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KIROKAZE
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ellievsbear

titsay
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Three Goblin Art

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we're not kids anymore.
art blog(derogatory)

ā

Andulka
NASA
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Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
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romaā
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Discoholic šŖ©

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@semigiantjimmy
Happy Lunar New Year! ę°å¹“åæ«ęØšÆ
shoutout to bi people who are hot and sexy and bi people who are cool and awesome. there are no other types of bi people
pitter patter putter patter *you look down and see this*
@clawfootboyā
I trust him
dragonās tower
It would be nice to be able to actually see the night sky again.
Treasure Planet concept art.
Treasure Planet (2002) dir. Ron Clements, John Musker
and then they proceeded to be the worst at their jobs for the next 20 years
No no, you donāt get it. Jesse and James are the absolute best there is at their jobs, but they have no idea what their jobs are.
They think that theyāre thieves, agents of an elite criminal group led by Giovanni, stealing rare pokemon and advanced technology and such. And there might have been a time this actually was their jobs. In the first season or two, they frequently get angry phone calls about how theyāve fucked everything up, or get their expense account cut off because they have literally never turned a profit on their criminal enterprises and constantly procure and then lose/destroy expensive and elaborate devices.
But then the world came within a hairās breadth of being destroyed, several times, and Jesse, James, and their weird cat rescued everybody. As terrible as theyāve always been at criminal endeavors of any kind, when the apocalypse approaches and theyāre forced to step up, theyāre really fucking good at saving the day.
And Giovanni is over here like⦠if the planet is destroyed, or time/space becomes unrecognizable, or civilization collapses, thereās no way for me to run a profitable criminal enterprise anymore. I need this planet, because itās where I keep all my stuff. And I donāt pretend to understand the whyĀ of it, but these couple of bumbling nutcases that I should have fired years ago seem to be an important component of that? Somehow? So you gotta stop thinking about them in terms of acquisitions and start considering them⦠loss prevention. As in, even if you waste a million dollars a month on giant cat-faced robots and a vast array of fancy ball gowns and they never turn a profit, they are preventing all of your assets from going away at the same time because of something you canāt do anything about.
And thatās the great secret behind Team Rocket. These guys arenāt thieves, theyāre professional superheroesĀ (sponsored by organized crime). Of course, nobody ever bothered to tell them that.
āTo protect the world from devastationā¦ā
Plus, as is frequently pointed out: Jesse and James are good at every other job EXCEPT Team Rocket. Theyāre actually smart businesspeople and run successful food and merchandise stands and are great salespeople. Hell, even in Team Rocket situations where theyāre not chasing after Pikachu theyāve done better. Itās just their Achilles Heel is one damn OP rodent.
We are not a monolith.
PREACH!
Suffering is guaranteed. How one bears it and moves through it toward a noble goal, that is what makes life meaningful and more than just survival.
(Why is it always the porn blogs with the worst takes?)
This world class Olympian has not rendered her life MEANINGLESS because she decided to not risk *breaking her neck* after ONLY winning, so far:
Olympic Experience
Two-time Olympian (2016, 2020); six-time Olympic medalist (4 golds, 1 silver, 1 bronze)
AND
World Championship Experience Most recent: 2019 ā gold (team, all-around, balance beam, floor exercise, vault)
Medals: 25 (19 golds, 3 silvers, 3 bronzes)
The way she has handled THIS situation has been mature, admirable, and inspiring. I would much rather have Simone Biles alive and thriving for many many years to come, than watch this incredible athlete severely injure or kill herself now because she felt obligated to compete during a personal health crisis.
One of the marks of adulthood is recognizing the difference between "I can't do this, so I'm not going to do anything" and "I can't do this alone, so I'm going to ask for the help I need."
Or, what a lot of people apparently wanted Simone to do, "I can't do this but instead of prioritizing my health I'm going to try anyway and possibly die"
Recognizing your limitations and getting the help and support you need is a sign of maturity, and having a world class, highly decorated, once in a lifetime talent like Simone Biles publicly going through these challenges is teaching a generation of kids that asking for help is a sign of strength.
Passing: Profiling the Lives of Young Trans Men of Color (2015).
[ID: Excerpts from interviews with two trans men. The first, Lucah Rosenberg Lee, has a shaved head and a trimmed beard. The second, Victor Thomas, has curly black hair and a trimmed beard, and is heavier-set.
