habitual night owl

i post what i want here. sfw and nsfw. i try to tag things appropriately but not always. i am not responsible for butthurt incurred by perusers.

[fugitiverabbit]

Fat Photo Ref just got an update!

New photos are up now to help you draw some beachy babes this summer. I'm hoping to update a little more frequently this summer and get to access requests quicker too. You can apply for access or login by going to fatphotoref.com (follow the link on the splash page to request access.)

[butt-berry]

They have pup cups at celadon department store now

[fiendish-illos]

hey dont cry Autism Creature speculative biology

[fiendish-illos]

ADHD friend should be based on a cheetah I think :3

Also I love your WoF posts!

this single-handedly kindled a desire for me to draw it. well done anon

feast, comrades. let it be well with you the fact that i finally relented to the prospect of slight cheetah allegations.

[fiendish-illos]

I must know. Does the autism creature have paw beans?

yes he does :>

[concerningwolves]

Thinking about Her again,,, (Medusa and the ways in which she has been claimed by both the oppressed and the oppressor in different visual mediums)

Medusa: In Defence of Monstrosity

In our modern world, Medusa has begun to thrive. Not only has she been the subject of a body of artwork that stretches back to antiquity, bu

[concerningwolves]

Every time I remember Greek tragedy exists I temporarily take leave of my senses and my eyes start blazing and I start speaking tongues (infodumping), and i WILL make this other people's problem

[concerningwolves]

@mistressdizzy (in response to my tag on the OG post that it's brought to you by me going off about lego medusa to a friend).

Short answer: Lego movie's Medusa is surprisingly one of the better Medusa representations in modern media because she's snakey instead of pretty.

Proper answer:

I've (fairly) recently come across this idea that Medusa has been "prettied up" in modern depictions. Initially I was like "uh ... no she hasn't?" because for me, Medusa is always the Ray Harryhausen Medusa from Clash of the Titans (1981). This is a Medusa who comes slithering out wielding a bow and arrow. She has craggy reptile skin, pointed teeth, and a rattle snake tail. I used to have to hide my face because she terrified me as a small child first watching the film on telly, but at the same time I couldn't stop peeking up at her because I was captivated.

[Image description: A screencapture of Medusa from the 1981 Clash of the Titans. Only Medusa's top part and a hint of her serpent lower half is visible. She is naked and has visibly textured scaly skin, snakes for hair and slightly bulbous eyes. Her lips are twisted into a sneer. /End ID]

But then I had to concede that, actually, Clash came out about forty years ago and there are a lot more modern depictions of Medusa. I mean, it got a remake and this is their Medusa:

[ID: Medusa from the Clash of the Titans 2010. She is rearing up, poised ready to shoot with her bow while her serpent lower half is coiled behind her. She has snakes for hair, but her skin is mostly smooth human skin and her facial features are recognisably human. /End ID]

Which is ... well, okay. Firstly, I don't think she's even a fraction as scary as the 1981 Medusa and she doesn't even activate my OOoh, Cool Monster!! mode. The 1981 Medusa doesn't move like the 2010 one because of the differences between stop-motion animation and CGI, and I think something very valuable has been lost in that difference. In 1981, Medusa is a slow, deliberate predator who waits for the perfect moment to strike (you know, like a snake) with a subtle soundtrack of snarl-like rattlesnake tail noises. She's so obviously Not Human Anymore! And for me, that's the deep tragedy of Medusa's story! Meanwhile 2010 Medusa throws away her bow and arrow in what looks like a moment of impotent rage and then chases after the heroes recklessly while screaming.

Secondly, 2010 Medusa is definitely prettified. I mean she is basically a scantily-clad pretty lady with a snake lower half and snakes for hair, with a little suggestion of scales where her human skin blends with snake scales. The only time she's really visibly monstrous is when she snarls and her face gets a CGI morph into a snakey visage with big snake teeth.

To be fair, this Medusa can be read less as "Perseus kills a monster who was once a human woman" and more as "Perseus kills a woman who has become a monster". I think you're meant to feel sorry for her because she's clearly fighting for her life in this version – whereas 1981 Medusa is framed as a monster defending its territory, and incidentally also its life. So, there's a difference in reading and interpretation of the myth, which is perfectly valid. But the 2010 design is so obviously sexualised (boob armour! she's wearing godamn boob armour!) that I get grumpy about it. I also think it says a lot about social views on beauty and disfigurement that the film-makers had to make Medusa pretty before they could make her sympathetic. 🙃

This isn't to say there's a wrong or right way to represent Medusa! Nor am I saying that it's an entirely modern phenomenon to present her as "pretty lady with snake hair". Ovid wrote about Medusa in roughly 8 AD:

[Medusa] was once most beautiful, and the jealous aspiration of many suitors. Of all her beauties none was more admired than her hair: I came across a man who recalled having seen her. They say that Neptune, lord of the seas, violated her in the temple of Minerva. Jupiter’s daughter turned away, and hid her chaste eyes behind her aegis. So that it might not go unpunished, she changed the Gorgon’s hair to foul snakes. (Metamorphoses book 4, translated by A. S. Kline)

It's Ovid's version of the myth that I think people know the best, and from him we know two things: snakes for hair, and horrid face. The key point is that Athena essentially disfigures Medusa. What constitutes a horrible face is wide open for interpretation, and the snakes for hair is quite an iconic visual symbol on their own. Apollodorus is another writer who described Medusa, and he gave her (and her gorgon sisters) more physical detail. His gorgons not only have snakes for hair, but also tusks, bronze arms and gold wings. If I remember correctly, another visual feature of Medusa in classical sources is a gaping mouth (presumably because of the tusks jutting out of it).

