Dancong Oolong Delights

I, local family's resident literature fine arts and weird dead animals dork, have been having ENDLESS fun at his expense on this

Me: Well I'd have to do some research to be sure but if it didn't have a practical purpose and it wasn't a spiritual thing then my best guess is that it was either a novelty that had suddenly been introduced and found appealing, or it came to represent an important facet of the culture that suddenly gained relevance

Him: So why did it stop

Me: Fashions swing from one extreme to the other. People seek out what is desirable and unique, which is almost always unique because it's not produced or available very much. If enough people jump onto that bandwagon, demand goes up, so whoever can invent a way to get more or make more will make a killing. Once this innovation meets demand, the rhing will become commonplace, and no longer new or exciting. If it happens to be perfectly suited to a particular niche or image then it will become timeless as long as that niche or image is relevant, but the majority will move in the opposite direction once they hit the greatest possible extreme.

Him: That's stupid

Me: War is stupid. Ask grandma why she doesn't throw out old nylons and keeps turning old rags into bath mats

Suddenly having 50 moving eyes can make you disoriented and barfy and the adjustment period sucks ass

It takes both more and less time than you’d think to figure out what the structure as a whole looks like and where those eyes ARE

After you get used to it the entirety of the structure itself and all of the eyes you can see from feels like an extension of your nervous system in a very bizarre way. Like I have dreams now from the perspective of A Building and I’m not sure how to describe that.

Like being your own neurosurgeon

Country breakfast

Fresh farm eggs and bread, pulled enoshishi, sweet potato pottage, and some salad. If asked, we'll deny having cheesecake for breakfast though.

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based on these passages from the odyssey and the aeneid (and i think it might have happened in the iliad too, though i can’t remember where):

Submission 1/2 for @creatingblackcharacters 's Melanin Beam Challenge 2026 - Qifrey from Witch Hat Atelier!!

Another favorite manga of mine became the Big Popular Fantasy Anime this year so it's a perfect series to demonstrate how Black characters can look in an anime/manga style as the protagonists!

Qifrey's an excellent teacher and extremely skilled witch, he's also full of Secrets and Mysteries that I will not spoil. He's been through so much and deserves this life he's built with the atelier.

Submission 2/2 for @creatingblackcharacters 's Melanin Beam Challenge 2026 - Olruggio, also from Witch Hat Atelier!

His look is inspired by this cosplay by riverjmv on instagram, they did SUCH a stellar job and the locs work so so well for Olruggio! Please check out River's stuff, he's a great cosplayer.

Olruggio's a very kind person even if he won't admit it. He builds contraptions that bring comfort and joy to people....he also needs a goddamn vacation cuz he's like perpetually exhausted from working all-nighters (which is why a lower maintenance protective style feels like a good fit for him)

It was her responsibility as a mother to ensure that Ada didn't turn out like her father;

Fundamentally, the thing that was wrong with Lord Byron is that he was a poet; and

The opposite of poetry is math.