nev.in.color

Hey so check it out: remember the Corpse Flower that bloomed at The Huntington back in August? This is what the fruit looks like now.

And earlier today, a couple of folks in our botanical division began extracting seeds. Pics soon. First, though, please take a moment to revel in the beauty of this moment of this crazy plant’s life cycle. It’s kind of amazing.

Look back through pics and gifs from earlier stages of its life here: http://huntingtonlibrary.tumblr.com/search/corpse+flower

This animation without the filter because it fucked with the framerate for some reason (this isn't the intended look otherwise, but bleh)

im sure most of you dont give a flying dick tit about godzilla shit but this model and now animation is the first thing ive made and was kinda proud of in a long time .

WAIT YOU MADE THIS?

idk probably

im worried that the reason you're getting less attention than you deserve is that this looks like it was clipped out of a Movie, and not one of the lower budget ones

2,840,658 polys

i make my rigs myself

sir those are two big for you

occasional posts from users

reblog if you occasionally post

Reblogging because I occasionally post

Lok’Tar Ogar

(As usual, all the names have been changed to protect people’s privacy.  LONG POST so press “J” to skip or start scrolling because I can’t make cuts work for Moblie, sorry.)

Back in 2004 I went to a cousin’s wedding and my mom got into Fandom.

Ruth, my Mom’s-college-roommate’s-daughter was getting married to a man of mixed reputability in what had been for several months had been the primary sitcom of the family- mushroom vs. champagne draperies, the bride wanted a small ceremony and the mother of the groom wanted to invite every business contact she had, and then there was the problem of the Rabbis- Ruth’s rabbi had mostly retired but had promised to marry her in her youth, David’s had promised the same and the current Rabbi of Ruth’s synagogue wanted in too, so they agreed to be married by all three Rabbis.  Furthermore, any Jewish wedding requires a Chuppah- a canopy under which the ceremony takes place.  Mom agreed to make one for Ruth and David’s wedding, (MUSHROOM-colored of course, not champagne) and escort it there personally as we were attending the ceremonies.

Alas, the wedding was in Columbus, a terrible place. 

Southeast Ohio is generally a rather nice place- on the far northern end of the appalachia it has lovely rolling hills of deep hardwood forests, a spectacular zoo and many other things a scientifically inclined teenager might enjoy but I was not going to those, I was going to a Wedding, where I had been guilted into being a flower girl on account of being the youngest available cousin, along with my sister.  I spent most of the drive from Colorado in a state of spectacular teenage misery, which was almost entirely obliterated when we got to the hotel.

The guests of the Hotel consisted thusly:

I didn’t actually know a damn thing about WoW, other than it was something my geekier friends in middle school played, and that it had elves with ridiculous eyebrows, but I know how to make friends with the kind of people who wear nothing but bodypaint and prosthetic ears in public and started talking to the gang of Blood Elves at the breakfast bar while the businessmen huddled together at their table like a group of musk oxen forming up against a pack of wolves.

Eventually mom wandered over and joined in the conversation- after years of making Halloween costumes, stage props, miscellaneous fabric constructions like the Chuppah and so forth, she’d gained an extensive knowledge of what fiber can be made to do, but wanted to know what marvelous things these people were doing with plastics.  She hit it off particularly well with the Troll over his teeth, and they decided to confide in her.

“Hey, here’s a fun thing to do-” Said the blood elf, before trotting over to the edge of the mezzanine overlooking the lobby.  

“LOK’TAR OGAR!”  she bellowed as loudly as her tiny, corseted frame could manage. “FOR THE HORDE!!!” Roared back several dozen Warcrafters, shaking their con-safe weaponry and causing several of the businessmen to duck for cover.

“Yeah, if you need anything, just yell that.”  she nodded, before we parted ways.

Later that night, Mom slipped in the shower and sprained her ankle, which resulted in a moderately panicked but ultimately boring visit to a clinic to get it X-ray’d and acquire a wheelchair.  The next morning, however, we had to proceed to the wedding, and discovered that the elevator was out of service.

