#and i started using a smaller sized document

[umbercommitsart]

scarf. again. !!

[froggerland]

I made a pattern for the terror gloves!!

Please note I'm not a professional and this is just for funsies, sorry for my clunky english but knitting terminology is a whole other beast lmao

I hope you can make some sense of this

Full tutorial under the cut

Terror Gloves Tutorial

Disclaimer: I’m not a professional and I’ve never written a knitting pattern before, I just made this up as I went tbh, basing it on a german tutorial I used for regular fingerless gloves I had made a couple of times already, the fingers I made up on my own. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to make another pair to document the process for you as of right now, so you’ll have to work off of the pattern alone. Sorry for all the weird terminology, translating german knitting vocab to english fried my brain real good lads.

 I’d say this is a beginner to intermediate level project, you should know how to purl and knit and how to make left leaning and right leaning increases. For the latter one I’ve linked a tutorial on YouTube at the part where it comes up in the pattern.

All that being said: I hope you enjoy making these gloves! Feel free to @ me on tumblr if you’d like to show them off :D

What you need:

- Yarn that requires you to use size 4 needles (3,5mm in the german/european system, the UK doesn’t carry the equivalent of this size for some reason, so use a size 10 or 9 depending on how tight you’re knitting); the color is obviously up to you, I used a grey close to the one most of the boys are sporting. I also used a 100% wool yarn, but I know those can be pricy so feel to use whatever is available to you :) I used about 50g, maybe a little more for my pair

-> Please note that I didn’t make a test swatch since I’ve used the base pattern of these gloves before and know that this size of needle works for me. I’d say I my tension when knitting is normal – tight so if you knit more loosely maybe choose smaller needles

- Size 4 double pointed needles (3,5 german/european, 10/9 UK)

- Safety pins

- Darning needle to weave in the ends

- Scissors

Tutorial:

- Cast on 11 stitches on four of your five double pointed needles

-> If you have smaller hands you might need to start with 10 instead of 11 stiches on each needle

- Join in the round and start the pattern for the ribbing that will make the glove a little tighter around your wrist, which means purl 2, knit 2, until the end of the row

- Repeat the purl – knit pattern for 20 rows

- Knit 10 regular rounds

- Now for the thumb: Knit 1, pick up 1 new stitch (it doesn’t matter if it’s left or right leaning), knit 1, place a safety pins on the needle behind that stitch so you can keep track of your increase section (tutorial for increases)

- Knit the rest of the round normally, as well as the round that follows

- Knit 1, make 1 left leaning increase, knit 1, make 1 right leaning increase, knit 1, slide the safety pin over

- Knit the rest of the round normally, as well as the round that follows; from now on the pattern will be one row with increases, one row without increases

- So in the next round with increases you will knit 2, make 1 left leaning increase, knit 1, make 1 right leaning increase, knit 2, slide the safety pin over

- Continue with this for 14 rounds (7 with and 7 without increases) until you have 15 stitches in the section framed by the safety pin

-> If you have small hands you might need to stop before reaching 14 rounds, your work should just about cover the first bone (going upward from the base) in your thumb. Maybe stop at 10 or 12 rounds, make sure you end on one without any increases

- After your last “no increases” round, before you start with the next round put the 15 stitches for the thumb on hold by sliding 7 of the stitches onto one safety pin, the other 8 onto another; you will not continue to work with these stitches (for now)

- Continue like normal and start knitting the rest of the stitches on the needle, making sure to join tightly to avoid a gap and finish the round

- Knit 11 regular rounds or until you reach the base of your pinky finger; you should have 42 stitches on all of your four needles right now

- We will start by knitting the pinky finger: For this knit normal until you’re at the second needle and have 5 stitches left on it

- Put all but 10 stitches (the ones on the second needle and the first 5 on the third needle) on hold by placing them ideally on two big safety pins or several smaller ones

- Knit normally until you reach the end of the second needle; here you will take a third needle and pick up 2 more stitches, one from the side the second needle is on, one from the side the first needle is on, so ideally, you’re keeping the gap that’s going to form between the fingers as small as possible

-> If you have small hands, you might only have to pick up 1 stitch or none at all; if you find that that’s the case split the 10 stitches onto three needles so they’re easier to work with and continue as written down below

- This was the first round; knit 9 more or until your work almost reaches the second bone in your pinky finger or just until you decide that it’s enough (feel free to try the gloves on as you go!), cast off and cut the yarn

- For the ring finger, pick up 10 stitches from the ones you put on hold, once again two needles with 5 stitches

- Join the yarn in the same place you started with the pinky finger

- Knit the first needle, then pick up 2 stitches on a new needle as I described it for the pinky finger

- Knit the 5 stitches on the second needle, then use yet another needle to once again pick up 2 stitches. You now have 14 stitches on 4 needles

-> If you have small hands, you might only have to pick up 1 stitch per new needle or just one stitch on one new needle

- Knit 14 more rows like this or until your work almost reaches the second bone in your ring finger or once again until you decide that it’s enough, cast off and cut the yarn

- The middle finger works exactly the same: Pick up 10 stitches from the safety pins, pick up 4 new stitches on two new needles, knit 15 rounds or however many, cast off and cut the yarn

- For the pointer finger you should have 12 stitches left since we started off with 42 in total (30 already “used” leaves 12) which means we only need to pick up 2 new stitches on one new needle (whether you pick them up on the side facing the thumb or the one facing the other fingers is up to you; I picked the one facing the thumb but picking the other one will probably look better)

-> If you have small hands, you might only have to pick up 1 stitch or none at all

- Knit 14 rounds or however many, cast off and cut the yarn

- Now to finish off the thumb: Put the stitches back onto your needles, 7 on one needle, 8 on another; now taking up a third needle slide the last stitch on the second needle onto it, pick up 2 new stiches around the base to make sure there’s minimal gaping, then pick up the first stitch on the first needle. You should now have a total of 17 stitches, split on three needles (6, 7 and 4 stitches) forming a triangle

- For the first round, join the yarn into the first stitch on the first needle; knit normally until you reach the third needle: Here you knit the first 2 and the last 2 stitches together, leaving you with 2 stitches on that needle

- Repeat this for the next round and knit the remaining 2 stitches on the third needle together, leaving you with 1 stitch on that needle (it can be finicky handling this third needle but it makes working the rounds a lot easier)

- Knit 5 rounds or until your work reaches over the second bone in your thumb, cast off and cut the yarn

- Weave in the ends; you might have to go back in with extra yarn if the holes between the fingers are too big for your liking

Yay!!! You finished it, congrats!! :D

[greaseonmymouth]

As you've asked for asks!:

Do you have any quick-and-dirty book/fic binding methods a terrified-of-failure novice could use to bang something out to get over the first collywobbling step of Actually Doing The Thing? (this may be something I've been meaning to ask for ages)

yes! I absolutely do! in my opinion the best quick-and-dirty bookbinding method is a no-glue pamphlet: you don't have to mess with glue or measuring or cutting anything, all you need is your text, some paper, a needle and thread. you can use the same needle to punch holes if you don't have an awl.

this is going to be a little long but that's because I'm going to write out some fairly detailed instructions for an A5 sized pamphlet. If you don't want detailed instructions and think you can glean the necessary info from photos, just skip to the photos! I've also linked tutorials.

for preparing the text to printing, in whatever software you use (word, libreoffice, gdocs, whatever) make sure your document is set to page size A5. make it look readable. then save as/export that document as a straight-paged PDF. now go to the bookbinder JS tool (https://momijizukamori.github.io/bookbinder-js/), and upload the PDF. source manipulation: none printer paper size: A4 display unit (you can ignore, or choose cm if it gives you anxiety that it automatically displays points) printer type: select single-sided or duplex accordingly* rotate paper: ignore flip on long side: check if you are printing duplex and if your duplex printer flips the paper on the long side page layout:  tick folio page scaling: original page positioning: centered ignore the rest flyfleaf: ignore signature format tick: standard signatures. in the length drop down, this depends on the type of pamphlet you are doing. for folio i generally find 4-5 pages per signature a comfortable thickness. if you have 6 whole A4 pages you can still do that as a single signature or you can split it into two signatures 3 pages each. wacky small layouts: ignore this signature info click the generate preview button to see what your PDF looks like imposed! I love this step especially when I'm doing quarto (A6) or octavo (A7) sized books generate output - click this to generate an imposed PDF

for A6 and A7 sized books the instructions are much the same, except for these you make sure the page size is A6 or A7 in your software, and then you choose quarto or octavo instead of folio. for signature length drop down I keep signature length to 1 for octavos typically and 2 for quartos, as this still refers to sheets of paper, and for octavo 1 sheet of A4 paper will turn into 4 smaller sheets in one signature once folded and cut.

*if you don't have a duplex printer you will have to manually turn the paper to print on the other side. I cannot be arsed with this so I bought a printer capable of duplex printing (I didn't have a printer anyway). if you already have a printer check what it can do as you might be surprised and go from there.

now to the pamphlets! you don't need a cover - I have one for the long stitch pamphlet but for the saddle stitch one I didn't bother and just made sure the first page had a title on it. you can always take a different piece of paper and print a cover on or or just use coloured cardstock and create a simple cover, but a cover is not necessary unless you're doing a long stitch pamphlet. all you need to do is to punch holes and start sewing. there are a few different stitch types below, I wouldn't say any of them are more difficult or easier than others, but they do look different so...pick one you like the look of and go from there?

pamphlet stitch (uneven number of holes) I haven't ever done a pamphlet stitch but here's a tutorial for how to do it: https://www.starpointestudio.com/simple-pamphlet-stitch-book-step-by-step/

saddle stitch (uneven number of holes) I realised that what I was thinking of as a pamphlet stitch is actually saddle stitch, as in this A7 pamphlet:

here's a tutorial for how to sew saddle stitch: https://www.bookbindingworkshopsg.com/saddle-stitch-bookbinding-tutorial/ here's a video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWHkY5jOoqM (sealemon has a lot of bookbinding tutorials and I know many people who like her videos, I used her tutorial for coptic binding way back when I first made a book but I can't otherwise vouch for the quality as I haven't used her videos)

french link stitch (even number of holes) in this one I used french link stitch which I typically use for thicker textblocks that i'm not planning to use tapes with as the french link gives it some robustness, I used it here because I had never done it before and wanted to try it out. I am planning to take these stitches out and re-sew this pamphlet with a cover now that I've found a suitable piece of transformer fanart to use as a cover:

french link tutorial. it's quite long but it has a colour coded bit towards the end that shows how the thread is supposed to link which i find very helpful to visualise: https://www.handmadebooksandjournals.com/bindings/french-link-stitch-binding/

here's a video tutoral from DAS bookbinding (he is my go to for techniques and he has the most soothing Australian accent as well, though fair warning not all of his videos are for beginners): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ZPdbaM-Ws

long stitch (even number of holes) for this one I used long stitch and I had a cover. this one is my favourite variation because I can make these pretty and simple covers and the stitch looks nice on the outside as well, so this one scratches the 'i want to make a book' itch for me.

here's a tutorial that also includes a how to on a cover that is different from my cover: https://lccprintmaking.myblog.arts.ac.uk/files/2020/06/Long-Stitch-Tutorial-A4.pdf DAS also has a video tutorial for long stitch but it's like three videos long, maybe watch it later :'D  here's one I haven't watched but seems decent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnignTL_wDQ

you can use saddle stitch for this kind of pamphlet as well, that's what I did for dozens of ships and hundreds of souls (https://ashmouthbooks.tumblr.com/post/681587080267202560).

I hope this helped!!

[shellseaisms]

the matthews residence.

I've been wanting to both build a smaller family home (aka a "stepping stone" home) + bring back the generations let's play I started back in my kiwisimming days for a while, so I decided to kind of combine them and build a small home specifically for those sims. it only has two bedrooms (master bedroom + nursery), but I think it's cute all the same and hopefully you do too! very excited to play in it, you should be seeing that very soon teehee

custom content used: find all cc links for this build here.

