Light Between Shadows - Scene 5, P2

Which search engine is best for academic research? Hint: It's not Wikipedia

PubMed

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Available to the public online since 1996, PubMed was developed and is maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), located at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

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i use "save as draft" to bookmark posts i wanna keep for later

Happy Make A Terrible Comic Day 2024!!! I hope you enjoy participating in this annual tradition which we’ve all done for ages!!! You must participate so you might as well enjoy it!!!

If you make a comic (again, it’s mandatory) and you want to share it, post it on the tag #makeaterriblecomicday2024! Or don’t, I’m not a fucking cop.

Remember, the goal is to make something terrible! So if you can’t draw or have never made a comic, or if it’s just been ages since you made something just for fun — that’s perfect! You’re all set! If you fuck up and make something that’s NOT terrible… well, some might say there’s a joy to that too.

Ok stop reading this and go make something!!!

just a heads up this is my art blog, where henceforth I mostly put only my stuff. Exceptions are mostly things I forgor to switch to my reblog blog for.

for cute creatures and other peoples arts and memes:

Light Between Shadows - Scene 2 part 3

>Read in order<

You don't think matcha is tea????

Matcha isn't a Tea in my humble Opinion.

Matcha is an expirience.

The year is 2009, the place is the University of Hawai'i at Manoa in Honolulu, and I am recovering from a still-undiagnosed disease that left me with a 100+ degree for over three weeks, extreme weight loss and permanent Brain Damage.I have signed up for an introductry History of Japanese Art class because I need an additional Humanities credit. It's called "The History and Philosophy of the Japanese Tea Ceremony", and for a class I can only sort of remember, it stands out.

So I'm in professor Roberts' Japanese Art and History class, looking and feeling like death warmed over, but I'm genuinely interested in the subject matter and show up to every class because I have nothing better to do, and ask questions and turn in my homework, even if neither are particularly coherent at times, and rapidly become his favorite student. The thing I learned in public school was how to show up to events even if I don't want to, analyze tests and other written materials for patterns and charm educators by holding up my end of a conversation, skills that have served me in the modern world far more than they actually should.

One of the things we're paying particular attention to in class is the Tea Ceremony, and I am enthralled. The event takes a good month to prepare and the entire evening to carry out- the guest list is curated to create social bonds and intellectual stimulation alike, a poem is composed for the season, and a flower arrangement of plants of the time created to decorate the space. When the guests arrive, they must all crawl through a small door to enter the tea garden, regardless of profession or rank. Hands are ritually washed in spring water, and there is a slow processional walk through the garden, to admire the artistry of the landscaping, and the composition of seasonal elements to create this particular night of beauty. The entire ceremony is about appreciating both the joy of existing right now, in this time and place, and the unification of the self and the universe and the endless cycles of nature.

The guests arrive at the tea house and meet the Tea Master, who will be making the matcha that evening. The guests are seated in particular order, the Most Revered Guest- sometimes a high-ranking official, sometimes a visiting scholar or artist- is seated closest to the Tea Master. The Poem is read aloud. The flowers are admired. The tools for making the Matcha are taken out, examined as objects of art, and their history told. The matcha powder itself is taken out- the case examined, the cultivation of the tea discussed, and only then does the Tea Master make the Tea.

Matcha is not brewed- it's a fine power made of crushed green tea leaves, and the powder is whisked together with not-quite-boiling water in a bowl to create a much more substantial and flavorful drink. This drink is presented to the Most Honored Guest first, who is expected to take a sip and, in a moment of Zen spiritual clarity, comment on it's flavor and how all the elements of the tea, art, garden and season all complement each other, and perhaps offer some sort of philosophical statement.

At least,

That's how it's supposed to go.

