#i'll develop this one

[reineydraws]

mihawk training with his step-kids! ft. smitten husband shanks

[girlwiththegreenhat]

team fortress 2 finally getting rid of the bots after 5 years

work on the team fortress 2 comic continuing after 7+ years

half life 3 development looking more likely than ever with legitimate code, file, and voicework leaks referencing a new non-VR single-player game from valve featuring a HEV suit wearing protagonist and Xen creatures and concepts

shoutout to the valve fan that found the genie lamp. you a real one

[thirdtimed]

crossed fingers that i'll do something with these thumbnails. happy cactus ring day everyone

[imminent-danger-came]

2x02 // 3x01 // 3x03 // 3x13 // 4x12

Team huddle!

[fuckingrecipes]

Everyone's tongue is unique to them.

Everyone is going to have a different experience, tasting the same thing.

It's pretty well-known that some people have a gene to taste cilantro as 'soapy' or not. There are many other variants like that!

Some people are VERY sensitive to bitterness, and when they eat bitter flavors, they perceive that bitterness as far more overwhelming than someone who isn't sensitive. Children in particular are well-known to be bitter-sensitive. Dark chocolate, coffee, some types of vegetables, and other bitter compounds are revolting.

On the same token, there are people whose sense of bitterness is 'delicious!', so they REALLY enjoy things like mushrooms, matcha, beets, and other earthy flavors.

Some people are VERY sensitive to sweetness. Actually, your tongue can be adapted to sweetness, and perceive it less over time. Many people report no longer being able to stomach candy and sodas after cutting added sugar from their diet - your tongue literally changes how it perceives flavors, based on what you eat frequently.

Some people cannot taste major flavor compounds found in avocados, pomegranate, and blueberries. They'll say 'it tastes sour/sweet but otherwise like green water' - But other folks know all three fruit have very distinct flavors of their own.

Some people have trouble tasting the flavors in meat - My wife, for example, claims there's little to no taste difference between beef, chicken, and pork - that the only difference is in texture. Meanwhile I'm over here slurping beef juices off the plate.

And there's many other like this!

With that in mind - that our tongues are literally having entirely different experiences when touching the same foods... and also changing as we age, and based on what we eat...

There is no perfect food that will be universally good to everyone.

It doesn't matter how meticulous you are about cooking your steak, or folding your batter, or hand-picking only the freshest leaves on a dewy morning.

There will always be someone whose tongue is simply built different than yours, who thinks your favorite food is unpleasant to eat.

And that's okay!

Sometimes experiences can be unique and personal. A food doesn't have to be universally enjoyed to still be exquisite to those whose tongues can perceive it.

------

This is also a love letter to Durian, you sweet, foul-smelling fruit. Your innards taste like sweet, creamy vanilla-almond custard, but the gods have cursed you with a wretched hot-rotting-garbage stench to hide the divine dessert within.

You are beloved, beloathed, and banned from several forms of public transit. <3

[ryllen]

You know I am surprise Sebek that is never jealous to anyone who is close to Yuu. It is a boys school and I can imagine some have crushes on her.

[yasmeensh]

Concept art: There is a game where one person would draw something on the other's back, and they'd have to try to copy it based on the sensation. Junar (angsty Neanderthal teenager. Yeah, name drop on tumblr now!) would totally play it with his sister, Jaya... Drawing on dirt will also mean she can feel the grooves of the result and compare.

I'm supposed to be doing actual plot development but here I am... brainstorming games and past-time activities for my visually impaired character. Will I even have scenes with the characters just playing? (probably. likely...)

[starrysharks]

early design for my sister and i's comic project "bites n' bribes" - a comedy about a group of gangsters starting a restaurant as a money laundering front

[kilak9]

since ik we wont ever see these two kiss, i decided to take it to my own hands (a couple months ago) 🙏

i need them to kiss, like actually 😢

[fishofthewoods]

Oh my god I woke up this morning and my Stardew Valley meta post had almost 150 notes????? Hello?????????? Anyways I started writing this last night because @moon-is-pretty-tonight left nice tags on the original so thank you so much!!

