Fandom Geek Blog

Fatima Ronquillo (Filipino/American, b. 1976)

Hand with Hummingbirds and Orchids ,2020 / Evanescence: Hand with Hummingbirds and Orchids ,2019

So it turns out "The Biting Pear" is created by an artist named Ursula Vernon, who has also created similiar works like "Mammoth Garlic"

"Great Eggplant"

And of course, "Divine Pear"

That's only a small portion of her work! She's also made some incredibly charming art of dinos, wildlife, and holy eggs (and of course like waaaay more art)

star bursts

Saguaro National Park, Tucson, Arizona

(...and you don't want to join 20 new websites)

First, get an RSS reader*:

Desktop: Feedbro (browser extension), QuiteRSS, Raven Reader

Android: Feeder

iOS/Mac: NetNewsWire

You'll be able to make a custom feed to follow blogs, webcomics, social media feeds, podcasts, news, and other stuff on the web all in one place. To follow something, find its "feed URL"-- often marked by an icon that looks like this ↓-- and paste it into your reader of choice as a new feed.

Some feed URLs for social media:

Twitter: Feedbro can use Twitter profile URLs as feed URLs. Otherwise, use nitter.net/username/rss (or other Nitter instance) (You can get a CSV file of all the accounts you follow using "Download a user's friends list" on Tweetbeaver)

Tumblr: Use username.tumblr.com/rss or username.tumblr.com/tagged/my%20art/rss to follow a blog's "my art" tag (as an example)

Cohost: Use username.cohost.org/rss/public (WIP feature)

Mastodon: Use instance.url/@­username.rss

Deviantart: Info here

Spacehey: Info here

Youtube: Go to a channel in a web browser, view page source, and use Ctrl-F/Command-F to find a link that starts with "https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id="

Instagram: Feedbro can use Instagram profile and hashtag URLs as feed URLs. Otherwise, Instagram doesn't have RSS feeds, and due to aggressive rate limiting on their part, it's not so simple to generate a feed URL.

Facebook: Feedbro can use public Facebook group/page URLs as feed URLs.

(If you know an artist who exclusively posts to Instagram, you may want to gently suggest that they crosspost elsewhere...)

Also see how to find the RSS feed URL for almost any site. Try using public RSS-Bridge instances or Happyou Final Scraper to generate feeds for sites that don't have them (Pillowfort, Patreon, etc).

You can see the most popular sitewide feeds here, and it's easy to add new ones. Then they just...show up in your reading list, along with all the accounts you follow.

but there are so many stories i've read over the years that could be summarized into a few sentences of bland-sounding plot, and it's the execution that matters. it's the writing. it's the writing!

a talented writer can turn a bland plot into a story you want to devour. and someone who only cares about ideas can take the most interesting idea ever conceived and make it unreadable/unwatchable.

It doesn't matter that Lion King is basically Kimba is basically Hamlet. They created the idea of the Lion King! They didn't write Scar saying "long live the king" and throwing Mufasa off a cliff into a sea of oxes, but they came up with the idea of a lion being the king of all animals! They didn't write the "remember who you are" scene, with its gorgeous visuals and music that still give people pause to this day, but they came up with the idea of a lion being the king of animals and his son being an ambitious young boy!