X days with them

This is my side blog to help me concentrate and stop procrastinating. It's an exercise for my mind, and to register my progress as a writer and artist. I started this blog 24/04/2016 (04/24/2016 por english people). I was doing the plot for a comic, but I changed my mind. Now, I'm doing another thing with this blog. It’s very likely no one will read this, but I tend to use man for everyone regardless. Of course I’ll stop if asked for a person.

[lazysmirk]

Just in case you forget this exists.

It exists.

[dragonofdarknesschaos]

With those “when you want to design a character but you don’t know color theory” posts flying around I thought this would be relevant again.

[secretsivekept]

SLAMs THE REBLOG BUTTON

[niyarest]

there’s also Coolors website that gives you randomized palettes!

[tf2humbug]

Don’t forget ColourLovers, either! It’s a social media-esque site where you can browse tons of palettes and share your own.

You can browse the most popular ones or search for certain colors, themes, and even specific hex codes!

When you find one you like, you can download a wallpaper swatch of it and also select the specific colors it uses to look at more palettes that use those same ones.

ColourLovers is my go-to for when I’m having trouble coming up with a color scheme! It’s also been around for over a decade, so there’s plenty to browse through.

[princesscolumbia]

I do love me a good color palet.

[princeanxious]

Aaa yes these websites are gr8 💛💛💛

[pyrettafoley]

Hey

[nanowrimo]

30 Covers, 30 Days 2021: Day 13

Are you ready for Day 13? We present the Thriller novel, Two Truths and a Lie by our YWP participant Cody Emerson? This haunting cover is designed by Kelley Malone Kempel. 

Two Truths and a Lie

Echo doesn’t remember the night her best friend died. Was murdered, to be more specific. The doctors say selective amnesia, but Echo wants to remember. Nobody believes her. They’re scared. But when the police close the case based on a lack of evidence, Echo decides to take matters into her own hands.

*****

My name is Echo Everett Delacroix.

I am seventeen years old.

I live in Toronto, Ontario.

I can’t remember the night my best friend died.

One of these statements is a lie.

I won’t tell you which one.

About the Artist

Kelley Malone Kempel is a graphic designer and creative director living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She specializes in brand identity and packaging design. After 18 years of working in-house at national retailers Kohl’s and Dick’s Sporting Goods, it was time for a shift. In 2020 Kelley started Hidden Path Creative to work with trailblazers creating new brands and products. When she’s off the clock, you can find Kelley cozied up with some chick lit or the latest thriller. 

[myebi]

'til we meet again

[bad-comic-art]

submitted by @plasticmantalk​

[wrecktheshipp]

Ngl, if it wasn’t for the waist proportions, it’s surprisingly a nice piece.

[sosuperawesome]

Carbickova Crowns on Etsy

[teathattast]

[tunashei]

I love desire paths. There's something so wonderous about seeing an echo of humanity. Depending on it's location, a desire path can mean so many different things.

In a city, like the pic above, they represent rebellion, and efficiency. The messiness of humanity. We like to imagine we're oh so logical and neat so we design our cities to be logical and neat an then real humans literally trample on that idea. The ego required to think you can design something perfect that checks every box. Life is all about compromise and patching stuff when some new problem arises. Though people have certainly tried! Ohio state univeristy let students carve their desire paths, and then paved them over. It looks pretty artsy.

Some people will try to discourage desire paths, but this is almost always going to fail.

Eventually, people just have to accept them. Humans are too dang stubborn.

Certain desire paths are just adorable. A 0.5 second time saver. You just can't design for maximum efficiency, humans will always find shortcuts!

Though on occasion a desire path can actually be the least efficient way...especially if you're superstitious.

In a wilder area, such as below, they show us the curiosity of humans. A desire path somewhere natural often tells you there's something interesting just ahead. (Though remember some ecosystems are fragile and will suffer if trampled! Stick to paths in these sorts of areas)

And how about desire stairs? I always think these look so cool. We get see humans determination to climb, to traverse every kind of terrain.

And for something really crazy...a desire path used for centuries will create a 'holloway'

All of these pics are off the Desirepath subreddit, check them out for more examples! And many thanks to the users who submitted these photos.