About a month before the spring semester is over, Professor Robert announces that he has a suprise for his class- a good friend of his, a Professional Tea Master, will be visiting Hawai'i, and has agreed to preform a Tea Ceremony for our class! I am very excited. The other 10 people in class are varying levels of amiably confused to distressed by having to go to An Event (TM) for a grade, but agree. One of my classmates, an astrology hoe named Jessica who lived in the dorm room immediately above mine and of whom I was very fond because even though she was deathly afraid of spiders, refused to hurt them and would periodically caterwaul out the window for me to please come get the spider out of her shower and would make me macaroni and cheese for doing so, pointed out that with the 11 students, Professor Robert, and the Tea Master, there will be 13 people present, which is basically inviting disaster.

"Jessica." Sighed Professor Robert. "It's a tea ceremony. What disaster could happen?"

Despite Jessica's misgivings, Preparations for the ceremony went on. We learned about Ikebana while deciding on the Ceremonia Boquet and tried our hands at it with what Professor Robert could get at the grocery stor for $12. We learn about calligraphy and different types of poetic compositions while making the Seasonal Poem, and stain the hell out of the classroom carpet learning the brush strokes. We learn about different types of Matcha Bowl sculpting and glazing and we are not allowed to touch the demonstration bowls or the kiln because Professor Roberts was beginning to suspect that some of his students, but especially me, were suffering from coordination issues. I apply myself with zeal, if not necessarily talent. I was, at the time, an art major, but my professors in the art department had been grading me on a secret "this bitch almost died last semester and is re-learning how to hold a pencil" curve, and boy howdy did I stumble and break leaves and splatter ink like it.

Despite my ongoing unmonitored recovery, Professor Roberts veiwed my enthusiastic class participation with rose-colored glasses, and about a week before the ceremony we had a class where he brought out the used Kimonos and Obi and other forms of japanese dress he'd borrowed from the theater department so that we would be traditionally dressed(ish) and expirience the ceremony authentically. While people were trying on clothes to see what would fit, he took me aside and told me he wanted me to be in the position of Most Honored Guest, the person who makes the zen statement upon which the entire event hinges.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" I asked.

"You're the only person who doesn't fall asleep in class and you talked about how the flowers stagger their blooms to not compete for the bees- you're perfectly engaged and concious of the seasons!" He said, blindly. "You will need different shoes though." He indicated my flip-flops. "I won't make you learn how to walk in Geta, but nothing with Heels. Ballet flats are fine."

"...These are the only shoes I own." I said.

Professor Roberts stared at me.

"-I used to have a pair of sneakers but I think a homeless guy stole them while I was at the beach last month."

"What?" Roberts blinked.

"He probably needed them more than I do. I'll see if I can borrow some flats."

"...I don't think I've ever met a woman with less than 10 pairs of shoes." Said Roberts.

"I'm not a woman, I'm and undergrad." I said, still three years away from learning the term 'Nonbinary'. "Those are Jordan's only pair of shorts too, you know." I pointed at my classmate, who had been wearing the one (1) pair of basketball shorts the entire semester.

"I WASH THEM." Jordan shouted defensively, wearing the longest Men's Kinmon the theater department had, which barely came down to the top of his calves.

"Oh God." Said Roberts, a horrifying new world opening up to him like an expired tub of sour cream.

*

It was the day of the Ceremony.

The Seasonal Theme we'd worked on was "The Turn Of Summer", and the weather was complying maliciously.

Normally, Tea Ceremonies are scheduled for the more temperate evening, but due to the school needing to host something in the adjoining cultural center later, we could only use the Tea Garden in the middle of the afternoon, and the summer sun was a sweltering 98 degrees and a similar level of Humidity. The Camelias were melting.

Where Jordan had difficullty finding a Kimono that suited his ent-like proportions, I'd had the opposite problem and the only Kimono short enough to trip my Hobbit-sized self was a Girl's size. My roommate had helped me get into the Kimono and Obi before the ceremony, and leant me a pair of her Ballet Flats, but we discovered an issue- this Kimono was designed for a flat-chested prebuescent youth, and even though I barely scraped 5'0", I had the robust proportions of an Irish Pesant, and the only way to avoid displaying a frankly offensive amount of cleavage was to use the widest Obi we could find and sort of tuck my boobs into it.

