Digital art of a turtle-koi fish creature with a lily pad and pink lotus flower on its back, mimicking the vague shape of a turtle shell. A small frog rests on their lily pad as drops of water catch on the petals of the lotus flower. A tadpole swims shortly behind them. The background is a greyish blue with swirls and sparkles.
koi pond turtle 🪷
How to Paint a Cat
Yup. All of these, and also:
Because some comments make me think people missed the PSAs I do semi-regularly: if you were born before 1987, you should get a MMR booster now. The second childhood dose of MMR wasn't added until 1989, and folks who were older than 2 (the age for the 2nd) may not have gotten it.
She is sneaking up on you/the veggies!!!
I was picturing this as an unridden horse, so it trots off without guidance.
I've met horses, though. Many are very competitive, so teaching them to stay in the fancy trot would be the challenge.
Hi, do not allow so called "publishing professionals" convince you to spend more than you can afford.
If you are indie author you can absolutely go back and upgrade your backlist later.
Indie authors do it all the time. Publish the best way you can right now and scale up later.
The First WORLD FENCING LEAGUE is happening April 25th!!! I'M GEEKING!!!
Japanese engineers developed this "Sword Tip Visualisation" tracking technology specifically for this event that will make it so much easier for the average person to see what's going on!
I MUST WATCH THIS ENTIRE TOURNAMENT
Oh this is me every time, what I love to do is write *around* it and then spiral into the thing itself. A monologue by a main character! A passionate speech by a villain! A newspaper article, bitchy online review, fake song lyrics, therapy session -- anything in the WORLD but not the story itself.
Repost with your first crush (if you had one).
He went on such cool adventures.
Two hooded figures with lamps approach a moonlit, isolated cottage. A woman answers the door. We have come for the child, says the hooded figure So soon? she asks It is time, says the hooded figure. The woman is distraught. We should never have got him a library card! What is done cannot be undone, says the hooded figure We couldn’t see the harm! We just wanted him to enjoy reading! For most, it ends there, says the hooded figure, turning away and walking into the wilderness Oh lord, What have I done! says the woman, the child walks past her and out into the darkness with them. Do not cry mother. I am a writer now.
my latest books cartoon for @theguardian.com
telling a bunch of Americans about how all the schools you went to had corporal punishment and noting the increasing looks of horror on their faces with satisfaction before realising you have been calling it capital punishment from the start
$25 GP, $50 specialist, $100 xray.
Me to 3yo: What do you want for your birthday party theme?
3yo: “Poopoo & peepee theme! We can get apple juice for the pee, so a skeleton pees and you drink the skeleton pee but it’s okay because it’s juice”
Me: ..K I was thinking like “dinosaurs” but let’s put a pin in “piss fountain of the dead”
It was. But also - and this is what people miss, I think - it was FUN. There were conventions, and huge fan groups (and the SnapeWives, something which makes me cackle with delight even now). There were still cliques (Harmonians), but the overall tenor was less angry than fandom seems to be now.
Oh yeah, and boy, looking back at how hard we were all digging to find clues and connections, it's kind of sad to know - at this end of the timeline - that her story was actually so thin.
A stack of books about HP clues.
A book titled Magical Worlds of Harry Potter.
A book titled New Clues to Harry Potter Book 5
A book titled Ultimate Unofficial Guide to the Mysteries of Harry Potter.
Actually, my kid also had a full set of the Colored Fairy Tale Books, so again - a solid education in 'real' fantasy/fairy tale stuff.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lan...
My kid was also a kid (... that sounds strange), but yeah, they'd been reading and having me read to them from older fantasy books practically from birth.
When your background includes Baba Yaga, and magical winged cats, and a walking castle (?), HP is middling.
I still have the tradpublished books with theories. I should hunt those down and glance through them again. They were funny then and I'm sure they'd be a riot now.
And I have SO MUCH truly excellent fanfic (The Untamed/MDZS seems to be a never-ending fountain of fun stuff) to read. Why would I re-read something that was mid at best, even when it was new?
I was an adult when the books came out. I grew up reading 'old' fantasy and SF, and so had a very different take on HP. I didn't care about the Houses. I was sort of into it for the background adult spy stuff.
I *absolutely* miss the old HP fandom (from circa book 4?) with other adults writing fic and tearing apart the books for Seekrit Hidden Clews. (Turns out, we were building a better story than she was.)
But fandom has changed, as all things do, and that one's gone.
Did you know that if your giant 20-lb cat is lying on your desk with one hind foot sneakily pressing down the escape key, it looks like all your photos and files have disappeared?????
Because I just had a really bad couple of moments, there.
Oof.
If you painted it blue, it would look just like William, the faience hippo at the NY Metropolitan Museum.
The proper response is to simply not treat the cocaine-fueled fantasies of a billionaire sex pest as if they have any merit whatsoever, and simply not get caught up in a stoned freshman philosophy 101 argument with the stupidest fucking people who have ever lived.
God I miss shorts. Not this knee-length or mid-calf thing.
SHORTS.
I think??? it was Amazon?
It was so ridiculously stupid. A little bloody, but not awful.
OMG, we have found a fantastically ridiculous movie: Pretty Lethal. A small troupe of ballerinas gets trapped in a hotel in backwoods Hungary, where they end up killing the bad guys by weaponizing The Nutcracker. With knives in their pointe shoes.
