idrawtooslow

Latest Posts by idrawtooslow

Nerf that Ring of Flight by making it the ring itself that flies, while wearing it, you can move the ring through the air in any direction at will. How the character manages to keep the ring on their finger, and their finger on their hand, is the player's problem.

There are books now that are specifically used as status symbols: people use them to appear to be the person they want others to see them as.

Consumer culture has the distressing effect of enhancing the human tendency to convince oneself that one liked something, for the sake of conformity and peace of mind. People tell themselves that they liked what they were told they should like.

Reviewers often wind up with extreme biases for and against certain types of works, for similar reasons to the above. It's also not too crazy to consider there may be some corruption in the literary review community.

Marketing is now a powerful discipline with cutting-edge psychology behind it. When used by trained professionals instead of incompetent corporate outcasts, it can essentially function as mind control, even for the well-informed.

Also, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

TL; DR: Don't feel bad about hating something everyone else seemed to love. There are many reasons why terrible books can get good reviews. And your own opinion is still a valid opinion, even if it's contradictory.

the sense of horror when you finish a book that was Ass Bad and you go to see what fellow haters are saying but all the reviews say it is the best thing they've ever read. feel like i just saw my reflection in the mirror move all by itself or something

Does this mean the era of fish-post-reblogging is at an end?

I eat paper

::Post is about spiders::

So I'm just sitting here at my computer, scrolling Tumblr, when a little male Giant Brown spider hits the bottom windowsill behind my screen. Almost immediately a HUGE female Giant Brown scurries up to it. They sit there listening for each other for a moment, then the female moves closer, feels the male trying to get away, and pounces on him, grabs him, and carries him off out of sight.

Spider procreation is so distressing to see.

Also, I need to deep clean my room.

Having never played Skyrim, I remember running around World of Warcraft in 2012, wondering why one of the most prominent guilds on my server was called Fus Ro Dah.

Context: my roommates were huge Skyrim nerds and played it almost daily in the common area.

if i had a time machine and i wanted to absolutely destroy an ancient emperor or king, i would take them to the shark tunnel of an aquarium. giving them an ozymandias view of their legacy would do nothing, they can see that all empires rot just by looking around them. but the shark tunnel of an aquarium is something they haven’t seen before, something no one has seen before, something magnificent that they could build with technology only slightly out of their reach. they would bankrupt their nation trying to recreate that shark tunnel for themself. their dynasty would collapse within three generations, and, if heaven is on my side, they themself will be eaten by a shark to the delight of generations of historians to come

@thatonepointbraincell you alone are responsible for fishposts showing up in my feed on their own, every day. I hope you're happy.

shhhhh guys be quiet we need to be quiet or else the bears will hear us. as long as we all keep quiet (everyone liking this post) we will be fine just don't do anything to alert the bears okay?

Gad, this is so true in everyday life, too, isn't it?

Tips on how to fight the "if I overly explain, everything will be hunky doory" instinct?

Being genuine, as someone who does struggle with it from time to time. <- Like this!

No matter how good you explain, you are not immune to

person reading fast skipping words or sentences

person reading casually who is not interested in unpacking your statement to any degree of depth

person who decided what you meant three words in and is not internalizing anything beyond that point

person focusing on a part of the statement you literally never considered important and making that the sole focus of their analysis

person primed by an external conflict who is scanning your statement for dogwhistles that indicate whether you're on Their Side or the Enemy Side

When it comes to explaining, there's a baseline level of Good Enough you can strive for, to the point where someone who's paying attention, trying to understand your nuances, and not actively setting out to misinterpret you will most likely get most of what you're talking about. Beyond that, it doesn't matter how many words you use if they aren't being read or interpreted. All you can control is what you say. You cannot control how you're perceived or interpreted.

Oh, good, this is one post I don't have to make myself! Thank you!

As for Moxxie, I think he'd probably want the kid, but wouldn't be realistic or mature about it. We've rarely seen that side of him not being Played For Laughs, but he can be obsessive, overly sentimental, and tends to overthink things excessively. I think Millie needs to emotionally process this news, and come up with a game plan, before she tells Moxxie.

