#crypids

[gnc-objection]

More poptropicans :3 ✨

biggest batch of requests yet ahhhhh,,,, I will take more :3333

@klds-12 Your Octavian and Jonas are here!!! :3

[brennanthepaleodude]

Beebe's Fish plushie lineup

Follow our Etsy to be notified on when these plushies release!

BrennanThePaleoDude - Etsy Canada

@Saureal illustrated and designed all of these guys!

My fav is Bathysphaera!

[twigsandhearts]

If you like the idea of an angsty t4t qpr, neurodivergent mcs, a wide range of disabled characters, sapphic friendships and relationships, cryptids in a situationship and other chaos, consider helping us bring it to your ears by donating or spreading the word!

[calico-and-kettles]

" There's one right behind me... Isn't there? "

Not-Deer have a strange affection and infatuation with our little necromancer, the feeling isn't mutual..

[galileosballs]

For reasons that aren't important I'm doing some Mothman research. It's kind of fascinating how much name recognition the Mothman has nowadays - it went from a minor local cryptid passed around in the same breath as the Ogopogo and Fresno Creeper to what is very likely a top-5 most famous cryptid (at least in North America). The question is why.

The Mothman Prophesies (2002) is the first and most likely contender for an explanation. Richard Gere was genuinely hot shit at the time (for some reason - he's really bad in that movie) and the film did come out in a lot of theatres presumably to be seen by a lot of eyes. It didn't crack the top 5 at the box office that week, but it wasn't behind by much.

While this looks like a lot of cultural impact for our dearest Lepidopteran friendo, it's worth taking a moment to think about how much you remember from those other five films, assuming you remember them at all. A Beautiful Mind still has a place in the popular consciousness, I suppose, but I dare you to look me in the eye and tell me you know a single thing about the film Snow Dogs (2002). Without checking, tell me in the tags whether Snow Dogs (2002) is an animated film. I'll wait.

There's another consideration that pushes back on The Mothman Prophesies as the source of the Mothman cultural icon we know and love today, and that is the extreme dissimilarity between the Mothman of the film and the adorable fluffy red-eyed dude who graces my dash on lucky days.

Here's what you get if you do a Google image search for 'Mothman'

We've got a couple of different designs there, but they break down into three major categories. There's the official Mothman statue in Point Pleasant WV (the silver fellow with the holey wings, menacing face, and magnificent crop of chest hair), a cuter and more mothlike design of a biped with feathery wings, round eyes, and fluffy antennae, and a design that more closely resembles the eyewitness reports of the creature - a hunched, shadowy figure with red eyes, big wings, and no antennae. These are the three basic mothmen you see in most mothman-type stuff. None of them, however, are the mothman of The Mothman Prophesies, who never appears in the film except as a disembodied voice and some drawings like this.

(also the word 'Mothman' occurs in exactly one scene of the whole movie and the rest of the time he's called by the name of a (possibly) different Cryptid. 3/10 not enough Mothman)

So, there's the question. The Mothman Prophesies probably isn't the source of the Mothman we all know and love today, especially the antenna-wearing cute (and... sexy, apparently?) variant of which tumblr is so fond.

The antenna variant is also dominant on Etsy and Pinterest

Where does Antenna Mothman come from?

It's not from the canonical Mothman sightings. Those mostly look like this:

It's not from the movie that made Mothman's name.

It's not from the (super cool) Frank Frazetta comic book art. Though this art is gorgeous, this Mothman is clearly just Spiderman with butterfly wings.

It's not from his appearance in the Shin Megami Tensei games (though his first appearance in 2003 doubtless makes SMT early Mothman Adopters, and they did have the bright idea to make him cute and give him antennae). This colourful design is not the tumblr one, though). It's likewise not from the antenna-free Castlevania depiction of Mothman (2005), though I am again a huge fan of him. Even though his eyes aren't red and kind of look like boobs.

My research suggests that Mothman was mentioned in Invader Zim (probably in 2003-2004) but not actually depicted. I'm not going to comb through the filmography of Invader Zim to check because I am an adult with a job, but if you, dear reader, can confirm this fact I'd be delighed.

So, what does this add up to?

My hunch is that we can isolate Cute Antenna Mothman to roughly the year 2005. That's going off this Google Ngram data that shows a continuous increase in the use of the term 'Mothman' since that year, after the peak presumably caused by The Mothman Prophesies (2002) starts to dip. Since so much Mothman activity now is driven by Cute Mothman (I just got back from Point Pleasant myself - Cute Antenna Mothman is 90% of the non-locally produced moth merch and cosplay) I think we can pin the explosion of Mothman's popularity on the explosion of Cute Mothman, rather than more authentic representations. Cute Mothman is the variant of mothman that has become a cultural icon - it's the one that you see on pins and pride flags (again, I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just asking why). Cute Mothman is the one that made the Yu Gi Oh card. That's cultural impact if I ever saw it

It's worth noting as well that Cute Mothman is much more moth-like than any of the other renderings. The antennae are the most obvious Moth-like thing, but hardly the only one. Many moth men are depicted as having actual moth-like wings, covered in patterns. It's a striking image, but not one supported by sightings. The creature sighted in West Virginia was actually not particularly moth-like, and to this day locals refer to it as 'The Big Bird' or the 'Point Pleasant Pheasant'. The origin of the name 'Mothman' is a bit contested, but the Mothman museum in Point Pleasant attributes it to a comic book contemporaneous to the disaster in which Batman fights a Killer Moth.

So, none of the sources I have found really give us what would become the canonical mothman image. The cute, fluffy guy with wings, red eyes, and adorable fluffy antennae. The one who would spawn abominations like this:

Terrible. Also, that's clearly just a bat.

So, now we get to hypothesis time. The fact to be explained is: the dominant image of mothman in popular culture is a guy with fluffy antennae that do not appear in its initial description or most 'mainstream' media portrayals. The popular mothman is a new design. Where did it come from?

I don't have an answer to that question. Part of why I'm writing this deragned moth essay is to try to solicit answers from the general public. If you know, please tell me. I must know. Who is Cute Moth patient zero?

One of my initial theories was that the mothman mention in Invader Zim led to moth-themed fanart of the relevant character (without reference to the historical Mothman) that was cute and fluffy for all the normal reasons, and this image bled into the popular mothman conception. I'm delighted to report that I don't think this theory is true, since after a lot of digging through old Invader Zim fan-art (it's so much hornier than I expected, but I guess I should have expected that) I couldn't find any recognizable mothmen before about 2017. Phew. I'm glad that's not the answer. But what is the answer???

Where does the cute mothman come from? How does one design take over the world?

[shadyufo]

Cryptids & Creatures of Folklore Drawtober Day 6 — Shug Monkey

Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk, England is the site of a well-known UFO encounter by US Air Force men stationed at RAF Woodbridge in 1980. `However, Rendlesham Forest is also said to be the home of a huge, hairy creature that likes to lurk around campsites and frighten hikers. The Shug Monkey is described as having the face of a baboon or similar ape, being covered in dark, shaggy hair, having a body more like that of a dog than an ape, and being able to lumber about on its hind legs. 

[shy-mouse]

🎃 happy 1st day of spooky season!! 🎃

please enjoy some squishable spooky liddle guys!! these are @karmacat107’s designs for goatman and mothman and i love them to pieces

[hiding-under-the-willow]

I designed mothman themed cereal for my graphic design class lol