[bcfruitpals]

dont tag as kin or fem

[prophecydungeon]

that’s not………. how child speech works…………………………………………..

[prophecydungeon]

god okay in an attempt to be less of an asshole, here’s how child speech DOES work (or tend to work, at least)

kids tend to hypercorrect — this means that they tend to say things like “sleeped” instead of “slept,” “writed” instead of “wrote,” “goed” instead of “went,” etc

kids tend not to make errors such as omitting verbs (“i hungry”)

kids also tend not to make errors in the i/me, she/her department (“me am hungry”)

simplification of difficult sounds — consonant clusters especially, so things like st, sp, ps, etc., as well as f, v, th-sounds, ch-sounds, etc.

“babbling”-type utterances (“apwen” for “airplane,” using one babbly word for multiple objects, things like that) generally occur in children under the age of three and a half

say it with me: an eight-year-old child is not going to be saying “me hungwy”

do not confuse child speech with stereotypical learner english mistakes, that’s not only incorrect but also gross on the stereotypical learner english front (“me love you long time,” anybody?)

if you’re going to write kidfic please do some * research

[prokopetz]

Totally. It can be helpful to remind yourself that young children tend to speak as though the English language actually made sense. Our brains are pattern-recognising machines: children are really, really good at puzzling out the implicit rules of the English language, but they don’t necessarily know all the silly exceptions and bizarre edge cases that break those rules yet - those can only be learned through experience and rote memorisation.

Basically, when children who speak English as a first language make mistakes, it typically reflects a tendency to treat English as more grammatically, syntactically, and/or orthographically consistent than it really is. In some cases, this can be compounded by the fact that some kids will get offended at how little sense “proper” English makes, and insist upon using the more consistent forms even though they know very well that they’re technically “wrong”.

for a long young portion of my life I insisted on pronouncing Sean “SEEN” because that’s how it’s spelled.

[pftones3482]

As someone who spends a good majority of her time working with kids, it irks me to no end when I see children written as if they’re babies.

Past the age of about five or six years old, children can have deep, intellectual conversations about the most bizarre of things. I HAD A CONVERSATION LAST WEEK WITH FOUR THIRD GRADERS ABOUT THE GAS PRICES AND TAXES IN HAWAII.

Were they entirely correct in the facts they were giving? No, because it was all from what they had heard from parents or on the news. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that I was having a genuine conversation with four eight and nine year olds about taxes.

Just about the only speech problems most kids have, unless they have a speech impediment, is not being able to pronounce certain consonants (replacing ‘th’ with ‘fw,’ for example, and some letters are harder to form with your mouth than others) and doing exactly what the person above said: using the English language the way they know how, which isn’t always the way English works.

Kids aren’t stupid. Stop writing them like they are.

[oldtoadwoman-deactivated2018121]

I was tutoring a little kid (second grade, I think). He was complaining about a worksheet. “This is hard.” I started to correct him as I knew he was more than capable of it and this bright kid, who had obviously heard the lecture before from others, interrupted me and said: “I know. I know. It’s not really difficult. It’s just time consuming.” Some kids are spooky-smart and even quite articulate.

If you need (plotwise) to emphasize that the child is specifically childish … have them tell the same joke to everyone they meet, cracking themselves up before they get to the punchline … have them ask “Why?” incessantly … have them fidgeting and possibly breaking things (”Oops.” “What?” “Nothing!” “WHAT?!”) … and if you have more than one kid, even of the same age, you don’t have to write them at the same intelligence level or emotional maturity. Some kids are messy and some are obsessively neat. Some are quiet, some loud. Some giggly, some surly. They basically come in the same range of personalities as adults. 

If you don’t want to invest a lot of time writing dialog for kids, just establish that you have a quiet kid. But a kid who gives single-word answers is usually doing so because they don’t like you (or trust you) or they are focused on their own thing and you’re interrupting them. It doesn’t mean they lack the vocabulary or that they don’t understand the adult conversation going on “over their head” (the more inappropriate the conversation, the more likely the kids are paying attention).

