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Yet Another Art Blog

@balaur-of-four-toes

Tentatively he/they, generic, 20+ yrs
Not trying to be kid friendly so follow at viewers discretion, also horrible at tagging so feel free to ask to tag

The River Jordan and Sweetpea are electric engines on the first railway on Mars.

River Jordan was the first one built, being the product of a collaboration between the nations who established the colony.

Sweetpea was donated by a coronal aerospace guild and assembled onsite. Her parts were imported and her blueprints were crownmade, so her visage is coronal.

Visage and the nature of living transport

Engines take the image of their creators. Their faces are not organic, and are more like a vessel for helpful senses and communication tools.

They come alive soon after they are built, once out of eyeshot for any moment. Attempts to stare at a new engine to see it stir are foiled somehow (blinks, saccades, CCTV malfunction, momentary lapse in attention). Not all engines come alive, as their animacy is often (but not always) decided by the intent of the builder.

Living engines can assess their circumstances and make judgements based on them. They are useful in volatile situations as an expert second opinion on conduct and design, and are capable of sensing external and internal problems quickly.

In calmer periods, they may not get adequate stimulation, and their personalities may interfere with their efficiency. For this reason, railways have their preferences when they build and purchase engines.

The facial material ends at the surface of the machine and is inscrutable in composition—the material appears to be made of itself, and is unusable for any other purpose besides as an engine’s interface with the world. If damaged, the material heals. If removed, it disappears. The conceptual self-referentiality of engines’ faces, souls, and senses deter scrutiny.

Living machines exist as a fact of the universe. Their animacy is cloaked in an analysis-averting antimeme.

Human Engines

Engines designed and built by humans possess dual-pinhole pupils that dilate into an elliptical shape, granting them a broad field of view and tolerance of rapid changes in light levels (such as in going in and out of tunnels). Deep set zygomata allow them to look directly to their sides, and with the dual-pinhole setup, they maintain some depth perception in monocular sight. Their pupil shapes are hidden by their black irises, which absorb glare. They can see clearly to their front and sides, but can’t see up or down very well. A tapetum lucidum retroreflects incoming light back through their retinas, granting them vision in darkness. The nictitating membranes and long eyelashes protect the eyes from dust.

The chemicals engines are capable of detecting are relevant to their purpose, e.g. distinguishing coal, gasoline, diesel, and wood fires from their smoke but not being able to distinguish or detect food smells. Similar to how cats, obligate carnivores, have lost their ability to taste sugar due to its absence in their diet, but can taste ATP for its presence in meat—engines can parse environmental and industrial scents, but will have wildly varied responses to food and fragrant compounds, often being unable to notice them.

To investigate an aroma, they slightly lower their bottom lip to take air into their vomeronasal organ located behind the upper incisors.

Engines do not require oxygen, but if debris enters the nasal passage, human engines will sneeze to:

  1. Ensure their voice resonates properly,
  2. Keep their olfactory facilities clean, and
  3. Indicate to engineers that particle buildup may have occurred in other places, such as the boiler tubes for steam engines.

Crown Engines

Just as the tongue is the only colored object on a human engine’s face for distinguishability, so are the teeth on coronal engines. The positions of the upper and lower jaw indicate tone, functioning in communication similarly to eyebrows.

Coronal engine eyes consist of an armored cornea surrounded by a cuticle and muscular eyelid. The cornea moves with the help of the embedded eyestalk supporting it. The cuticle is lubricated with an oil-based film and is less susceptible to irritation than the aqueous solution on human engine eyes. The undersides of the eyelids and surface of the cornea are covered in setae, preventing chafing and reducing airflow on the cornea. The hairs catch debris and are combed out by the lids with a puckering motion.

To make up for unenhanced vision by human engine standards, coronal engine hearing is advanced, allowing the listener to pinpoint sound sources through triangulation of the four inner ears. Coronal engines, too, channel sound through their incisors and into their internal ears via the acoustic windows at the hinge of each jaw.

Coronal engines achieve their sense of industrial smell through the gustatory papillae that line their choana and pharynx. They supplement their olfaction by introducing cool air behind the heat pits inside their nares.

Coronal engines’ thermoception is more efficient than living crowns, as coronal engines’ faces do not produce heat nearly proportional to their mass.

