One day you will wake up and think to yourself “m,mm I’m cozy” and then you will go back to bed and rest. 

let's draw a horse

Legs are looking a little weak at the moment

final moments left to take part in horse creation!

Good job, everyone!

I’m proud to identify as morosexual. I’m attracted to dumbasses and dumbasses exclusively. A guy asked me what the Spanish word for tortilla was once and now I dream of kissing him under the moonlight

this same idiot: what kind of animal is the pink panther

me, already taking off my clothes: benjamin you’re so fucking stupid

oh my god the original out in the wild

I GOT A REALLY COOL MICROSCOPE FOR CHRISTMAS DO YOU WANT TO SEE SOME ROCKS UNDER MY REALLY COOL MICROSCOPE

Australian boulder opal!  This brown matrix is covered in cracks which have filled in with flashy precious opal.  She is beautiful, but it is hard to appreciate her colors because she is just such a Little Guy.  Let’s get closer.

Pretty good!  Under magnification, we can really see the fire of that opal filling in the tiny cracks.  This is about the level of magnification that my old microscope could manage.  Anyway, let’s get closer.

The fire is intensifying!  More colors are appearing!  Tiny fireworks invisible to the naked eye!  But we can get closer.

YES, that FIRE!!  But I want to be closer than that!!  I demand we get closer!!

YES!  GOOD!!  CLOSER!!  ALL UP IN THIS ROCK’S PERSONAL SPACE!!!

YES!! YES!! YEEEEES!!!!

That post about writing motorcycle scenes I've been meaning to write

Riding a bike is one of those things that’s a very physical experience, so if you haven’t ridden, then there’s a lot you will naturally not be aware of.  I love motorcycle scenes in stories, but over the years I’ve noticed that scenes written by non-riders almost always make the same mistakes.  They’re ubiquitous in fact, to the point that if you haven’t been there to learn the contrary yourself, it’s natural to assume that’s how it actually works.

The first thing to know about motorcycles is that when driving, the motorcycle performs as an extension of you.  It’s almost cybernetic, the way your mass and balance fuse with the machine’s, the way it transmutes your sense of your surroundings and the surface you’re driving on, and the sense of the bike itself and how it’s performing.

Most notably, the driver’s center of gravity becomes the central steering mechanism.  At speeds faster than around 10 mph, the driver steers primarily through shifting their center of balance.  If you want to turn left, you lean your body left.  You’re actually tilting yourself and the motorcycle to take curves and corners.

When carrying a passenger, then, the passenger needs to shift their center of gravity along with the driver’s.  It’s like taking the ‘follower’ position in partner dancing.  You lean WITH them; not less, because then your weight counters theirs and they end up not turning (which can be highly bad if, say, the road does not go that way), and not more, because then the bike could tip right over.

Being a good passenger on a bike is not a huge learning curve for most people, but there is a learning curve.  And some people have more of a knack for it than others.  Some people are natural back-seat drivers, for whatever reason overly pushy, eager, demanding, or determined that they know better than you, and have a habit of making it hard on the driver.  I’ve had people tell me they hate riding pillion even if they’re good at it, because they don’t like how out-of-control it feels.  I detest it myself, in fact; I’d far rather be driving, and it’s a constant struggle for me to just follow along and behave myself.

This means, though, that carrying a passenger who weighs significantly more than you can be a tricky business.  I weigh about 110, and when carrying a rider weighing significantly more than that, it’s awfully easy to crash if the passenger tries to back-seat steer.  (A way to mitigate this, especially for new passengers, is to simply take 15 minutes or so to bump around quiet local roads at low speeds so that the driver and passenger can familiarize themselves a bit with minimal risk to themselves.)

Now, undoubtedly the #1 most-committed mistake I see from almost everybody who writes about motorcycles (and for that matter, a lot of unsuspecting new passengers try it in real life) is the ‘wrapping arms around the driver’s waist’ business.  It’s so common that this line is practically required by law when somebody’s writing a motorcycle scene, but seriously:  DON’T DO THAT.  <–The all caps there is not for shaming; it’s for emphasizing the safety issues.  It’s not only uncomfortable for the driver, it’s potentially dangerous.  It makes it hard to steer, hard to breathe comfortably, and easy to get jerked off balance and into a crash.

