@comicaurora

@is-it-a-man But... if Amaury Guichon makes himself a really, really good pair of wings out of chocolate...

I swear to god one of these days were going to see a video of Amaury Guichon and he's going to be making some wings and they are going to look dope as hell, the detail of each feather will be breathtaking, he'll spray paint them to perfection, but as the video goes on, he's not building any sort of winged creature, just the wings. And then there's a human-sized harness (also made of chocolate, somehow, he can do it). And he's attaching the wings to the harness. And he's putting the harness on and he demonstrates how he can flap the wings. And then he'll be off. Out the window and up and up and up. And we'll be looking at the livestream (it's a livestream now) and we'll scream "No, Amaury, the sun! It's going to melt the wings!". But he knows this already. And he is free.

Not telling your kid they have a learning disability, chronic illness, mental illness etc. so they can “feel normal” actually does the opposite. They will not feel normal if they do not have the context to understand that their normal will be different from that of their peers.

This character is debonair and very attractive. Very sexily attractive, and has a sexy accent to top it off.

But their knowledge of the common language is worse than just having a shaky accent... they get idioms comically wrong, all the time, in their sexy accent, ruining the effect. They'll say "Boum, schockolat" instead of "boom, shakalaka," for example.

When other characters try to correct them, they just flip their hair sexily and say, "My vairsion is bettair."

Pro tip:

Never confuse the War In the Pacific with the War Of the Pacific.

I know I'm not the first to Uno-Reverse the whole humans-summoning-demons thing, but what kind of mundane tasks might an otherworldly being need a summoned human to do? What kind of "powers" might a demon gain from a pact with a human? And what might the human demand in return?

Is spitting on one's hand, then shaking hands, the "humonic binding ritual"?

What happens when a demon calls down that which they cannot send back up?

A. Shipwright on Deviantart: https://www.deviantart.com/ashpwright

DoodLetMeGO on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ashipwright

Happy shmoo hunting, Tumblr!

"...but, hey, I'm pretty happy with this one."

As you should be!

Modern Monsters 9: Lesser Dragon (Dragonet)

The modern world has very little space for giant monsters to roam the land.

If any of the large sapient lizards - the greater elemental dragons, fire and ice drakes, wyverns, wyrms, or any others you can think of - still live today, they certainly don’t venture far from their inhospitable hiding places. Human settlements have encroached too far into the wild edges of the lands. Even the skies and seas are not entirely untouched.

However, just as the more widely-known living fossils like coelacanths and tuataras continue to survive, if one knows where to look, there still remain small populations of dragonets scattered across the globe. They have adapted through necessity to living on the quieter edges where human influence, though undeniably present, begins to fade into wilderness.

Like their larger relatives, these small creatures are sapient and have some influence over the elements. However, these lesser dragons branched off quite some time ago from their more powerful and more intelligent giant cousins. Even the most unusually large dragonets are no bigger than a small domestic cat.

Consequently, their abilities don’t quite match up to dragons of medieval lore.

Dragonets have a level of intelligence roughly equivalent to a young human child.

They understand human languages well but may struggle to articulate themselves fully, given that inter-dragonet communication uses an intricate combination of scents, pheromones, scale colour changes, and elemental flares such as barely detectable atmospheric pressure changes alongside any vocalisations. As a result, they only have so much patience left for polishing up their grammar.

It’s really anyone’s guess whether it’s the brain equivalence to a small child or the genetic link to greater dragons that makes them so temperamental and so keen to hoard shiny things for themselves.

The different populations of dragonets have started diverging into subspecies at this point, with different types showing different elemental affinities.

The pictured specimen’s tendency to leave trails of frost lacing from its path may seem to imply that this type throw ice magic out into their environment, maybe because they love the cold. The fact of the matter is, the opposite is true - they just like to keep warm, and their bodies absorb heat from around them to such an extreme degree that they drop the temperature of everything around them. They are far less snappy and more energetic in the summer when their bodies don’t have to work so hard to maintain their preferred high core temperature.

More than one shrewd hedgewitch has picked up on this, over the years.

The promise of a warm fireside for the winter, along with all the cat food pouches they can eat, has been quite effective in convincing frost dragonets to form a partnership of sorts.

They still need to be treated with respect, and they must have free access to the outdoors, of course; draconians of any size cannot tolerate captivity. However, they can bond with the right sort of humans, and those that do so quickly learn that they rather enjoy a ride in a shirt pocket or on a shoulder when offered.

It is also well-known among such favoured witches that dragonets are surprisingly good with their children, particularly their little girls.

A lesser dragon is still a dragon, after all.

And dragons do so love a princess.

~~~

This time around the picture came first. I just really love dragons, and wanted to dream up a way a pocket-sized one could exist. Once I saw its face, I knew I wasn’t going terribly verbose on the poem this time.

It doesn’t often talk to humans, but it’s trying its best.

I’ve also seen “dragonet” sometimes used to refer to baby dragons, so let me be absolutely clear that yes, I’m using that here as a separate species name, and this is a full-grown adult one ready to fight you for that shiny bottle cap.

I love bearded dragons, so I went straight to that as my baseline for the picture. Which I dedicated far too much time to, as usual, but hey, I’m pretty happy with this one.

~~~

Modern Monsters series

Modern Monsters 1: Dullahan

Modern Monsters 2: Kelpie

Modern Monsters 3: Kuchisake-onna

Modern Monsters 4: Cuca

Modern Monsters 5: Vampire

Modern Monsters 6: Dr Frankenstein

Modern Monsters 7: Frankenstein’s Monster

Modern Monsters bonus: Frankenstein, Monster (it’ll come some day I swear)

Modern Monsters 8: The Scissorman

Modern Monsters 9: Lesser Dragon (Dragonet)

@whyisthereacentaur

Happy Yule! by Abigail Larson

Gad, this is so true in everyday life, too, isn't it?

Tips on how to fight the "if I overly explain, everything will be hunky doory" instinct?

Being genuine, as someone who does struggle with it from time to time. <- Like this!

No matter how good you explain, you are not immune to

person reading fast skipping words or sentences

person reading casually who is not interested in unpacking your statement to any degree of depth

person who decided what you meant three words in and is not internalizing anything beyond that point

person focusing on a part of the statement you literally never considered important and making that the sole focus of their analysis

person primed by an external conflict who is scanning your statement for dogwhistles that indicate whether you're on Their Side or the Enemy Side

When it comes to explaining, there's a baseline level of Good Enough you can strive for, to the point where someone who's paying attention, trying to understand your nuances, and not actively setting out to misinterpret you will most likely get most of what you're talking about. Beyond that, it doesn't matter how many words you use if they aren't being read or interpreted. All you can control is what you say. You cannot control how you're perceived or interpreted.

I actually liked the Australian animated version of Transformers better... It really improved the dynamic of the show, that they made the human characters a group of bush mechanics, who, after every fight with the Deceptacons, fixed the Autobots up with duck tape, scrap metal, and "she'll be right!"