Webberly Rattenkraft
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factrat.bsky.social
Webberly Rattenkraft
@factrat.bsky.social
920 followers 440 following 1.4K posts
Erstwhile lab rat, current bon vivant. Insisting on persisting in this relentlessly roiling morass of madness.

Love is real, Love is the Answer, Love is the fulfillment of the Law. We will fix our hearts or die.

Fun Fact: I love you. Yes, even *you*.
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factrat.bsky.social
Had another delivery to Silent Hill today. I'm glad that customer doesn't order very often, because this place always gives me a serious case of the creeps.
A fog envelopes the landscape, visibility is maybe a hundred feet. Two trees in the foreground are somewhat visible through the fog, but everything beyond them is sort of a vague blur. I'm telling you, this was some thick, nasty fog.
December 17, 2025 at 10:43 PM
factrat.bsky.social
Check out the back cover, eh? Happy blurbs from @markhamillofficial.bsky.social *and* @derfbackderf.bsky.social, right? And it's so sturdily solid, perfectly embodying the satisfying chonk of a hefty new volume and you shove your snoot into it and drink in that New Glossy Book smell and mmmmm
This is the back cover of OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE, featuring a promise that you can, quote, relive the trauma of the last five years through the Pulitzer-nominated cartoons of Tom Tomorrow, from the early days of the pandemic, to the Biden interregnum, and finally into the incomprehensible, malevolent chaos of Trump's second term. It's a laugh a minute, end quote! Also, there are effusive blurbs from both Mark Hamill and Derf Backderf, so, come on, what more do you want?!?
December 16, 2025 at 5:43 AM
factrat.bsky.social
W00t! My quest to spread goodness this dreadful day just now received one right-danged energizing boot up its metaphorical rear with the USPS-facilitated arrival of @tomtomorrow.bsky.social’s newly Kickstartered volume, OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE! I've been a fan since... before. What even is time?
Behold the cover of the incisively sardonic but always echt menschlich Tom Tomorrow's newest collection of his "This Modern World" comics, in which Sparky the Wonder Penguin takes center stage, surrounded by the grotesque and somewhat melted faces of Trump, Vance, RFK Jr, and the Nazi Stephen Miller, plus a bunch of floating eyes suggesting paranoia and madness.
December 16, 2025 at 5:29 AM
factrat.bsky.social
Fun Fact: If anybody out there needs a stock photo illustrating “wildlife persisting after the Fall of Mankind,” I think I might just have the perfect image for you. Please don't right-click and save it, give me some money for it maybe?
A young deer hesitantly steps past an industrial building of ambiguous purpose, featuring an array of clouded-over glass panes, thoroughly rusted and corroded metal frames, and a small assembly of dank pipes on the right. The overall vibe suggests that all the humans are dead, and wildlife is tentatively reclaiming the spaces they were for so long banished from.
December 16, 2025 at 4:29 AM
factrat.bsky.social
A pretty wretched day, vibes-wise, eh? One of the absolute worst of us cruelly, crudely gloating over our collective loss of one of the absolute best of us.
Pfui.
Here, have a photo of a stylish critter I encountered during a delivery in Tiburon, it might help?
One of our ubiquitous Bay Area deer-folk takes a moment out of a busy day of grazing and pooping to offer a reasonably handsome pose, framed top and right against a mostly white background by what I think is maybe a lemon tree? Not one of the greatest leggy mammal poses, to be honest. It's not like he's rampant or anything, but, you know, considering I wasn't paying him, what did I even expect? Anyway, maybe it was merely in service of his ego, but I also got a pretty cool photo out of it, so who's to say it's Weird?
December 16, 2025 at 4:06 AM
factrat.bsky.social
W00t, made it back from deliveries just in time for #TheLastDriveIn, a precious time in the Lair when we all put aside our individual channel preferences and unite in shared worship of The Drive-In.

Apropos nichts, been seeing more of these “Fuck off, ICE” signs. Warms my heart, it does.
#FuckICE
A sign stating, in no uncertain terms, "No ICE Access in This Business," informing law enforcement and immigration agents that entry requires a judicial warrant. It goes into delightfully specific and elaborate factual detail about why ICE have no goddamn right to do any of this shit.
December 13, 2025 at 2:03 AM
factrat.bsky.social
Oh yeah, here's one right solid plunge into a soothing bath of Bay Area mascot facts, fun fact, with the added spice of a panel of Furries judging matters Anthropomorphic as only Furries can.

