#white whale bird

[heartnosekid]

leftover stims!

(as always inspired by helium-stims)

🌈-🌈-🌈 / 🌈-🌈-🌈 / 🌈-🌈-🌈

#stim #stimboard #leftover #animals #sfw #orange #blue #purple #pink #white #snails #whale sharks #parrots #birds #sea creatures #slugs #frogfish #fish #orchid mantis #insects #bugs #underwater #clothes #drinks #pouring #dice #mermaid tails #hands #ishy gifs #postish

[everydayesterday]

A male House Finch cronching on seeds.

photos by me. 2024-03-14.

#my white whale #I haven't been able to get good photos until today #birds #birdblr #birblr #bird photography #backyard birds #house finch #mine #finch #bird #birb #birbs

[demifiendrsa]

Critics Choice Awards 2023 winners:

Best Picture: Everything Everywhere All at Once

Best Actress: Cate Blanchett, Tár

Best Actor: Brendan Fraser, The Whale

Best Director: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once

Best Limited Series: The Dropout

Best Drama Series: Better Call Saul

Best Actress in a Drama Series: Zendaya, Euphoria

Best Actor in a Drama Series: Bob Odenkirk, Better Call Saul

Best Comedy Series: Abbott Elementary

Best Actress in a Comedy Series: Jean Smart, Hacks

Best Actor in a Comedy Series: Jeremy Allen White, The Bear

Best Animated Feature: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Best Actor in a Limited Series or TV Movie: Daniel Radcliffe, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Best Supporting Actress: Angela Bassett, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Best Supporting Actor: Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once

Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series: Sheryl Lee Ralph, Abbott Elementary

Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series: Henry Winkler, Barry

Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or TV Movie: Niecy Nash-Betts, Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story

Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or TV Movie: Paul Walter Hauser, Black Bird

Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series: Jennifer Coolidge, The White Lotus

Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series: Giancarlo Esposito, Better Call Saul

Best Foreign Language Film: RRR (India)

Best Actress in a Limited Series or TV Movie: Amanda Seyfried, The Dropout

Best Young Actor/Actress: Gabriel LaBelle, The Fabelmans

Best Comedy: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Best Acting Ensemble: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Best Talk Show: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Best Comedy Special: Norm Macdonald: Nothing Special

Best Foreign Language Series: Pachinko

Best Animated Series: Harley Quinn

Best Movie Made for Television: Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Best Hair and Makeup: Elvis

Best Visual Effects: Avatar: The Way of Water

Best Editing: Paul Rogers, Everything Everywhere All at Once

Best Production Design: Florencia Martin, Babylon

Best Cinematography: Claudio Miranda, Top Gun: Maverick

Best Costume Design: Ruth E. Carter, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Best Song: “Naatu Naatu”, RRR

Best Score: Hildur Guðnadóttir, Tár

Best Adapted Screenplay: Sarah Polley, Women Talking

Best Original Screenplay: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once

Lifetime Achievement Award: Jeff Bridges

#SeeHer Award: Janelle Monáe

#Critics Choice Awards #Critics Choice Awards 2023 #Everything Everywhere All at Once #Better Call Saul #Abbott Elementary #Tar #The Whale #The Dropout #Euphoria #Hacks #The Bear #Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio #WEIRD The Al Yankovic Story #Black Panther Wakanda Forever #Barry #Dahmer Netflix #Black Bird #The White Lotus #RRR #Glass Onion #Last Week Tonight with John Oliver #Pachinko #Harley Quinn #Elvis #Avatar The Way of Water #Babylon #Top Gun Maverick #film #television

[froads]

#birds #townsend's solitaire #photography #finally killed my WHITE WHALE it's insanely hard for me to get a decent pic of a townsend's solitaire for some reason #they like to sit up in the canopy where i can't get a good angle and my zoom doesn't reach that far

[huethehueman]

Meet up 🐋🦆

#huethehueman #illustration #inkdrawing #gouache #whale #humpback whale #birds #black and white #wave

[developingnaturegallery]

A series of photographs titled, 'The Bird That Woke The Whales', has been added to Developing Nature Gallery. Start with this one and use the back arrow to read the story of this adventure.

There will be some more pictures of this whale group added during this week.

#humpback whale #breaching #calf #oceanlife #black and white photography #kimberlyjt #developingnature #giftideas #shoponline #women photographers #artists on tumblr #art #photography #shopsmall #seascape #bird #shearwater #splashdown #jump out #action #motion #wildlife photography

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

Another #paleostream sketch

Is it a bird? Is it a ray? Nope it's Aquilolamna, a lamniform shark, a relative of great whites and whale sharks.

One of the weirdest discoveries in recent years.

#paleoart #sciart #paleostream #palaeoblr #cretaceous #shark #mexico #weird boi #aquilolamna

[wynnyfryd]

Eddie

He gets it now. Goddamn does he get it.

Eddie straightens his spine and looks out over the landscape, everything lush and brilliant green; Appalachian hills after morning rain. Eddie is seven again and running through long, dewy grasses behind his grandmother’s house, his fingertips dancing over rich emerald blades. The colors blur together and splinter like facets of fine jewels. He’s hearing all these cosmic sounds: whale calls, bird song. Choirs of elves and men and beasts, and beneath it all the low thrum of deep space.

He takes a deep breath and the universe breathes with him, particles of old stardust filling up his lungs. Rejoicing with him.

Exhale. Om.

Everything is beautiful; everything is one.