§80,179 furnished, §49,379 unfurnished

2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom

30 x 30 lot size

custom content included with package file

built in saffron bay

‣ ‎ ‎ download below. watch the speed build // buy me a coffee

download (furnished)

sims3pack // package

place the file ending in '_library' in your library folder (documents/electronic arts/the sims 3/library) regardless of what version you choose to install. for package downloaders, the file ending in '_mods' goes in your mods folder.

note: custom content is not included with the sims3pack.

unfurnished (sims3pack + library file) // library file only (furnished, cc not included)

[honeytonedhottie]

starting a collection⋆.ೃ࿔*:･🎀

BENEFITS OF STARTING A COLLECTION ; collecting things is SO much fun, but not only is it fun but it actually has lots of benefits for you. it can be a stress reliever, a mind stimulator. plus, the social aspect of collecting, where collectors meet and exchange items, fosters a sense of community and shared interest.

and BESIDES, who doesn't want a lot of cute stuff that belongs to them? i love to have lots and lots of my favorite things.

THINGS TO COLLECT ;

lipglosses - i collect lipglosses bcuz i LOVE lipgloss and since i use it so much, i like to have a variety at my finger tips. some of my favorite glosses include the dior lipglow oil and the victoria's secret candy baby.

music albums and vinyls

clothing articles

and anything you want ofc, just find whatever it is that you like and collect that. collect what sparks joy and happiness.

HOW TO KEEP TRACK OF UR COLLECTION ;

keep an adorable collections binder that u can decorate with glitter and charms etc. if u want you can use a journal or your diary to keep track of new additions to the collections. you can organize your collection into sections -> editions depending on what it is that you collect. here's the step by step guide to organizing ;

categorize - you might categorize by date, author, genre, or origin. categorizing the collection makes it presentable and easy to locate when u need to.

storage - the way that u store ur item depends on the size and nature of your collection. for smaller things -> use binders or display boxes. for larger things -> they can be stored on shelves or in dedicated display cabinets

documentation - keep a record of each item in your collection, its origin, value, and any other relevant details. use a binder, journal or digital tools like spreadsheets.

THINGS THAT I COLLECT ;

lip glosses

kpop albums

i collect tomorrow by together albums bcuz they're my favorite boy group. i collect twice albums bcuz they're my favorite girl group.

hello kitty collectible figures

i can't remember what they're called exactly but they're very soft and very cute. i have pompompurin and a hello kitty one.

stickers

tea flavors and tea blends

flavors of gum

fragrances

whether physical objects or digital assets, collecting is a rewarding hobby that combines the thrill of the hunt with the satisfaction of ownership. starting a collection gives u a sense of control over what u have.

[hiwelcometothemonstersancturary]

hi I just wanted to say I love your AU!!! Like so much!!! Any Marie headcanons? (Please I am starved of mommy long legs content your au feeds me)

AAA THANK YOU SO MUCH, ANON! And yes, Marie/Mommy Long Legs headcanons ARE HERE:

Pre-Experiment:

Marie was a pretty tall kid for her age, and she used her size to intimdate other kids away from getting themselves into trouble. In a way, she always assumed the role of an older sister;

She got thrown into the foster care system thanks to a physically abusive father and a neglectful mother. Had to look out for her brother as well, always keeping him out of trouble, and learned how to do house chores so they wouldn't live in even worse conditions;

Her brother never ended up becoming an experiment, but she did, thanks to her "motherly nature" that was actually just a trauma response;

Already had temper problems, esp when a group of boys started picking up on her. She got angry, but never got physical with them;

Would often braid the hair of the younger girls as well;

Had a spider fascination since before arriving at Playcare;

LOVED dressing up in pink and girly outfits, mostly because she never had access to this kind of stuff before;

Helped the counselors a LOT with handling the younger kids. They loved her for it;

Was very close to Claire, and dreamed of being adopted by her some day. She was the mother she never had. Claire actually taught her how to sing, and showed her many cartoons she never had the opportunity to see before;

Was SUPER into video games! She loved those so, SO much!

Loved playing games with the other kids, but she was always looking out for what the adults were doing because she didn't exactly trust them to not start yelling at her without reason.

Post-Experiment:

She was forced to fit into the "Mommy" role, and modeled her behavior after Claire. PlayCo. told her to forget about that kind woman, and Mommy ended up believing Claire had abandoned her, or at least KNEW what her fate would be;

Doesn't trust any adults, and is protective of the kids. When they stopped showing up, Marie's childish mind concluded that they must have left her as well, as they didn't even say goodbye to her, not knowing that PlayCo. didn't even allow the kids to say their byes;

Actually hated babysitting Baby Long Legs, but it's not like she had many options. Had a neutral relationship with Daddy Long Legs, but resented him because PlayCo. allowed him to be goofy and more loose, while SHE had to be the responsible one;

She didn't see Claire during the Hour of Joy, but knows she was killed off. She feels bad about it;

Actually saw the Prototype as a cool guy until, post-HoJ, she was once again stuck mothering younger kids because otherwise they would literally starve. She fell lied to;

Hunted other toys to feed the ones at the Game Station, but started resenting their dependence on her as well;

HATES her body. Marie doesn't like how girly it is, how ultrafeminine it feels. She hates her hair being stuck in a ponytail, and her gloves, and how there's a dress modeled on her instead of it being an actual outfit. At least she could change it;

Likes singing, and would sing lullabies to put the toys to sleep;

Made her own room and filled it to the brim with all the documents she could find so the smaller toys wouldn't see them and feel even worse about the situation. She also found some weird posters and used them as decoration - it's mostly stuff the employers used to decorate their offices;

Had a single cassete tape with rock/punk music that she listened non-stop until it stopped working. Had a temper fit that day that ended up with her destroying some stuff;

Would often try cleaning up the Game Station because she hates dirty places;

Puts the Mommy act because it's the only way she knows how to have control over her own life, and sees the Game Station as a house.

After Rescue/General Headcanons:

SHE'S A BUTCH. LIKE. 100% SHE'S A BUTCH. DON'T @ ME, JUST TRUST ME ON THIS ONE;

Attempts dying her hair black after finding out that you CAN dye plastic. Ended up leaving only the tips as black because she got used to the vibrant pink;

Loves doing darker makeup and more gothic/rock accessories;

Opts for loose clothes, especially oversized shirts and sweaters that can cover both her torso and "hips";

I don't think she would wear an arm prosthetic. She gets used to only having one hand and rolls with it, plus she's super flexible so she can avoid asking for help from time to time;

Clean freak. Do not leave anything dirty next to her, she WILL clean it;

If she had been allowed to have a normal life, I hc that her body would have turned out to be chubby and muscular, and she covers one of her arms with tattoos! Unfortunately, she got turned into an experiment, and forever hates the fact she she won't develop muscles, much less fat;

Likes punk, rock and goth music, and 100% pirates DVDs if given the opportunity to do so;

Still likes video games! She's very good at FPS, but always comes back to playing The Sims and making elaborate storylines for her sims;

She's a toxic player sorry, if a guy is mean to her she would 100% doxx him or make him cry with the stuff she tells him, which happens all the time;

I feel like she would really like Halo and Mass Effect as well. And Fallout. And-

Please ask her about how to build things. She has been trying to learn because she found out she LIKES making things. Please ask her to do stuff.

[endursent]

- God Shattering Star

【 content; morax | rex lapis x reader , slow burn , mutual pining , multi-chapter , archon war period , afab!reader 】

【 note sorry this is also late i had to redo this chapter like 3 times cause i wasn't happy with it, i should stop re-reading a song of ice and fire while writing this 'cause i keep comparing my dialogue skills with fucking george rr martin and feel sad ｡ﾟ(*´□`)ﾟ｡ | read on ao3 】

【 word count; 6.016 | previous chapter - next chapter | masterlist 】

- Chapter 8 - Consumption

You barely recognise life anymore—or anything for that matter. You feel sick, sticky and heavy, as if your body is full of liquids in every crevice. The world around you feels lighter than you yourself do, like you’re sinking below it and perpetually struggling to reach upwards to grasp at the people staring down at you from around the cot. 

  Ming Hui sets her hand on your stomach, and a pain so consuming you thrash and scream overrides any thought or consciousness. Hands hold you down to prevent you from hurting yourself or anyone else as the smaller girl tears (at least that’s what it feels like to you) blackened liquids and blood from the lacerations on your belly. 

  You throw up every day, most of the time several times a day, nights are filled with shivers and huddling under blankets when you try to close your eyes to sleep—and wake in the middle of the night, soaked with sweat and fever. 

  One night, you had a terrible dream—you’ve been having many bad dreams, terrible, suffocating dreams. Nightmares. You woke up to two pairs of hands shaking your shoulders, clapping your cheeks lightly in hopes of waking you before you hurt yourself. 

  Another night, you couldn’t sleep, you kept seeing dark snakes slither between beds—you told yourself that they aren’t real, there are no snakes so high in the mountain of Liyue… they are far more common between the mountains, in thick forests with plenty of opportunities for food for their size. 

  They never approach your bed, one circles around it before disappearing behind a shelf of ointments. Later the same morning, exhausted and dozing from a sleepless night, you thought you saw a white snake under the bandage around your left arm looking at you, you reached out to pet it, but it slid back inside. Into your bandages. Into your skin.

  The week drags on for what feels like several of them. Every morning, Ming Hui would perform a cleanse and try to purify parts of your body to keep the miasma from spreading into it, but you weren’t sure how much it was helping, at least, you didn’t start feeling better until a week and a half after the seven days of cleansing. 

  With a groan, you prop yourself up and get into a sitting position, fumbling to grab one of the seven or so books on the table next to the cot, you let it fall open onto your lap. Staring at the ceiling is impossibly boring, and you hope your body is giving you some energy to use your brain at least a little. The book doesn’t have a name on the cover, nor does it look like a printed book—it’s full of handwriting and for a moment you thought Guizhong might have accidentally lent you a diary… but as you squint and read further, you see that it’s something of a logbook. 

  Documentation of a crew’s trip on the sea, the management of resources and the direction of the winds… it’s a surprisingly soothing read, you craft the ship in your mind and imagine the soothing brush of waves against the wood, sun beating down and warming the skin.

  You open your eyes again as a healer touches your shoulder and asks to see your left arm again, you didn’t even realise you fell asleep. The prickly sensation of their fingers prodding at your arm is strange, like it’s felt through a few layers of clothing… you can feel it, but just kind of. You feel like you used to be able to tell what texture was touching you—a finger or a glove, the grass or floor. But now it all feels like the same kind of poking. You feel trembling, like the bed is trying to shake you off, but you're not cold.

  You feel a fragment of dread every time Ming Hui comes up to your bed, but thankfully the last few times, she’s just been bringing you things. Doughy snacks from the capital, some sesame balls from the kitchens, papers and ink to draw on, anything. Unfortunately none of the foods or snacks stick in your belly for long… but it’s nice to taste them, if only a small nibble with the front of your teeth and a poke of your tongue. 

  It has been a long morning, you had woken up early due to your back starting to hurt because you’ve been laying down for so long—you really wish you could start to walk around, but even just sitting up feels like you’re leaving half your organs behind on your mattress… you look up as you hear footsteps approach and see a familiar face, though not one you expected.

  Cloud Retainer—rather roughly—takes your arm and lifts it up vertically, you make a strange startled, as well as surprised sound and try to tug it back, but she holds it firmly. Ground Mender follows behind and sighs. “Be gentle,” she scolds. 

  “Hmph, a sound of pain merely shows there’s still feeling in the limb,” she moves it horizontally and squeezes the sides of your elbow, you have no idea what she’s doing. “Squeeze into a fist for me.” 

  You do as she asks, curling your fingers as much as you can—it’s not a very good squeeze, if any, but you manage to curl them into a fist with trembling fingers, your fist twitches from the effort. “Like this?”

