gonna be a big one under the cut

The devastating difference between how much time it takes to write something vs how fast people read it lol

you're falling in the trap!! it will be read by many people, many times, and it will live on in their memories. and maybe no single other human will match you in time spent dedicated to your story, but as a collective we will outlast you. acts of creation only grow when they are shared

This. Writing is not like dinner. It can be consumed many times

This machine kills AI

Elon Musk bought the company. He has nothing to do with the development. #CosplayEngineer

No. I will not have you do this.

Dr. Nikola Tesla did not sign bad contracts. He signed an excellent contract with Westinghouse to bring AC power to America. Westinghouse was the big competitor against Edison Electric, which ran DC power. Thomas Edison was a massive prick and Edison Electric went around doing its best to convince everyone that AC power was dangerous, most infamously by electrocuting an elephant to death and developing the first execution-style electric chair using AC power. All of this cemented in the mind of the public that AC power was dangerous and deadly, while DC power was somehow safer.

By 1890, Westinghouse was in trouble. George Westinghouse went to Tesla and laid out the truth: if he honored the royalty contracts that he’d agreed to pay Tesla, he would go bankrupt. So Tesla tore up the contracts. He walked away from millions, maybe billions of dollars because he believed that wireless electricity should be free to the world. Westinghouse went on to bring AC power to homes across America.

Tesla wasn’t a bad businessman. He was an idealist who hated capitalism.

I’m getting really tired of the wise serene pacifist trope in fiction. Every committed pacifist, prison abolitionist, antiwar activist, etc I’ve ever met in real life has been vibrating with compressed rage at all times. Do you know what it’s like to believe deeply in your heart that doing harm to others is wrong and the goal of society should be to alleviate suffering for all people and live in the United States of America? IT’S NOT FUN. Show Us The Pissed-Off Pacifists. 

Dude there might be a word for the emotion that is forged when someone’s deep abiding love and compassion for all people and living things welds itself into decades of built-up foaming fury at how those people been treated their whole life by those in power to create a sort of alloyed super-commitment to a set of ethical principles but i promise you “tranquility” is not that fucking word

People used to comment on web comics.

People used to comment on fanfiction.

People used to comment on fanart.

People used to comment on OCs.

I hate "content" culture.

I hate "consuming content" and scrolling immediately to the next thing.

People used to be excited about the art that other people created.

People used to want to share that excitement with creators.

I hate this future.

Once someone tagged art that I made with "woah" and I think about it at least once a week. Someone else said "oh neat" once. Someone else WROTE A WHOLE DAMN POEM IN THE COMMENTS. Anyways even just one word can change how someone sees their art. You don't even have to think about it too hard. You could put a keyboard smash and I'd probably cry from joy.

I'm also trying hard to interact more, I understand that it's hard to break away from opening your phone and being in Content Consumption Mode.

I honestly hadn't stopped to think about this until I saw this post... I used to think people would get annoyed if they were notified everytime someone posted a comment on their art. I never thought about it being like fanfiction and that they might appreciate comments. Frick, that means I'm part of the problem on here. Thats gotta change.

Every tag, every comment, every reblog with some kind of reaction/opinion or even just one word. All of these things are precious to creators!

I spent countless hours reading and rereading tags full of love people left under my art. All the people i could gift a laugh to or even inspire with something I made mean more to me then you could ever know.

It's what makes me proud of my art!

And to think that you could have enjoyed my art in silence and I would have never known.

Half Goblin, half Hobbit.

Goblit.

God dammit I did this just for a pun but now I’m imagining this whole backstory where a wounded female goblin flees from some battle and winds up on the edges of the Shire and she’s gonna jump some Hobbit dude named Blinko Tumbrush but Blinko’s so unfailingly polite that his first reaction on seeing someone in a rough situation is to invite them in to dinner and gobbo chick is just like “… uh… ‘kay.”

And then she has dinner and it’s the best thing she’s ever eaten and even her little green brain is able to put together “If I knife this guy so I can take his stuff he can’t cook more of this” so when he asks her to stay the night she’s just like “Fuck yeah breakfast”.

