Ok but Tumblr keeps putting stuff from this fandom on my Dash for no reason and this was so GOOD that I literally just threw up my hands went 'dammit fine, this will clearly be my jam!" and ordered the dang book. I hope you're happy you have ensnared a soul, this will probably hurt so much more to watch once I have a hint of context.
Please, Shizun
I adore small art of scenes we will never get in big movies. They are the moments that can most easily be cut, without ever hurting the narrative, but they hold the soul of the work.
Happy Hobbit Day! :D
This one was a beast, but man it was fun.
Once again, the poetry is from my super cool friend, Meg. Who also wrote the poem for this set of drawings. Though, if you asked her, she'd just tell you that she only rhymed what Tolkien wrote in the House of Healing chapter. Regardless, scream some love in the comments for her!
Or- check out her other poems and writings here! She's got a bunch!
With that being said, thank you, Meg, for giving me the proper outlet to draw this scene. I would not have been able to get nearly this far or include this much emotion without you <3
Don't you just love a cozy little fandom? :D
@professorfoglio replied to your post “y'all about to make me never liveblog girl genius...”:
Hey. The whole purpose of this stuff is to entertain. We tried REALLY HARD to not make the novels have any "spoilers", but, I will confess that they DO contain more information than the comic. It's a different medium. Personally, I get a kick out of your updates. I would say, treat any comments you get like we treat fan fiction: we know its there, but we do not allow ourselves to read it, and assume it's all positive. Good luck!
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uh...hi? big fan.
still working on getting through first read but The Horrors are interfering
i uh thanks for the advice!
This series has singlehandedly cured me of my tendancy to roll my eyes at canon divergences...
Update: just listened to the suggested soundtrack and hey guess who just solved a lifelong mystery about what song is in a heirloom musicbox. This series, HONESTLY.
This update comes with a content warning, which you can read here if you're so inclined.
THE FINAL PROBLEM - part 9 of a few more - part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5 - part 6 - part 7 - part 8.
"I struck against an elderly deformed man, who had been behind me, and I knocked down several books which he was carrying. ... I endeavoured to apologize for the accident, but it was evident that these books which I had so unfortunately maltreated were very precious objects in the eyes of their owner. With a snarl of contempt he turned upon his heel."
THE EMPTY HOUSE, part 2 - (part 1) - Several reunions, which do not go exactly to plan.
This is in the Watson's Sketchbook series!
"She's tilting pretty sharply bitchward" would live rent free in my head forever even if it wasn't part of one of the catchiest songs I've ever heard.
I'm still in a Galavant mood, so I'm posting a thing.
If you see this and you've watched Galavant, reblog this with one line from Galavant that you still find yourself saying/singing.
Mine is:
"A new season and it's totally bitchin'."
People forget that you can light a bonfire with a candle; that's what this felt like to me.
Hey, y'all. It's...been a rough couple of weeks. So, I thought--better to light a single candle, right?
If you're familiar with wildlife conservation success stories, then you're likely also familiar with their exact polar opposite. The Northern White Rhino. Conservation's poster child for despair. Our greatest and most high-profile utter failure. We slaughtered them for wealth and status, and applied the brakes too slow. Changed course too late.
We poured everything we had into trying to save them, and we failed.
We lost them. They died. The last surviving male was named Sudan. He died in 2018, elderly and sick. His genetic material is preserved, along with frozen semen from other long-dead males, but only as an exercise in futility. Only two females survive--a mother and daughter, Najin and Fatu.
Both of them are infertile. They still live; but the Northern White Rhinoceros is extinct. Gone forever.
In 2023, an experimental procedure was attempted, a hail-mary desperation play to extract healthy eggs from the surviving females.
It worked.
The extracted eggs were flown to a genetics lab, and artificially fertilized using the sperm of lost Northern males. The frozen semen that we kept, all this time, even after we knew that the only living females were incapable of becoming pregnant.
It worked.
Thirty northern white rhino embryos were created and cryogenically preserved, but with no ability to do anything with them, it was a thin hope at best. In 2024, for the first time, an extremely experimental IVF treatment was attempted on a SOUTHERN white rhino--a related subspecies.
