Four straight shots of espresso, please.

Hey! My name is Megan. I'm a twenty-nine year old print production operator and illustrator from New Zealand, living in Canada. Most of my reblogs are just about my gay fandom interests. Maybe I'll post art again.

[commandersheena]

In one of my film classes last semester we had to tell a story in 3 pictures for a mini assignment so my friend and I did this

[drizzit]

Happy 10 year anniversary to this post!

[benmce-art]

Shower

[kragehund-est]

sex isn't sexy unless it's a little bit gross. have you forgotten that you are a divine ape? plastic smooth skin, plucked hair, painted faces, scripted reactions, scrubbed til only the smell of perfumed soap remains, proportions that are conflictingly cookiecutter yet unattainable, none of this is even a little bit interesting.

you can laugh at napoleon's "home in three days, don't bathe" letter to his wife, but there's more sexuality in that one line then there is in the entirety of the hypersexualized but painfully unsexy internet.

[the-ghost-of-jetstream-tormod]

What are your thoughts on musk?

[kragehund-est]

i hope he dies

[itsapmseymour]

They got new photos of the moon,

I knew she had colors hiding in there 🥹

[wizardimpersonator]

Correction to the link sourced by OP! The Artemis II team did not take these photographs. These were shot by a Ukrainian student named Ildar Ibatullin sometime in the last year or so. Furthermore, the Moon does not have these actual colors in reality; Ildar does a lot of post processing and compositing to saturate the colors in order to artistically represent the mineral composition of the lunar surface.

If you would like to see photos taken by the astronauts aboard Artemis II (and more!), here is the repository that NASA is keeping.

[ouiouhie]

intruder 👁️

[grendel-menz]

My round two entry for an oc tournament -- featuring my character Eyvor and @arkatrine's Janvier.

round one here.

[gandalfsbignaturals]

learning to notice an absence of people of color is crazy. you start seeing it everywhere. ill see a random pic of characters or people or whatever and be like "these are all white people. why"

[gandalfsbignaturals]

all the babies in those baby youtube video memes. humanized character posts. like. its the little innocent shit. and like, the people making those baby memes probably arent seeking out white babies. maybe theyre just easier to find. but why are they easier to find? a complicated question, surely... but you know what it probably comes down to. someone, somewhere, maybe a lot of someones in a lot of places, made a choice. maybe knowingly, maybe not. but they made a choice. it starts to make you feel like a conspiracy theorist!!

[sycamorality]

hi guys! discord is doing a survey on how people would like ai to be integrated into discord. take it and say fuck no to every question. when you get to "in general, how do you feel about discord inegrating ai features?", respond that you would actively get everyone you know off of discord and wouldn't pay for nitro or other shop items if they added ai features.

[modmad]

watch out for the trap! there's ONE QUESTION where the last option *isn't* the max 'no AI' option, read each part carefully to be sure

[prokopetz]

"I can never get it tasting like my mom used to make" yeah, because your mom had a giant Costco-size bottle of a specific pre-mixed spice blend that was discontinued by its manufacturer in 1998 and spent your entire childhood putting it in every meal to use the stupid thing up faster – she doesn't know how to replicate it any more than you do.

[prokopetz]

The tragedy of culinary nostalgia is that most of the time, the flavours of your childhood aren't memories of lost secret recipes – they're the irreplicable accidents of folks tossing whatever happened to be cheap and available into the pot, and there are no recipes to recover because the people doing the cooking never knew them.

[batbetbitbotbut]

I am reminded of this reddit post and update, from a person seeking to recreate a dish their mum used to make based on not much more than "chicken, peaches, and it was beige".

I am a pretty competent cook, so don't worry about that bit. I just want to know if this dish sounds familiar, so someone can fill me in on the parts I don't remember. It's a chicken dish made with flat chicken cutlets. I think she used to hammer them a bit with a kitchen mallet, dredge them in flour, and pan fry them in a little butter so they would brown nicely. The sauce is the part I am a little lost about. She used white wine (probably chardonnay) and sour cream, that part I am sure of. There were canned peaches too, which were slightly browned and served on top. I'm sure there was something more to it than that, any thoughts? The flavor was tangy, not particularly sweet except for the peaches, and the sauce was opaque and kind of a beige color. Does this sound like a dish you are aware of? While her food was great, her dishes were usually pretty simple. It is likely that this is not something she invented herself, but it might be something that she simplified. Does anyone know what this is or what it is called so I can look it up and try and get it right? She used to serve it with grilled zucchini brushed with garlic butter. Thank you. Edit -- I am blown away with how helpful and kind you all have been. I have taken little hints from each of your posts and a lot of them have jogged my memory. I think some sort of composite from these suggestions will produce something close. I am going to try to make it when I have the chance, and I will update when I do. Thank you, reddit. <3