In response, here's my suggestion for the most obscure Bay Area sports mascot. D’ye ken?
A portrait of a sports mascot having a delightful interaction with a young fan enchanted by this strange new creature. The mascot's physical form is an anthropomorphic rocket with a jaunty grin—a classic sci-fi "silver needle" missile given arms, legs, and an attitude. The color scheme is overall gray, as befitting a rocket, but red and black highlights plus brown cowboy gloves give him the overall look of a fun adventurer type. While he himself is clearly a rocket, he also has a utility belt containing what some might presume are smaller rockets? Anyway, the conceit of this post is that you're supposed to guess who this character is. The fact that his team's name is clearly emblazoned on his chest serves as a pretty clear hint for those who find no shame in seeking puzzle answers in Google searches.
December 11, 2025 at 3:32 AM
factrat.bsky.social
Shock R. Ray has gotta be feeling a little left out, though.
Shock R. Ray, a Pacific eagle ray-based character who served as the mascot for the 2001 WUSA National Champions, the San Jose CyberRays. He's posing proudly in front of the banner proclaiming their victory. He's got big purple eyes, and big swoopy arm-wings that nicely mimic the flappity-flappers of actual rays, purple underneath and black on the back. He's snappily dressed in a team jersey and traditional cartoony white gloves, although once you learn about the whole minstrel show connection, they sort of lose their childhood charm, fun fact.
December 10, 2025 at 8:55 PM
factrat.bsky.social
Fun Fact Follow-Up Followed-Up: It finally arrived! Just when I was starting to wonder if this whole freaky farrago of an affair might have been one of those things that only happened in my head¹, look what done landed in the Lair's mailbox today, eh?
_______
1. I.e., did I only dream it?
This? Oh, nothing much, just a photograph of the actual, concrete, physical, molecularly literally real paper-made-from-pulp-made-from-trees first issue of THE END TIMES, a newspaper from a parallel post-apocalyptic timeline what you can hold in your grubby little hands like a real thing. If anybody needs me, I will be over in a corner rubbing this delight all over my brain for the next few hours.
November 26, 2025 at 3:54 AM
factrat.bsky.social
A movie that takes place where you're from.

(CHARLY, 1968)
A happy human (Cliff Robertson) and a happy lab mouse (identity lost to history) share a heart-warming moment of basic mammalian connection via one-on-one play, both unaware that they also share a future of getting utterly, marrow-deep Fucked by Science.
November 23, 2025 at 9:55 PM
factrat.bsky.social
UPDATE! It arrived! It's officially #bookmail now! Go ahead, *gape* at this haul! Not just the zine in question, but also a mighty load of awesome extras from artist @patricbates.bsky.social, I'm gonna have to take this @orringrey.com frood's advice and get myself some more of his creations!
Against a weirdly-textured maybe red velvet? background lies Orrin Grey's "Starlight Theater Halloween Double-Feature," which is the zine what I bought and said you should buy, but hokey-methylated-smokes did I get more, a dazzling array of bonus art thanks to Patrick Bates, illustrator of the volume in question. There's a 16"x20" (?) poster tribute to The Nightmare Before Christmas done in pen&ink plus watercolor, a lovely print of a 3D relief of an assortment of ghoulish critters emerging from the closet underneath the stairs to gape at a ringing telephone, a bookmark fulla skeletons, and even a personalized card with even more art inside!
October 3, 2025 at 1:08 AM
factrat.bsky.social
Uhhh... right, trying to boost positivity or w'ever, yup, check out this #bookmail of late from @eibonpress.bsky.social and @vinsyn.bsky.social, eh?