A Chuppah, if you’re not familiar with one, is roughly the same dimensions and weight as those pop-up tents they use at gentrified outdoor craft fairs, or about 9 feet long and close to 60lbs when folded up.  This one was closer to 100 once all the memorial images and sentimental fabrics and special tent poles had been added on.    Mom was stuck in the wheelchair, Dad was in a state of near panic at Mom being injured and also having to be somewhere On Time, and my sister and I were liquefying in the summer heat and the bride-mandated mushroom-colored seven goddamn layers of itchy-ass tulle flower girl dresses, barely able to lift the chuppah between us.

In short stairs were not happening and three quarters of us were about to riot but Mom is definitely the smart person in the family because she remembered-

“LOK’TAR OGAR!!”

“FOR THE HORDE!!”

“I NEED SOME HELP!”

Instantly the cosplayers from the night before were there, along with a dozen more.  Two beefy trolls carried Mom down the stairs and clean out to the parking garage, someone else got the chuppah, and the Blood elf managed to get concierge to bring our car around to the curb with our destination already programmed into the (VERY PRIMITIVE) gps.  I thought my dad was going to cry with relief.

“So [Gallus].”  Mom asked me on the way to the wedding.  “People who like videogames. Do they all have Magic Words?”

“Yeah most of them have some kind of phrase like ‘may the force be with you’ or ‘live long and prosper’.  Why?”

She just nodded, storing that fact away for later.

The wedding turned out to be an event in and of itself- The mother of the bride fainted when they kissed, the rabbis nearly got into a fistfight, the mother of the groom fell off the chair and needed stitches, uncle Larry tore his pants on the dance floor then elected to remove them and keep dancing- and I managed to forget entirely about Mom’s question.

Last year, we were doing theater set-in at the same time the local theater and culture complex was hosting the small city convention.  It was July, hotter than satan’s own asshole, and the stage pieces were too large for both of our 5’2-and-under asses to move.

I came back out from wresting a Magic tree into the complex to find mom squinting calculatingly at a group of Marvel cosplayers.

“What are their Magic Words?”

“Huh?”

“The words you say when you want to summon them- ‘Use the Force’ or something?”

I blinked a few times, as my heat stroke-addled brain translated that.  “…Avengers Assemble?”

“HEY AVENGERS!” Hollered Mom. “ASSEMBLE!!”

INSTANTLY, an Iron Man and three Captains America sprinted over.

“What can we do Ma’am?” asked one of the captains, sticking rigorously to character.

“We need help moving these set pieces in and you have muscles.”  she explained, and without question everyone pitched in to move a magical forest, the front half of a castle and a dragon’s cave into the Children’s Theater backstage.  The Iron Man politely answered questions about painting metallics on Cardboard for her and all three Captains America lines up and saluted her upon emptying the truck.

“You’re dangerous.” I teased her as they returned to Con.

“Tell me more Magic Words- I need that tall one in purple to help with the lights.”  she said, gesturing to a Waluigi that was about to become familiar with the Children’s Theater Lighting System.

_________________________________

(If you enjoyed this story, please consider supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon where you can pre-order my upcoming Family Lore illustrated Anthology.  Thank you.)

I need one of these!!! 😍😍😍

Actually forget every other post about “primal” feelings and actions, the most connected to my early hominid ancestors i have ever felt in my LIFE is when slowly following an increasingly panicked sheep. I believe that slowly following ungulates is the most primally human activity in existence

That moment when the sheep has run a few times and visibly realizes that you just keep slowly walking at it and are not going anywhere and you can see it thinking “oh fuck this isn’t how being chased is supposed to work” rockets me back in time several hundred thousand years

Hey quick question OP why are you bullying a sheep

To give it medication

Pursuit predation, pursuit medication, same structural foundation.