Update 6 days later:

My mom passed away a few years ago. I needed help trying to recreate a chicken recipe of hers that I have been craving, because I could only remember a few ingredients. You amazing people of r/recipes came through and gave me so many wonderful suggestions. With a mix of all your advice, I made it tonight. I was nervous as I was putting it together. I felt like there had to be something more to it, but I went with using just the ingredients I knew (as suggested by Ethril). I felt like there was something I was forgetting. Something about brown specks in the sauce. I went with it anyway, and figured I would know what to add at the end by taste. I took chicken cutlets and hammered them flat. Dredged in flour and sauteed in butter (high heat). I burned the butter a little. I remembered my mom saying that butter is the one thing that is ok to burn (as long as it is not smoking furiously) so I left it alone, and smiled at the memory. I was pleased to see the chicken brown to the color I remember. When I flipped the chicken I added the zucchini spears and browned those too. When the chicken was done (just a couple minutes) I set it aside and covered it in tinfoil to keep it warm, then turned the zucchini and browned the peaches in the same pan. It only took a few minutes to brown everything and when the zucchini and peaches were done I put them aside with the chicken. I deglazed the empty pan with chardonnay. My mom wasn't a big wine person, so I went with the cheapest they had. I suddenly remembered that sound the wine would make when it hit the hot pan, a huge hiss. Mom used to tell me to step back before she poured it in, because it would splash a little. I felt like I was nine years old again. I added three big dollops of sour cream and dissolved it in the hot wine. I didn't know what I was going to do next, this was all I had planned. Then I saw the little brown flecks come up. It was that burned butter! I just about cried. I tasted it, and suddenly in my mind I was standing in her kitchen as a kid watching her cook. This was it. It was that simple. I added a couple spoonfuls of the liquid from the canned peaches to take away a little of the wine's tartness, and the sauce was perfect. Just like she used to make. Keep in mind that I am no food stylist, but I assure you that this tasted 10x better than it looks: http://i.imgur.com/Qgk6u.jpg The whole thing took less than 20 minutes to make. And I fucking nailed it. Thank you so, so much reddit! You brought me back, and I love you. The smell is still lingering in the house.

[dungeonofthedragon]

You might have heard about the recent puberty blocker ban in Aotearoa New Zealand. It's a cruel move against some of our most vulnerable rangatahi. Fortunately, The Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa is taking legal action to try and reverse the ban before too much harm can be done.

A few ttrpg designers from Aotearoa have put together this bundle to support PATHA. $19.99 NZD gets you supplements for D&D, Pathfinder, MOTW and Stewpot, as well as a collection of stand alone games. All for a really important cause!

Rpgs not your thing? Don't have twenty bucks spare? You can also donate directly to PATHA here.

Reblogs are greatly appreciated to help get more eyes on this! We're grateful for help in whatever form it takes. <3

[two-wizards-in-a-trench-coat]

yeah no man it's cool that you don't like the female character for having an insufficient development. yeah even if you adore that male character that appeared in two frames of the show. yeah. yeah. yeah. cool. cool.

[two-wizards-in-a-trench-coat]

no you're also very much right. let's get this on the post

[loudlyunladylike]

The Dyke Project manifesto printed on the back of estradiol and testogel boxes

[pinketine]

The way tumblr users talk about racism makes it really obvious they learned about it from Harry Potter's muggle born wizards plotlind

[pinketine]

This is to say, they take the same attitude JKR does: racism is wrong because it's factually incorrect on a pedantic level and not because it inherently places a certain group of people as inferior, a wrong belief to have no matter what.

For example, in the third Harry Potter, Hermoine gets called a slur by Draco. She goes to Hagrid, upset, and instead of saying Draco's wrong because he's bigoted and hateful, Hagrid starts talking pedantically. Not all muggle borns are inferior because Hermoine is academically gifted, and Neville, a pureblood, isn't. So therefore, racism is wrong! 👍🏾. Of course the implication is that if Hermoine wasn't good at school she'd deserve it..? And that's how tumblr users speak about racism.

