me when i fucking Boop you

The fact that he’s not actually struggling but just learned a habit from watching his human buddy snap bamboo is so precious.

Vampira (1974)

Bloop! 💅🏿

Holy shit, they got Voyager 1 working again!

15 billion miles away and NASA was able to tweak code packages on one of the onboard computers and it worked and Voyager 1 is sending signals back to earth for the first time since November.

Incredible!

Fucking obsessed with those brands that have rebranded their diet products to be more masculine so men don’t feel emasculated when they go buy triple zero greek yogurt or whatever

don’t worry! brands are working hard to equalize the weirdly gendered consumables situation for women too

hipness purgatory

indie sleaze

global village coffeehouse

supergraphic ultramodern

memphis-milano

internet awesomesauce

pacific punk wave

utopian scholastic

frasurbane

curly girly

pastel southwestern

mission school

I thought we were supposed to go off names not actual images 😭 I want my vote back

@prismatic-bell you can have mine, what do want to vote for?

Frasurbane. It’s what I grew up with and at the time I thought it was very sophisticated. Now I think it’s got kind of a timeless look.

Utopian Scholastic forever yo.

The opening sound for Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia slaps, but I cannot find it.

lol. lmao, even

it is very funny to me when people make artificer pebble's cat because in canon they are the fucked up rat that wont stop throwing shit and guy who is so so tired of them

anwaysy. this has made me draw artificer again and i am Thinking

Only two options, no middle ground here, I'm making you commit to an answer. Explain it in the tags!

Plenty of highly intelligent people end up getting sucked in to cults because they just wanted people to hang out with. There are antivaxxer nurses. Your ability to act on empirical reason breaks down fast if your social and emotional needs aren't being met.

Hai-Taihe, a minor spirit known in the rural north of the Nekhuatseth forest, seen in the spaces between major towns and cities.

She is described as a mangy, heavily scarred bitch bearing signs of past pregnancies. She's mostly a normal looking dog but closer inspection reveals paws with unusually long fingers and distinct thumbs, and the tail and eyes of an elowey. She appears to lone travelers in the wilderness, almost exclusively on moonless nights. She will sit down at the fireside and strike up conversations in fluent (though antiquated and overly formal) Nekh, and it's usually only after she disappears that one notices that it's "kinda weird" that a dog was talking to them.

She is variously interpreted as a protective local spirit who guards travelers, and as a minor god of death that guides the living through moonless nights where the boundaries between the living and the Otherworld of the dead are thinnest. Sightings where she does not speak are regarded as omens of impending doom.

This folklore is contemporary, with the Hai-Taihe figure only showing up in stories from the past couple centuries and having no obvious presence in older mythology. Some scholars connect her to relics from the Sethym culture, extinct for almost a millenia. They left few direct records and their histories are distorted by generations of oral retelling, but motifs of a dogheaded elowey figure are common in the area, often in conjunction with sword imagery. The figure is often found on intricate metal amulets left as grave goods for high ranking clanmothers, and in stone or clay figures left in the boundaries of settlement territories (the latter commonly depicted as heavily pregnant)

[The meta reality not known in-universe: Hai-Taihe is an actual physical entity, a living god once known as [NAME FORGOTTEN] who was worshiped as a tutelary deity to the ancient Sethym. She was conceptualized as a mother to the people and the tutor of the sword, companion to the hunting god [NAME FORGOTTEN], who taught the people the spear.

The demon [NAME FORGOTTEN], a god of cannibalism and the dishonorable hunt, is said to have devoured the tutor of the spear. The tutor of the sword was chewed on and spat out half-dead while trying to rescue her, and her consumed companion was twisted in the demon's stomach and excreted as something new and terrible.

The tutor of the sword lost her identity with the cultural extinction of her worshipers and has found new life as Hai-Taihe, unable to distinguish the boundaries between her own mythology and living memory, both of which are half-remembered at best. She feels a great affection towards mortals and wanders in an endless, futile search for her companion, the devoured god now known as the spirit Arweny. She wishes to kill her, as an act of mercy.]

someone I follow on the bird app just announced they're starting a very exclusive private fic server because they and a bunch of other people want to talk about how much they love the fics they're reading, and as an author can I just say that a really great place to talk about a fic you love is in the comments for that fic

I understand that people are trying to create safe spaces, but as the number of comments that I get on my fics dwindles with each passing year, knowing these spaces exist where my fics are being discussed, places that I am excluded from, makes me want to write fic LESS

I mean I guess who cares, right, because if I stop writing, there's 10,000 other people that will continue...but if you participate in a fic "book club" server and you say nice things there about a fic you loved, maybe copy and paste that into a comment on AO3?

