deviantART: Popular Winter Pictures in the last 8 hours

Winter's Love

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:56:52 PDT

A picture from a while ago. I got a bit bored earlier so I went back and editted some older pictures. This was taken late this past winter at the neighbourhood park.

Winter's Touch

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:43:18 PDT

This is also an old picture...
My lovely sister, Anastasia, as my model.

Winter Pond Panoramic

Thu, 23 May 2013 23:34:26 PDT

My pond at my old house. actually three pictures mashed together.

Crona Drawing WIP

Thu, 23 May 2013 21:57:07 PDT

My drawing/ painting of Crona from Soul Eater. (just so you know I see Crona as a he and I believe he is a he, if you think otherwise then good for you.)
The drawing is on 18x24 inch mix media paper and the outline is black marker while all the colors are acrylic paint (including the dress thing he wears)
I do not own the character Crona and I think we all know that.
I NEED IDEAS FOR THE BACKGROUND!!!oh well I shall think of something and post the finished product here XP
I know the pictures crappy but I couldn't find my camera and use my laptops camera so the picture quality is pretty bad

The End of the Road Near Copperbane Plateau

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:18:43 PDT

Alternative title: Mother Starfer and Adolescent Foal-Pup.

Fun fact: The slang word for a foal-pup which is used in Escavia's north is quite predictably, 'fop.'

Inspiration: Wildlife and nature photography. The layout (which has been done for weeks now) was inspired by many of the beautiful forest photos that you can see on Tumblr (and here on deviantART as well.)

Animal Species: Escavian Starfer F. Diabolusequus escavianus

Plant Species:

- Northern Fur Grass - safe for Gaian livestock consumption, this species of Rimarian grass is also safe for humans. Briefly flowers white in fall; found in alpine habitat. Endemic to northern Escavia.

- Northern Zebra Bark Tree - similar to poplars and aspens of Earth in appearance. Likes to grow in marshy ground; favoured for its decorative bark and straight grained, clean burning wood is a favoured material. Endemic to the northern half of Escavia above Kirin Desert and to Tarn. Safe for human and livestock to handle as well as inhale fumes from burning wood.

Geographical Location: Northern end of Sapphire Coast Highway near the town of Fletch and the Copperbane plateau. From Tumblr post of layout: ...Copperbane is a wild place, a land of falcolfs and creatures living untouched by human kind, all except for the Fletch. Though Copperbane sits between the more civilized part of Escavia (like Serenity, Seamist) and the mountainous land of the dogmen/northmen, all roads and trails veer around it. It’s sort of like a Bermuda Triangle, just without the plane crashes and ship sinkings. The idea that any roads leading towards it would just suddenly end just adds to that mystique; there’s no established trails going in. The only way you could possibly find your way to the centre is if you had a guide. I’m looking forwards to the day when I can write the novel which will expose all of its mystery.

Yes, the road literally just stops. I'm thinking the Fletch park their supply wagons here and these starfers come sniffing around hoping to raid any food from them. (If starfers lived on Earth, they'd definitely be pulling a Yogi Bear routine upon hapless campers in between... you know... trying to eat the hapless campers.)

Information: Female starfers are shy, wary animals but like on Ancient Gaia there was a golden rule about never getting between a mother bear and her cubs, the same rule applies to starfer dams and their foal-pups. They will generally kill any animal that they see as a threat to their babies, a fact exasperated by the fact that for the first six months of a foal-pup's life, it must stay hidden and camouflaged when its mother is hunting as they lack the muscle mass and size to defend themselves or help their mother catch even small prey. Gestation for starfers is an entire year with their development delayed during the most severe winter months, the fetus going into a unique type of stasis until food becomes more plentiful for its dam again. When born in late spring to early summer foal-pups usually only weigh around ten or fifteen pounds - the size of a domestic cat. They are so small that their mothers must lay down to nurse them, though newborn starfers are not born helpless. Unlike the cats and dogs that hail from Ancient Gaia who are born blind and deaf, foal-pups are born with fully functioning ears and eyes - though it may be a few hours before the foal-pup figures out how to focus its eyes. Much like a horse foal, newborn starfers are also able to run within a few hours. Mother starfers hide their foal-pups in high grass and the deepest foliage that they can find, returning to it to nurse it and keep it warm in cold weather, the vulnerable babies only appearing in the open to play when their mothers are grazing. Though having one foal-pup is most common, experienced mother starfers with territories abundant year-round in resources have been known to have up to three foal-pups at a time.

