happy thursday everyone
styofa doing anything
$LAYYYTER
Xuebing Du
Show & Tell

if i look back, i am lost

JVL
Mike Driver
d e v o n
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trying on a metaphor

blake kathryn

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Janaina Medeiros
sheepfilms

oozey mess
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Sweet Seals For You, Always

Product Placement

izzy's playlists!
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@sharkrillettes
happy thursday everyone
wizard hat cowboy brim
Witch o’ the Wild West
@genderwizard y’all called?
HOLEY TITS did i never really post pics of gods perfect little boy???
I must apologize for this most egregious oversite, made this back in 2021 for @broccoly-cowboy for chrimmus
it's baked clay with a magnetic clasp and real moss on the inside for holding all your precious rings and things
i love people's willingness to get hype over dumb shit.
I was driving home today and pull up to a light. As i'm slowing down i 👁️👁️ lock 👁️👁️ eyes with the dude in the car next to me. I spring into action, this is the moment I've been waiting for.
Now, something you must know about me is I drive around with several small plastic 🦀crabs 🦀 on my dashboard, One: for the whimsy of it all and two: on the off chance i encounter another driver who i think could benefit from witnessing them.
This young gentleman was one such someone.
As i pull up, as previously stated, our eyes lock and I hold up one☝️ finger☝️
Perplexed by my unprompted gesticulation, the young man rolls down his window, "what the devil could this perfect stranger be about to tell me?" he might have been thinking.
I present a singular dashboard crab, green and brown, homely but not without its charm.
I study his reaction, grinning encouragingly. He's nodding, obviously intrigued by my plasticine crustacean.
I wag my finger and shake my head, removing the crab from view. Confusion again, but he leans forward, invested. I have him now.
I grab my second dashboard crab, a rotund white and brown crab, easily the most beautiful of my crabs as it sports large discernible claws of an attractive size and silhouette.
✌️ TWO ✌️ i tell him.
He's cheering now, and rightly so, as these are delightful little beasts that anyone would be happy to encounter. But now comes the clincher, time to seal the deal.
My finger wags once more. He's awestruck, I have him completely enraptured. If a car had come and smeared us both into the pavement we would not have noticed, so wrapped up in my display were we.
I bring out my showstopper: a bright pink spider crab with delicately long legs the likes of which had never before nor since been seen in mid afternoon traffic.
As emphatically as i can express, I display all three of my dashboard crabs to this man, three fingers pressed triumphantly to the glass.
the guy is loosing it in his car, mouth wide in what i assume to be a primal shout of crab derived excitement. His arms are pumping so vigorously its shaking his stationary vehicle.
We sit there, sharing in a moment of mutual jubilation, and then the light changes, and we move forward in line. He drives off, honking his horn in rapturous exultation,
and we part ways, exactly the same perhaps but changed nonetheless.
🦀
OH NO YOU DON'T
oh my jeezusFUCK ok LOOK
ONE
nothing wrong with me
TWO
nothing wrong with me
THREE
NOTHIN WRONG WITH ME
FOUR
DON'T TURN TOO QUICK LEST THE CRABBIES HIT THE FLOOOOOOOOOOOORRR
they are like beautiful tropical birds to me
Literally..
@guooey ya
the default way for things to taste is good. we know this because "tasty" means something tastes good. conversely, from the words "smelly" and "noisy" we can conclude that the default way for things to smell and sound is bad. interestingly there are no corresponding adjectives for the senses of sight and touch. the inescapable conclusion is that the most ordinary object possible is invisible and intangible, produces a hideous cacophony, smells terrible, but tastes delicious. and yet this description matches no object or phenomenon known to science or human experience. so what the fuck
this is what ancient greek philosophy is like
False! “Sightly” is a positive word, so the default way for things to work is good as well.
The true most ordinary object is beautiful, horrible sounding, very smelly, intangible, and delicious.
