Dandelionlily

Jonathan Harker’s little travelogue/recipe blog becomes the focus of much speculation when it starts posting nothing but surreal photos of shadows and gothic architecture. Prank? Commentary on society? Desperate bid for attention? No one knows.

Lucy Westenra the Instagram and Tik Tok influencer announces three marriage proposals and one engagement! Unfortunately she’s been feeling unwell recently, so she’s getting treatment from new sponsor Dr Abraham Van Helsing

Jonathan Harker’s blog is updated by his fiancée Mina Murray, who explains that he had a mental health crisis while traveling through Budapest and is, at his request, deleting all of the non-travel cuisine photos

London Examiner posts headline story on Twitter about the tragic death of young influencer Lucy Westenra. Police were looking for Van Helsing, Dr John Seward, Quincey Morris and Arthur Holmwood for questioning about possible involvement in her death.

Angry rant on Tumblr about anti-immigrant sentiment and the attempted murder of recent English emigré from Transylvania Count Dracula, an innocent man who suffered from migraines and sun sensitivity. The four attackers were arrested and charged with attempted murder and hate crimes, in addition to a shocking incident of grave desecration.

London Examiner posts headline story on Twitter: Van Helsing, Doctor of Philosophy, charged with practicing medicine without a license, gross negligence and manslaughter in the death of Lucy Westenra, who died after receiving a blood transfusion from an incompatible blood type, the third such “infusion of strength from virile young men who love you” Van Helsing administered. Manslaughter charges against Dr John Seward, Quincey Morris and Arthur Holmwood were dropped in exchange for testimony. Asked if Van Helsing or others may attempt the insanity defense, Police Chief Burton answered, “I don’t know any other reason they’d be yammering on about dead women coming back to eat children, psychic connections from drinking blood or people transforming into wolves.”

The Storify (is there such thing as Storify or similar anymore?) ends with Mina Harkness remembering her friend Lucy and warning against quack doctors and suspicious product sponsors.

(Naturally, each of these would be followed by top comments from the community.)

And now there’s so much spill-over from “baby cute” gene that humans see literally any “baby” creature that even slightly resembles us, like

and we’re like 😍🥰🤩🥺🥺🥺 I wanna love you so bad. I wanna make so many images of you, you are so small, just baby. I’m inventing new emotions as we speak bc I love you so much.

Actually hatebros, “survival of the fittest” means you have to make as many friends as possible in one lifetime. Naruto understands Darwinism better than you.

Muscles and large brains are physiologically expensive. Young have to be born early because of their large heads. Muscles/brains require certain diets to maintain; most individuals of the predator species we admire are one broken bone or a few failed hunts from dying.

Broke: Katara and Sokka wear fabric clothing outside the tundra.

Woke: Katara and Sokka wear fish leather outside the tundra.

Pictured above: Nanai clothing set, Oroch robe & hat, Ainu robe (attush), another Nanai robe, and different shades of dyed fish leather

Traditional Inuit sewing needles are quite a bit bigger than what Katara was using in the show. It was probably advantageous, since they were were working with thick animal hides and furs. Below is a Hezhe woman describing how tough fish leather is to sew. Hezhe people, also known as Nanai people, are indigenous to Northern China and Siberia.

I wonder, would Sokka and Katara’s tribe, as small as it was, have the time to devote to making fish leather clothing rather than the much warmer animal hides? It seems like one of the arts that might have been lost as the raids brought the Southern Water Tribes closer to the edge of survival. On the other hand, it seemed that hunting was mainly done by men, so with the men away at war, they may not have had ready access to large animal hides.

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

The premise is that Zuko is knocked out in the fight in “Zuko Alone”, wakes up with amnesia and enlisted in the Earth Army as “Scout Li”, and promptly makes that everyone else’s problem.

Excerpt from A Legend is Born: Chapter 6 - “Crazy Dramatic Awesome”

Specialist Zixen loathed fire-blooded people.

Most of the world hated them because of the whole genocidal colonial empire waging a 100-year war of conquest thing, but that was political. Zixen wasn't narrow-minded like Yanlin; That was a reason to hate the Fire Nation army, not the poor bastards they'd left scattered throughout the colonies. Not even the whole Fire Nation army; Min had strong-armed Zixen into delivering dinner to Li's prisoners that once, and while he wasn't good with kids' ages, even he couldn't miss the fact that half of them would be too young to enlist in the Earth Army.

No, Zixen's loathing was personal, and specific, and based on the indisputable fact that they were mostly Shu-damned Morning People .

