"Stolas Isn't Wrong For Choosing His Own Happiness For Once After Years Of Abuse And Depression"

UPDATE: Yes, the kittens do live next door. We had no idea!

The problem with having "free range" cats is that they will annex properties and people you don't have control over, into their territory. I hope they eventually learn that the neighbors' dogs can't keep them safe up here. At least they'll put a dent in the vole population.

This is here because I can't post photos on the local message board. I'm trying to find the owner of these two kittens before the raccoons get them.

The Croaker's Revenge

The Croaker will be present at Dashcon 2, and will guard the ballpit, after a fashion… but nobody will notice or recognize them. Many cosplayers will attend as the Croaker, but none will be @the-muppet-joker, not even the one in full purple-leisure-suit Joker cosplay, with a Kermit puppet fastened to his fly like a codpiece.

@strange-aeons will be there, in full Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven-Way cosplay, guarding the ballpit and posing for mock battle photos with Brotherhood cosplayers, but nobody will claim to be the actual Muppet Joker. Things will be whispered into Master Strange's ear, but they will mostly be along the line of what a lovely couple she and her wife make. Perhaps Master Strange will lean down to hear one person whisper, "I think he's here," and she will turn around, but she will not be able to tell who she was leaning down to listen to.

The ballpit will be a hit. Not as big as the raccoon talk given by @raccoonmilf, but the organizers, @dashcon-two, knew that if they were going to have a ballpit, they'd have to go big and make it as nice as possible, and the party supply company will deliver the perfect thing. Among other activities, getting selfies with Homestuck cosplayers reenacting their time in the original Dashcon ballpit will be popular.

Nobody will urinate in the ballpit.

Nobody will think very hard about how the laconic, sullen young person in a polo shirt and work slacks, who set up the ballpit alone and unassisted, had bright green hair.

Nobody will think very hard about how this green-haired young person spent every day of the convention posted up against a wall in view of the ballpit, scrolling on their phone, not interacting with anyone.

Nobody will realize until after the con, that the party supply company did not contract to set the ballpit up for the organizers, or to provide a maintenance person for it.

Nobody at the party supply company will care, when the Dashcon 2 organizers tell them that whoever initially signed for the ballpit wasn't event staff. Nor will they have any idea who actually did sign for it.

After the con, everyone will assume that the young green-haired nonbinary person, who set up the ballpit and spent the entire con leaning on the wall in view of it, scrolling on their phone, will pack up the ballpit and load it into the party supply company's truck, but in fact, the ballpit will still be standing, quite abandoned, and the green-haired one will have vanished without a trace. Eventually, the organizers will find badge details matching the green-haired one in their records: a standard visitor pass with no special privileges, under the name of "John Smith."

After the con, over the next few weeks, the repercussions will start to become apparent. Bit by bit, the Croaker's devious, twisted, insane, magnificent, hilarious plan will come to fruition before the eyes of an astonished and terrified Tumblr community, and the Croaker will have revenge upon all of us.

In near-future speculative fiction story, highly politicized faction refuses to use pronouns completely. Including indefinite pronouns. Including first-person pronouns.

Can conceivably be pro- or anti- inclusivity ideology, small group or large group.

Faction's speech is weird and stilted, although similar to English "brevity wording" found on signs and instruction manuals. Surprisingly easy to understand, considering complete restructuring of speech pattern and grammar.

Same group does not use contractions, but unrelated. Abandonment of contractions pure affectation driven by pomposity.

Blog post is self-demonstrating.

AAAAAAA

I used to take care of a couple goats, I am now feeling very weird that I didn't know goats have a dental pad.

Goat opinion: pygmy goat wethers are only obnoxious if you make it easy for them. Otherwise, they're practically obedient. And incredibly sweet!

"...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)

This character is debonair and very attractive. Very sexily attractive, and has a sexy accent to top it off.

But their knowledge of the common language is worse than just having a shaky accent... they get idioms comically wrong, all the time, in their sexy accent, ruining the effect. They'll say "Boum, schockolat" instead of "boom, shakalaka," for example.

When other characters try to correct them, they just flip their hair sexily and say, "My vairsion is bettair."

::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.

Oh, right.

I watched this a couple weeks before I came up with the bit about a triple-A publisher launching a video game that "plays itself for you," because they're that out of touch.

Must have still been kicking around my skull when I watched that Oxbox video about disturbing trends in the video game industry. The cringey XBox reveal in it prompted several pointed, well-reasoned comments, that was the other seed.

GAMES NEED AN EASY MODE.

Or maybe they don't. Today we look into it.

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.

@whyisthereacentaur No idea what this bumper sticker is there for, but I insist that technically, this qualifies as goatposting.