"Hm" I said. "Kind of hard to breathe."

"Yeah, but you're sitting for most of it, right? It can't last more than an hour, so just like, shuffle and don't talk much?" She suggested.

To her credit, the first forty-five minutes of the ceremony only involved shuffling through the gardens and not talking while the Tea Master lectured us on some of the finer points of the garden's design.

But then we got to the Tea House- a small structure only barely able t accomodate the 13 of us, which was in the shade but hotter than the outside because of the roaring fire in the middle of the room, where the water for the Matcha was boiling. The room was surrounded by a narrow sort of porch, part of which hung over the Koi pond, where several massively overfed carp blurbled expectantly for treats at the arrival of humans. I sat down, legs folded under me like Professor Roberts had insisted, and realized that this pushed the Obi UP, and now my ribcage was being compressed in all directions.

I tried to pay attention to the rest of the ceremony, but two and a half hours is an awfully long time to listen about lecture's you've already heard when your body is undergoing a sort of internal horserace to see if the heastroke, sciatica pain and numbness, allergies or suffocation-by-compression will cause you to pass out first. My legs had gone numb below the knee by the time we were done with the flower arrangement. My entire legs were numb before we were done with the Poem. By the time the Tea Utensils came out, I was seeing spots of colored light in my vision and could only breathe if I focused on it very, very hard.

But! The ceremony was genuinely interesting! and Professor roberts was counting on me! So I did my best not to sway or throw up from watching the Tea Master whisk the Matcha, and dutifully took the bowl with a pair of hands that felt like slabs of ham that I was attempting to puppet from another dimension, and took a sip.

They say that Smell and Taste are fare more closely connected to the emotional centers of the brain than any other sense, and I believe it because the instant I inhaled both the grassy, powdery smell, and tasted the moderately viscous liquid, I expirenced an intense flashbulb memory back to a previous late May-

The Year was '98, the place was my elementary school art room, and we'd been using the seasonal hot weather to paint on a massive scale as the art dried quickly- each third-grader had been given a roll of butcher paper, a cheap brush, squirts of non-toxic paint and a water cup, and allowed to go hog-wild on our murals, and the rush of creative energy and the imminent sense of freedom as the semester drew to a close truly embodied the summer of youth, carefree but with an almost psychotic fervor, where lack of care was both freeing and dangerous as you lost track of your surroundings in the act of creation-

Which isn't a bad seasonal-philosophical connection statement to make, but the actual words that came out of my mouth were:



"Wow. This is tastes exactly like paint."



The first sound I heard after the moment of silence was the cartoonishly loud gasp of horror from Professor Roberts, which was almost immediately drowned out by the thunderclap of laughter from the Tea Master, slapping his thighs and wiping tears from his face, unable to stop. I desperately tried to explain the connection between the fact I might be dying of heat stroke right now, and how I ended up drinking my paint water back in Mrs. Krantz's art class because I was also kind of dying of heat stroke, but mostly ended up wheezing half-formed sentences as the rest of the class took sips and offered opinons varying between "Wow, that's thick. Like a Hot smoothie." and "Oh yeah, it tastes like summer. Like how a freshly-mowed lawn smells like summer." and Professor Roberts slowly melted into a pile of shame, the Tea Master slapping him on the back, still howling with laughter.

"They're honest! Nobody else will be honest! This is magnificent!" he wheeezed.

Eventually, everyone had thier taste, and the ceremony was concluded. The second the Tea Master had packed up his tools and stepped outside for a breath, Professor Roberts was in my face.

"HOW YOU COULD YOU SAY THAT?" he hissed, grabbing my arm and pulling me up. "GO APOLOGIZE RIGHT NOW!" he shoved me out onto the porch where the Tea Master was looking at the Koi, who had started bubble-begging aggressively again.

Except that my legs felt like blocks of wood that my pelvis was renting from another dimension and hadn't read the manual on how to actually stand, my vision was entirely static between the dehydration and lack of oxygen, and my vestibuar system had fucked off an hour ago, leaving me to stay upright by the virtue of the Obi. So instead of bowing and apologizing profusely like my professor expected, what I actually did was stumble out of the room, say something like "Hsdfkf" and topple head-first into the koi pond.

