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not today

when pope

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when pope

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It is Wo-Chien Wednesday, my dudes!

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Another worldbuilding application of the "two layer rule": To create a culture while avoiding The Planet Of Hats (the thing where a people only have one thing going for them, like "everyone wears a silly hat"): You only need two hats.

Try picking two random flat culture ideas and combine them, see how they interact. Let's say taking the Proud Warrior Race - people who are all about glory in battle and feats of strength, whose songs and ballads are about heroes in battle and whose education consists of combat and military tactics. Throw in another element: Living in diaspora. Suddenly you've got a whole more interesting dynamic going on - how did a people like this end up cast out of their old native land? How do they feel about it? How do they make a living now - as guards, mercenaries? How do their non-combatants live? Were they always warrior people, or did they become fighters out of necessity to fend for themselves in the lands of strangers? How do the peoples of these lands regard them?

Like I'm not shitting, it's literally that easy. You can avoid writing an one-dimensional culture just by adding another equally flat element, and the third dimension appears on its own just like that. And while one of the features can be location/climate, you can also combine two of those with each other.

Let's take a pretty standard Fantasy Race Biome: The forest people. Their job is the forest. They live there, hunt there, forage there, they have an obnoxious amount of sayings that somehow refer to trees, woods, or forests. Very high chance of being elves. And then a second common stock Fantasy Biome People: The Grim Cold North. Everything is bleak and grim up there. People are hardy and harsh, "frostbite because the climate hates you" and "being stabbed because your neighbour hates you" are the most common causes of death. People are either completely humourless or have a horrifyingly dark, morbid sense of humour. They might find it funny that you genuinely can't tell which one.

Now combine them: Grim Cold Bleak Forest People. The summer lasts about 15 minutes and these people know every single type of berry, mushroom and herb that's edible in any fathomable way. You're not sure if they're joking about occasionally resorting to eating tree bark to survive the long dark winter. Not a warrior people, but very skilled in disappearing into the forest and picking off would-be invaders one by one. Once they fuck off into the woods you won't find them unless they want to be found.

You know, Finland.

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Milkshakes you get from American diners are so thick because it’s basically just soft serve ice cream in there

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I met one of my longest-term internet friends last week after over 20 years of knowing each other! It was such a great moment for us. They brought their plush of Elphelt, so I brought Emmet, and they got to meet too!

Bonus doodle: Ram and Ingo are trying their best to smile too!

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The older I get the more I admire people who are earnestly, genuinely into whatever their thing is. I know it sounds like an annoying cliche but unless you're being cruel or hurtful there is really no need to be normal about things. The dude with the bad fake accent at the renaissance faire is having the time of his life. The people having photoshoots with their fashion dolls are loving it. The old lady with a yard unreasonably full of tacky ass lawn ornaments is having a blast, HOA be damned.

Don't waste your time being too cool to have fun, y'know?

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Hello everyone please tell me your favorite random character lore from Guilty Gear because I like the character designs and my friend really really loves Elphelt and I like knowing what my friends are talking about

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this week's smartypants reaction image is:

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Ok everyone let’s think beautiful thoughts about masculine women today.

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todays warmup sketch was this here patron snailnt of callout posts

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 nourishes it

keeps it warm

fills it with love

fills it with rice

refills sanity bar

grants it a blessing

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I agree that your brand is trains and Murphy. Also baseball, especially this time of year

I am so, so happy that everyone associates me so strongly with my cat. ♡ Seriously.

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Actually really frustrated right now because people just refuse to let binaries go and love assuming sexuality and gender based on likes and interests. Just went into the notes on this post and it was a bunch of people fighting over whether or not this young man is an egg because he discovered he looks good in a dress, and...not everyone who dresses a certain way is going to be able to be sorted into a binary gender like that, and clothing choices don't necessarily indicate gender identity. There's a huge difference between intentionally coding your clothing choices and presentation to suggest your identity to others and just wearing what you want when you want.

Gender essentialism has come back so stupidly strongly lately and it's infuriating. I'm a masculine cishet woman and gender essentialism actively contributes to my societal de-gendering, because I've noticed I'm only noticed or acknowledged as a woman when I perform femininity and womanhood in extremely specific ways.

I'll be direct and blunt here: gender essentialism is a tool of oppression, and everyone who assumes a feminine man or a masculine woman has to inherently be trans is actively contributing to it and suppressing the wide range of human expression. Sometimes they are trans, and sometimes they aren't, but it's deeply parasocial to make assumptions about strangers the way you would about fictional characters. You can't read a real person the way you would a text or the plot of a television show. If you're insistent that people have to behave only in ways that are appropriate to their gender and that if they aren't doing so they absolutely have to be the opposite binary gender, you're hurting yourself and others and I would suggest having a good hard think about who benefits from you insisting there is only one way for each binary gender to be.

(And of course nonbinary folks inherently exist outside of these binary genders, and there is immense prejudice against intersex people across the board regardless of how they identify. Those could easily be their own posts but I think that uplifting NB and intersex folks' voices would be even better to do here.)

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Your trademark things are Train™️ and Murphy!!

I am so delighted to hear both! ♡

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New ask game:

Reblog if you want your followers to tell you what your trademark ™️ is. Like, what’s that thing that really identifies you.

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incredible

I'm grass/bug