raine

Showing off the Arapaima I made! (Pattern also made by me)

420 Million years before the reign of Mamdani, two Acutiramus wake up from their daylight slumber as thousands are Eurypterus begin to invade the shallow, warm waters of New York. This is the Fiddlers Green or Bertie Formation, a Silurian lagerstätte known for its eurypterids

The research history of this formation unfortunately causes much confusion here because what was once the Bertie Formation is now the Bertie Group which includes the Fiddlers Green Formation, but certain authors, especially on the Canadian side still call it the Bertie Formation

This caused a little bit of a headache during the research phase for this piece but I think we have it now figured out and the Wikipedia page also got already some updates. Beyond that Fiddlers Green is rather straight forward. These near shore waters were home to many critters

most prominently the eurypterids which most likely gathered here to molt, away from large open water predators, but other animals like weird oncoceratid cephalopods and even some interesting marco-algae can be found here as well.

OH BOY!

It's a wild mix, most of what you find in there are wildlife images with specifically with large and diverse groups of animals and wide landscape shots. But beside that ANY piece of art that might inspire me for larger compositions.

I don't have specific artists I really look for, my net is usually thrown as wide as possible. Since the science narrows you down so much already I want to keep an open mind when it comes to the compositions and storytelling.

here some examples

In case you want to have a closer look at the OTHER reference folder that we work on during the research phase for these pieces you can now look at all these size charts in here:

the city of los angeles

the city of new york

sex

how drinking alcohol works

how getting high works

how a child of any age speaks

how nuclear physics work

how [my job] works

how debilitating being shot in the shoulder is

how hypothermia works

things I have never before seen someone fake their way through writing about, until today:

SHRIMP COCKTAIL:

banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol

generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is

#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro

And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!

POMEGRANATES:

zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple

thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute

sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.

FRUIT TREES:

zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''

salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE

baander: #cranberry trees

DOUGH/BATTER:

maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre

livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles

lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY

Some other topics:

I know a lot of trans men want to be TMA reallllll bad because someone mistook them for a transfem once and called them a tranny, but the "Affected" in "TransMisogyny Affected" doesn't just mean you have been Affected by transmisogyny at some point--it means it affects you, inescapably, in uncountably many more ways than just random harassment, every minute of your damn life. and it worms into your brain and stays there, because you ARE the tranny they were talking about

We know how this happens, how transmisogyny worms its way in, the thoughts that itch at the back of our minds that make TMA people so easy to doubt. I was programmed to think the same assumptions too, and when I dug inward I found the same dirt you will:

It's usually some vague thought or feeling along the lines of "what if the trans fems are lying or exaggerating about how badly they're treated because they're [almost like a man suddenly dropped into womens' skin merely shocked from experiencing misogyny for the first time]; or [weird feminine men desperate to have experiences of misogyny validated as a bizarre form of gender affirmation]; or [weird guilt-ridden men desperate to experience misogyny as some kind of repentance]; or [weird feminist men desperate to exert unique expertise over women]; or [men desperate to position themselves as 'more oppressed' so they can regain their lost sense of gendered power among the voices of women]; or [perverted men who just transitioned for sex reasons overreacting with anger about being treated like the weirdo they are]".

All of this thinking and the roots of ALL transmisogyny come from this fucked up assumption that we are in some way or another always still men. Transmisogyny tells the fiction that a "male essence" supposedly remains at our core and is either morally corrupt, innately digusting, or both. THAT is the lie of transmisogyny, the lie that no matter what we do or who we are, our lives before transition somehow hold some kind of fundamental, inescapable corrupting influence over us today.

It is bioessentialism at its most pure. People take one look at the sex characteristics that we can't escape and transport themselves into a made-up world where some horrid element of male gender must therefore still exist within us. They stop seeing us as men or women and instead begin defining our entire personhood as if we are wolves in sheep's clothing; misguided men at best, immoral freaks at worst. They throw at us all the baggage that comes with a person asking "what kind of man does that?".