And then there’s Steve. Radiant as the rising sun, his smile splays dawn across Eddie’s horizon — casts out the lingering dark, bathes him in pure and holy light.

“Fuck, Steve,” Eddie utters in abject awe. His lips are numb. “This shit is wild.”

——

Steve

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mrs. Emerson,” Steve answers, always polite where parents are concerned. “This is Steve Harrington.”

“Oh, hi Steve, sweetheart! How are you?”

Steve bites back the sigh he’s desperate to let out. Bake a woman brownies one time and she’s fucking obsessed with you. He doesn’t have time for this. “Oh, I’m great, thank you. Is Gareth around?”

“Sure! Let me go grab him for you.”

There’s white noise over the line, muffled sounds of movement, thudding footsteps down the stairs, and then Gareth finally answers, “Hey.”

“Hey yourself, you little jackass. What the fuck did you make my boyfriend take?”

“First of all, I didn’t make him take anything. He was practically begging. And secondly, mushroom tea.”

“Oh, goddammit; goddamn you, man.”

Gareth cackles down the line, doesn’t even have the decency to pretend he’s sorry about it. “Has he started dirty talking to his guitar yet?”

“For the last, like, twenty minutes, yeah.”

“Oh, good.”

“How is that good?”

“Means the trip’s almost over. Give it half an hour; he’s gonna doze off and wake up craving mac and cheese like a motherfucker.”

From the bedroom, Steve hears Eddie mumble-singing some unbelievably horny sentiments to his instrument. “I hate you so much.”

“Mom wants more brownies, by the way.”

“So. Much.”

#eddie munson #steve harrington #gareth stranger things #steddie #stranger things #steddie fic #steddie drabble

[klemen-tine]

So in white whale part 2 reader revealed they were always going to come back right? So in the scenario that reader successfully escaped how would the batfam(Jason and Bruce in particular) react to reader willingly returning after like a year or 2?

You know that phrase, "If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it's yours. If not, it was never meant to be?" It would be like that.

Bruce would be happy that a kid returned, willingly, and he would spoil the shit out of reader. Buying them everything and all of that, and really doubling down and making sure that they never. leave. again. He would smile and tell reader how happy he is that he is standing on his own two feet and being comfortable with himself being deaf. He would listen as reader recalled everything they went through and everything they saw, and while he would be happy reader is smiling, he absolutely HATES that the reader is proving that he doesn't need them.

Jason would be so pissed, but would be ecstatic to know he is back. Jason would hug him, and not let go for anything. It would be memory lane almost, going to local cafes, Jason reading to the reader again, and just an overall happy time. While reader is assuring Jason that they are safe and having a great time, Jason would be plotting how to keep reader there at the manor. How do you lock up a bird without them being depressed?

Easy! Make it so they don't want to leave. Make the world seem terrible and that the first year on their own was great because of luck.

I see them being fucked up and tricking reader into thinking they were all for them going out and exploring, and reader is so cute, and surely Jason and Bruce would never do anything that would hurt them, right? They would convince reader to take something with a tracker (obviously reader don't know that part) and just fuck with everything in reader's life to make them come back.

Reader got an apartment? Damn, the apartment is now raising rent and reader can't afford it anymore. That ASL-friendly cafe that needed a barista? Sucks, they never called back even though they said reader was perfect. Everything in reader's life would go to shit so fast, that he would be calling texting Bruce to please come pick him up. He doesn't want to be alone anymore.

Everyone is in on it. It's just Jason and Bruce are the ones leading it.

But hey! Reader came back, right? So that means that he always meant to be with them... right?

#yandere batfam #yandere dc #batfam x reader #platonic yandere #batfam x deaf reader #platonic batfam #batfam x male reader #bruce wayne #platonic batman #batfam #platonic jason todd

[motheline]

WoF Headcanons:

LeafWings' wings and frills change colour depending on the season, they get greener with warmer months and duller/browner with colder months

MudWings often get markings engraved on their tusks or horns, royal ones get them engraved in gold

BigWing MudWings wear gold rings on their horns- one for each of their siblings

HiveWings have their own language similar to SeaWings' Aquatic- which revolves around various flight patterns similar to how bees communicate, usually used as a way for soldiers to get a message across quickly

Some SeaWings live in polar waters near the Ice Kingdom- have thicker scales and blubbery skin similar to whales or seals

SilkWings have long tongues like butterflies- nectar is repurposed as a sweet and rich drink, seen as a delicacy- sometimes alcoholic

SandWings have a third eyelid and thick eyelashes to keep sand out of their eyes

SandWings hold their tails up when threatened or as a warning sign to enemies, giving them a chance to back off

Sky Islands exist because I said so, magic can exist so why can't floating islands, SkyWings don't deserve to just live on mountains

SkyWings can handle much higher altitudes than other tribes, some choose to live on the floating islands- most of which are so high up only SkyWings can reach them

NightWings born under blood moons have red tinted wings

SkyWings have hooked snouts like beaks, as well as feathers because I can

MudWings are incredibly culinarily (???) advanced and see food as a very vital part of their culture. They hold tribe feasts on special events

LeafWings have green blood

LeafWings need sun time as much as RainWings do- they still eat actual food but get most of their energy from the sun

SeaWings are slow fliers, their wings more built for swimming than flying

SkyWings have courtship dances similar to birds

RainWings aren't fit for flying long distances as their wings are built more for gliding through trees than flying

NightWing seers have white diamond shaped markings on the top of their heads, usually resembling a third eye

That's all for now, follow to see me break canon even harder

#wof #wings of fire #wof headcanons #wof tribes #mothie rants #dragon #dragons

[ckret2]

On chapter 30 of The Writer Uses Misleading Graphics To Trick You Into Looking At This Fic About Human Bill Being The Shack's Prisoner: Summerween part 2! Bill wheedles Mabel into helping him make a costume. Mabel wheedles Bill into spilling some of his preciously-guarded secret backstory. Ford is kind of in awe.

