LOOK AT THEM

Wisy made these two boys look amazing! Thank you so much! Art based of my fic Ice Breaker! I promise it'll warm you up really fast!

God, I could stare at them all day long 😍

You’re a mimic. You were disguised as a chair in a dungeon when an adventurer decided to take you as loot. You’ve actually enjoyed your life ever since as furniture in a jolly tavern. So when some ruffians try to rob the now-elderly adventurer’s business, you finally reveal yourself.

If it had learned one thing during its long life, it is that Noisies are creatures of habit. Of patterns. Of repetition dictated by the coming and going of the light, or of the cold. When the light began to fade, the Noisies gathered in Carry-Me’s den and were even noisier than usual. They fed and drank and made much of themselves. When the dark began to fade, they made their way off to their own dens, and home grew quiet. Carry-Me always seemed relieved at the quiet, even as he welcomed all his fellow Noisies and took their shinies and gave them food and drink. Carry-Me’s mate, Move-Quiet seemed no less relieved, and no less tired. Those quiet moments were also the only time when Smoky-Growling came out of the den where the food came from, and made happy noises with the other two. They would all gather the drinking containers, and scrape away the dry rushes from the floor, put down new rushes, straighten up the furnishings, set the place to rights.

And they always left one table covered with food the other Noisies had not eaten.

It would eat it when light shone into the den and they were all sleeping. After the first few times, it had learned to take the food, but not the hard round things underneath it, or the pointy metal sticks sometimes stuck in it. They were palatable, but hard to digest, and it was not as if he needed them. It would also eat the tiny Noisies that scuttled around the back, trying to get into Smoky-Growling’s den. It would not chase them if they managed to escape outside, but they rarely did anymore.

It had learned some of their noises, too. Mostly those it suspected had to do with it, those Carry-Me and its nest-mates spoke in the quiet after all the other Noisies had gone. ‘Tame’, they called it. ‘Domesticated’, too. It understood, to some degree, that they knew. They knew it was there. They knew what it was. For a long time it had thought its camouflage so great that they were unaware, and why not? It had been fantastic camouflage, thank you very much. It had made of itself an absolutely exquisite throne, with finely engraved, curling wooden arms gilded in gold, beautiful indigo leather armrests and seats, bejeweled fittings, a plush indigo cushion that felt like buttery leather to the touch, and a swooping back full of wood-carved fangs.

The fangs, of course, were quite real. It had been quite proud of that bit of cleverness.

But no, they knew. It had had ample time to try and understand that, in the quiet time when the nest was closed and the dust motes danced on the light coming through the decoy entrances, covered by a see-through film that did not, actually, allow passage. (It was really a very cleverly made nest.) Why did they let it stay? They were its natural enemies. Whenever it, or one of its kind, found a Noisy, either it ate the Noisy, or the Noisy killed it. But Carry-Me had, instead, carried it out of its den, into the light, across the surface. It had sat, unmolested, in a dusty room increasingly full of Noisy things. They did love to hoard their things. For a long time it had sat there, eating the scuttling Noisies that occasionally meandered in, and why not? It was warm, it was dry, it was empty. There were no others to compete for what little prey came by.

Eventually they had moved it to this den. Here, too, there were patterns. When the light was at its brightest, Noisies poured in, packed the place, ate the food that came out of Smoky-Growling’s den, left shinies behind, and departed. Then it would be quiet, once again, until the light began to fade. More Noisies would come in, to repeat the process. There would be drinking. Sometimes they would make so much noise that even Carry-Me would not abide them, and roar at them until it subsided. Sometimes they would fight amongst themselves, but not often. If Smoky-Growling, coming out of his den to growl at the squabblers did not stop them, Carry-Me would point to the gilded throne-like chair sitting by the hearth. He would point at it, and the squabbling ceased.

