I really hate those stupids posts that are like:

“What about REAL monster girls??? Not just weird humans?? like real huge MONSTERS?? With giant sharp claws and big sharp teeth?? Where are those???”

You’re thinking of bestiality. You want to fuck a T-Rex.

If it passes the Harkness Test, I’m down.

For the uninformed:

This isn’t an item or even a game mechanic but I think y’all know you need the Harkness Test at some point or another in most campaigns

here’s my issue with the harkness test

The takeaway here is that Scoobert Doo is a fuckable monster

look, the harkness test isn’t whether a monster is ATTRACTIVE, it’s whether fucking the monster is UNETHICAL. “do I find scooby doo hot?” is a separate question from “IF I find scooby doo hot, would fucking him constitute bestiality?” 

questioning myself after making this

Moving to a different post—I had no idea that aphantasia was so common?

I can easily visualize things “in my mind’s eye”. I don’t see it with my actual eyeballs, but I can clearly picture what things look like, either from memory or from a description of them. I can imagine vivid colors and shapes and scenery, and when I read or listen to an audiobook, it’s like a film reel is playing inside my head. If the description is confusing, sparse, or poorly written, the imagined images just aren’t as detailed.

If you have aphantasia, how does non-visual fiction compel you? If there is a description of how something looks, do you get anything out of that at all or is it just irritating word clutter?

Like, if you’re reading a book and you come across a passage like

Do you get something out of that, or do you just zone out, and would you rather read something straightforward and free of visual descriptors, like

The second one is a lot more useful to me. I indeed zone out during the first one. I tried really hard to get something out of the description, but yeah it didn't work out for me. The second one goes straight to the point and gives me exactly what I need to know about the character, so I don't have to try so hard to get the information

Wild. 

I would hate reading the second one because in the absence of any specific description, I’d probably just imagine, like, my mom, and “my mom” definitely isn’t the vibe I’m aiming for with that character. 

I don't have aphantasia but my visualization isn't very strong. The way it works for me is that I can vaguely imagine the shape/color/location of something, but I can hold at most 1 detail in my mind. This means I really struggle to visualize people, especially faces, because they are so detailed. Hair is pretty easy because that's more about the overall shape of the person, but if you tell me someone has full lips or a large nose, that detail just ends up getting lost for me. This is actually a bit of a challenge in my own writing because I just don't describe characters visually very much, if at all. This past nanowrimo, I had literally no idea what my protagonist looked like, other than that her style was Not Femme. The most that I got out of the love interest was curly brown hair, and that she was probably white. For me, what characters look like is such a small part of the story that it's almost irrelevant

umm you should probably delete that post you reblogged :/ op is clearly count olaf

uh op isn’t count olaf their bio clearly says their name is falo tnuoc 🙄 and their about says they have a rare mental condition where they’re afraid to show their ankles and the top third of their face. please be respectful.

what if i made a ‘pick a hot person and i’ll tell you how valid you are’ quiz but made it ‘choose some paintings and i’ll tell you how much art thief energy you have’ ... i just might

here’s the quiz! choose some paintings and i’ll tell you how much art thief energy you have. 💫 

Mahtin fans, I offer you all some extremely cursed audio from Jonny’s game stream today, I’m sorry in advance

Okay but does he realize that for a bit he imitated a new york accent which is...non-rhotic? Of all the regional accents to dip into, he picked one of the two main ones that doesn’t do Rs

it literally sucks to be an animal ruled by hormones. im not talking about being horny im talking about everything. like all we do is respond to stimuli and im sick of it

Since their bodies disappeared, I'm inclined to think even in the likely scenario where Jon and Martin died in the tower, they were still yeeted through the dimensional rift with the fears.

So in my head there's a distinct possibility that in some other reality, two corpses have suddenly appeared in the middle of a street, still mid-embrace. Possibly surrounded by half-unraveled cassette tapes telling a fragmented story of how they got there.

Which is a decent way for them to be mysterious harbingers of the doom that's coming there, I guess.

Actually play with me in this space - what if this reality is similar enough to theirs that it has a Martin and a Jon of its own?

They have normal jobs and don't know one another. Maybe they both have some mild interest in the paranormal. Nothing passionate, just enough to occasionally scroll through blogs over breakfast.

Both of them come across an article about two mysterious corpses, which includes photos and transcripts of what little audio was recovered. Some of the audio mentions their names. In two different apartments across London, two men who've never met do simultaneous spit takes.

Both look up any information they can find. A paranormal podcast gets a hold of some audio files from the recovered tapes -- and holy shit, one of the voices even sounds like them.

Most of the tapes are too damaged to recover so there are only tiny fragments of the story we, the audience know. Enough to get a sense of a few small things -- a few other names, a disturbing experience or two. A warning of something terrible coming.

(Maybe, maybe, just the faintest hint of a love story.)

