#<— last two are human designs

[sunnydayart]

[edwardwonghaupepelutivrusky4th]

wah i looove their designs and animation...

[drawnecromancy]

So, I colored that last sketch ! Silk (dragon form) and Itheel, still amazed to learn that he's quite literally dating a very young god.

[stirdrawsandreblaws]

as if i didnt have enough to do why am i designing webcomic characters i can't do this noooo

[caffeineinmyspleen]

Uhhh Bishop Lamb doodles in order of first to latest (mostly on how I imagine their horns o-o)

[caravanlurker]

Hi I'm Lauren I'm new to this app, I'm just trying to make some friends. Can i be your friend?

Oh—sure! Cursory glance at your blog shows that we have a few interests in common. Who’re your top 3 Owl House characters?

[m-awile]

i was having a rough time designing my human Starscream

[rabbit-rays]

image id: a painting in warm yellow tones of two aliens sitting at a table in a small room and playing cards. the alien on the left (foram) is humanoid with digitrade legs, arms with three fingered hands, and an elongated head covered in plates. she is gesturing with one hand and talking. the alien on the right (joules) has two large back legs and two much smaller front legs, one of which he is currently using to hold a hand of cards. he has a large feathered crest currently held flat against his neck and is facing awa from the camera. the room is decorated to look lived in and homey, with a bookshelf, lamps, plants and knick knacks on the shelves, and posters on the wall. end id.

oc-tober day 5: best friends!!

this is foram and joules, the deckhands and main engineers on the starship tradewinds, a small research vessel researching physics anomalies in deep space. foram is a member of a hivemind species currently on a traditional pilgrimage away from home and away from the hive, and joules was exiled from his home planet for dodging the draft. they’re playing a war game from joules’ home planet!! (or they were, but now they’re just chatting :) )

[cyberiada]

I love you galleo steamworld

[gingerfruit]

‘Bearers of the Light’ (aka me having fun with the symmetry ruler)

[chisatowo]

I have successfully made a brush that I adore idk how much I'll use it but I'm definitely gonna make a few drawings with it at least just to mess around

[donuts4evry1]

i know momoko is aroace so i'm curious to know: will a lot of the characters in the jellyfish game be like in hatoful where you don't get to technically romance them but instead develop a close platonic bond with them?

along those same lines, would miyu specifically be a romancable character?

Oh! :D

I haven't planned out the routes yet (still hashing out everyone's backstories rn) but I will try my best to make as many routes platonic or undefined (probably queer platonic tbh) as possible :). Perhaps I'll make them all like that to refrain from writing scenarios that are personally awkward and uncomfortable to me haha.

Plus, I've always gotta pour one out for my fellow aros <33. Ya'll deserve dating simulators that don't push you through romance hehe.

Miyu may or may be romanceable. Judging on what I've characterized her as so far, I don't think you'll actually be able to "date" her. But hey, I think her route should be pretty fun, nonetheless. // Tbh, I'm thinking that revealing her now might've been a mistake since her appearance on here is technically... a spoiler :)! But that's alright, we can make her our little secret 😉.

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

Heylo my maggotsies... I'm sorry to do this but I have a thing that I really, really need to do (thank you Ash for helping me realise that) but I'm terrified to. so well. I'm going to make one of the posts (Neil reblogged me a couple of days ago so I feel pretty safe making one now since he only lurks by once in two weeks so this is as good a time as it gets to make a post and not expect many notes, yes I'm an overthinker and I'm actually scared of this getting notes).

Sigh. Here goes.

...I'm scared of even typing it.

Nope okay I can do this let's go.

If this post gets 1k notes, I'll look up jobs in design and film making that don't need a college degree.

2k notes, I'll sign up for an Alliance Francaise course so I can have another language on my CV, and I'll find a course that teaches me how to use design software.

5k, I'll look up distance learning alternatives, because just talking about physical college yesterday made me spend the whole morning and afternoon today in and out of nightmares screaming. Fuck.

10k, I'll tell my mum that I can't do the offline college. She's been talking to me about it, but I've been dodging because I'm not well-off and I really need to be earning and idk how to do that without college and I feel so guilty.

15k, I'll officially back out from the college (does that count as dropping out, if it hasn't begun? maybe half. i am a college and a half dropout, my 11th grade self would hate me and my 10th grade self would refuse to believe it).

I don't know what I'll do then. I don't know how to live as trans here in India, I don't know how to earn enough to be able to help my family, I don't know what I'm good at and I'm so fucking terrified. But. I spoke to @random-doctor-on-the-internet last night (I love you Ash you're such a fucking amazing human) and they made me realise that well maybe landing in a hospital with steroids to relieve an allergy attack because of exam stress isn't normal and so.

Well. Here I am. I know I can't do it, but I'm scared to risk everything, it's just not something people do here, dropping out. But also (TW s**cide statistics mentioned below the cut)... And so I've just. Got to do it, got to save myself and say no to college (cue say no to school, kids joke). Somehow be brave enough. And yeah.

