#midjourney edit

Bio-Booster Armor Garfield (1985)

A classic of the 80s, hyper-violent anime boom.

Everyone loves a feast, no matter when you’re from.

Of the five sapient civilizations to call this planet home, only one (the one we don’t talk about) had no known form of harvest festival. The festival for our most recent cousins, the dinosovians, translates as “Festofall,” a corruption of the archaic “Feast of All.”

The “modern” (from the standpoint of dinosovian time-refugees) holiday is a synthesis of a number of similar festivals, mainly “Tubersprang” and “The Hunt of the Gorged” that merged with the rise of multi-species nation-states during the first industrial age. 

From a human perspective, Festofall comes across as a mix of Halloween and Thanksgiving held at a state fair. Cooking begins a full thirdmoon before the festival starts. Each family prepares a vast quantity of a specific dish, all of which is brought together for a community-wide potluck and cook-off. Competition is intense, though caring about winning is seen as gauche. 

The festival lasts for “two claws” (eight days) of feasting, carnival games, live music, dancing, and traditional theater. The potluck aspect is used by every aspect of food production, from farming to dining, to showcase wares and joust with rivals. On the fourth day of the festival, just as the sun begins to set the participants’ offerings are judged, and prizes are passed out.

The prize in question is an “honorloop”, conceptually similar to a blue ribbon or a medal, but taking the form of a ring of metal, braided leather, carved wood, or horn (tough plastic is always an option in the modern day) that is inscribed with the accomplishment.  These are worn over the winner’s own horn-tips, spikes, or talons as jewelry during every major festival for the year, before they are returned for the next year’s competition.

But when the judges go to give the honorloops, they are always wrong! Each replaced by a crude fake bearing a humorous, insults. The nature of the insults varies regionally, but “least improved”, “tastes like it smells” and “bland in, loud out” (very rude in the native podite) are traditional favorites. The honorloops have been stolen by impish bogies called “wildmolts”, “hollowkind”, or “Snappy Jarry.”

Dinosovian folklore associates the child’s first full molt with the shedding of their “hatching wildness” (Dinosovian children can walk within hours of hatching. A hatchling for the first three years or so is essentially a pet raccoon that gets bigger and more sapient every day, with substantially more bite-strength). The wildmolts are this lost wildness made manifest, in the form of macabre goblin-like pranksters.

The wildmolts, are of course, dinosovian children, who have been making their costumes and planning the theft of the honorloops since cooking began. The children hide the stolen loops in public places, and the winners must find their proper prizes before the festival ends or they must wear the mock-prizes at each of the year’s remaining cultural festivals and bank holidays (of which there are many). Wildmolts trade hints at their hiding places (in the form of riddles and puzzles) for treats and small toys. Adults are expected to play along with the ruse.

The second half of the festival belongs to the wildmolts, with adults and children alike participating in ritualized practical joke games that vary community-by-community (the uniqueness of which is a point of local civic pride.) These range from insult-competitions to hold-my-klem* reckless self endangerment. At night, live theater performances take on a more macabre tone and scary tales are told around bonfires.

Many of the more modern additions to the holiday, such as Aegis Shows, Pulse-Tag, and the Gorge-o-Rama (sponsored by Mr. Big Byte, Gorge Responsibly) take place in this latter half of the festival. 

The dual nature of the holiday symbolically conveys that even in times of plenty, the unexpected can strike at any moment. Post Time-Slip Festofall celebrations are held from November 16th through the 23rd. Mid October is generally considered more “seasonally accurate” to the original Pre-KT celebration, with the later date being intentionally chosen to overlap with American Thanksgiving. 

Festofall is, in human terms, a largely secular holiday and is open to human participation in most communities.

The above images were taken at the Ceratopolis Festofall celebration on the 7th-12th of Harvest Moon 2, 5 BKT, and were generously provided by the Dinosovian Cultural Council of Colorado. 

The necromancer needs you. You don't need the necromancer.

Prompt and process under the fold

RattleAxe

Marauding Mistress of Venom

Welcome to Planet Feyr, Pariah Planet of the Eternal Galaxy. It doesn't matter how you got here, or why you came. Feyr is power. Feyr is opportunity. Feyr is eternal.

And Feyr is inescapable.

I am tinkering with RPG Maker, but instead of leaning into the retro-JRPG pixel art thing, I'm instead looking at the aesthetics of 80s toy tie-in kids books and box paintings. She's a an early stab at it.

Process and text transcript under the fold

Kleinheart Robotics Ad - Woman's Day Magazine, June 1952

The 1952 model was a classic, back when you could do your own maintenance. Younger readers won't remember this, but back in your great-grandma's day, Kleinheart was primarily a manufacturer of electric hand mixers, transitioning almost fully to robotics in just five years.

That's why all Kleinheart robots have an egg-beater (even the much-maligned Mark 17 had a <disdain>decorative</disdain> one) in the right forearm.

Jackal Lanterns

The seeds of smashed Jack'o lanterns, if not swept up and thrown away, may take root. The twisted gourds mature over the course of a single year, until they rise to hunt the following Halloween.

Those in costume are invisible to Jackal Lanterns, though the stench of tricks will still draw them to their prey.

Prompt and process under the fold

The rarest film in the trilogy.

Prompt and a detailed process under the fold.

"Night on the Town"

"We dated for a year and a half, the reception-"

"-was a mess, absolute travesty. We wanted Swedish meatballs."

"They're just like vorma. Something both sides of the family can enjoy equally. And we all also equally shared in the food poisoning."

"But that's normal wedding stuff, which is kinda the point. The dinosovian conception of marriage has more in common with ours than not."

"There are compromises, of course, but neither of us is very traditional, so its easy to accommodate most of our family's little demands. Like, I took her name, which made my traditionalist mom and aunt very happy."

"And made uncle Robert very annoyed, which I greatly enjoy."

"But to be fair, in a nod to her traditions, we chose to live in our own home rather than a multi-generational arrangement, as is thyrene custom."

"Sweetie, plenty of humans live in multi-generational homes."

"Can you not print that last bit? My mom reads your magazine."

-Dyo (34) & Melynie (28) Sledge, Newlyweds