beetleandfox

[beetleandfox]

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Nothing wrong with a mid-quest-hot-spring-nap with the bros after sprinting like 7 consecutive marathons 🤍🤍

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[beetleandfox]

A small tree shrine for Mary in the Irish countryside.

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Roman sea life mosaic from the House of the Faun in Pompeii, dating back to the 2nd century BC. Displayed in the Archeological Museum of Naples, Italy.

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Animation practice with a dandelion :p

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Gemma Scout, on the phone with her bank: Yes I’m just trying to reopen my account. ‘Marked as deceased’ yes I know, but I’m not dead. Yes I know my husband sent you my death certificate. My death was faked in a really elaborate scheme so—no, not by me. Look just turn on CNN. I’m all over the news. It’ll—'can I come in with my husband?' No, I can’t. He’s dead now. Well maybe not dead. But he’s probably never coming back alive. They can’t get his innie in the elevator. Yes they tried that. But he sticks his arms and legs out real wide like a cat so they can’t get him in the elevator.”

[beetleandfox]

defiance, personified

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Barry McGlashan (British, 1974), Black Bear Thought, 2022. Oil and wax on paper, 11 ½ x 7 ¾ in.

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Something that I get chills about is the fact that the oldest story told made by the oldest civilization opens with "In those days, in those distant days, in those ancient nights."

This confirms that there is a civilization older than the Sumerians that we have yet to find

Some people get existential dread from this

Me? I think it's fucking awesome it shows just how much of this world we have yet to discover and that is just fascinating

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Vintage newspaper article

[beetleandfox]

but seriously i think learning about nature is Hard for many people, especially adults, because you have to rationalize the symbiotic experience youre having next to the contemptuous and abusive way we treat the land. I think USAmericans fear nature as a way of making sense of the fact that we're waging war against nature, with our lawns and our suburbs and our landscaping and our cosmetic use of pesticides.

There was a post on facebook my mom was showing me where someone found a salamander and was asking what it was. thankfully half the comments were like "that's a SALAMANDER they are SPECIAL and a BLESSING and you must PROTECT it"

but the other half were things like..."I don't know, but I think it's time to move" "Burn the house down" "Kill it with fire" "I would scream if i saw that"

this is why i have such specific preferences in horror fiction that nothing seems to really hit: for me, horror is not about bad things happening, horror is about fear. So occasionally I find these really satisfying stories that are about fear of the unknown thing and the experience of fear, but the unknown thing being harmless is generally seen as a "twist" rather than a perfectly sensible and satisfying outcome.

on the face of it: why would you be afraid of a tiny creature weighing only grams, whose body is so delicate and frail? it's heartbreaking, but it's not unexplainable. What kind of a childhood makes someone an adult who is totally unprepared to comprehend the idea of something both unexpected and good?

a bizarre universe to try and place myself in, where a salamander is more likely to be...what? a mutated fetus of a brain-sucking alien? rather than one among the thousands of gentle creatures that you can marvel at, forever, for free.

It's the same way with bugs: people argue with the simple fact that nearly all insects cannot harm you, and I think it's because it's so difficult to reconcile with how liberally and carelessly we use insecticides with proven harms to humans and pets, and how we treat and speak about these creatures in general. If that weird bug almost certainly would not have harmed you, that means you killed a living thing because you didn't understand it, and that's a troubling thought.

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touching grass isn't enough we should be staging small community productions of shakespeare

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I am going to [remembers that jokes about suicide are detrimental to myself and others] Scarborough Fair.

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I saw some tags recently saying that they felt like Severance was feeling more like the MarkHelly show, and honestly it made me realise that’s what’s been niggling at the back of my mind about the show/fandom this season. And to be fair, literally every trilogy/three-season-show, s2 is always about splitting the core group from each other before Reuniting The Fellowship in the third part, so I get it. But it feels like so much focus is on the MarkHelly thing: Irving and Burt feel less important, Gemma becomes just a task to tick off the to-do list, etc, and it’s just left me feeling a little less compelled by the story this season.

Which I think highlights how hanging the emotional significance of a story (particularly one that didn’t appear initially about romance) on two characters being together can end up being a swing and a miss. Because though I can appreciate the writing choice of these two Innies wanting to be together and choosing that when everyone is making the choices for them, I personally think that the characters just...have very little chemistry. (Not the actors’ fault, the actors are both great! They’ve killed it this season! But they certainly don’t make me feel The Thing.) Which means that when so much of Mark S’s full conflict about fighting for his right to exist is focused on ‘I want to be with this woman I love’ part of me is very much feeling like ‘well, I feel for you buddy, but also. enh. can we hurry this along already?’

(And tbh, it really sticks out that all the MDR Innies this season have had their right to live focused on who they love – Mark S & Helly R, Irving & Burt, Dylan G & Gretchen. Couldn’t just one of them get passionate about kids or siblings or parents or being able to paint or woodwork or see the beach or something?)

Now if Mark S’s PoV had talked far more about  ‘I want to live, I want my friends to live, I want us to be together’ (which s2ep1 did really well) I could have run Mark Scout over with a rubbish truck to make that happen! I miss the focus on MDR as a family and a community! I realise the writers aren’t just writing for me personally but I really miss that!

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Goddess Figurine ca 6000 BC Venus statues found all over Europe

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overheard these two guys talking and they're like. very obviously cowboys and one of them goes "man when I was young I used to think everyone had horses I didn't even know there were ppl w/o horses" and the other one goes "shows how horseified we are"

[beetleandfox]

the last couple of days I've been noticing way more buds than usual on the branches of trees and bushes. I think something big is about to happen