i didn't ask for this

reyna. 18. wanted this blog to be about random stuff. failed and made it about strange magic, trollhunters, and labyrinth

[the-lonely-knight]

Princess finds a bedraggled knight wandering just outside the castle walls with no heraldry and a wilted plume (a common sign of emotional neglect in knights) and begs the queen to let her keep him. The queen warns about the dangers of adopting wild knight errants but the princess promises to take good care of him and make sure to keep him away from their domesticated knights until he’s properly adjusted. Queen finally relents once she sees his rusted kit, broken sword, and the saddest brown eyes known to man. Princess claps her hands excitedly and drags him off to the apothecary to make sure he doesn’t have worms.

[laqueus]

via followthebluebell:

[hcnnibal]

just got back into gardening so i’ve forgotten. are basil leaves supposed to be this big

[hcnnibal]

am i the problem

[mousegirlheart]

op are you a hobbit

[jettkuso]

Real observations since I started wearing a wizard hat daily:

- Brim is so wide that I stay BONE DRY taking walks in the rain

- Brim can be positioned to block the sun from ever getting in my eyes AND keeping it off the back of my neck

- The pointed top part creates an air pocket, keeping my head from getting hot or squishing my hair as it might in a ball cap

- Hat can easily be pulled down over the tips of my ears without looking dumb, protecting them from wind chill

- Strangers say they like my hat, giving me the chance to tell them that I am a wizard

- When you’re wearing a wizard hat, ALL OTHER FASHION CHOICES become secondary, allowing you to branch out with style

Embrace ego death. Stay protected from all elements. Wear a wizard hat.

[valtsv]

been thinking about fantasy/scifi rule systems and free will

[anxious-alien-overlord]

Don’t all creatures deserve love?

[kalikatze]

OP made the post unrebloggable but said it's fine to screenshot and I'm in love with this

[funny-tik-toks]

[smolgroundsloth-deactivated2025]

[passionpeachy]

They should take empty butterfly cocoons and repurpose them as fairy coffins, curl their wings around their bodies so the semi-translucency of the shell makes them just visible enough for the mourners to look at those wing patterns one last time while also giving the visual of the dead fairy being ready to burst into their next life

[blipdripstrip-deactivated202109]

[rhube]

There was a wall here once. The tree remembers, but now the wind blows through roots that once nestled among stones.

[27dragons]

climbing through that gap will DEFINITELY take you somewhere Else

[peachvers]

imagine if the oceans were replaced by forests and if you went into the forest the trees would get taller the deeper you went and there’d be thousands of undiscovered species and you could effectively walk across the ocean but the deeper you went, the darker it would be and the animals would get progressively scarier and more dangerous and instead of whales there’d be giant deer and just wow

[chandrar-nalaar]

you have a beautiful imagination

[iguanamouth]

[galahadwilder]

A sudden, terrifying thought

When you see an animal with its eyes set to the front, like wolves, or humans, that’s usually a predator animal.

If you see an animal with its eyes set farther back, though—to the side—that animal is prey.

Now look at this dragon.

See those eyes?

They’re to the SIDE.

This raises an interesting—and terrifying—question.

What in the name of Lovecraft led evolution to consider DRAGONS…

As PREY?

[dorito-and-pinetree]

I know this isn’t part of my blogs theme but like this is interesting

i know this isn’t part of my blogs theme but like this is interesting

^Haiku^bot^8. I detect haikus with 5-7-5 format. Sometimes I make mistakes. | @image-transcribing-bot @portmanteau-bot | Contact | HAIKU BOT NO | Good bot! | Beep-boop!

@howdidigetinvolved

The eyes-in-the-front thing (usually) only applies to mammals. Crocodiles, arguably the inspiration for dragons, have eyes that look to the sides despite being a predator.

[pyrrhiccomedy]

hey what up I’m about to be That Asshole

This isn’t a mammalian thing. When people talk about ‘eyes on the front’ or ‘eyes on the side,’ they’re really talking about binocular vision vs monocular vision. Binocular vision is more advantageous for predators because it’s what gives you depth perception; i.e, the distance you need to leap, lunge, or swipe to take out the fast-moving thing in front of you. Any animal that can position its eyes in a way that it has overlapping fields of vision has binocular vision. That includes a lot of predatory reptiles, including komodo dragons, monitor lizards, and chameleons.

