cosmic-espero

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Dante statue and the blood moon, photograph taken in Naples, Italy on July 27, 2018. From The Guardian website.

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I will always remember the time I had an encounter with the Mothman. It was around 11-12 pm, I was sitting on my back porch, enjoying a snack consisting of a donut and glass of milk. Then I saw the glowing red eyes a the top of a tree. It swooped down and approached me, I was terrified! Then he said to me that I was gonna get an ingrown toenail. He then stole took my donut and flew away. It was a boston cream.

Three months later I had to go to a podiatrist to get an ingrown toenail removed.

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Funerary figure of Qebehsenuef, 1100BC-332BC, Egypt.

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Detail of sacrificial bull from fresco of Jason and Pelias, Roman, 1st century AD (no later than 79 AD) Casa di Giasone, Pompeii (IX, 5, 18-21, triclinio f) Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Salla LXIX (inv. 111436) Detail in a fresco depicting Jason and Pelias: a young man leading a bull to sacrifice. This is the moment that King Pelias, not seen here, stands on the steps of the temple and recognizes Jason by his single sandal. The bull looks shocked!

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What's the creation you hated making the most and the peel you hated the most (either by difficulty or just cus ew)

i love making all manner of creature. i don't hate any of them as i create them - some are more difficult for sure, but they've never given me so much trouble that i started to hate them.

as for peels though, the most repulsive one is absolutely the twerkey

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One thing that Spore has over every other character/creature creator - it lets you make your creation do a little dance, and then inflict bees upon it.

this is true

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🐨 A hand-book to the marsupialia and monotremata London: E. Lloyd, 1896. Original source Image description: Illustration from an 1896 handbook depicting a koala clinging to a tree branch. The koala is shown in profile, with detailed fur texture in shades of brown and grey, large rounded ears with tufts of fur, and sharp claws gripping the branch. The background features a natural landscape with trees, shrubs, and a body of water, rendered in soft greens and yellows. The style is typical of detailed 19th-century scientific illustrations, providing a clear and informative view of the koala in its arboreal habitat. The image is labeled “PLATE X.” and titled “KOALA.”

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Have you ever taken a closer look at the folder Billie shows us in DH2?

No, not the outside. The inside, I mean.

When she opens it on the desk, first you can only see the newspaper clipping about Hypatia on top - but something is peeking out from under it... You can take a better look at it after she's walked away and you're back in full control of yourself, or by examining it before activating the cutscene. There are three photos taped to a sheet of paper.

One is clearly one of Yannick Gombart's shots, specifically Harbour Of Ill-Thought Salt, but I can't say I've seen the other two in any of the material I've looked through. Yannick Gombart also made the folder asset, by the way.

The third depicts the corner of Bottle Street and Bloodox Way in the Distillery District, most likely during the Golden Cat mission judging by the angle of the sun. (No visual material from the cut third visit to the Distillery District remains so I can't say this screenshot wasn't taken during that visit, but due to something I'll discuss in a second I do personally doubt it.) From the vibe I'd hazard to guess this is also a Yannick Gombart original. Here's my best recreation of it:

That still leaves us with the second one - and while it is a bit of a mystery, I do have one very good guess. Let's start with what this location is not: the Distillery District main street, nor the entrance to Dunwall Tower, at least not in the finished game.

The Distillery District main street features hedges and fences that would fit but it is far too wide, and it's probably safe to assume this street has always been rather wide since it's the big flashy main throughway through this mission. I get more a side alley vibe from the mystery street, definitely nothing signaling the player to not just go here but go to its very end (as, for example, the railcart line through the main street does, visually ferrying the player along its way).

