A Lair of Nerdiness

1. If you see this post, highly recommend taking it as an opportunity to set a timer for 15 minutes and switch over to ACTIVITY YOU ENJOY. if after those 15 minutes, you want to go back to scrolling, that's okay!

2. Huge shout out to this popping up in my notifs often, bc I do go back to activity.

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

Write it badly or it'll never be written

vainakh tower architecture is a historic style of architecture characteristic to chechnya and ingushetia. they've been noted as far back as the 1st century, but most we see today were built between the 15th-17th. the towers are built with stone blocks, range from 10-25 meters high, and feature walls which taper the higher the tower reaches. they were multi-purpose, used as silos, residence, and fortresses. wealthier families usually had at least one built for their community.

things like

the desert as a lifeless wasteland where ‘life is crushed underneath the shifting sands and blazing sun’ blah blah blah. deserts are full of life and they are beautiful and people have lived and prospered in them for eons. please read a book

the desert as an ugly or barren terrain where everything is harsh and threatening

the desert as something scary

the inhabitants as backwards religious zealots

the men as overly violent and oppressive

the inhabitants in need of outside instruction/intervention, i.e. “civilizing the savage”

the “harem” and women as exotic, sensual, mysterious

writing tribalism with no knowledge of how tribes actually function

djinn (or for the westerners, genies)

Islam Lite (the aesthetics or spiritual practices appropriated and stripped of meaning)

sprinkling random arabic words for ✨flavor✨instead of expanding your worldbuilding to include language as well

clothing as oppressive or mysterious, instead of serving its actual purpose (protecting you from the elements, which should be obvious but i guess it isn’t. covering your skin keeps you cooler and safer in most deserts)

people who live in deserts as ignorant, superstitious, uneducated

To anyone writing stuff set in the Mojave/Sonoran Deserts (and maybe the Colorado?) Please please please look up Palo Verde forests!! The trees are green but completely bare of leaves- they photosynthesize directly through their bark. And instead of leaves they have spikes! It's so trippy and cool to be walking through a lush green forest knowing that the nearest water is 50+ miles away.

Other Mojave/Sonoran specific things:

There's tortoises! They're pretty rare to see but you can often find their burrows, or sometimes skeletons

Nightjars will wait till you get super close and then fly up, scaring the crap out of you

There are areas called 'desert asphalt', which are large expanses of black volcanic rock. Looks totally different from any other part of the desert

There are jackrabbits everywhere

Everywhere there aren't jackrabbits there's lizards

It's actually pretty loud; there's loads of insects- mainly crickets and the like- but also lots of birds! You won't see them but by God you will hear them

Wildflower blooms in the rainy season are the most beautiful thing you'll ever see in your life. There will be so many flowers that you never even knew existed

If you live near any mountain range, you'll actually see thunderstorms fairly often. You'll never actually get rained on, but there's almost always thunder on the mountains, especially in the evening. Idk maybe that's a metaphor or something

Above: Fastosarion brazieri, commonly known as the chameleon semi-slug, and an unidentified species of semi-slug from the genus Sheldonia

The term "semi-slug" is used to describe an intermediate stage of evolution as snails evolve into slugs. Nearly 1,000 different species of semi-slugs are known to exist, and these bizarre little creatures can be found on at least four continents.

Above: Fastosarion brazieri and Varadia amboliensis

Each species of semi-slug is technically still classified as a snail, but its shell is noticeably reduced, becoming more internalized as the species evolves. A semi-slug officially becomes a regular-slug once its shell is no longer visible at all.

As this article explains:

If life were simple, there would be snails and slugs. Snails carry their homes on their backs; slugs are naked and embarrassed. But life isn’t simple, so of course there’s secret option #3 – the semi-slug, a bizarre creature that sits exactly between the snail and the slug.

Above: genus Satiella and genus Euaustenia

This article also adds:

In contrast to snails that have an external shell large enough to accommodate the body, or slugs in which the shell is completely internal or absent, semi-slugs have an external shell, but the shell is too small to accommodate the animal’s entire body.

Above: Megaustenia siamensis

This process is known as limacization, and it's especially common in moist, low-calcium environments where a snail's shell may be more of a burden than a benefit:

Terrestrial slugs are not a monophyletic group, but a case of convergent evolution in which the slug form evolved from different lineages of land snails that gradually lost their shell through a process called limacization. Limacization resulted in adaptive radiation in land snail lineages, as slugs became adapted to diverse moist and protected spaces, such as crevices in rocks and wood debris. The loss of the shell also allowed for more movement and less calcium dependence, making slugs more successful as pests.

Above: Gaeotis nigrolineata, also known as the Puerto Rican semi-slug, has a neon green shell that is almost completely internalized, but the shell is clearly visible through the semi-slug's translucent body

Some semi-slugs have shells that are still opaque and largely visible, with the mantle (a patch of flesh) covering only the outer edges of the shell, while others have shells that are more significantly reduced, transparent, and/or concealed.

