lacependragon

[lacependragon]

the concept of fatphobia isn't "skinny people have never ever been shamed or insecure about their bodies ever" but rather "society literally doesn't want fat people to exist at any cost to the point healthcare systems are willing to let fat people die rather than address any other possible medical issue, in addition to facing insults and disgust at every turn socially". online the fact u can't make a body positive or even neutral post without somebody going "but what about us naturally skinny and petite people" is so fucked man

[lacependragon]

Indulging my most self-indulgent scene ideas has given me some of my best character details for Descent.

Why yes, there is a scene where a character stops a runaway subway.

And another one where two characters go to space to repair the space station. In nothing but the suits. No ship required.

And another one where a character catches a plane.

And another one where a character purposely falls off a skyscraper.

And another one where one character convinces the other to let go of them a good 8,000 feet above the ground.

And all of it shows off character and develops character and relationships and builds theme and setting.

Self-indulgence is key, y'all.

#reblog from side #yeah

[lacependragon]

I have. The weirdest urge to ship Hardcase/Padme. I have no idea why. But I wanna.

#star wars

[lacependragon]

Just the fact that so many people talk about "feeling fat" and "looking fat" despite not actually being fat, betrays that it's fucking not all about health. People fear even this perceived proximity to fatness. "I feel fat today" means "I feel ugly and therefore some kind of unworthy". "I look fat in that picture" means "I appear uglier than I consider myself to officially be". Neither of them means "I feel compelled to check my cholesterol" or whatever

[lacependragon]

i think it is important to recognize the ways in which your favorite thing sucks. i think it keeps u normal

#rwby is unfortunately my favourite piece of media

[lacependragon]

for whoever needs to hear this:

starting HRT doesn't have to be a huge momentous all-or-nothing decision. you can just try it like you would an antidepressant you've been informed of the risks of.

there won't be any immediate irreversible changes overnight. you can always stop, change your dose, change your delivery system, decide it's not the right time. you can even microdose if you want to.

you don't have to tell anyone. you don't have to announce it if you don't want to.

stop waiting for a perfect time in your life because it won't come.

stop waiting to reach a mythical level of certainty that never comes to anyone, for anything.

you've been thinking about it long enough. if you have the opportunity, just give it a shot. you're worth the courage it takes to make a change in your life.

[lacependragon]

A Workshop for Creating Magical/ Fictional Crystals: A Guide from a Geologist

Hi folks, its me, here to talk about fictional writing again! Today I'm just tackling the idea of magical stones/mana stones by looking at existing minerals today and some neat properties that they have, and how you can apply these things to a fictional world. The goal is mainly to help you if you are stuck trying to come up with a unique magic system, or a unique identification/characteristic of your mineral.

First Things First: Mineral Shapes

I am exhausted, petered out, down-right fatigued by seeing every mineral depicted with having the crystal structure of calcite and quartz. There are soooooo many cooler, more interesting crystal structures, don't you think you would stop and take a look at a perfect cube in nature? It is completely unsettling.

Second: Color

Color within minerals can either be really important, or not important at all! It is your choice to decide if color is going to be something that means something to your mineral. But what are some times when the color is important? Well.... there are some elements that are called chromophores, this classification just indicates that these elements, when present, will determine the color of whatever they are in. So, if you wanted to treat mana like a chromophore, you could say, "Oh everything that contains mana turns green!" This could mean that regardless of the mineral, if that mineral is a specific color, it means it contains mana. This concept is exciting because you can just stop here and use minerals that already exist! You can also use it as an indicator for a magical ore! Chromophores are typically metals, so if you are making a new metal weapon, making the ore of that metal a unique color would make a lot of sense!

However, your mineral can also just be every color of the rainbow like quartz and perhaps that's what makes identifying your mana stones elusive and create an illusion of scarcity that your character can solve.

There are other things that can change the colors of minerals, like radiation damage, and electron exchange, but I think that is beyond what would be helpful! So lets talk about some unique color properties that happen in nature that seem magical in the first place! Maybe you don't need to design a mana stone, but you want a unique gemstone that only the royal family passes down or something (IDK).

The first one is the alexandrite effect! This is where a mineral can change color in natural light vs. incandescent light. (the mineral itself is not changing, but the lights contain different amounts of different colors that then get absorbed by the stone). Even if you don't use electricity in your fictional world, you could have the colors change in the presence of light magic. This could create fun misunderstandings about what the mineral is reacting to!