Also there's like 4.5 drawings in this chapter. They're all very silly drawings.

####

Bill wouldn't tell Mabel what his costume was—"I want to see who can guess it"—but all it needed was a brown bedsheet, a long red wig, cardboard (to be drawn upon), and flip-flop sandals.

The bedsheet was the easiest to acquire. Dipper's barely-worn brown sandals were just slightly too big for Bill but Mabel helped tie them on with yarn. the shack's cardboard supplies were still depleted from making Bill's triangle mask, but they could make do with paper and popsicle sticks. Mabel didn't have a red wig but she did have a blonde wig and red markers. Since Bill was, by his own reporting, terrible at drawing, Mabel offered to do the fancy artwork if Bill did the tedious task of recoloring the wig. He claimed he'd feel like a mortician putting makeup on a car wreck victim, but nevertheless accepted the deal, and they settled in around the living room table to get to work.

"So just a bunch of houses, right?" Mabel asked, starting on the first drawing.

"Ancient Greek-looking houses," Bill said. "So, marble and columns. Don't think too hard about the details—this is a 21st century American costume holiday, not a historical reenactment. You can slap columns on anything and call it 'Greek' and every human in town will buy it."

"Do ancient Greek houses have chimneys?"

"No," Bill said. "But adding one would be funny."

Mabel considered that, weighed up the value of historical accuracy against entertainment value, and decided giving one house a chimney would be funny. She gave the whole house a thick black outline in marker, and pulled out crayons in black, white, and whale blue to quickly add some light shading to the marble. 

Mabel didn't think she'd ever seen Bill focus so hard or so quietly on anything the way he did on coloring that old wig red. He was giving it more attention than he did his own hair: while his golden locks were a tangled, uncombed, soggy mass shoved dismissively over his shoulders, he was dying the cheap wig (and his fingertips) strand by plastic strand with the bright-eyed morbid fascination of a third grader studying a pack of ants as they disassembled a bird's corpse.

This was the longest she'd been around Bill without conversation—usually, you couldn't even walk into a room without him immediately chattering at you like the motion-activated animatronics at the Summerween store. It was hard to think around him. Bill didn't give you room to think.

What did Mabel think about Bill?

He was right, she was still mad about the mall. No—mad wasn't the right word—mad was his word—she was scared. She'd never really stopped being scared of him, if she was honest with herself. But everything he'd done that day, from tricking her into trapping herself to reminding her of almost dying, had just reinforced why she should fear him.

But. She thought he felt bad about it. And she didn't think she'd ever seen him feel bad about anything before.

Maybe that meant her experiment was working. Maybe he was changing. Yeah, he was still scary—but he was Bill Cipher, he had a lot of scariness to work through. He was moving in the right direction, and she wanted to encourage that.

He hadn't apologized for the mall; but, since he'd tried to make up for it at the time, and that was a sort of apologetic action, Mabel decided she could tentatively forgive him for that day—provided he continued to improve. Put him on forgiveness probation. And that meant they were on friendly speaking terms again.

Which was good, because the quiet was starting to get uncomfortable. She surveyed her art for something they could talk about.

After a couple of as-historically-accurate-as-she-could-imagine houses, Mabel had started varying up the designs by redesigning houses she could remember off the top of her head with columns and white marble. She'd made a stately marble Mystery Shack, and a columned-covered doppelgänger of the house with the terraced yard across the street at home, and then she'd decided to make a Greek-ish version of her own home. "Hey Bill. Have you ever seen my house?"

"In person? No. But it came up from time to time in you kids' dreams, so whether I've seen it depends on how accurate you think your dreams are," he said. "It has less plants and more windows in your brother's dreams than in yours."

Mildly disturbing answer, but not disturbing in the direction she'd expected. "What! You mean you haven't haunted our neighborhood or anything? I don't believe it."

"Do you think I spend all my time stalking random humans? Don't flatter yourself."

"Well, seeing it in dreams isn't good enough!" Mabel pulled over a blank paper. It was hours until trick-or-treaters showed up, they had a little time to waste. "I'll draw it!"

"Wow, really?" Bill looked up from his wig. "You're not worried about letting the big bad triangle see your house?"

"Come on! You already know where I live, right?"

Bill immediately rattled off, "1337 Fairview Drive, Piedmont, California, on the northeast side of the street where it's less hilly."

"Exactly—you creep. So who cares if you know what it looks like, too?"

A square, sky blue house with two stories and a triangular roof; a big living room window on the left, a covered door on the right, three windows on the second floor, and a chimney. Mabel had drawn her home plenty of times—but doing it for a friend (?) was different from doing it for a teacher or a librarian, and she put extra effort into the rose bushes under the living room window. She added her and Dipper's smiling faces in the upstairs windows and Waddles's face downstairs in the living room.

"Waddles sleeps in the kitchen, but he basically owns half the yard to wallow in. This is my room, and here's Dipper's—I get three windows, but Dipper has the biggest window and a bigger room, so it's fair, no matter what he says—"

"Oh, you two have separate rooms now?" Bill was leaning halfway around the table and craning his neck to see the image right side up.