Fortunately, the impact of the bottom of the pond with the top of my skull activated a sort of last-resort emergency self preservation system and I inhaled with enough force to break the Obi-Jime and probably a couple ribs from the pain that hit both my sides like lighting. Unfortunately, the thing I was inhaling was fish-shit riddled Pond Water, so my emergency self-preservation system ordered an even harder Exhale.

The Tea Master, to his immense credit, had immediately jumped in after me, and pulled me upright just in time for me to forcibly exhale half a gallon of rancid pond water directly in his face, then start screaming, which is an extremely appropriate reaction to have because it alerts everyone that you require medical attention, but is very unpleasant to expirience from four inches away, which is probably why he then immediately dropped me.

Fortunately the pond wasn't very deep and this time I sat there, scream-gasping as my lungs re-inflated, Koi fish burbling and sucking at me with tremendous excitement, until the EMT from the campus clinic arrived, a vanguard before the actual ambulance.

"Okay uh. You're bleeding." he said, cautiously wading into the pond.

I opened my eyes to find that I had apparently acquired a large and profusely bleeding head wound, which had activated some long-supresed Shark Instincts in the Koi, which were eagerly gumming att he streams of blood and trying to suck on my forehead. "That explaines the fish." I said in the distant bliss that only zen masters and people with serious head injuries get to expirience.

"Do you want a towel?" he asked, helping me up.

"No, this is rather refreshing, actually." I said, still absolutely smashed on endorphins, Koi still enthusiastically swarming at my kneecaps.

"I mean like for your-" the EMT Gestured Vaguely at my torso.

I looked down and realized that not only had I broken the Obi-jime, the entire Obi had come undone and was floating several feet away, and I was only wearing the Kimono, fallen completely off my torso and only being held on to by body by the valiant efforts of the Last-resort emergency belt around my waist.

"Professor Roberts?" I stood up all the way, soaking wet, bleeding from my face and head with such force as to create actual streams of blood down my face, neck and chest, tits out, and addressed the poor man standing, white-faced on the deck above the pond. "I don't think I'm going to be in class on Monday-" I paused to fish a small Koi that had gotten trapped in the remains of the now-ruined Kimono, and tossed it back into the pond. "-Can I schedule a make-up exam for the Final?"

"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GET IN THE AMBULANCE!" He screamed.

I was x-rayed for a skull fracture, but my lifelong membership to the Lactose Tolerance Club had protected me, and I happily texted my roommate to come pick me up as "They x-rayed my head and found nothing" while the doctor stiched part of my scalp back toghether.

The following morning, I discovered that Professor Roberts had graded my exam before I took it. 100%. Truly, the best way to get a good grade on your finals is to get a serious head injury.



So, Matcha isn't a Tea, in my Humble Opinion.

Matcha is an Expirience.

And sometimes that expirience is drinking something almost exactly like paint, mortifying your professor, getting a serious head injury, ruining an important cultural ceremony and introducing a bunch of fish to the taste of human flesh.

***

If this made you laugh, there are more funny stories on My Patreon, or you can help support me by tipping my Ko-Fi. Thank You.

Light Between Shadows - scene 1

takes place during Battle for Azeroth: Visions of N'zoth

gonna be doodling my favorite scenes of a script I wrote during lockdown before moving on to fresh TWW ideas.

Light Between Shadows - Scene 4, p1

N'zoth's Horrific Vision of Stormwind ruffles some scales.

>Read in order<

Lady-Duchess Elloel Sunmiststrider

shes the MOST! the math doesn't math! finally making good on whimsical women warcraft oc posting

my OC for Goku Royale 2! She made it 5 rounds before I got knocked out! CW: Body Horror for most of her comics:

Round 1

Round 2

Round 3

Round 4

Round 5 (loss :') )

Additional refs: