#fallen acorn

[the-cave-colonies]

Moonturn 0, Part One.

Hello all, welcome to the Caves. Where everything is completely normal, all of the time.

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[kojiarakiartworks]

December 2003 PDX Portland Oregon U.S.A. 

© KOJI ARAKI Art Works

Daily life and every small thing is the gate to the universe ：）

[humbababa]

I fell asleep (exhaustion) re-reading Gardens of the Moon last night.

Until now, I never realized how much I craved falling asleep to a favourite book while relaxing.

It's the kind of thing you only see being done by cats or mice in cute pastel and watercolour art

[inka1712]

The last leaves 🍂🍁🍃

[bumblebee-cottage]

[shalmplay]

Sunday Perusin' 07/21/24

bad at fighting games & haven't kept up with new stuff much, but i do still have a nostalgic spot for them (played them a tonnn growing up, since my brother got as many as he could find lol) loved the sprites in SVC Chaos & it's nice to see it again~

some of these character designs are pretty cool 0:

i've already heard some buzz for this one, but more importantly:

bird alert

speaking of:

protagonist bird alert

'nother one i've already heard some buzz on

nice homegrown charm to this one; looks like a lot of love went into it

squirrel game? with bird alert?? u bet i'm smashin the wishlist button

i'm torn--love that i'm seeing more ports of niche wonderswan/gba/etc stuff coming out these days on the other hand, def some anime tropes in here that i just don't like lol;; (also pls tell me that smoothing filter can be turned off 😭 i'm fine with it existing for those who prefer it, but at least make it toggleable)

wow!! bird alert is strong this week!!!

this is a very oddly timed port because i was literally just looking this game up recently? can't remember why though. (oh you know what, i think maybe i saw an old ad for it in one of those retro game mag tumblrs. and thought the concept was neat in spite of the terrifying face lol)

another one i'm torn on;; on the one hand, cyangmou art on the other hand, it sounds like most of the other elements leave a bit to be desired still....cyangmou art....

i had this wishlisted for a while & it looks like it finally came out! decent reviews too

[westernstarofthenorth]

Autumn feels ❤🧡💛🌰🍁

[deanmarywinchester]

hobbies include: close reading the Redwall series to answer my most burning questions. such as:

- can I replicate any of these delicious-sounding foodstuffs and would they in fact be delicious if I was able to

- corollary to the above: are we just supposed to read “oat cream” and “nut cheese” every time we see the words “cream” and “cheese”? I think so. bc if not, what tha hell are their livestock animals

- what is Society like? I don’t think we ever see a Mouse City or even Mouse Town though we do see castles and obviously an abbey. are we supposed to believe that most creatures are either in wandering bands or these societies based around a single structure (castle/abbey?)

- they appear to have an idea of what currency is (the bad guys always want treasure — maybe just to have, not to sell? but less ambiguous is some dialogue I just read, “acorn for your thoughts?” “you can have them for free”) but again, we never see anyone using money or making goods for the market. is this after the fall of Mouse Capitalism? are the bad guys (the idea of rat pirates gives me a headache, vis a vis the political/economic systems needed to power piracy) raiding preindustrial mouse societies for treasure/meat?

- corollary to the above: the abbey creatures have oats and wheat but we don’t see anybody farming or trading for farm goods on a large enough scale. is the abbey “orchard” really a like an indigenous forest farm of mixed foodstuffs? is that possible if you live in the same place the whole year or only if you travel each season? I have to do some googling

- both the lack of mixed-species families and the idea of mixed-species families give me a headache. has a squirrel never fallen for a handsome otter? what is the culture shock like if you marry into a subterranean mole family?

- this is the least “important” question but this read through I’ve been desperately trying to figure out What Size Everything Else Is. i’ve come to the conclusion that everything other than animals are at mouse scale, given that they can make seaworthy vessels their own size (a mouse sized vessel with real-world-sized waves seems impossible) and pick and eat apples and plums. but so far it seems like they’ve avoided mentioning how tall trees are — like a person compared to a tree or a mouse compared to a tree?

[lunarbard]

So in my other campaign (called the Order of the Fallen Acorn), my fighter (and token non-magic-user of the Order), Brigid, and our padlock, Bill, fell into a sort of lancer/leader dynamic (respectively) a year ago in actual time (a few weeks in-game) after the party got separated for a bit.