"Uh, yeah? Since we were ten?"

Loftily, Bill said, "I don't know how you'd expect me to know that. You both still dream about sharing a room."

Mabel paused and tried to remember how often she dreamed about Dipper in his new room. Sometimes she woke and was still disoriented to find her bed in the middle of the room instead of against one wall with Dipper's on the other side. "Huh."

She added a few more details—the front steps, the gate, the shingles. (Bill watched nervously as she pulled out the gray crayon to color the driveway—but she didn't notice how it had been tampered with.) She talked about her home, and in turn Bill told her weird things, like that Dipper often dreamed of monsters coming out of the fridge. When she finished, she autographed her name with a star on the "i" in Pines, offered it over grandly, and said, "Here, you can keep this!"

Bill accepted it without the customary effusive gratitude with which one ought to accept a generously-gifted original artwork from a 13-year-old prodigy. "What am I gonna do with it?"

"That's your problem!"

"Fair enough!" He checked his leggings for pockets and, when he didn't find any, set the page on the table by his elbow. 

Offering accepted. As Bill resumed coloring his wig, Mabel picked up another piece of paper and got to work on the next columned house. "What does your house look like?"

Bill stopped dead, looked straight at her, and said, "My what?"

What was weird about the question? "Your house! Or whatever you lived in before you came here. You came from somewhere before you tried to invade Earth, right? You didn't just pop out of somebody's dream."

Bill laughed. "Yeah I did!"

"Bill."

"4500 years ago the construction workers of Egypt had a shared nightmare about the immense tombs they'd spent the last century building—"

"Biiiill."

"—and when they awoke they found the combined psychic energy of their terror had spawned a sleep paralysis demon more powerful than Ra! So then I ate their souls—"

"Seriously, Bill."

"I'm being so serious right now."

Mabel rolled her eyes. "Okay, fine! I get it. You're embarrassed." She shook her head and returned to coloring.

She felt the combined spiritual energy of hundreds of imaginary Egyptian construction workers beating down on her face from Bill's eye. Like a laser. "'Embarrassed'?"

"Because you don't have a house," Mabel said. "I think it's okay, you don't need to be embarrassed! I don't think you're a loser or anything. It's just kind of sad—"

Bill snatched up a blank piece of paper. "You want a house? Fine! I'll show you a house." He grabbed up an orange crayon, muttering, "It'll put your stupid overpriced shed in California to shame— Where's the ruler—?" Mabel tried not to grin.

For several minutes, he was perfectly silent. Mabel glanced over to see him coloring with three crayons at once, only for him to shove a hand in her face and snap, "No peeking."

Mabel got through two more drawings before Bill slapped down his paper over Mabel's. "There! How about that?!"

She looked at the drawing, which Bill had helpfully labeled "Party Central!" in red crayon. A great stone pyramid so dark brown it was nearly black, with bricks outlined in brilliant gold and molten orange and fiery red, and a sharp multicolored X hovering above it—

Mabel gave Bill a flat look. "This isn't your house, this is your Torture Temple."

"The what? Hey, is that really what people are calling it?! It's not the Torture Temple, it's the Fearamid!"

Despite herself, Mabel burst out laughing. "You named it the 'Fearamid'?!"

"It's a pyramid and humans fear it! It's genius. Portmanteaus make great names."

"What's a portmanteau."

"It's a word made from the unholy Frankensteinian fusion of two other words. Like getting 'electrocute' from 'electricity' and 'execute'!"

"Or 'romcom'?"

"Yeah, or that."

Mabel considered the drawing. "If you want to scare less people, you could call this your Bill-ding."

"HA! Oh, I'm saving that."

"Anyway, this isn't where you live," Mabel said. "You were there for like a week tops!"

"Yeah, before your great-uncle killed me. I'd still be living there if it weren't for you jerks." He stuck out his tongue.

"Come on, Bill. I showed you my house. Draw where you grew up or something!"

"What's wrong with the Fearamid?"

Mabel crossed her arms. "Why don't you want me to see your real house?" She raised her eyebrows at him.

Bill opened his mouth to protest, but then stopped, a thoughtful look on his face. "Eh, you know what? Why not. If you're gonna be so ridiculous about such a silly thing." He pulled over another piece of paper. "But if I don't have enough time to finish coloring this wig, you have to help me."

"Fiiine." She returned to her own drawings as Bill got back to work.

After a long silence—longer than he'd taken to draw and color the Fearamid—he said, "Okay, done. Here." And he pushed over the paper with one dismissive finger.

She eagerly accepted the drawing—and frowned. There was nothing on the page except for a straight flat black line, interrupted by three line segments of bright blue and a cluster of red and green dashes. "What is this?"

"Where I grew up," Bill said, innocently, already back to coloring the wig. Mabel could see his mischievous smirk. "As seen from the front. Just like your drawing of your house. So we're even now."

Mabel's brows furrowed as she stared at the page in confusion. "What...?"

"You do know I'm from the second dimension, right? A universe that's flat like a piece of paper. I figured Sixer would've told you all about it by now." Bill picked up the drawing and held it between his and Mabel's faces, so that, viewed from the edge, all Mabel could see of the paper was a thin flat line. "What do you think the second dimension looks like to somebody in the second dimension?"

Mabel took the paper back, looked at the underwhelming flat line representing the front of Bill's house, and said, "I hate you." 

"We had the prettiest roses in the park," Bill said, pointing at the red dashes. "Crayon really doesn't do them justice."

"Shut uppp."