[santheum]

I have jabbed the back button so many times on terrible kid fic. This is an excellent resource - kid fic, when done well, is a real treat for me.

[thaxted]

The only children I have ever met who did say things like “me hungwy” were the ones who had figured out that if they sounded “adorable” they could wrap adults around their precious little fingers. Kids get it.

[delicatefury]

Kids also slur and mumble a lot. Especially when they’re tired. They don’t say “me hungwy”, they say “M’hungry”, or “m’hung’y” cause it just takes too much effort or time to do a proper distinct ‘r’.

Really, with kids, it’s more about how they say the words than what they say. A sleepy kid can be adorable, but they’re either cranky as hell or nearly dead on their feet. A hungry kid is going to be cranky (again) or whiney. A bored kid’s going to be fidgety and/or whiney. etc. 

[neurodiversitysci]

Generally speaking, in my experience, kids are as smart as any adult. What they lack is: * Life experience and knowledge about the world. So sometimes, things that seem silly and cliche to us are new, exciting, and profound to them. * A long term perspective. They don’t have a sense of “this too shall pass.” If something upsets them right now, it’s the end of the world. If something makes them happy, they think they’ll never be unhappy again. This hurts their judgment and can make them emotionally reactive. * Self-control. Try to get kids to sit quietly when they’re tired or hungry or angry, and you’ll see what I mean. * The ability to know what they know and verbalize it to others. Any therapist will tell you kids pick up family dynamics and detect conflict parents are trying to hide like no one’s business. They can’t usually talk directly about it, though, although they might enact the patterns they see with dolls and pretend play. * Defenses and seeing themselves through others’ eyes. I love teaching and doing research with children because their personalities are so quickly and easily visible. Their parents are another matter. Until at least 5th or 6th grade, they’re not constantly thinking about how others perceive them and constructing complicated facades. * Meta-thinking. When I ask a child who just solved a logic puzzle or answered a question correctly how they knew, they’ll often say something like “I just knew,” “because I’m smart,” “my sister taught me,” or “I don’t know.” This is related to kids rarely knowing and being able to verbalize what they know. * Basic executive functions like working memory, processing speed, and inhibition. All of these rely on the frontal lobe and develop slowly. A concrete example: on a brief IQ test like the Woodcock Johnson, I’ve seen kids get lost in the problem and forget part or all of what they were being asked, but they could solve it accurately if you kept reminding them (but did not otherwise provide help). Their standard scores with reminders were often over 120 (roughly “gifted range”), while without, they did about average. * They ask questions, but they don’t critically question what you’ve been told. In my experience with gifted kids for example, they ask so many questions it wears parents and teachers out. But until adolescence, they trust what they learn from books, parents, and teachers. They don’t ask constantly, “how do you know? How do I know?” I vividly remember beginning to ask these how-do-we-know questions at 14. I suddenly became aware of a lack of certainty of everything I knew and believed.

Kids are smart and observant, but they are not little adults. Their perspective is so different given their size, relationship to time, and dependence on the adults around them. If you want to write about kids, keep that in mind, listen to them, and observe them closely.

[winplaceshow]

i’m a speech/language therapist who specializes in language development for preschool aged children (under 5).  as a rule of thumb, children approximate adult language at 5 years of age.  i didn’t really include speech sound development because that’s a whole lot of explanation.  but, here’s what their language looks like from birth - 5 years:

Birth–3 Months

Startles to loud sounds

Quiets or smiles when spoken to

Seems to recognize caregiver’s voice and quiets if crying

Makes pleasure sounds (cooing, gooing)

Cries differently for different needs

Smiles they see caregiver

4–6 Months

Turns eyes to the direction of sounds

Responds to changes in tone of voice

Interested in music / toys that make sounds

Babbling is reduplicated repetitions of different easy to pronounce sounds, (i.e. ”papapa,” “bababa,” “mamama”)

Chuckles and laughs

Vocalizes excitement and displeasure

7 Months–1 Year

Enjoys games like peek-a-boo and pat-a-cake

Turns and looks in direction of sounds

Listens when spoken to

Recognizes words for common items like “cup”, “shoe”, “book”, or “juice”

Begins to respond to commands and requests (e.g. “Come here” or “Want more?”)

