Did I Daydream This, Or Was There A Website For Writers With Like. A Ridiculous Quantity Of Descriptive

Chai tea bag + lil but of brown sugar + apple cider packet + 16 oz. mug of hot but not quite boiling water

it will not Fix You but like. maybe. maybe.

So, tattoo shop AUs are really popping off lately and personally I love it. What’s more romantic than bleeding for art? Nothing!

But as someone married to a tattoo artist, I have been experiencing some mild She Wouldn’t Say That regarding tattoo culture. So here’s a few quick tips that may help inform your AU. With a grain of salt for my mostly-second-hand knowledge:

NO ONE REPUTABLE SHOP WILL TATTOO A DRUNK PERSON. EVER. or even a person they suspect of any kind of inebriation. This is not just for Regret reasons, but also because alcohol is a blood thinner. If someone is on an acute dose of blood thinners, you generally do not want to stab them dozens of times per second.

Maybe this is regional, but in my experience most tattoo places don’t call themselves parlors anymore. It has a kind of seedy vibe. I see shop or studio a lot but rarely parlor.

Most tattoo artists are hot, yes, but none are as hot at my wife

Tattooing janks up your hands. Sometimes in a RSI way but definitely in a changing-gloves-every-five-minutes-fucks-up-your-skin way.

Artists themselves are rarely if ever employees of the shop. They will be independent contractors who pay the shop either a cut of their sales or rent on their station like a hair dresser. They are also (usually) responsible for taking care of their own supplies, tools, etc. except for the stencil printer. What kind of dweeb would have their own stencil printer?

There is always a line for the stencil printer. Always.

Artists generally spend orders of magnitude more time working on art, replying to emails, doing consults, etc compared to time with their needles in skin.

A typical schedule for an artist might be: wake up at noon and guzzle half her body weight in coffee, one appointment from 1-4, and another from 6-9. Home to eat one (1) real meal at 10 pm. Drawing until 5 am. This is good for her actually and good for our marriage and she’s so healthy all the time.

An ideal shop receptionist needs to be friendly, knowledgeable, and encouraging. They also need to be willing to get out the baseball bat that is kept behind the counter.

If a shop has to choose between “good people skills” and “will promptly rebuff Nazis and the obviously inebriated” the later is often a more important consideration.

At any given moment in any given shop there’s going to be at least one apprentice or someone bumming around hoping to be taken on as an apprentice. They spawn on tic and this feature cannot be disabled.

Again I can not overstate how hot my wife is

I get why fantasy authors would default to using, like, the same basic arrangement of seasons and weather and gravity that we have here in The Real World because they have to make up so much shit as it is and it IS probably good praxis to give your readers some familiar touchstones in your world so they can just focus on the plot, but. having said that. I think there should be more settings that have seventeen seasons, all of them different lengths, and constellations that don't have fixed patterns because sometimes they'll get pissy and just move to a different part of the sky, and sometimes the sun tells people things telepathically, and there's a type of weather where the air just gets really thick and difficult to walk through that's unpleasant but not any more uncommon than rain. it's called smärklf.

closely related to sharks but with long, flat bodies and wing-like pectoral fins, mobula rays are ideally suited to swooping through the water - here off the gulf of california - yet seem equally at home in the air, so much so that they have earned the name “flying rays”. mobula rays can reach heights of more than two metres, remaining airborne for several seconds. 

mobula rays are quite elusive and difficult to study, so biologists are not quite sure why they jump out of the water. theories vary from a means of communication, to a mating ritual (though both males and females jump), or as a way to shed themselves of parasites. they could also be jumping as a way of better corralling their pray, as seen with them swimming in a circular formation. 

what is known about mobula rays is that they reach sexual maturity late and their investment in their offspring is more akin to mammals than other fishes, usually producing just a single pup after long pregnancies, all of which makes them extremely vulnerable to commercial fishing, especially as a species that likes to come together in large groups.

Creative & DIY

Feels like I should post these here as well - Chinese makeup elements iconic to Mulan’s era!

Meaning the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the Sui dynasty, or the Tang dynasty (~400-900 CE). These few hundred years were when aesthetic styles in China were at their boldest.

My Instagram

My Chinese history tweet collections

You CAN do deep squats, my friend!

sewing patterns for bugs! (pt 1)

these are just some I found on etsy. please add more you know about!

giant tropical velvet worm pattern by LilLeviathan

aphid plush pattern inspired by Grounded by TheWeaversTools

tarantula pattern (there's a crochet version, too) by LarriecraftsNL

jester the snail pattern by Oddnest

bee plush pattern and fruit fly plush pattern by CirquellCuriosities

isopod plush that stays rolled up with snaps or velcro by CholyKnight

snail plush pattern by CholyKnight

moth and butterfly plush pattern by CholyKnight

dragonfly plush pattern by CholyKnight

//Absurdly helpful for people writing royal characters and/or characters who interact with royalty and members of the nobility.

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grounding techniques, ok 5 things i can see. ugly man. shitty palm tree. clear evidence of air pollution. conservative bumper stickers. roadkill. why do i feel worse