Bill laughed at her; but then, to her surprise, he said, "Okay, all right, I guess a big fancy 3D creature like you can't understand the nuances of two-dimensional sight. So, here." He flipped over the page. "Top down view."

The back of the page had what looked like a floorplan. A narrow room on the left, a large L-shaped room, a tiny room nestled into the L's top right corner, and a medium room on the right. Little shapes filled the rooms—furniture of some kind?—but she didn't see anything immediately recognizable like a top-down bed or table and chairs. Green and red spirals dangled off the bottom of the floorplan.

"I'm no Edward Bishop Bishop, but it gets the idea across," Bill said.

She studied all the strange little figures in fascination, looking for anything familiar. She pointed at a few shallow bowls filled with blue sticking out of the wall between the L-shaped room and the tiny room. "Are these sinks?"

"Hey, you're pretty sharp. Sinks and the tub." 

"So the little room's the bathroom."

"Right again." Bill pointed out the rooms on the floor plan. "Master bed's on the right, kitchen and living room in the middle—and you found the bathroom—and second bed's on the left. That was my room! The one with a million books," he pointed at a wall with countless tiny multicolored lines coming off of it. "I was a big reader as a kid. I've always been an intellectual."

"Who was in the other bedroom?"

"I never really went in there, who cares." Bill made a dismissive gesture. "I think there were some desks and stuff in there too, but I didn't bother to draw them since I never used them." He picked up a yellow and a black crayon and added on to the drawing, dexterously turning the crayons in his hand to switch between colors without setting either one down. "I spent most of my time in my room." He'd drawn a little yellow triangle with an eye. He picked up a red crayon to point an arrow at the triangle and label it "Me!" "I didn't even have to leave the room to see the TV. The perks of psychic powers!"

Mabel wondered which of the weird shapes was the TV; but before she could come to a decision, she was distracted by the scale of Bill drawn in his room. Maybe he'd just drawn himself big, but he seemed cramped in that narrow space. And he'd hardly have room to turn around in the bathroom without his corner smacking something. "It looks pretty small. Is that normal on your home world?"

"Ah, I rarely spent time at home—it was just a place to sleep between speaking engagements," Bill said. "I was always on tour. Living the life of the rich and famous! Hotels, jet planes, and tour buses!"

Mabel shot him an irritated look. "You said this is where you grew up."

"This is where I grew up! I got an early start making my fortune. I was already famous by the time I was, uh..." he pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Developmentally, I think I would've been about equivalent to your age. Maybe a bit younger."

How much of all this was true? It didn't feel like a lie—and she couldn't see how he'd benefit from lying about any of it, except maybe claiming to be famous. So it probably had to be true. He'd actually made her a drawing of his house. Even after he'd complained about being so bad at art. She beamed at him. "Thanks, Bill. Your weird alien house is neat! I like the squiggly spiral flowers! Are they actually roses?"

"They were the flower that everyone mentions in poetry and that you have to bring home when your wife is mad, so, same basic function as roses," Bill said. "Fun fact, they grow in spirals so that they're pretty on the outside, but—"

####

"—but have more surface area to absorb sunlight on the inside," Mabel said, pointing at the flowers. "Alien biology! And the orange things are couches and the colorful box in front of them is his TV, and Bill says he could watch TV through the wall but he never really liked TV, he preferred live performances—maybe we should take him to a musical! And the little sideways cushions on the walls are their beds because gravity goes to the left because their house faces east—I have no idea why!—so, I guess that's their 'floor'? But if that's the 'floor,' Bill didn't explain why all his books were on the 'ceiling' without them falling off, and..." Mabel trailed off, giving Ford a concerned look. "Grunkle Ford? Are you okay?"

He was gaping at the drawing. "Wh—? Yes. Sorry. I'm just..." He shook his head in amazement. "I never even got that slippery eel to admit he has a calendar system, and you got the blueprints to his childhood home?"

Dipper said, "Yeah, this is amazing. How did you get this out of him?"

"Oh, I didn't do anything special," Mabel said casually. "Just drew our house and then suggested he was too scared to let me see his."

Dipper grimaced. "You showed him our house?"

"Don't worry about it! He already knows where we live."

"Of course," Ford said, taking a quick note in his journal. "Exploiting his ego. He's very proud; undermine that pride and he'll feel compelled to defend his honor." Ford had started goading Bill into giving away more than he meant to the same way. He wished he'd started doing it far earlier; but he'd spent so many years foolishly assuming Bill's pride was objective and justified that he sometimes forgot what an egomaniac Bill really was.

As Mabel had spoken, Ford had filled several pages with bullet-pointed half thoughts: dodges questions about the master bed—his parents' room?; no bed or bedroom for a sibling, he seems like an only child; "speaking engagements" is probably a euphemism, what was he doing to become a child celebrity; were his books his only childhood possessions or just the only thing he valued enough to draw; did he gain his "psychic powers" while amassing the power he needed to "liberate"/destroy his dimension? "Can I borrow this drawing to make a photocopy?"

"Sure! Don't forget the line on the back," Mabel said. "And you can copy the Fearamid, too! Did you know he named it the 'Fearamid'?"

"Oh yeah, I heard him call it that," Dipper said. "I think I recorded it in Journal 3?"

"I should've read that before we threw out all of Grunkle Ford's Bill stuff," Mabel sighed. She slid over the Fearamid drawing to Ford. "Bwop! He drew it tilting all weird to the left? He wasn't kidding when he said he's bad at drawing."