Possibly the funniest resonance of this dynamic was when the Order met with the Archbishop of the nation of Everiel (where the campaign takes place), who hopes to make the gods stronger there. So he brought the party to a place where they could each commune with whichever god called to them, hoping they would become champions of those gods.

Bill had been serving both the god of justice and goddess of peace, and chose to accept service to the goddess of peace, embracing her. The other three in our party had relatively calm conversations with the god of the wilds, the goddess of medicine/undeath, and the god of knowledge.

Brigid got called by the god of war/bloodshed/strife/glory, refused to fight him, and got physically kicked out of the commune so hard that she slammed into a column in the mundane world and cracked it, but stayed conscious.

[the-cave-colonies]

Moonturn 0, Part Two

[Beginning] [Previous] [Next]

[teaandspite]

The Great Goodreads Diss List (Part 1)

Context: For many years now, I have been collecting funny lines from Goodreads reviews to share with my coworkers. (I do collection development, reader's advisory, and weeding at a public library, so I read a LOT of reviews)

Are some of these, perhaps, rather mean? Yes, but they are also very funny, and come from a place of honest frustration. In the tradition of Bargepole threads and lists everywhere, names and titles have been censored.

"First, I want to say that I understand how hard it is to write a book and how amazing it is when it is actually published. Congrats to the author for that accomplishment. That said--"

"Warning: This review will be lengthy due to pure hatred."

"I found myself feeling really, really annoyed with the world that this book is allowed to exist. We live in a universe where the passenger pigeon is extinct but this book goes along merrily being read by unsuspecting lovers of words and ideas and stories? It just seems like too much, you know?"

"Don't do it. Don't spring the cash for the hardcover. Instead, eat an entire bag of Twizzlers, spend some money you don't have at a high-end department store, look up on Facebook the shady college boyfriend that made you cry, research the current value of your home or 401K and then read all about how the big hedge fund managers are faring during the economic crisis. You'll feel about the same stomach pain if you waste your time reading this book."

"This wretched novel begins with the mugging of an old lady and it appears I may be in the process of repeating that loathsome crime as [author] was 78 when she wrote it. It is not nice to put the boot into such a poor defenseless old creature lying there with only a damehood, a Booker Prize and a few million quid. It’s a nasty job but somebody has to do it."

"I think this is the way dead people would write, if they could."

"I am considering setting up SPABB: Society for the Protection of Accurate Book Blurb. This blurb appears to have been written by someone from the publishers who met [the author] the night before, got very drunk, lost his notes and then constructed something in a fug of hangover the next morning."

"I congratulate [the author] on the early half of his book, which was thoroughly fun and made me laugh and think. I congratulate [the author] on the second half of his book, for finishing it. It reads like that was difficult."

"…a woman whose taste in contemporary literature has roughly the same batting average as a pitcher in the National League."

"The author is a pompous windbag."

"Recommends it for: No one. Recommended to me by: A friend who apparently wished to cause me great suffering."

"Makes me wonder: is it possible to obtain similes at a volume discount?"

"The repeated phrases made me want to mail a thesaurus to the author."

"I'm disappointed in myself for finishing this book."

"if the author described [character's] eyes as "obsidian" one more time I was tempted to write her and ask if her thesaurus broke."

"They say that an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters would, if given infinite time, eventually produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. [This book], on the other hand, would probably take the average monkey just under two hours."

"I can't imagine what the author had to do to get this nadir of Western literature printed on innocent trees, but he does seem to know a LOT about being well-connected in New York."

"This book is so bad it is almost worth reading just to make you appreciate the other books you are reading."

"Reads like it was written by a brilliant author, the night before it was due."

"raises interesting questions, like: can a book be so bad as to constitute an act of terrorism"

"has this author ever spoken to a human woman"

"This acorn has fallen so far from the tree that it can’t even see the forest."

"I’m guessing they are touted as ‘beach reads’ because no one will care if they get dropped into the ocean."

"This book begins with all the energy of a hand vacuum near the end of its battery life, and the pace doesn't quicken much from there."

"At least everybody’s eyes stayed the same color this time around.”

Part 2

Part 3

[kojiarakiartworks]

December 2003 PDX Portland Oregon U.S.A. 