Lucah, talking about gender dysphoria prior to transitioning, says, āI was in a heterosexual relationship. I was female. I would question this all the time. Am I attracted to these men, or do I just want to be them? That was a big turning point in my own self-discovery.ā
Victor, talking about the transphobia heās endured as a trans man of color, says, āYouāre subjected to something because they donāt understand you. And you have to watch the way you react, because youāre a man now. People take you as a threat.ā
Lucah, in another scene, discusses feeling erased as a trans man, and racism in trans communities. He says, āBeing so invisible within the LGBT community can actually feel so isolating. When people donāt know my history as a trans person, I feel sometimes that Iām viewed as more of an enemy.ā END ID.]
Trans men of color deserved to be loved and appreciated, and made safe. Trans men deserve access to our own spaces, no matter how masculine and cis-passing we are. We deserve credit and recognition for the contributions that we have made to trans history, most of which are erased nowadays.
Being a man is not dangerous or wrong. Being masculine is not dangerous or wrong. Being a black man is not dangerous or wrong.
Please support trans men of color.
Please support trans men.
Please support men.
Men belong in trans spaces. Men of color belong in LGBT+ spaces. Straight trans men belong at Pride. Men do not have to be feminine to be queer.
Honestly the biggest disappointment I had researching ABC was that medieval authors did not, in fact, see the creatures they were describing and were trying their best to describe them with their limited knowledge while going āwhat the fuck⦠what the fuckā¦ā
Instead all those creatures you know came about from transcription and translation errors from copying Greco-Roman sources (who themselves got them from travelersā tales from Persia and India - rhino -> unicorn, tiger -> manticore, python -> dragon, and so on).
So unicorns are real
behold⦠a unicorn
I always thought animals in medieval manuscripts looked like the result of having to draw say. A Tree Kangaroo, but your only source for what it looked like was your friend who heard it from a fellow who knows a man who swears he saw one once, whilst very drunk and lost, and I am SO PLEASEDĀ to find out this is, in fact, the case.
Questing Beast
- Neck of a snake
- body of a leopard
- haunches of a lion
- feet off a hart (deer)
So is it
Orā¦.
donāt forget that some of the legendary creatures they were describing were from other peopleās mythos which were passed down in the oral tradition for gods know how long. You know what existed in Eurasia right around the time we were domesticating wolves into dogs?
these beasties. For a long time, science had them down as going extinct 200 thousand years ago, but then we found some bones from 36 thousand years ago. Which, yāknow, is quite a difference. Since you can bet that any skeleton we find is not literally the last one of its kind to live, many creatures have date ranges unknowably far outside the evidence.
In South Asia there were cultures that described a man-beast/troll forrest giantĀ whoās knuckles dragged the ground, and everybody from the west was sure it was superstitious mumbo jumbo, but you know what used to live there?
And did you know that some of the earliest white colonizers of the Americas heard accounts that there were natives still alive who had seen and hunted and eaten a great hairy beast, shaggy like the buffalo but much bigger, with a long thin nose like a snake and two giant fangs⦠so, like, mammoths, you know? but they were totally discounted because europeans of the time were like, elephants live in Africa and arenāt hairy, you canāt fool us, pranksters!
Anyway, the point is between the early writing game of telephone description thing talked about by OP, and the discounting of native cultural accuracy, Iām pretty sure most legendary creatures are in fact real animals one way or anotherĀ
It canāt explain every single legendary creature, but yes, this is super important. Because History relies on written sources, it tends to sweep oral tradition under the rug, even if thereās a lot of interesting informations in it.
And itās not just living animals that were badly described, or which descriptions got exaggerated over the course of centuries or through translation errors. Sometimes, people finding fossil bones of extinct animals might have also influenced some myths!
By now this is pretty well-known but it has been theorised that the Greek myth of the cyclops was started when people found Deinotherium skulls. Now you might say, uh, how is it possible to think a cousin of the elephant is a huge human dude with one eye?
Well-
- the big nasal opening kinda looks like an eye if you have no idea what kind of animal had this kind of skull (you can read more about this theory in this old National Geographic article if you like).
Hereās a less well-known one; the griffin is a mythological hybrid with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. The earliest traces of this myth come from ancient Iranian and ancient Egyptian art, from more than 3000 BC. In Iranian mythology, itās called Ų“ŪŲ±ŲÆŲ§Łā (shirdal, ālion eagleā). Now, itās been the subject of some debate and itās not confirmed, but thereās a theory that people might have seen some Protoceratops and Psittacosaurus fossils in Asia and might have interpreted it as āa lion with an eagleās headā:
Check the āoriginā part of the wikipedia page for āgriffinā if you want to find more sources for this theory and for the arguments against it! Again, itās just a theory, but I think itās super cool.