Ford studied the drawing and frowned. He lay his pen on the drawing to use like a makeshift ruler. "It's not 'skewed'—he drew the front face as a perfect equilateral triangle, and then extended a side on the right to turn it into a pyramid. It's poor perspective—there's no point of view from which one side would look like a perfect equilateral triangle and you could see another side, but..." He trailed off again as he made a note to himself about what this might mean about Bill's ability to perceive the third dimension and his artistic sensibilities.

"So he draws like Picasso!" Mabel concluded. "Oh! Bill mentioned a name when he gave me his house, he said he wasn't like Edward Bishop Bishop—and I remembered it because it sounds funny. Bishop-Bishop. Maybe he's another artist Bill likes? Or somebody who makes blueprints?"

"I'm sure I've heard that name. I think he was a mathematician?" Ford frowned. "I can't recall, though." He wrote down another note: Edward Bishop Bishop – mathematician/artist? Something to look up later.

Dipper glanced back and forth between Ford and Mabel as they talked, feeling his stomach sink at how excited they were and how easily they got along. First the mysterious disappearing crystal shop in Portland, now Mabel made this huge discovery about the guy Ford had spent years trying to learn about... Dipper swallowed hard and tried to tell himself he shouldn't feel jealous after he'd gotten Ford to himself for basically the past year. "I can't believe you found out all this."

Mabel immediately looked at him. "Hey, what's that supposed to mean?"

Dipper winced. He'd realized a moment too late how he must have sounded. Quickly, he said, "I mean, it's great that you did! Finding out more information about him is great. But, like... investigating the paranormal is my thing. It's what I spent all last summer doing, and it's my dream job, and... and now, the biggest paranormal mystery in human history is in our house, and you're the one getting all the info out of him?"

"Well, yeah," Mabel said. "I'm our official Bill spy, remember? I'm the one who made friends with him."

"I know, I know." He shrugged jerkily. "I'm just... kind of disappointed that I'm not prying eons-old secrets out of an alien demon. You know?"

Ford had paused in his writing to listen to Dipper thoughtfully. "I understand. When you're exceptional at something, it can be... difficult to share the limelight," he said. "Not because you don't think anyone else deserves it. You just don't know if you'll ever get it back."

Dipper's face heated up—he didn't want Ford to think he was bad at sharing, of all things—but he mumbled, "Yeah, I guess." Ford patted his shoulder understandingly. 

"Aww," Mabel said. "Didn't you say that if we're running an experiment on being nice to Bill, you want to be in the control group?" She punched his arm. "Welcome to the control, bro!"

"Ow!" Dipper rubbed his arm and laughed weakly. "Yeah, okay, you're right. This is what I get."

Mabel said, "You should try talking to Bill! Maybe he'll tell you stuff too. He's really easy to talk to as long as you don't mind him sometimes saying creepy nightmare things."

"And as long as you're prepared for his mental tricks," Ford said.

"Yeah! Grunkle Ford's got a whole class for that," Mabel said. "He'll teach you about the BITE model! It's how cults sink their teeth into you!"

Dipper chuckled. "Sure. Maybe I will. We're gonna be at home handing out candy for a few hours, maybe I'll find an opportunity to interrogate him."

"You're not going trick-or-treating?" Ford asked.

"No," Mabel said, with an exaggerated sigh of disappointment.

Dipper elbowed her for her theatrics; they'd already agreed on what they'd do tonight. "We've got plans with friends. But we do get to wear matching costumes again."

"Creepy ghost children!"

"Ah," Ford said. "That explains your..." He gestured at them. They were wearing a suit and a dress, old-fashioned and gray, with tattered hems and dusty black dress shoes.

"Barty helped us put the outfits together," Dipper said.

"We still need to do our makeup," Mabel said. "What about you, Grunkle Ford? What are you doing for Summerween?"

"Ah." He glanced toward the ceiling ruefully, as though he could see The Enemy in the shack through the many layers of dirt above. Summerween had been one of the things he'd missed most about Gravity Falls; even during his years as a reclusive scientist in the woods, he'd usually taken off Summerween and Halloween to hand out candy to the children bold enough to visit his house.

But Bill's eagerness to participate had sucked the fun out of the day. The thought of celebrating Summerween in the same house as Bill felt too much like celebrating with him. "Nothing, I suppose. I was planning to stay down here." He gestured at his desk. "Continue my research."

"What are you working on right now?" Dipper asked.

Ford quickly said, "Nothing. Just—the same research," and was immediately hit with a pang of guilt. Remember what happened last summer when you tried to keep secrets about Bill out of embarrassment? Reluctantly, he said, "I've... split some research duties with Fiddleford. While I'm waiting to hear back from him, I'm looking into—some magical knowledge Bill revealed. To determine how much of it's true."

Dipper looked puzzled. "Revealed when?"

Mabel slammed her hands on Ford's desk. "Grunkle Ford, you can take a break from gathering intel on the enemy for one day! It's Summerween! Promise me you'll do something to celebrate before the day's over."

Ford let out a huff, but smiled. He wanted to do something. Surely he could come up with something that would let him avoid Bill? "All right, I promise. I won't invoke the Trickster's wrath tonight. Could you leave your costume makeup in the bathroom when you're finished? I'll find something to do with it."

"Perfect!" Mabel hugged him; then grabbed Dipper's hand. "C'mon, let's finish getting dressed. The trick-or-treaters will be here any minute!"

"Okay, okay." Dipper waved at Ford as Mabel dragged him to the elevator.

