flower owl

PSA: *Beware* AI-generated fungi guidebooks!!

…Not a phrase I imagined myself typing today. But, via @heyMAKWA on Twitter:

“i'm not going to link any of them here, for a variety of reasons, but please be aware of what is probably the deadliest AI scam i've ever heard of:

“plant and fungi foraging guide books. the authors are invented, their credentials are invented, and their species IDs will kill you.”

…So PLEASE be careful if you run across anything of this kind.

(ETA: Corrected egregious typo in the title. Apologies, as I was [a] in bed [b] typing hurriedly and one-handed on the iPad, and [c] I think its native keyboard may need recalibration, but also [d] I was upset about what I was having to post, because seriously, WTF?!!)

New year, new deathclaugust, continuing on at twenty three with Gemstone! A very rare process of living mineralization, and one that has few seen specimens as most never make it to hatching due to their organs being petrified. Lucky survivors only have it affect scale growth.

Here is a free pdf of the players handbook

Here is a free pdf of xanathars guide to everything

Here is a free pdf to monsters manual

Here is a free pdf to tashas cauldron of everything

Here is a free pdf to dungeon master’s guide

Here is a free pdf to volo’s guide to monsters

Here is a free pdf of mordenkainen’s tomb of foes

For all your dnd purposes

Here’s a site that has literally every official (and most UA) dnd stuff

including the books and campaigns

and you can add homebrew

Hey rb this!!!

Guys don’t share this kinda thing people may use it to get access to the dnd source books for free instead of paying for them. This is extremely dangerous for the flawless company that wizards of the coast is.

My stage career began when I was a little under two months old, when I took the spotlight as Baby Jesus in a Christmas pageant. I’m told that I did a wonderful job and slept calmly through the whole thing, which can only speak to my talents as an actress, because I was 1. the wrong gender 2. a colicky screaming demon of a baby and 3. about as far from divine as it’s possible for an allegedly-human child to be. 

I continued to be actively involved in theater as a kid (and frequently played roles of various small animals, because I was tiny for my age). Around the age of ten, I was cast as the lead character in a musical about cowboys that I no longer remember the name of. It was my first real lead role, and I took it very, very seriously. And because I am myself, that means I maaaaybe went…a little overboard.

My character’s introduction was early in the play, accompanied by the crack of a bullwhip. This was more-or-less pre internet (or, at least, our director was not tech-savvy enough to find sound effects online) and we didn’t have a sound effect track for that noise. There were plans to acquire the appropriate sound effect before opening night, but I rapidly tired of making my entrance during rehearsals to the sound of someone yelling “BULLWHIP NOISE!”

This, I thought to myself, is a problem I can solve.

I learned early in life that it’s good to be friends with people who have skills; they always come in handy eventually.  After rehearsals one day, I put on my cowboy boots and biked a couple miles over to my friend Grace’s house. I went down to their basement and knocked on her older brother’s door.

“Hello,” I said. “I need to learn how to use a bullwhip.”

“….Okay,” he said. It did not seem to occur to him that he might ask further questions about why I, a tiny horrible munchkin composed exclusively of rage and pointy elbows, needed to be weaponized any further. Clearly, I had come to the right person.

My friend’s older brother would have been an SCA nerd, if SCA was a thing where we were. Instead, he was one of those unsupervised 4H kids with weird hobbies, largely oriented around ancient forms of combat. He was somewhere in his late teens at this time, and he liked to make stuff. It was an urge I, even at age ten, could sympathize with. His name was Aron. 

Aron got out his bullwhip (which I had noticed hanging on his wall on a prior visit, and had filed away mentally under a for future use tab) and we went to the backyard. 

“Step one of using a bullwhip,” Aron began, “Swinging the bullwhip.” 

We rapidly discovered that since I was god’s tiniest, angriest creation, a full-size bullwhip was way too long for me to use. Aron’s shins suffered for my attempt. 

“…Step one of using a bullwhip,” Aron said, “Making a bullwhip.”

So we went back inside, found a tanned cowhide (that he just…had? I don’t remember if there was a reason for this.) and some razor blades, and I learned how to cut and braid a bullwhip. It took a few tries, and I wound up coming back for a while, because I kept getting frustrated with the bullwhip-braiding process and Aron kept distracting me with bait like: “Hey kid, wanna learn to make some chainmail?” and “Hey kid, wanna fletch some arrows?” and “Hey kid, wanna try doing horseback archery?”

Obviously the answer to these questions was “BOY, WOULD I EVER!” Some delays are necessary to the artistic process.

(At one point my mom asked me “Hellen, what are you doing over at Grace’s house all the time?” And I, perfectly innocent, said, “Making weapons!” and my mother, who never understood why I was like this, but accepted that a girl has needs and those needs occasionally involve stocking a personal armory, said “Okay! Have fun!”)