Basically, Medusa is a monster. She's monstrous. She has been unfairly and unjustly transformed for something she had no control over, and the point of the transformation is that it takes away her beauty. But Medusa is also an extremely popular figure in modern culture, and heaven forbid that a popular figure be ugly. So we get prettied-up versions of her – or worse still, sexy versions of her. In the Percy Jackson film, she's portrayed by Uma Thurman who plays an almost sensuous Medusa. Wearing dark sunglasses and a turban, Thurman Medusa passes entirely for human. She also tells Percy, son of Poseidon, "I dated your daddy". It isn't made clear which version of the myth the film uses as its primary source (and I can't recall if the books do either), but considering that the most popular version has Poseidon as Medusa's rapist....

Yeah. Don't like that.

In her podcast Natalie Haynes Stands up for the Classics, Haynes says that a lot of modern Medusas are "minx-like", and that's so true of Thurman Medusa. It's also true of the Medusa that Rihanna portrayed in a photo-shoot for GQ magazine, who is again very human and also very nearly naked. Liz Gloyn in Tracking Classical Monsters in Classical Culture says "This [photo-shoot], it seems, is a development of the Beautiful Medusa theme and the associated ideas of the monstrous feminine, the woman who must be conquered because of the danger she poses". In short, modern Medusas tend to walk the line between "sexy lady" and "scary sexual lady".

However, Haynes also said something about modern Medusas that made me drop my crochet and go "What????" before diving for my phone. She said that the Lego Movie Medusa is actually a pretty good representation, and I was shocked to learn upon Googling that she's right.

[ID: two images of Lego Medusa. The first is from the Lego Movie, and the second is of her full Lego model. She has a snake lower half like the Clash of the Titans Medusa, green skin all over, sharp teeth that protrude from her lips, solid yellow-green eyes and snakes for hair. Her expression is fierce. /End ID]

In Haynes' words, she's "not at all minx-like". She's scary, she has a slightly grotesque face, she is ... playing a drum with two snakes? (I haven't seen the Lego Movie. I do not know what's going on). The model is obviously a homage to the Clash of the Titans Medusa, and delightfully falls closer to the Ray Harryhausen design from 1981. I can even forgive the weird little boob armour she has on and the pouty painted lips because! We've actually got big teeth! It's great.

[storywonker]

They recorded tinnitus? It's a physical thing?????

[storywonker]

Lola De La Mata speaks to Patrick Clarke about how her experience with severe tinnitus and vertigo fed into her new album Oceans On Azimuth

Source

[bisexualbaker]

Transcript:

The most mind-blowing moment, not only for De La Mata but the scientists too, came when they managed to actually record the sounds that she heard in her ears – which now appear as ‘Left Ear’ and ‘Right Ear’ which begin sides A and B on the album – and in doing so opened up questions about the nature of tinnitus itself. “The NHS definition is that it’s a phantom sound that your brain is creating, that it isn’t something ‘real’, so you should try to ignore it.” By having De La Mata place her ear into an anechoic chamber, with an ultra-sensitive microphone perched in her ear canal, they were able to provide significant evidence to the contrary. “After the first recording of it, it was ‘There’s no way, this isn’t possible.’” They tried again with her breath held, and again with her tensing her ears, and again with other members of staff, but each time it became apparent that yes, the noises De La Mata hears are seemingly something physical.

[uhhhhmanda]

HOLY SHIT THAT'S WHAT I HEAR ALL DAY

[theanoninyourinbox]

what in the gosh darn

[yelenhol]

[holepsi]

don’t trust the apostate 2: reborn

[yelenhol]

I'm not sure when, but I'll definitely finish this little portrait😌

[westlywheatly-deactivated202512]

But you would do this to yourself? I cannot bear to think of you alone.

[wizardarchetypes]

deeply obsessed with the salmon edit by _olive_ridley on TikTok

[wizardarchetypes]

I'm baffled that some people seem to think this video/post is a joke & find it funny that someone ascribed emotions & music to the salmons' journey, as if that's new. Humans around the world have told stories about salmon since time immemorial. Salmon are sacred symbols of life, loss, and recovery. In many places, depletions tell stories of colonialism and genocide, and their recovery is a victory hard-won by Indigenous activism.

It's impossible to overstate the necessity Salmon have been to entire cultures for tens of thousands of years.

I get that the humor around this video may not be "that deep," but capitalism and colonialism divide us all from the sacredness and inherent value of all lives. Many of us have become completely disconnected from the cycles of life which support us every day and from the food that nourishes us. If a music edit about salmon moves you, hold onto that. Foster that! Salmon have always moved us. Listen to a story in Tlingit about the Salmon People:

Shanyaak’utlaax̱: Salmon Boy Told in Tlingit (with English Subtitles) - YouTube Find stories about Salmon in the Irish Folklore Collection:

CBÉ 0407 (Part 1) · The Main Manuscript Collection

This collection includes every aspect of the Irish oral tradition.

This collection includes every aspect of the Irish oral tradition.

Read about what Salmon are to Peoples of the North Pacific, from the Ainu people to the Ulchi people:

[wizardarchetypes]

exactly

[dungeon-vault]

[yelenhol]

[sladucer]

"He's not my boyfriend.

He's all and he's more."

~Joe.

[sh4ke111]

Practice piece