Pleochroism

Pleochroism is something that most minerals have, it is frequently used to help identify minerals in thin sections, however minerals are usually not pleochroic enough for it to be visible to the naked eye! Pleochroism is just a fancy name to describe the change in how light is absorbed based on the angle of the mineral! So if you scroll up to the first image where I showed a lot of crystal shapes, most of them have angles where they are longer and shorter! This will effect the way light travels in the crystal. Tanzanite is a popular mineral that does this.

Photochromism

This is when a mineral will change color (in a reversible way) when exposed to UV light (or sunlight), I am not going to go too into the details of why this is happening because it would require me to read some research papers and I just don't feel like it. The mineral that is best known for this is Hackmanite!

Alright! These are all the really cool color effects that might inspire you or maybe not, but now I am going to talk about how you might find your minerals within a rock!

When I see a lot of magical caves/mines, typically I see them with some variation of a geode honestly, but most minerals are not found like that! Now I am sure most of you guys have seen a geode, so I will not really talk about those, but I will talk briefly about porphyroblasts which is when the mineral grows larger than the minerals around it, this happens in metamorphic minerals!

sorry random stranger, but this is an image of garnets inside a finer-grained rock at gore mountain in New York!

Another way you might find minerals is in a pegmatite! This is when all minerals are really large! This is a formed from really slow crystalizing magma!

But something else to think about is that your mineral might just be massive, it doesn't have to have distinct crystals, it may be similar to jadeite where small grains grow together which leaves it looking smooth and seamless! A note about all of these is that you would have to mine into the rock to find these, there would not be any natural caves in these rocks! Caves are only ever really formed in limestones and maybe marbles (rocks that react with acid).

How can your characters identify these minerals?

Typically when you are out in the field you will look to see what type of rocks the minerals are found in (The overall texture of the rock will tell you how it formed). If you know how the rock formed, it will narrow down the amount of minerals you need to think about by quite a bit! Next, you are going to look closely at it and observe its crystal structure, does it have an obvious crystal? if so what is the general shape? If it is broken, how did it break? Did it fracture like glass or did it break along uniform planes. Some minerals have a thing called cleavage (breaks along planes of weakness). If a mineral exhibits this habit, it will again help narrow this down. Next we can look at color. Color can be misleading, because minerals like quartz can be any color imaginable, but minerals like olivine will always be green! The next thing your character can do is test for hardness, minerals all have a specific hardness that can help identify it as well.

After you go through all of this, your mineral might have some special property! This could be magnetism, fluorescence, reactions to acid, or any of the color changing effects I mentioned above! Other than that, your character can take it back to a lab and do a number of things to identify it, but the most typical thing would be for them to make a thin section (very thin piece of the rock) and observe it under a cross polarized microscope!

On that note folks! I hope this helped in some way in thinking of new magic mineral properties! I have other guides that explore some different fictional worldbuilding issues you might run into, but if you have any topics you would like me to cover please that I haven't mentioned already, let me know!

#ref

[lacependragon]

What exactly is going on with Taylor swift? Did she do something wacky or just release a shit album that's so bad it's funny?

okay i have done time as a swiftie and i now watch over those weirdos like im david attenborough so you’ve come to the right place.

ur correct about it being an album so bad its funny. but theres more. im very sorry but this will be long.

so basically since like 2016 she was in an apparently steady and normal long term relationship with a blond man called joe alwyn whose only character trait is knowing how to shut the fuck up (and i love him for that)

then in april 2023 it was announced that they broke up while she was on tour but bc the relationship had been uneventful and boring this whole time, the general vibe from everyone was “huh thats kinda sad, oh well”

i might be mixing up the timeline a little here but a couple weeks later there were some articles about how she’s now dating matty healy from the 1975. people were mostly just like “pfft its just tabloid shit it cant be true” and then at the next 1975 gig, marty pointed into the camera and said “this is for you, you know who you are, i love you” before playing a love song. THEN at the next taylor gig she did the exact same damn thing and the swifties hit the fan.

to make a very long fuckin story short, they dug up a bunch of dirt about how this dude is a nasty little racist misogynist rat and he needs to get away from their poor little innocent billionaire princess. some people get kinda heated about whether these accusations are true and tbh id rather eat glass than get into that shit myself