But like @uselessalexis165 wrote, couples can have unplanned pregnancies, as in, they are completely unprepared to raise a child. And this is Hell, not Earth. And they're imps. The idea that there's a safety net for unprepared imp parents is... a bit of a stretch.

As other people are pointing out this week, any pregnancy can be scary. Millie might just be terrified and... well, not overreacting, but reacting extremely.

Y’all, it hasn’t even been a day yet and some people are already theorizing that Millie cheated on Moxxie and that the baby isn’t his

You guys do realize that married couples can experience unplanned pregnancies, right?

Or, that maybe Millie is worried about how having a baby could affect her job?

Shit, maybe she’s worried that she won’t be a good parent if she does decide to keep it because of her own family issues

I could even go as far to say that maybe she’s worried if she does decide to keep the baby, something could go wrong and the baby ends up dying during the pregnancy

And I’m just saying all of this without knowing what Moxxie’s point of view is going to be like

Their plan is to make up Woke reasons to fire all of us incompetent straight White guys who've skated by on privilege all our lives, and then they're gonna round us all up and imprison us in FEMA camps, while black helicopters circle around overhead, scanning our DNA with their special radars, so the Grey aliens can make perfect clones of us with the machines hidden in the bunkers underneath Denver International Airport, except the clones will all be Trans and brainwashed to do whatever the Female-Liberal-Gay Alliance tells them to do. And that's how Freedom will die.

YOU are the Snowflake of whom the Prophecies foretold!

Pro tip:

Never confuse the War In the Pacific with the War Of the Pacific.

Pro tip:

Never confuse the Fifth International with the Third Lateran.

Pro Tip:

Never confuse the Furby community with the Furry community.

Spotted Towhees (Pipilo maculatus) look like someone took an American Robin (Turdus migratorius) and tried to make it "edgy."

By Pranav Tadepalli, CC BY-SA 4.0

And they really are edgy little fuckers, too. They'll pull up every single shoot that pokes its head above ground in your garden, and are very clever at getting through barriers. They do not fear humans, not further than you could lightly toss one.

If you find a roadkill or mysteriously-dead towhee in Spring, it's worth its weight in gold, because they are deterred by a corpse of their own species. The next problem is putting it somewhere these ground-feeding birds will notice it, without making it a free snack for the first scavenger that comes along.

--Hey, didja hear what happened to Brett?

--No, tell me!

--Well, last night, some assholes came out to his dock and ripped off his Johnson.

--What?! Is he gonna be okay?

--Yeah, he was in bed, he slept through the whole thing.

--How can someone sleep through getting their Johnson ripped off?

--Yeah, he's a pretty heavy sleeper, I guess.

--That's... so weird. But is he gonna be okay?

--Oh, he's not hurt at all. They never even came in the house.

--Wait, what?!

--They didn't actually make much noise. But now he needs to borrow your truck.

--To go to the hospital?

--Huh? No, to pick up his spare.

--His spare what?

--His spare Johnson. It's in his shop.

--Okay, why are you messing with me like this?

--What! He's got his spare Johnson up at his shop. He just needs your truck to bring it down here.

--He needs my truck. To pick up his spare Johnson. And attach it, right? After getting his original Johnson ripped off, and he didn't even wake up... or bleed out! Look, what the...

--Well, they didn't actually rip it off, I meant he got ripped off. They had tools, and they unbolted it from the back of the transom.

--...Transom??

--Yeah, you know, the board at the back of the skiff? Where the motor sits?

<long pause>

--You're talking about an outboard motor. A fucking Johnson brand outboard fucking motor.

--Uh, yeah? What did you think I was talking about?

Being German-American, I don't much like the stereotype of Germans as excessively regimented and organized. So I prefer to believe that Liesl's extensive lists and spreadsheets are actually a carefully-crafted manipulation technique, designed to leverage that stereotype into a way to demoralize any opposition to her plans. It's her version of "I can do this all day."

Liesl isn't, actually, an organization freak. If you pay close attention, she turns out to be an adept at retaining facts and knowledge, extrapolating from observational data, and determining optimal solutions. She's a theorycrafter and a logician.

Except for her own personal goal, of course. She's not entirely sane about that, but understandably so.