I still don’t think it matches anything in existence but to truly understand a thing one must know its true nature.
"touchy" is also a word! however it's mostly used for things that aren't objects, like subjects of conversation. it either means "oversensitive and irritable" or "requires careful handling/wording, delicate"
i think the second one works well for our hypothetical object. so we can use that.
therefore, the Default Object is:
beautiful
makes a horrendous sound
smells absolutely awful
is very fragile
tastes delicious
and i still cannot think of anything that matches this
behold, the default object!
They’ll never do a Hitman level set in a Furry Convention because gamers would absolutely ruin it but imagine. like the target isn’t a furry he just owns a hotel that happens to have one every year but you can disguise yourself in a fursuit and some guy will ask you “what species is your sona” and 47 would be like “a wolf. i always felt a connection with…hunters.” and then diana would be like “let’s see if you can sniff out some information, furrty-seven” and then he comes to my house and kills me for writing this
ok but imagine being the fursuit artist that he contracts to make his costume tho
He contacts you via an anonymous email and is very exacting and precise in his request. Money is no object, which isn't uncommon in your line of business, you're a professional and more than a few customers have been in the 1% range.
So you ask if he's local so you can meet and take measurements and he says no but he will meet you at (conveniently close local craft store) tomorrow after work (you did not mention where you live)
You're a little shaken but you meet him anyways because daddy needs to pay rent, and he's probably not a serial killer, right?
Right?
You had no idea what kind of person to expect, but a 6'2 bald white guy built like a fucken shit-brickhouse with a "FurCon2023" shirt wrapped around his brolic frame was rather on the shorter end of your list. His cargo shorts and pure white sneakers looked like they'd just been picked up off of the shelf and his glasses looked too small for his massive head.
You jump because you don't even notice him until he's tapping you on the shoulder and introducing himself. How did he know it was you?? Alarm bells are going off everywhere but there's cameras all over, he wouldn't try something in public right?? You take his measurements and look at fabrics together.
You ask about his fursona and he very seriously produces a laminated folder with several crudely drawn pictures of a polar bear suit. Well, you guess you shouldn't be mean, they were clearly drawn from references but you could tell this was someone who did not draw often. It didn't even have any accessories, it was just a normal polar bear... But the notes surrounding them were so neat they looked printed! And so in depth! There was one page solely dedicated to the visibility needs, with advanced notes on the camera and display system he wanted in the head. You'd only seen this sort of thing at the national cons, just who the hell was this guy??
You haltingly ask him if he was sure. You tell him this is really advanced stuff and he was looking at at LEAST 10k with all the specific modifications on it. When you first started making suits you would have never been this firm on pricing, lowballing and trying to make up the difference so as not to upset the customer with a hefty price, but you'd learned eventually that undervaluing your work was a waste of your time and effort so even though you couldn't gauge his reaction, you figured being upfront about the price would at least be a test to see how serious the guy was.
He nodded silently and reached into the fanny pack around his waist to produce the cleanest stack of hundreds you'd ever seen in your life, like straight printed from the treasury mint. He places it in your palm and you almost drop it out of shock.
"Will this be enough to get you started? I included some extra to compensate for lost wages as I do need this suit fairly quickly" he says, tone unreadable.
You stammer and try to look professional thumbing through the crisply banded notes and would you look at that, you think this will do just fine!
He nods again, shakes your hand and leaves without another word.
You exit the store, just trying to comprehend what in the hell you'd just gotten yourself into, zoning out so hard that you didn't even realize someone was yelling at you until the word "-fuckin furry faggot" pierced through your thoughts. You were looking at your phone so you didn't notice the band of truck bros creeping up behind you in their suped up pickup truck. There were three or four in the bed of the truck, dangling out over the side in between giant "TRUMP 2024" and "Lets Go Brandon" flags. They have their phones out, recording you and shouting slurs.