My real world example is how some tumblr users tried to defend rap music by saying, not all of it is about drugs, sex and violence, so therefore it shouldn't be dismissed. But, what about the rap music that is about those things? Does that deserve to be belittled and mocked?

[pinketine]

Astute observation as always. It's the subconscious belief that everything white is naturally superior because white people made it. While black art is naturally uncomfortable/hard to emphasise with because not only is it not white, it's black, and there's always an underlying sense of percieved aggression attached to blackness. For it to be liked, white people often project their own whiteness onto it (see things like how fandom treated Miles Morales after the Spiderverse movies). And when something, like rap music, does have an aggressive element to it, white people use that as an excuse to express discomfort while listening to heavy metal because white anger is the status quo and black anger is always a threat.

[pinketine]

I didn't go far enough in describing the whitewashing as I'd like so here's my elaboration: fandom will often ignore a black character's aspects to their black culture and give them interests more aligned with white people (example: the fandom surrounding Tyler, the Creator's alter egos, where some of them lose their swag era fashion and get replaced with notoriously anti-black movements like (modern) scenemo), remove any "rough" edges to the black character to act "soft", tiktok softboi style (example: the woobification of Miles Morales), turning it into a big joke to laugh at and then call cringe (examples: Drake vs Kendrick rap beef, "brainrot" words that are just AAVE) or even just straight up ignoring the black context to music to fit their own white experiences (example: 'Wavy' by SZA being used by white girls to complain about not being blonde, the 'Black Barbies' by Nicki Minaj trend on tiktok being hijacked by insecure white girls, and ad nauseam).

This all just ties back into seeing black art as inferior and "fixing" what black art they deem just about good enough to be more white and ie more acceptable

[hacvek]

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

[olyia-stories]

@dragonpyre any chance you could elaborate on this

[dragonpyre]

I grew up learning about land formations. Seeing fictional maps that don’t follow the logic and science of them makes me upset

[serinos-kitt]

What are the most common sins you’ve seen relating to this? I wanna know

[dragonpyre]

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!!!!!!!!

[serinos-kitt]

So what is a rain shadow?

[lethalbutterfly]

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.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Oh yeah nothing is more annoying than fantasy maps that can't get mountains, rivers and rain shadows right.

[mindfulwrath]

May I recommend my new favorite tool: Mapgen4. You start with a random seed and then add mountains, valleys, shallow water, or oceans as you like. You can adjust the wind direction to make wind shadows off the mountains fall where you want. You can adjust overall raininess to make the rivers larger or smaller, or have more or fewer tributaries. It works best for small, isolated landmasses (think islands more than continents) but as there’s no scale bar and it’s all slightly abstracted anyway you can do whatever you want with it. I’ve only just started playing with it but it’s SO FUN.

[jeanjauthor]

I do think this could be useful for writers! ...Caveat, if you're going to use this for making a map for anything published (digital or paper, even if it's only in a fanfic archive or whatever), please, please credit the creator and their program as how you made that map! The more ways information like this gets out there, the more useful it'll be to other writers, roleplaying game DMs/GMs, creators, etc.

[oh-opossum]

One of my favourites for mapping plates, biomes, etc is Tectonics.js. If you're familiar with how tectonics shape a planet, you can guess where the features go by toggling plates, crust thickness, etc. Between Mapgen4 and Tectonics.js, we've got some pretty sweet tools at our disposal.

[brehaaorgana]

More stuff!:

European Geosciences Union Blog — Beyond Tectonics: Building fictional worlds to better understand our own

Reshaping Reality's Worldbuilding Tips

Worldbuilding pasta's series, An Apple Pie from Scratch also check their resources page!

R/worldbuilding's Reading List. Also check out their collected resources link. This basic geology guide from 11 years ago is still nice.

Creating an Earth-Like Planet, and The Climate Cookbook (aka Geoff's Climate Cookbook) technically the climate cookbook is a part of Creating an Earth like Planet I think.

Related: Worldbuilding Workshop's "Working Out Climates Using Geoff’s Climate Cookbook." Which goes through using the resource in order to map make. Also just the Worldbuilding Workshop in General.

Madeline James Writes's Worldbuilding Guide

Worldbuilding 101 (this links to the Biomes section but there's like...everything.)

