(not so) secretly a total geek

Hi folks, I'm the Sylversmyth! ‘90s baby, aro/ace-spec, she/they NB/agender. I'm an artist and a metalsmith/jeweler. I draw some too (and very occasionally post it). I love reading but don’t do it enough (unless you count fanfic). Since I work with my hands I am CONSTANTLY listening to podcasts and audiobooks. I'm a big fan of way too many things, so you can expect basically zero consistency on this blog!

[adultlikers]

[porksweats]

e me a mail

[fortooate]

make the attachment a pic of a snail

[jumpingjacktrash]

give me two gifs

of critters in clover

[nuclearcarrots]

then photoshop them on the CLIIIIIIIFFS OF DOVER

[laurasinele]

I still reference this post today. And yes, when I say I reference it I mean I sing it.

[ueeyasu]

twin high maintenance machines

[ashenmind]

good lord this thing is useless

[fishmech]

idk what yall are mad about the new Lies Your Older Cousin Tells You machine is working great

[dragongirltongue]

Happy horse on mars day

[middleland]

Screech Owlets by Tom Bognar

Via Flickr:

This year's nesting pair were a bit hard to photograph. I lucked out. I found that on a windy day the branches moved enough for me to get a few clear shots.     

[beescream]

because grace learns eridian from rocky do you think he speaks to people on erid with his little piano/organ/instrument setup and theyre like lol wow. you've got a REALLY strong accent. and grace is like well im an alien, thats to be expected, right? and theyre like no that's not what we mean. it's just... you sound just like rocky :,) it's very cute actually

of course grace is delighted! but it'd be very funny if rocky had just. a massively specific regional accent. and now grace has it too. all the eridians from that area are like OMG THE ALIEN IS ONE OF US - we're adopting it. that's an honorary member of the clan. listen to it. it might as well have grown up here.

...actually i'm gonna do it. fuck it. rocky is space scottish. to me. he's mine now, i'm taking him out to look at the kelpies and the falkirk wheel and climb up ben ledi. he can go fishing in a loch. and now grace's eridian accent is their equivalent of scots. he says stuff to adrian's family (posh motherfuckers) and theyre like 'i think it's trying to communicate with us..?' meanwhile adrian, well used to rocky's accent by now, is like 'it's giving you a compliment. be nice to my spouse's alien, please.'

(adrian is like the dad who doesn't want a cat. theyre like this is my spouse rocky and rocky's... alien friend.. and then like two months later rocky comes in and adrian is letting grace sleep on top of them. he was cold, I couldn't just let him shiver, and rockys like no no beloved you're so right, and secretly rubbing his claws together like yesss just let it happen, grace will win all of erid over at this rate..)

[yasfera2-deactivated20220905]

[mortimermcmirestinks]

every fucking time I see this I miss the "7 month old" part, then when I see the image I fucking lose it. god fucking dammit

[browsethestacks]

Kermies

Art by Alex Plante

[jorolle]

"And it seems like it's worth your time, right? And, by the way, there's actually- the superpower inside of feeling alien is admitting that you might be an alien."

Into the Mud Podcast Ep. 81: The Superpower of Feeling Alien with Project Hail Mary's James Ortiz - What James Ortiz would say to people who feel foreign and alien

[werewolf-transgenderism]

this is fucking killing me bro. computah, show me more hot hockey firefighters whaling on cops

[uovoc]

Adrian POV being like. A classic alien horror movie. Your spouse returns home after being left for dead for decades in space. But wait, he's brought back an alien! Alien claims that everyone else on the ship just happened to die from other, unrelated reasons. Slowly it becomes clear that your spouse is, like, unhealthily obsessed with this creature. Maybe psychosexually obsessed. He can't sleep without it. He even — gasp — eats with it. Adrian braces themself because ok, clearly they're dealing with some kind of brain-stealing parasite that's trying to subsume Rocky into its weird hivemind or whatever before consuming him alive. There's no way around it. They're going to have to kill this thing. So they go up to the ship prepared to fight to the death. And then they meet Grace

[lierdumoa]

Nothing fills me with disgust like people who suggest singing “[alternate lyrics] to the tune of [x]” with a syllable count does not even remotely work with the tune in question.

[neverniko101]

who up perceiving and reacting to stimulus

[neverniko101]

That is. a great username. The first thing I saw upon opening tumblr. Thank you.

[i-welded-ur-genitals-shut]

Woah. They weren’t kidding organisms will perceive and react to stimulus.

[alienthegreenalien]

fascinating that when you tell people "you have to learn the rules to break them" when talking about drawing/painting etc everyone nods and agrees but the second you say "you have to read books if you want to write better" there's a horde of contrarians begging to be the wrongest people ever all of a sudden

[alienthegreenalien]

if one more person in the notes of this post says "omg op has clearly never talked to a beginner artist!!" as if im not a literal professional artist and was making a broad point........ this time im really gonna do it

[rjalker]

and reading only fanfiction does not count as reading books to get better at writing. Fanfiction, where everyone reading it already knows who the characters are and what their relationships are and what the setting is and all that crap, is not the same thing as reading an original self-contained story.

If you only read fanfiction, you will not be able to write original stories well.

Reading books does not have to be expensive. It can be completely free. Project Gutenberg exists. So does the Internet Archive's lending library.

Fanfiction works in ways that original fiction doesn't. You can't write original fiction like it's fanfiction if you want your story to actually be well written and interesting.

[fixyourwritinghabits]

I think it's important to point out why fanfiction is different - so much context and interest hooks depend on you already being interested in the source. You are familiar with these characters and therefore don't need to have the basics built into the story. With original work, you need all that underlying character development to be in the story you're writing to make us want to read it. You could 'cheat' and give us a modern Sherlock Holmes - but we still need your version explored in narrative to actually care about it. Dr. House is more than just Sherlock Holmes in a hospital, he has his own issues and foils and quirks. The Holmes from the TV show Sherlock and Elementary are vastly different takes on the same character. You need to read original fiction in order to learn how to do that in your own original fiction. Fanfic is great, but it intentional has gaps that make it a different form.

[breadandm]

somebody posted this Calvin and Hobbes strip and i cannot overstate just how topical this fuckin thing is

[linecoveredinjellyfish]

i am some sort of fey creature and my cat is the human who i have arbitrarily decided is my favorite human.

[linecoveredinjellyfish]

i live, to him, an unfathomably long life

i have access to powers and locations that he cannot access independently; he needs my help to navigate the world i've brought him to

i simply found him outside and abducted him one day

there are many cats in the world, but this one is the best and my most favorite. why? because he was available to abduct that morning and for very little other reason.

i have a much greater understanding of this world than him, but he has unshakable confidence in his ability to figure it out and i find that really cute

the power dynamic is fundamentally unbalanced, but i let him have a little audacity. a little combativeness and sass. as a treat.

some humans are needlessly cruel to cats or take them in for a short time before neglecting or abandoning them. but i have chosen to love and guard this one with my life. because i think he's neat.

he is very well-treated and has pretty much everything he could possibly want or need, but he is my prisoner.

[emziess]

Rocky + Details Project Hail Mary (2026) dir. Phil Lord, Chris Miller

[pussyronin-deactivated20260120]

tomorrow i will ride an elephant sized isopod into a crowded public area and we will all find out what happens next together

[oniongarlic]