  “Hm, good enough,” she nods and begins to undo the bandage. You look at Ground Mender, but she doesn’t seem to stop the other adeptus, so surely it’s okay… the bandages have been changed many times, but you’ve always been either been half-asleep or too out of it to pay attention to it. The white cloth falls away from your skin and reveals a rather uncomfortable sight—your arm looks like it’s been through the ringer. The skin is uneven and looks more like crumpled parchment stretched over bone than the arm you’re more familiar with, the deep wounds were beginning to close but you could still clearly see the raised edges where it separated, having been knit together twice. 

  It’s a mangled, uncomfortable thing, your fingers twitch and a dull tug pulls at your senses where you think your joints should be—as if the entire arm was misaligned, off-kilter.

  Cloud Retainer turns your arm wrist up and then wrist down, looks at it with a scrutinising eye behind those red-rimmed glasses. You wonder if adepti need glasses or if it’s just fashion. 

  “What are you searching for?” you ask, your arm is tired, being raised like that for so long. You want to let it lay down and rest. 

  The adeptus pokes your palm with a sharp nail and your fingers twitch again, your eyebrows furrow in mild annoyance… you can only tolerate being prodded at without explanation for so long. Finally, she graces you with an answer. “The miasma is concentrated heavily in your arm, most of what was in your stomach has been pulled out… but there is little to do with this part here.”

  You look down at your arm… it doesn’t look as rotted as you recall others’ bodies would become after as long as it has stayed in your arm. A bit discoloured, maybe… just, different. “Little to do? Extraction has never failed… can’t we just dig in and drag it out…?” you don’t have the energy or capacity to recount a lengthy process, but cleansing has never failed you—you have yet to find an object or person who was too far gone.

  And surely, you are not…?

  Cloud Retainer wraps your arm again carefully, you see the golden eyes of a snake staring at you from between the bandages.

  “Then… what do we do?” you ask as if there was something for you to do. You can barely hold your arm at chest-height for too long.

  Cloud Retainer holds her hand out to Ground Mender, who hands her the familiar wooden board someone is always holding when standing by your bed. “Observe for now, the miasma is contained below your elbow—” you look at the ink on your arm, locked. “—and it doesn't seem to be rotting the skin, it’s stagnant.”

  You were better for a while, and got worse again. 

  You could imagine the ship, high tides and low, rocking among the waving ocean—a peek of sunlight. Two suns, warmth and stability. A calm sea surrounded by raging waters. 

  The perpetual taste of bile stings the back of your throat, it’s a wonder if you aren’t in danger of malnourishment—you’re unsure you’ve kept down a meal in three weeks. Your head swims and you get nauseous if you lie down, you’re nauseous if you sit up. The world spins when you try to stand, even with attendants insisting you move your legs and body to prevent clotting from forming in your feet. You are practically hauled onto a cart of some sort that holds only your upper body, when strength slips between your fingers and you slide off—only just barely caught by the attendants and brought back to bed, they decide to just assign someone to apply pressure to your feet instead to promote blood flow.

  It’s strange… it’s all treatment and techniques you’ve familiarised yourself with over the last months you’ve been working for the capital. But it feels so foreign to be on the receiving end. 

  Like a rocking ship, you managed to down some foods one morning—and kept them down over lunch time, for the first time in… how long has it been? You feed some of the congee to a smaller snake by your bedside. 

  Everyone around you seemed very excited, but you didn’t have the energy to return it—you know in your heart and gut that it could change at any moment… your day moves slowly as you flip the page of a rather difficult book Cloud Retainer gave to you, it’s only about half writing and the rest is just numbers. Your eyes rise when you see Morax approaching your bed, and you straighten instinctively—he has something in his hand, a bamboo food basket with a long handle. “Good afternoon,” he greets evenly and takes a foldable table that’s used to prop on the bed to allow patients to eat there. He sets the basket on the table over your lap—over your book—and steps away again… Morax has been very quiet recently, and you’re unsure why. You would never say you know him well, you are just barely on greeting or chatting terms, but you still feel a sense that something weighs on his mind. 

  He returns again with a spoon. “Zhou’s son recently made travels to the west, and on my walk through the streets, the old man demanded I try some cuisine his son had studied there. This is supposed to be easily digestible,” Morax takes your right hand, despite it being very much healthy and mobile. His slender fingers slide below your wrist and lift your hand where he lays the spoon against your upturned palm, your fingers instinctively curl around the cutlery despite the fact that your eyes aren’t watching it. His expression is firm, stiff and stony. 

  “It’s not dinner time yet,” you’re not sure why you said it, perhaps the silence was uncomfortable, or you want his gaze to leave your torso and rise to meet yours. 

  He blinks, there are so many things on his mind that it gets pulled away even in the respite he’s taking in bringing you food. “Yes, my apologies. Master Zhou was rather insistent that I stop by and taste his son’s food no matter the time of day, he said finding me during meal hours is too complicated,” Morax lets go of your arm and his hand goes to the basket, he takes the top off and the dish out.

  While the congee you ate this morning was nice and light on your stomach—this dish was a pale yellow as opposed to the white of the congee. It smelled warm and comforting but mild, like a stone left under the midday sun, a hot spring on a cold winter’s day in the mountains where the flakes melt against your cheeks, but your body and shoulders are enveloped in a warmed watery blanket. 

  You stop staring at the dish and stick your spoon into it, it’s soft and moist, the rice separate easily as you scoop a small bite past your lips, careful not to have too much at a time—your stomach has traumatised you over the week by acting up over the smallest thing.

  “Ground Mender and Cloud Retainer surmised that though initially we thought enough of the miasma had been cleared from around your organs, your body is still too weak to push out the rest by itself,” Morax finds a stool to sit on next to your bed, not wanting to intrude on the mattress itself. In your convinced state, the bed is your only privacy space that only feels more confined when the curtains are closed around it. 

  The bite of food fills your mouth—and though your taste buds are extra sensitive now with not eating a lot of foods for so long… licking a sesame ball doesn’t count for much, it tastes very much like the warm embrace the smell and temperature brings. The rice is soft and nearly dissolves on your tongue, the creamy texture of the bite spreading in your mouth and down your throat—it’s five times more warming and powerful than a sip of warm water to smooth out your scrunchy stomach. It gets to work and you instantly feel a sense of ease. 

  Morax watches you as you lick your lips, dipping the spoon again. “What is it? It’s very nice,” you ask as you take another—now a fuller spoon—of the surprising dish.

  “Khichdi,” Morax says the word carefully, as if he were trying to mimic a pronunciation. “After master Zhou’s son returned, a lot of the dishes he learned to make have become very popular in the neighbourhood.”

  You hum, you can see why—the flavour is very unique, even if it’s not very strong, it’s likely made with ingredients not found in the Guili Assembly. “Some vegetables could add to it,” you muse to yourself, but quickly try and correct yourself. “I-I mean, it’s very good like this, thank you—”

  Morax, however, seemed sheepish for a moment. “Ah… there are vegetables in it… but master Zhou asked for your preference and I couldn’t answer, I deemed it safer to ask them to chop a chosen few of them into… miniscule pieces, in case chewing would be discomforting, or you didn’t like the taste.”

 You look down at the bowl, sure enough, there are specs of green and red—how small can you even chop a vegetable?! This looks like a crumb of salt, you think as you squint at a tiny flake of red on your spoon between two grains of rice… your taste buds are in shambles, even just the flavours of this was making it difficult to tell the ingredients, though there are some you have never tasted before. “Ah, thank you for your consideration,” you say before setting another—now spoonful—in your mouth. You almost wish you had bread now, when even two days ago you couldn’t even think about food without your stomach curling up. 

  Another silence lingers, but it’s not uncomfortable—not waiting or hesitant. You slowly eat while Morax sits, he looks around the calm ward, it’s usually only used in dire circumstances—when the usual infirmary tucked on the first floor on his side between the palaces is full, you’re the only patient being tended to now. “Perhaps you will soon be ready to go above ground,” Morax says absently, not turning his head to you yet.

  “Hm? Someone could surely carry me there now, I can try walking again,” you say after a swallow, realising you were eating a bit too fast, you slowed down; your grandmother wouldn’t have you consuming a meal made in kindness at breakneck speed without appreciating the flavour and effort. 

  “Though I’m glad you feel confident, I would rather avoid you hurting yourself,” Morax shakes his head slowly. “We will see what Ground Mender says in the morning, if you keep this down.”

  You better, you tell yourself. 

  Morax stuck around until you finished, and he helped put away the wooden board as well as placed the bowl back into the basket which had been set aside. You expected him to leave, but he walks around the bed to the side of your injured arm and extends his own right hand. “May I?”

  Raising your arm slowly, it stutters and jerks slightly, as if you were fighting against your own muscles for them to listen to your commands.Morax takes your arm kindly, treats it with a gentle touch you would expect from a seasoned healer… a soft glow emits from his hands and you feel their warmth seep into your skin, for a moment it is comforting, a taste of the khichdi from his hands to your skin.

  But suddenly, it’s too hot—it burns.

  You yank your arm back instinctively, as if you had laid it on a raging fire and not realised until the flames licked your skin. “Ah—” your right hand fingers dig into the bandage of your left arm, trying to squeeze away the pain, to inflict it differently and drain it out.

  Morax tenses at the sudden reaction, his eyes flashing with a strange emotion you didn’t see long enough to discern. “What is it?” he asks with urgency, but he doesn’t touch you again. Not if it was his touch that was the cause of your startling. “Did I hurt you?”

  “N-No,” you say quickly, but you’re not sure—it only happened because his fingers rested on your arm, but they were gentle, like leaves brushing against cobblestone in a drifting breeze. “What were you doing?”

  You don’t mean for your question to sound accusing, you hope Morax doesn’t take it as such. He looks from your eyes down to your clutched arm, eyebrows pinched in thought. “Does it still hurt?”

  “A little…” you mumble. Your arm tingles and your fingers tremble slightly, it has felt strangely cold—as opposed to the warmth that always emanated from corrupt skin, the miasma displaying symptoms of infections, because one corrupted is being infected. 

  “I was merely examining your energies, but as soon as I touched them…” he looked at his own hand. Your body had rejected his energies before—but they had not simply evaporated now, he was pushed back. 

  He does not like it. 

  You rub at your arm gently, nails scratching at the bandage now that you had the excuse. The bandage is wrapped so densely, your skin is moist and itchy. “Don’t scratch it,” Morax scolds as you do, and with a defeated sigh you look up at him again and tense. 

  There is an unmoving silence before you quickly look away again, but Morax saw the surprise and—fear? Concern?—on your face before you turned back to your arm. He says your name firmly, firmer than you’re sure you’ve heard before. “What is wrong?”

  “Nothing,” you say quickly. There was a snake around his shoulders. Writhing and wrapping around his throat. 

  They’re not real. You must just be malnourished, sick. Hallucinating. 

  Morax doesn’t react when the snake squeezes his neck.

  It’s not real.

  You pant, heart racing and pounding against your chest—you feel it so vividly you’re sure you could lay your fingers over your chest and pinch it when it presses between your ribs. You feel dizzy, and disoriented, eyes looking down to your left arm, it’s there—all fingers attached as usual. 

  Just seconds ago it had been red, open, you could reach out and touch the bone, you could wrap your fingers around it while your skin and muscles slipped off your arm and landed with a wet squelching sound on the floor.

  You’ve been having nightmares again. 

  It doesn’t have any comprehensive or predictable patterns, one night your head is in the maws of a beast, another you’re drowning under a tidal wave of iron-tasting water, unable to breathe or see as it stings your eyes and burns your lungs. You squeeze your eyes shut, running your right hand over your face tightly, squishing your nose slightly with your palm. 

  It’s exhausting. The day is tiring enough already, and you find no solace in sleep. You don’t even have the luxury of turning from one side or the other, any position other than flat on your back feels like your intestines are going to spill out through your belly button. 

  You glance at the breakfast laid out for you, sitting on the bedside table as it cools. Congee and some bread… but you don’t feel hungry. Not for what feels like the hundredth bowl of congee, you haven’t returned your meals in a few days, but yet Ground Mender denied you when you asked if you could be brought above ground.