When they were gone, Ford turned back to the papers Mabel had given him. Bill's childhood home... Assuming he wasn't lying, at least. But an entire blueprint seemed like a complicated spur-of-the-moment fabrication even for him. If Bill was lying, it was a lie close to the truth.

It was strange to imagine Bill as a child with a bedroom full of books. Strange to imagine Bill as a child at all. What did a young triangle look like? He couldn't imagine anything different from how Bill always looked.

The floorplan did look small. Smaller even than the apartment over the pawn shop had been. Ford tried to remember what the homes he'd seen in Exwhylia had looked like...

He raised his head as something the kids had said registered. "Barty? Who's Barty?"

####

While Mabel was downstairs, Bill inspected her box of crayons.

The wrapper around the gray crayon was coming loose.

He took the glue stick they'd been using to reinforce the paper houses with popsicle sticks and carefully stuck the wrapper back on.

The house was too quiet without anyone around to talk to. He hated the quiet.

From the corner of the living room behind the table, when Bill leaned on the wall, shut his eyes, and listened closely, he could faintly hear the hidden elevator. He headed upstairs to stow the drawing of Mabel's house somewhere safe, and then went to the downstairs bathroom to finish dressing for Summerween.

####

(Y'all I worked hard on those fake crayon drawings. Anyway I know we're all collectively going insane today over the book news but if you took time out of your day to read this, I'd love to hear what y'all think!)

#bill cipher #human bill cipher #gravity falls #gravity falls fanart #gravity falls fic #fanart #my art #my writing #bill goldilocks cipher

[cure-typhoon]

what animal do u associate to each kid or troll. like u see this animal and r like yup thats [blank].

HMMM okey theres like certain animals the characters are already established as, but i dont totally agree with all of them

Beta kids and Alpha Kids:

June and Jane - Okey everyone says bunny for June and i understand why but idk I preffer a cameleon or a lizard and the bunny for Jane or maybe a bull for her, yeah i think that fits

Rose and Roxy - Yeah yeah theyre cat people and whatever but i always imagined as Roxy as a Fox and Rose as an owl lol or a black puma or like those scotish round cats

Dave and Dirk: Dave is those little birds that i see around where i live (sparrows?) and Dirk is a peacock

Jade and Jake - I dont have any creative one for Jade, i mean she is totally a dog but also a wolf or a coyote and Jake HMMMMM hyena (dont ask idk why) or like....parrot or white cockatoo

Beta Trolls and Alpha Trolls:

Karkat and Kankri: crabs, like there has never been a more crab character than karkat, he is a king crab, spiky boi. kankri is a spider crab

Aradia and Damara: Bighorn sheeps for both but also this one for Godtier Aradia

Tavros and Rufioh: Buffalos

Sollux and Mituna: why bees, like i get it but whyy. they are this

Nepeta and Meulin: Nepeta is a Tiger and Meulin is a Lion

Kanaya and Porrim: the fucking fluffiest moth i cant recall the name and Porrim is a moon moth

Terezi and Latula: Dragonfly for both of them

Vriska and Aranea: IM NOT LOOKING FOR SPECIFIC SPIDERS theyre both wolf to me, well Vriska is a Wolf and Aranea is a Jackal

Equius and Horuss: this fuckers

Gamzee and Kurloz: EDIT BECAUSE I FORGOT ABOUT THEM bdkadn

They're both clownfish no i won't apologize

Eridan and Cronus: Cronus is an electric eel and Eridan is a whale or a dolphin, maybe a pelican

Feferi and Meenah: Feferi is a jellyfish and Meenah is a Mantaray

#homestuck #beta kids #beta trolls #alpha kids #alpha trolls #fuck i have to tag everyone #june egbert #rose lalonde #dave strider #jade harley #jane crocker #roxy lalonde #dirk strider #jake english #karkat vantas #aradia megido #tavros nitram #sollux captor #okey im too lazy fuck it

[flowerishness]

'O my Luve is like a red, red rose'

When the great Scottish poet, Robbie Burns, wrote this famous line in 1793 he wasn't aware that his ability to see the color red in the first place was the gift of an asteroid. Seeing in full color is actually quite rare in mammals. When the dinosaurs evolved, hairy, warm-blooded mammals existed but they were the size of tree shrews and literally hid in the dark from the terrors of the day. The dinosaurs forced mammal genetics through the so-called 'nocturnal bottleneck' and as night-dwelling creatures, we lost the ability to see color.

WHAMO! Everything changed in a split second and the dinosaurs were gone.

After the asteroid hit, mammals experienced an explosion of diversity and among the first to evolve were the primates. Our ancient ancestors were daytime creatures that fed on ripe fruits and berries and needed the information that only the color red could provide. So primates re-evolved receptors for the colors red and green that had been lost for 150 million years.

Nocturnal mammals such as bats, rodents and raccoons still see in black and white. Color vision is also very poor in whales and other sea mammals (although fish see in full color). Dogs see shades of blue, yellow and gray like most mammals. They can't see green at all and reds are dark brown at best. In comparison, most birds have very good color vision and that's why they have such pretty feathers.

