I finally finally FINALLY finished this piece what felt like months. I loved this past zzz event and I can't stress enough how much I appreciate them making events revolved around the bangboos it makes me so happy
Belle wanted to show Lighter her new Roscaelifer outfit and I think he likes itttt
ive seen other lighterbelle artists do this scenario before but I wanted to do it too hehehe AND YES I HAND DREW THE BACK DESIGN OF HIS JACKET I WAS ABSOLUTELY CRAZY DEDICATED didnt trace it or ANYTHING JUST STRAIGHT UP KEPT LOOKIKG AT REFERENCES
Been a little (not so little) obsessed with Lighter for about a month now so im putting that energy into lighterbelle my new beloveds 🫶🫶💖💖 LYCABELLE AND KOMABELLE ARE STILL MY FAVS TOO but lighter...god i miss him
I want him to have another rerun its been OVER A YEAR I wanna go for m6 and his wengine so badly 😫😫
Anyways I love lighter so much new obsession and its totally destroying me
SORRY FOR THE INACTIVITY I genuinely keep forgetting I have tumblr
aparently in the latest fantastic 4 comics johnny storm has been in a relationship with an alien, and that would be pretty standard affair for marvel heroes, right.
except someone at marvel with fucking balls of steel and the biggest brain in the known universe made the alien look... actually alien
this is the greatest thing ive seen in my life, is almost enough to make me want to read the comic
I just want to point out the core of what the diffuser did in this conversation
They recognized that the mother was also expressing a vulnerable truth about herself - that she felt like a bad mother because her child was expressing gender feelings she wasn’t equipped to help with - and met her where she was, a concerned parent with limited information - to point her where she should be heading, research and resources.
Im going to make more of an effort to stop reflexively pushing people away when they express biases and make more of an effort to hear the underlying fears when i can
A frustrating part of the mainstream vegan “love all animals and protect the environment” mindset is the fact that things need to die in real-life ecology all the time but deer hunting season makes icky feelings and carp culls aren’t cottagecore
The vegan “any animal death ever is morally wrong” mindset doesn’t hold up when:
We don’t have any of the large predators we used to (black bears, mountain lions, or gray wolves) but still retain large deer populations. If nothing is removing animals, they’ll quickly overload the carrying capacity of the environment and have massive losses to starvation and disease that can also pass on to livestock. Human hunters replace the large predators that our landscape can no longer support.
It’s kinder to euthanize an un-releasable hawk rather than try to find it a permanent home with humans. Wildlife rehabs have extremely limited space and resources and are usually run entirely on donated money and volunteer time. Only a few are large and stable enough to care for permanent residents long-term, and those spots are few and far between.
An invasive species poses a danger to threatened native wildlife. I will admit- Australian possums are adorable. But not in New Zealand, where they’re an invasive species that eats the eggs of ground-dwelling birds that previously had no such predators. The landowners I worked with replanting native bush, all native Maori, had no qualms about setting the dogs on them.
I don’t know how to end this except. Sometimes things just gotta die and acting otherwise just isn’t a realistic expectation.
Highlights from the notes over the past 6 months include a lot of angry vegans saying “you’re blowing things out of proportion, no vegans actually think like this!” and a lot of people who work in conservation and education saying “Every day. I have to fight people who think like this.”
As a bonus this post was originally inspired by the vegan who called me racist for saying we should kill invasive species
nature keeps itself in check. It’s why wolf/ deer populations are in sync
When wolf populations increase, deer populations decrease, which in turn causes a decrease in wolf population, that causes an increase in deer, which will then increase the wolf population.
When wolves were reintroduced into yellowstone, both flora and fauna massively bounced back because elk were no longer ruining the environment, including beavers, which in turn brought back creatures that exist in mutualism with Beaver dams and pools.
Keystone Species are massively important to ecological health
While this is true, I want to highlight a point from my original post- where I live, our landscape cannot support large wild predators.
There’s food aplenty but that’s only one part of the puzzle. 99.9% of our prairie in Iowa has been turned to farmland. There’s nowhere for them to GO aside from tiny pockets of the Northeast near Wisconsin. At any one time there are between zero and three black bears in Iowa as they pass through the Mississippi River area to get to better places.
I should be so lucky to live to see the possibility of wolf reintroduction. It’s just a “Decades of hard work to prepare” kind of thing instead of a “Ship in a few dozen puppies and let em loose” kind of thing.
Let’s make this post even longer because I have even more images saved. Next up, we got:
Tsutsumagushi Disease
Chikungunya Fever!
MERS
Pertussis (whooping cough) with a horrifying (almost body horror) headpiece and flute
Dengue Fever, the image of which literally made me stop breathing for a moment when I first saw it
Japanese Encephalitis (as... idols, maybe?)
And Zika Virus (so pretty! and for what???)
And some higher res images of the ones from the video (Legionnaires’ Disease, Viral Gastroenteritis, and Rubella). Unfortunately, I could not fit Rabies because of the image limit.
Lyme disease also has an outfit that when viewed from above would be a bullseye shape, which is a characteristic first symptom of the disease visible on the skin around the site of the bite.
OK, so I've seen this image set before, and it is AMAZING! But it's only the recent discussion that made me realize that people may not be understanding many of the visual references in these images. So... with no further ado...
An epidemiologist's guide to the Disease Idol covers...
