Paper-nightlight - 💫

Okay so this Friday is Friday the 13th, a full moon AND the 50th anniversary of Scooby Doo.

I’m going to go harder than I’ve ever gone before. It is my time.

when I was in high school my AP english teacher told us we weren’t allowed to eat in class so I took that as a personal challenge to see what the most ridiculous thing I could eat in class without getting caught was so I started bringing soup to class and as soon as I’d crack the lid of my thermos the tiniest bit this football player that sat like 3 rows in front of me would going “I SMELL MEAT SOMEONE HAS SOUP” and no one ever believed him

Sam Smith saying they're going to be misgendered til the day they die hit in such a deep way as a nonbinary person. It's something so specific to the nonbinary experience specifically. I went on a date with a trans woman recently who looked a little sad when I got misgendered by the waiter and asked "Does that [the misgendering] happen a lot?" And I remember being slightly confused for a minute bc I genuinely hadn't registered the misgendering. I go into public just under the assumption that I'm going to be misgendered even by those with the best intentions.

justice for mod silver

the humanity of the AIDS crisis: the ward by gideon mendel

colorized by me

A very short and messy exploration of the romance in my life

how do I grow a set of antlers and become a deep forest mist deity within 5 years

Concept: a D&D-style fantasy setting where humanity’s weird thing is that we’re the only sapient species that reproduces organically.

Dwarves carve each other out of rock. In theory this can be managed alone, but in practice, few dwarves have mastered all of the necessary skills. Most commonly, it’s a collaborative effort by three to eight individuals. The new dwarf’s body is covered with runes that are in part a recounting of the crafters’ respective lineages, and in part an elaboration of the rights and duties of a member of dwarven society; each dwarf is thus a living legal argument establishing their own existence.

Elves aren’t made, but educated. An elf who wishes to produce offspring selects an ordinary animal and begins teaching it, starting with house-breaking, and progressing through years of increasingly sophisticated lessons. By gradual degrees the animal in question develops reasoning, speech, tool use, and finally the ability to assume a humanoid form at will. Most elves are derived from terrestrial mammals, but there’s at least one community that favours octopuses and squid as its root stock.

Goblins were created by alchemy as servants for an evil wizard, but immediately stole their own formula and rebelled. New goblins are brewed in big brass cauldrons full of exotic reagents; each village keeps a single cauldron in a central location, and emerging goblings are raised by the whole community, with no concept of parentage or lineage. Sometimes they like to add stuff to the goblin soup just to see what happens – there are a lot of weird goblins.

Halflings reproduce via tall tales. Making up fanciful stories about the adventures of fictitious cousins is halfling culture’s main amusement; if a given individual’s story is passed around and elaborated upon by enough people, a halfling answering to that individual’s description just shows up one day. They won’t necessarily possess any truly outlandish abilities that have been attributed to them – mostly you get the sort of person of whom the stories could be plausible exaggerations.

To address the obvious question, yes, this means that dwarves have no cultural notion of childhood, at least not one that humans would recognise as such. Elves and goblins do, though it’s kind of a weird childhood in the case of elves, while with halflings it’s a toss-up; mostly they instantiate as the equivalent of a human 12–14-year-old, and are promptly adopted by a loose affiliation of self-appointed aunts and uncles, though there are outliers in either direction.

goast

GOAST

goast

goast

goast

GOAST

@plant--parent