It worked.
The embryo transplanted as part of the experiment had no northern blood--but the pregnancy took. The surgery was safe for the mother. The fetus was healthy. The procedure is viable. Surrogate Southern candidates have already been identified to carry the Northern embryos. Rhinoceros pregnancies are sixteen months long, and the implantation hasn't happened yet. It will take time, before we know. Despair is fast and loud. Hope is slower, softer. Stronger, in the end.
The first round may not take. We'll learn from it. It's what we do. We'll try again. Do better, the next time. Fail again, maybe. Learn more. Try harder.
This will not save the species. Not overnight. The numbers will be very low, with no genetic diversity to speak of. It's a holding action, nothing more.
Nothing less.
One generation won't save a species. But even a single calf will buy us time. Not quite gone, not yet. One more generation. One more endling. One more chance. And if we seize it, we might just get another after that. We're getting damn good at gene editing. At stem-cell research. In the length of a single rhino lifetime, we'll get even better.
For decades, we have been in a holding action with no hope in sight. Researchers, geneticists, environmentalists, wildlife rehabbers. Dedicated and heroic Kenyan rangers have kept the last surviving NWRs under 24/7 armed guard, line-of-sight, eyes-on, never resting, never relaxing their guard. Knowing, all the while, that their vigilance was for nothing. Would save nothing. This is a dead species--an elderly male, two females so closely related that their offspring couldn't interbreed even if they could produce any--and they can't.
Northern white rhino conservation was the most devastatingly hopeless cause in the world.
Two years from now, that dead species may welcome a whole new generation.
It's a holding action, just a holding action, but not "just". There is a monument, at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, where the last white rhinos have lived and will die. It was created at the point where we knew--not believed, knew--that the species was past all hope. It memorializes, by name there were so few, the last of the northern white rhinos. Most of the markers have brief descriptions--where the endling rhino lived, how it was rescued, how it died.
One marker bears only these words: SUDAN | Last male Northern White Rhino.
If even a single surrogate someday bears a son, we have erased the writing on that plaque forever.
All we can manage is a holding action? Then we hold. We hold hard and fast and long, use our fingernails if we have to. But hold. Even and perhaps especially when we are past all hope.
We never know what miracle we might be buying time for.
-Part One
-Part Two
"I moved my head to look at the cabinet behind me. When I turned again Sherlock Holmes was standing smiling at me across my study table. I rose to my feet, stared at him for some seconds in utter amazement, and then it appears that I must have fainted for the first and the last time in my life. Certainly a grey mist swirled before my eyes, and when it cleared I found my collar-ends undone and the tingling after-taste of brandy upon my lips. Holmes was bending over my chair, his flask in his hand. “My dear Watson,” said the well-remembered voice, “I owe you a thousand apologies."
(this is in the Watson's Sketchbook series! but it's also a great standalone to send to your friends to illustrate why sherlock holmes is gay)
also - shoutout to @haedraulics for doing a sketch of mid-hiatus Holmes with long hair that captivated my heart so much I needed to include that idea!
I've spread this earworm to my whole friendgroup XD
If you're visiting my profile for the slur song, here's the spotify link:
Text link if that doesn't work.
You can stream it on YouTube too. I'll update if Apple accidentally approve it.
Thankyou for all your messages, I'll get to them all eventually, promise!
I'd watch this sitcom
They meet at the Secretly Side-Characters Support Group, having all been referred to what they think is a Protagonist Party by well-meaning friends and acquaintances. Hilarity ensues.
A social gathering of dudes who all have serious Main Character Syndrome, but all are wildly different genres. One of them is the "people don't like me because I'm too smart" Misunderstood Genius who isn't actually particularly smart, just mean. Another one thinks he's wisecracking and clever by just talking like a character in a Marvel movie. Third one thinks he's subtly pulling off a mysterious Film Noir vibe by wearing a fedora and spending most of his time internally narrating, and silently staring at people. The fourth one is a deeply dramatic purple prose self-fashioned Byronic Hero who is unaware that he would be a mildly annoying minor antagonist in a Jane Austen novel at best. The fifth one has gotten his entire personality from shounen anime.