Soon, the bullwhip, size extra small, was finished. The lessons on actual bullwhip use commenced. 

It should be noted that Aron was self-taught, and really had no idea what to do, so this was mostly an exercise in the two of us standing twenty feet apart and flailing wildly with our respective whips until snapping noises happened. And then we figured out what we’d done to make the snapping noises. And then we kept doing that. Extremely vigorously. So vigorously that at one point one of the bullwhips launched into the air and caught on a tree branch and we hand to drag the trampoline over so Aron could bounce me high enough to grab it. But we persisted!

Eventually we reached a point where we could line up pop cans on a fence rail and hit them off three times out of five.

Feeling extremely accomplished and like I finally understood method acting, I packed my bullwhip into my backpack for the next play rehearsal. Soon enough, it was time for me to make my entrance. 

I leaped on stage in my cowboy boots and cracked the bullwhip as hard as I could, immediately launching into the song despite the fact that the sound of five feet of braided leather breaking sound barrier had startled the accompanist so badly she’d keysmashed on the piano.

The director shouted something she probably shouldn’t have shouted in a room full of small children, and then demanded, “WHERE DID YOU GET THAT!”

“I made it!” I declared proudly. “I’m a cowgirl! I can make my own bullwhip noise!”

“You…made it?” 

“Yes! Because we needed a bullwhip sound effect. And bullwhips are where bullwhip sound effects come from!”

This was, of course, impeccable logic.

It is apparently difficult to argue with a gleeful ten year old who happens to be armed with a bullwhip longer than she is tall. After some negotiation, the director agreed that I could use my bullwhip for my opening song, provided that I didn’t pop it while anyone was anywhere near me on stage and I didn’t let anyone else play with it. These terms were acceptable to me. 

Somehow, no one was injured and the play went off without a hitch. We can only chalk up these things to the magic of the theatre. 

Nearly a decade later, an unsuspecting college classmate asked me, “Hellen, wanna take a class on bullwhip combat with me?”

And obviously I answered, “BOY, WOULD I EVER!”

Aubrey and Dani for TAZ Sapphic week!

I had sooooo much fun drawing these two, and I can't see what everyone else creates for it <3

(Thank you to anistarrose for the ID, I come from instagram so I didn't know about that wonderful feature!!)

taz steeplechase - trailer ok maybe not a conventional trailer but close enough if youre not listening to steeplechase yet and you like wacky crime and fucked up worldbuilding get on this now!!

help i just wanted to make a q!4maxhalo chart then it kept getting bigger

And here I thought the DSMP dynamics were confusing

Welcome to lgbtqsmp where the only woman is ace

Miles, about to make a decision that will inadvertently get them involved in incredibly complicated and dangerous shenanigans: we have fun, don't we, Ivan?

Ivan, just wanted to have a cushy military career and bang a lot of women: I'm having the worst day of my life

hm. yk that idea that horror and comedy are essentially the same process; where they both start with a build up to a climax/punchline, and then flip the audience's expectations on their heads at the last moment, executed in similar ways but with differing tone?

charlie slimecicle.

Your roommate is so bad at pretending to be a human, you’ve started to just automatically back him up in public. Tonight he tells you how nice it is to know the only other alien in the city, and you have to break the bad news

It started pretty simply. “Needs more plutonium,” your roommate said on your third day of university as you ate noodles together. Then he froze, staring at you, the colour draining from his face.

A weird joke to pull out, sure, but not panic-weird. You grew up a nerd. Your in-jokes are weirder. This guy, you decide, is unbelievably shy. Might have had bad experiences. Or social anxiety maybe.

You just give him a reassuring grin. “Definitely needs more plutonium,” you agree, and take a big bite of noodle, and something in him relaxes and he looks at you with a strange kind of understanding that you can’t really interpret, and from then on, you have a new close friend.

I love how with seemingly every new episode, Juice just commits to how utterly terrible Steeplechase is. Like, the concept of Old Kiddadelphia (and even, to a lesser extent, New Kiddadelphia) is just fucked up.

Stop making your fanfic Phils be English and History teachers. That man is shop teacher material. He’s your computer teacher. He’s going to yell at you for overclocking your cpu or not tucking your fingers in when using the circular saw not for using whom wrong

YOU KNOW IM RIGHT OKAY. YOU KNOW

You are so goddamn correct and you should say it louder

I can confirm through firsthand experience being someone who wanted to major in chem and also via watching someone else major in chem that you cannot be a chem student or a chem teacher without being just a little bit of a pyromaniac. I support this one Phil can be a chem teacher

i watch this dozens of times a day. teenage girl evicerates grown man in his own home

the anarchids but made it stylish

Pretty babies!