Babbling has many different sounds (”pabamima”)

Uses gestures to communicate (waving, holding arms to be picked up)

Imitates different speech sounds

Has one or two words (hi, dog, dada, mama) around first birthday, although words may not be intelligible

1-2 Years 

Points to a few body parts when asked.

Follows simple commands and understands simple questions (“Roll the ball,” “Kiss the baby,” “Where’s your shoe?”).

Points to pictures in a book when named.

Vocabulary size increases every month

Child over generalizes words (i.e. every four legged animal is “doggy”)

Uses some one- or two- word questions (“Where kitty?” “Go bye-bye?” “What’s that?”).

Once vocabulary size reaches ~250 words child begins to put two words together (“more cookie,” “no juice,” “mommy book”).

2-3 Years

Understands opposites (“go-stop,” “in-on,” “big-little,” “up-down”).

Follows two-step requests (“Get the book and put it on the table”).

Should be able to listen to story books for longer periods of time

Vocab size increased to the point where they have a word for almost everything, new words every day.

Uses two- or three- words sentences.

Speech is understood by familiar listeners most of the time.

Often asks for or directs attention to objects by labeling them.

Asks “why?” but may not be able to answer (**asking questions comes far before being able to answer them!!)

May stutter on words or sounds (this is normal unless it distresses the child)

3-4 years

Will respond when called from another room.

Can talk about familiar activities that happened at school or at friends’ homes while the listener was not present.  Uses about 4 sentences at a time. (Not yet a full adult-like narrative, but making progress.)

People outside of the family understand child’s speech.

Answers simple “who?”, “what?”, and “where?” questions.

Asks “when?” and “how?” questions.

Understands simple meta-linguistic structures such as rhymes (i.e. “hat-cat”)

Uses pronouns, such as I, you, me, we, or they

Uses some plural words, like toys, birds, and buses (may overgeneralize plural or past tense “

Sentences have 4 or more words.

Usually has outgrown stuttering behaviors.

4-5 years

Understands sequencing words like first, next, and last.

Understands words for time, like yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Follows 3-4 step directions, like “Put your pajamas on, brush your teeth, and then pick out a book.”

Says all speech sounds in words. May still make mistakes on sounds that are harder to say, like l, s, r, v, z, ch, sh, th.  **Mistakes on /r/ are common until 7 years of age

Uses sentences that have more than one verb.

With adult support can construct a short narrative about something the listener is not familiar with (i.e. “What happened in the movie?”)

Understands that they must change their language depending on the listener and place. May use short sentences with younger children or talk louder outside than inside.

[a-book-of-creatures]

Honestly the biggest disappointment I had researching ABC was that medieval authors did not, in fact, see the creatures they were describing and were trying their best to describe them with their limited knowledge while going “what the fuck… what the fuck…”

[a-book-of-creatures]

Instead all those creatures you know came about from transcription and translation errors from copying Greco-Roman sources (who themselves got them from travelers’ tales from Persia and India - rhino -> unicorn, tiger -> manticore, python -> dragon, and so on).

[downinmybeastheart]

So unicorns are real

[a-book-of-creatures]

behold… a unicorn

[gallusrostromegalus]

I always thought animals in medieval manuscripts looked like the result of having to draw say. A Tree Kangaroo, but your only source for what it looked like was your friend who heard it from a fellow who knows a man who swears he saw one once, whilst very drunk and lost, and I am SO PLEASED  to find out this is, in fact, the case.

[glamourweaver]

Questing Beast

- Neck of a snake

- body of a leopard

- haunches of a lion

- feet off a hart (deer)

So is it

Or….

[weaselle]

don’t forget that some of the legendary creatures they were describing were from other people’s mythos which were passed down in the oral tradition for gods know how long. You know what existed in Eurasia right around the time we were domesticating wolves into dogs?

these beasties. For a long time, science had them down as going extinct 200 thousand years ago, but then we found some bones from 36 thousand years ago. Which, y’know, is quite a difference. Since you can bet that any skeleton we find is not literally the last one of its kind to live, many creatures have date ranges unknowably far outside the evidence.