SO, swifties outnumber us all and raised absolute hell online while taylor brought this guy to all her concerts and let him perform with the opening acts. her publicist released some statements saying taylor knows what her fans are saying and she doesnt give a fuck. but also said they’re not super serious and are just having fun together.

during all this, theres a small group of swifties that have decided to break away and become very pro-marty and essentially pit him against aforementioned blond man joe alwyn. their general narrative is that because joe loves being quiet and doesnt really do Celebrity Things, that must mean he was ashamed of his relationship with taylor. this is where we get the beloved He Lets Her Bejeweled meme

this fannade narrative becomes more relevant in a bit

at some point during this relationship she releases the joe alwyn breakup song You’re Losing Me, which just describes some very standard long term relationship breakdown stuff. they have different life goals and they’re drifting apart and the communication is breaking down. she kinda wants him to do something to save it at the eleventh hour but that wouldnt be realistic. very sad oh well.

theres a small amount of kicking off from the fandom about he’s awful for this but only bc they’re addicted to the idea that their favourite billionaire is the worlds most tragic victim and honestly whats new

and here starts the very fucking weird trend of her publicist releasing statements that are very clearly deliberately backing up the weirdo fan theories. a lot of “taylor and matty are showing up for each other UNLIKE HER LAST RELATIONSHIP and he is proud of her UNLIKE JOE ALWYN” like..alright.

anyway ratty and taylor break up after about a month of publicly dating and she sings some sad songs and cries at her concerts but everyone mostly forgets about the whole thing.

about a month later travis kelce asks her out and they end up dating and the white women of america collectively cream. personally i dont get it because i dont know what sports are and the only travis im familiar with is the tractor from bob the builder but i digress. the 35 year old deadbedroom swifties are going CRAZY. they’re saying these two are gonna get married and have ten kids and global superstar taylor swift can finally achieve the only real success for a woman: marriage and motherhood. because football man is the only Real Man she has been with due to the fact that he is tall and wide and bearded.

its severely tragic and vicarious

once again the focus does not remain on the couple. they’re turning on poor puppydog joe alwyn again. this time he’s evil not only for being “ashamed” of her but also for wasting her time by not marrying and impregnating her, because as we have established, thats the only point to life as a woman. how dare he waste all that time locking her away in the six mansions that she owns.

and her publicist does the same shit as before with the “he supports her and shows up for her UNLIKE JOE” bullshit. all of these people are over 30 and have never experienced a real problem.

this creates a cycle that is honestly kind of concerning, where the fans invent a strange theory, the publicist backs it up, the swifties add to the theory, the publicist back up the new additions, and so on. taylor continues dating travis and they go to each others concerts/games and act like a relatively normal honeymoon phase couple. the narrative has massively broken away from the reality.

so this continues, people hyping up travis and hating joe. at this point i want to note that taylor and her team have spent a lot of years crying about how the nasty misogynistic media only ever cares about her relationship drama and ignores her art because they hate powerful women or something. the irony is that just about every bit of publicity she’s done over the last year+ has been directly linked to whatever breakup or boyfriend she’s going through currently. they’re definitely not hiding that this is the PR direction they’re going with.

so, with the weird fan rumours continuing to reinforce themselves, the swifties become very confident that their imaginations are telling the truth. they stalk joe alwyns social media presence, of which there is very little. but if you go out looking for mess you never come back empty handed. they find that he has been around women. because he is an actor. and some other actors are women. anyway they fully believe this is proof that he cheated, and they launch harassment campaigns against these relatively small actors, who end up having to private their accounts. then the swifties find another woman to harass for being “the other woman”. it goes on.

then the abuse and domestic violence accusations against joe alwyn are created. not from taylor or anyone close to the situation. only from the fans. her PR team have at least stopped reinforcing the fan theories at this point, but the ball is already rolling.

when she announces her new album, the swifties ERUPT with joy that finally she is going to end joe alwyn, the man who im pretty sure has just been chilling in his house this whole time. the harassment of anyone and everyone deemed in any way guilty continues tenfold. they are openly tweeting about finding him in london and physically attacking and/or killing him (he’s not a huge celebrity and is often just hanging around alone with no security team or anything. im sure these threats arent serious but they feel kinda more dangerous when the target essentially just hangs around as a private citizen)

the album promo is pretty much just.. “hey i dated this dude and he made me sooooo sad isnt that interesting, swifties?” over and over again. each new post brings a bigger wave of joe harassment. they’re champing at the bit for taylor to tell them all the many ways he hurt her so dreadfully.

then the album leaks and its all about matty healy, which is very funny on the dismayed swiftie-violence front but also just..terrible in that she used the harassment of joe as an album promo tactic when the album barely mentions him. the only thing she really says about him is that he suffers from depression and it made their relationship difficult.