Conversely, the tines heat up significantly hotter than the crown average for unambiguity in temperature tones. The origin of the tine thermal energy appears to be redirected from excess produced by the machinery, or from the face’s temperature directly.

Extramodal senses

Engines are capable of listening from within their cabs with greater acuity than mere conduction of sound through the body would suggest. Other unsubstantiated sensory abilities include:

  • Discernment of water/fuel quality within the framework of taste though intake alone
  • Somatosensory awareness on the entire body, not just the face

kill the shift manager in your brain

you are not wasting time you are vibing. you are not being unproductive you are literally chilling. make a grill cheese with cheddar cheese and slather a piece of the bread with some honey and maybe you'll relax

Innes Keeper's Formula For Fantastic Grilled Cheeses (for nearly no extra spoons!)

Are you hungry? Do you have a hankering for grilled cheese sandwiches like, way more than a normal person maybe? Great news! I am about to give you the secret knowledge I stole, like Prometheus himself, from the Akashic Records—to bring back to Prudencia! And I’m even doing it without a ten hour long lecture about how the Akashic Records makes me think of idfk, 9/11, and how that relates to sandwiches.

I will, however, briefly say this: You gotta trust me when I say cooking grilled cheeses via this formula WILL grant you Bloodborne Insight. There is no fucking reason that making a grilled cheese this fucking delicious should be this fucking easy. I feel like I’m cheating God every time I do it because it takes (nearly) no extra spoons. And here’s where I show you why.

Scientifically Proven Perfect Extremely Easy Grilled Cheese

INGREDIENTS — SEASONINGS -butter, i usually use 2 or 3 tablespoons per sandwich -garlic cloves, I use 3 usually -a source of heat, like red pepper flakes, or szechuan peppers -a source of spice OR a source of sweetness, such as dijon mustard or honey. slather that motherfucker on a slice of your bread. -a source of herbiness, such as oregano, thyme, sage, rosemary, etc in any combination that goes well together or on its own. if someone tries to tell you that you need it fresh, they’re fucking lying, the 2$ crushed powdered sage is fucking great. experiment with other spices such as ground turmeric if you're spicy

INGREDIENTS - THE METAPHORICAL MEAT OF THE SANDWICH -two slices of bread per sandwich. this is actually a massive influence on your sandwich taste and texture as a whole. a basic white or wheat will still be fucking delicious because like I said, I stole this from the Akashic Records cookbook section and found it under “fucking perfect grilled cheeses forever”. However, if you CAN—getting bread like brioche, texas toast, brown bread, rye, or sourdough will make a sandwich already being elevated super easily to “pay 23 dollars at a fancy restaurant” level of elevation.

-one to three types of cheese per sandwich. you can get away with one type but really try for two or three if you can swing it. this is also one of those massive influences over the sandwich—listen, i know, that’s obvious, but stay with me—what matters isn’t the SPECIES of cheese, it’s the TYPE of cheese. getting the deli at your local Safeway or Walmart or whatever and asking for the cheese they gotta cut (or just in general the fancier, better-quality cheeses) is literally the only major requirement that I ask of you. If you are on SNAP/EBT programs, me too, and I promise you: Please do this. Please trust me when I say do not get the cheap Kraft-type cheese because it’s less money. I know it’s a bit extra but it’s only a bit to get like 1/4 or 1/3lb and you have no idea how much I’m actually getting a little emotional about this, because the “rice with butter and beans or top ramen every single day” life is soulsucking and sickening and it is genuinely one of the greatest sources of suffering to human beings I can imagine, I’m serious. Following this formula will genuinely change your life/mental health just a bit because you know that you have one meal that is super delicious, super filling, pretty damn cheap when it comes to how much you get, and super easy to make on days where the idea of doing more than just 15 minutes MAX is gonna make you wanna die.

super sorry for that paragraph btw i just really cannot overstate how this is a lifechanger especially when youre poor/low spoons/depressed. delicious food makes me not be as depressed. this is that.

