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"Booboo" is extremely judgmental of a decent number of the posts that show up under the For You tab and would really like to take away the posters' social media privileges for my sake.

Also, "Booboo" and Kaelynne are probably the same thing.

TRULY though, it's alright to be put off by someone's actual words or actions but if you feel uncomfortable with someone you just met because something "just feels off" or they have "bad vibes" or you think you detect some kind of "darkness" from them I'm sorry to say you are almost definitely just having a subconscious visceral reaction to superficial surface differences. Whether it's the shape of their face or the frequency of their voice or just the subtlest unfamiliar mannerisms, that whole "something's not right with this person" emotion is about as meaningful as a dumbass little monkey creature on your shoulder saying "STRANGE!!! WANTS TO EAT US!!!!!!!!!!!!" and you're nodding like "wow booboo you're onto something"

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I've been boycotting McDonald's for over a year at this point because they give free meals to Israeli soldiers. I don't understand what McDonald's has to gain from doing this.

I would think, since it's a massive corporation with the goal of earning as much money as possible, that it would make more sense to prioritize paying customers rather than non-paying soldiers.

And yet, despite the fact that McDonald's hast lost customers because of its support for Israel, it still continues to support Israel. What is it about Israeli soldiers that makes staying in their good graces more important to the company than earning back the trust of its customers?

Because I'm not planning on buying any more fries from McDonald's- in spite of how mouth-wateringly delicious they are- until the company stops giving free meals to the IOF.

if they can survive bombs, i am sure we can survive without mcdonalds

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That guy in the frog costume from Ena: Dream BBQ is harder to draw than I thought he'd be. Or at least his face is. I actually took a photo of my own face to use as reference for what a mouth making a "th" sound looks like.

English has two "th" sounds- a soft "th" like the one in the, this, that, these, there, etc. and a hard "th" like the one in throw, through, and, wouldn't you know it, bathroom! Both sounds are very common in English words (just for fun, try counting all the "th"s in this post). Japanese, on the other hand, uses neither of these sounds, and therefore Japanese speakers, including a piano teacher I had once, struggle to pronounce them.

I couldn't help but notice that Froggy is no exception to this. When he says the word "bathroom" he pronounces the "th" more like an S, making it sound more like "bass-roomu". So I thought it'd be funny to draw him trying to pronounce the "th" properly.

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I wish the person who posted this message wasn’t anonymous, because I really want to find them and comfort them right now.

Anon, I totally, completely, and fully understand exactly how you feel about death, and I agree with a lot of what you’ve said in your message. But I also feel that @imsobadatnicknames2’s inbox was a poor choice for where to post your message, since they and many of the users who reblogged this post felt that your message was too hostile.

If you’re reading this, Anon, please send me a private message so we can chat further. I have so many ideas about what might happen after we die that I’ve been wanting to share on this site, but haven’t done so due to fears of pushback from atheists.

It's because being told that my dead baby sister is gone gone and rotting in the ground and there's no form of afterlife and i'll never see her again makes me wanna send atheists to the dead black void they're telling me my dead 16-year-old sister and my puppy are in.

no other religion is telling me that i'll never see her again and i hope anyone who does that gets hit by a crane.

I don't even have a firm religion, I don't think any specific religion is real or right or true, but if you tell me my baby sister's gone, I'm gonna go fucking feral.

I'm gonna see her again, bite my asshole off.

I mean this in the most neutral way possible: This sounds like a you problem.

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Same kind of logic as this:

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It's a Girl, It's a Girl: the sequel

Continuing from this fanart, the pea pod swaddles make their return, with absolutely no scenery to accompany them because I have no idea what that scenery would look like.

I don't know what Tricularian humans' exact ratio of females to males is, but since the men and boys are like drone bees ( @revretch said that Tricularian humans are meant to seem "more insectoid") I decided out of curiosity to look up the ratio of drone bees to worker bees, and the answer was 10-15% drones, >90% workers. As for ants, this page doesn't say the exact ratio but it does say that male ants are "extremely rare" compared to females.

So, with that in mind, what happens on the off chance a human boy is born on Tricularia?

Obviously it's no big deal on Earth, but on Tricularia where the humans are mostly women and girls, I imagine a baby boy would be noteworthy.

