Backup Memory

HELL YEAH!

I'm looking for advice. I am the godparent of a kindergartener who I think may be autisitic.

How do I gently tell their parents that they may need more help?

For clarification I am in my early 20s and got finally diagnosed with autism and ADHD just this summer. The kid's mom is a kindergarten teacher, who has some knowledge of what being neurodivergent means, but only recognizes extreme cases.

My question is: do you think I should meddle? I really like the kid, and want them to have a better childhood than I did. But I also don't want to make things awkward with their parents, since I'm afraid they will take this badly.

Thanks in advance for any guidance you can give! 💜

I think maybe in this instance you could be like like gently being like "omg they're so much like me they remind me of me... by THE WAY"

So my mom and I, after watching all of Leverage, have been watching Leverage: Redemption. And we're maybe halfway through the first season, and a few episodes ago there was this moment. Brianna's laying out what their latest mark does--she's one of those "health" influencers that sells garbage concoctions to desperate people. Brianna notes that the mark specifically targets women, because, as she says, "Women get misdiagnosed 30% of the time".

And Eliot just very quietly goes "What?"

And it is COMPLETELY unacknowledged. Brianna just continues talking. But. Just. Listen Eliot is my favorite and that "What?" shot a dart into my mind. He did not know that. He is upset that he did not know that. He has just found out that he has a privilege that he didn't know he had. And he is upset because, well, he's Eliot, and it's not right. Hell, his team, his family, is now majority women, and he has a privilege over them.

Writer, illustrator, conservationist, natural scientist

For the inaugural Arcade Feature, I'm excited to tell you about Beatrix Potter. Most people (including me) know her best for her picture books-

-which have sold over 250 million copies since they were published in the early 1900s.

Fun fact: In 1903, Peter Rabbit was the first fictional character to be made into a patented stuffed toy, making him the oldest licensed character.

But what really caught my attention is the work she was doing before Peter Rabbit came along.

Beatrix Potter had a scientific eye for detail, and was able to faithfully depict the world around her. In particular, she was interested in mycology.

In 1897, she put forward a paper to the Linnean Society in London... but as a woman was not allowed to be a member of the society nor attend the meeting when her paper was read. When the society's members did not pay much attention to her work, and fearing her samples to be contaminated, Potter withdrew her paper, which became lost. Only after Potter left hundreds of mycological artworks to a museum in the Lake District, UK, on her death in 1943, were her scientific talents recognized... Potter's precise and beautiful paintings and drawings of fungi are now helping modern mycologists in their efforts to identify species.*

Potter eventually moved away from books in favor of land management and farming. She was a prize-winning sheep breeder and a prosperous farmer, and bought several farms surrounding her own to preserve the unique hill country landscape. Much of that land now constitutes the Lake District National Park.

Keep an eye out for more Beatrix Potter throughout the month of February.

* Fry, C., & Wayland, E. (2024). Introduction. In The Botanists’ Library, The Most Important Botanical Books in History (1st ed., pp. 9–10). introduction, Ivy Press.

introducing:

THE STEALINGPOTATREON (stealingpotatoes patreon) 

If you'd like to regularly support the art and comics I regularly draw or just see more of my art and how I make it, then you're gonna love my brand new (and very exciting) patreon!

There is currently one tier, benefits include:

timelapses and step-by-step processes of my art/comics

wips and behind the scenes 

extra art 

supporting that potato tumblr lady/jester you like (me)

Check it out! 

Human: We just train new people how to do it?

Elf: *gears visibly turning in their head*

Human: Are you alright?

Elf: I just realized that we didn’t have to let that whole city fall to ruin just because my grandfather died.

Human: My cousin made it.

Elf: Impossible! Those metalworking techniques were lost a hundred years ago!

Human: What do you mean lost? My great-grandmother learned to make these swords from an elven smith, then taught it to her kids.

Elf: That's ridiculous. No elf would give such secrets to a human.

Human: They didn't. Meemaw delivered the metal to the forge, and no one kicked her out when she stayed and watched. She always said they barely acknowledged her even when doing business with her, like she wasn't worth noticing.

Elf: Come to think of it, my great-uncle always was rather single-minded when he started working.

Human: So he wasn't ignoring her, he just forgot she was there?

But Is Jabba A Dragon Though?

he has the body plan of a lindworm. I suppose you could argue that he is too thick to be considered “serpentine”, but he is longer than he is wide, and not entirely unlike an especially chunky gaboon viper. his upright posture distracts from the fact that he’s built like an abbreviated mole lizard, which are lindworms.

and then of course he acts like a dragon. I don’t know if Star Wars uses gold or something else but whatever it is I’m sure he hordes it. eats people sometimes. disturbing taste for princesses. knights come to kick his ass.

And not all creatures under the broad category of “dragon” fly. Lindworms don’t fly, neither do wyrms, drakes, sea serpents, or hydras. Lungs/Chinese dragons can fly but they don’t use wings to do it. Jabba should not be disqualified as a dragon simply because he uses repulsor technology to achieve airborne locomotion.

Jabba is unlike a slug in so many ways. He has jointed limbs, a hard internal skeleton, a skull with fixed spherical eyeballs, and no sensory tentacles or pneumostome. He is capable of facultative parthenogenesis--like komodo dragons and other squamates--continuously growing larger and living for hundreds of years hoarding wealth and power and preying on princesses. His resemblance to a slug is superficial, though we may describe him as such in an insulting fashion... like how a dragon may be called a “worm”.

Also he can and does eat people.

Dragons are the same way. It’s an umbrella term, and while some irritating pedants insist that only a four-legged creature with words god can be considered a dragon, they only say that to make sure everyone in the room knows that they know what a wyvern is. Wyverns and lindworms and amphitheres are obviously all under the dragon umbrella.

If these things are dragons, then “dragon” is as fluid a category as “worm”:

Take, for example, the dragons from The Last Airbender. They’re clearly dragons, as they breathe fire and have wings, but they’re also more like elemental spirits that visually and behaviorally resemble lungs more than they resemble, say, Smaug. Do their similarities to lungs disqualify them from dragonhood?

Also, it’s not like the medieval Welsh concept of a “dragon” evolved in a vacuum. There are mythical creatures from around the world that bear strong resemblances to That Specific Creature Which We Are Apparently Now Inisisting Is The Only True Dragon. Welsh and British folklore was surely being influenced by mythology from disparate cultures. 

That thing does not have innate dragony-ness to me. It looks like a turtle with tentacles. 

But, while I think the answer to “can we consider Jabba the Hutt to be a dragon” is yes, no one has asked whether or not Jabba would consider himself to be a dragon.

i’m reading Maul: Lockdown by Joe Schreiber and

you make some good points and also I ABSOLUTELY HATE YOU FOR THIS

fine.

DRAGON LOCATED

This is exactly what I mean when I say "All Dragons Are Good"