(The eyes-in-front = predator / eyes-on-sides = prey thing holds true far more regularly for birds than it does for mammals. Consider owls, hawks, and falcons vs parrots, sparrows, and doves.)

But it’s not like binocular vision is inherently “better” than monocular vision. It’s a trade-off: you get better at leap-strike-kill, but your field of vision is commensurately restricted, meaning you see less stuff. Sometimes, the evolutionary benefit of binocular vision just doesn’t outweigh the benefit of seeing the other guy coming. Very few forms of aquatic life have binocular vision unless they have eye stalks, predator or not, because if you live underwater, the threat could be coming from literally any direction, so you want as wide a field of view as you can get. If you see a predator working monocular vision, it’s a pretty safe assumption that there is something else out there dangerous enough that their survival is aided more by knowing where it is than reliably getting food inside their mouths.

For example, if you are a crocodile, there is a decent chance that a hippo will cruise up your shit and bite you in half. I’d say that makes monocular vision worthwhile.

Which brings us back to OP’s point. Why would dragon evolution favor field of view over depth perception?

A lot of the stories I’ve read painted the biggest threats to dragons (until knights with little shiny sticks came along) as other dragons. Dragons fight each other, dragons have wars. And like fish, a dragon would need to worry about another dragon coming in from any angle. That’s a major point in favor of monocular vision. Moreover, you don’t need depth perception in order to hunt if you can breathe fucking fire. A flamethrower is not a precision weapon. If you can torch everything in front of you, who cares if your prey is 5 feet away or 20? Burn it all and sift among the rubble for meat once everything stops moving.

Really, why would dragons have eyes on the front of their heads? Seems like they’ve got the right idea to me.

[spookcataloger]

Worthwhile cryptozoological discourse

[the-nekoromancer]

Ok but like dragons eyes are clearly capable of front veiwing (in many cases) it’s just due to their headshapes it makes it look like the eyes are sideways when veiwed from the side but they generally have angular heads but just search up front veiws of dragon heads and you can see their eyes clearly.

And judging by the fact they usually tend to look directly at someone when talking to them rather than turning their head sideways they clearly see head on.

Compare that to the eyes of a cow or even a monitor lizard which you generally can see much less of the eye

Heck if you put a hawks head sideways enough it will look like its eyes are off to the side

But if you look from the front youll see the eyes are foward

Therfor dragons do infact have capability to see to the front its just their headshapes are weird and makes it seem like the eyes are side veiwing when veiwed from the side

[sinistercakes]

Just to add to what @the-nekoromancer said, let’s take a quick look at the ancestor of birds, and arguably one of the inspirations for dragons: dinosaurs.

The Tyrannosaurus Rex is probably the most famous dinosaur. It was a gigantic killing machine. In Jurassic Park, when confronted with queen of the dinosaurs Rexy, Dr Grant tells the girl not to move, because the T Rex can’t see you if you don’t move. This is absolutely false and palaeontologists unanimously agree that Dr Grant and the children would’ve been Rexy’s dinner. Much tastier than goat.

The T Rex had acute vision. T Rex eyes faced forward like a hawk’s and were spread farther apart on its face than most other dinosaurs’ eyes, giving it superior depth perception during a hunt. It also had some of the largest eyes of any land animal, about the size of oranges.

Let’s take a look at Rexy. In profile, her eyes appear on the side of her head:

But when you view her head on, it’s pretty clear her eyes are facing forward, and she can see you:

Here’s some pictures more clearly demonstrating the forward-facing eyes:

And some unsettling photos from a case study by Prof. Kent A. Stevens from Oregon university:

The study, which looks at binocular vision in theropod dinosaurs, can be read here. It might give some idea on the vision of dragons.

In conclusion, like hawks and some other birds of prey, a Tyrannosaurus Rex had forward-facing eyes, but due to their angular head shape, their eyes appeared to be on the side of their head when viewed sideways-on. As theropod dinosaurs were possibly one of the inspirations for dragons and are a real animal that most closely resembles the typical model of a dragon, it can be safely assumed that dragons would have similar eyesight to that of a theropod dinosaur.

I think we can say that not only would a dragon share the acute binocular vision of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, but it would like have a similar keen sense of smell and excellent hearing, meaning there’s no hiding from a dragon.

Peek-a-boo!

[galahadwilder]

One the one hand, reblogging this for excellent taxonomical analysis.