You gotta have ovoids like church bells to try to create sequels to Fulci's ZOMBIE and THE NEW YORK RIPPER, but these gorgeous bastards pulled it off!
What we have here is one rat's sincere attempt to make a nifty photo array of three (technically two) graphic novels from the essential Eibon Press, recently rescued by the equally essential Vinegar Syndrome. In the middle is ZOMBIE II, featuring the stars of Lucio Fulci's ZOMBIE, Ian McCulloch and Tisa Farrow, in an extremely James Bond and Bond Girl pose. Don't worry, it will live up to that cover. Left and right are the two different covers for the two different editions of THE NEW YORK RIPPER. I'm running out of steam here, so if you want to know the difference between the two editions, let me know. Otherwise, I'm gonna go nap.
August 23, 2025 at 10:02 PM
factrat.bsky.social
Oh, right, I was attempting to boost positivity into this relentlessly wretched realm, this dumbest of all possible timelines, this... I mean, fuck all this nowaday Nazi shit, eh? Uhhh... hey, look! It's books! What a handy refuge from our daily meat-grinder reality, eh?
I'm going to be honest with you. This is a photo of some of my To Be Read piles, and there's way too many damned books therein for me to name. I like to think the composition is both dynamic and buoyant, but who knows, right? Not very helpful if you can't see it. Anyway, basically there are two columns, so if you want to pick a random number from 1 to 24, and a column from A or B, I'll read that book for you and I will let you know one rat's opinion.
August 20, 2025 at 7:12 AM
factrat.bsky.social
Bookmail! I love when multiple pre-orders drop! There's @chucktingle.bsky.social's LUCKY DAY, because how do you not pounce right the heck away on an upcoming release from that mensch, eh? Plus @haileypiperfights.bsky.social's A GAME IN YELLOW¹, because, I mean... CRANBERRY COVE, right? VHRRI²!
It's books! Pre-ordered, newly-released books! The inimitable Chuck Tingle's LUCKY DAY has cover art featuring a visual riff on the King of Hearts playing card, traditionally depicted as looking like he's shoving a sword through his becrownèd head (tho it's meant to pass behind his head, in this case it's clearly piercing his skull), but while both Kings have untraditionally popped out an eyeball in the process, the 180° symmetry of face cards is otherwise violated, as the top King's head has flesh and the bottom King's lacks same, plus there's luck symbols and Void Sign and does anyone need this level of detail? Yikes. Anyway, Hailey Piper's A GAME IN YELLOW features the sort of artistically drippy erotic nude image framed by a background of bright yellow and bold pink title typeface that would scream "RENT ME!!" in any video rental place with a giallo section.
August 14, 2025 at 2:10 AM
factrat.bsky.social
It creeps. Of course your To Read stack is under control, don't be gauche. You're the Rat Who Reads, mein Nagebro! You'll get to them all soon enough, eh?

But it creeps. There's a subtle rustling. You'd swear that pile used to be smaller. And... wasn't that corner empty before?

It creeps.
This offshoot of the main TBR stack is quietly spreading, stealthily adding books to the pile when it thinks nobody's looking. So many books. Please don't make me list them all, lest I discover books that no one remembers buying. Private requests will be entertained as appropriate. I know, compositionally speaking, there's a great big yawningly empty gap in the top left corner, but did you ever think that maybe it was ordained to be that way, or maybe it's Art On Purpose, or maybe you just think too fucking much?
July 4, 2025 at 6:57 PM
factrat.bsky.social
Check this out, eh? Here's Korrok giving a Death Stare to whomever gifted us this shitweed, but I have a sneaking suspicion that he's also glaring at me personally, wondering if I'm ever going to back up all my talk about how bad things have gotten with any kind of actual action. Yikes. Ow. #ow
Here's my good pal Korrok, a one-eyed, blue-eyed creature with a sort of Admiral Ackbar color palette and very strong opinions about politics. He's staring directly at you, because he's wondering if you're gonna stand up in these times of murderous fascism, or if you're just gonna lie back and hope everything somehow works out. And by "you," I kinda mean "me," because he's really making me seriously question what I'm willing to do to stop "all this fucking fascism," eh?
June 23, 2025 at 3:02 AM
factrat.bsky.social
Hey, speaking of delightful surprises brought by mail, check out this treat what the postm'n done brung me, eh? Got myself a great big box of #Munchkin, I did, but this was the clear outstander among all the many lovelies!
A display of some of the highlights of the MUNCHKIN RATS expansion for MUNCHKIN, a card game that boils the experience of dungeon crawling down to the very basics of "Kill the monsters, steal the loot, betray your companions." So many rat puns! Fearsome beasts you might face include the Gym Rat, the Pie-Rat, and the dreaded Lab Rat. Plus there are rat-based bonus cards and such!
June 21, 2025 at 2:40 AM
factrat.bsky.social
Yowza, going full-metal-nitpicker on a simple attempt to take a photo of part of my To Read pile¹ successfully kept my mind off... you know, fucking *EVERYTHING*?!, for thirty minutes. Highly Ratty-Recommended Indeed as a way to zone out for a bit! Growlix's judgmental glare² just fed my fire!
Hoo-boy, this is a lot to describe. While Webberly calls this chaotic mess his "To Read pile," it's really just an assortment of heaps, stacks, and slouching pillars of books, vaguely arranged by theme, author, or impulse. Growlix the Lookah Bear stares in a judgmental fashion at the books that somehow ended up sorted into a basin with the horror coffees. Jeezum-Crow, please don't make me type in all these authors and titles. Should anyone ever read these words and have a legit need for me to specify what's in the photo, fine, just... when you demand, be kind, eh?
June 14, 2025 at 6:29 PM
factrat.bsky.social
UPDATE: Look what the latest #bookmail done brung me, eh? Check out this incredible back cover pitch: "Asher Black is one of—if not the best thieves in the town of Majestic Forest. He's also a squirrel."