Above: Ibycus rachelae, commonly known as the green-shelled semi-slug, and a species of semi-slug from the genus Durgella

This topic was mentioned in my previous post about Ibycus rachelae, but I wanted to write a more detailed post about semi-slugs, because they're just so fascinating and weird.

Above: a black-and-white semi-slug from subfamily Sheldoniinae

Sources & More Info:

Australian Geographic: Meet the Semi-Slug, a Snail without a Home

Carnegie Museum of Natural History: What's So Good about Being a Slug?

Frontiers: Terrestrial Slugs in Neotropical Agroecosystems (PDF)

iNaturalist: Photos 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, & 13

The Shell-Makers (Introducing Molluscs): On Becoming Sluggish

Land Snails and Slugs of Sabah and Labuan, Malaysia: Semi-Slugs

If you weren’t aware that there was a Howl’s Musical, here ya go. Go throw money at this production company and hope they release an album or a recording because the show was honestly fucking perfect. We were in the front row and all five of us flailed so hard that the cast thanked us specifically “for our enthusiasm and energy” after the show. 

This Sophie, played by Seattle actress Sara Porkalob, is your new god. 

She has micro-expressions down to an absolute art and the best comedic timing I’ve ever personally witnessed. She exists and was the perfect Sophie and now you know. You’re welcome.

Sidenote but the night we saw it Howl was wearing a NEON PINK WIG and SPRAY PAINTED SILVER JEANS for almost the entire show and NO ONE will ever be a better Howl tbh.

And Lettie and Martha were also great! The entire cast was great! Their physicality on stage was unbelievable!! The writing was superb!!! I can never see another musical as long as I live because of how perfect this one was!!!!!

I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT ALL OF THIS

Please please please don’t just reblog this post but also go check out the YouTube channel and give the songs some more views. It’s worth it the songs are amazing. And I desperately want more people to watch the current videos so Justin will finally finally release a recording of the best song from the show (it’s the witch’s solo and it’s Amazing).

Also before someone asks my second favorite song is the love theme Sophie sings when howl gifts her the flower shop and it’s fucking beautiful.

So very sadly, bookit theater, which produced and housed both runs of this musical and had been in Seattle for over 40 years, was not able to survive the pandemic and sell enough tickets to stay open after lockdowns were lifted. They announced they were shutting down this summer. I’m personally pretty bummed about it.

But if you want to support this musical PLEASE check out Justin Huertas’ YouTube channel and patreon. Let him know that his work in creating this musical is appreciated.

I am still holding out hope that he’ll be able to get this show produced again, maybe in a workshop or something.

Also I want to add a story from viewing this show in person.

My friends and I attended both of these productions dressed in the most over the top thematically appropriate outfits we could manage. We were in the front row and it was a small theater and we were Enthusiastic audience members to say the least, cheering, laughing, getting into it. And when the witch of the waste took the stage to deliver her extremely powerful theme song, we lost it. This woman was eating this song, an absolute powerhouse, fucking spectacular performance.

(Justin has still yet to post this song on YouTube…..Where is the witch’s song Justin…..let me hear it again………)

When the cast came out to the lobby after the show we found the witch’s actress to complement her and she recognized us from our very enthusiastic cheering and thanked us for being her coven for the evening, which is a complement I hold dearly.

Anyway, here are some of the fantastic songs from the show I mentioned above, usually featuring at least one cast member from one of the runs:

Early book sophie wishing she was a different person.

Newly cursed Sophie enjoying the start of her adventure and finding freedom in being cursed.

Sophie’s sisters explaining their scheme to switch places. This is a song about cake and it goes Extremely hard. The second run of this show added a reprise of this song at the end. Standing ovation.

Sophie reacting to the field of flowers gifted by Howl (this song made me cry in person). Sung by Sara Porkalob, original Sophie!

And last but not least, a song from the point of view of the cursed dog man mashup that is Extremely beautiful.

(REBLOG THIS VERSION OF THE POST INSTEAD PLEASE!!!!)

After seeing these additions I checked with my seattle local friends and apparently, they had to sell the theater that bookit housed its productions in, and in order to make bookit viable this time around, they have to limit it to one or two productions a year total, and they will be housed in different theaters around seattle in partnership with other theater companies.

Which is an improvement for sure! But because they’re doing limited runs, I think if we want to ever see this show staged again, or for Justin Huertas to release an album version, we NEED to make sure that Justin knows people appreciate his work.

This post has well over 20k notes and some of the videos I linked above have like 7 comments. Or less.

Can we please show the artist behind this fabulous work some appreciation y'all?

The Sir David Attenborough That Lives In My Brain: Being smaller-than-average presents an added challenge to foraging ... but necessity is the mother of invention. A little creativity turns a baguette into a tool, and voilà--

(paper towel roll falls on my face)