Tales of a Lost Tanuki

Hey pumpkin! I'm TNKT aka Tanuki and this is my creative blog ! Drawing/writing inspo ✧ Original stories (OCs page) ✧ Fanfiction (D:BH, End Roll, Outlast) (Whump blog) 20s | Cat person | Never really knows what's going on | France | @losttanuki on BlueSky. If you like what I do, please consider giving me a tip on Ko-fi! Every little bit helps.

[todaysbird]

Champleve enamelled bird, 19th century

Figure, Persian bird, enamel / brass, maker unknown, possibly Lucknow, India, 19th century.

Images cc Powerhouse Museum.

what a curious little fella! I wonder what bird(s) he was intended to resemble. thanks for sharing!

[lost-tanuki-tales]

Charming, the tail makes me think of how dragons were depicted in the middle ages

[guiltfactory]

i like when both people in a relationship are scared of it

[chateauofmymind]

best kinds of characters either:

is/has been an active suicide risk

doesn’t or cannot consider suicide a real option and so is left with an inarticulable feeling of circling the drain

[draconym]

Getting dumped really puts children's cartoon villains into perspective. Like dude you're SO right, love and caring ARE disgusting and we SHOULD cast a spell to drain all human emotion into your amulet.

[draconym]

Friend breakups are how you get lines like "Your friends? You think your friends are coming to save you? Don't make me laugh."

[juliettecousin]

More vampire's stuff 🦇🦇🦇

[zntauri]

FINALLY TGED ART RAAJKDSJSKS tged is all i've had in my head for the last 5 or 6 months djskdj

dumb comics + explorations (I've never been so obsessed at drawing characters "right" in my style, i mean liking how I draw them, distinct from each other to avoid same face syndrome and in a way I can keep consistent. I even made some bad 3d models of their heads to keep them consistent lol and I hate using 3d programs) I've never been more obssessed your honor

wasnt sure if i liked silver or mint hair for javier, but i think I'll go with silver from now on

also sorry for the long post lmao

As always, keep reading ⬇️ for the references

hi

[lost-tanuki-tales]

I like these guys 😌

[bbybluemochi]

[OCs] i've been thinking a lot about frankie and sinner's relationship in the supernatural AU. hunting partners and best friends, but what else?

[meanbuddhist]

ran out of things to run to or away from. what now

[cy-lindric]

Knights of Antēpolis, for a short story

[kyotoprotocols]

[steelnail]

Are you free from your curse yet i miss you

[laz2y5]

art

vs

reference

[valtsv]

really love a corruption arc where the character is trying way too hard to make it work but they're in over their head and it's uncomfortable and embarrassing and they're swallowing their own puke every time they do something awful and damp with sweat and trembling but insistent that they can do this, they want it, they're not a child, but it's like they're playing dressup in clothes that are too big for them and trying to convince their own reflection in the mirror that they fit and it's just no fun to watch at all

[valtsv]

+ then they find inside them a capacity for cruelty far more upsettingly vicious than anyone could have imagined and decide that because they enjoy how unafraid it makes them feel for the first time in as long as they can remember it must have been their true nature all along instead of something that had to be starved in the dark until it grew desperate enough to claw its way out 🙂‍↕️

[annabelle--cane]

"the thing about paranoia is well what if I'm right" no actually I'll do you one better. what if it's the fourth wolf-crying incident in a row and I successfully manage to talk myself down and convince myself that I'm imagining all the ringing alarm bells bcuz that's what I did the last four times. so I ignore it and look away. and then. specifically due to me relaxing and turning around. The Fucking Wolf.

[herpsandbirds]

Rainbow-bearded Thornbill (Chalcostigma herrani), male, family Trochilidae, order Apodiformes, found in the Andes of Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia

photograph by Jeff Hapeman

[not-poignant]

Hello! Fellow childhood ornithologist! Are you still into birds? Do you have the Merlin app or ebird? I’d be very into seeing bird pictures on my feed 👉👈

Hi anon,

I think I'm too much of an old to use apps like that honestly. I use iNaturalist (though it's mostly plant identification), and that's it. I don't actually need apps to identify birds, I use...books, I'm very old-fashioned that way. Field guides are my everything, and as a result, that and + iNaturalist combined has me able to identify pretty much all the birds around me.

But here are some of the bird photos I've taken over the years though!