This is a pretty well accepted theory for why dragons (or animals we group as like dragons, eg wyverns and drakes) are seen in mythos almost worldwide - because people found dinosaur bones, looked at them, and wentĀ āoh fuck whatās that? some bigā¦. lizardy thing?ā and then created dragons.
Also many deagon legends are simply exaggerations of well-known living reptiles like snakes and crocodilians.a
It also explains why dragons can look so different in the myths of the various regions.
In asia, Dragons tend to look very long and snake like:
One of the most common dinosaurs that used to like in the asia region, so would have been the most common fossils found by people:
The Mamenchisaurus, this thing is just all neck and tail! You find just half a fossilised skeleton of this monster, you can easily end up thinking of a long snake-like beast.
South America also has legends snake-like dragons among some of its peoples:
What fossils from pre-historic south America could be found?
The Titanoboa, which can easily grow to be 40 feet long.
In North America there is the Piasa Bird
Which wikipedia tells me comes from ā the large Mississippian culture city of Cahokia,ā itās describes as
What fossils could have been found in that region:
Pterosaur, and Triceratops. Features of both sets of skeletons could have been merged into one legendary creature.
Then we get our European style dragon:
One of the most common fossils that could have been found was a CetiosaurusĀ
which, despite being a herbivore, looked to have a mouth of sharp looking teeth, consistant with a dragons.
Dragons amongst the peoples of Africa are even more varied, but most revolve around some kind of giant snake-like creature. As a quick example, weāll take Dan Ayido Hwedo commonly found in West African mythology.
Fossils in that area could have been included the Aegyptosaurus:
A quick google search tells me that most Sauropods: well known for being long necked and long tailed, are found in Africa.
If you found only a half complete skeleton of this thing; which is likely, because itās rare to find a complete dinosaur skeleton, you could easily think of a giant snake monster.
IIRC, another possible explanation for long snake-like dragons/sea serpents in Africa couldāve been Basilosaurus, a whale from the PaleogeneĀ whose skeleton looked like this:Ā
A lot of the most complete specimens have been found in Egypt.Ā
You know what, Iām tired of getting notifications for this post and not saying anything about it. I know that last time I complained about this sort of thinking, I got called out by revretch, who called me a gatekeeper and then blocked me. But I donāt have anything left to live for anymore so Iām going to let my science and education background take over for a moment and discuss this in depth.
Okay, not in depth, Iāll try to be brief.
Yes, I know tumblr likes to believe scientists are silly old fools for refusing to accept the truth that is right in front of them. Fine. Believe in what you want. But the problem is that a lot of the information in the above post is either long discredited, not taken seriously by archaeologists/folklorists for good reason, or
Animals have inspired a lot of mythical creatures. That is true.
Fossils have inspired a few mythical creatures. That is also true.
Fossils have not inspired the creatures in the above post. Not provably, at any rate, and certainly not enough for any self-respecting archaeologist to take them seriously.
Why not?
Thereās a popular misconception about how fossils are formed. People tend to think they look something like in Jurassic Park 3, where a Velociraptor is being excavated in Montana (that already makes it impossible, but bear with me).
Look how nice that fossil is. It looks exactly like an animal. You can see the head, the shape of the body, the arms and legs and tail. You easily picture what it looked like alive.
This is NOT what fossils look like.
Real fossils tend to be disarticulated. Broken up. Spread over a large area. Believe me, I know! Iām a paleontology washout whoās volunteered on at least 3 digs in 3 different countries! The only information an average person could get out of most real fossils is āthis was an animalā, and āthis was a BIG animalā. Nobody would have deduced frills and wings and stuff like that.
The griffon hypothesis up there? We owe it to Adrienne Mayor, and itās popular among paleontologists but not archaeologists. It makes sense on a very superficial level ā It Stands To Reason, after all ā but once you start looking at it in detail it breaks down. Even if, somehow, someone saw a Protoceratops skeleton in enough detail to see wings and beaks and stuff, why would they leave out the teeth? The stubby-toed feet? The ridiculous tail? Mark Witton, a person actually connected to paleontology, has done a great article on the subject.
Griffons were inspired by a number of things, including Mesopotamian royal art, and thereās at least one real animal behind the griffon (and itās not a fossil). But thatās another story.