METHOD

  1. Take garlic cloves and crush them either with the meat of your palm or the flat of a knife or literally anything that would crush good. Take bread slices and put a source of spice or sweetness if you are using one. take a pan and put it on the stove on low-medium heat (aka a 2 out of 10).
  2. Place the butter in the pan, as well as the garlic cloves, the source of heat, and the source of herbiness. Congratulations you have now literally done ALL the extra effort that you need to make a grilled cheese like this. That’s it. No extra dishes. No fussing with amounts or chopping or whatever. That’s it.
  3. The butter will melt in the pan and soak up the delicious ingredients that you also put into the pan. Take each slice of bread and place it in the pan to butter it, OR just take one slice, place the cheese on it, and then put the other bread on. It’s really just a matter of extra effort.
  4. When the bread is in the pan, turn it up to medium heat (5 out of 10) and just sorta let it sit for a bit. When you can see the cheese start to get visibly melty—or when you vibecheck it—flip it once and just do the same thing.
  5. When you’ve grilled your cheese on both sides, take it out of the pan and put it on a plate (or just a paper towel to save on dish spoons. btw paper plates and plastic utensils are a fucking godsend if you hate dishes and/or can’t do them very easily/takes a lot of effort.)

That’s literally it. I really hope this helps.

The best grilled cheese I’ve ever had ft. Some paprika I found later on in the shelf

I think next time I do it I’ll use more of the spices/ herbs than I did and also put up the heat on the stove a bit more (it’s kinda old so I think it doesn’t get as hot as newer ones) and also maybe use some of the olive oil we have, although that stuffs expensive so might want to save it

kill the shift manager in your brain

you are not wasting time you are vibing. you are not being unproductive you are literally chilling. make a grill cheese with cheddar cheese and slather a piece of the bread with some honey and maybe you'll relax

Innes Keeper's Formula For Fantastic Grilled Cheeses (for nearly no extra spoons!)

Are you hungry? Do you have a hankering for grilled cheese sandwiches like, way more than a normal person maybe? Great news! I am about to give you the secret knowledge I stole, like Prometheus himself, from the Akashic Records—to bring back to Prudencia! And I’m even doing it without a ten hour long lecture about how the Akashic Records makes me think of idfk, 9/11, and how that relates to sandwiches.

I will, however, briefly say this: You gotta trust me when I say cooking grilled cheeses via this formula WILL grant you Bloodborne Insight. There is no fucking reason that making a grilled cheese this fucking delicious should be this fucking easy. I feel like I’m cheating God every time I do it because it takes (nearly) no extra spoons. And here’s where I show you why.

Scientifically Proven Perfect Extremely Easy Grilled Cheese

INGREDIENTS — SEASONINGS -butter, i usually use 2 or 3 tablespoons per sandwich -garlic cloves, I use 3 usually -a source of heat, like red pepper flakes, or szechuan peppers -a source of spice OR a source of sweetness, such as dijon mustard or honey. slather that motherfucker on a slice of your bread. -a source of herbiness, such as oregano, thyme, sage, rosemary, etc in any combination that goes well together or on its own. if someone tries to tell you that you need it fresh, they’re fucking lying, the 2$ crushed powdered sage is fucking great. experiment with other spices such as ground turmeric if you're spicy

INGREDIENTS - THE METAPHORICAL MEAT OF THE SANDWICH -two slices of bread per sandwich. this is actually a massive influence on your sandwich taste and texture as a whole. a basic white or wheat will still be fucking delicious because like I said, I stole this from the Akashic Records cookbook section and found it under “fucking perfect grilled cheeses forever”. However, if you CAN—getting bread like brioche, texas toast, brown bread, rye, or sourdough will make a sandwich already being elevated super easily to “pay 23 dollars at a fancy restaurant” level of elevation.

-one to three types of cheese per sandwich. you can get away with one type but really try for two or three if you can swing it. this is also one of those massive influences over the sandwich—listen, i know, that’s obvious, but stay with me—what matters isn’t the SPECIES of cheese, it’s the TYPE of cheese. getting the deli at your local Safeway or Walmart or whatever and asking for the cheese they gotta cut (or just in general the fancier, better-quality cheeses) is literally the only major requirement that I ask of you. If you are on SNAP/EBT programs, me too, and I promise you: Please do this. Please trust me when I say do not get the cheap Kraft-type cheese because it’s less money. I know it’s a bit extra but it’s only a bit to get like 1/4 or 1/3lb and you have no idea how much I’m actually getting a little emotional about this, because the “rice with butter and beans or top ramen every single day” life is soulsucking and sickening and it is genuinely one of the greatest sources of suffering to human beings I can imagine, I’m serious. Following this formula will genuinely change your life/mental health just a bit because you know that you have one meal that is super delicious, super filling, pretty damn cheap when it comes to how much you get, and super easy to make on days where the idea of doing more than just 15 minutes MAX is gonna make you wanna die.

