#and even then. its esoteric

[orphetoon]

i hope nobody thinks im a serious artist cause i drew this today

[july-19th-club]

giggling and kicking my feet and prancing into my armchair to watch this annoying guy do embarrassing things on my tv show with his hot friend . and also Tim is there

[peninsulaisms]

all im saying is that no american could even start to fuck with lake mungo the way that like. a functionally illiterate australian farmer who doesn’t even like horror that much could. that movie is so australian you do need to be intimately familiar with the country to get it i fear

[whatkindofnameisella]

i think it's so absolutely sick and twisted that a) the french dispatch is generally regarded as one of wes anderson's least liked films when it is literally the most touching homage to writers and/or being a creative in a community of creatives and/or the neverending ennui of trying to find a purpose. and b) that because timmothy chalamet was in it now 50% of the wes anderson tag is unrelated timmothy chalamet stuff. I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE TWINK LEAVE HIM OUT OF THIS!!!!

[dailydemonspotlight]

Camazotz - Day 63

Race: Raptor

ATMA Avatar of Bat

Alignment: Dark-Law

July 3rd, 2024

I've been playing Digital Devil Saga lately, and combined with my erratic mood swings, what else would be more fitting for today's DDS than a blood-draining bat who leaves those in its wake feeling hollow? This also marks the second demon in a row to originate from South American mythology, though this one is its own can of worms- or, maybe, bucket of blood...? No, that's stupid. Regardless, though, today's Demon of the Day is a curious fellow originating from very specific Mayan cults, and a personal favorite of mine- Guatemala's own lord of the night, patron of giant vampire bats, and a terrifying blood-sucking deity, Camazotz!

A lot relating to Camazotz is hard to dig into, let alone digest- purportedly worshipped as a central deity in ancient Mayan culture, this great-winged bat appears scantly, yet its influence cannot go understated. This is made even more confusing by evident conflation between Camazotz and a completely different concept, that of 'The Camazotz,' a race of giant bats found in the underworld in the Polpol Vuh, a chronicle going into the creation myth of humanity itself in Mayan mythology. As is purported in it, the Camazotz weren't actually a single, unified deity, and instead were an entire separate race of giant bats found in the Mayan afterlife, known as Xibalba.

People also often purport that this race may have been a mythological explanation for the extinct, but then-present giant race of vampire bats called Desmodus draculae. This, of course, makes things a mite more complicated- the death bat may have been conflated with recollections regarding a completely separate bat god that is left unnamed, as there is evidence of worship to a single, unified bat deity in ancient Mayan culture. Camazotz itself is also purported as being a single, great bat spirit in the underworld, not quite a god but still immensely powerful in its own right. And, well, let's get into that.

The main appearance of the Camazotz comes in the Polpol Vuh, as is to be expected, and they have quite an interesting role- in one of the trials the two protagonists, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, have to survive during their expedition into Xibalba, they're challenged with staying the night in Zotzilaha- the House of Bats. The legend tells of how they had hid away within their blowguns to last the night, but eventually, perturbed by the lack of the wings flapping from the bats outside, one of the brothers dared to stick his head out. This is when Camazotz, who was watching, striked. In an instant, the brother was decapitated, and his head used as a ball for the deities to use in their next ballgame. As morbidly hilarious as this story is, it does give us some insight into Camazotz's role- as a spirit of the night, he clearly showed both trickery and strength.

Of course, this origin is hard to pinpoint, and I'm honestly unsure as to if there was a single Camazotz or an entire race of them who were attacking the brothers, as a lot of things surrounding this great vampire bat are frustratingly murky. Of course, as it comes down to a lot of the time with these demon spotlights, a lot is left up in the air due to the loss of primary sources through history, but with the connection to the long-dead Desmodus draculae species of vampire bats, it's possible to come to several interesting conclusions. There are even beliefs that the traditional blood sacrifices that the Mayans were known for were partly inspired by Camazotz, but that's a rabbit hole I'll leave you to dig into.

Now, as for how Camazotz is depicted in the series, the design has grown on me a lot. While originally seeming to just be a giant bat with sickles, the strange, wrapping hands, the ornaments, and the skulls all paint it in a uniquely Mayan light that I'm really quite fond of. Of course, it also appears in Digital Devil Saga, but frankly I'm not quite sure what to make of a lot of ATMA avatars, and Camazotz is no real exception. As much as I love DDS, the avatars definitely need to grow on me a bit more for me to really appreciate them.

Overall, though, the design works wonders, and I really do enjoy it. Too bad the sprite compression in SMT IV makes it almost completely incomprehensible, but... well, alas, that's what happens to games on the 3DS.

[skitskatdacat63]

Painting 🖼

[greenerteacups]

what do you think is the most underrated moment in lionheart?