This lady does care about the boy's well-being, but not his agency- she, and the matriarchal society she's part of, have already decided what his life's purpose will be before he's even opened his eyes. I suppose it's not unlike how women in our real life, patriarchal societies are expected to get married- an expectation I was first told about back when I asked my mother about the old maid card as a kid.

And... now I'm wondering if Tricularian humans have a male version of the old maid stereotype. On the macrovolute end, they did have that elderly weevil, though I don't think he counts because he used to have a partner.

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HOW?!?!

How...??

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I’m not even a trans man and I wish I could punch my boobs off, too.

Loved one got top surgery yesterday so I made this for him but I think y’all would appreciate it too

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Yeah, I bought one of the plushies, too. He watches me play on my computer, probably hoping that the pneumatic gas cylinder under my chair will malfunction and impale me at some point.

But, even if it doesn’t, Barnaby can always take comfort in the knowledge that I’m still going to die someday no matter what. If nothing else ends my life, the passage of time will.

Hopefully not before 2094.

Wait. Theoretically, is Barnaby able to get himself to our universe? Do I need to hit the panic button and watch my surroundings?

He is! He’s been here before

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How...??

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ayo heads up that “boldechoimp” account is known harasser that just likes to start shit, especially targeting bog lately. i wouldn’t worry about anything they say or waste time arguing with them.

...Oh, oops. I just found this in my askbox right after I replied to Boldechoimp. My bad.

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By "ass" I'm not sure if you're saying that you think Bogleech is stupid, or that you think he's mean to you. He's certainly not mean to me- I've been a fan of his for years and he's been remarkably kind to me.

Our conversations have given him plenty of chances to make fun of me, all of which he let pass by. The thought that a person I met on the internet would choose not to make mean jokes at my expense when they have the opportunity to is downright heartwarming to me.

It would seem your relationship with Bogleech is completely different, though. If you've got personal beef with him, then I'd rather not get involved.

It's so common, almost every time in fact, that I'll be told it's hard to find an appointment with something medical but when I call I have my pick of countless timeslots

That is probably because I'm self employed. Everyone saying they have a long wait must have a 9-5 and they're all competing for limited evening spots.

All jobs should actually be required to give you some allotment of short notice paid break days every single month for errands and appointments.

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I'm not sure I'd call it bragging. While it is cool that he gets to work from home, he isn't financially secure- he told me that the money he earns is "only just enough".

On one hand, Bogleech is living my dream- he's a successful webcomic artist with a devoted fanbase. He gets to earn money doing what he loves. But on the other hand, his financial situation is much more precarious than mine. He doesn't own his home and he doesn't have extra money to spend on nonessentials, or perhaps in case of an emergency.

If Bog were to slip and fall in the shower, break his wrist and knee, and have to go to the hospital for two weeks like my mother did two years ago, I bet the medical bills would be much more trouble for him than it was for my mom.

As much as I wish I could have a career like his, I would absolutely, positively not be willing to trade my family's financial security for it.

It's so common, almost every time in fact, that I'll be told it's hard to find an appointment with something medical but when I call I have my pick of countless timeslots

That is probably because I'm self employed. Everyone saying they have a long wait must have a 9-5 and they're all competing for limited evening spots.

All jobs should actually be required to give you some allotment of short notice paid break days every single month for errands and appointments.

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Regarding Tricularian Humans, Part 2

Continuing from part 1...

Since the story takes place in Formicosa, and is mostly from the macrovolute perspective, with the hivers being relegated to the B-plot, the lives of the other humans on Tricularia are mostly unknown. In my opinion, this ironically makes the human characters more mysterious than the giant bugs. It's especially ironic when I think back to Gregorsa's comment of "I assume you're familiar with yourselves" because actually, no, Gregorsa, us Earth humans are not at all familiar with what Tricularian humans' lives are like.

One big thing that sets them apart from us is their uneven male-to-female ratio, which I referenced in my fanart from the last post. For us Earth humans, our population is roughly half males, half females. Every time we have a baby, it's about a 50/50 chance of it being a girl or a boy.