In South Asia there were cultures that described a man-beast/troll forrest giant  who’s knuckles dragged the ground, and everybody from the west was sure it was superstitious mumbo jumbo, but you know what used to live there?

And did you know that some of the earliest white colonizers of the Americas heard accounts that there were natives still alive who had seen and hunted and eaten a great hairy beast, shaggy like the buffalo but much bigger, with a long thin nose like a snake and two giant fangs… so, like, mammoths, you know? but they were totally discounted because europeans of the time were like, elephants live in Africa and aren’t hairy, you can’t fool us, pranksters!

Anyway, the point is between the early writing game of telephone description thing talked about by OP, and the discounting of native cultural accuracy, I’m pretty sure most legendary creatures are in fact real animals one way or another 

[historyisntboring]

It can’t explain every single legendary creature, but yes, this is super important. Because History relies on written sources, it tends to sweep oral tradition under the rug, even if there’s a lot of interesting informations in it.

And it’s not just living animals that were badly described, or which descriptions got exaggerated over the course of centuries or through translation errors. Sometimes, people finding fossil bones of extinct animals might have also influenced some myths!

By now this is pretty well-known but it has been theorised that the Greek myth of the cyclops was started when people found Deinotherium skulls. Now you might say, uh, how is it possible to think a cousin of the elephant is a huge human dude with one eye?

Well-

- the big nasal opening kinda looks like an eye if you have no idea what kind of animal had this kind of skull (you can read more about this theory in this old National Geographic article if you like).

Here’s a less well-known one; the griffin is a mythological hybrid with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. The earliest traces of this myth come from ancient Iranian and ancient Egyptian art, from more than 3000 BC. In Iranian mythology, it’s called شیردال‌ (shirdal, “lion eagle”). Now, it’s been the subject of some debate and it’s not confirmed, but there’s a theory that people might have seen some Protoceratops and Psittacosaurus fossils in Asia and might have interpreted it as “a lion with an eagle’s head”:

Check the “origin” part of the wikipedia page for “griffin” if you want to find more sources for this theory and for the arguments against it! Again, it’s just a theory, but I think it’s super cool.

[excessively-english-jd]

This is a pretty well accepted theory for why dragons (or animals we group as like dragons, eg wyverns and drakes) are seen in mythos almost worldwide - because people found dinosaur bones, looked at them, and went “oh fuck what’s that? some big…. lizardy thing?” and then created dragons.

[autisticexpression]

Also many deagon legends are simply exaggerations of well-known living reptiles like snakes and crocodilians.a

[injuries-in-dust]

It also explains why dragons can look so different in the myths of the various regions.

In asia, Dragons tend to look very long and snake like:

One of the most common dinosaurs that used to like in the asia region, so would have been the most common fossils found by people:

The Mamenchisaurus, this thing is just all neck and tail! You find just half a fossilised skeleton of this monster, you can easily end up thinking of a long snake-like beast.

South America also has legends snake-like dragons among some of its peoples:

What fossils from pre-historic south America could be found?

The Titanoboa, which can easily grow to be 40 feet long.

In North America there is the Piasa Bird

Which wikipedia tells me comes from “ the large Mississippian culture city of Cahokia,” it’s describes as

What fossils could have been found in that region:

Pterosaur, and Triceratops. Features of both sets of skeletons could have been merged into one legendary creature.

Then we get our European style dragon:

One of the most common fossils that could have been found was a Cetiosaurus 

which, despite being a herbivore, looked to have a mouth of sharp looking teeth, consistant with a dragons.

Dragons amongst the peoples of Africa are even more varied, but most revolve around some kind of giant snake-like creature. As a quick example, we’ll take Dan Ayido Hwedo commonly found in West African mythology.

Fossils in that area could have been included the Aegyptosaurus:

A quick google search tells me that most Sauropods: well known for being long necked and long tailed, are found in Africa.

If you found only a half complete skeleton of this thing; which is likely, because it’s rare to find a complete dinosaur skeleton, you could easily think of a giant snake monster.