..and yeah, the album is about how she’s been obsessed with marty for over ten years and she fantasised about him while in her long term relationship, and theres maybe some overlap of the two relationships. the irony. all the “this man hurt me so much!!!”-type lyrics that were released to promote the album were actually about matty, not joe. a lot of the swifties are continuing to double down on hating joe bc they cant accept that the matty relationship even happened. theres a song about how much she hates her fans for hating her relationship with rarty. its called but daddy i love him. its a whole embarrassing mess for everyone involved, including me for typing all this out.

and after all that most of the songs fuckin suck

#lol what a fucking disaster of a human being

[lacependragon]

#ref

[lacependragon]

it’s sooo funny when rude customers encounter employees who can deny them service for the first time.

i was working at a little cafe where I could deny service over bad behavior, harassment etc. & mask mandates had just ended a week before & already people were being weird about me still wearing mine—an N95, the kind shaped kinda like a duckbill.

so this man walked in, looked at me sooo scathingly, laughed at me, and said “damn. never known a woman to choose…practicality over looks.”

And I just said, “oh. you can go, you’re not getting a drink.” And he said, “what???”

I said, “sir, you just walked in at 6 am & called women impractical and me ugly in one sentence.”

And he was so astonished he didn’t even argue he just turned around and left 💀🙏🏻 it was like he suddenly became self aware

[lacependragon]

best of the onion

[lacependragon]

Look at them 🥺🥺🥺🥺

[lacependragon]

just realized i never posted this one anywhere! i did this project last summer - it's my old stardew valley character! (my current one looks pretty different, maybe i need to do another one...)

it wasn't a particularly large project but there were a bunch of different colors, and it got tricky managing all the ends. i love how it turned out though!

i have progress photos too if anyone wants to see those 👀

#look at how good this is y'all! #stardew valley #art

[lacependragon]

Here’s the art of their wedding outfits~

#fanart #kalluzeb #star wars

[lacependragon]

Y'all, the world is sleeping on what NASA just pulled off with Voyager 1

The probe has been sending gibberish science data back to Earth, and scientists feared it was just the probe finally dying. You know, after working for 50 GODDAMN YEARS and LEAVING THE GODDAMN SOLAR SYSTEM and STILL CHURNING OUT GODDAMN DATA.

So they analyzed the gibberish and realized that in it was a total readout of EVERYTHING ON THE PROBE. Data, the programming, hardware specs and status, everything. They realized that one of the chips was malfunctioning.

So what do you do when your probe is 22 Billion km away and needs a fix? Why, you just REPROGRAM THAT ENTIRE GODDAMN THING. Told it to avoid the bad chip, store the data elsewhere.

Sent the new code on April 18th. Got a response on April 20th - yeah, it's so far away that it took that long just to transmit.

And the probe is working again.

From a programmer's perspective, that may be the most fucking impressive thing I have ever heard.

[lacependragon]

"i use it/its pronouns" is actually a code word for "i am a really cool and epic person" so if u see someone w/ that or similar in its bio be sure to befriend it and be there for it and listen to it and hug it cuz it is so cool it deserves it!!!

#i sent someone an ask about how cool i thought its pronoun combo was and it never responded #i wonder if it thought i was being mean #i didnt i just thought it was a fucking awesome combo of pronouns #i just wish i knew what that person thought

[lacependragon]

#look im not some rabid asshole thats trying to ruin her life #i just think shes a bad person #with shitty music #who continues to revel in how much bad shit she can pull off at once #the woman is genuinely kind of terrible #and now her music is starting to reflect that #and i think thats fucking hilarious #also she thinks shes god #and anyone like that needs to fly too close to the sun #y'know? #its just fun to watch a god-complexed billionaire eat shit and prove they're a fucking douchebag y'know?