It was part of their pattern, and it was… nice. It wasn’t as nice as sharing space with nest-mates, which wasn’t nice at all when there wasn’t enough food. It was a different sort of safe, and it… liked it. Even if it could not understand why. It was nice to be safe, to feel safe, to know it was not alone, but not in danger of being eaten because prey grew scarce. It was reassuring, in the same way well-fed nest-mates were reassuring to have around, to know there was strength in numbers.

So the beautifully gilded throne-like chair had remained by the hearth.

Only once had someone chosen to disregard the many and ample warnings Carry-Me and Smoky-Growling tendered. Once, one of the squabbling Noisies had put his hands on it, bellowing. It knew what came of such things; it had seen many a piece of furniture be used to whack another Noisy around. At that point, Smoky-Growling would come out of the kitchen and toss the unrulies out. Why he didn’t just eat them, it didn’t know, but that was a rule that did not need to be spoken to be understood, and one it could abide, as well-fed as it was: do not eat the other Noisies.

But the Noisy had put his hands on it, too fast for anyone to react. Zap-Burn-Light might, he had once been even faster than Move-Quiet, but by that point Zap-Burn-Light had stopped coming around. A pity, because he was quiet, and calm, and it tingled faintly when he sat on the buttery soft indigo cushion that was its tongue. In any case, The Noisy had grabbed it, ready to whack some other Noisy with it. Except the ‘chair’ had not budged. Caught off-guard, it had done the first thing it could think of, and the claw-footed legs of the chair had sunk those claws into the floorboards. So the Noisy yanked again, making angry noises.

And it had growled a warning.

The nest had gone really quiet.

The Noisy had let go, the sweat of its fear a delightful salty taste on its skin. It had backed away, and Carry-Me had made amused noises until he could hardly catch his breath and Move-Quiet whacked him gently on the back of his head and called him an ‘idiot’.

So, in a way, it guessed, it really was ‘tame’ and ‘domesticated’. ‘Domesticated’, that was was Smoky-Growling told Carry-Me he was. That Move-Quiet had ‘domesticated’ him. And Carry-Me would point out, with great pride, that they had ‘tamed’ Smoky-Growling. It had to do with giving up their roaming, and settling down to a nest, and making others give them shinies, rather than having to fight with sword and axe and magic for them. It would rather be ‘tame’ and ‘domesticated’ than starving, or destroyed by a pack of Noisies, or devoured by a larger nest-mate if food grew scarce and hunger great. So it grew ‘tame’, and ‘domesticated’, and settled into a comfortable pattern. Sometimes Move-Quiet would slip into the room, in the golden early light, and sit on the plush indigo cushion. She often did so when she had a youngling, letting chubby hands and tiny fingers map out the patterns of gold-leaf in the wood-carved armrests. It was good. It would have been hard to tell her younglings apart from all the other Noisies otherwise, particularly as they grew up and matched them in size.

Sometimes, but not often, the younglings themselves would sneak in. Happy-Sound would lay down on the floor and tickle the underside of the chair until it would wriggle in response to the funny feeling, and she would make the happiest sounds. No-Shoes would meander in and climb laboriously up on the buttery soft indigo cushion, and then pretend to be a ruler of Noisies, gesturing importantly and commanding the silence and the dust-motes in the golden light. It would usually take such opportunities to clean the youngling’s feet subtly, because Move-Quiet did not make happy noises when she discovered the youngling had misplaced yet another pair of footwear, and if Move-Quiet was not happy, there was no peace for anyone in the nest. But they, too, eventually stopped coming in. They had gone away, like other Noisies, to look for shinies. It was always just the five of them, and then just the four of them when Zap-Burn-Light stopped coming.

The patterns remained, and it understood them, and that is all that mattered to it. Its kind were relatively simple predators. Until the pattern broke.