  “We don’t have much space in the palace infirmary.”

  “Did something happen?” you had asked, you hadn’t heard of anything, but you haven’t heard much of the outside world in a while.

  Ground Mender changed the subject without telling you, and you were starting to feel that you were being kept alone in this massive hall for… what? You’re getting better, slowly, you managed to walk around your bed with some support, but you would never make it up the endless staircase leading to the sun-touched hallways. 

  It’s been a month and a half, according to an attendant that brought your breakfast. Your muscles have atrophied terribly and even just standing so someone can help you bathe is exhausting. 

  A hand touches your breakfast tray and you look up to see Moon Carver. It feels like every person you’ve met in the last months has been coming around to check on you… it’s strange. You’ve never stayed in one place for long enough for anyone to notice absent days of sickness, to inquire why you close your home off for cleansing for a week.

  You had returned to a small village that specialised in silk weaving and no one had remembered your face, despite the fact you had discovered the foul energies poisoning a part of the nearby forest, which caused a devastating number of lost silkworms over the span of three years. 

  You had seen your reflection recently and didn’t recognise yourself either. 

  “Time to stretch your legs, come on,” the adeptus tilts his head for you to get up. “The more you skimp out, the longer it will take to build those muscles up again.”

  If you don’t move, he’ll continue to pester you… you move the blanket off your lap and Moon Carver takes under your right elbow to help you stand. You’re steadier on your feet than you were before, but you always feel like your legs’ sense of balance is different from your mind’s. 

  “Starting to think you ask for babysitting duty,” you mumble, a poor attempt at humour as you take careful steps. You feel exhausted, but not like you would after running—there’s no burn, there’s no ache or cramp. You just feel like you’re going to slink down onto the floor like a dropped paper, swaying back and forth before gliding under a cabinet. 

  Moon Carver huffs, his grip is strong. “It’s not easy to say no to this one’s Lord.”

  “Would you if it were?” you wonder why Morax would ask Moon Carver to check on you, surely he has more important things to do. 

  He doesn’t answer, changing the subject. You’ve started to notice that when an adeptus doesn’t want to tell you something, they will just become quiet or dodge your question. “Let us go towards the stairs and back.”

  You frown. “All the way? It’s far…”

  It’s barely thirty steps, sixty in total there and back. You’ve walked this distance without a thought several times, so many you can’t begin to imagine how often. Light on your feet, walking briskly with tools, trays or heavy baskets you are sure you couldn’t try to lift up now. 

  It seems so far, yet you know it’s not. You just have to put one foot in front of the other, not think, not look at the distance, look at your feet, the floor. 

  You’ve had different nightmares. 

  Strange, different.

  Sinking below the claustrophobic, choking earth. Deeper into the iron water. Sinking. Watching the surface of the world like a reflection of sunlight from above the sea, blinding. 

  They’re vivid, but not scary.

  Just strange. Different. 

  Not nightmares.

  You wake and feel the warmth of the sun on your cheeks, it filters through oiled paper and you shift to your side. You don’t feel pain laying on your side anymore, but it’s not comfortable either… but you want to sleep, and the sun—though filtered—is in your eyes. You prefer to lay on your right side when you rarely roll, it’s easier if you have to sit up. 

  “Hmm, I would have thought you would be happy to see the sun?” Guizhong sets her hands on her hips, standing next to your bed suddenly—you didn’t hear her approach, but her preference to forgo shoes makes her footsteps very quiet. 

  You are happy to see it, Moon Carver helped Ground Mender carry you up the stairs last night. There’s less quiet in the palace infirmary, more patients coming and going and attendants rushing about… but as you don’t feel as sick as you did even just a week ago, it’s not as overwhelming to hear people wandering about, if anything, it’s comforting. 

  “I am,” you mumble, giving up on your prolonged rest to turn back on your back. “It’s warm.”

  “It won’t be for long, summer is coming to an end soon,” Guizhong approaches your bed and makes room for herself on the side of it next to you. “You should try and enjoy the warmth while it’s still here, do you want to go outside?”

  You do, you want to feel the warmth of the sun on your skin, to breathe in the fresh mountain air and feel the breeze ruffle your clothes. 

  But you don’t trust yourself to make it alone, even if you were to just stand by the walkway and hold onto the railing. “Will you help me?”

  “Of course,” Guizhong moves off the bed and straightens. “Let’s greet the fishes in the gardens.”

  You want to squat down and let the carps nibble on your finger, but you worry you might not be able to get back up easily, or you might pull on something. Instead, you merely stare longingly while Guizhong kneels down and feeds them from her hand.

  There’s not much wind today, barely the breeze you longed for—but even just the soft brush of air is more than you’ve had for weeks. You squint up towards the sky, a few clouds lazily drifting across the vast expanse as the sun hangs high above your heads.

  You hear the waters of the pond and small stream that cuts through the back gardens, a usually peaceful ambiance that makes you slightly uneasy now. You can’t imagine yourself stepping into a river anytime soon… you know that rationally, there is no danger in the small waters of the gardens, but the thought of touching the waters makes your skin crawl. 

  Footsteps approach the two of you and Cloud Retainer stops next to you—she has a floating bird crafted from bamboo and paper next to her, you hope it doesn’t shoot darts at the fish—with a flourish of her hair. “Your breakfast is waiting for you.”

  Ah. “I’m not hungry,” you turn your gaze away from the eccentric inventor, looking down to the Lord of Dust that pets every fish that comes to eat from her hand. 

  “You said the same thing last night,” she folds her arms over her chest. “You need energy.”

  She’s right, of course. “... okay, I’ll try.”

  You sit on the side of the road, a weary log under you and soft grass beneath your feet, the sun slowly sinks below the treeline as you stretch your legs and raise your gaze to the pink sky, your surroundings are peaceful and silent—a captured moment in time where you get to be alone with yourself. 

  Long, high trees line the road behind you and shield you from the rest of the world, the view before you is a comfort and home. Rolling hills, distant farms and fields of flowers spread over the land, coloured orange and pink with the reflective sky.

  A child runs past you, they trip on a rock and tumble to the floor—but no sounds of pain leave them, giggles and snickers as an older sibling runs past them, grabbing their shirt and hauling them up on their feet as they continue their sprint. 

  You don’t recognise them, but they feel familiar.

  You feel no wind nor the heat of the sinking sun, the sky is clear of clouds and birds, there is nothing but the wide scroll of the heavens furling across the air, opening up to reflect their blessings of fertile lands and fresh produce. You stretch your arms above your head and stand up, patting your clothes down to rid of any grass or dirt before continuing on your way. 

  You see him in the distance, and your pace increases. A flow of white robes and long brown hair, he turns off the gravel road and walks towards the thick treeline. Where is he going? You only see his back, the golden lines glowing in the darkening surroundings—as if beckoning you to follow, a guiding light. 

  But before you can leave the road and follow him into the forest, a hand grabs your elbow and stops you.

  You hear your name and blink—there’s no trees in front of you, there is a deep crater that is centred with a pool of water. Dry dirt crumbs fall down from below your foot and roll to the body of water, creating ripples in the still waters.

  Suddenly, you feel as if all the weight of the world is bearing down on your body, you’re cold, your feet hurt—you’re not wearing shoes. You stand at the edge of a crater, one step from tumbling down, and in the battered state you’re already in, it wouldn’t be a good tumble. You look back and see Morax staring at you, his hair is tousled and eyes strangely wide—you have never seen his face make such a vivid expression, one of surprise and concern. He tugs you backwards and you fall into him, your legs give out and tremble with strain. There’s a dull, agitating throb in your arm and stomach, a pulsing throb in tune with your heartbeat, in tune with the sway of the grass around you. Back-forth. Back-forth—

  You hear your name again, his arms hold you up and prevent you from sinking down to the ground. “Can you hear me?” 

  You can, but you find it difficult to voice your confirmations. You’re cold, it’s nighttime—how is it night already? The stars dot the sky with bright flickers and you try to stand, but your feet feel like heavy weights, a thrumming prick of needles rushes through them when you try to put pressure on them. 

  Why does it feel like he is always seeing you at your worst? 

  Sick. Injured. Hurting. 

  You would rather fall into the crater, he must think you a burden on—

  “You’re trembling,” his voice is louder than the brushing wind, louder in your ear than the sway of branches and rustling of leaves. “How have you found yourself here? In the darkness of night, alone and so far from the city?”

  He sounds different, urgent and more pointed—as if a front has been reached through, a hand through fog holding your arms as he steadies you against him. Morax’s body is warm. “You… it was you, I was following you,”you finally manage. But when did you start chasing him? You don’t remember starting a journey. 

  “Me?” he hesitates for only a beat of your erratic heart. “Are you certain?” Morax reins in his urgent tone, carefully choosing his words. “Word was sent to me that you had disappeared from your bed, it has been two days—do you know where you are?”

  “No,” it’s an easy question to answer, despite it being so difficult to think of what had just happened mere hours ago, days ago—a week ago. Your tense of time is ruffled, what had been the last thing you had been doing? Were you asleep before or after finishing the book Guizhong had left you?

  “The energies in your arm have spread again,” he moves—tugging your rather limp body along with him as he kneels on the soft ground. You feel the tickle of grass on your calves and realise you’re still wearing the short pants and shirt you were put in and made to use by the medical ward. Morax tilts you towards him as he unfurls the bandage on your arm, your side and right arm rest against his chest and torso, your head falling rather lamely against his shoulder—it’s a strangely intimate position that neither of you consider given the circumstance, it doesn’t feel intimate, it only serves the purpose of not having you fall over while his hands are occupied.

  The ink that had been sealing the miasma below your elbow was smudged—this type of ink doesn’t smudge for this specific reason. Blackened veins travel up your arm, so stark against your skin that they might as well be drawn on. They rise up your bicep and fade just below your neck. Morax’s eyes are focused and firm as he turns your throbbing arm palm up to examine it further. “The seal has been torn,” his fingers ghost over the blackened veins on your arm, you’ve only felt his gloved hands before, you wonder if his fingers are softer than the texture of his clothes. “You said you were following me.”

  You were… or, you thought so. “It looked like you,” you say it more so to yourself than him.

  “Did you see its face?” he asks as he wraps your arm again,  your skin is ice cold to the touch—the weather has cooled as summer is coming to an end, and with the Guili Assembly’s elevated land, it gets colder faster. 

  “No,” you mumble, shoulders raised as a cool breeze brushes past your neck, raising shivers on your skin. 

  Morax doesn’t ask further questions, but it doesn’t leave his mind either. He believes what you say, what you saw… real or not, it only serves to drive his concern for your well-being, physical and mental. 

  His hand raises, and you feel something touch your head. You squint your eyes open—you didn’t even realise you had closed them—and tilt your head to look at his face. Morax’s face is so close you can feel the warm brush of his breath on your cold chin, it blooms over the bottom half of your face. “What are you doing…?”

  His fingers halt and lift from your head, Morax blinks down at you. “I… heard it is a sign of comfort.”

  He was patting your head, trying to comfort you—it was… rather cute, that he tried even while struggling to grasp whether it would be appreciated or not. “Oh… thank you, it’s okay,” your torso doesn’t feel as cold anymore. Morax seems to take your waiting eyes as permission, and his palm rests on your head again, carefully. He doesn’t stroke or scratch like one would do with a pet or animal, his palm and fingers lift slightly and touch back down a few times. 

  You never thought you would be petted like this by a god, had you told yourself a few months ago, you would have found it funny—silly maybe. But… now that his warm hand touches your head gently, you find that it is comforting.

[kahluacoco]

Making Mychael's Horns

My mom likes to celebrate Halloween with a family dinner in costumes. This year I decided to have a Mushroom Oasis inspired outfit. I found a peach mushroom sweater very similar to Mychael's in day three, and his gloves, but I knew what I really wanted to try was to wear his horns! I haven't done a craft project in a while, and I haven't done any cosplay before. This is documenting the process and has some accompanying pictures.