And all the other Hobbits in the area are staring at this new arrival who starts begrudgingly working in the garden (she can pull out the weeds they’d normally have to hitch livestock to) and they’re all thinking “Uhhhhh that’s a fucking Goblin there, chief” except if they actually acknowledge that she’s a goblin then it’s a huge to-do and a lot of excitement and possibly there would be adventure involved in chasing her off. So they just sort of silently, collectively decide they’re going to ignore it and all go “Oh, Blinko finally found himself a lady, how nice, she must be one of the Glumbrushes from over the far side of West Farthing, I always did hear they were on the homely side, not much hair on their feet you know.”

And eventually in due time along comes Korbo Tumbrush and decently cute Hobbit baby but the biggest fucking ears you ever saw on a Hobbit and he’s a bit green and everyone is thinking “That’s a fucking half-Goblin you’ve got there, chief, you fucked a fucking Goblin, you made a baby with a damn Goblin my guy” but this would be an immensely rude thing to say to someone so they’re just like “Oh how nice, Blinko, he looks just like you, has those Glumbrush eyes though.”

And Korbo the Goblit grows up a proper little man in his waistcoat and pipe and every so often someone visits from a different part of the shire and sees this plump green dude with massive flappy pointed ears and they start to open their mouth only for a local to leap right in and go “HAHA YES THAT IS KORBO TUMBRUSH A VERY UPRIGHT HOBBIT WE ALL LOVE KORBO HE’S GLUMBRUSH ON HIS MOTHER’S SIDE (WE THINK) THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING!!!” and the visitor just starts nodding along emphatically because this is clearly something that is Not Spoken Of.

I fuckin love it

I. I have to know …

Does Korbo know!? Like is the Gobit aware his momma is a goblin? Or does he just grow up like

“yup us Glumbrushes sure do look different”

He leaves home on an adventure and stumbles n a hoard of goblins marches right up like

“how do ya do fellow hobbits? You know I’m half Glumbrush myself”

Alright, so, Korbo got in a fight once.

Once.

The Tumbrushes are, as a family trade, purveyors of fine pieces of wood. Not of large amounts of lumber, for which Hobbits don’t have a particular lot of call save occasionally, but rather of particularly nice pieces suitable for the making of fine window trimmings, floors, or the occasional carved bit of artwork to be given at a fancy event. Obviously for this one doesn’t go cutting down any tree willy-nilly, and Korbo had spent most of the day out and about looking for suitable trees.

(Korbo also personally assisted in cutting them down, being rather well known as on the strong side for a Hobbit, wink wink, nudge nudge.)

Having put in a genuine hard day’s work and rather pleased with himself, Korbo retired to the local bar to have a few beers and a smoke and to partake in good company, all of whom had gotten so used to pretending there was nothing odd about him that it was almost as if there was genuinely nothing odd about him.

Until along comes Humdil Thumbletoe.

Now the Thumbletoes were what was known in the Shire as “experts on genealogy”. This might sound like quite a good thing when you consider how well-versed most Hobbits are in their family lines, until you consider that most Hobbits are already well-versed in their family lines. A Hobbit being thoroughly knowledgeable of their family tree is not much to be remarked upon, so when it is remarked upon it is more to mean that the Hobbits in question are such tremendous mooches that they have had to dive far more deeply into their bloodlines looking for more relatives to leech off of than any Hobbit would generally consider polite.

Humdil was fairly brawny as Hobbits go, which was about all you could say for him. In fact Humdil had realized that was really all that could be said for him and had become a bit of a bully. And so it was he entered the bar that night with a very put-upon third cousin twice removed (by marriage) and caught sight of Korbo for the first time.

“Why, look at that one!” he bellowed, guffawing. “He’s so ugly his mother had to have been a Goblin, ey!”

The whole bar goes quiet. Aside from the obvious abominable rudeness of this, Humdil has said the thing that is never supposed to be said, and is clearly too stupid to realize he’s right. All heads slowly turn to Korbo.

Now, it is well known that Korbo has inherited his father’s tendency to never give a single solitary hairy-toed fuck about anything. He has currently been in the running to be at least the second most chill dude to ever be born in the Shire. And indeed, right now he’s still looking perfectly calm, puffing on his pipe. He sets the pipe aside, finishes off the last of his beer, and stands up.

“Sir, we’ll be needing to step outside.”

Now Hobbits are mostly a peaceable lot, not given to wars or fighting for any old thing, but a bit of fisticuffs outside the bar is hardly unheard of. Mostly everyone is kind of nervous about this because they’re still not sure how Korbo is reacting to this whole Goblin thing. So someone takes Korbo’s jacket and Humdil’s third cousin twice removed (by marriage) grudgingly takes his, and the two square off.