Starfer dams nurse their foal-pups until four months old, by which time their foal-pup has learned to graze and they begin to learn which plants are safe from their mothers. It is only with the arrival of winter that their mothers introduce them to meat. Mother starfers often lead their foal-pups to lower, more hospitable elevations at this time for the winter and the coat of the baby starfer turns from the muddy black of their infancy to pure white. It is only as spring again comes that yearling baby starfers begin to look more like adults as they shed their snowy nordic baby coats to reveal a summer coat that is a muddier, darker, stripier version of the summer coat that they will sport as adults. They also start to grow a mane and their mothers begin to teach them how to hunt and stalk. Again, in their second winter they turn pure white but when this coat sheds come summer, the winter fur falls away to reveal their full adult markings and colouring, though the foal-pup will not leave their mother until their fourth or fifth spring, learning from her and helping her hunt until then. After this second winter, Escavian starfers do not turn pure white in the winter months ever again, keeping their dark markings through the winter. In contrast, the Thundarican starfer (F. Diabolusequus thundaricanus) turns pure white reliably every winter for its entire life. Starfers typically do not retain their manes in winter, growing them back every summer.

Older foal-pups are often still around when a mother becomes pregnant again and will help her take care of their younger siblings by helping her hunt and protect the new young. Female starfers usually come into heat only once every three years for about a week after the snow melts. Unrelated adult starfers, particularly mature males, are a threat to foal-pups, so female starfers will viciously chase these away, fearing injury to their infants which is why female starfers are preferred over males for making their territories in human occupied lands. (Humans also being hopeful to influence the next generation of starfer that Humans Are Not Food. (Even though they are.)) Mature adult male starfers who are related to a female's foal-pups are not a threat to them, though neither are they a help as they do not participate in the rearing of the young so adult females rarely tolerate them being close unless they are in their heat and even then there are many accounts of Northmen seeing female starfers chasing males away or seriously injuring them. Even the father of the young is not tolerated and is likely to get a hoof or spiny tail to the face if he so much as shows his nose within half a kilometre of a female and her foal-pups. ^{^{If asked about how this species ever procreates, most Northmen will laugh and say that they don't know because nobody has ever actually seen it. (Probably because starfers, like humans, value their privacy.)}}

Starfers are fully sexually and physically mature at eight years old. Not much is known about what they do between the time that they leave their mother and the time they are strong enough to take a permanent summer territory; it is theorised that they may be nomadic and less territorial than their fully adult counterparts. (Note that most mature adult male starfers stay in their alpine territories year round.) Adolescents in this period of life are rarely sighted; it is believed that mortality is high and that they may live in lower elevations than their parents in areas where humans do not live or frequent. The maximum lifespan for a starfer is unknown as most are killed in confrontations with other starfers, prey (such as humans) or in natural accidents such as falls from heights or avalanches. There has never been a report of a sick starfer, so it it believed that they have an incredibly good immunity to disease, if not a complete immunity to getting ill at all. Starfers are also incredibly good at recovering very quickly from injuries, a definite advantage when they risk breaking a leg or rib every time they go out to hunt prey. Starfers have been known to heal from broken bones without any interference and live for years afterwards until some other accident of nature took them.

Beyond hunting and which plants are safe, mother starfers have also been known to teach their young how to avoid human traps, how to read human signs (yes, READ,) and get into chicken coops, human houses and barns. Because of the starfer ability to slip latches, it is strongly advised to humans living in starfer habitats that they bar their doors from the inside and never have large windows at a height that starfers might be able to enter. (Because starfers have also figured out that windows are breakable of course.)