Before the essay starts, (I wrote a lot!) here's the finished product! It was lightweight and fun to make!

Here are the materials I used. Since I made this across multiple days I took some pictures for fun. I didn't expect to make this into a blog post but here we are! Sharing this out in case you want to try and make this. The products I noted here are not to advertise anything, I just tried to find the cheapest materials I could use. I also noted the prices.

Total Cost was ~$22 USD but that includes extra material for other projects. I bought all this at Walmart.

Materials

Acrylic Red Paint (Apple Barrel Matte Flag Red) $0.58

Acrylic Yellow Paint (Apple Barrel Matte Bright Yellow) $0.58

Acrylic White Paint (Apple Barrel Matte Snow White) $0.58

Acrylic Blue Paint (Apple Barrel Matte Too Blue) $0.58

Mod Podge Matte-Mat-Mate $4.94 for 8 fl oz

Foam Brush (optional for blending) ($1.48 for 4)

Some paint brushes (a few sizes for basecoating and details - $2.98 for 3 brushes)

Pencil

Thin wood dowel $0.42 around 1/8 diameter maybe?

1 Foam Block (Medium/Small - Used as a base to hold the horns upright while working/drying) - $1.97 for 2

Blue artificial flower pick $0.50 (I got one on sale at Walmart that had some purple, white and blue flowers with green leaves. Feel welcome to grab a couple picks just in case)

2 Craft Foam Rectangular Blocks (FloraCraft Foam - I used DryFM green blocks that aren’t as porous. They’re usually used for keeping water for flowers. I got rectangles that were a bit larger than 5 in H x 3 in L x 2 in W. $1.07 for each block.)

Soft Fabric Headband (I used Goody Fabric Covered Headbands in neutral colors. You can get one similar to your haircolor $4.48 for 3)

Hot Glue Gun (I owned one already)

Dinner Knife

Gloves and Face Mask

Scissors

Here are the steps. I added in a lot of notes for gotchas/oopsies that I ran into.

Instructions

Carving the horns

With the large foam rectangular blocks, draw out the shape of the horns on the two widest sides gently with a pencil. This will help guide carving.

With the serrated knife cut gently along the areas around the lines to form the rough shape of the horns.

Don’t cut directly along the line. Cut out from the rectangle a rough polygon shape to start that is a bit bigger then the drawn lines. Then slowly start carving closer like carving a fruit and curving the knife. You can cut larger shavings for the rough shape, but try to cut smaller shavings as you get closer to your drawn lines so that you can get more detailed easily. The less you cut, the easier it is to fix. If you cut more, then you aren’t able to add foam back. Take your time cutting. See drawing on process.

Since the foam is soft, you can optionally cut the rough shape and use your fingers to smooth the edges and curves of the horns

Once you’ve completed one horn, you can work on the other. As you carve, compare the two horns and try to make them similar in width, height and length.

Recommendations/Notes

Line your work area with a bag for easier cleanup.

I recommend wearing a face mask and gloves so you don’t breath in the fine dry foam as you’re working with it. It’ll get messy if you cut fast. It’ll cling to your hands and maybe clothes.

Be careful with the knife, I ended up using a small serrated dinner carving knife

Treat the foam gently, it can be easily squished if you grip it too strongly

If you want to buy an extra block to practice carving a 3d shape, it might be helpful

No worries if the two horns aren’t exactly the same. Imagine that a horn is like a thumbprint, no two are alike :)

After all the carving, the horns were roughly 5 in H x 3 in L x 2 in D. Feel welcome to make them smaller or larger.

Strengthening the horns

Gently clean away with your gloved hands as much of the foam dust as you can from the exterior of the horns.

Cut up the wood dowel into a couple of small pieces. This will be used to prop up the horns so they’re upright and allow them to dry. Gently poke through the bottom of the horns with the dowel, and poke the dowel through the base foam block.

Pour some mod podge into a reusable cup and with a medium/large brush coat the first layer on both horns. Paint all over the horns including the bottom.

Wait for it to dry and continue to coat the horns with additional layers until it isn’t porous anymore

Recommendations/Notes

Since the foam is porous and soft, some mod podge or similar material will help fill in the holes and strengthen it

Even though the exterior is strengthened and prepped for painting, the foam can still be squished if too much pressure is on it (squeezing it strongly, hitting it with something, etc). I chose this foam since it was lightweight and would be easier to wear, but that is the main downside.

You can use a blow dryer on low heat to help speed up drying. I think I waited at least 15-20+ minutes in between layers. I would go about and do some other stuff around the house and come back to it.

I coated the horns with about 2-3 layers of mod podge.

Painting the horns

To cover up the green foam, paint a base coat with the darkest red of the horns. You’ll need about 2-3 layers of base coat to cover all the horns in red. Let the horns dry a bit in between coats.

After the base coats are fully dry, prepare the three horn colors to make the gradient. Paint the darker red at the top, the orange around the middle, and the soft yellow near the base and bottom. Feel welcome to blend with a brush or even some gloved fingers! Let the horns dry a bit and apply additional coats as need until you get the desired result.

Once the gradient on the horns is fully dry, make the spots color and plan out where your spots will be before painting them on. Have fun with it! You can try to match the spot positions in the character reference sheet or make your own. You’ll probably need to let it dry a bit and paint a few coats until they are a nice solid color.

For steps 1-2, you can use the blow dryer until fully dry or let this dry overnight. I waited overnight until the next day in between each step.

If you have a spray on mod podge or other sealer, feel free to spray the horns to lock in and protect the paint colors! I didn’t get a chance to do this. This would be the last step.

Recommendations/Notes

Refer to Mychael’s character reference sheet as a color guide. His horns are a gradient of three colors with a fourth lighter color for spots.

You may want to practice mixing colors a bit to get the hang of it before creating larger quantities. For the quantities I made about 1/4 cup or so? I don’t know the exact proportions I used since I eyeballed it to the best of my ability. Here is a rough approximation:

The darker red at the top is like a vermillion. I used mostly red, with a few touches of blue (no more then 10%), a few touches of yellow (no more then 10%).

The orange was a mix of maybe 60% red and 40% yellow.

The softer yellow for the base was yellow with some white and a bit of peach (no more then 15/20% for the white/peach colors).

The spots were made with some of the soft yellow and extra white

The red paint I purchased was the strongest color, so keep that in mind when creating the oranges and yellows. The paint I used is a bit thin so I had to paint multiple coats.

I ended up painting a base coat with the darkest red color a few times to cover up all the green foam.

I mixed each of these in different reusable cups.

You’ll want to paint the gradient all at once to blend it.

You can use a blow dryer on low heat to help speed up drying. I think I waiting at least 15-20+ minutes in between layers when applying multiple coats. Then I waited overnight to let it fully dry.

Creating the headband

Choose a fabric headband that’s closest to your haircolor (or Mychael’s if you’re wearing a wig!)

Mark faintly with a pencil where the horns will be on the headband. I placed the horns a little less then 2 inches apart from the center of the headband. Feel free to adjust to your liking.

With the glue gun, add some glue to the base of the horn and hold down firmly. Be careful for any excess glue that may spill. I added in extra glue and made sure it was pressed firmly on the hairband to secure it.

Repeat with the second horn a few inches away from the other one. Dry it with a blow dryer on the low cool setting if needed

Optional for the flowers

Carefully remove all the fabric flowers from their stems on the flower pick. Remove the plastic base and leave the stamens. Use the scissors to cut some of the back stem if needed.

Apply some glue to the back of the flowers and carefully attach them to the headband around the base of the horns. Feel free to mix around the colors and leaves as you’d like.

Recommendations/Notes

Be careful with the glue gun. If you add too much glue onto the horn, you may burn your fingers when pressing it down onto the headband.

The flowers hide the base of the horns where it’s glued. This is optional if you prefer the horns as they are. I did this since my glue gun work was a bit messy and I thought it would dress up the headband and help blend the horns to my hair. I didn’t wear a wig.

I used 5 blue flower, 3 white flowers, 3 purple flowers, 6 leaves and 5 little fuzzy blue and yellow stems I used some leaves on the sides of the horns and the back. I glued the leaves first, and then some additional flowers on them. I tried to position the flowers at slight angles around the base of the horns in the back and front of the headband.

Here's how they look once they're ready! If you do end up making these, please share! It was so much fun dressing up, maybe next time I can try to go green and make a tail.

[unidentifiablelifeform]

How to Get Into Bugs

"A world of dreams and adventures with bugs awaits! Let's go!"

What are bugs? In this document when I say “bugs”, I refer to small invertebrate animals like insects, spiders, snails, and worms. These creatures are underappreciated, and their importance to the health and function of life on Earth cannot be overstated. Bugs aerate the soil, pollinate plants, spread seeds, clean up dead plants and animals, provide food for countless species, prey upon countless others, and cycle nutrients across the planet, among other services.

Bugs are amazing creatures. They come in a vast variety of shapes and colors, from the shining wings of a blue morpho butterfly to the pebble-like body of a toad bug. Their habits and behaviors are just as complex as those of larger animals. Stick insects sway as they walk to mimic a branch blown in the wind, mud dauber wasps gather mud to build earthen nests, and moths read the stars to navigate in the dark. Because they are small, bugs can be supremely adapted to their environment. Many insects will form relationships with specific plants, only pollinating or laying their eggs on these species.

There are many mysteries left to uncover about bugs. Insects alone make up 75% of known animal species, with more being discovered every day. These species are not only being found in remote forests and grasslands, but in woods, parks, and other habitats closer to home. You may be the first to discover a rare creature found only in your area! It is not only new species that present us with mysteries. There is ongoing research into even common species, to answer questions like how flies land upside down, how beetles fold their wings, or how bees make decisions on where to build their nests.

If you appreciate them, the world will become more vibrant. Wherever you are, you can almost certainly find bugs. By noticing these creatures living around you, you will become more aware of nature not as an untouched ideal found only in mountain rainforests or ocean trenches, but as the life that permeates even the most “average” places.

How Can I Get into Bugs?

Go for a walk! As you are walking, take the time to look closely at your surroundings. Notice the different species of insects you see flying around. Look at the leaves and branches of plants. Turn over rocks and bricks. Do you see any bugs? Focus on one of the animals you see. What is it doing? Searching for food? Resting? Building a nest? Have you ever seen this bug before? What is it called? What is its life cycle like? These questions provide starting points that you can use to learn about the creatures that live alongside you.

Get acquainted through books, websites, and videos! Field guides and websites like iNaturalist serve as great first steps to familiarizing yourself with the species found in your area. Select a favorite species or family of bugs, then go out to search for them in the wild. Online resources can also be used to overcome phobias. If you find yourself creeped out by an animal, you can look up videos online to get used to its appearance and movements.

Gather some useful gear! If you are looking to catch bugs for photography or collection, you'll want to have a jar of some kind to contain them. Mason jars work well for large specimens and 2 oz. travel sized jars work well for smaller animals. Flying insects like moths and dragonflies can be captured with a butterfly net, while sweep nets can be brushed against vegetation to collect crawling animals. Dip nets are made for use in water and can be used to capture shrimp and snails along with aquatic insects. In addition to bug-specific equipment you may want gear like a bookbag, sunscreen, hiking boots, canteen, and long pants if you are going out into wilder areas.

Know where to look! Different species of animals need different resources to survive, so they will be found in different places. Look beneath logs or dead leaves to find isopods, millipedes, and earthworms. Ponds and other water bodies are often home to water skaters, crayfish, and water beetles. Flowering plants are a good place to find bees, butterflies, and wasps. Caterpillars, aphids, and planthoppers can often be found on leaves and branches. Some species of insects can only be found on particular plants. Whenever you find a new plant species, take a closer look to see what is living on it. Also be aware of what time you go out searching. If you go to the same location during the day and night, different creatures will be active.

Keep a record of your adventures! Whether it be a digital photo album, a collection of preserved insects, or a written diary, records will provide you with an easy way to revisit memories of your exploits. You might also have more fun exploring the world of bugs if you have a personal project to develop.

