#brainpicker

[httydbook-designs]

Brainpicker

[always-amity]

The Brainpicker

(Book Franchise)

Headcanons and Design Details below the cut

Brainpickers have a long, prehensile tongue ending in a sharp, solidified point. They use this to chip away a small hole in a dragon, animal or persons skull to access their brain inside. Depending on the size of whatever they're preying upon, they either insert just their tongue to the hole or, occasionally, crawl fully inside the skull if the host is large enough.

Their saliva, as well as mucus they can excrete from their skin, acts as an incredibly powerful, incredibly fast numbing agent, making the process not just painless, but unnoticeable.

Brainpickers can feed on a single host for years, sometimes several decades if the host happens to be a particularly gargantuan dragon. They don't need to eat a lot or particularly often, meaning it can take a while for them to consume enough of the hosts brain for it to start effecting their behaviour, and longer for the loss of brain tissue to be fatal.

Once a host has died the Brainpicker has approximately 6 months to find a new host before it dies of starvation. As long as they are able to keep finding hosts to feed upon, they are functionally immortal, unable to die of old age.

---

Brainpickers are one of the many book dragons without any art depicting them, and a scant physical description (small, with a 'pick' used to feed on brains through somethings ear).

My initial notes on ideas for them have them being much more butterfly-like, but I abandoned that idea, mainly because a lot of nanodragons are based on butterflies, and I wanted to make these guys unique, and I figured a good way to do that was make them look like weird and unsettling to match with their really unsettling, uncomfortable method of feeding.

[delicatuscii-wasbella102]

PROTEST

To sin by silence, when we should protest, Makes cowards out of men. The human race Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised Against injustice, ignorance, and lust, The inquisition yet would serve the law, And guillotines decide our least disputes. The few who dare, must speak and speak again To right the wrongs of many. Speech, thank God, No vested power in this great day and land Can gag or throttle. Press and voice may cry Loud disapproval of existing ills; May criticise oppression and condemn The lawlessness of wealth-protecting laws That let the children and child bearers toil To purchase ease for idle millionaires.

Therefore I do protest against the boast Of independence in this mighty land. Call no chain strong, which holds one rusted link. Call no land free, that holds one fettered slave. Until the manacled slim wrists of babes Are loosed to toss in childish sport and glee, Until the mother bears no burden, save The precious one beneath her heart, until God’s soil is rescued from the clutch of greed And given back to labour, let no man Call this the land of freedom. This poem is from 1908 and sadly nothing much has changed

[seekingstars]

(brainpicker)

[ginzyblog]

• Dear Peter: Got your letter yesterday. Was so happy to receive it and your sweet sex talk. I have been running around with mad mean poets & world-eaters here & was longing for kind words from heaven which you wrote, came as fresh as a summer breeze & “when I think on thee dear friend / all loses are restored & sorrows end,” came over & over in my mind — it’s the end of a Shakespeare Sonnet — he must have been happy in love too. I had never realized that before. . . . Write me soon baby, I’ll write you big long poem I feel as if you were god that I pray to — Love, Allen  (Paris, February 1958) • Thanks to @brainpicker for pulling this one up on her feed this week. It’s excerpted from the should-be-back-in-print Sweet Heart’s Delight: love Poems and Selected Letters of Allen and Peter, edited by  Winston Leyland, founder of the legendary Gay Sunshine Press. Photo is Allen & Peter San Francisco, 1956, two years before this letter.  #peterorlovsky #allenginsberg #gay #queer #gaysunshinepress #brainpicker #winstonleyland #pridemonth #lgbtq #poetry #poets #poetrycommunity #sanfrancisco #paris (at San Francisco, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/CB6UuT-h3mp/?igshid=g5guke3yyji6

[criticallymisanthropic]

(brainpicker)

[kiranearthling]

(brainpicker)

[fhear]

(brainpicker)