You raise double birds at them and turn to walk quickly in the opposite way, hoping you wouldn't see them as you walked home. You'd heard of a couple beatings happening locally and you didn't want to be around if that's what they had in mind.
So when you hear tires screeching and and engine roaring behind you, you break out into a run, hoping to make it to the bus terminal across the parking lot.
But they catch up to you before you'd made it halfway. They all get out and one grabs your phone that you held out to record with. He smashes it on the ground and shoves you into the pavement. Hard.
They all stand over you, jeering and laughing and you try to escape but your limbs won't listen to you. You always figured if something like this happened you'd stand your ground, maybe get in a couple of hits yourself, but in reality you could barely breathe and your chest felt like it was collapsing in on itself, so your attempts to scream for help end up coming out as breathy wheezes. One of them levels a crowbar at you and thats when the screaming starts.
You curl up into a ball to protect your face but the pain never comes. You hear screaming and sneakers skidding across asphalt and oh god, wet crunchy impacts followed by something warm and wet being splattered across your arms and legs.
Its suddenly silent except for the drone of the truck engine but eventually you crack open an eye to get a look around, and for the second time that day you almost lose your lunch.
Its straight up something out of a video game, just absolute carnage surrounds you. All of the tall frat bros are out cold in varying stages of fucked up. You do actually start to hurl a little when you see one with his nose completely sideways like a gory Picasso.
And in the center of the carnage is -no fucking way- your fucking fursuit client, calmly wiping his hands of the blood with some baby wipes from his fannypack.
He looks over at you when he sees you're up and for a second there you see something, a slip in the mask, something angry, something violent. You flinch as you realize it, but oh fuck, this guys like.. killed people before. like, for fucken sure.
He walks towards you and you suddenly feel like a very small animal being stalked by a tiger. You try to stumble away but the mask is back on and he just looks down at you and offers you a babywipe.
"You alright?" He asks plainly.
Turns out the guy is "ex-military" and he hurt himself so he's back in the states and bored out of his mind. His daughter is a furry and wanted him to go with her to FurCon and insisted he get a suit as well. You keep on glancing at all the deep scars running up and down his arms and wondering how the hell you didn't see it before.
He's saying something to you but you only snap out of it when a phone is being placed into your hands. You look up and suddenly you're standing outside your apartment building (did you tell him where you lived???)
"This is a secure line, if anything happens to you or you have questions, I'll answer immediately." He says, pale blue eyes drilling into your skull with their intensity.
The tears start bubbling up in your eyes before you can stop them and you just lean forward, bumping your head into his chest and choking out a thank you as you clutch the phone to your chest like an amulet.
As you figured, his body is make out of steel and he stiffens at the contact, unsure of what to do.
He just lets you cry it out for a bit before eventually placing a heavy hand on your shoulder, pulling you off but he keeps the hand gentle.
He's not looking at you this time but he clears his throat and murmurs a quick "Take care" before turning around and disappearing into the night. You unlock your door and collapse into bed.
"What the fuck" you murmur to yourself as you pull out your tablet, and you start to sketch...
ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE
hi here’s a cool bird I betcha didn’t know existed, ✨the wallcreeper✨
it literally looks like a monarch butterfly it’s so cute
the creeperrrrrrrrr
*doom music starts to play* I actually kindof like scheduling these kinds of appointments now...
but seriously Fellas, don't forget to schedule a pap smear every couple of years just in case. If you still have a cervix you can still get cervical cancer. ilu
this has been a psa
I don't know I'm not done talking about it. It's insane that I can't just uninstall Edge or Copilot. That websites require my phone number to sign up. That people share their contacts to find their friends on social media.
I wouldn't use an adblocker if ads were just banners on the side funding a website I enjoy using and want to support. Ads pop up invasively and fill my whole screen, I misclick and get warped away to another page just for trying to read an article or get a recipe.
Every app shouldn't be like every other app. Instagram didn't need reels and a shop. TikTok doesn't need a store. Instagram doesn't need to be connected to Facebook. I don't want my apps to do everything, I want a hub for a specific thing, and I'll go to that place accordingly.