but for real, nothing can match the tenderness, the warmth, the private & public love & fondness of the couple portrayed in the Etruscan Sarcophagus of the Spouses…I mean. look at them:

the way they chose to be pictured in this loving moment, so they could remain together for eternity! she used to be holding what we assume was a tiny pomegranate (a symbol for eternity), and she was pouring perfume in his hand… i….the tenderness. but also the way their bodies connect, almost being inextricably tied to one another; the playfulness of their expressions, the intelligence of their eyes, the expressiveness of their gestures (italian legends lol), and the sweet domesticity of their position, which was typical for dinners with friends - husbands and wives remained under the same blanket and conversed w their guests over dinner…….. 

but most of all. how wordlessly beautiful it is to see their heads from behind, looking (with all the differences in costumes of their time) like a couple we could easily see sitting in front of us at a restaurant. they’re lost in a lively conversation with their friends. the man’s arm is around her shoulders, and she’s laughing, moving her hands animatedly while telling a story. they love each other. it’s a story that never ends. 

It should also be stated that this piece was meant to hold the ashes.  This was someone’s burial piece, and it was the most important thing to them that they and their spouse be depicted together and very visibly in love, and participating in a banquet as was the norm in Etruscan culture.

Etruscan art, especially funerary art, is made of couples.  The Boston Museum of Fine Art holds the burial tomb of the Tetnies families, and both the husband and wife and then their son and his wife?  The tenderness on both pieces is absolutely remarkable.

But nothing, and I truly mean nothing, prepares one for seeing il Sarcofago degli Sposi in person.  You can see them down the corridor in Villa Gulia, and the closer to get, the more inviting they are.  Warmth radiates off of them, off of every angle of this piece, and there is a fluidity and life present that the photographs capture, but seeing them in person only amplifies.

Etruscan art has such liveliness and joy in it, and nothing captures it better than these two.

If you are ever, ever in Rome, go visit them.   It is worth every moment.

Oh, wow. I’d never seen the Tetnies sarcophagi before, and they’re wonderful. Incredibly intimate:

And that sent me down an Etruscan sarcophagus rabbit hole — this was my other favorite couple. I love that they’re sculpted as they must have been in life, with their age showing clearly in their faces, and the pose is wonderful too:

The solo sarcophagi are also great! Love that they were probably all painted, and some of them still have a lot of their paint left:

anyway, a+ genre of ancient funerary art that I knew almost nothing about

I’m Bored and Anxious So I Slapped Together a List of Fan Fic Writer Asks

1. Share a song that makes you think of [fic title] 2. Do you read/reread your own fics? 3. What’s your favorite fic that you’ve written? 4. How many WIPs do you have right now? 5. What’s a fic idea you’ve had that you will never write? 6. Are there any fics from others you reread all the time? 7. How many ideas for fics do you have right now? 8. What project(s) are you currently working on? 9. Do you write every day? If you wrote today, share a sentence of what you’ve written! 10. Is there a fic that got a different response than you were expecting? 11. Do you have specific playlists for writing fics? 12. Do you have a playlist for your current WIP(s)? Share it! 13. How much planning do you do before writing? 14. If you could see one of your fics adapted into a visual medium, such as comic or film, which fan fic would you pick? 15. How do you come up with titles for your fics/chapters? 16. At what point in the process do you come up with titles? 17. What’s something you’ve learned about while doing research for a fic? 18. What’s one of your favorite lines you’ve written in a fic? 19. Give us a small teaser from one of your WIPs. 20. What’s a favorite title for a fic you’ve written? 21. Have you ever deleted an entire scene after spending hours laboring over it? If so, why? 22. Do you know how your fic will end before you start writing? 23. How do you choose where to end a chapter (if you have multi-chapter works)? 24. Share a moodboard for (one of) your current WIP(s). 25. Have you ever upset yourself with your own writing? 26. Is there something you’ve written that you would never want your family to see? 27. Is there a fic you were nervous to post/share? Why? 28. Have you ever tagged a fic “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat”? 29. Share a bit from a fic you’ll never post OR from a scene that was cut from an already posted fic. (If you don’t have either, just share a random fic idea you have that you don’t plan on getting to.) 30. Ask anything!

time to play the age old game of,

guess! that! ad!