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get DOWN here

*defiant dangernoodle noises*

I’m gonna miss these guys when summer reading ends

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My city is amazing but this has to be the #1 reason. The Bike Path Mayor’s race is heating up and it’s creating all kinds of of buzz! Here are some additional signs that have popped up in the last week:

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I’ve never had a reheading go this horribly before. I’d say I’m pretty good at beheading- I may have broken a neck once or twice, but never any parts I actually liked or intended on keeping, and usually a reheading is the easiest thing, right? Just a little squish and a pop and done, a complete person. But this time it just- it just won’t go back on the body?? Which is incredibly frustrating but also, like, why??

And the funniest thing is, I’m not even swapping a head!! This is a curvy dancer head going onto a curvy dancer body!! They match!! This should have been so simple!! But no, this head’s just flopping around like a limp flaccid idiot and my hands are all red and sore now but the head just isn’t attaching all the way!!

Today I did six beheadings and two other reheadings, and I wanted to get this one attached so I could take a picture, but somehow it just isn’t working!! The head is just getting squished around but isn’t stretching over the neck right!! And I’m way too lazy to go and boil the head just to make the slip easier!! And I don’t wanna keep forcing it cuz I might break something but this is!! So frustrating!!

Like, what could I possibly be doing wrong!! Fuck!!

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Putting the art degree to work!

~This is your reminder to sign up for Summer Reading at your local library~

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Dagor Dagorath is CAUSED by giving Morgoth access to Feanor’s server.

Maglor, coming home after living through the 5th age amongst humans: Oh! ada! I have a gift for you!

Maglor: *sets up a gaming consol and downloads minecraft* it’s this game where you can creat an entire world for yourself made out of cubes.

Feanor: i will test it out later.

*3 days later*

Nerdanel: feanor! Are you ok, you haven’t left the room in 3 days! You’ve even been ignoring the forge!

Feanor, looking like a mess: not now, love! I’m almost finished recreating fermanos!

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Things Velcro is smart enough to do:

Herd humans like a border collie

Understand pointing

Track people in other room via the hall mirror

Understand difference between clothes (claws ok) and skin (soft paws)

Open doors

Cheat at puzzle feeders and snack toys

Lift blanket with claws so she can burrow under it

Fraud

Things Velcro is not smart enough to do:

Eat her food slow enough that she doesn’t make herself sick

Ma’am. We have to feed you on a tray.

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Oh so I thought of this while plotting (loose term) a small and silly fic in which Sabriel, well into her second trimester with Ellimere but too busy and relatively symptomless to notice she’s actually, y’know, pregnant, is finally pushed gently but firmly into a chair by the house sendings and handed the book they left on her bedside table, the study desk, in her backpack, etc, with signs indicating that she has to read it. Right now.

Said book is an Abhorsen’s guide to pregnancy and child development in wee necromancers, written waaaaay back when by someone, probably Belatiel’s daughter or granddaughter and subsequently heavily revised and argued over, and it included a lot of helpful tips including how to ward the crib of a baby against a baby rolling over into Death by instinct (I maintain this is what Sabriel did as a newborn, which is why she came back normal, and also, that her many-times great grandmother would have sighed and gone ‘well yes, babies want to be with their mother’) and, as she’s reading, she goes…oh I remember these wards, kinda. Dad used to cast them when we were travelling. There’s a further spell to ward a body and tie a spirit to a body, in the event that you have to take a baby with a death sense somewhere not warded, and, particularly, if that somewhere is somewhere where it’s very easy to cross into Death, like, say, a place where many people have recently died or there are broken Charter Stones. This spell includes a variation or note that it can be cast if a spirit has already started to go into Death and needs to be stopped in order to retrieve it (in the same way one might corner a VERY FAST toddler by a closed door) which Sabriel sits and squints at for a long time, because that sounds like a plausible answer for why Touchstone was Like That when she found him.

At this point the librarian sending buries its hood in its spellflesh hands, comes over and turns the pages back to ‘a spell for diagnosing pregnancy’ and points at it.

(Addenda: the whole above ground section of the Abhorsen’s house is, by default, childproofed in this way and probably several other ways. Bel’s daughter or granddaughter and her very small children were living there for this very reason when Hillfair burned, so they all survived. She’s the Queen Victoria character of the Abhorsen line.)

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Now on AO3, with three possible endings of varying levels of silly:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/61176034

It's a lovely day in Beleriand, and you are a horrible goose

AU where Elwing, after being told that Elves can’t go back to Middle Earth, argues successfully to Manwe that clearly this rule doesn’t apply to migratory birds. Since Manwe 1) feels bad for her and 2) loves birds, he rolls with this, though he does point out that she won’t be able to turn back until she returns to Valinor.

Feat. Bird-Elwing being violently protective of her sons and tormenting the Feanorians. She eventually figures out that they mean well, which does not actually stop her from stealing Maglor’s harp and throwing it in the pond, or pecking him when he’s not paying attention, or sneaking up and honking as loudly as possible.

(Maedhros gets less of this, because he is 1) scary and 2) completely unimpressed. Maglor yells, which is more entertaining)

Elwing still can’t talk to her sons, but she can gather them under her wings to sleep and preen their hair and hope they know, somehow, how much she loves them.

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And did you know? I was right.

I can’t fix the world, so I’m going to spend the day working in the garden. It’s the right time to plant bulbs, and I’d like to see crocuses and daffodils in the spring.

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Oop, there he goes again!

A very warm March we’re having!

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so I just went to a production of A Winter's Tale knowing nothing except that one stage direction* and their Paulina was fantastic, she full on decked King Leontes and then kicked him in the ribs while he was down. 10/10, no notes**

*you know the one

**actually, many notes, mostly to do with what the hell is going on with the second half, why does it feel like the cliffnotes version. did WS get bored? why does literally everything happen off screen explain

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tiny velcro snores

eepy kitty

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Spoilers for The Last Graduate, avert thine eyes, etc etc

So it had to be utterly WILD for the parents of the graduating seniors, right? Like, you're waiting, knowing that at BEST you'll get back a traumatized, injured stranger running high on adrenaline and terror from the WORST Fitness-Gram Pacer Test of all time...

And your kid just walks out like 'Hi Mom! Senior year has been weird as shit!'

And then the next year, of course, it gets even weirder.

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Oh, the ~*~pathos~*~

Weep, my countrymen, for poor starving Velcro! She is being so strong and brave about breakfast being late!

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Attention everyone! This is Velcro:

Velcro is five years old and she sleeps like this:

Thank you, that is all.

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Marine art references

Fishbase.org - global species database of fish, great for anatomy reference for specific species, lots of photos, specializes in finfish.

Sealifebase.org - complementary database for non-finfish marine life.

(As always, I also refer you to the Wikipedia list of online encyclopedias - there’s a lot of great ones out there!)