In a similar vein, holding onto the driver via grabbing their clothing is ill-advised.  This can lead to getting jerked off balance, having seams dig in painfully, and being choked by fabric.

What to do instead:  The rider sitting pillion should brace their hands on either side of the driver’s waist.  

I know, if you’re in it for the sexual tension, this sounds less sexy, but I’m here to tell you that’s a filthy lie.  A passenger who’s sitting properly is basically molded onto the driver’s back.  Riding with/being a passenger on a bike is a startlingly intimate experience.  There’s a lot of trust and teamwork involved, which takes place at a kinesthetic level.  It feels a lot like dancing, as I said before, or maybe partnered sports, where the collaboration is happening at a physical, bone-deep level that often skips right past the conscious intellect.

Now, sometimes (you may’ve seen this on the road) you’ll have passengers who prefer to hang onto a part of the bike–bits of the frame, maybe, or a ‘sissy bar’/seat back sticking up from the back.  It’s not uncommon, but it’s a bad habit because the passenger is never quite as in-tune with the driver this way, and if something happens–a tire slips in a puddle, for example–their weight moving in the wrong direction can end up jerking the bike out of the driver’s control.

Another thing I see a lot of writers do in stories that doesn’t work in real life:  unfortunately, helmets are NOT easily swappable.  They’re designed to clasp the head; a well-fitted helmet should not move on your head at all, even if you shake your head hard (though it also shouldn’t be tight enough to exert uncomfortable pressure).  A helmet that fits loosely is useless at best and dangerous at worst.  One that’s too tight is either painful or doesn’t go on at all.  It doesn’t take much difference in the size of two people’s heads for one person’s helmet to not fit the other person properly.  (And even if they’re the same size, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be comfortable for more than short-term wear, but hey.)

Also, the stupid things are ridiculously expensive–especially the full-face models–so most bikers aren’t lucky enough to have a bunch of extras just laying around.

Another tip, both for writing and riding: riding pillion on a sports bike (those sleek ones where the driver’s crouched and leaning forward like a race jockey) is a miserable freaking experience.  On a lot of models, you’re perched up there on something that barely counts as a seat and leaves you constantly feeling like you’re about to slide off the back; your legs are pushed up into a crouch; you’re hunched like a monkey over the driver; and possibly you’ve got a scalding-hot muffler pressed up against your calf.  

(Pro tip: if anybody ever invites you for a ride on their bike and you’re wearing shorts, pay attention to where the muffler’s located in relation to the foot pegs.)

Now, what is it about motorcycles that makes some of us bikers go into a lathered-up frenzy at the idea of riding?  It’s because it FEELS SO DAMN ALIVE.

Look.  It’s like…life these days is, well, canned.  We spend a lot of our time in pods–houses, cars, subway trains–breathing tinned air, walking around on pavement or carpet…  But when I’m on a bike, it’s me and a 360 degree panorama of the world, and there’s nothing between me and it.  Some people get off on the risk of that, but for me it’s a matter of immersion.  When I ride, I can feel the cool humid air rolling down from under a forested hillside.  I can smell the road dust, the oil, the exhaust, the herby scent of weeds and wildflowers on the roadside, the river I’m driving near, the shady scent of a forest, the roadside fruit stand…and I’m not talking in that wafty, broken-up way you get if you roll the car doors down.  It’s like driving into a wall of scent, crashing through one bubble after another of temperature changes and smells and sounds and sights, and I have this bike underneath me that’s rumbling and vibrating and moving like it’s part of me, and it’s just the most powerful sense I’ve ever had of being in charge of my own life and not hiding from the world.  I can see it, and it can see me, and yeah, that’s a bit dangerous, but it’s also real.

this came to me in a dream etc

Quick reminder that July is disability pride month. Not “gay wrath month”.