There's even a horror story told in Outpost from the early days of the settlement about a male starfer that once entered a house but nobody realized that it was there until the next morning when it was found standing in the main room, casually chewing on what remained of the grieviously ailing boy that the family had left sleeping by the fire the night before which the starfer had eaten. The starfer matter-of-factly escaped by leaping back out the window that it had broken and the tear-stricken father of the house had to be stopped from chasing after it with his bow as his wife saw it waiting at the edge of the forest. Most likely the starfer was just curious about what the humans would do and probably even it considered its house invasion rather ballsy because the starfer was never reported to try it again. Of course (and this is the part that doesn't usually make it into the horror story though the story in its entirety is commonly told,) the anguished father made sure that the starfer did not invade his home again by setting up nail boards underneath the window, covering the boards with snow, hoping the starfer would step on them and lame itself. The next morning he woke up to find that the starfer had peed on the boards but not stepped on them - obviously it thought this attempt at securing the household was redundant and possibly even hilarious, probably because had it wanted to, it could have just lain in wait for anyone to come out to the detached barn to look after the livestock if it had wanted to eat another member of the family. The man continued trying and failing to seriously hurt the starfer with traps until finally the Escavian police charged him for attempted murder, because while the starfer had been within its rights to eat a human, (particularly a sick one likely to die anyway) as prey, the man obviously was not intending to eat the starfer and was merely trying to kill it for revenge. The man was given two summers of mandatory volunteer work to the Escavian Explorer's Union in punishment where he was made to help study starfers, a special torment which is said to have enlightened him to the fact that the boy's death was actually his own fault for building his house incorrectly so that the starfer had the opportunity to enter it. When he returned from this punishment, he built a new, properly starfer-proof house with the barn connected to it and taught his dogs to bark whenever the starfer so much as poked its nose from the forest. The dogs reportedly annoyed the starfer so much that it decided that it was not very fond of them as neighbours and it moved the home base of its territory to elsewhere in the valley. It is unknown whether that particular starfer ever killed another human as prey, though people who tell the story seem to think it unlikely. The perhaps extremely eccentric starfer in this story is largely and surprisingly fondly regarded as one of the less dangerous of the non-humanized* starfers that humans have encountered and the story of his home invasion is used as incentive for proper northern anti-starfer-home-invasion building practices. One of the man's neighbours even reportedly nicknamed it 'Buddy' because of its habit of playing with one of his dogs. The poor dog was sadly later killed and eaten by another starfer because it thought all starfers were its playmates. (Author's note: It's possible this weirdo starfer was very distantly related to Kazik, because he's weird too.)

Today, most Northmen houses are two story complexes with very thin windows which starfers cannot enter on the main floor. Narrow, twisting staircases or even ladders lead up to the second floor where the family sleeps in what the Northmen call 'coffin beds' - cupboard like beds with horizontal sliding doors which can be latched from the inside. Barns are attached to the house building so that the livestock can help warm the house with their body heat but hay storage is separate. The porches which Northmen like to build on the front of their houses are typically narrow, with not enough space in them for a starfer to stand. There is usually a closable spy slit in the door for making sure that whoever is standing there is not the four-legged, hoofed, fanged variety of neighbour. Wood storage is also inside to avoid late night opportunities for starfers to consume beloved members of the family. Because starfers are particularly likely to make predatory attacks on humans who are sick or hurt, these people are kept inside until they heal or moved to warmer, starfer-free climes if their condition is more permanent. (Unless they actually like living inside constantly.)

It is evident from the adult behaviour and the aggressively protective behaviour of mother starfers that these sentients fear predation even though they are usually believed to be the apex predators of their habitats. It is believed that the aggression in mother starfers roots from the fact that because baby foal-pups are small, they are unlikely to be fast enough to escape attacking predators. Though smaller than male starfers, full grown females are often said to be more dangerous, though they are less likely to risk attacking dangerous prey. (Thus, females are slightly less likely to attack a human as prey than a male starfer, but they are more likely to attack a human for getting too close for their comfort to them or their babies.)

The foal-pup pictured here is actually a yearling. The stripes on the shoulders of this young foal-pup hint at extinct ancestors which may have been fully striped, possibly Richard's (Three Toed) Starfer (F. Triumdigitorum richardus) or the True Three-toed Starfer (F. Verumtriumdigitorum terramtactus.) The pair here are in their wintering habitat, probably ranging up towards their summer turf now that spring has arrived here.

One of my favourite things about starfers? Definitely the fact that I know some of their extinct ancestors! It's fun trying to figure out what Richard's Starfer and the True Three-Toed Starfer looked like in colouring.

I don't really know what sort of sounds starfers make beyond their simple ancestral spoken language. For some reason I can't imagine them growling because starfers always seem like such happy, even joyful animals to me. I think they'd make a sort of eerie, whooping cry to locate each other long range. (Which of course would scare the pants off of nearby humans.) These aren't actually very aggressive creatures. They're very wary and in fact pretty lazy, saving energy whenever they can. I can imagine starfers occasionally passing up chances at prey just because of a plethora of particularly juicy plants in summertime and them going crazy for certain types of mountain fruit or roots, even munching these alongside animals they would normally try to eat but completely ignoring their dinner mates. Humanized starfers would probably go nuts for treats of dried native fruit and pemmican. These guys will eat almost anything and probably have guts of steel, since they eat everything from tree bark to carrion.