super sorry for that paragraph btw i just really cannot overstate how this is a lifechanger especially when youre poor/low spoons/depressed. delicious food makes me not be as depressed. this is that.

METHOD

  1. Take garlic cloves and crush them either with the meat of your palm or the flat of a knife or literally anything that would crush good. Take bread slices and put a source of spice or sweetness if you are using one. take a pan and put it on the stove on low-medium heat (aka a 2 out of 10).
  2. Place the butter in the pan, as well as the garlic cloves, the source of heat, and the source of herbiness. Congratulations you have now literally done ALL the extra effort that you need to make a grilled cheese like this. That’s it. No extra dishes. No fussing with amounts or chopping or whatever. That’s it.
  3. The butter will melt in the pan and soak up the delicious ingredients that you also put into the pan. Take each slice of bread and place it in the pan to butter it, OR just take one slice, place the cheese on it, and then put the other bread on. It’s really just a matter of extra effort.
  4. When the bread is in the pan, turn it up to medium heat (5 out of 10) and just sorta let it sit for a bit. When you can see the cheese start to get visibly melty—or when you vibecheck it—flip it once and just do the same thing.
  5. When you’ve grilled your cheese on both sides, take it out of the pan and put it on a plate (or just a paper towel to save on dish spoons. btw paper plates and plastic utensils are a fucking godsend if you hate dishes and/or can’t do them very easily/takes a lot of effort.)

That’s literally it. I really hope this helps.

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the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ has only been actually typed once by a single person, everyone else who has ever used it has just googled “shrug emoji” and copy-pasted it

May I introduce you to my FAVORITE SITE EVER

(I do have the app bc I use it THAT often)

if you’re on a windows pc you can press the windows key and period button together and it pops up with a bunch of emojis and kaomoji you can just select

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The full playtest draft of Eat God is up. For those just joining us, I'll let the document's own intro do the talking:

---

Eat God is a game where you take on the role of a small gremlin-like creature. Though you're just as much a person as anybody else, the setting's dominant human culture tends to regard your kind as clever vermin, which means you don't get a lot of respect – but it also means you usually aren't seen as a threat, which may occasionally work to your advantage.

Unfortunately for the people in charge, you're not just any clever vermin: you and your companions are God-eaters, wandering practitioners of an esoteric discipline – part existential philosophy, part martial art – which affords you a limited capacity to bend the laws of reality to your will. As its name suggests, the God-eater's creed also has serious objections to authority in all its forms.

In a typical session of Eat God, you and your friends will arrive in a community that's suffering under some abuse of power, and proceed to cause problems on purpose. Owing to your limited outsider's perspective, your efforts may not necessarily help, but they'll definitely ensure that those responsible have a bad time. Actual theophagy may or may not be involved, depending on the situation at hand.

---

... or, for those not inclined to read between the lines, you're a bunch of muppets with Looney Tunes super powers wandering around a gritty fantasy milieu stirring shit up.

This is a little less finished than I prefer my first drafts to be, but I'm sixty pages deep and well and truly sick of filling out d66 tables – it's time to get it in front of eyes that aren't mine!

If you're coming in from the previous character creation teaser, revisions in this version (apart from, you know, the actual rules being present) include expanded treatment of Facets, minor rewrites to several Traits, major rewrites to at least a couple Rebellious Arts, and at least four entirely new d66 tables to play with.

You can find the link above, or right here.

As always, questions, criticisms, and bizarre rants are welcome!