We know from the starting scenes of the game that the farmer's grandfather loved Stardew Valley. So why did he leave? Pelican Town is a good place to grow old; George and Evelyn are just fine. It's a fine place to raise a kid, but maybe he just wanted to raise his child closer to real schools and other children.

Or maybe, just maybe, he understood.

Was there a day when he was in his thirties where he looked at his friends and realized they weren't like him? That he could run faster than them, work longer, explore deeper into the hidden places of the valley?

Was there a day when he went to the wizard to ask him for help, for knowledge if nothing else? Did he learn then that his family was different? Special? Chosen? And how did he react? He couldn't possibly raise a child in the valley if they would be as strange and fey as him. He had to leave. There was no other way.

But years later, on his deathbed, did he regret that choice?

Is that why he gave the farmer the letter?

Is that why they went back home?

When the farmer steps off the bus that first day, the valley is still on the cusp of winter, just barely tipping over into spring. The flowers are starting to bloom, but a chill still hangs in the air. As soon as the farmer's boots touch the soil there's a change. The air gets warmer. The trees get greener. Not by too much, not all at once, but it changes.

The junimos watch the farmer as they do their work. They're new to farming, but take to it with frightening speed; their first batch of crops is perfect. None of the townsfolk tell them that parsnips don't normally grow in less than a week, that cauliflowers don't grow to be ten feet tall, that fairies don't visit when the sun goes down and grow potatoes and beans and tulips overnight. The junimos talk amongst themselves in their strange, wild language, and agree: this is the one. They're back. The valley recognizes its own, even when they've left for a generation. The farmers have come home.

Things change fast in the valley. The community center, empty and decrepit for so many years, is rejuvenated. (Lewis says it was abandoned only a few weeks after the farmer's grandfather left. Strange coincidence, he says, that it both came and went with the farmer's family.) The mines and the quarry, similarly abandoned, are explored for the first time in ages. The town becomes cleaner, brighter, more vibrant, happier.

And it is happier. Not just the environment, but the people. It's the talk of the town for weeks when Haley does her first closet purge. Leah's art show in the town square is a huge success. Shane's smiling for the first time since he moved to the valley. All of them, when asked, say it's all thanks to the farmer.

People love to ask why Lewis didn't fix the community center on his own. Why Willy never repaired the boat to ginger island. Why Abigail or Marlon never went down to fix the elevator in the mines, or why Clint didn't fix the minecarts.

But isn't it so much more interesting to ask how those things were there in the first place? How they got so broken down? If the stories the townspeople tell are true, the valley was once a beautiful place, flourishing and full of life; why did that change? When did it change?

Was it when the farmer's grandfather, the locus of the valley, its chosen representative, left town?

And if so, what happens when the farmer comes back?

[deoidesign]

Been thinking about her recently.

[fourswords]

to be quite honest shadow's characterization in the fsa manga was always something that raised more questions than answers for me because it's like. he's got a mile-wide inferiority complex about being link's shadow we all know this but when did he have the time to develop that inferiority complex in the first place. how long was he lurking around after ganon created him before the events of the manga actually started. what did he witness or hear or both to make him so fucking angry

[grumpyghostdoodles]

The Almighty Sheriff!

Save a horse, ride a cowboy~

[quirkle2]

i have GOT to stop drawing things for fics i haven't written yet

[psychomusic]

oc time again! + her town & culture (heavily inspired by pre-roman italic populations)

she is suri sauthon (later suri laran, after her marriage). her story is linked to my swtor imperial agent, but most of her life for like. the one year away where she meets him, is spent in a town in the mountains of mirial.

despite mirial being cold and desert, and many cities developing underground, her town flourishes thanks to a force nexus, venerated in the form of an ancient, sacred, alive crystal. the ecosystem of that mountain depended on what "the horned crystal" was capable of giving them, but mirialans couldn't live off of that alone, so they developed trade and some rudimental technology, even if oftentimes it was bought thanks to the highly profitable trade of a plant used to make medicines that slowed down aging and had overall healing properties.