The Hawt Spring

This tiny little inn is built around a magical hot spring. The spring has one simple magical property: as long as one is physically bathing in the spring, or a pool conected to it and filled with its water, they seem more than naturally physically attractive. To everyone.

The caretakers no longer allow mirrors at the Hawt Spring, and have a firm limit on how long they allow people to stay. Because otherwise, one can poison one's body image, or lose the ability to find beauty in ordinary people.

If you get on their good side, the caretakers might tell you about all the newlywed couples who would honeymoon at the Hawt Spring before there were rules, and come away ready for divorce, after getting too used to how each other looked while bathing in the Hawt Spring. They would begin to see each other's real bodies as "ugly."

Nowadays, newlyweds are banned from the Hawt Spring, by official decree.

It's easy to be "original" when there are no rules, no exceptions. But, under those circumstances, it's difficult to be interesting.

I think that some people hate Blitz because they're so used to dealing with assholes IRL who act like Blitz does in season 1 and much of season 2. This makes it hard for them to see how Blitz is doing it performatively, because he's afraid to show his caring side, or to be vulnerable to others. Props to Brandon for helping us to see the difference.

And, let's face it, most IRL people who act like Blitz aren't faking anything, and are just selfish, hateful assholes.

My spicy take on Studio Ghibli movies: Joe Hisaishi's jazzy piano solos are jarringly incongruous to the movies' fantastical tone and vibe, and they're also a little tacky.

I kind of doubt that Vivaldi's student orchestra at the girls' school was full of incredibly talented instrumentalists, who could toss off his fast bravura passages without a hitch.

I can't help but imagine them as an ordinary school orchestra, most of whom aren't particularly good or talented... and they all dread orchestra practice, because Fra Antoni refuses to either simplify his masterworks for beginner players, or accept the results. Concerts always sound utterly horrible, everyone slogging through music they barely can play, at various tempos that are all less than Vivaldi is beating, and he's always purple and hyperventilating by the end.

I don't have any problems with romantic ships, but I often find platonic friendships in media more interesting. Sure, I'll ship VR-LA and MX-IM, but as friends and research partners, not lovers. As much as I love Stolitz, I'm way more affected by the father-daughter relationships of Blitz and Loona or Stolas and Octavia, and the potential surrogate-sister possibilities of Loona and Octavia. I got so much more mileage out of Elliott's relationships with the other characters in original LEVERAGE than either of the couples.

I will go for the interesting and plausible character dynamic, every time, regardless of whether it's romantic or not. I'm just weird that way, I guess.

Not that it's never romantic. I do wistfully stan Mako and Gamagoori... they could improve each other in so many valuable ways. But I understand why it's not canon.

I guess I just want to make it clear to all the fandoms I may participate in, that if they see me shipping something, it doesn't always mean I'm shipping it romantically.

Interesting how many of these stories follow the pattern of "monster terrorizes town, townsfolk reach accommodation with monster, epic pagan hero or mythical Christendom saint slays or banishes monster." It's fun to headcanon that this is the story as told by the victor, and actually these monsters were symbiotic, providing a defense against transient monsters (Les kaiju, ils se battent).

Maybe even the non-human foods they were fed was a refinement of the original accommodation, and the monsters weren't even eating people at all, by the time Ser Pointyhelmet comes along.

Could be a fun thing to work into a modern narrative: hero comes to town, hero hears about monster, town begs hero not to slay monster, hero slays monster, hero moves on, town gets destroyed by wandering monsters. Or maybe the town forces the hero to stay around and defend them against the transient monster population...

Dragons & Folklore de France

Translation below

The Tarasque dwells in the waters of the Rhone river near the town of Tarascon, where it devours travelers and destroys dikes and dams to flood the Camargue. Saint Martha chained it, and the people of Tarascon killed it.

The ruins of the amphitheaters of Metz were infested by hundreds of snakes. The largest of them, the Graoully, had a venomous breath, a mouth bigger than its body and devoured men. Saint Clement chased it away into the Seille River.

King of serpents, the Basilisk takes many forms throughout history and appears in many tales. One of them takes place at the Gate of Saint-Eloi in Bordeaux, known today for its Big Bell, where a well was occupied by a Basilisk. It petrified with its gaze anyone who went there to fetch water. It was defeated by a man returning from the Egyptian crusade, who petrified the beast with its own gaze using a mirail (mirror).

