Here there be Monsters @forta-ver - Tumblr Blog

Illustrator, monster maker, weaver of timelines. Chaos optional.

Hello! I have a Patreon now. Please stop in and consider chucking me a follow - even if you don't do a paid tier, it's the best way to keep up on what I'm doing.

Thanks!

#artists on tumblr #illustration #patreon #sketch requests #illustrator #art commissions

kianamaiart

Episode 3 tingz

jagalart

The current pre-Pyrkon grind makes me forget I draw stuff besides merch, but I still absolutely do and love it <3 I miss it already, but July's gonna be entirely dedicated to completing all of my current commissions + ArtFight so #soon :)

Huge thanks to all the commissioners here, I loved working on these!

pangur-and-grim

I haven't seen people talking about this, but the pilot for The Ebony Witch dropped! the visuals are absolutely beautiful. honestly, it has the same magic as old disney (if disney was brave enough to give us a hot elf who's actually 50 cats in a trenchcoat)

the sound design is a little rough, but that's because of the funding they're working with - if you'd like to lend some support, here's the link!

pangur-and-grim

here's a few screenshots, in case you're not convinced:

wordwizards

first potential redesign for my oc vic...i will redo the whole cast eventually. she likes historical fashion and wants to be a costume designer. she can also see ghosts

bedrock-to-buildheight

First of us, last of me

manicpixiedckgirl

theaudientvoid

There are multiple chapters that are set in hospitals where the characters are attempting to recover from injuries that never fully heal. I must once again stress that my experience in WWI was perfectly normal.

aro-ace-from-outer-space22

There is a giant horrible mudplain full of unrecoverable and perfectly preserved dead bodies that the characters have to walk through in a land where the air is poisoned gas, and on a compLETELY UNRELATED NOTE: WWI WAS TOTALLY FINE AND NORMAL!!

kingercainedaddyissues

Uh??? Tolkien did not claim that???

"One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918, all but one of my close friends were dead."

He talked about how WWI affected his writing all the time, he was not in denial for how it affected??? Am I missing something????

alexseanchai

https://www.tolkiensociety.org/blog/2017/09/tolkien-as-war-novelist-another-way-of-dealing-with-trauma-through-writing/

what Tolkien was adamant about, which has been confusing people for several decades now, is that he wasn't writing about World War Two

beatrice-otter

He was also very clear that he was not writing allegory. Now, some people are not very clear on what allegory means. "Allegory" and "symbols" are not the same thing. Allegory is a type of symbolism, but there are a lot of ways of doing symbolism that aren't allegory ... and a lot of people are kind of fuzzy on that. The way allegory is most commonly used in literary and religious analysis is that there is a direct, almost 1:1 correspondence between the literary figure and what it is standing in for.

So, for example, Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory of Christian salvation. It's sort of a novel? There are characters who do stuff? but also they are very one-dimensional. The main character is a guy named Christian--yes, really!--who is journeying from his hometown ("the city of destruction") to the Celestial City (heaven). There is not much subtlety to it. It is pretty much what it is. There is no slippage, no playing around with the theme, no places where the symbolism is ambiguous. John Bunyan, the author, is hitting you over the head every step of the way with the Meaning That You Are Supposed To Be Getting From The Story.

Not all allegories are that crude or simplistic; the Narnia books are also allegory for Christianity. They have a lot more subtlety to them and a lot more nuance, and there's a lot of stuff in there that isn't allegorical, but on the crucial matters there is still a 1:1 correspondence. Aslan is Jesus. He's not like Jesus, he's not a character that has some similarities to Jesus or takes themes from the stories of Jesus, he is Jesus.

Tolkien is not doing allegory. Tolkien is taking the material of his life--his faith, his experiences in WWI, his linguistic and historical knowledge, his favorite books--and using them as the building blocks of his story. The themes and imagery and symbols draw heavily from all of that, the characters and settings draw heavily from all of that, but they are too complex to be allegorical. There's a lot of symbolism! It's not allegory.