Also I would recommend looking into Landscape Archaeology as well! That's because Landscape archeology is basically adding the social/cultural layer on top of all that geology and geography. Environments change when communities live in them, and communities likewise adapt to various environments.

This is a short free introduction to the concept: "Notes on Landscape Archaeology." To summarize, Landscape archaeology sort of like...studies the relation of people to places/spaces (that is, landscapes) in time.

Also this paper [An Archeology of Landscapes] breaks down/introduces the key concepts that I learned which is first that you can form the "construct paradigm" of a landscape from settlement ecology, ritual landscapes, and ethnic landscapes.

And then the highlights of their summary of what constitutes defining a landscape:

Landscapes are not synonymous with natural environments. Landscapes are synthetic (Jackson, 1984, p. 156), with cultural systems structuring and organizing peoples’ interactions with their natural environments ...

Landscapes are worlds of cultural product ... Through their daily activities, beliefs, and values, communities transform physical spaces into meaningful places. ...

Landscapes are the arena for all of a community’s activities. Thus landscapes not only are constructs of human populations but they also are the milieu in which those populations survive and sustain themselves. A landscape’s domain involves patterning in both within-place and between-place contexts ...

Landscapes are dynamic constructions, with each community and each generation imposing its own cognitive map on an anthropogenic world of interconnected morphology, arrangement, and coherent meaning ...

Basically a "landscape" is made by a community living in an environment. Once you have a geological environment that makes sense, landscape archaeology is like... Basically how I feel confident knowing where trade routes would be on a map, where there are areas of continual high conflict, what kinds of agriculture exists where, etc. once the geological stuff is hammered out, it's like...I know how that would influence the local cultures and vice versa. At that point, it's easy to start marking the natural borders, settlements, trade/port cities, and even strategic fortresses. If you have properly put rivers on a map, then marking your port cities is effortless, basically.

Also:

This course syllabus for a Landscape Archaeology class is freely accessible. It includes an online resources page.

Place, Landscape, and Environment: Anthropological Archaeology in 2009

(Landscape Biographies is open access, as is Landscape Archaeology between Art and Science: From a Multi- to an Interdisciplinary Approach. But I wouldn't try to read every essay.)

[dedicatedfollower467]

If you are like me and find it helpful to have video reference for a process/activity in addition to a written guide, Artifexian is a YouTube channel that does a LOT of world building stuff and specifically he's in the process of creating a world following a lot of Worldbuilding Pasta's methodology!

[mysteryteacup]

Regarding Mordor: the being upset with the shape of it is pretty much what Tolkien wanted. Because an evil wizard literally made it that way in defiance of the rules of nature. It's supposed to be wrong and upsetting. That's the point of it being that unnatural shape. It's the will of the person being forced upon the land. Same vibe as big-ass mining pits that ruin the local ecosystem. Nature's not supposed to look like that, and nature did not make it.

Mordor's mountains are man/maiar made damage.

So, fantasy writers, go ahead an make scientifically impossble things (that's why you're fantasy writers, not sci-fi writers) but have a justification for why the unnatural thing exists.

And by justification I mean: a reason that ties into your themes of your work (you do have themes, right? you're not doing a D&D GOT bullshit "themes are for 8th grade english" failure to understand how writing works, right?) not just slapping a wizard did it down on things to make them look cool.

[pallettown]

genuinely so scary that you can't access the page on the ssc website that guides you through changing your sex designation. so so fucking scary. they are already making our lives harder. they are already taking what little resources we have.

[pallettown]

update on this, if people want to reblog this to spread information to any trans person who is getting their gender marker changed with social security after the executive order:

today i went and was able to change my gender marker along with my name with social security. even though the page that guides you has been taken down you are STILL ABLE to do so. here is a link to the way back machine for the page and here is a link to the form you will need and here is another source that can help you prepare for federal crackdowns

don't be deterred by the removal of the page. there is still time, but possibly not a lot of it. if you can do this fast, do it.

it's worth noting that it's FREE to change your gender marker with social security. when you change your gender marker with social security, what you change it to does NOT have to match your other current IDs.

double check your state policies, and what you will personally need, but the overall message of this post is that there is STILL TIME despite the executive order. don't give up hope.

[theonlyadawong]

"he's like a woman to me!!!" not true because if he was a woman to you you wouldn't give a fuck about him

[gvalesdraws]

bird in cage