Howdy, Paxon! Can I Request Boobys And Gannets >:P

Do you like vintage scientific illustrations?

Do you like not spending huge amounts of money on them?

This website has a huge collection of high quality vintage illustrations that you can download FOR FREE

They got pretty much everything!! Vintage maps, mushrooms, flowers, trees, bugs, birds, corals, fish, palm trees, feathers, tropical fruits, you name it!!

They even got some works of my dude Ernst Haeckel on there!!!!

I could go on and on but I suggest you check it out yourself. Personally, I will be covering my entire apartment with these once copyshops are open again. But even if you don’t want to do that, just browsing all these beautiful illustrations is a great way to spend your time. 

Have fun and stay save!

Low level/continuous pain tips for writing

Want to avoid the action movie effect and make your character’s injuries have realistic lasting impacts? Have a sick character you’re using as hurt/comfort fodder? Everyone has tips for how to write Dramatic Intense Agony, but the smaller human details of lasting or low-level discomfort are rarely written in. Here are a few pain mannerisms I like to use as reference:

General

Continuously gritted teeth (may cause headaches or additional jaw pain over time)

Irritability, increased sensitivity to lights, sounds, etc

Repetitive movements (fidgeting, unable to sit still, slight rocking or other habitual movement to self-soothe)

Soft groaning or whimpering, when pain increases or when others aren’t around

Heavier breathing, panting, may be deeper or shallower than normal

Moving less quickly, resistant to unnecessary movement

Itching in the case of healing wounds

Subconsciously hunching around the pain (eg. slumped shoulders or bad posture for gut pain)

Using a hand to steady themself when walking past walls, counters, etc (also applies to illness)

Narration-wise: may not notice the pain was there until it’s gone because they got so used to it, or may not realize how bad it was until it gets better

May stop mentioning it outright to other people unless they specifically ask or the pain increases

Limb pain

Subtly leaning on surfaces whenever possible to take weight off foot/leg pain

Rubbing sore spots while thinking or resting

Wincing and switching to using other limb frequently (new/forgettable pain) or developed habit of using non dominant limb for tasks (constant/long term pain)

Propping leg up when sitting to reduce inflammation

Holding arm closer to body/moving it less

Moving differently to avoid bending joints (eg. bending at the waist instead of the knees to pick something up)

Nausea/fever/non-pain discomfort

Many of the same things as above (groaning, leaning, differences in movement)

May avoid sudden movements or turning head for nausea

Urge to press up against cold surfaces for fever

Glazed eyes, fixed stare, may take longer to process words or get their attention

Shivering, shaking, loss of fine motor control

If you have any more details that you personally use to bring characters to life in these situations, I’d love to hear them! I’m always looking for ways to make my guys suffer more write people with more realism :)

Photographer Levon Biss Illuminates the Strange, Otherworldly Chrysalises of Butterfly Pupae

the real reason why teachers dont want you to wear hats in school

[Image ID: two close-up photos of short green lawn grass. The photos appear to be taken in the evening right before sunset, where the shadows are really stark and the tips of the grass is lit up a brilliant bright green by the sunlight. /End ID]

got high and thought the grass looked so beautiful i couldn't believe it and proceeded to take some really mid grass pics

the paralyzed cicadas I picked up from a failed cicada killer nest are the perfect material to show off some cool features of insect anatomy! (although the wasp’s venom would keep them alive for her larvae to eat, I froze them to make sure they’re fully dead for dissection).

cicadas are powerful, fast fliers, and all of their thorax is taken up by a bulk of reddish, stringy flight muscles, which I’ll talk more about later. this cicada is a female, so her abdomen is full of white, elongated eggs that she will insert into tree bark with the bladed ovipositor at her rear.

the male cicada’s abdomen, however, is almost entirely empty, and that air-filled space is used as a resonator for his loud calls. the biggest structure visible there is a curved pair of muscles that deforms the tymbals, producing a click with every contraction.

here's a view of the complete muscle, and the tymbals themselves which look like overlapping plates on his belly. if you're curious what the white frosted appearance is, some Neotibicen have a coat of waxy powder or pruinescence; this male N. tibicen is particularly pruinose.

onto the flight muscles:

powered flight is a pretty complex mechanism in any organism, and is never so simple as just flapping wings up and down, but most insects power their flight in a really unintuitive way (at least for us vertebrates): they contract muscles in their thorax that aren’t even attached to the wings!

this method of flight is called indirect flight, in contrast to the direct flight of the dragonflies and mayflies where each of four wings is directly attached to a muscle and can flap on its own.

instead, most insects have a longitudinal (image 1 above, d below) pair and a vertical (2, c) pair of muscles that deform the shape of abdomen, pulling the upper segment of the thorax (notum) up and down, and this moves the wings which are attached to the notum. useful indirect flight gif from wikipedia found here

even if compressed manually, the dead cicadas "flap" their wings due to the motion of the notum:

insect flight is a lot more complicated than this simplified look at them, but I think these cicadas offer a pretty good look at how most insects get around essentially by squishing themselves internally!

not exactly using the ask box correctly here but shshshshshsh just wanted to share with the class incase anyone was curious! cats actually can have "skunk stripe" patterns like cashew

images from http://messybeast.com/bicolours.htm it's not the prettiest site but it's got alot of info + images of cats with really funky patterns! great design inspo don't mind me, i just think these kitties look cool

Aww pretty cats! It's nice to know that my ridiculous sparklecat designs have some kind of basis in reality.

Did a small #tutorial for class on “How to Improve Storytelling in Panel Layouts”! Thought it might help some peepz around here!

Me: oh yeah, if you think school photography is hard now, try imagining doing this with film.

The new girl: what’s film?

Me: … film. Like… film that goes in a film camera.

New girl: what’s that mean?

Me: … before cameras were digital.

New girl: how did you do it before digital?

Me:… with film? I haven’t had enough coffee for this conversation