There's more, but em-dash fail aside, fucking *SOLD*, right?
#squorror #ShowUsYourNuts
The Lair's official travel mascot, a plush panda named Monium, proudly displays a copy of Patrick Barb's new novella THE NUT HOUSE. The cover features a low-angle view from behind assorted critters looking up at a possibly abandoned house with an overgrown lawn. It looms over them all most ominously.
June 14, 2025 at 1:29 AM
factrat.bsky.social
Look, I'm not meaning to say anything, but I'm just saying that if you want people to be scared of your movie's Satan figure or whomever, maybe don't make them all heckin' digitigrade tail-hoisting sexy-hawt, maybe?
#TheLastDriveIn #MutantFam
On the left is one demonically sexy demon, with the classic hoofy action stance and tail proudly curled high, clearly all set to launch into one epic knock-down, drag-out ass-kicking brawl. On the right, facing them down, is one human warrior, admittedly also classically superhero-sexy, and she's got some weapon or other. Shit is about to get real, fun fact.
June 7, 2025 at 5:59 AM
factrat.bsky.social
Don't wanna brag about where I am right now, but, uh.....
That's right, I'm in the Orinda Theater watching the new CKMT documentary, but I'm gathering death stares, sorry, gotta shut this down, the point is, the pic is from the very first CKMT season, wow, Balrok was so young!
June 1, 2025 at 2:06 AM
factrat.bsky.social
Even after she moved in, Prickles at first only trusted Momma Kobold. She would always just happen to be where MK was, and should anyone else enter her space, she would very nonchalantly just happen to need to be somewhere else. I won her over, though! Look at this shot she let me take!
It took forever for Prickles to relax enough to let a rat sprawl himself out on the floor in front of her to get a fancy-pants low-angle shot while she subtly glammed it all the H up, but in the end, we got the shot. We all loved you, Prickles.
May 11, 2025 at 7:23 PM
factrat.bsky.social
We knew this day was coming, and on Friday it came. Prickles was maybe twenty years old? She'd orbited the Lair for years, a shy, shaggy spectre, reluctantly accepting our nightly dinner offerings until she finally deigned to accept our offer of shelter.
A disappointingly beige-toned photo of our recently late and forever lamented Prickles lounging in her hooded bed. She's staring contemplatively into the middle distance, as was her wont.
May 11, 2025 at 7:04 PM
factrat.bsky.social
BookMail Update!

Sweet hickory-smoked pine-scented fudgulating ¡kerDANGUS! but that was fast! Check it out, look at what rich bounty the postm'n just brung me, eh? Thanks, @dimshores.bsky.social!
Hoot mon, what an array, eh? We've got Scott Nicolay's newest novella CATERPILLARS, plus Kurt Fawver's novella THE THIRTEEN WAYS WE TURNED DARRYL DATSON INTO A MONSTER, and Dim Shores also included a cool assortment of stickers and bookmarks, I love it when small presses do that, fun fact!
February 22, 2025 at 2:08 AM
factrat.bsky.social
SO ANYWAY, here's the Big Reveal! It's the February 2025 haul from monthly subscription service Night Worms, are they awesome or what, eh? Haven't heard of either book, but I trust Night Worms' judgment, they just don't disappoint, fun fact. #NightWorms
The February subscription package from Night Worms is displayed, spread against a plaid background, as a Noir Penguin appreciates the spread and poor Growlix the Lookah Bear lies supine, gobsmacked by the splendor revealed. MASK OF THE DEER WOMAN, a novel by Laurie R Dove AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GARDEN, a novel by Camilla Bruce Plus some milk chocolate cinnamon cocoa from Moonstruck of Portland, Oregon and cool stickers plus a bookmark, you get a load of cool stuff from Night Worms, fun fact!
February 15, 2025 at 3:36 AM