Raise bugs in captivity! Caterpillars and beetles can be raised over a season and released when they undergo metamorphosis. Snails and isopods are easy to keep so long as they are fed vegetable scraps and have humid places to hide in their enclosure. Many insects, spiders, snails, and other invertebrates are easy to care for in vivariums. Just be sure not to overcollect! While many bugs have healthy populations, others need as many wild breeding individuals as possible. Entirely avoid collecting endangered species or taking animals from protected areas.

Help Your Local Environment!

Insects, arachnids, and other invertebrates serve as essential building blocks to the global ecosystem and help to keep our world functioning. There are many ways you can help bugs:

If you enjoy gardening or landscaping, grow some plants native to your area. Native plants provide local species with food and shelter, and because they are adapted to your habitat, often require less care than exotic plants.

Avoid spraying pesticides and herbicides unless truly necessary. Not only can these substances kill off non-target species, they can also increase the populations of pesticide-resistant species, runoff from their site of application, and seep into local soil and water supplies.

Select a woodland, meadow, or section of waterway and keep it clean of litter. Pollution may be a global issue, but the world is made up of places, and you can make tangible change in your local area. See if you can get some friends together to help out. Cleanup efforts are most enjoyable with a few extra hands!

You can protect your local woods, creeks, or other wilderness spaces by working with your community’s hobbyists and environmental organizations, learning about your local ecosystem, and sharing your thoughts with others.

Many of the environmental, societal, and health issues we face are interconnected. Thus, improving one situation will make it easier to address others. Whatever problem you are most equipped to face, do your best. Even the smallest action you can take changes the future and makes it that much better.

Online Resources

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/ - Explore worldwide observations of living things.

https://xerces.org - The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation is an international nonprofit organization that protects the natural world through the conservation of invertebrates and their habitats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Arthropods - Wikipedia information on arthropods, their habits, and biology.

https://bugguide.net/node/view/15740 - Information on bugs from the United States and Canada.

https://www.pbs.org/show/deep-look/ - Explore big scientific mysteries by going incredibly small.

Chromatophone Nature Youtube Channel – No-Commentary wildlife footage, like a virtual nature walk.

Thank you for reading! For a PDF version of this post, visit my blog an check the pinned post.

[rangersveppir]

A history of Ranger Capture Stylers (from the view of the various models)

Howdy! This is a post I have been meaning to make for a while, this is essentially a list of every (publicly known) Capture Styler, not all of these will have photos but I have done by best none the less. Now first as many people know Hastings was originally going to call the device we know as a Styler "The Capture Loopy-Looper" and this is where some weird naming nonsense comes into play. So the first ever "Styler" was the Proto-Styler.

Proto-Styler.

Or as it is labeled the S.T.Y.L.E.R. (Spin-Tuned Yoked Link for Emotional Regulation), this was the first ever styler, its a bulky machine about the old style Poke-Center healers they used in Kalos, or for a less specific example about the size of two Metagross staked ontop one another. This big ol' boy had a small screen and a keyboard used to direct the Capture Disc. The capture disk for this original was about a foot across and weighed about 10 lbs. The machine itself required a constant power supply to run and was basically stationary so it wasn't very useful. Not to mention you had to do the calculations for how far the disc had to move yourself before typing in those numbers in on the keypad. It gets its mention here for being the first device to do basically what the modern Styler does today. Now onto the weird naming, so the Ranger Union and Hastings himself refer to this device as either a "Proto-styler" "The Prototype Styler" or "The Looper" however Hastings' documentation and patents call it the acronym I listed at the start of this section. From what I was able to find by looking through old interviews with Hastings it looks like the "The Capture Loopy-Looper" name was played around with because he feared the S.T.Y.L.E.R. acronym would be too weird for most people to understand and it wasn't until he noticed that his assistants were calling the new portable model they were working on a "Styler" to avoid saying the long official name did he decide to change it to the "Capture Styler" we know today.

Styler MK. 1

This is the first version of the Capture Styler and the first one I ever used, when I joined the rangers these guys were in their prime so its what I am most comfortable with even if that is kind of crazy. So the MK. 1 has a hand held section that's similar in design to the the fine styler but has an antenna like the MK 2 with the MK 1's antenna being about as long as the device itself. You hold it like you would hold a TV remote and make gestures to guide the Capture disk, the disk itself is released from a launcher on the bottom end of the handheld. The handheld is connected by a wire to a large battery pack. The larger ones could be worn as backpacks with the smaller ones hanging from your hip. These bad boys had enough power to keep the Styler charged for a whole three capture (six with the backpack sized pack). And if the disk was hit by a pokemon that would essentially knock you down a capture. It was not the best but it did its job, though I will never be as fit as I was back then lugging a 40 lbs. Battery pack to base so I could swap it out with a fresh one and continue work after capturing a beedrill. The one upside of the MK. 1 is the capture effect tended to be much stronger than with the modern stylers, as such if a capture with a MK. 1 would take 3 loops it might take a modern Styler 7 or 8 loops. But for most people that doesn't make up for the downsides, it cant use Pokemon Assist, it cannot be charged using pokemon and power cable on the handheld is damaged or severed its down for the count. The disks themselves were rather large not as big as those for "The Looper" but they still weighed a whole 3 lbs. and really hurt if you didn't seat them properly into the launcher, I am getting phantom toe pain just thinking about it.

Styler MK. 2 The second version of the Styler was a massive upgrade, it first introduced an internal battery, the disk was more durable so instead of losing a third of your charge from any contact the disk itself loses charge, pokemon can now recharge the styler.

The MK. 2 is one of those stylers most people think of when the imagine a pokemon ranger the hand-held device with the top and the pointing. It is the first Styler to be able to use Pokemon Assists. Styler MK. 3

Now we get to the not-so-fun part of this history, now if you look at the MK. 2 you will notice they were manufactured by "Mill Bros. Electronics" who used to be a large electronics manufacturing company in the Fiore region, though they had factories in many places. For the MK. 2 they had been hired to mass produce the stylers, and they were also tasked with the same for the MK. 3 however by this time Mill bros. was doing pretty poorly, they had just lost their factory in Fall City, which was one of their largest and had also lost contracts with a few other companies they had been producing products for, so with money tight they decided to cut some corners, specifically with the battery, the batteries planned for the MK 3 were heavy duty numbers designed to take a beating and handle electric type attacks like a champ, instead Mill Bros. used a weaker and cheaper battery and hoped no-one would notice, and probably they would have gotten away with it, except these batteries had a tendency to explode rather violently often injuring the rangers using them with nearly 300 injuries related to it in the first year (most were minor, just mild burns, others not so much) needless to say Mill Bros. does not exist anymore and the ranger union has their own manufacturing company now. As for the MK. 3 Itself it looks like a MK. 4 (what most people associate with a student styler) just slightly larger, with a longer handle, the handle was deigned to stick out of the hip-holster designed for it, so it could be pulled out at a moment's notice. You can tell a MK. 3 from a MK. 3.5 or 4 by looking for the Mill Bros. logo on the bottom of the device near the charging port (there will also be the model number MB30141). If you find you have been issued a MK. 3 or fine one in like a drawer or something you can turn it in to the ranger union for ₽2500, or 1 years worth of credit at the Ranger Union HQ cafeteria. Styler MK. 3.5 A rapid follow up to disaster of the MK 3. was the 3. 5 they look almost identical to the MK 3 but use a smaller more stable batter and tend to be slighter smaller over all. Not much to say it is just the MK 3 but does not explode.

Styler MK. 4

This is the styler most rangers reading this have use or have used, if you have been to any ranger academy you have used a modified MK. 4

Small compact with the disc being released from the yellow launcher seen on the head of the device. These guys are still in wide use today and are designed to be semi-disposable, if it is damaged just turn it back in for repair or replacement.

Fine Styler (MK. 5)

The Fine Styler aka the MK. 5 is a more powerful version of the MK. 4. It is strapped to the wrist instead of held in the hand and require a lot more training to use.

Super Styler (MK. 5.?)

Not much is known about this one so I wont be covering it, but I know if I did not list it I would have to deal with the tsunami of people saying I forgot it.

Styler MK. 7

The most recently released styler, its designed to be worn on the wrist similar to a watch and is similar in power and features to the Fine Styler in a much smaller package. It also has a built in AI that can help keep the ranger informed. These came out last year and I have yet to see one in person so I can say too much on how effective they are but the Union seems proud of them.

So yeah, thats all the publicly available styler models, for those interested I use a modified MK 1. (the union let me keep it after I retired, an antique for an antique I guess haha) I modified it to use a MK 2. Capture Disk so its a lot more useful. It's not winning any awards for looks though.

Anyway hope I was able to teach you something, stay safe out there.

[squawk-chatterbox]

I sketched out my terror bird things in charcoal pencil.

I love speculative biology I do

It’s so much fun when my mind gets working on stretching out towards all the fun possibilities.

Here’s closeups of some of them with explanations

———

These are Horned Hollers, the smallest of the Rhacids in Aureole and devious little burrowers that can fly.

They’re mostly carnivorous, eating insects and reptiles, but they’re not adverse to roots, and a couple seeds every now and again.

They live in groups of pretty big, like meerkats, and they’re pretty ferocious for their size, usually able to drive off larger predators and animals with the power of determination and being really annoying.

———

These guys are Blue Rhacids, they can’t fly, but they’re big and they can run. They’re incredibly intelligent, nocturnal pack hunters and scavengers that live in groups of up to twenty, usually family and extended family, though a group of twenty-six members is the largest documented yet.

Y’know how crows can recognize human faces and will target and mob people they believe have wronged them or killed them. This is that, 5 feet tall at the shoulders.

Thankfully, they usually don’t want to get on people’s bad sides, but harass or kill a member and they’ll be out for revenge.

There’s also rumors and stories that they can tell when the humans in their territory are hunting too much prey, and they’ll start targeting hunters for food instead, but it’s hard to say if those are actually true or just things made up to make sure people didn’t over hunt or do more ecological damage during the Great Starving.

———

These are Crested Hollers, a bit like secretary birds mixed with hornbills. They’ve really loud, but melodious territorial calls which people used to use as measures of time, a bit like a rooster crowing. Up before the Holler, as they say in Aureole.

These birds can fly, and can run, and they stomp the souls out of snakes, reptiles, small mammals, even smaller birds. But unlike the other two Rhacids I’ve highlighted, these ones have a healthy fear of people, and tend to steer clear when they can.

[rabbitcruiser]

National Reptile Awareness Day

Every October 21 is National Reptile Awareness Day. Godzilla. Reptar. Yoshi. The Geico Gecko. Those two lizards that always hang out around your back porch. These are just a few of the famous reptiles we love. But on October 21, we celebrate all of our cold-blooded friends. This day is observed to educate and raise awareness of  threats to the natural habitats that our reptilian companions rely on to survive.

History of National Reptile Awareness Day

While the history of reptiles may go hundreds of millions of years back, National Reptile Awareness Day has an unfortunately short history in comparison. Additionally, it wasn’t really until 1966 when the first Endangered Species Act was passed that awareness of the needs and threats facing reptiles (or any animal, for that matter) started to make its way into our cultural mainstream. 

With the passing of that act, a mid-century push toward conservation started taking the forefront. Updates were passed in 1967 and 1969. Additionally, in 1967, the Environmental Defense Fund created their historical efforts to ban DDT from usage in the United States. Much of this was movement was sparked by Rachel Carson’s seminal book, Silent Spring, which documented the adverse effects pesticides and other chemicals have on the environment. 

National Reptile Awareness Day wouldn’t exist without the efforts of that movement. In fact, many reptiles wouldn’t be around today without the help of the Endangered Species Act. While National Reptile Awareness Day may have a small history compared to its subjects, its still part of a historically important movement to help protect and conserve all species of animals.