A strike team of firebenders had attacked Chiala village, and because they were go-getters and overachievers, they'd done so before the sun rose. Which is why Zixen had been woken at the ass-crack of dawn and forced to quick-march for over an hour without breakfast or even a strong cup of tea, all for the privilege of dodging fireballs. Or getting incinerated, if the earthbending squad marching with them was having a bad day.

There was a hasty meeting and hand-signals. Not that they needed to communicate much. The plan was, as always, that the non-benders would draw attention and fire while the earthbenders got into position, hopefully before Zixen's whole unit got their asses roasted. Sergeant Bingwen led the charge, roaring a battle-cry that petered off when they got a good look at Chiala village.

One of the houses was on fire, but the bucket-brigade of villagers were taking care of that. The firebenders were all lying on the ground, groaning. Li was trying to simultaneously tie them up and fend off several grandma-types.

"Li! You couldn't have taken care of this before they sent for us?" Zixen demanded.

"I just--" Li started to say.

One of the grandmas shoved a dumpling in his mouth. "Eat up! You're too skinny." Another pushed a platter of mochi balls in front of him. Li was surrounded and starting to look desperate.

Zixin took pity on him. "You know, none of us have had any breakfast, or even tea."

The grandmas turned. The one with the mochi balls narrowed her eyes in suspicion, but Zixen wasn't worried. He was a scoundrel, after all, and grandma-types loved scoundrels.

Twenty minutes later, when he could speak without one of the grandmas shoving food into his mouth, Private Yanlin asked what they'd all been wondering: "Li, how'd you beat a bunch of firebenders?"

"It was AMAZING!" a dirt-caked child yelled, throwing their hands up in the air. "They were all," the child struck a pretty credible firebender stance, "and Scout Li was like hi-YAH and kicked their legs, and they all fell over."

"And then there was the one who punched--show them the punch!" a girl, somehow even dirtier, demanded.

"Yeah, the scary fire lady was like BAM and fire shot out of her fist--"

"And Scout Li was like," the girl bent backward as if dodging a fireblast.

"No fair! I want to be Scout Li."

"You can't be Scout Li and the fire lady both."

"Then you be the fire lady, I wanna be Scout Li."

"Okay, fine, I'm the fire-punch lady, and I punch like this, and you--"

"Wait!" the first child said and ran away. The second crossed her arms and tapped her foot impatiently.

Zixen said, "Well, that explains that."

Yanlin yelled, "That doesn't explain anything! Li, how the hell did you take out six firebenders without even getting burned?"

Li shrugged.

"He broke their root," Toyozo offered.

"What does that even mean?"

Zixen rolled his eyes. "You've sparred hand-to-hand with Li, yeah? Have you noticed how often he goes for leg sweeps or kicks at your knees? That's how you fight a bender. Knocking them down and running like Koh the Face-Stealer is on your heels is usually the best option."

"Or you wait until they're committed to a strike," Li said, "and don't be there when they finish it."

"Is that how you beat the fire-punch lady?"

Li blushed.

The first child ran up with a bucket full of water. "I vanquish you, fire-punch lady!" they yelled and dumped the water on their friend's head.

The girl shouted, "Oh no, Scout Li put out my inner fire!"

"I didn't put out anyone's inner fire!" Li yelled. "I just… needed a distraction."

"I guess that explains why some of them were so wet," Min said. They all turned to look at the bound and--yes, soaking wet--firebenders.

(Thanks to commenter wellcrud for the scene idea!)

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The deity in question is all "???" but keeps granting the cleric power because all that free worship and influence from the people who now pray to them is nice, and hey if the cleric wants to put in the leg work to launder the deity's reputation what reason do they have to say no?

Only it turns out that the cleric is actually playing 4D chess because of the way faith works in Faerun (and most DnD settings). As more and more worshipers start believing The Terrible Dread Lord is actually a Good and Kind and Noble god they start to be influenced by that to become Good and Kind and Noble. Slowly but surely they find themselves warping to match the perception of the masses. It starts by just giving a few random blessings out of what they think is pity, or maybe sending a sign to help someone who is lost on what the deity insists is a whim....but it snowballs until you have Lolth smiting down slavers or Asmodeus sending out devil's to drag down a tyrant to the depths of hell and then they realize 'oh oh no' but by then it's to late: the religious reform movement within their flock is too massive and been ignored for too long as benign. They can't just turn around and smite their own followers- not only because it's tacky but because they feel... compassion and responsibility for those that look to them for guidece.