Oooh tried out the character creation, ended up with a Funky Little Thing

Ethos 5 (impulsive/ nimble) (I went with both due to the middling score)

Pathos 6 (intense)

Logos 4 (obtuse)

This little thing has a body that seems to act faster than their mind, which can cause trouble as they tend to throw itself as hard as they can into whatever it’s whims have taken it

Striking Mein (Annoying)

Fluttering Flight

Superior Sense (Taste and Smell)

An annoying, loud, hyperactive critter with a long snoot and headcrest (complete with elongated sinus cavity and tongue) that it can both honk with and briefly inflate to “fly” short distances

Art of Guising

An obnoxious little jester/ clown thing with a nack for spontaneous improv that often lands it in hot water, given its not half as clever as it thinks it is

6 4 4 3 5 2 = 24 + 34 = 58 cm/ ~ 22.8 in, about 1’11” tall

3 2 = 5 + 3 = 8 kg/ ~ 17.6 pounds

Basically about the size of a fox

Many or compound eyes

Moist or oozy

Find or frills

Going to combine this with the outdated theory that parasaurolophus used it’s crest as a snorkel while eating soft swamp plants to make a weird little parasaur swamp creature that can use its head crest a combination “periscope” and breathing apparatus for when it’s submerged

Creed 2- Theres something wrong with the cosmos on a fundamental level, and the culmination of that disorder is what we call “God”. Your Rebellious Arts are intuition exploits of the universes flawed structure.

Desperately wants to invoke the bog- bound fae tricksters and monsters or legend, and believes it’s guising abilities are it exploiting a “bug” in the makeup of reality that allowed it to “steal” a faeries glamour abilities. Its end goal is to use the exploit to somehow steal the powers of the entity that calls itself God and destroy it. It doesn’t think too hard about how it’ll achieve this, or the consequences of achieving this, or what it’ll do after. Or even why it wants to do this in the first place.

It styles itself as a sort of jester in the court of faeries as a way of mocking them; after all, if something as “lowly” as it could steal the powers of something that was once an angle, then doesn’t that prove that the supposedly “perfect” universe is full of flaws? And doesn’t that, in turn, prove that “God” is flawed- and a liar? And doesn’t that render any and all arguments for God justly ruling the universe false? And shouldn’t people who lie their way to power through false arguments be stripped of their titles and dragged from their thrones? It’d say yes.

IV. Death by Water (Bywater) (it/ its in the human languages)

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wow pluto reclassification discourse is exhausting. here I thought doing a poll that highlights some of pluto's cool lesser known dwarf planet friends would put things in a context where it can't possibly go in that direction but nope a bunch people really do just hold a hard stance against a classification system entirely out of a sense of nostalgia

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"the planets" aren't this exclusive club where all the astronomers' favorite celestial bodies go. the definitions used in astronomy are descriptive, they refer to the dynamics between objects and the properties they have. if you feel bad that pluto isn't considered a planet anymore and think it should be an honorary planet anyway, good news! that is literally the reason why the category "dwarf planet" was created. it's for things that don't have the same type of role in the dynamics of the solar system as the eight major planets, but are still physically a lot like little planets

>>"the planets" aren't this exclusive club where all the astronomers' favorite celestial bodies go.

that's exactly what they are, and my favourite rock deserves to be counted amongst them.

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see what I'm talking about.

the set of celestial bodies the average astronomer thinks are cool is significantly larger than the nine planets you memorized in elementary school. if this were literally how it worked, there's no way the moon or europa or titan or ixion would have been excluded.

OH SHIT ITS JAN MISALI

anyway yeah i had a similar post where i was like "hey its kinda objectiely anti-science to loudly state that your personal preference supercedes scientific professionals" and people got PISSSSED

palaeontology-astronomy solidarity over people interpreting changes in classification for well defined functional reasons as being some sort of bizarre value judgement of their nostalgic favourite thing and getting unreasonably mad about it.

CHRIST FIGURE BRACKET FINAL ROUND

ngl I will not miss this bracket when this ends good bye you little shits

KNUCKLES PROPAGANDA TIME

  • walks on water (as above)
  • leads some of his people to a new promised land
  • has like, three different prophecies marking him as a saviour
  • dies, his casket is inspected and surprise surprise he isn’t there!
  • comes back to life
  • regarded as a savior among his people
  • believed by his people to be able to heal the sick and injured

^ knuckles grave being discovered empty

^ someone asking him to cure their daughters blindness

lara-le (knuckles mom) is also very pious, frequently shown praying at the church