Avatar

Questionably Scientific

@draco-peregrinus

I do have a piece of writing advice, actually.

See, the first time I grew parsnips, I fucked it up good. I hadn't seen parsnips sprouting before, right, and in my eagerness I was keeping a close eye on the row. And every time I saw some intruding grass coming up, I twitched it right out, and went back to anticipating the germination of my parsnips.

But it turns out parsnips take a bit longer than anything else I'd ever grown to distinguish themselves visually. It's just the two little split leaves, almost identical to a newly seeded bit of kentucky bluegrass when they first come up, and they take a good bit to establish themselves and spread out flat before the main stem with its first distinctive scallopy leaf gets going.

I didn't get any parsnips, not that year, because I'd weeded them all out as soon as they showed their faces, with my 'ugh no that's grass' twitchy horticulture finger.

The next year, having in retrospect come to suspect what had happened, I left the row alone and didn't weed anything until all the sprouts coming up had all had a bit to set in and show their colors, and I've grown lots of parsnips since. They're kind of a slow crop, not a huge return, but I like them and watching them grow and digging them up, and their papery little seeds in the second year, if you don't harvest one either on purpose or because you misjudged the frost, so it's worth it.

Anyway, whenever I see someone stuck and struggling with their writing who's gotten into that frustration loop of typing a few words, rejecting them, backspacing, and starting again, I find myself thinking, you gotta stop weeding your parsnips, man.

have you ever wondered what the communist manifesto would sound like if it was said in the same tone and cadence as dj crazy times

TO ALL THE WORKERS OF THE WORLD!! I love you and feel the groove. Let’s go

A SPECTRE IS HAUNTING EUROPE… THE SPECTRE OF THE Bass.

TONIGHT! WE'RE HAVING SEEEEEX!!!! And abolishing private property

YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS... AND NOTHING TO GAIN BUT THE RHYTHM OF THE BEAT 😈

Avatar

Never gonna know them, but shoutout to the healthcare workers who are breaking the law to help their patients get life-saving care. I'll never see an article about you because knowing you would risk everything including jail time. Nurses who lie on medical records so their patients can get abortions. Doctors making up shit so their patients can have HRT.

Wherever you are, you are keeping your promise to help your patient.

BITCH

NOT TO MENTION the fact that the prohibition against direct images in Islam was actually the reason for the development of the incredible advances in higher mathematics of the Islamic Golden Age because they were required to create these structures. The Islamic World basically took the ban on images as a “hold my beer” thing and created an entire artistic culture based on mathematics and architecture where art and science fed into and glorified each other, 700 years before the Italian Renaissance.

In conclusion

i will say that islamic art drove me nuts as a kid because i did not have the math knowledge or capability to create such geometric patterns. it may have been the art of my people but by gOD it was difficult and unnecessarily difficult. however my pride in islamic art is neverending. it was frowned upon to be vain in the house, so artists would deck out the places of worship - but places of worship couldn’t be too garishly decorated, or it might detract from worship! the compromise? calm blues and greens, intricate details hidden into the complex patterns. carefully mapped out and planned patterns that were beyond complex and straight into deliberately confusing and practically impossible to replicate. not only that, but verses from the Quran were hidden along the walls, asking god for blessings and care.

muslim art is stunning and i’ll fight the bitch that says otherwise.

Also something underappreciated about the Islamic art is that not only is it geometrically incredible, but the geometry and structure of it has a purpose. In the niches and ceilings, the cascading ornamentation is used for acoustic purposes. In many of the mosques, they are so well laid out and designed that a single person standing on a specific spot can speak/sing/pray and be heard in every single part of the building.

I feel like this should be considered under the same heading as “fascists don’t like abstract art.”

Like, that’s a whole thing. If you look at the art favored by dictators and fascists, it’s almost entirely portraits and landscapes. (Nice, serene, pastoral landscapes, though. None of that war-torn realism stuff.) Rarely still-lifes, unless there’s also a person in the picture. It’s literally common enough to be considered a phenomenon. And while Islamic art isn’t abstract in the sense we usually use the word, it certainly does not include portraits or serene pastoral landscapes. Just, you know. Considering who said this. Something to consider.

You’re not a real gamer unless you’ve wasted countless hours of your life purposefully walking in the wrong direction to make sure you’re not missing any content

I’ll stop doing when they stop putting chests full of mid-tier armor in the opposite direction of the clearly marked endgoal

That feeling of “oh crap I triggered the plot I wasn’t done fucking around yet”

“Dammit, I thought this was the wrong way and now the plot’s progressing.

“are you afab or amab” “are you tme or tma” do you guys remember the era of the internet where one of the biggest queer memes was about not telling people what the fuck is in your pants because it’s no one’s fucking business. can we PLEASE go back to that.

Avatar

I spent a good chunk of my weekend scrambling to finish this comic. I hope you like it. I was really trying to push myself with the colours.

Avatar

You know what’s wild? This comic still gets reblogged every single day. I made it so long ago it doesn’t even feel like my own work haha. Anyways, I guess I’m glad people still like it but it’s very weird to have One Piece of Art that Doesn’t Fade.

even if you're not a supernatural fan, if you've been on tumblr long enough you are, like, culturally. like cultural christianity in america except it's the cw's supernatural. you may never have watched an episode or set foot inside the tag but your regular life shuts down on their holidays and all of your world news is delivered through that point of view. something to think about

at this point i feel like people who insist taylor swift is an indie artist, that she’s queer, that she’s all of these things that she plainly is not as the blandest and most successful and exposed musician on the planet, might as well have magazine cutouts of CEOs and washington lobbyists on their bedroom walls. it’s functionally the same thing