It had been drowsing in the golden morning light, playing with a fork under its tongue, enjoying the bitter taste of it for a novelty, when Carry-Me had crashed through the den’s back entrance. The Noisy had staggered, and then fallen to the clean rushes on the floor. He had not gotten up. It had gone very still; it could scent something almost forgotten in the air. Blood. Noisy blood. Not the blood of scuttling Noisies, no; this was coppery and salty and sweet, rich and warm and there were tastes embedded in its memory that rose up like a tide. Except this was Carry-Me. The tide turned into a churning whirlpool. Carry-Me was bleeding. Carry-Me, who could cow a whole pack of Noisies with one look, who could growl and quiet a whole room, who sometimes left extra food out if the pickings were slim at the end of the night. Carry-Me was on the floor, he was bleeding, and he was not getting up. It felt the sort of panic that wells up from seeing a nest-mate cleaved under an ax. Get up!, it thought, but Noisies were, well, Noisies. They did not have a proper language, only noises, and while it had learned a great many of them, it had never learned to make them back.

Three Noisies came in through the shattered back entrance of the den and oh, they had weapons. They had a sword and an ax and an ugly club, and it knew clubs. It knew them almost as well as axes. The Noisy with the sword was dragging Move-Quiet by a handful of her hair, and she was raging at them all, kicking and clawing. When it scented her blood, it could only think of Happy-Sound and No-Shoes. The whirlpool inside it turned into a dark, black thing.

“There,” the Noisy with the sword pointed at the gilded, throne-like chair sitting by the banked hearth, its gold-leaf trimming gleaming in the morning light, the indigo of its leather cushions rich as the day it had been dyed. Ax-Noisy and Club-Noisy nodded, and moved towards it.

How long? Most mimics die young; they eat each other in times of famine. They’re discovered and destroyed. How many find a home where they’re fed? Sheltered? How long does it take for a creature whose size and power depend entirely on its age and feeding to grow from a humble beginning, say, a throne-like chair with gold-leaf carved armrests, indigo cushions and a swooping backrest, into something much larger?

How long does it take to tame a mimic?

The men advanced towards the chair.

And the walls of the tavern growled at them.

when it takes you a while to process what someone is saying and you realize they asked you a question

I cannot fucking believe I am drunk, past midnight, and tumblr is throwing fucking saturated fatty-acids at me

Listen here friendo I didn’t sit through a year of organic chemistry for you to come into my house and call a carboxylic acid a saturated fatty acid you respect that hexadecanoic acid

And I didnt get a degree in biochemistry to hear you say that carboxylic acids with aliphatic chains arent fatty acids. That hexadecanoic acid IS a saturated fatty acid!

lovely story from a friend today.

Look, this post has been wildly more popular than I thought it deserved, apparently at least in part because "don't burden others; be independent" is far more ingrained in people than I realized. So here's the thing: society works when people help each other. Helping others gives people a chance to know each other, and gives them an investment in the people they help. Helping creates bonds. People enjoy helping, and you are doing a good by letting them help you if they so wish.

Offer help; accept help. You will be a part of creating a helping culture. Which, incidentally, weakens capitalism and the fractionation between people that benefits those who would use us.

No matter how lost you feel, all you need to find is the next right step.

Not only that, but being on the right path often FEELS better and more natural - even if it's more work.

So you're only a step away from a process under which you'll thrive.

The best news: there are multiple right steps that can work for you.

There are many different paths to happiness you can take.

If you feel like you took a wrong turn, you can always try another path.

Have a beautiful day!

Thanks everyone for the warm welcomes🥹These are from very long time ago, all about touches!

The titles translate to

# first snow

And

# “I'm so glad”

I made my DTIYS for @wisyhana. I hope it didn't come out too dark (;

I love how the black works in this!! Lovely lovely 💕🌸

YGO sketch dump

Bits and bobs of b&w puzzle

favorite tags from the notes so far:

#throwback to that one time a platonic friend invited me to a swinger club#and his earnest reasoning was#'the buffet there is the best I have ever been to and it's so cheap we need to eat our way through the buffet together'#I didn't go but I have reliable sources that the buffet really is that good (via @notgreengardens)

#this has been the case at every single kink event i've been to#went to a fireplay demo once and it took like 45 minutes to get started because everyone was distracted by the host's pet lizard (via @glorious-spoon)

The best sex party I ever went to nearly stopped because someone taped a sheet to the back of sliding glass windows and were using dry erase markers to make diagrams. A bunch of math and physics PhD’s were helping a chemistry phd with a thorny problem and they cheered when they solved it. A board game night broke out and it was really hard to pry people away from the games, science and snacks for sex so someone put up a pole in the living room and four women started pole dancing while shouting instructions to the scientists and board game nerds.