When ableism is a massive issue in the queer community and most pride events aren’t accessible maybe y’all should. Idk. Try a bit fucking harder to educate urselves this July.

you know i had to keep up the 'wei ying, the lesbians' tradition, even though hanguang june just ended here as of an hour ago. i hope you all had a happy pride month!

this is based on a scene from the movie Pride :) i imagine lwj and wwx just returned from a long trip/night hunt and the lesbians have missed him a lot

humans don’t have enough ornamentation. where’s the plumage, the antlers

i could go for a good vibrant throat sac i could display as i sing in the mating season

Humans have some of the most extreme hair variation over their bodies in the animal kingdom, with hair on some parts of our body a few millimetres long and fine enough to be almost invisible, and hair in other parts a good metre long if not artificially trimmed. Part of the inside of our mouths are turned out to make our lips bright red, we have comically oversized breasts and lack penis bones to make erections more indicative of impressive circulation, and have some of the most complex behavioural adaptations to self-ornamentation for courtship seen in anything that doesn’t spend half its life collecting blue bottle caps. How much ornamentation do you want?

I’d like antlers, as previously stated

I want bioluminescence

Sonar

Flared webbing would be nice

:3 or >:3

our discord unanimously agreed that ratatouille is a mecha and I cried laughing after making this joke

Asexuals were always part of pride and it really fucking shows when people think it's a recent term.

Although not going by the term "asexual" yet, asexuality was spoken about alongside homosexuality as far back as the 1890s. Asexual history is just as vital to queer history as any other term and I'm so tired of watching us being treated like a new thing

This image is so so fucking important to me

Reblog this, cowards

Everytime I see posts like this I get filled with such profound sadness

Cause you know who has the same brainrot as you? The same unhinged feelings as you after you've read the fic? The person who always wants to scream about the fic with you?

THE PERSON WHO WROTE IT

I never used to leave comments but since I got into the habit of commenting on everything i enjoy it's been incredible. Especially when the author gets back to me about it and we get to have a discussion of what other ideas they had. One writer replied to my comment with a 5 paragraph essay detailing the Floorplan of the building the characters lived in and it was incredible

Anyways this is all to say that if you find a fic that just makes you want to scream from the rooftops, leave a comment saying that to the author and maybe they will join you and you can scream incoherently together

Everytime I see posts like this I get filled with such profound sadness

Cause you know who has the same brainrot as you? The same unhinged feelings as you after you've read the fic? The person who always wants to scream about the fic with you?

THE PERSON WHO WROTE IT

I never used to leave comments but since I got into the habit of commenting on everything i enjoy it's been incredible. Especially when the author gets back to me about it and we get to have a discussion of what other ideas they had. One writer replied to my comment with a 5 paragraph essay detailing the Floorplan of the building the characters lived in and it was incredible

Anyways this is all to say that if you find a fic that just makes you want to scream from the rooftops, leave a comment saying that to the author and maybe they will join you and you can scream incoherently together

Everytime I see posts like this I get filled with such profound sadness

Cause you know who has the same brainrot as you? The same unhinged feelings as you after you've read the fic? The person who always wants to scream about the fic with you?

THE PERSON WHO WROTE IT

I never used to leave comments but since I got into the habit of commenting on everything i enjoy it's been incredible. Especially when the author gets back to me about it and we get to have a discussion of what other ideas they had. One writer replied to my comment with a 5 paragraph essay detailing the Floorplan of the building the characters lived in and it was incredible

Anyways this is all to say that if you find a fic that just makes you want to scream from the rooftops, leave a comment saying that to the author and maybe they will join you and you can scream incoherently together

Fully losing it at this facebook screenshot. 22 inches of green and 1.5 of carrot.

did we learn nothing

Fully losing it at this facebook screenshot. 22 inches of green and 1.5 of carrot.

did we learn nothing

Fully losing it at this facebook screenshot. 22 inches of green and 1.5 of carrot.

did we learn nothing