National Reptile Awareness Day timeline

315 million years ago

Prehistoric Reptiles Evolve

Reptiles are considered to have evolved from amphibians around this time. While many have perished along the way due to mass extinction, many (such as crocodiles and sea turtles) still remain

66 million years ago

The End of the Reptilian Era

The end of "The Age of Reptiles," a period of time where dinosaurs and other massive reptiles roamed around as if it were Jurassic Park. This began "The Age of Mammals," while, despite the name, reptilian species continued to diversify and thrive but at a much, much, much smaller size. 

1978

The Loggerhead is Listed

The loggerhead sea turtle, one of the more famous reptiles, is listed as endangered, mostly due to bycatch in fishing gear but also because of loss of nesting habitats. 

1987

See Ya Later, Alligator

The American alligator is officially removed from the protected species list, making a remarkable comeback from near extinction after spending twenty years on the list.

National Reptile Awareness Day FAQs

When is National Reptile Awareness Day?

National Reptile Awareness Day is every year on October 21. 

How do I celebrate National Reptile Awareness Day?

There are many ways to celebrate National Reptile Awareness Day, such as donating to a reptile conservation, visiting a national park, or learning to identify reptiles. 

Is a turtle a reptile?

The placement of turtles within the reptile kingdom has historically been up for debate, but so far they are still considered to be reptiles.  

National Reptile Awareness Day Activities

Donate to a reptile conservation programThere are a lot of different organizations that want to continue educating the public about our reptilian friends. One way they do this is by also advocating for us to have the ability to keep reptiles as pets. Donate to your favorite organization to help them continue being the voice for reptiles.

Visit a National ParkRegardless of what part of the country you live in, reptiles play a major part in your ecosystem. By visiting your nearest national park, you're helping promote a place that is dedicated to preserving the natural habitats for all animals that live in that area - including, of course, the reptiles. Some notably reptilian parks are Joshua Tree, Big Bend, and the Everglades.

Identify a reptile (or two, or three)Consumer science is an important part of helping researchers understand where our cold-blooded friends live and their population densities. Many identification apps are created by institutions to help draw in that data. If you see a lizard or other reptile, use an app to ID it. This helps scientists understand where certain populations live and how well they're adapting among us. The Audubon Reptiles & Amphibians app is a great place to start.

Why We Love National Reptile Awareness Day

Their body armor: Reptiles are known for having thick skin, literally. Their armored body is made up of scales or boney plates (yes, some have their bones on the outside) to protect them from the daily wear and tear. How cool is that?!

Lizards, turtles, and snakes, oh my!: Because some of the most awesome characters/creatures on TV, or in the films we watch, are reptiles. They are sometimes dramatized to be huge and scary, like Godzilla, and other times are hilarious, like the Geico Gecko.

They make the best pets: No backyard to have a dog? No problem! Most reptiles can be kept indoors in naturally adorned tanks. They are easily maintained and make for an educational experience for kids learning about the environment.

Source

National Reptile Day

Not every person can look at a boa constrictor named Barbara or a toad named Frank and think lovable thoughts. However, National Reptile Day is the perfect day for the squeamish and admirers alike to appreciate the role these creatures play in our ecosystem. We celebrate these reptiles on October 21 — where fans take the time to educate others about habitat loss, conservation programs, and the importance of keeping reptiles off the endangered list. Below we share what you can do to celebrate this holiday — even from a distance.

National Reptile Day timeline

​400 BC

The beginning of recording reptiles

​The methodological study of reptiles dates back to the time of philosophers Aristotle and Pliny.

​1852

A prehistoric discovery was made ​

​Traces of the oldest known reptile, called the Hylonomus lyelli, were discovered in a fossilized tree stump in Nova Scotia.

​1998

​Saving the Galapagos

Ecuador enacted the Galapagos Special law, to create the Galapagos Marine Reserve and protect the island wildlife (including the Galapagos Tortoise), manage fisheries, and inspect quarantine measures.

National Reptile Day Activities

Reacquaint yourself with reptiles: Spend some time holding and interacting with reptiles — perhaps at a pet shop — where snakes, frogs, or lizards are just a short car ride away.

Donate to a conservation program: Contribute to programs designated to protecting endangered species. Many reptiles are still hunted for their use in leather or to meet consumer demands. In several regions, this type of hunting is a big problem due to the role most reptiles play in their specific ecosystems.

Read about reptiles: Spend a day at the library researching and learning new things about reptiles. You may even find your future pet in the process.

​5 Quirks Only Reptiles Could Have

​The Fantastic Four​: There are four orders of species: the Crocodilia (crocodiles, alligators, etc.), the Tuatara (lizard-like), the Squamata, (includes lizards and snakes), and the Testudines (turtles, tortoises, and terrapins).

​Baby it's cold inside​: The majority of all reptiles are considered ectothermic, meaning they rely on their environments to regulate their internal body temperature, reproductive health, immune system functioning, and daily stamina.

​Larger than Life: One of the largest reptiles on record is the salt water crocodile, which can measure over twelve feet long and weigh more than a thousand pounds.

​Circle of life: ​All reptiles play an important function in their ecosystem; for example, lizards control insects and pests in homes and gardens, while snakes keep rodents under control in urban life and in the countryside.

Survival! The way reptiles adapt to their environments allows them to create defensive behaviors in fights, to reproduce, hunt for their food, or anticipate a dangerous situation.

Why We Love National Reptile Day

A time to love our pets: Reptile owners get a special day to appreciate their best friends every year with this holiday. This day allows us to treat our buddies and give some never-ending love and care!

A day to relax with some reps: For those of us who don’t own a reptile, but are curious, this holiday allows us to take time to observe them in their natural element. For those who are very nervous or scared of anything slithery, this is the perfect day to face those fears.

We expand our knowledge: Taking the time to learn about these different species allows us to appreciate the environment we both share. This day is perfect to teach children about animals and nature.

Source

[evienyx]

im not too sure how to ask this, but i'm reading the first book in the fractures series, and really enjoying it, and you said that you started it when you were 14. i'm 14 at the moment and am thinking of writing a fic and was wondering if you had any tips on how to plan a longfic or for writing in general

Oh my god this was asked back in August I'm so sorry anon.

As it is, I can still give a pointer or two, regardless of how late it is.

So, as much as anyone hates to hear it and I hate to say it, the best way to get better at prose (as in sentence-level writing) is just by writing. You gotta train it, develop your own style, figure out what works.

I have a tendency to be very flowy and long-winded, often to my own detriment, which is something I'm working on trimming down in the Fractures Rewrite without sacrificing the emotional weight from the scenes.

When it comes to planning a longfic, generally the most important first step (for me at least) is figuring out where you want to end it. Anyone can write a fic whose plot goes on and on for eternity, but if you want your fic to kinda be a classic, having an idea of where it's going to end up will immediately help you.

After the end, the hardest part for me tends to be the middle. It is just as important as anything, and you want it to stay just as interesting. The middle part of the story is the plot, the beginning and end are just vessels for it.

Oftentimes, the earliest form of my outline is literally just a document with the entire plot written out. I don't care for length or details, I just sit down, write the beginning, and then write how the story gets to the end. From there, I clean the outline up. I figure out what makes sense to use and what needs to be added or taken away. I start separating the stuff into possible chapters and outlining those chapters to figure out what they will include.

As I'm doing this, I also write out (smaller) outlines for the arcs of individual characters. Depending on the size of the fic and what the focus is, I might do this for dozens of characters or only for a handful. Regardless, I need to know where they start, where they end up, and how the plot changes them to get them from point A to point B.

If you're ever struggling with coming up with a plot that flows well with good tension, one that feels like it's building to something satisfying, you can always just use a plot template from online somewhere. Even if it feels rudimentary, Exposition-Rising Action-Climax-Falling Action-Resolution works for a reason. It's often how I outline stories of my own that aren't related to fanfiction.

One more tip: Read. And I don't just mean fanfiction. The best fics are often compared to published novels, with some even being considered better than them. One of the reasons these stories are so good is because they don't flow like many fanfictions do - rather they flow like published novels, with a proper plot, arcs, prose, and a satisfying ending.

[skyrim-forever]

Beading: A Year's Progress

Hi everyone, I thought I'd do a little retrospective as I began learning to bead 1 year ago! Here is a timeline of my progress and projects :)

June 2023 Pomegranate 1st project -This was the first project I tried, design freehanded by me. I practiced a few stitches and then just started! Figured it out as I went, still proud of this turned out way better than I expected. Materials 6/10 seed beads, glass pearls, and glass semi-transparent beads in 4 different sizes for the seeds; polyester backing and thread.

July 2023 Twin Snakes -Project number two is where I decided to play with a more complicated design and use colour. This was definitely a learning experience but it gave me confidence to try more intricate designs. Materials 6/10 seed beads, glass gemstone beads for the eyes, polyester backing and thread.

August 2023 Scared Heart and Eyes -For project 3 I decided to try working with more different types of beads, design inspired by adobe stock images of scared heart tattoos :P Materials 6/10 seed beads, glass pearls, czech crystal beads, and semi-transparent glass beads.

September 2023-Janurary 2024 La Pietà di Neravar -A lot of developments! I decided to try working with smaller beads, 10/0 seed beads and began my most ambitious project. Taking over 50 hours, spread over 3 months, it was wonderful to document this process on tesblr. I also decided to combine my love of TES with beading, a theme that would continue. Materials 10/0 seed beads.

February 2024 - March 2024 Mask of Almalexia -Something about Morrowind just inspires me so much and for my next project I decided to do Almalexia's mask as she is my fav Tribunal member. This was complicated and I ended up colouring the background with markers to make sure I put the beads in the right places. This isn't my fav but I learned a lot and it didn't turn out too bad. Materials 10/0 seed beads, czech crystal beads, and metal cones with rinestones on the tusks.

April 2024 - July 2024 Ayem -More of her <3 I love my wife :P I decided I wanted to learn portraiture, in fact the reason I started beading was because I was so inspired by artist Rachel EllenBogen and her stunning beaded portrait purses. I hope to make this into a purse as well! Quite proud of this as it's not bad for my first stab at portraits.

Thank you everyone for your support, in particular I'd like to shoutout @thequeenofthewinter @throughtrialbyfire @ladytanithia and @your-talos-is-problematic for the incredibly kind comments on my wip wednesday posts <3 Many weeks I made progress because I wanted to show you all :)

[fleouriarts]

time for a jamie and co LORE POST!!!! here's them with their (immediate) families. all the actual lore and such below

JAMIE: only child with a single mom. since furries in this universe can only have kids within their taxonomic families, adoption is really common among smaller families like prionodontidae. however jamie's mom erica really wanted a bio kid, so she ended up marrying another linsang who she liked... well enough, but not that much. they get divorced when jamie's a little kid. she had jamie at an older age; by the time he's in college her markings have already started greying, which is why she looks a little dull next to him. nowadays she works as a teacher and she loves her son vewy much :3

SANTIAGO: santiago is the only one in the main cast with different species parents. cross-species kids are just the species of either parent with a 50/50 chance cus i don't feel like dealing with hybrids... HOWEVER sometimes genetic fuckshit happens. because of said genetic fuckshit, santiago grew to a cow size instead of a sheep size. i couldn't fit all the family relations shit on the actual image but emilio is santiago's OLDER brother (hes 25) but people always assume hes younger because santiago is a giant. magnolia and amapola are twins and both 8. mariana is either a teacher or a librarian (haven't figured it out yet) but she used to paint when she had more free time which is how santiago got interested in painting and eventually went into fine arts. jorge is a plumber and emilio is a graphic designer. santiago is the first in the family to leave their hometown (key west) for a degree (emilio went to a local college) and his mom + sisters were SOOOOOOOOOO SAD so he comes home to visit as often as he can. also since he is in family bovidae he has several cousins/aunts and uncles/etc that are different species. all i know for sure is that one of them lives near jamie and co's college and is some sort of antelope (leaning towards bongo bc i like them). also using this poast to announce that i changed santiagos outfit here is his new cute flowers and bees sweater look