© KOJI ARAKI Art Works

Daily life and every small thing is the gate to the universe ：）

[alphacrone]

Ranking animals i’ve had to move out of the road

deer - 1/10

you’ve heard of ‘deer in the headlights’ but have you heard of its much more deliberate cousin, ‘deer who are grazing on fallen acorns in the middle of the road and know you’re there and don’t give a fuck about your murder machine or how loud you honk at it’?

neighborhood dogs - 4/10

i love random surprise dogs as much as the next person but not when i’m driving. not when they’re muddy and wet and want to get into my car but won’t let me read the number on their collar. not when their owners don’t answer and now i’m just responsible for keeping their idiot golden retriever alive when i just wanted to go home.

turtles - 7/10

if you know how to pick ‘em up proper then it’s kinda fun to zoom a little guy over to where he’s trying to go like he’s just minding his business and now he’s flying

snapping turtles - 0/10

you want for that motherfucker to cross at his own speed. dni

baby owl while all his siblings and very scary mother watched - 10/10

i’ve never felt more alive. lil idiot kept hissing at me but would move to i kept having to scooch him over with a shoe in place of a stick or shovel. genuinely thought mama owl was gonna attack me but seemed to realize i was helping her dumbest son over to where she was. scariest minute of my life tbh. he was nothing more than an angry ball of feathers and i fell in love instantly. sky cats indeed.

tarantulas - 0/10

i’ve never tried to move one i just wanted to remind everyone that they’re big enough to see on the road lmao

[junkiepunkie]

Bilbo and Thorin both trying separately to arrange a date to propose to one another but both their cultures have wildly different engagement superstitions. Like,

Bilbo: Well, it will have to wait at least another two weeks because the last acorns haven’t fallen yet. And even then, I’ll have to bake the cake and dust off my good boots so we’ll be blessed with good weather for the wedding, and of course I could hardly propose on a Sunday! That would be far too improper.

Thorin, in a separate room: Okay, first things first I’ll need to make the traditional gift of my kin, he likes gold doesn’t he? Ah but he already owns a golden ring, terrible luck to give someone two pieces of the same jewellery. A crown perhaps? Then of course there’s the matter of the courtship braiding which will mean at least two months before I can even entertain the thought of actually proposing-

Gandalf off in a corner somewhere: this… may take a while.

[super-lovely-star]

🍁Fall Activities and Stuff for Middle Regressors🍁

Go outdoors and stomp in some crunchy, dry leaves. Bonus points if it’s at an empty playground!

Pick out a spooky movie and have a movie night. It doesn’t have to be horror, there are plenty of cartoon/kids show Halloween specials that aren’t too scary! It’s even more fun when you have pizza or some other nostalgic food to snack on.

If you go to school/classes, you can pick out fun stationary like folders with characters on them, cute notebooks, and scented pencils.

If you don’t go to school but would still like a back to school experience, you can set up a little classroom for your plushies and read chapter books with them

Think of fun Halloween costumes to make. It doesn’t have to be expensive. A pair of animal ears for your favorite animal has never failed me.

If you don’t want to dress up personally but still want to make a costume, you can make some for your favorite plushies out of materials like craft felt or construction paper.

If there’s a farm near you, they might have apple/pumpkin picking!

Another outdoors activity is taking a nature walk! The trees look so pretty during fall, so make sure to bring some plushies so they can see them too! You can take pictures of them in the fallen leaves.

Speaking of leaves, you can find the most perfect ones and press them in a book. Just make sure they aren’t completely brittle or they’ll break!

You can go camping, for real or for pretend. I don’t like real camping, so I make a fort out of blankets and use an LED lantern and make s’mores in the microwave lol.

Go check out a thrift store for cozy sweaters and other stylish fall clothing. If you go close to Halloween, they’ll have interesting stuff that you can make costumes out of!

For some reason I find going to the library very nostalgic around this time of year, so I recommend doing that! Most libraries have middle grade chapter books.

Set up a cozy corner in your room with lots of blankets and pillows and plushies, for reading or gaming in!

Plant some seeds or bulbs for the summer. This generally works best outdoors, but if you don’t have a yard you can probably still have luck planting it in a flower pot.

Research the seasonal behaviors of your local wildlife! You can watch squirrels burying acorns, and birds migrating. Just be sure to do so from a safe distance,

Make something tasty, like candy apples or a sweet with lots of cinnamon! Make sure you have supervision if you need it.

Happy Fall and have fun!

[bumblebee-cottage]