Epic party, I think I shagged 8 women that night and I won a card game.

Surprisingly, this is not a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference, but an actual fact. From Burnout: Solve Your Stress Cycle, by Emily and Amelia Nagoski

I think Doctor Emily Nagoski has a PHD but YEAH

[image ID, photo of a book page:

[bold, centered text] Forty-Two Percent [bold ends]

So how much is “adequate”?

Science says: 42 percent.

That’s the percentage of time your body and brain need you to spend resting. It’s about ten hours out of every twenty-four. It doesn’t have to be every day; it can average out over a week or a month or more. But yeah. That much.

“That’s ridiculous! I don’t have that kind of time!” you might protest - and we remind you that we predicted you might feel that way, back at the start of the chapter.

We’re not saying you [italic] should [end italic] take 42 percent of your time to rest; we’re saying if you don’t take the 42 percent , the 42 percent will take you. It will grab you by the face, shove you to the ground, put its foot on your chest, and declare [image ends here, mid-sentence]

end ID]

Here’s the last paragraph, completed courtesy of Goodreads:

We’re not saying you should take 42 percent of your time to rest; we’re saying if you don’t take the 42 percent, the 42 percent will take you. It will grab you by the face, shove you to the ground, put its foot on your chest, and declare itself the victor.

every gym leader is like “I lost!?! UNBELIEVABLE!” buddy you live in a world where every ten year old child has always been offered a free fire breathing monster at least once and you brought nothing to this fight but anthropomorphic flowers

gym leaders’ whole job is to provide a specific challenge, a battle of a certain type and difficulty level. if you’ve brought the tools and skills to complete that challenge, you’re going to win by design. the pokémon in that battle are probably not actually the strongest pokemon they have.

when gym leaders go “argh, how could i lose??” they’re acting to give your victory legitimacy because you’re 10. they’re like a villain cosplayer letting a baby knock them over. they’re being nice!!

Like how adult lions let baby lions “defeat” them

"Why do so many action characters wear high heels?"

While you can do some badass tricks while rocking stiletto heels, they probably wouldn't be the first pair of shoes I'd throw on to go fight crime!

Find me on Patreon and YouTube!

With almost everything on earth there’s someone that’s dedicated their entire lives to it either through hobby or career and I’m so glad that there’s someone thinking about everything.

I’m glad that there’s people that travel around Tokyo taking pictures of trains and I’m glad that there’s people that design printers and I’m stoked that people like hiking down abandoned trails and reading old scientific texts from 400 bce. It’s cool. I’ve got my own corners of stuff I like. I hope I’m adding to something when I read ancient literature. If nothing else it makes me feel connected to everyone else with really specific interests.

there’s a guy on youtube who really likes romanian trains. he’s got hundreds of videos spanning 14 years of trainspotting and rearview rides in old and shabby trains on old and shabby 60-year-old rails. i (who also like romanian trains but i’m not like, passionate about them) thought it was a really cool hobby to have…….and then i found a full 4-hour rearview of the route to my grandparents’ village. the one i took every summer from birth into my 20s. every tiny little stop is nearly time-stamped and in-between there’s every river and bridge crossing and power station, every old silo and derelict water tower somehow still standing, and i remember all of it.

sometimes i let the video run in the background while working because i like the sounds (there’s no music like in similar videos from other channels and i’m very nostalgic about those sounds). a few times when i was at my lowest from depression and insomnia, i’d just stay in bed and watch all 4 uninterrupted hours of it. and i got to have this odd source of comfort in some of the worst moments of my life because one guy has a youtube channel, a gopro and a really cool hobby.