[randomslasher]

IIRC, another possible explanation for long snake-like dragons/sea serpents in Africa could’ve been Basilosaurus, a whale from the Paleogene whose skeleton looked like this: 

A lot of the most complete specimens have been found in Egypt. 

[a-book-of-creatures]

You know what, I’m tired of getting notifications for this post and not saying anything about it. I know that last time I complained about this sort of thinking, I got called out by revretch, who called me a gatekeeper and then blocked me. But I don’t have anything left to live for anymore so I’m going to let my science and education background take over for a moment and discuss this in depth.

Okay, not in depth, I’ll try to be brief.

Yes, I know tumblr likes to believe scientists are silly old fools for refusing to accept the truth that is right in front of them. Fine. Believe in what you want. But the problem is that a lot of the information in the above post is either long discredited, not taken seriously by archaeologists/folklorists for good reason, or

Animals have inspired a lot of mythical creatures. That is true.

Fossils have inspired a few mythical creatures. That is also true.

Fossils have not inspired the creatures in the above post. Not provably, at any rate, and certainly not enough for any self-respecting archaeologist to take them seriously.

Why not?

There’s a popular misconception about how fossils are formed. People tend to think they look something like in Jurassic Park 3, where a Velociraptor is being excavated in Montana (that already makes it impossible, but bear with me).

Look how nice that fossil is. It looks exactly like an animal. You can see the head, the shape of the body, the arms and legs and tail. You easily picture what it looked like alive.

This is NOT what fossils look like.

Real fossils tend to be disarticulated. Broken up. Spread over a large area. Believe me, I know! I’m a paleontology washout who’s volunteered on at least 3 digs in 3 different countries! The only information an average person could get out of most real fossils is “this was an animal”, and “this was a BIG animal”. Nobody would have deduced frills and wings and stuff like that.

The griffon hypothesis up there? We owe it to Adrienne Mayor, and it’s popular among paleontologists but not archaeologists. It makes sense on a very superficial level – It Stands To Reason, after all – but once you start looking at it in detail it breaks down. Even if, somehow, someone saw a Protoceratops skeleton in enough detail to see wings and beaks and stuff, why would they leave out the teeth? The stubby-toed feet? The ridiculous tail? Mark Witton, a person actually connected to paleontology, has done a great article on the subject.

Griffons were inspired by a number of things, including Mesopotamian royal art, and there’s at least one real animal behind the griffon (and it’s not a fossil). But that’s another story.

What about elephant-skull cyclopes? Again, it sounds like it makes sense! Certainly more so than the griffon-Protoceratops. But here we run into another problem… complete lack of proof. It sounds reasonable, but it can’t be proven. And “one-eyed giant” isn’t exactly a colossal feat of imagination - giants are one of the standard baddies in legend, and making them one-eyed makes them just more monstrous. You can just as easily argue that cyclopes originated in solar wheel imagery associated with the gods, which is why their name means “wheel-eye” and not “one-eye”, and that also ties nicely into their association with metallurgy. Again, Mark Witton has more on that.

Creatures LEGITIMATELY based on fossils typically look nothing like their progenitors, and tend to incorporate features based on their fossil location.

Mammoth remains, for instance! Those are found sticking out of eroded riverbanks, so there must have been a big animal underground! In China they are the yin shu, an enormous mouse or mole that digs underground but dies as soon as the sun touches it. (My interpretation below. Note that I couldn’t resist making it mammothy anyway)

In Siberia the witkes is a horned lake monster that demands offerings of the people who cross its water. Note that the “tusks” are seen as horns, and because the fossils are found near water, it becomes a water animal. See how the facts of the fossils become part of the legend? (Again, my interpretation below, and same comment as before)

The lindwurm of Klagenfurt was based on the discovery of a cave rhinoceros skull. Again, you can see how little the creature has to do with the fossil! People already have dragons on the brain, so finding a skull reinforces that, instead of altering it. You’ve got crocodile skulls in castles in Hungary displayed as dragon remains. Same story. Everything’s a dragon if you want it to be.

Brontotheres (thunder beasts) are named so because of the legends of the Great Plains people! Their remains were seen as the casualties of great battles, and the name honors that legend. Again, they aren’t described as being big rhino-like horned animals, just as… big animals that are now dead.