Cattle egret in breeding plumage:

An Australian Raven pair:

Another occasion with ravens in this same tract of bushland:

Green catbird:

Pink Cockatoo:

Painted Firetail Finch:

One of my favourite series ever, Splendid Fairy Wrens (male and female):

One of the largest flocks of the Endangered Carnaby's Black Cockatoo that I've ever seen, and they flew directly overhead. We were just lucky that day:

And finally, this barn owl, the love of my life:

[definitely-not-an-alb]

Fascinated by everyone's but especially American's desire to give medieval keeps, especially in colder regions, central heating (and I think Winterfell is to blame for this trope, where, to it's defence, the hot springs were not a matter of comfort but survival wrt the deadly fantasy Winter that's not real irl), because I'm always like. okay I know they told you in middle grade that castles were all cold and drafty but like ... no also what

There's generally going to be rooms dedicated to and build for warmth, the living quarters, both for nobles and their servants. This will be the central living tower, or parts of it called a Kemenate (literally 'room with a stove'), the great hall and work spaces around the kitchen. You can put the Kemenate on top of the hall to catch the big fires' and daily living's heat through the wooden floor, but you often can't put wooden stuff on top of the kitchens (that's a fire risk). If you have the money and space, you build a whole separate comfy place for living because you don't have to stay in the most defensible part of the castle all the time. These separate living buildings are also called Kemenate and are often build from wood, cob, brick etc.

People used to wear much more clothes indoors, including while sleeping, and those clothes were much thicker and sturdier than what we largely wear today. Every time you think of how cold those stone walls are, think about everyone wearing a linen shift + two-ish layers of wool on all body parts except hands and head + stockings and shoes + some kind of head-covering. In Ye Old Middle Ages, women are probably wearing a wimple, which is kind of like a modern Hijab in terms of coverage. People wear shifts, socks, and a head-covering to bed.

I think people used to radiators also really underestimate how much a large open fire/tiled stove heats up a room. Also, middle and northern Europe (as well as parts of Northern China) had and to this day have beds and benches build into tiled and cob stoves. Those fuck.

Beds are enclosed so you stay warm in them, either by curtains, in wall niches or with wood. There's also a type of bed that's inside a chest (like a coffin) so you can stuff your stuff inside during the day and put down the lid to use it as a bench. That's also another reason for people to always sleep in groups. Depending on the era, one of the jobs of a lady's maid or a retainer might literally be warming their master's bed. In early times and among servants, people also sleep in large groups in rooms together in general even outside a farming context, often with animals like pet dogs, too, which further warms everything up.

Walls are not bare, cold stone, but covered with a layer of plaster or cob, tiles or wooden panels, sometimes layered, and believe me, this makes such a difference. Source: I lived in a Ye Olde German Farmhouse with 70 cm thick stone walls and flag stone floor and all that converted to modern flats for a while.

On top of that you hang tapestries on the wall, which are not like modern printed cloth but basically wall rugs, sometimes several inches thick, and rugs or rushes (like a light cover of hay) on the floor on top of stone, tile, wooden panelling or a cob floor cover that goes over the heave flag stone. Pillows and blankets on all sitting surfaces, often on top of panelling (in the case of benches build into the stone). The roof of a room is also tiled, panelled or plastered. Upper stories will generally have wooden floors. Stories in a tower heat each other upwards, so the nicer rooms are further up.

The inner stone walls of a castle, even if stone and very thick, will heat up a few degrees in comparison to the outside walls if the castle is continually heated/lived in, and also trap heat inside, and this will make a difference. Inner walls might also be thinner and made of wood, cob or brick. You're defending against the outside, after all.

You put stuff in the windows. Holy shit. Screens of wood, horn, cloth or leather/hide, often treated for extra insulation. Why are these fantasy castles all so drafty.

Like, idk, I know Americans especially can't pop down to their nearby castle museum to have a look around, but even with people who can and do: The castles you'll see, even the ones who aren't 'ruined' are ruins. They're stripped down. I remember touring Norman towers in England, and those places do look dire and are cold because even if they're still standing, they're ruins. It makes such a difference to get to look at a castle that is still lived in, has been inhabited until recently, or has been historically restored where these amenities are preserved. The exact amenities will depend on the era, of course, but they'll be there. The publicly accessible parts of Burg Eltz are a great example to google, especially since I promise you, you have seen this specific castle before. They have pictures on their English language website here, and the German National Geographic has a few further inside pictures here. Seeing a place like that that isn't a ruin with bare, stripped walls, nothing in the windows, no decorations and furniture etc. makes you realise that yeah actually. My characters are probably just gonna go grab a pillow if their ass is cold on the window's stone bench. Blankets are a pretty old technology, humans (elves, dwarves, whatever) can figure that one out.

[overfedvenison]

Oh these links are a FANTASTIC reference!