Now, Humdil was a big Hobbit, it was true, but there were a few things that, being a moron who didn’t realize he was right, and who had never been outside the Shire or seen a Goblin anyway, he could not possibly know.

For one, Goblins have long, spindly arms, giving them a surprisingly good reach for their size… not abominably long, certainly not in the case of a half-Goblin, and certainly not above being concealed by the cut of a well-tailored shirt. Second, they are compact, wiry creatures, with dense muscle over their otherwise lanky forms, and given to that a Hobbit’s already greater mass and the anchoring benefit of large, wide feet, well.

The moment Humdil stepped forward and started to swing, Korbo’s fist shot out like one of Gandalf’s better rockets and struck him directly in the nose. His flight was also, for some weeks after, compared to one of Gandalf’s rockets, though not quite as far and the explosion at the end was mostly him laying on the ground cursing wetly due to all the blood streaming from his nose.

Korbo apologizes profusely to all and sundry for the disturbance, collected his jacket, and goes home. Honey is out picking mushrooms (still being of the more nocturnal persuasion after all these years), but Blinko’s sitting by the fire reading a book. Korbo sees that there’s a newspaper (full of lots of extremely important things like how the pipeweed was growing and which barrels of beer were going to be uncasked that month), so picks it up and sits down to read.

“Evening, Da.”

“Evening, son. Pleasant evening out?”

“Oh, fine. Save for I broke Humdil Thumbletoes’s nose for him.”

“Hm, hm, I see. Why did you feel the need to do that?”

“Well, he called Ma a Goblin, you see.”

Blinko slowly lowers his book, and slowly raises his head. Looks at Korbo for long moments. Raises one eyebrow a little.

“Son. You know full well your mother is a Goblin.”

“Well, yes, but he didn’t know that, and he said it as an insult anyway so it being true or not doesn’t really matter that much, does it?“

“Hm, hm. I suppose that’s true at the end of the day, isn’t it?”

Blinko goes back to reading his book. Korbo continues reading the paper.

“You could have stabbed him,” Blinko eventually notes.

“Aye, could have stabbed him,” Korbo agrees easily enough. “But it’s a bit of a mess, isn’t it?”

“True, true, probably would have been a bit of a mess in the road, not very thoughtful to the community,” Blinko allows.

And that was the end of it.

I love all of this so much. Also-

“Sir, we’ll be needing to step outside.”

The power. I set down my drink after that one.

Oddly enough, one might expect Korbo to have trouble finding a lady hobbit. He’s not given to being as plump as his fellows, and his feet are a bit small, and he’s rather, well, tall for a hobbit, isn’t he. And green. Always looks a bit like he’s eaten something that didn’t agree with him.

But he runs into Hilda Greebrook one day in town, and she’s lost her favorite pipe, which is of course a tragedy of the highest order. It’s not unheard of for a lady to smoke, but it isn’t particularly encouraged, either, and so the general reaction is “you poor dear, perhaps it’ll turn up, hadn’t you best be getting home for luncheon?”

Korbo, however, stops to help her look for the pipe, and when it’s nowhere to be found he offers to make her another just like it, if she can tell him what precisely made it so special that it was a favorite, for after all a favorite must be distinguishable by something.

Unfortunately the thing that distinguishes it is that she got it from Gandalf and it’s quite unlike most pipes in the Shire, so recreating it is quite the task. But Korbo sets himself to it anyway, working a bit each night and handing it to Hilda daily to see if it feels quite right, and six months later he’s done it—recreated a pipe that came from the world of men, or perhaps elves, but certainly not that of hobbits.

Hilda for her part discovers Korbo quite likes to read, and though he’s from a reasonably well-to-do family—for hobbits are always in need of new toys and fancy party decorations after all—can’t get his hands on books fast enough to satisfy himself, and, well, her da’s a transcriber, someone’s got to write out the papers after all, and she’s got access to practically every book in the Shire, and ways to make copies besides.

At first people think it’s odd, a hobbit who can’t see asking to borrow books, but then they find out Korbo is involved and asking questions could lead to excitement and so they absolutely do not ask and simply offer up their histories and books of poetry and hobbit folklore (for even without want for excitement there are things it’s good to remember, and things every hobbit child should know so they, too, can grow up properly plump and staying well away from adventure), and resign themselves to never seeing their books again.