#flowers #photographers on tumblr #Robbie Burns #Red Rose #colors #fleurs #flores #fiori #blumen #bloemen #my garden #Vancouver

[silkwhim]

semi-aquatic coastal life of south Orus Hycea (Australia)

blue: Thylacetus (pouch whale)

thylacetus shares a common ancestor with thylacine, but split off millions of years ago. being a marsupial, it has a pouch that is now vestigial as it's counterproductive to carry infant young underwater. they have a carnivorous diet, preferring birds, fish, crabs and small mammals and lizards along the shore.

green: blue fairy penguin

a close relative of the fairy penguin, they favoured shallow waters and a diet of crustaceans and slow moving fish. their feathers are black with a blue sheen, and the main difference between their cousins are the white stripes on their face and neck as well as their thicker beak.

purple: clam seal

suggested by their name, they're actually an offshoot of sea otters that evolved convergently with seals after ending up on the other side of the globe. their back legs have remained mostly the same, unlike their front legs which are now flipper-like, similar to the thylacetus.

#beatha #spec bio #spec evo #speculative biology #speculative evolution #art #speculative zoology

[pleistocene-pride]

The tiger shark is a species of ground shark, and the only extant member of the genus Galeocerdo and family Galeocerdonidae. It is a highly nomadic species which inhabits tropical and subtropical waters world wide up to 3,000ft (900m) in depth, and is often found in coastal waters with particular abundance in the gulf of mexico, Caribbean sea, Indian ocean, and western pacific. Tiger sharks are often call the garbage cans of the sea and have reputation for eating almost anything. As such there diet is wide and heavily varied an is known to regularly include: small fish, jellyfish, crustaceans, cephalopods and other mollusks, rays, skates, sawfish, sea birds, sea snakes, sea turtles, other sharks, dolphins, seals, sea lions, dugongs, manatees, crocodilians, porpoises, and sick or injured whales. When near islands or coastlines they have been known to eat sheep, goats, dogs, pigs, rats, horses, deer, cattle, cats, camels, monkeys, inland birds, bats, lizards and  inedible objects, such as license plates, cans, tires, books, boat oars, soccerballs and baseball bats. Tiger sharks are themselves occasionally preyed upon by orcas, great whites, and saltwater crocodiles. The tiger shark commonly reaches 10.5-14ft (3.2 -4.26m) in length and 385- 1400lbs (175 – 635kg) in weight, with the largest recorded reaching 18ft (5.5m) long and 3360lbs (1525kg). This ranks the tiger shark amongst the largest extant sharks on earth only being surpassed by the whale, basking, great white, pacific sleeper, Greenland, and blunt nosed sixgill sharks. They have a broad snout and stocky body with proportionally large fins and a long upper tail. Tiger shark teeth are unique with very sharp, pronounced serrations and an unmistakable sideways-pointing tip. Such dentition has developed to slice through flesh, bone, and other tough substances such as turtle shells. In the northern hemisphere the mating season takes place from march to may and the southern hemisphere from November to January, with males breeding every year while females breed once every 3 years. After a year long pregnancy mother tiger sharks give birth to 10 to 80 pups. Under ideal conditions a tiger shark may live upwards of 12 years.

#pleistocene #pleistocene pride #pliestocene pride #pliestocene #fish #shark #shark week #tiger #tiger shark

[noxhawthorne]

Amemasu

Look up the term ‘Amemasu’, and you might be met with the simple white-spotted char. However, tack on the word ‘yokai’, and you’ll learn of giant whales or fish from Ainu folklore that live in the lakes of northern Honshu. There are said to be multiple Amemasu, with some of the biggest living in Lake Mashū and Lake Shikotsu in Hokkaidō.

An Amemasu is a shapeshifting creature, able to turn into a human. It usually becomes a beautiful young woman with the intent of luring foolish young men to their deaths. You can identify them when in human form, however, as their skin will be cold and clammy, much like that of a fish.

There are a few different legends about the creature. Similar to Bahamut, a fish we’ll get to soon, the residents of Hokkaidō believe that the Amemasu holds up the earth. When the giant fish or whale becomes tired, it shifts, causing earthquakes. In Akita Prefecture, there’s a place called Amemasu Otoshi. According to legend, the Amemasu was so powerful that it was able to kill a hawk (despite dying, as well, in the end).

Another legend is about Lake Kussharo, also in Hokkaidō. An Amemasu resided in the lake, one with a head that looked much like a rock. One day, Otashitonkuru, an Ainu hero, took a harpoon and tried to poke the cryptid’s eyes out. The fish fought back, and, desperate to hold onto the harpoon, Otashitonkuru grabbed ahold of a large rock. The creature ended up pulling so hard that it dragged to rock into the middle of the lake, creating the small island that now sits in the middle.

Another legend comes from Minabe, Wakayama prefecture. A large whirlpool appeared in a deep pond, where a giant Amemasu lived. It would emerge from the pond every spring, taking the form of a beautiful young woman. For two or three days, it would lure men away, taking them to a place where nobody could find them. Then, one day, a cormorant dove into the pond to hunt for fish, and was swallowed by the creature. However, the Amemasu floated to the surface, dead. The cormorant burst from the creature’s body.

A final tale is about the flat Konsengen’ya plain. A deer came down to have a drink of water, and was subsequently swallowed by an Amemasu. However, the deer’s antler rip open the cryptid’s stomach, killing it. The corpse of the creature blocks the lake, making floods a real danger. So, a god in the form of a bird warns people living nearby. Those who lived upstream took to higher ground, while those who lived downstream didn’t believe the bird. They go and find the Amemasu, dragging away its body. This caused the built up water to flow downstream and wipe out everything, creating the Konsengen’ya plain.

In addition to the legends, the Amemasu is said to attack boats and cause earthquakes.

#nox hawthorne #writers on tumblr #writing #writer #writeblr #creature feature Friday #Amemasu #cryptids