Neither knows what to think or how to feel. Both throw together theories in their minds -- alternate dimensions, time travel, bizarre coincidences with identical strangers.

Jon becomes obsessed, hunts down any scrap of information out there and pieces together wild theories. Martin mostly goes on with his life, but finds himself frequently wondering who those people were and what happened to them, now and then doing some googling in case something new has been unearthed.

The news cycle leaves the story behind as a mildly weird dead end. Paranormal blogs move on to other things. Months pass.

One day there's a tiny, rinky-dink paranormal convention in London. Neither of them would have any interest in it, except one of the panels promises to play a new section of recovered audio from the "Harbinger Tapes," never before heard by the public.

They see each other outside the convention center and lock eyes.

Both of them have seen photos of the mystery bodies, and those faces are burned into their retinas. For a long minute, both of them stare in shock. Jon's the one who finally breaks the silence and approaches.

"Hello," he says, smiling awkwardly. "I, ah. I think I was found dead beside you in a London alleyway last March?"

I got bored waiting for my work meeting to start so I thought I’d make some post apocalypse memes to add to the pile 

I FOUND IT GUYS I SPENT HALF AN HOUR LOOKING FOR THIS VIDEO AND ITS HERE

Always reblog peent.

*before clicking play*: IS THIS WHAT i THINK IT IS???

*clicks play*: IT ISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

omg!! omg

Carmilla was also made into a web series several years back! That channel also appears to have a series of videos where they read the actual story, too if you’d like an audio version of the book instead of or in addition to an adaptation

finally living up to my URL

You ever think about how old people have no idea what “survivor bias” is, and take full credit for being excellent out of things where they lucked out?

“Back in my day we didn’t have any of these childhood protective things, we were smart enough not to do stupid shit on our own!” Except your little neighbour, who got the funniest idea at the age of seven, and got his skull pierced when he slipped?

“Back in my day nobody got divorced, we stuck together and fixed our problems!” What about your cousin, who was slowly killed by her husband because she had nowhere to escape him?

“Back in my day nobody had ‘mental problems’, we didn’t whine, we just toughed it out and endured life!” Hey remember that guy you used to work with, who seemed really friendly and normal, and then suddenly hanged himself ‘for no reason’?

“Back in my day we didn’t have any of this ‘gay’ or ‘transgender’ thing.” You did, but your family cut all ties with her before you were born.

 You kinda start seeing it in everything they think, if you start looking for it.

“When we were kids nobody whined about car seats or bike helmets. We didn’t use them, and we all survived!”

Yeah, except for the ones who didn’t.

they cant piece together that something as SIMPLE as ‘back in my day we didnt have peanut allergies’ means they absolutely had allergies, but knowledge about epi pens or getting kids to the hospital in a timely manner meant you HAD a kid with a peanut allergy versus you had a kid who died of ‘mysterious causes’ at age then scale that up for everything “back in my day teens didnt have sex or get pregnant” fuckoff teens in the 50s-70s had signifigantly higher sexual activity and birthrates then teens today its just that back then your school might have teenaged girls just dissappear for a semester to ‘live with their aunt’, that was not better simply because you didnt see it

I mean, some of the child safety stuff that we have isn’t actually necessary. A lot of it is helpful and important (wear your bike helmet folks!!) but allowing kids to enter risky situations can actually reduce their likelihood of getting hurt because they learn to measure risks! In particular, I’m thinking of adventure playgrounds, which are basically DIY playgrounds that kids make themselves. Of course, you’re not comparing play structures now to play structures in the past with that, and today’s play structures are held to strict standards after lots of lawsuits from kids getting hurt on pre-regulation ones.

As for allergies, it’s not that they didn’t exist at all in the past, but way more people do have food allergies now, and the rate is still rising. Nobody is 100% sure why, but it’s being actively researched by lots of folks.

Mental illness is hard to measure because of historical and ongoing stigma, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a combination of it being more in the open and there being more of it. There is an epidemic of loneliness, especially among older adults, which is demonstrably as bad for physical health as being a heavy smoker. And I’m sure it’s not great for mental health either! So on the one hand, people aren’t shoved into mental institutions or just quietly supported by their neighbors and faith communities without a diagnosis, but on the other people are less connected to each other and have more opportunities to compare themselves to an idealized vision other people.

And there are more people who identify as gay or trans because they see that it’s a thing and that it resonates with them and also that it’s safe to come out!  As opposed to people who hid their true selves their entire lives or just had a vague sense that they felt out of place or yes, were ostracized and excluded from the family. It can be easy to forget, but it’s only in the past decade that having a safe and supportive environment to come out in has become anything close to a norm.

The point is that things are different now than they used to be. Some things have gotten more prevalent, some things have gotten less so. Some things have just become a hell of a lot more visible to the point where your average person knows about it. Ignorance is sometimes a front for malice, but it’s worth giving people the benefit of the doubt because genuine ignorance means they can learn. Change is not bad just because it’s different and you’re not used to it, even if it feels that way. Some change is bad, yes, but a lot of change is neutral and some of it is even good because it reduces suffering in the world.