And then they find that far from their books quite disappearing, they return in fine form—albeit usually in a timeframe rather too long to be polite—but oddly quite a lot seem to have tiny bits of wood shavings in, although one wouldn’t expect it in a hobbit home? And THEN Hoptus Redbranch finds Korbo one day in his workshop, he’s just stopped by for the wood to repair a door after an unfortunate incident with attempting to remove a colony of bees and rather too much smoke for the moving of bees, and Korbo is simply. Pressing small pieces of hot iron into a very thin piece of wood, making small triangle patterns like no hobbit decoration Hoptus has ever seen, and he’s quite frequently checking into a book on his left that turns out to be one of Hoptus’ own books, and very carefully turning the pages with a cloth so as to not get oil from the hot iron all over the pages—

—and THEN, not long after the news of Korbo’s strange woodburning activities have spread across most of the Shire (and caused no small amount of consternation, because goblins are clever but so often the things they make are cruel and the cause of ever so much unpleasantness), Hilda is seen in her own garden with Korbo with a stack of these thin pieces of wood all carefully hinged together, running her fingers over carefully sanded and varnished pieces and feeling the triangles and reciting a hobbit tale.

For all those months of strangely disappeared books, Korbo has been translating Westron into an alphabet that can be read with one’s fingers, and making Hilda books, and teaching her to read them.

Nobody is entirely surprised, after about three years, when the two of them vanish for a few months, and come back quite married.

Within a few generations, this is absolutely going to be a thing Not Worth Remarking Upon. So when a young hobbit finds themselves accidentally ripping the knobs off doors when they’re cross, their parents will sigh and the elder hobbits in the village will remark that ‘that’ll be the Glumbrush in ‘im coming through, I told you his ears were a little bigger than his siblings, didn’t I?’ much the same as they always did on Bilbo and Frodo’s Took relations and the resulting hankering for adventure.

Were anyone from the outside to visit the Shire, they’d find a small colony of goblins thoroughly intermarried and also avoiding the usual goblin tendencies towards stabbing, so long as no one is so gauche as to insult them for being goblins.

(Sooner or later, one very flustered hobbit is going to accidentally do the same thing with an orc.)

The Tumbrushes, as with all Hobbits, were quite proud of their work, and rightly so. Their works are fine, of the highest quality, and they fetch the appropriate price for their labors, making them quite well-to-do. In the Shire, wealth breeds respect, of course, and so the Tumbrushes are quite well respected.

And yet there’s a difference between “well to do” and “scandalously wealthy.”

So when, when Blinko Tumbrush recieved a letter inviting them to the Baggins residence for tea, he of course brought his wife and son along.

Now, Korbo had crossed paths with Bilbo Baggins a time or two in the market, never for much longer than the time required for Polite Conversation, and so wasn’t expecting much. Sure, everyone knew Bilbo was odd, and were willing to talk about it, since Bilbo made no effort to hide his adventures and had, on numerous occasions, commented on visiting the elves or poking around the mountains, but they were in the Shire, no adventure in sight, and so this should be a normal, proper visit between client and craftsman.

And then Bilbo opened the door, pipe in hand, took the three of them in, and said, quite out of nowhere, “Ah, Shoebiter clan.”

Honey Tumbrush, late of the Shoebiter clan of the Misty Mountains, smiled with all her teeth and replied “Dragon thief!”

Bilbo guffawed and waved them inside, offering them hospitality in the goblin tongue, with the guarantee of safety and threat of violence that implied. They had arrived in time for second breakfast, and didn’t leave until past dinner, having hammered out a contract and shared many a story.

Blinko Tumbrush had only one thing to say as he walked home, arm in arm with his wife and son trailing behind. “He’s an odd fellow, that Bilbo, but nice enough. Yes, nice enough indeed.”

I love them

Gets better and better every time I see it

What was removed?! Which guidelines did it violate? This post was complete last time I saw it.

Here’s my art that apparently was too much for tumblr!

Great news everyone. There was a kitten wandering in the drive thru at work and my inner warrior cats kid tried to be a hero and capture him.

I have now suffered multiple puncture wounds and have to go to the emergency room.

Me: I shall become his mother and gain his trust

Me talking to an animal control officer five minutes later: he is a nasty horrid little boy and I am bleeding heavily

Animal control officer on the phone: So he’s in your car with you?