Hepatitis: Boy band of 5 guys for the 5 types of viral hepatitis A, B, C, D & E. I think Hep A might be the blond with his tongue out, since A can be passed by contaminated food. The idol boy on the lower right is probably Hep C as he has a syringe tattoo and pierced ears. The boy at 12 o’clock also has a pin of three syringes and headphones, maybe he’s Hep B (which can cause hearing loss? Also, one idol has a red spider angioma tattoo. All of them have slightly jaundiced eyes, pointing to the liver damage of chronic hepatitis.
Syphilis: A little easier to decode - it’s a sexually transmitted disease (hot girl, apple symptom of temptation) and causes chancre sores and a red spotty rash.
Chicken pox & Shingles: Fun fact - chicken pox and shingles are caused by the same virus, the varicella zoster virus! Most anyone older than about 30 probably knows about the chicken pox rash. It’s spotty, itchy and forms blisters which open up like the eyelets on the little girls’ mesh gloves. But, after the infection, the virus can live dormant in your nerve cells only to reactivate as shingles, an intensely painful red rash that causes large areas of red discoloration, like around the boy’s eyes, and I think the snake on his sweater might represent the dormant virus. If you had chicken pox as a kid getting the shingles vaccine when you turn 50 can prevent shingles!
Plague, AKA The Black Death: This one is basically a bunch of European symbols that don’t have a whole lot to do with plague, aside from the gangrenous fingers, which are a late stage symptom. Can’t tell from the drawing, but plague is spread by fleas.
Influenza: The flu really is a fuckboi! Influenza travels the world, alternating between the global south and the global north, picking up lots of mutations as it goes. The hand tattoos represent the three main types: A, B and C. We normally vaccinate against two strains of influenza A and one or two strains of influenza B, and the vaccine has to be updated every year because they’re so promiscuous. (Also, if you look at him up close, he looks so fucking tired behind those eyes, and fatigue is a major symptom.)
Measles: Another spotty rash. However, this one can cause blindness and deafness in children, both represented in the designs on his shirt and jacket. Vaccine preventable!
Lyme disease: The bullseye visual image was noted above, so I’ll just also mention that her mech is a tick and the doohickies in her ponytails look like the twists of the bacteria that causes Lyme disease. And our girl here is wearing sturdy boots and white stockings, both that can help protect you from ticks, or help you notice them quickly.
COVID-19: Sits on a throne that looks like the COVID-19 virus, but the spike proteins end in hands that are using phones and handheld computers, representing how we all got through lockdown. (Note this was an October 2020 cover.) I’m not sure if the crown covering the nose is supposed to represent the loss of smell?
Tsutsugamushi disease: I actually didn’t know what this is, the internet tells me it’s a form of typhus, but not a rickettsia. Huh. 🤷♂️
Chikungunya: This is a mosquito borne disease that is notable for causing joint pain, which can become chronic. Here it’s reprinted by skeletal spines and arms, places where joints can develop long term bursitis or arthritis; the idol’s high heels are made of bones as well. It can also cause a patchy rash, as represented on the her dress.
MERS: Middle East Respiratory Syndrome was the second major coronavirus disease (between SARS COV-1 and COVID-19/SARS COV-2. First discovered in Saudi Arabia and mostly occurring on the Arabian Peninsula, it is represented here by a veiled lady, which a crown representing the “corona” of a coronavirus. While SARS COV-1 died out, cases of MERS continue to occasionally occur, the virus doesn’t spread very easily person-to-person, but it does have an animal reservoir in camels.
Pertussis: The body horror headpiece here is supposed to represent the alveoli of the lungs, inflamed and clogged with fluid. The flute is because of the high pitched wheeze of a child with pertussis struggling to breath. Pertussis kills babies! If you’re around babies or young children, please get vaccinated for their sake! (And for yours, the severe coughing can cause vomiting and broken ribs even in adults.)
Dengue: OK, so the visual similarity to Aedes albopictus has been noted above. But what’s with the datura here? She’s holding a datura and has another tattooed on her arm. I can’t figure out the connection, what am I missing? Something about atropine maybe?
Japanese Encephalitis: Don’t actually know what this is about, other than the balls they’re holding clearly represent the tight ball shape of the JEV. Not sure why this is a three girl group. But Japanese encephalitis does some nasty things to your brain for sure.
Zika: Again it’s just the mosquito here. I’m actually glad they didn’t get any deeper into a representation of Zika’s worst effects on the body because I feel like it would be pretty insensitive. There’s still a sizable cohort of Brazilian children with profound disabilities from Zika.
Legionnaire’s disease: Our dandy here must have been attending some kind of conference; Legionaries disease was discovered after a large outbreak at an American Legion convention in 1976. You can see some kind of sink contraption behind him - this is because Legionnaires is usually spread by inhaling aerosolized droplets of contaminated water.
Viral Gastroenteritis: I got nothing. All I can make of this guy is that maybe he got his abs by shitting his guts out and now he needs a boba drink to hydrate. IDK man…
Rubella: Another gentleman covered in red spots. Electron microscopy of the rubella virus does look like the little clustered seeds of the pomegranate he’s holding. The cherub on his pendant and in the background probably represent miscarried babies as rubella is quite dangerous during pregnancy.
Rabies: Is this dude the reason for that weird tumblr rabies fad? Anyway, this cover is a masterpiece, his jacket has spikes representing the spiky virus envelope, the background is people in the masks of reservoir species for rabies all playing violin, and the whole thing takes place on flooring that looks like brain tissue, where rabies causes a devastating encephalitis. If you have been bitten by an animal that could have been rabid - GET TREATMENT FAST! Post exposure vaccination is 100% successful at preventing rabies, but once you have started to get symptoms there is no going back. Rabies is inevitably fatal. But Tumblr sure loves themselves a white haired Twink.
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