I used to think that starfers raised as humans might let people sit on them, you know like a horse, but I don't think you would want to sit on a starfer. Their backs (which are really flexible) would be super bony and not really capable of carrying very much weight. These guys make great hunting, hiking and biology field study buddies, but they would not make great mounts. I don't think they'd like carrying anyone anyway; they'd keep wanting to roll in stuff or jump up things to investigate other things and they would detest having anyone disagree with where they have decided they are going. They would probably end up biting anyone who was dumb enough to try sitting on them. Plus, because they are territorial, they'd have something nasty to say about being asked to leave their turf for any reason other than their lives being in obvious, serious danger.

*Raised by/with humans from a baby.

Dedicated to and everyone else besides me who thinks starfers are awesome!

(c)Rosanna P. Brost. All Rights Reserved!

black and white

Thu, 23 May 2013 20:40:36 PDT

I took this picture today
and for some reason thought
HEY! This looks like I could be Pitch Blacks daughter!
then I thought
maybe i should ask someone elses opinion
so, what do yall think?

Winter's Wild Skyline

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:59:48 PDT

Another picture from my most recent editting spree. This one was taken at one of the ski resorts that my family skis at. This was taken from the top of the run out across the valley some time late winter.

Love

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:27:07 PDT

It's what brings us on, at the end of the day.
It sends smiles and laughter floating our way.
We dance and play, to far away.
Our lives moving, bright especially today.
A world turning, the air waltzing.
Live eternal, love a rhyme.
Breezes fly, children cry.
Spring brings the warmth we wish for.
The summer's day, oceans far away we dream for.
Fall comes near to end the year.
Winter comes soon behind, bringing cold to mind.
The seasons bringing new love in their wake.
Devastation may come and go, Dangers may come near.
But with love around, their is no room for fear.
Springtime rabbits playing fondly, deer in the woods below.
Valentine's day, the day of all love, comes quickly near.
Buy a box of chocolate,Give your lover a big red rose.
When she kisses your cheek, you blush down to your toes.
It's love that gives the lion his roar.
Love that brings men from war.
Love that makes sure that, of happiness, death never tore.
Love, yes love, that brings of life, listen to what's near,
Embrace your family closer, they won't be their every year.

-A poem I wrote...yes another poem..Can someone show me how to put it in that actual writing form? I hate the picture comment style.

Playing Among Memories

Thu, 23 May 2013 20:04:53 PDT

This was taken in late winter/very early spring (though it feels like we didn't actually have a spring this year) at the playground in the next neighbourhood over from mine while a friend and I were scouting for possible cosplay locations.
_{If anyone is curious, I will be doing a lot of cosplaying over the summer as Prussia from Hetalia. Pictures will be posted on this account at a later date.}

Jack Frost

Thu, 23 May 2013 23:20:59 PDT

This is what happens when you let me roleplay with a Jack page...whom my OC ends up falling deeply in love with. This pretty much sums it up.

And of course all this roleplaying has made me fall even more madly in love with Jack despite how insane all my friends and family think I am for it but I don't care, they can go die in a hole if they don't like it because I can't believe how hopelessly in love I am with this guy. Like it's not even funny. He's all I think about and all I dream about and my tummy goes all tingly and fluttery every time I so much as see a picture of him. Don't freaking judge me, mmkay? And I really wish I knew how to make that fancy slash-through text on here now because that'd be perfect for this paragraph, no matter how true it is. ._.

Bubbles

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:37:58 PDT

I don't know, this picture just made me think of bubbles. It was winter time here and I was waiting for my friend to get back into her car. >_<

Emotion in Motion

Thu, 23 May 2013 23:30:56 PDT

Cool winter nights
With the music on
Moonlight falls like rain
Curtains still dance
With the wind in the sky
Sun will be coming up soon
Adapted from the song "Nights are Forever Without You", sung by England Dan and John Ford Coley

Took this picture as the moon was setting over the horizon at 4am just as I finished revising for my test. Nice shot, I dare say...

I'm somehow hooked on the day night illusion thinggy... Don't know why...

Mii and My Best Friends

Thu, 23 May 2013 21:46:43 PDT

I haven't uploaded a picture from my 3DS in a while, so Mii and my best friends(terrible pun is terrible)decided to make on my 3DS XL.They wanted me to tell you who they are so.. Im the one with the hat,Robby. The smokin' hot blonde is Winter(irony), the dark haired totally not emo girl is Chanel, the bad@$$ sexy dude with the green shirt is Triston, the cute girl in yellow is Annabel(A.K.A. Anneyboo), the sexy red head is Ratana, the awesome kid in orange is Mike, and the nigga on the right is Byron(lol they each typed this about themselves, take no offense. I love ya'll lol)