Me: Um. It’s his car now and he’s very mad at me.

Second animal control officer: oh you captured him and got him in your car? He’s friendly?

Me, my right hand completely wrapped in paper towels: wouldn’t say that

Urgent Care Nurse: Wow it’s strange he managed to get you so many times.

Me: I uh. Did not let go.

You vibe as someone prone to toxic relationships

People on tumblr will just say anything huh.

Oh cmon, "he hurt me a lot cause i couldn't let go" absolutely has double interpretation.

Me, holding a cat (of unknown gender) as it repeatedly digs its little teeth deep into my flesh: Is this… too… yuri?

This website is free

We pay in other ways.

This is so sad

hot artists don't gatekeep

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.

Homie gonna share this

They really went there huh.

@acelacealex i thought people should see this

To Summarize:

Well…..

FUCK

csak egy nátha!!

article link

site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

site that gives you synonyms and antonyms

THAT FIRST SITE IS EVERY WRITER’S DREAM DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I’VE TRIED WRITING SOMETHING AND THOUGHT GOD DAMN IS THERE A SPECIFIC WORD FOR WHAT I’M USING TWO SENTENCES TO DESCRIBE AND JUST GETTING A BUNCH OF SHIT GOOGLE RESULTS

OMG

This one’s an always-reblog, because who knows who needs it and hasn’t seen it yet?

Uh, I think you mean nothing is more *magical*

If you've never seen it before then it's almost definitely harmless because the world just never shuts the duck up about the five whole kinds that can ever seriously hurt you.

There are people in the notes I think I kinda want to beat in the face with a mallet

Seeing a bug I’d never seen before would make my day as a kid

Idk why I’m restricting it either. Still would

Are the words "insect apocalypse" new to this person?

You know what's REALLY terrifying? Not seeing any bugs at all

But seriously, almost all bugs are entirely harmless, and even among ones that CAN sting or bite you, most of them won't unless they feel they absolutely have to in order to avoid certain death.

Y'all have seen those pictures of oblivious people holding some type of bug that can give you a painful sting asking "what is this bug?" right? That bug just got grabbed by a giant Godzilla monster 10,000 times its size and it has an instant, sure-fire way of making the Godzilla monster leave it alone, but it's like "Ehh, better not, maybe it will put me down."

There are so many people in the notes describing common everyday bugs as though channeling the spirit of Pliny the Elder himself. Y'all have no business dunking on H.P. Lovecraft's air-conditioning horror if you are this terrified of regular crane flies

The chasm between the people going about their lives terrified to ever see a bug, and the people who Know, is so vast it kind of boggles my mind.

Like personally I am filled with a deep, gut-wrenching horror at reading these replies! The fact that there are places on Earth where it's possible to be unfamiliar with the most basic types of insect, is so scary.

Bugs are the foundation of the food chain and necessary to turn organic matter back into soil. No bugs means the plants are slowly starving to death in their own waste and the skies are empty of birds except for a few that can survive off of bird feeders. No bugs means the whole ecosystem is dying.

...except...ticks, German cockroaches, bedbugs, mosquitoes, and other bugs that are parasitic on humans; this kind of sterile, lifeless wasteland would be a dream come true for them! Unlimited food and ZERO natural predators!

Further note. I sympathize intensely with people who deal with phobias of insects—I can't even imagine what a painful trauma being stung by angry bees might be, without positive and beautiful experiences with insects to counteract it! And sometimes even in the absence of a negative experience, brains decide to hit the berserk button at the most random stimuli. I get it.

Here's the thing, though. Fear and disgust of insects is socially normalized and enforced.

In fact, it is promoted in order to sell pesticides—products that are incredibly harmful and damaging to the environment and can be a health risk to humans and their pets.

Humans learn what to be afraid of by watching the reactions of people around them. If someone responds with fear and disgust to a bug and kills it, and a small child is watching, that child learns to hate and fear bugs. This can really interfere with a child's ability to enjoy the outdoors and experience the mental and physical health benefits of nature! Maybe this was what happened to you: adults around you treated bugs with disgust and fear, and it got lodged in your brain...

But it's not just other people's reactions, it's also tv shows and movies, common misconceptions, and misinformation. Many people believe things about insects that aren't true, urban legends based on people's fears or lies spread by sensationalistic media sources.