JOHNNY: her family works on a chicken (and other assorted birds) farm, the chickens are for both eggs and meat while the other birds are just for eggs. this is actually a common set-up in the dorian furryverse, it's hard to farm livestock as a carnivore (because all the livestock are deathly afraid of you) so herbivores usually do the job even if they can't actually eat what they farm. johnny's parents are sorta "confused but got the spirit" about her being a butch lesbian. jimmy is an ass about it but he gets better. shoutout to this horse color calculator for helping me figure out which coat colors were plausible for them

NULL: null has an older brother and does not talk to their parents. sakichi is six years older than null and they were never very close; their parents treated sakichi as the "successful" child and null as the "problem" child. they're also quite conservative. null realized they were agender in high school but stayed closeted at home, they planned to come out to their parents immediately once they got to college and were able to support themselves. something happens that instead makes them come out a few days after their graduation and they get kicked out. null doesn't know where to go and ends up living at johnny's farm for the summer before college (sakichi lives far away doing some tech job and so can't take them in). the clantons are basically null's family at this point. once null legally changes their name they remove their last name entirely (it probably says X on their documents just cus there has to be SOMETHING there). sakichi and null see each other very occasionally, and sakichi still talks to their parents, but only when absolutely necessary. it's not malicious, he'd just feel too guilty cutting himself off from them completely

ARGYLE: argyle is an only child with well-off parents, his mom is a lawyer and his dad is a quirky ancient history professor. his parents are like EXTREMELY doting so they were secretly kinda glad that he came back home so they could see him more often. argyle was really scared that they would hate him for going into a less stable field, but his parents love him to death and are ready to support him in whatever. suzanne was probably a nightmare at pta meetings i'll be so real

[delighteddistractions555]

Random Rant In Fanfic Form

I posted this in the Nezha Fanclub on communities and now I’m posting this here. 🙃

Nezha was minding his own business working as usual. His desk is occupied by court documents and a mug of hot coffee. He had just finished 2/3rds of his work when he heard a dog’s growl and the sound of large boots. He glanced up to see a familiar pair-er, set of three eyes. Oh no, just why?

“My peace has been disturbed and my day is ruined.” He glared at Erlang Shen. Damn the elder war deity for abusing the Third Lotus Prince’s “tolerance” for him. The demigod only chuckled as he leaned against his desk, “Is that any way to speak to your incredibly caring and handsome senior brother?” He smirked. 

“Oh sure!! Whatever helps you sleep at night, gramps.” The younger prince snorted. Wrong sentence because the next moment he found himself in the older man’s arms. “Pppfftt, I’m not THAT much older than you brat. But you are more youthfully cuter than me~” He teased smugly. Nezha let out a long exasperated sigh only reserved for damn bastards or equally damn war siblings as Erlang and Iron Fan. “What do you want mutt?”

“Just kidnapping you.”

“Oh fine then I’ll-………..Run that by me again.”

“Nope. You’re definitely not deaf Nezzie.”

“ERLANG SHEN IF YOU DARE-“

One hour of feral screaming later….

“At least tell me WHY you are doing this!!” Nezha grumbled as he crossed his arms in his “human” outfit. A pink hoodie with lotuses, jeans, and red sneakers with white lotus print. The elder demigod laughed at the younger god’s expression. The older deity dressed in a black leather jacket, grey T-shirt, black jeans, and still wearing those stupid boots. Xiaotian’s golden markings were masked by a simple illusion and his gold collar switched for a spiky red one with a skull tag. 

“Guess what time of year it is.” Erlang grinned. “Bastard Season.” Nezha's eyes rolled. Erlang huffed as he replied, “No smart aleck, it’s my Uncle’s birthday. And what better present to give him then-“ “Pissing off his Majesty by kidnapping me. But Erlang, your uncle is dead and my dad is the emperor now!” The younger immortal cut in. The taller warrior gently placed a hand over the smaller one’s mouth. 

“Let me finish. I damn know that and I wish I knew what the damn was happening before Wukong’s successor was forced to fix everything. I don’t care if I’m not emperor-but I DO care about what happened to you in the aftermath of all the DBK-sized crap I missed out on.” The lotus prince softened as he gently removed the bigger god’s hand, but he did hold onto it. He said even more gently, “Erlang. It wasn’t your fault. You were banished from the Three Realms and despite what his late Majesty has to say-it wasn’t fair. 

Honestly, I’m just glad we managed to find you after all this time. Or at least spare those poor inhabitants of the world you were stuck on…Still, I’m just relieved my dad finally had the sense to bring you back after nearly screwing everything in the Color Stone mess.” The nephew of the previous Jade Emperor snorted, “I’m not surprised. Uncle only kept me around because I was “useful”. With how the Celestial Court is in shambles, of course they would bring back this old dog to be useful.”

Nezha immediately backtracked, “No!! That’s not what I meant-“ Erlang held up a hand, “No. I know you don’t mean that. But other people do, especially the ones in power. Only valuing people for their utility as if people were no better then frigging tools if not toys. However, you and I are on the same boat in terms of how others value us. And I’m not standing for it.” 

The younger warrior looked up with puzzlement at the elder one, “Nezha. You were basically forced once to throw away all of your eternal life for a damn map. A MAP. I know damn well it was integral in keeping the Samadhi Fire unforged forever. But did it mean you had to give up your life and your own godly responsibilities?! Isn’t there a reason why guards take damn shifts?! And don’t get me started on when you had to fend off Azure ALONE. With only a half a millennia old demon brat and of course the armies of Heaven.

BUT, none of the other war gods, generals, and warriors couldn’t step in to protect their “precious Emperor”?! What about your own damn brothers and father?! Did they really just sit back just to watch you get pummeled by a rebellion that nearly overthrew heaven?!?! Oh and my dearly departed and wonderfully wise uncle…” Erlang sneered the last part as he continued, “The old man was sick and suffering this whole time from holding the power of the universe. So pitifully sick he just let DBK, Spider Queen, and that damn bone lady almost get away with their wretched ploys…But of course the stubborn fool refused to get any help or let ANYONE KNOW until it was well too late. That damn bastard just kneeled over and let a freaking, flipping kitty cat take his power and indirectly, lead the ENTIRE world as we know it to its doom!!”

“At least I managed to seal it temporarily…” Nezha tried to cut off the rant short because he still hadn’t a clue what the demigod was getting at. That only seemed to fuel Erlang’s fire more, “OH! And for fending off Azure mostly by yourself and saving the Three Realms from becoming roasted turkey by sealing the Jade Emperor’s power. Even if temporarily. You get freaking demoted and forced to stand by while your sorry excuse for a father fumbles the whole-universe-egg-cracking-mess and NEARLY LETS SOME SNAKE FREAK DOOM EVERYTHING AGAIN!!! HOW IS THAT FAIR?!?!” The taller god hotly demanded. 

Nezha squeezed Erlang’s hand a little tighter, “As touched as I am by your concern. Just cut to the chase already! How does this relate to me besides the fact I got humiliated three times over by defeat despite being a God of Victory?!” He hissed. The demigod gazed at the shorter god with all three of his eyes, “Because I damn care for you. That’s why.” The younger immortal knew his fellow war god wasn’t one to lie, especially to those he trusted. He turned his head away feeling somewhat heavy in chest.

How many times have Nezha heard someone say they cared-only to find himself standing completely alone? Too many times actually…

As if indeed Erlang read his mind, the demigod spoke up, “I should have been there for you. Doesn’t matter if I was banished or not, you should not have been left all alone. I would think someone would watch over you. But, that turned out to be wishful thinking didn’t it? Despite all you've done, despite how much you’ve grown, it seems as if no one cares about you. Not even your own frigging family.”

The truth was so painful Nezha had to speak up, “Fine! So it’s true!! I have been alone for ages and I can confidently say no one hardly cares about what happened to me!! But-but, I…..” The Third Lotus Prince looked up with the flickering flame of longing in his eyes. “Erlang…..I, I was the one who suggested to dad to bring you back. Because I wanted to-“ The younger god never got to finish his sentence before being lifted up into the arms of the older god.

Erlang hung onto him not too tight, but secure enough not to let his junior brother fall. Nezha held on just as desperately, unwilling to lose what he once thought was gone forever. After a few minutes of silence Erlang finally spoke up, “This time, we’re sticking together. You, me, and Xiao. I’m not letting you go again didi…” The smaller warrior sighed deeply, feeling relieved by that statement. 

Then a small frown crossed his face, “Will have to return to the Celestial Realm from time to time, for work. Heaven still needs every god available.” The larger warrior grumbled as he gazed at Nezha in annoyance, “You’re a damn workaholic you know that? And why should we even bother to help those fools? But then again, we are probably the only rare few left that can keep the ship running.” The rebellious demigod relented with an ever-suffering groan.

Nezha crackled lightly as he punched his senior brother’s arm. “If it quits your whining, I’ll take over the cooking. And you have free reign to terrorize anyone that tries to “rescue” me from your horrible clutches.” Erlang smiled wickedly as a foolproof scheme to borrow the Monkie Kid’s staff to smash Li Jing into the fourth wall and beyond crystallized into his brain. “But you have to let my dad live or you'll end up as emperor if not arrested or executed.” His junior brother warned him sternly. 

Xiaotian could only hold back a canine smirk as he watched his master growl from being denied the pleasure of delivering well-earned karma (revenge). “Hey!! Your dad DID help uncle banish me you little punk. I deserve some compensation for being knocked out of the ballgame for the last five centuries!!” Erlang argued petulantly. Nezha rolled his eyes as he retorted, “I think kidnapping me and earning my cooking services for life should be compensation enough.” The demigod holding him gave him a look that said otherwise.

The “hostage” resisted slapping his “kidnapper” as he added, “I can bake and brew tea.” “I’m counting those both in the cooking category and I’m not totally helpless. I brew my own tea just fine.” Erlang replied stubbornly. The lotus prince groaned, he could not believe he was actually defending his crappy father from a guy he wouldn’t mind running Li Jing over with a bus. Still, it had to be done. Or he could forget having some semblance of a happy(?) life. “You can overrule any order he gives me if you don’t deem it fit.” Nezha gave his final offer. 

Fortunately for the sake of Heaven and one unpopular pagoda king, the three-eyed demigod seemed to be satisfied by the prospect of gaining protection for his junior brother and leeway in tormenting Li Jing in the bargain. “I say that’s fair enough for me kiddo.” He ruffled Nezha’s hair as he readjusted the smaller war deity in his hold. Nezha allowed himself to get comfy in his senior brother’s embrace. “Hey gēgē, how long and how well have you been planning this kidnapping?” Erlang couldn’t help but feel a little fuzzy when his adorable junior brother called him that. 

The celestial half-blood answered, “Believe it or not, Wukong has actually been gracious to me. I’m pretty sure I owe the idiot a bunch of favors by now. Still, it’s worth it in the long run now that I’m more or less acclimated to the modern era. The moronic peach lover has been introducing me to the new age for the last couple of months. And by a stroke of luck we found my old territory. So it didn’t take long for me to reclaim it, clean out the monsters, and rebuild my old house there.”

“We’re going to have that damn simian visiting us often aren’t we?” The kidnapped prince deadpanned. Erlang cringed with a grimace, “Yeah, but better tolerating Wukong then living by others’ rules right?” Nezha soon found himself agreeing, “I’m not looking for a perfect life, but I am not settling for being the lone soldier boy anymore. I rather fight for the world by your side than by my father’s.” The ex-heavenly prince hugged Nezha happily in response to this. Xiaotian wagged his tail happily from how everything was turning out for both of his masters.

“Hey Erlang, what are you in the mood for tonight? I can cook-“

“Actually Lil Lotus will just get takeout. You might want to take it easy for tonight. In fact, let’s just take a small break from Heaven. At least three days….”

“……..Yang Jian, what. Did. You. DO?!?!”

“Hey!! To be fair your garbage excuse for a dad had it coming!! And I’m sure he can rule the Celestial Realm easily enough without it!”

“ERLANG YOU DIDN’T-“

“I fully apologize little brother, but I don’t regret anything at all.”