Strange and never changing

Hmph. How very glib.

little a gore magala, as a treat

I drew a quick little comics essay today about a topic near and dear to my heart: horror for kids!

Or, “why some kids like to read books that scare them, and why you should let them.”

sometimes plushies make me cry because it’s like. they’re little guys made to be loved. their only purpose is to be held and hugged and loved. we made them because we love making things and we love loving things. and they’re so cute

Years back, I was working at a specialty store, and we got this HUGE crate of plushy toys. They were all insanely cute and squishy. I knew kids would go nuts for them, as it was the first week of December, so parents and grandparents often had kids with them while shopping for furniture, lamps, cooking equipment, lights, etc.

One night, I was working my last hour of my shift covering the Customer Service desk, which meant when I wasn't busy, I was supposed to help clean up around the cash registers, including taking back items people changed their minds about at the checkout. Earlier, I had witnessed a kid carrying thos cute plushy toy. It was a brown and white hedgehog. The kid, at the checkout, saw a remote control car and he told his dad he qanted it. The dad told him, "The plushy or the car- you can't have both" (by the way, I respect boundaries with kids and parents sticking to their guns about it), and the kid picked the car.

So, I'm cleaning up, have less than an hour left of my shift, and I see the little plushy hedgehog. Somehow, he never got put back nor had anyone else seen him and decided to buy him. He was just sitting there, slumped to the side, unattended.

It's Christmas and I'm a sentimental old sap at heart. My brain starts replaying the scene from RUDOLPH where he's on the Island of Misfot Toys, and is told a toy is never truly happy until it is loved. I picked him up and quickly took him back to the bin with the plushies but... It was empty. He was literally the last plushy toy and my boss was about to wheel the bin out. We weren't getting any more toys till November, so that meant any toys left at this point needed to sell or they'd be sent to the dump.

I brought the little hedgehog to the front, figuring someone would see him with the candy, candles, & Christmas brick-a-brack, and fall in love with him. When I finished my shift, I went to ask my manager a question and as I passed the Christmas candle display - there he sat, the sad little slumped over hedgehog plushy. No one had bought him, or even moved him.

My manager, Phillip, saw me and the hedgehog. He asked how the hedgehog got there. I told him how I'd put him there when the bin got sent back, and he was the only plushy left. Philip had kids, I figured he'd probably get sentimental and buy it for his kids. Nope. He shrugged and said he'd send it back to be disposed of.

That night, I came home with a plushy hedgehog in my passenger seat. My mom saw him and just thought he was the cutest little hedgehog and asked what I wanted to do with him. I told her the story, then added I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do with him.

My mom is a child psychiatrist, specializing in children with PTSD and brain damage that results in learning problems/issues with processing their emotions. She asked if she could have the plushy hedgehog (even offered to pay me for him, she didn't expect me to just give him over), so kids could hug him when they were upset in session.

Murphy, the plushy hedgehog that still slumps a little to the left when seated, has been hugged by hundreds of kids. Little girls have held him tight while explaining about bullies, little boys have held him tight while crying over their panic attacks, younger siblings have held him to whisper secrets while elder siblings and parents talk about self-soothing techniques, teenagers have hugged Murphy while talking about the worst day of their lives. Murphy has also been hugged by kids excitedly chatting about a new friend at school, a teen girl excited to be called by her name instead of her dead-name, little kids proudly saying they've mastered their ABCs, and even staff members who just need to come chat over a case they are having trouble with.

Every now and then, my mom brings Murphy home for a weekend. He gets washed (she calls it a Spa Weekend, to her coworkers, all of them laughing), dried, and sits outside with my mom in the sunshine to get aired out, then on Monday, they are back to work. Some kids even just ask to hold Murphy while they talk, no matter their mood or what they want to talk about. They just want to hug Murphy.

So yes. Plushies are made for one purpose. To be hugged and loved. To be a comfort.

My full art piece for @drkzine! I was so happy to do a page for both the lovely Shadowkeeper and one of my favorite lines in the game.

a great part of speedrunning documentaries/docuseries on youtube on super niche/old games is the fact that, in most cases, the only people with enough in-depth knowledge to make the video in the first place are the top runners themselves. which results in really funny moments where the narrator is like "but in 2016, a new runner would blow the category wide open with a 3-minute time save... meeee :3 teehee"

I imagined him emphasizing “鬼oni” （demon） appearance…

They actually made a formal set of guidelines for practice practice aboard ISS when the first Malaysian astronaut got to go to space!

Planetes, by Yukimura Makoto

let me tell you guys something, whether you’re an aspiring healer or what not.

do not ever rescue the tank when you want them to pull bigger and they hesitate. never. 

i had two people from balmung, my own gotdamn server, in a leveling and both the SMN and the SCH decided to berate me for not pulling bigger. SCH rescued me in the middle of the first pull of Don Mheg, a place notorious for hitting tanks hard (of which I’ve tried to pull big at request and I’d be left to die even burning all my CDs), and demanded I pull big. I said no. They kept berating me. So I said fine. I pulled what they wanted and they immediately let me die. Tried to tell me how to tank, use your CDs, everything. When I had done exactly that. 

I know sometimes it can be frustrating when a tank doesn’t pull bigger, I get that. But please for the love of fuck respect people’s limits. I’m a former career tank and I know my limits and I tend to not trust healers I don’t know. I like to test the waters first. Let me do my goddamn job.

this cutscene will never not be funny to me, you can literally see something in her brain snap in two

finding out about like 90% of bg3 shit like thirdhand whenever it crosses one of my feeds is so funny what do you mean the fucking cleric has higher str than the rapier-wielding folk hero warlock

starting to understand why this bitch hates it here

Made an illustration to mark my 100th Alatreon slain in MHW.

I like thancred with a black t-shirt

it's CC's anniversary and i realized i never posted this here. well

happy sweet 16 miku, please remember to pay for your auto insurance