When this fear of such a large part of the family of Life is treated as normal, it becomes a dumping ground for hateful impulses that exist within all of us: hatred of the unfamiliar, fear of difference, disregard of everything that isn't beautiful and useful to yourself.

And this is a really sad way to live. Bugs are just guys that you share your community with. A lot of them are essential for your life and happiness, doing tons of hard work to keep your habitat a good place to live. Most of them are just hanging out. Very few of them are harmful to you, and if your fear keeps you from learning about them, you will not be able to learn which ones and how to avoid them, and might actually increase your chances of running into the harmful bugs, by killing and poisoning the helpful guys that are their natural predators.

Bugs are just guys. Some of them like a lot of the same things you do, like flowers, sweets, and friends. Some of them also like a lot of things you DON'T like, such as poop and dead bodies, and thank God, because if nobody was around to clean those things up the world would be a disgusting place.

Yes, bugs are crunchy, but you would also be crunchy if Godzilla accidentally crushed you, and the whole thing would be pretty disgusting for Godzilla. Yes, bugs have a lot of legs, but that's important for balance, dexterity, and succeeding in the fast-paced work environment that bugs often have. They don't mean to crawl on you. You're just so large, they probably thought you were a landscape.

I really do think if you're afraid of/disgusted by bugs that it's worth it to examine that fear to see if it's a genuine phobia or if society has merely told you that you should be scared of bugs, because ngl I used to not mind bugs so much when I was a little kid, but then I lived with people who hate them for various reasons and without realizing what was going on I started mirroring them until I legit was very scared of insects. But once I realized where the scared reaction came from and that I seriously did not like it I was able to slowly train myself out of it, and now the only bugs that really bother me are flies and cockroaches(for sanitary reasons mostly, I know they're important to the ecosystem but there's nothing in my house that needs help decomposing).

And like I won't fault people who have real, serious phobias, my fiancé has been stung by bees like 10 times and now he understandably panics around basically any flying insect, and I've worked on getting over real phobias and it's really hard, but I really think it's worth it to do some introspection, to see if it's society getting in your head and if it is working on getting it out of there. And this is maybe a silly motivation, but there is something weirdly empowering about being the person called to take bugs outside. People treat you like you're some kind of wizard, it's great.

But yeah I know it isn't possible for everyone, but this is one thing that it's really worth working on, because we NEED bugs and our collective hatred and fear of them isn't sustainable.

hot take: realism in a work of fiction doesn’t come from being as grim as possible. it comes from detail. 

Life is full of small, odd details that are hard to anticipate if you haven’t lived them. If you winkle them out, either by research or by imagining living through their context very vividly, you create realism. Crucially, not all these strange details are bad:

Infant mammals crave warmth and softness more than food. Even rats know what unfairness is and find it unpleasant, even if they get the same reward no matter what. It is possible for humans to learn to sleep while standing. Humans and cats chose each other once, twice, a thousand times. A bat, whose wing surface is made of whole hands rippling with muscle that allows it to hold delicate postures of the fingertips at speed, is a much more maneuverable flier than a bird whose wings are whole arms studded in keratin feathers—but the bird needs for fewer metabolic resources to fly. Blind humans often have circadian rhythm disorders because we use light for more than just sleeping with. Pigeons use special magnetoceptors in their eyes to literally see the magnetic fields in the earth to navigate.

A naked mole rat that goes for too long without its kin will die: the same is usually true for a naked human. Kindness and reliably supporting other group members can be an effective strategy for consolidating social power. So can reducing intra-group violence and harassment. There is no place, no matter how inhospitable, where life will not find a way to eke out a living.

These, too, are real truths.

Roasted chicken, ginger, daikon, shiitake mushroom soup with lime, cilantro, broccoli sprouts, and rice noodles

Thank u for this contribution

I know rooster teeth had a whole fucking host of problems and haven't watched their stuff in years but I still shed a tear for another day another internet group getting bought out by big media companies because "they're successful" and then being shut down because they don't make enough profit for wall street. let things stay small. not everything needs to be contract deals and billboards the beauty of the internet should be that there's thousands of little things for people to find the niche they like, not that anything that becomes popular is obviously the next big franchise and we need to throw millions of dollars at it. We live in an era where big companies are taking everything small from us. Heardle getting bought out by Spotify and then shut down bc they realized it cost more than it made. capitalism and the Internet are not built for each other.