As for the others, again, those are incredible speculations that require, once again, to dismiss far more obvious things that would have inspired them. And there’s a whole lot of cultural evolution that goes on that isn’t taken into account.

The unicorn in particular. There’s no reason to think that it was anything other than the one-horned Indian rhinoceros. Elasmotherium tends to get dragged into the discussion, but all the original unicorn stories tell of a one-horned Indian monster. Not something that lives underground.

The Piasa? The above post compares it to pterosaurs, but the original did not have wings! It was a version of the “underwater panther”, a mythical underwater lynx of the Northeast Woodlands and Great Lakes regions. There’s a long story behind that but that’s, again, beyond the scope of what I wanted to say.

Of course, if you want to consider the underwater panther a dinosaur as well, be my guest.

Regarding the sauropods (and Titanoboa, and whales) inspiring giant snakes thing.

If only there was some terrifyingly large, reptilian, legless, snake-like creature in South America…

Or Africa…

Or Asia to fire people’s imagination and cause them to think of giant snakes?

And it’s not like rainbows aren’t associated worldwide with snakes because of their, well, long and thin and curvy nature.

Now if you think I’m a big horrible gatekeeping meanie for saying all this, that’s fine! There’s still a lot we don’t know, and there’s still a lot of things that could very well be based on fossils, so you can keep your hopes up!

Like the ketos of Troy, for instance!

That… looks awfully like it could be a skull! Adrienne Mayor thinks it’s a fossil Samotherium, which sounds like a stretch. It looks more like a pterosaur to me. But still, that’s something that could indeed be a fossil!

The other thing about all this is the “scientists didn’t listen to native people who told them about monsters they’d encountered”. And yes, this is true and a noble thing to believe in. But also consider that one of the reasons dinosaurs were believed to exist in “darkest Africa” (all the scare quotes) is that it was held that native people couldn’t possibly be creative enough to imagine them. Europeans talk about giant reptiles? Myths, legends, folklore. Non-Europeans talk about giant reptiles? OMG LIVING DINOSAURS. It goes both ways, sadly.

Mythical creatures are the product of culture, literature, and biology. Reducing their creation to “sees weird fossil => invents monster” is, to me, just sad, and cuts out a lot of the process and wonder and translation errors and sheer mistakes that intervene.

[megs-mayhem]

@unpretty

[unpretty]

it’s DIRT

[ceekari]

unmute for comically aggrieved farmer

[fieldbears]

reblogging for the second time because I still laugh uncontrollably. in my mind the cows are trying to be gracious about their strange gift. ‘yes we love it thank u’

[fizzgigfurball]

@diseonfire future?

[vet-and-wild]

I know I literally  just reblogged this but I love this video so much it always makes me laugh because

1. “LADIES”

2. The very disappointed “Eclair…”

3. “WHAT?” (High pitched mooing in response)

4. The way they turn into Pleakley from Lilo and Stitch as they get progressively more frustrated

[drawingden]

WebGL Water is a great water simulator, with a sphere that can interact with the water’s surface. It can be paused which means you can then use it as a reference for lighting, reflections, refractions, etc.

Painting Tutorials:

Water in Motion 

Ocean Waves

Water Bubbles

Water Surface

Stormy Sea Waves

Condensation

Water Droplets

More Various Tutorials

[slavicafire]

I found THE funniest folktale ever (Tatra mountains again) but there is no way I can do it justice in english.

I will try, of course, but I will fail.

[slavicafire]

the tale is about a man complaining to his wife that he has to work so hard each day and she just stays home and does nothing – so they switch roles, she goes to work instead and leaves all the household chores to him.

of course he fails at each chore but I cannot stress enough how absolutely badly he fucks it all up.

[slavicafire]

Man and woman (endearingly chłop i baba in the górale dialect) - slight warnings for mentions of animal death and bodily harm, as it usually is in slavic folk tales.

There was a woman. One day her husband complains. The man despairs! Woe, woe, he has to work each day to earn money and she gets to stay home, and that it is unfair. And so the woman agrees and goes to work next day instead and leaves all the household chores for him to do.