The Cocatrix is born from a rooster's egg incubated by a toad. The egg has magical properties but must not be broken. People who cross its gaze die immediatly.

Made of wicker and covered in flowers, the Grand Bailla wanders the streets of Reims three days a year and feeds on gold and sweets. It was banished by Archbishop Charles Maurice le Tellier.

The Grand'Goule haunts the marshes of Poitou, the waters of the Clain and the flooded cellars of the abbey of Sainte Croix. It feeds on nuns and casse-museaux (snout-breakers, cakes). Saint Radegonde chased it away with holy water.

In the rivers of the Jura and the Alps there is a group of diverse dragons, the Vouivres. They are generally flying serpents covered in fire and guardians of treasures. Many have for a single eye a gigantic carbuncle with extraordinary powers, desired by those in search of wealth and power.

Hidden in the caves of la Pointe du Roux near La Rochelle, the Rô Beast traps and devours travelers in the coastal marshes. It was impaled by seven heroic pagans from the seas.

Mythical dragon of the Basque Country, Herensuge gave birth to the Sun and the Moon, swallowed all of Creation in ten days then regurgitated it in flames. Now asleep in the mountains, it sucks up flocks and shepherds in his sleep. When it wakes up, it will destroy the world in flames and blood. (illustration)

Durandal is the mythical sword that Charlemagne gave to the knight Roland. Some claim that it was inherited from Hector, the warrior of the Trojan War. At war with the Saracens in the Pyrenées, Roland wanted to break the sword so that it would not fall into the hands of the enemy but Durandal split the mountain. So he threw the sword, which went to stick miles away, in the rock of the town of Rocamadour.

The belief in the Tooth Fairy is widespread in several countries in Europe, and is sometimes amalgamated with La Petite Souris (little mouse). It exchanges baby teeth for money. No one knows what it does with all these teeth.

The Camecruse is a bogeyman that haunts the moors and marshes of Gascony. It is agile, can jump and hide in the night to better devour lost children. No one knows exactly how it feeds.

The caves under the hill of the town of Hastingues are home to Lou Carcolh, a monstrous snail, long, slimy and hairy. Its shell is as big as a house. With the help of its tentacles, it grips people to devour them.

The Questing Beast is hunted by kings and heroes in Arthurian legends. It symbolizes evil, incest, violence and chaos, and takes it name from the loud noises that come out of its stomach, similar to the barking of dozens of dogs.

The fairy Mélusine, cursed princess of Albania, was condemned to change into a snake below the waist every Saturday. She married Raymondin de Lusignan with whom they had 10 prodigious children. But Raymondin broke his promise never to see Mélusine on Saturday : he surprised her in her monstrous form, and she left her family forever.

Ever notice that both Ram and Prius drivers will take up multiple parking spaces, and double down if you call them on it?

Now that we've discovered the First-Ever Complaint Letter, perhaps we will discover other firsts among ancient cuneiform tablets baked in long-long-ago city fires. Like, oh, I don't know... How about the First-Recorded Karen?

"O, Tara-Nuwusu, since your father's death, you are the head of your household, and as such, we, the elders of the town, implore you to curb your venerable mother's behavior. Her sharp tongue and endless demands are an affliction to us all. Day after day, she lurks at the gate of the town, seeking those with whom she may take offense and make undignified scenes. Please, Tara-Nuwusu, [...] diligently, for the sake of your name and lineage, and speak to your mother, and [...] to her that she cannot insist on [?receiving] goods without price, as compensation for ill-treatment she has [?imagined/?alleged], nor may she overturn the stalls of vendors who refuse her demands. O, Tara-Nuwusu, we do not wish to bind and confine your venerable mother, but she daily [...] peace of the city with her behavior, and if you cannot control her, we must regretfully subject you and your family to [?humiliation]."

"...but, hey, I'm pretty happy with this one."

As you should be!

Modern Monsters 9: Lesser Dragon (Dragonet)

The modern world has very little space for giant monsters to roam the land.