To quote a financial express article: "In an alarming situation, a total of 7,62,648 suicides were reported in India between 2018 to 2022, Of this student suicides account for 7.6% at 59,239". Maybe if more people did say fuck you to the system here, that wouldn't be the case. That number could have been 59,240 (aside from everyone who wasn't counted and hushed up), that could have been me, and I don't want to put myself in that situation again. You know? Yeah.

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Week

1. ‘We are just getting started’: the plastic-eating bacteria that could change the world

In 2016, Japanese scientists Oda and Hiraga published their discovery of Ideonella sakaiensis, a bacterium capable of breaking down PET plastic into basic nutrients. This finding marked a shift in microbiology's perception, recognizing the potential of microbes to solve pressing environmental issues.

France's Carbios has successfully applied bacterial enzyme technology to recycle PET plastic waste into new plastic products, aligning with the French government's goal of fully recycling plastic packaging by 2025.

2. HIV cases in Amsterdam drop to almost zero after PrEP scheme

According to Dutch AIDS Fund, there were only nine new cases of the virus in Amsterdam in 2022, down from 66 people diagnosed in 2021. The organisation claimed that 128 people were diagnosed with HIV in Amsterdam in 2019, and since 2010, the number of new infections in the Dutch capital has fallen by 95 per cent.

3. Cheap and drinkable water from desalination is finally a reality

In a groundbreaking endeavor, engineers from MIT and China have designed a passive solar desalination system aimed at converting seawater into drinkable water.

The concept, articulated in a study published in the journal Joule, harnesses the dual powers of the sun and the inherent properties of seawater, emulating the ocean’s “thermohaline” circulation on a smaller scale, to evaporate water and leave salt behind.

4. World’s 1st drug to regrow teeth enters clinical trials

The ability to regrow your own teeth could be just around the corner. A team of scientists, led by a Japanese pharmaceutical startup, are getting set to start human trials on a new drug that has successfully grown new teeth in animal test subjects.

Toregem Biopharma is slated to begin clinical trials in July of next year after it succeeded growing new teeth in mice five years ago, the Japan Times reports.

5. After Decades of Pressure, US Drugmaker J&J Gives Up Patent on Life-Saving TB Drug

In what can be termed a huge development for drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) patients across large parts of the world, bedaquiline maker Johnson and Johnson said on September 30 (Saturday) that it would drop its patent over the drug in 134 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

6. Stranded dolphins rescued from shallow river in Massachusetts

7. ‘Staggering’ green growth gives hope for 1.5C, says global energy chief

The prospects of the world staying within the 1.5C limit on global heating have brightened owing to the “staggering” growth of renewable energy and green investment in the past two years, the chief of the world’s energy watchdog has said.

Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, and the world’s foremost energy economist, said much more needed to be done but that the rapid uptake of solar power and electric vehicles were encouraging.

---

That's it for this week :)

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[mrnnki-img]

Kendy's here!!!

[thestuffedalligator]

I read Fat Face by Michael Shea last month and it was. Fine? It was a Cthulhu Mythos story written in the 80s, it was very edgy and it had a lot of tropes I’m not a fan of, I don’t really recommend it, but I have to talk about one detail I have not stopped thinking about since I read it.

So. I knew Fat Face through reputation because it was the story that inspired Shoggoth Lords from the Call of Cthulhu TTRPG, shoggoths that can control their cellular makeup to look like humans. And the twist in Fat Face is that shoggoths have been hiding amongst humans in Los Angeles, and at the end of the story one of them eats the protagonist.

The tone of the story is grit. It’s grime. It’s sleaze and sexual violence and drug abuse on top of cosmic horror. It wants to be taken seriously so bad.

But here’s the thing about the shoggoths: they have a business.

They have two businesses they run out of an office building in downtown Los Angeles. A shoggoth is a primordial blob of eyes and mouths and flesh and hunger, and the idea of one of them at the LA Office of Finance registering an LLC is already. Great. Perfect. No notes.

The business is a front — and again, that’s great, a shoggoth went, “I want to do some nefarious deeds and not get caught by humans; I know, I’ll register a fake business that’ll be a front, and no human will ever suspect” — because the actual interior of this office is a room of pools of water made from black and ancient Antarctic rocks so that shoggoths can relax in their original blobby forms and eat stray animals that they’ve caught.

So it’s basically just. A place for shoggoths to unwind after a long day of pretending to be human. It’s portrayed as cosmic horror, but it’s shoggoth Cheers. Sometimes you wanna go where nobody knows your shape.

Here’s the kicker. The front of the business is a hydrotherapy clinic and stray pet rescue.

When they decided to make a front for their secret lair in an LA office building where they hang out in pools of water and eat stray animals — the front they prominently display and advertise — they decided to go with a hydrotherapy clinic and stray pet rescue.

That is Goosebumps shit. The rest of the story reads like a tone poem about the sleaze and violence of Los Angeles, and the main twist of the story reads like R.L. Stine.

But that’s not even the detail I can’t stop thinking about. Because the story reveals that this business — which again, is a front made by alien blobs to eat stray animals like an ALF-themed buffet and hang out in jacuzzi tubs of Antarctic rocks in an LA office — has a flyer.

Which means there’s a shoggoth with a passion for graphic design