She tells him to let the hen and the chicks out but beware the goshawk. He lets them out but does not keep an eye on them: the goshawk steals both the hen and all the chicks.

She tells him to gather hay and grass for the cow to eat and feed her in the barn. He ties the cow to the stake too far from the hay and the cow chokes on her rope trying to get to it.

She tells him to prepare her some food, given she has to work all day away from home: to mill wheat and bake her breakfast, and bring it to her. But he is too caught up in all the chores to be able to do so, and she is left hungry for the entire day.

She told him to bathe their little son Jaś and to churn fresh butter for the week. He puts the child in the bath and starts to churn the butter, but he forgets he had milk in the pot on the stove for his wife’s breakfast and it boils over.

He rushes to get the milk and does not mind the child. Jaś wants to reach the butter and he falls out of the bath: he knocks over the butter churn and put his eye out as he falls.

The man despairs! Woe, woe, no hen and no chicks, no cow and no milk, no butter – and now his son is hurt, too! He does not know what to do and decides to leave the house and get some wood for the stove instead.

He takes his axe and goes to the forest. On his way there, by the lake, he sees a wild duck! He decides to get her so at least they have duck for supper. He throws his axe at the duck… and it falls into the lake. The duck flies away.

The man despairs! Woe, woe, no duck and no axe. He does not know what to do and decides to undress and lie down to rest after such misfortune. He falls asleep on the lake’s bank.

But behind the leeve there was a hunter: he was waiting with his rifle to kill the duck for hours, and the man ruined his plan. And so he steals the man’s clothes as he sleeps to have something to bring home at least.

The man despairs! Woe, woe, no clothes to put on at all, and a long way back home through the main road leading to the town. What shame! He sees a horse-drawn cart with hay and sneaks behind it, and hiding behind it he sneaks back home, naked as God made him.

But he feels shame for he’s fully naked, and so he makes his final mistake: he takes some hay from the cart to hide his most shameful bits…

[slavicafire]

The woman comes home, tired and hungry. She sees the man sitting by the stove, crying, and she asks him why he did not bring her any food at all. The man despairs! Woe, woe, he cries and cries.

Why are you crying so, the woman asks. I let the hen and the chicks out and the goshawk came and stole them all! Woe, woe, he cries. Do not despair, she says to him, we’ll get another hen and we’ll hatch more chicks. But the man cries.

Why are you crying still, the woman asks. I wanted to feed the cow but I tied her to the stake too far from the hay and she choked and now she’s gone! Woe, woe, he cries. Do not despair, she says to him, we will get another cow. But the man cries.

Why are you crying still, the woman asks. I drew the bath and churned the butter, but the milk boiled over and the child fell out of the bath and ruined the butter and put his eye out! Woe, woe, he cries. Do not despair, she says to him, at least he won’t get drafted. But the man cries.

Why are you crying still, the woman asks. I went to the forest to get some wood and I threw my axe at a duck but the duck flew away and the axe fell into the lake and so I laid down undressed to cry and a hunter hiding by the leeve stole all my clothes. Woe, woe, he cries. Do not despair, she says to him, we have some cloth in the chests, I will sew you new clothes. But the man cries.

Why are you crying still, the woman asks.

I had to take the main road to go home and I was naked as God made me, and so I sneaked behind a cart! Woe, woe, he cries, I had to cover my shame with hay so that people would not see! 

Woe, woe, he cries. 

The horse ate my dick.

[kbdvvdgdbrbvb-deactivated202203]

local clothing hanger gets stuck in your door, bets you can’t name three noble truths of buddhism and floats away without even opening his eyes ✋🏽👁️✨ 

[filibusterfrog]

core classes as undead :)

[jrpencil888]

1234 - Sayu

15 Aug 2021

[echo-at-the-pond]

Guys if I get 271,100 notes on this till my 21st birthday (November 27th) I'll get

Don't walk on my roof

tattooed in ancient greek

[okaytheniguess]

@welcome-to-gaytown

[modelsof-color]

Symone Lu by Anna Koblish for LADYGUNN Magazine, August 2021