the only thing fanfic writers are asking for in return for hours of hard work is attention. please don't rob us of the one thing that we hope for when we hit "post"

this is directly related to this post I made about how fanfic authors now are treated like content mills, and not like valued members of a creative community who thrive on interaction. for the past decade, we've watched the fandom ecosystem disrupted over and over, as NSFW fan artists seek safety by putting their work behind paywalls, and self-conscious fic readers squirrel away their feelings in invite-only communities

an easy way to do your part to fight against the evils perpetrated by social media is to leave a comment on a fanfic you love

but don't take my word for it -- here are some responses that my fellow authors have left on this post:

If fanfic/fanart is a meal, then fandom as a whole is a potluck. Everyone should bring something to the table. For some people, that comes in the form of what we now (unfortunately) refer to as “content”: fic, art, gifsets, headcanons, video edits, playlists, etc. That’s a home-cooked dish that the person took time out of their day to make. Other people provide the engagement: comments, likes/kudos, reblogs, inbox asks. That’s a store-bought dish: a box of cookies, a container of macaroni salad, a few bottles of soda. And while those things might not take as much time and effort as the homemade dishes, they’re every bit as essential as the homemade dishes. Everyone who participates in a potluck wants to eat, and people who make their dishes understand that not everyone has the time, energy, or inclination to make their own. They’re just happy to have something else to add to their plate.

Making a dish from scratch is a lot of work! And after all that work, sometimes all I want is a slice of grocery store cake for dessert, a cup of soda to wash it down, and a group of nice people to talk to while I eat.

I’ve now read this post twice and I’m still absorbing the fact that people are talking about works in secret, in circles where the author can’t find out. I don’t understand. What are people afraid of?

Do readers think writers will say “what a bunch of weirdos”? We won’t. We’ve literally shared our wildest imaginings with you. If anyone’s the weirdo it’s us.

Is it dehumanization stemming from consumption of “content” i.e. people just forget that a real person made this? Come on, don’t fall into that trap.

Communicate. Just communicate. 💖

I would love to hear from the people discussing my fics, seriously.

There is a well circulated rule for commenting to either say something nice or nothing at all so if people want to discuss their favorite fics in a more critical way, which will include talking about the things you didn't like, the private discords are a good place for that. I can't begrudge people that.

But yeah, writing fic is lonely and hard sometimes. How are we supposed to write more fics that people love if we don't even know if anyone likes our work? We need readers to reach out in some way.

It's not even like from a positive reinforcement angle. Feedback makes me more creative. It gets me thinking about my writing in different ways and my brain will come up with more ideas. It gives inspiration.

Kudos are great, of course. Comments are great. Tagging the writers in rec lists is great. And honestly, having people discuss my fics to a similar degree as they talk about the source material is a major fantasy of mine.

Fandom is a collaboration even if you don't think you're 'doing' anything. Reblogging, recommending, and commenting on fics and art are just as important as creating the stuff.

There isn't any difference between the readers and the writers in the fandom. Writers aren't content farms and readers aren't hits. Writers write and readers read because we both love the source material.

Fic writers and fan artists aren't like some lower tier workers for the original creators. We have as much connection to them as you do. We're not getting paid and we're never going to be interviewed or invited to award shows.

But I get the feeling that consciously or unconsciously, readers don't see as us as One of Us but One of Them and that's why readers don't give direct feedback.

Writers and artists aren't Them. We're You. We're Us. And we want to play together.

flight rising dot com 😩

Pangur would make a good villain’s cat (the innocence is deceptive)

Day 28 - 7 year anniversary

happy birthday, rain world! i love this game dearly

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im currently completely losing it about the great stalacpipe organ. are you fucking kidding me they made an organ out of a CAVE???? IT TAKES UP THREE ACRES??? i legit am about to lose it

this is a comment left on a recording of moonlight sonata played on an organ that is literally made out of a cave and its making me so emotional its not even funny

[image id: a youtube comment that reads ‘wonderful…and the moon has never shone there…’ end id.]

All that and no pictures??

According to Wikipedia, it works by hidden rubber mallets on the naturally-musical stalactites that tourguides have been knocking on for over a century. The guy who made the organ may have gotten the idea when his son whacked his head on a stalactite.

Here’s a video. It is hauntingly beautiful.

Oh. It’s the instrument Organ. Not organ like… a lung or kidneys.

Of course I knew that and was in no way worried after the first post. Nope.

A.I. photos are flooding social media and contributing to an Internet where we can't believe what we see. Spotting A.I. 📷s is an important media literacy skill.

None of us have time to research every image we see. We just need people to notice BEFORE THEY LIKE OR SHARE that an image might be fake. If unsure, check it or don't share.

I've started drawing some comics explaining the basic of AI spot-checking and media literacy in the age of disinformation. Follow along here or on my Twitter.