Meow

this animal is confused

Leave him alone he’s a good cat

i was genuinely surprised to find out that people thought that Zuko refusing to give his seat to Aang in Ember Island Players so aang and katara could sit together was Zuko having romantic feelings for Katara

because it really read to me more like ‘ex-Prince Zuko, who couldn’t see a hint if it tried to eat his head, fails to see the complexities of a romance going literally right outside his door 24/7 now’

he sat down and he’s being obstinate and refusing to move, its not PERSONAL for him, he’s just an oblivious dork

Zuko was oblivious to Suki and Sokka’s romance in exactly same way just an episode before.

Zuko won’t see a hint until it hits him in a head. Which actually explains:

1) 45% of Zuko actions can be explained by him being totally oblivious.

2) Mai’s courting works, since putting a fish on Zuko’s head is exactly the thing that makes him pay attention. (that’s a joke)

Aang and Katara were dating for three months before Zuko had any clue and he literally had to see them making out before he caught on.

Sokka: “She keeps calling him Sweetie and holding his hand, what did you think was happening?!”

Zuko: “Look at him! HE IS A SWEETIE! I THOUGHT WE ALL CALLED HIM THAT!”

Aang: “That answers some questions I had.”

So Your Temperate Home is Suddenly an Arctic Hellscape

As -10F hits area’s of the US who’ve never seen such temperatures in living memory, I wanted to give some tips from a Minnesotan who’s lived with these temps as a part of my life for 37 years.

1) Don’t Get Cocky. People used to these temps may laugh at our southern neighbors freaking out about the cold because yes, some parts of the US get such temps regularly every year. These people are being ignorant assholes. Our houses are mandated to have insulation that few of your homes will have. We pretty much all have huge puffy coats, and have well established winter weather gear drives for homeless and poor folks every year. We have expensive, well equipped infrastructure for cope with these temps and with large amounts of snow. You don’t. When it comes down to it, Minnesotans know to respect the cold temps- it’s just that a lot of the ways that do it are so commonplace as to be invisible to those who already have these habits.

2) Don’t go out wet. Dry your hair or stay inside. You will loose a lot of heat if you’re wet. Same for sweat, and wet diapers. And clothes with snow on them are now WET CLOTHES. Change into dry clothes as soon as possible.

3) If you have a shitty car battery or a car that sometimes struggles to start, then try not to use it. You’re unlikely to get the kind of temps where it’s impossible to start an engine (I’ve only experienced those temps a few times. Once my eyelashes froze shut and I almost froze to death in my own back yard. Don’t be like young me. Respect the cold.) If your car doesn’t start, you could be stranded somewhere, and realistically your area’s emergency services may be pretty overrun. 

4) Very cold air doesn’t hold moisture well. Plan for extra hydration for people, pets, and plants. Even if your staying in- most home heaters pull cold air from outside, then dry it out even MORE in the process of heating it. Dehydration is a thing. Even if your home’s heater has a humidifier attached to it (if you’re not sure, then it probably doesn’t.) it’s a good idea to drink extra water. Right now I have a few pots of water just left out by heaters to evaporate as much as possible. My mom used to just heat huge camping pots on the stove all day in cold temps. Remember, dry nasal passages really muck up your bodies ability to fight airborne illness. This is not a great time for that.

5) Help out homeless folks in your area in any way you can. These temps can and do kill. And since we have more evictions than any society can conscionably defend this year, we have high numbers of homeless people. Which means area supports for unhoused folks are often underfunded and over-taxed. 

6) Let your faucets drip. I know nobody likes to waste water but if your pipes freeze they will literally explode. Your home will flood. My mother’s kitchen got completely destroyed and it traumatized my childhood dog. Justa  bit of moving warm water will safeguard you from that.

7) Do. Not. Burn. Propane. Indoors. 

8) Plan for potential power outages. Ice on the lines can cause this and again, your infrastructure isn’t prepped for this. Unplug anything in your home you’re not using to do your part to help prevent rolling blackouts.

9) Driving on ice is a SKILL. Your roads may be filled with people who do not have that skill. Please please, stay off the roads if you can- even if you have this skill these roads will not be prepped and will, again, be full of people who don’t know how to do this because it just hasn’t come up that much in their life.

Stay safe and stay kind, folks! 

Another couple things:

Can’t put into words how hot this is to me

King of Cups

As someone who does not pay attention to lyrics in songs, I am always afraid someone who does pay attention is going to come along and see my music and be like “why are you listening to songs about kicking orphans and diverting funds from public libraries?” Like, I dunno! That’s news to me! The beat was fresh and the vibes were funky! I lose all knowledge of human language when the drum goes bop bop. I am as surprised and alarmed as you are.