I love discord, but so much information gets lost to it. I don't want to join to view things. I want to lurk on forums. I want to be a user who can log in and join a conversation by replying to a thread, even if that conversation was two days ago. I know discord has threads, it's not the same. I don't want to have to verify my account with a phone number. I understand safety and digital concerns, but I'm concerned about information like that with leaks everywhere, even with password managers.
I shouldn't have to pay subscriptions to use services and get locked out of old versions. My old disk copy of photoshop should work. I should want to upgrade eventually because I like photoshop and supporting the business. Adobe is a whole other can of worms here.
Streaming is so splintered across everything. Shows release so fast. Things don't get physical releases. I can't stream a movie I own digitally to friends because the share-screen blocks it, even though I own two digital copies, even though I own a physical copy.
I have an iPod, and I had to install a third party OS to easily put my music on it without having to tangle with iTunes. Spotify bricked hardware I purchased because they were unwillingly to upkeep it. They don't pay their artists. iTunes isn't even iTunes anymore and Apple struggles to upkeep it.
My TV shows me ads on the home screen. My dad lost access to eBook he purchased because they were digital and got revoked by the company distributing them. Hitman 1-3 only runs online most of the time. Flash died and is staying alive because people love it and made efforts to keep it up.
I have to click "not now" and can't click "no". I don't just get emails, they want to text me to purchase things online too. My windows start search bar searches online, not just my computer. Everything is blindly called an app now. Everything wants me to upload to the cloud. These are good tools! But why am I forced to use them! Why am I not allowed to own or control them?
No more!!!!! I love my iPod with so much storage and FLAC files. I love having all my fics on my harddrive. I love having USBs and backups. I love running scripts to gut suck stuff out of my Windows computer I don't want that spies on me. I love having forums. I love sending letters. I love neocities and webpages and webrings. I will not be scanning QR codes. Please hand me a physical menu. If I didn't need a smartphone for work I'd get a "dumb" phone so fast. I want things to have buttons. I want to use a mouse. I want replaceable batteries. I want the right to repair. I grew up online and I won't forget how it was!
glad this post is resonating with the local populace fr
target audience
it occurs to me that i am also the target audience
I fucking hate game apps. I wanted to play tetris the otherday so I figured there must be a simple tetris app out there its the most basic game. But every app is like heres your daily log in bonus of 10 gold! You get 5 free plays a day. Here's an ad. To replay a level costs 1 diamond. You can eart gold by earning points in levels. 1000 points = 1 gold. You can exchange 550 gold for one diamond but we have a sale right now that they only cost 500 gold. Heres an ad. You can buy a loot crate of diamonds for 5.99$! You leveled up! Heres 1 free diamond. Youve run out of free replays for today, would you like to buy some more diamonds? Heres your daily tasks, make sure to log in every day this month for a free reward chest. its free! Heres an ad. Would you like to sign up for this credit card to recieve 10 free diamonds? Invite a friend and you can earn points! Ding! Youve leveled up. Heres an ad. This is our special bonus play weekend, you get one free replay and a pack of diamonds only costs 4.99$. You can use your gold to purchase new skins for the tetris blocks. This ones shaped like cats! It costs 100 diamonds. You need to collect them all. Free to play, may be some in-app purchases.
I agree with literally everything op is saying and I don't want to detract from their point but this website here, specifically for mobile games (though they intend to eventually branch out to other types) is creating a database that flags those exact types of predatory things. It also flags games as safe, so if you want to look for safe mobile games this is an invaluable resource.
https://www.darkpattern.games/
It also has definitions, explanations, and examples of all the different types of psychological manipulations games pull on the website so if anyone ever tries to give you "just don't spend money, it's easy" you can send them this
Oh thank god, I lost my link to dark pattern some time ago and I thought I would never find it again.
this is a great website for basic arcade games! i'm currently in mahjong hell but they have pacman, frogger, space invaders and a bunch of others!