The raised look of the building on the left and the light stone used in the architecture reminded me of the way the Tower entrance is set up. Hedges and iron fences are of course also used around the Tower. In the intro version of the Tower, the entrance can't be examined up close so it is very low detail. Did they maybe build a more complex version of the entrance at some point that ended up going unused? Maybe. Additional evidence: part of the railcart station that forms part of the entrance in DH2 has an iron fence in a place that could be seen as a continuation of the fence in the mystery image, as well as its opposite wall being formed in multiple horizontal levels reminiscent of what we see in the mystery image. The one big issue here would be that there is no reason for there ever to have been another house on the right of this structure, and a house is imo very clearly what we see on the right of the mystery image.

What I would like to posit the mystery image portrays is neither of those spots and instead is, in fact, this street:

"But where is the fence? And the hedge? And the discoloration of the street? And where the hell is this???" I hear you cry out! Please, shh, let me soothe your worries. The street we see in the mystery image looks very polished from a design standpoint, care has been put not just into the environment but also into the lighting. And yet it is seemingly unrecognizable, matching nothing in the final game. This actually makes it a perfect candidate for it being this little dead-end street adjacent to Timsh's Estate, or possibly what would later become it.

It is known that the Estate map was based on what had been Dishonored's second vertical slice - this means a small slice of gameplay that is, in itself, a representation of the final game which is polished up to a point where it can draw in investors but has been created long before the game itself is finished or even really started at all.

The layout of the Timsh street is very similar to the mystery image. On the left we have a big, imposing building with no ground-level entrance in the visible part and possibly a raised area - remember that the Estate has a courtyard that is partially raised compared to street-level. The owners are wealthy enough to afford a hedge - this level of wealth in the neighbourhood is additionally shown in the pristine iron fence. The entire street looks suspiciously clean for Dunwall really. All of these aspects - hedges, iron fences, pristine streets - can be found around Timsh's Estate. Something is marking the middle of the street - if you squint, the dark discoloration on the mystery street almost looks like it has wheel tracks running through it, much like the railcart line running down the street in the final game. The twinned shadows on the right might also potentially be from a raised railcart line. The map seems to end at the blocked door at the end of the street, with nothing much of notice back there to draw the player towards it. On the right we have additional buildings that don't look like they can be entered. Their entrances are raised from the street and possibly accessible by a small bridge. Indeed, despite some detail having been removed in the final game, the door on the far end of the building on the right looks like it's pretty much in the same position and of the same type as the one in the mystery image.

TL;DR: I would like to posit that this is a screenshot of an earlier version of the Estate map, potentially from the original vertical slice but just as possibly from a later in-development version of the actual Estate.

Putting all three of these shots together now that we've placed them, an image I found rather startling emerges: these aren't just random beauty shots grabbed blindly out of a hat, these are very intentionally chosen images. The Harbor and the Estate (not in the version seen in the image - but who knows, what with all the timelines and such) are both locations that Billie would have visited over the course of Daud's search for Delilah. The corner of Bloodox Way and Bottle Street is not just a random part of Dunwall but one of the few places where Whalers were actively patrolling on the lookout for Corvo - patrolling during the exact time the photo was taken, in fact.

These are all memories of Billie's past.

Just a quiet little way for the game to tell you something without ever telling you anything out loud at all. So quiet I'm sure most players - just like me - never noticed it at all.

<3

One last thought: one has to wonder - did Corvo recognize the corner of Bloodox Way and Bottle Street?

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going down

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i don’t give a fuck if i “sound like chatgpt,” you will pry—my em dash—from my cold—dead—hands—fuck you fuck you fuck you

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Iris and Pallas Athena.

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DERRY GIRLS (2018-2022) 2.01 Across the Barricade

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bits of spaceships and machinery. 2025 mostly Cocoiro ZIG pen on paper. color in photoshop.

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Docking of the Russian Progress 91 cargo ship with the International Space Station's Zvezda service module today, March 1, 2025. Progress cargo ships are unmanned spacecraft that automatically dock to the ISS to supply the station with food, experiments, and other supplies.

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Joseph's Dream John Flaxman (1755–1826) Sir John Soane’s Museum