So, for example, let's take the Dead Marshes referenced above. Does the experience of walking through this muddy wasteland with corpses all around that are rotting but still look like people draw from Tolkien's WWI battlefield experience of dead bodies in the trenches? Of course it does! but there are also a lot of differences. These dead are not from the current war, they are from a previous one--they are a reminder of old conflicts, of the ways the systems and powers of the current war have not come out of nowhere, there is history here. There is meaning that is not drawn from the Somme. And they are also drawing from literary references Tolkien was familiar with--primarily William Morris. Modern readers don't get the references because we have generally not read The House of the Wolflings, but that doesn't mean that the references aren't there.

So people read Tolkien's insistence that he didn't write allegory, and take that to mean that he's saying there isn't symbolic and thematic references. And that isn't what he meant! And also, we focus so much on the thematic references to WWI and Christianity, and we miss most of the other references, which makes it seem like Tolkien's only drawing on WWI, when he's actually doing something more complex.

fountainstrangerart

Digimon Laiya the Labramon

I'm gonna be in a oneshot Digimon game, so i made an elderly Labramon. Her name is Laiya, and she came from Witchenly before she moved to Bisket Village where Ether and Grit live. *** Digimon Commissions are open, DM for more details

casprisunn

different, a spamtenna comic

bedrock-to-buildheight

Reading the bodega cat mewtwo comics is proving to be strangely cathartic for me. On one hand, I'm happy to see this interpretation of perhaps one of the Pokémon that fascinates and intrigues me most in the saga. On the other hand, seeing how you write Mewtwo's reasoning, and even the fact that you use pronouns for "it," feels very narratively correct, but it also makes me feel very connected to it.

Dehumanization is something I can't seem to shake, no matter how hard I try. I don't know if it bothers me or not, but I think seeing something labeled as inhuman being treated with affection is kinda encouraging.

Yeah this whole thing can be summed up as a fantasy of 'what if the world can treat you well even if you lack Several aspects commonly considered base human desires and behavior'

(tumblr is somewhat better at this because we've for the most part accepted aro/ace/agender as A Thing) (now try wrap your head around the fact that I don't have a desire for human connection or sense of belonging)

You'd think all this means I'm projecting onto Mewtwo but if anything I'm projecting on Mew gkskkfkskg

tertain-the-original

The girlies 💜🤭 Esther is Cleo’s older half sister! (Also you can see originally Esther’s cat part was orange… changed it to black because it works better)

Both were raised by their Centaur mom. (Picture can also be used to reference height)

jay-rayart

FLY launches on Kickstarter in less than 24 hours! It’s almost time to spread your wings, and help us take flight!

A coming of age story about Black kids who finally have power to fight back against systems designed against them.

deinocheirus

Finished another batch of this style meme with my dragons!

part 1

jackalpants

THE CHAFF PROJECT

Hi! Are you cis in the UK and you'd like to support trans rights? Great!

How: buy a trans flag pin and wear it in public.

Why: chaff is an overwhelming amount of false positives so that when a missile gets close to the plane, it hits the chaff and not the plane.

In practice: the goal is to make it DIFFICULT to identify trans people to target with bathroom bans, and to create many FALSE POSITIVES for businesses.

Basically, you might get accused of being trans and kicked out, because of the badge. You say: I wear the badge because trans rights matter.

You follow up with a letter to the business saying you're fucking furious because some nosy dipshit just tried to play fucking genital police with you in the loos. You know lots of trans people (don't name any, if you do) and you wear the pin in support and you're disgusted at them for allowing this.

Blame the business for allowing the behaviour.

Businesses see that their cis customers are getting bothered over a badge and may clarify trans-inclusive policies, so they can kick out the bathroom botherers instead of nice cis allies.

You only need to buy and wear the badge, and you are protecting trans people. You can be genuinely heroic. Even one cis person doing this helps, and everyone you get to join in helps even more.

Non-affiliated badge link:

https://rainbowandco.uk/collections/trans-pride/products/transgender-pride-flag-badge

Show your pride with our 25mm transgender pride flag pin badge. Perfect for wearing on your favourite denim jacket, back pack, or lanyard to