On the other hand, reblogging for the GOOGLY EYE T REX SKULL

[presidentstarscream]

I love how some people in the coments are like its because theyre not mamals

[silvercaptain24]

@here4dragons

[ellohcee]

The idea of dragons in modern times is so fun because imagine a hot summer day on your vacay and go to use the hotel pool and staff is like "valued guests we regret to inform you that the pool area is out of service at the moment, we apologize for the inconvenience"

And people like "wtf why" looking out their hotel room window and there's this. This dragon just curled up in the pool chilling, literally, cooling itself down

Some of the staff are trying to gently shoo him away and the dragon does a soft little "rrrrrr" like a grumpy cat and a warning puff of smoke and they're like "fuck it i don't get paid nearly enough for this" and no ones using the pool today sorry!

[ellohcee]

[kawuli]

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[thecollectibles]

[a-frog-in-a-bog]

“I want to decompose in a bog” well you clearly don’t know the first thing about bogs. Clout chaser

[thebigbiwolf]

Huge fan of the phrase "get pickled, idiot"

[headspace-hotel]

"I want to surrender to the moss" bro the moss is not decomposing you it is just hanging out. you're buddies

[glumshoe]

The Fair Folk: “I can’t believe this. Twenty years I’ve cleaned your house and you DARE to try to REPAY me with GIFTS. This is such an insult. Fuck you, you insolent humans. I’m leaving here and never returning because you have insulted me so deeply.”

Also the Fair Folk: “Remember that one time you pulled a thorn out of a cat’s foot? That was me. To show my gratitude, here is a house made of solid gold, a life-debt, my daughter’s hand in marriage, and a promise that all your children will be gorgeous and successful at all that they do. I can also throw in a blow job if you want. I hope this is enough. I don’t want to seem ungrateful.”

[pallidprincess]

ship are you making a callout post for faeries

[elvensemi]

#now to be fair #i have always interpreted this dichotomy as#you can leave them gifts #but not as repayment#because otherwise you’re just paying them to clean your house#and so the insult is to imply that they are servants performing labor for compensation#when in reality they are Magnanimous Bros#totally just cleaning your nasty house out of the goodness of their good good hearts#and if you want to also be a bro #and give them some uncurdled milk and honey#that’s cool because that’s what bros do#but if you’re like ‘here’s some food for cleaning my house’ it’s like #EXCUSE ME#ARE YOU IMPLYING THAT YOU’RE ONLY GIVING ME THIS BECAUSE I DID SOMETHING FOR YOU#WHAT KIND OF FRIEND ARE YOU#FUCK OFF WITH THAT THEN I THOUGHT WE WERE BROS

[theworldsactuallynotthatsmall-d]

This is the quality content I look for on my dash

[dad-nixilis]

The only bro code worth following.

[writing-prompt-s]

“The stone corrupts all those who wield it, it is fueled by their ambitions and dreams. So we need someone with no ambitions, no dreams, someone who doesn’t care about what the future holds for themselves. That’s why we found you.”

[shady-tavern]

The first thought, in a moment like this, probably should not have been what came to your mind. Well, fuck you too, you thought, half incredulous and half apathetic. You leaned against the doorframe with one shoulder and eyed the group of three wizened people before you. Why was it always the elderly who came with big quests or brought important items that had to be hidden away?

Also, if you didn’t care about the future, didn’t that mean you didn’t care about the stone either? You might as well give it to someone else. Maybe someone better suited than you. There was this little girl across the street who had an acorn necklace and played in puddles and always sat very still until the every last stray cat felt safe enough to eat what she brought them. Maybe the stone should go to her, she at least gave a shit.

You debated arguing or refusing, but your disinterest won out in the end. “Sure,” you answered, holding out a hand for them to plop the stone into. You weren’t scared of it, especially since it looked utterly unremarkable. If you tossed it into a river, no one would be able to tell it apart from the other rocks.

The three wizened elders, apparently the smartest of their magic circle, exchanged grave looks and you waited until they were done with their silent communication and their leader stepped forward.

“We entrust you with the Stone of Possibility, never use it and always hide it,” they said, voice solemn and carrying the sort of undertone that spoke of great importance. You blinked slowly. “Give it to no one, no matter how noble their hearts, how pitiful their tale or how silver their tongue.” You couldn’t help but imagine a genderless person sticking out their tongue dripping with mercury.

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