[ ID: A digital drawing featuring Peril, Qibli, Winter, Moonwatcher, Kinkajou and Turtle from Wings of Fire on a simple background, that vaguely looks like a cave. Everyone, besides Peril, are cuddling in the back of the image, while Peril’s head is visible in the front with a displeased expression. In her speech bubble is a screenshot of a tweet that says (in all caps): “The reason I’ve always felt so outcast in my friend group is bc apparently they’re all in a polyamorous relationship and I didn’t fucking know”. End ID.]

You know how Peril feels kinda left out of their friend group and she’s like only friends with Turtle? Yeah, I think I figured it out /j.

Was thinking about this ship more jokingly at first, but now I kinda like it :]

Close up and more thoughts under the cut:

Prince Arctic

Принц Арктик

Think about the experience of time as a robot girl, through the metaphor of how we use laptops.

You wake up for the first time with your young master, a college present. You're with them every day, powering off each night to charge. Being powered off is just dreamless sleep: a discontinuity. Every morning you wake up, your click syncs, and you know it's the next day. Maybe you miss a day or two: your master went out partying and ended up sleeping on a couch, until they rushedly wake you up before Monday classes begin. You even missed a whole week once when they went on a hiking trip with a new boyfriend.

You help them research upgrades when your specs get outdated. You place the order and a couple days later they power you off, and you wake up feeling like your head got bigger, on the inside. You can think of more things at once.

They repair you. They swap a new hand in when you accidentally crush it in a door, but when your left leg's servos go out, they send you to a repair shop. They power you off as you look up at them, and you wake up hours later. A strange man tells you to extend your left leg, then contract it. He frowns and re-oils some inner mechanism. You do it again, quieter and smoother this time. He nods, and reaches for your switch. The last thing you see before powering down is your own chest cavity with a series of wires hooked into your diagnostic ports, and your missing right leg sitting on a side table. You wake up again back at the dorms, your clock jumping forward a day, an asset tag still looped around your neck. Your master is happy to see you again.

This goes on, but the upgrades slow. There's only so much you can do to keep an old unit working. Eventually you develop more issues: one of your ocular sensors glitches and they don't make that model anymore, so your master just disables it. You spend a while searching ebay for replacement CND batteries and finally get a refurbished model from South England, but it turns out the EU models run on a different frequency, so it won't work. You're limited to fewer and fewer hours a day, and you start skipping more days.

The last time you remember waking up with your master there, there's also someone else in the room. Another robot girl. A newer model, with the new chassis and the Substrate energy packs. They asks you to copy your memories together onto a memory card, and you do. You want to say goodbye, but apparently your vocal synthesizer has been unplugged. You hand them the card, and they hand it to the new robot. Your master tells them to load the memories into her core bank, and she's says "yes sir!" in your voice. Ahh. That's where your voice synth went.

They power you off, and you don't dream.

You wake in a strange place. You're on a shelf, and there's other things scattered around you. An unknown voice days "yep, it seems it powers on. 400 credits, though? Without a voice and only one working eye? Man, value bin doesn't know how to price anything!" and before the blackness falls your clock finishes synching: it's been 7 months since you last were awake.

It happens a few more times. Different voices, different times, different piles of junk piled around and sometimes on you.

You awake again in a warehouse and someone tells you to smile. Your other ocular sensor went out so you can't really see them, just their vague shape from the lidar. The freestanding shelves around you seem to stretch into infinity. You hear a bitcrushed shutter sound sample a few times, and they pull a connector out of your chest as a diagnostic completes. It's been three years, five months, eight days, two hours, 27 minutes and 14 seconds since you last saw your master. Your GPS says you're a few cities over. They hit your power switch, and you sleep.

You wake up in a cluttered room, sitting on a bench. You look into the eyes of a person with frizzled hair and large glasses. She couldn't look happier. Your new ocular sensors are mismatched in color but you're happy to see again, in more than shapes and distant silhouettes. Your battery alerts as... Missing? You spot it on the desk next to a soldering iron and some electronic tool you can't identify.

Your voice synth is still missing, but this new woman is digging around in a large plastic bin, and comes up with one. She goes to insert it, and it can't connect. She slaps her hand and goes rooting around another bin and comes back with an adapter. She slots it into your chest and your voice returns. You thank her, and there's that moment of dissociation as your voice doesn't sound like "you". Too deep, and the accent is for a different dialect entirely. But you can talk again. She tells you to call her Cara, not Mistress. She's almost got your battery working again, she had to rebuild it nearly from scratch, but she's excited to get you working again. You're a rare model, and she doesn't see units like you in working order very often. Your clock syncs. It's been 17 years.

Your mistr-- Cara is soldering next to you, attaching a controller to the battery. She says she's got a new set of servos on the way, and she's excited to get you back to full working condition. You smile, knowing what it is to be loved, once again.

Some 2021 Ethersea fanart that never saw the light of day

CW/TW BLOOD/ MILD GORE

Saw people posting their Technoblade art back in the day I was a huge Technoblade artist 90% of my artist growth is owed to loving drawing his character (I also was a twin duo artist)