note: everything that's generated by this nexus has these healing properties BUT they have to be processed, except for those who bathed in the waters of the cavity under the crystal - the "real" nexus, but not the worshipped one. the waters were sacred but they were not thought to be miraculous, unlike the crystal, who instead was thought of as the keystone of the ecosystem: without it, everything would fall apart (and that is partially true: the cavity was the "real" nexus but thanks to the crystal, also strong in the force, the properties were spread all over the mountains). those who bathed in the cavity's waters - so, all of the town, who had a sort of baptism there - could eat the plant, make whatever food with it, and not only that plant, but everything generated by the nexus, that, again, had similar properties. this allowed people to live up to normal life-spans without advanced medicines or, much, really. to those who didn't live there, though, after the processing, had incredible effects, slowing down aging - for those who took it regularly - and making people able to live up to half a century more than the average]

originally, there were four tribes of nomads that lived thanks to horned farm animals that decided to settle down into one bigger town and other smaller settlements, to live off of transhumance. this division of the tribes stayed into the political and social organization: every person belonged to one tribe specifically, and had slightly different rituals and culture. for examples, each tribe had their own priests and healers, with different techniques and traditions. the town, tho, was guided by a group of people in the high priesthood, a position you could reach only by having earned the trust of all tribes. those high priests had many roles: they guided the people into sacred processions common to all the tribes, they managed the trading with outsiders, they did the maintenance of the temple of the summit (the one that functioned as casket to the crystal) and created a special liquid to offer the crystal that helps it grow.

this particular temple was important because 1. it was very visible, from every angle of the town, and it became an important identity symbol; 2. it stored the venerated horned crystal; 3. it had the altar where sacrifices were made for the crystals. that altar had a hole connected to the cavity, that allowed the liquids to reach the underground; 4. it had various symbols: statues representing each tribe + the high priesthood, and typical mirialan tattoos carved into the wood of the trees that served as columns for the temple, symbolizing 8 values that who dared to enter HAD to have; 5. it was on the way to an important lake (called "mother lake" because the lake the town was built around to depended on the waters of that other lake) where they traveled to in important processions; 6. it was said that a the wizard who unified the tribes made it with its magic, making the plant grow to hold the temple's roof. this wizard was, actually, a force user, obv.

BACK TO HER THOUGH: she's daughter of one of the high priests, who was in charge of managing the trades with outsiders, and lives in a house on the mountains with her mother and him. her parents are from different tribes (that's one of the things that earned him trust from the 4 tribes): when a child is born from two different tribes, they don't pick one to allign to, but they're usually linked automatically to the one with more relatives in it (in her case, the father's tribe: she had many uncles and aunts on his side while her mom only had one sister).

later, though, she got quite tied to her mother's tribe due to a mysterious illness that only her mother's tribe healer was able to cure. she spent 4 years (from 10 to 14 years old) living with the healer and learned her secrets. to better study, she wrote them down. when she returned home, she studied to become a priestess with her father. at 22 (the average age: you can't become priest before your 20s), she was supposed to take a test and become a priestess, but the healer of her mother's tribe died and the tribe asked her to take her place. she couldn't technically do that, but both tribes estimated both her and her parents and she was allowed to become both. she then decided to try to become a high priestess, and became one at 25 (a quite young age). being part of the council, she tried to convince the various tribe healers to unite their knowledges and write them down, and eventually made it. healers still remained tribe based but they now had an "upper, inter-tribe level" similar to high priesthood.

years later, the sacred horned crystal is stolen from the temple by some Hutt mercenaries looking for a profit. given the trust she has earned from all the tribes and the fact that her father is the high priest that deals with outsiders (and she's been hearing stories and advice about it since she was little), she is the one tasked with getting it back. without the growing crystal, the keystone to their ecosystem, the village would have lasted only a few years. in hrr quest, she meets imperial intelligence agent tar'x laran and, as they "solve the mystery" and fight to have it back, they get closer. they'll get married and have a daughter, Vegoia (who's the only one who actually will get to the plot of my story. this was all background)

[juaneloriginal]

silly thingy

@blackkatdraws's sillies