What about elephant-skull cyclopes? Again, it sounds like it makes sense! Certainly more so than the griffon-Protoceratops. But here we run into another problem⦠complete lack of proof. It sounds reasonable, but it canāt be proven. And āone-eyed giantā isnāt exactly a colossal feat of imagination - giants are one of the standard baddies in legend, and making them one-eyed makes them just more monstrous. You can just as easily argue that cyclopes originated in solar wheel imagery associated with the gods, which is why their name means āwheel-eyeā and not āone-eyeā, and that also ties nicely into their association with metallurgy. Again, Mark Witton has more on that.
Creatures LEGITIMATELY based on fossils typically look nothing like their progenitors, and tend to incorporate features based on their fossil location.
Mammoth remains, for instance! Those are found sticking out of eroded riverbanks, so there must have been a big animal underground! In China they are the yin shu, an enormous mouse or mole that digs underground but dies as soon as the sun touches it. (My interpretation below. Note that I couldnāt resist making it mammothy anyway)
In Siberia the witkes is a horned lake monster that demands offerings of the people who cross its water. Note that the ātusksā are seen as horns, and because the fossils are found near water, it becomes a water animal. See how the facts of the fossils become part of the legend? (Again, my interpretation below, and same comment as before)
The lindwurm of Klagenfurt was based on the discovery of a cave rhinoceros skull. Again, you can see how little the creature has to do with the fossil! People already have dragons on the brain, so finding a skull reinforces that, instead of altering it. Youāve got crocodile skulls in castles in Hungary displayed as dragon remains. Same story. Everythingās a dragon if you want it to be.
Brontotheres (thunder beasts) are named so because of the legends of the Great Plains people! Their remains were seen as the casualties of great battles, and the name honors that legend. Again, they arenāt described as being big rhino-like horned animals, just as⦠big animals that are now dead.
As for the others, again, those are incredible speculations that require, once again, to dismiss far more obvious things that would have inspired them. And thereās a whole lot of cultural evolution that goes on that isnāt taken into account.
The unicorn in particular. Thereās no reason to think that it was anything other than the one-horned Indian rhinoceros. Elasmotherium tends to get dragged into the discussion, but all the original unicorn stories tell of a one-horned Indian monster. Not something that lives underground.
The Piasa? The above post compares it to pterosaurs, but the original did not have wings! It was a version of the āunderwater pantherā, a mythical underwater lynx of the Northeast Woodlands and Great Lakes regions. Thereās a long story behind that but thatās, again, beyond the scope of what I wanted to say.
Of course, if you want to consider the underwater panther a dinosaur as well, be my guest.
Regarding the sauropods (and Titanoboa, and whales) inspiring giant snakes thing.
If only there was some terrifyingly large, reptilian, legless, snake-like creature in South Americaā¦
Or Africaā¦
Or Asia to fire peopleās imagination and cause them to think of giant snakes?
And itās not like rainbows arenāt associated worldwide with snakes because of their, well, long and thin and curvy nature.
Now if you think Iām a big horrible gatekeeping meanie for saying all this, thatās fine! Thereās still a lot we donāt know, and thereās still a lot of things that could very well be based on fossils, so you can keep your hopes up!
Like the ketos of Troy, for instance!
That⦠looks awfully like it could be a skull! Adrienne Mayor thinks itās a fossil Samotherium, which sounds like a stretch. It looks more like a pterosaur to me. But still, thatās something that could indeed be a fossil!
The other thing about all this is the āscientists didnāt listen to native people who told them about monsters theyād encounteredā. And yes, this is true and a noble thing to believe in. But also consider that one of the reasons dinosaurs were believed to exist in ādarkest Africaā (all the scare quotes) is that it was held that native people couldnāt possibly be creative enough to imagine them. Europeans talk about giant reptiles? Myths, legends, folklore. Non-Europeans talk about giant reptiles? OMG LIVING DINOSAURS. It goes both ways, sadly.
Mythical creatures are the product of culture, literature, and biology. Reducing their creation to āsees weird fossil => invents monsterā is, to me, just sad, and cuts out a lot of the process and wonder and translation errors and sheer mistakes that intervene.
Harbinger
PUPPY HAS RECEIVED SO MANY PETS AND IS ALL WARMED UP NOW
SHUT UP LOOK AT THIS BOUNCY ASS BISON
unrestrained winter fun
#LateStageCapitalism
Most fucked up animal by far is the aardwolf
Like just what the fuck is all this then
Fucking awesome is what it is