If any of the large sapient lizards - the greater elemental dragons, fire and ice drakes, wyverns, wyrms, or any others you can think of - still live today, they certainly don’t venture far from their inhospitable hiding places. Human settlements have encroached too far into the wild edges of the lands. Even the skies and seas are not entirely untouched.

However, just as the more widely-known living fossils like coelacanths and tuataras continue to survive, if one knows where to look, there still remain small populations of dragonets scattered across the globe. They have adapted through necessity to living on the quieter edges where human influence, though undeniably present, begins to fade into wilderness.

Like their larger relatives, these small creatures are sapient and have some influence over the elements. However, these lesser dragons branched off quite some time ago from their more powerful and more intelligent giant cousins. Even the most unusually large dragonets are no bigger than a small domestic cat.

Consequently, their abilities don’t quite match up to dragons of medieval lore.

Dragonets have a level of intelligence roughly equivalent to a young human child.

They understand human languages well but may struggle to articulate themselves fully, given that inter-dragonet communication uses an intricate combination of scents, pheromones, scale colour changes, and elemental flares such as barely detectable atmospheric pressure changes alongside any vocalisations. As a result, they only have so much patience left for polishing up their grammar.

It’s really anyone’s guess whether it’s the brain equivalence to a small child or the genetic link to greater dragons that makes them so temperamental and so keen to hoard shiny things for themselves.

The different populations of dragonets have started diverging into subspecies at this point, with different types showing different elemental affinities.

The pictured specimen’s tendency to leave trails of frost lacing from its path may seem to imply that this type throw ice magic out into their environment, maybe because they love the cold. The fact of the matter is, the opposite is true - they just like to keep warm, and their bodies absorb heat from around them to such an extreme degree that they drop the temperature of everything around them. They are far less snappy and more energetic in the summer when their bodies don’t have to work so hard to maintain their preferred high core temperature.

More than one shrewd hedgewitch has picked up on this, over the years.

The promise of a warm fireside for the winter, along with all the cat food pouches they can eat, has been quite effective in convincing frost dragonets to form a partnership of sorts.

They still need to be treated with respect, and they must have free access to the outdoors, of course; draconians of any size cannot tolerate captivity. However, they can bond with the right sort of humans, and those that do so quickly learn that they rather enjoy a ride in a shirt pocket or on a shoulder when offered.

It is also well-known among such favoured witches that dragonets are surprisingly good with their children, particularly their little girls.

A lesser dragon is still a dragon, after all.

And dragons do so love a princess.

~~~

This time around the picture came first. I just really love dragons, and wanted to dream up a way a pocket-sized one could exist. Once I saw its face, I knew I wasn’t going terribly verbose on the poem this time.

It doesn’t often talk to humans, but it’s trying its best.

I’ve also seen “dragonet” sometimes used to refer to baby dragons, so let me be absolutely clear that yes, I’m using that here as a separate species name, and this is a full-grown adult one ready to fight you for that shiny bottle cap.

I love bearded dragons, so I went straight to that as my baseline for the picture. Which I dedicated far too much time to, as usual, but hey, I’m pretty happy with this one.

~~~

Modern Monsters series

Modern Monsters 1: Dullahan

Modern Monsters 2: Kelpie

Modern Monsters 3: Kuchisake-onna

Modern Monsters 4: Cuca

Modern Monsters 5: Vampire

Modern Monsters 6: Dr Frankenstein

Modern Monsters 7: Frankenstein’s Monster

Modern Monsters bonus: Frankenstein, Monster (it’ll come some day I swear)

Modern Monsters 8: The Scissorman

Modern Monsters 9: Lesser Dragon (Dragonet)

It's hard to study contemporary American cryptids, because they don't have unique names. Instead of fanciful names like "Jersey Devil" or "Sasquatch," most new cryptids don't have distinct names, people just use common words like "woman" or "criminal," even when they're referring to imaginary, non-human beings with supernatural powers.

If I wrote a zombie apocalypse story, guns and ammo would be hard to come by, because all the gun nuts and survivalists and preppers looted them first thing, and hoarded them.

Most of the guns and ammo that remain are rusting away in the zombie-infested ruins of these people's compounds. Most of them made up their own little stories about where the zombies were coming from, and paid the price.