stuff at that point? no one's saying that you Must memorize obscure line no #4500 you can only find if you jump up and down at midnight during a new moon on the 13th of december but only if it's not a friday, but surely there must be a midpoint between that and 'i cannot form any opinions on this at all whatsoever'
like, if you can't form any opinions on it, what do you like about the series? the fanart? the fanfiction? the posts about it?
also, a lot of the Lore Videos are just. wrong. like it's not a service they're providing. these people can be wrong and often are-- i've met quite a few Lore Video people who have certain viewpoints that seep into their interpretations, and the fact that a lot of these people are treated as objective truths rather than subjective viewpoints has led to a lot of frustrating discussions where people argue about something that literally is not in the series they're discussing because a Lore Video said it.
like, how do you know a lore video is 'good' and not just someone making up shit about easily verifiable facts if you're not interested in engaging with the original text?
why are you so interested in portraying the act of engaging with a text and forming your own conclusions, even if they're as simple as 'i don't know what went on there but it's cool' as something only professionals can do?
I think a huge part of the problem is so many people are engaging in media only to "finish it." Like... this isn't even a game specific issue I've found, and I've been guilty of it myself.
We could also have the ye old "media literacy is dead and our attention spans are quickly following" conversation but a LOT of that is honestly pretty fixable in the context of media consumption.
Genuinely a great step in "understanding" the game you're playing is to just... play it. Don't skip dialogue scenes, take a minute to read those optional in-game lore books and flavor texts (and no, you dont need to read ALL of them), and like... if it's applicable, just explore. Take your time. If a game is not capturing your attention it's okay to put it down, and yeah, it's okay to never finish it.
And like what's said above, it's OKAY if your takeaway is "I'm not sure whats going on but I like it." And it's okay to consume other people's opinions on the matter, but understand that's often what they are, opinions. Hell, if you are really wanting to get a better understanding of the game outside of the game itself, see if there's any guides made by the creators, or watch behind the scenes videos if theyre available. Those can be super enlightening even if they arent lore, perse.
If the only way to enjoy a game or any piece of media for that matter is to understand every single detail, it's not good. Free your brain and don't be so hard on yourself and default to "Well I'm not going to understand this anyways so may as well not even try before I get anywhere."
One of my favorite video games is Oblivion, and fuck if I know the story outside of the main plotline (and sometimes even then I get a little lost) but I still have a TON of fun and thuroughly enjoy it. And on the other side of that, I really enjoy games like Twilight Princess BECAUSE of the story (I would not have emulated it on PC with no proper controller setup if I didnt.) I could go on for ages how the themes and details of that game are so iconic to me.
If the only way you can enjoy a game's story is through other's opinions... maybe you need to take a break. And that's okay.
Have a little more faith in yourself and your ability to engage with the media you consume in a meaningful way.
A smattering of things
Been wanting to explore an unusual character of mine: The Begotten Beast of Yearning. He's a spirit, often taking the form of wounded, mangey Bull Elk who haunts individuals who are lost, both literally, spiritually and metaphorically.
He's near and dear to me, though I'm not the happiest with this piece in particular I'm glad I was able to make it exist :)
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Awoo
TW shootings, news, etc....
Gender dysphoria has nothing to do with the increase of mass shootings. Stop saying it is.
Extremism is almost always the root cause of most mass shootings in the US. Nearly every individual has a history of being involved in alt-right groups, doomsday groups, and other similar things. This is domestic terror rooted in hate, nothing else.
Stop fucking blaming it on Gender Dysohoria and bullying.