On Tricularia, however, the vast majority of humans are female. At the end of the goat episode, Gregorsa's notes include a bacterium called the Wolbachia, likely hinting it to be the cause of the humans' uneven gender ratio. How it might have made its way into the humans' reproductive systems is anyone's guess, though.

The same episode also provides the only glimpse we've gotten so far of humans who aren't hivers. There's not much to make out since they're just silhouettes, but we can clearly see that they're wearing some type of skirt. Admittedly, I forgot to look at this screenshot before I drew my fanart.

Rev did say that Tricularian humans are "mostly the same" as us, but besides the uneven male-to-female ratio, the other differences I know of are;

-The women are taller, and the men are shorter. I imagine it's like if my big brother and I switched heights.

-What few men that there are, are like a human version of drone bees. They serve as "trophy husbands" to retired hivers who can afford to buy them. If the men are like drones, then this would mean the women are the workers, right? Which raises the question- is Vera a "queen"?

-They're lactose intolerant, most likely because of how breeding cows or goats on Tricularia would risk producing their much more dangerous demivolute versions, and therefore the humans have spent so many generations without non-human milk that they lost their lactase persistence.

-On the other hand, they're better at digesting raw meat than we are. I'm guessing this is probably out of necessity due to fire being harder to come by on Tricularia (with the firebreathing, demivolute goat lighting the torches of the three women screenshotted above being one such source of fire on Tricularia).

That's all that I can think of for now. I feel like keeping the humans' lives out of focus is meant to make them seem as mysterious to us as they are to the macrovolutes. The scene where I felt this the most was when Rose saw the captive hivers at Sophodra's house. Their less-smooth-than-normal movements and their facelessness made them look sort of doll-like and harder to "read" than Rose herself was. I wonder if maybe that's just how macrovolutes see humans in general?

Now I'm wondering what macrovolutes would think of dolls, mannequins, and statues...

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Regarding Tricularian Humans, Part 1

I'm not sure if this fully counts as Humans-B-Gone fanart, since it's fanart of characters who are completely outside of the plot- namely, the non-hiver humans. The ones who don't go to Formicosa City.

@revretch said that they make clothes out of plants (although technically so do we, since cotton is a plant), but since I don't know what the non-hivers' clothes would look like, I decided to draw a green dress with a leafy skirt for the woman holding the baby.

Continuing with the plant theme, the swaddles for the rest of the babies are based on a photo I saw on the wall of my preschool classroom, which showed three babies wrapped in pea pod-shaped swaddles, each with three round, pea-shaped pillows or cushions of some sort on top of the babies. I opted to omit the pea cushions, which unintentionally made the swaddles resemble the Body Swapper from Monster Seeking Monster.

Part 2 will be later, I've stayed up too late and need to go to bed now.

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I wish my mother would understand this. Yes, we've got a roof over our heads, food in our bellies, and financial security, but I still can't get rid of the feeling of the Trump administration's presence hanging over my head, and the worry that it's only a matter of time before I'm affected by its policies, too.

Well, alright, I guess my mother does understand to an extent, but I feel like she's not treating it as seriously as she should be. She even said to my therapist that she was trying to "pretend it's not happening".

It might just be that she's too busy with her job, but she still hasn't gotten around to calling up that nonprofit organization my therapist mentioned, to see whether or not it's somewhere I'd be able to volunteer at.

I've even been having trouble remembering things, just like the OP said, and I guess this is probably why. I don't want to be stuck in an emotional rut for the next few years, but it's hard not to be in one when I can't stop thinking about politics regardless of whether I look at the news or not.

Me: I don't get it. I thought I was doing a lot better than I was a few years ago. I'm like 10 times more on top of things than I used to be. How does everything feel terrible now?

The Tiny Me in OSHA-approved Hi-Vis Gear Who lives in my brain and pulls all the levers: Boss, it's the fascism. You're completely gunked up with cortisol due to the fact that your entire daily life is now underscored with a haunting awareness of the rapid erosion of your rights, dignity, and any and all social safety nets, and you're also bearing witness to the most vulnerable people immediately being persecuted. This creates a natural stress response that basically means you're going to continue having memory and organizational problems, as well as emotional imbalances.

Me: BUT I HAVE A BULLET JOURNAL AND I MEDITATE NOW.

Tiny OSHA Me: BOSS, THE FASCISM.