Play classic Pacman online. No fuss. 100% free.
PLEASE for the love of the universe read anti-colonial science fiction and fantasy written from marginalized perspectives. Y’all (you know who you are) are killing me. To see people praise books about empire written exclusively by white women and then turn around and say you don’t know who Octavia Butler is or that you haven’t read any NK Jemisin or that Babel was too heavy-handed just kills me! I’m not saying you HAVE to enjoy specific books but there is such an obvious pattern here
Some of y’all love marginalized stories but you don’t give a fuck about marginalized creators and characters, and it shows. Like damn
If anyone has any recommendations give them to me please!
Gladly! The pieces on this list aren’t limited to specifically anti-colonial science fiction and fantasy, but they do center related and relevant topics, themes, etc.
Anything by NK Jemisin. She is the best speculative fiction writer of her generation and probably the best speculative fiction writer alive. She is easily one of the best writers working right now, across all genres. That’s not hyperbole. She deserves all the hype.
Anything by Octavia Butler. She needs no introduction. Her short fiction is incredible; “Bloodchild” is one of the pieces that inspired me to write.
An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon. Excellent. Just read it.
The Radiant Emperor duology by Shelley P. Chan. It broke my heart and it'll break yours.
Babel by RF Kuang. You’ve probably already heard of this book because Harper Voyager marketed the shit out of it and was right to do so. It’s very, very good. Kuang writes a compulsively readable story, that’s for sure.
The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo.
So Long Been Dreaming: Post-Colonial Science Fiction and Fantasy (anthology) edited by Nalo Hopkinson.
Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (anthology) edited by Nalo Hopkinson.
Severely underhyped books of assorted speculative genres:
The Blood Trials by NE Davenport. Given the current chokehold romantasy has on the public it’s insane to me that this book hasn’t sold a billion copies.
The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez. It’ll change you.
The Tiger’s Daughter by K. Arsenault Rivera.
The Lesson by Caldwell Turnbull.
Read widely. Read diversely. People of the Caucasian persuasion need to stop getting pissy when the story doesn’t immediately center them and they don’t automatically relate to everything the character says and does and is. Just let yourself get swept in the story—even if it touches on (gasp!) racism—and maybe, just maybe, it’ll reveal something to you.
Or maybe not! Marginalized sff authors do not have to and should not have to educate their readers. But if I see one more white person complain about how Black characters are fundamentally annoying because they complain too much I’m going to fling myself into the sun
Thanks for coming to my ted talk I didn’t want to do it but here I am
Oh! Please read EVERYTHING EVER WRITTEN by P. Djèlí Clark y'all! but start with this book first!
This is the epitome of Black Steampunk. It so refreshing to see science fiction written and just beautifully and authentic displaying of black culture(locations, language, practices, belie, ect) like black culture is extremely relevant and refreshingly written in this story. It even has some thrill of historical/ancestors revenge, along with messages of life and healing in it. It has all kinds of Black diaspora and queer rep in it too!
current fan creation landscape is kinda like if you went to a party with a homemade cake and everyone takes a slice and silently thumbs up at you with no attempt to start a conversation except for occasionally some guy sits in the corner with a tape recorder critiquing the cake as though he was a restaurant critic and another guy is handing the cake to an uber driver like "yeah i need you to find a restaurant that makes cake like this so i can have more of it" and the only person that's talked to you in 30 minutes is a very sweet little guy who was like "hey i liked your cake" and then ran away apologizing for bothering you the moment you said thank you.
someone brought a cake analysis robot to feed the cake into to determine the exact ingredients and supposedly it can spit out the exact same cake. and if you're like dude. what. then they're like well if it bothers you you should have made more cake. i'm hungry and i deserve cake. and you're like dude we're at a party.
Writing hard
But having written good
But at what cost
Writing