I deeply and gratefully appreciate how people react to chapters/plot beats of all sorts, so I don't have any moments that I think of as "underrated" per se.

That being said. In Book 3, Draco has a quip to Ron that goes: "where did you find this Methuselah of rats?" and I don't think there's anyone alive who finds that as funny as I do. I can sincerely make myself laugh out loud just by thinking about that line. It's still my favorite joke in the fic.

[goosessideblog]

Thinking about A Square being returned wrong. Mirrored. Irreversible

A Sphere fucks up, and puts him down in the wrong direction, wrong side up. It's not like he remembers, but A Square certainly does. When he wakes up- it's too late.

The third dimension never phased him, but what about something so intrinsic as your own body, flipped the wrong way? The world becoming upside-down, having to relearn to navigate the places you called home. And it's such obvious proof of the third dimension, but what if it's all in your head? No one can tell with your features being confined to a corner, you can only try to explain the distress you're going through, but if you try you'll certainly be deemed a madman.

We know his knowledge changed him, but what if it changed him physically? In a way he can never return from? He could've passed it off as the strangest dream, denied it's truth, lived the rest of his life at peace, but how do you disprove something so concrete? Would he think himself insane too, after a while?

Someone let me access a two-dimensional being i have a hypothesis that needs to be tested

[theblesseddamozel]

Am I the only one who loves William Blake's engravings but finds most of his writing kind of unreadable? I've been assigned The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and America: A Prophecy in two different classes now and it's still just as impossible to get into lol. Did 18th century audiences actually like this stuff? Tbh Finnegans Wake made more sense to me than this one reading that keeps following me around lol.

[trickycactus]

i looove my prozac but the strongest side effect i get is really active dreams. this week every single night is as if the second my head hits the pillow to when my alarm goes off its nothing but a highly pigmented dream slurry. just fucking EXHAUSTING. i feel like a skyrim werewolf where i can sleep but can never rest

[dykeofmisfortune]

i hate enjoying something when it gets popular and a lot of other people enjoy it because it feels fun at first and if u don't get into it ur missing out but then like a month or two later everyone starts shitting on people who enjoy it for being annoying but u can't be shocked bc that's just the cycle of things when they get popular and it's inevitable but still annoying and makes you feel bad

[quietwingsinthesky]

and that was a lot of words to justify the scenario in my mind of the master (<- currently salvaging a broken-down and half-dead tardis for them to use) getting increasingly frustrated that even just. knows what he’s talking about. that if he sends them searching the wrecked guts of other ships and weapons and worse for parts, they’ll come back with what he needs and if he rejects it for not being in good enough shape, they’ll ignore him and make it work anyway. as well as begrudgingly finding them useful, because this really isn’t a one-person job, and he doesn’t have to explain why for the most part, just what he needs done and they figure it out. Allowing for a few reconfigurations of things they did wrong, it benefits him more to keep them around than to ditch them. and so it begins.

[aeide-thea]

have been reading fic & thinking abt my relationship to fic, which is of course also among other things a mirror of my relationship to my own psyche, and like—i think all the discourse abt its being ~internalized misogyny~ to mostly/entirely read m/m is not ultimately, whatever the truth of it, all that helpful, either to readers or to Women! but of course that doesn't stop me from feeling weird guilt abt the fact that i don't read more f/f than i do, because if there's anything i love to do, it's feel unhelpfully bad abt myself on the slimmest of pretexts…

however! i did end up reading some f/f earlier, specifically transfem f/f, and it got me thinking—basically what i'm usually mostly reading fic for is the romance/sex, right? like, don't get me wrong, i love when a fic gives me a gorgeous double helix of, like, casefic and romance twisted together, that's ideal, but fundamentally most of the time the feeling up is what i sat down at the table to eat. so in a complex aegosexual way it's a fantasy i'm—not projecting onto, exactly, i don't want to be one of the people in it; but, like, lurking in the wings of with eyes big love-crumbs, to steal a phrase from a relevantly-named poet. :) and so it's no wonder that mostly i don't want to read cisfemme4cisfemme stuff, because that's not a dynamic that feels like it has any room for me, or even like i'm particularly welcome in the room. but like. if it's trans women? i'm there, i love that for them and for me. if there's a butch? i might get tripped up by our differing lenses on gender feelings and stub my toe a little but even so i'm probably here for it. (thinking here abt that one butch/femme geraskier ~cisswap which is, like, a gorgeous bruise i keep periodically pressing. <3)

so really it's just like. shocker: i'm not personally moved by fantasies abt romance which feature conventionally feminine cis women whom i don't personally find relatable or sexually desirable! and when i put it like that, it really instantly dissolves the weird useless discourse-induced guiltgunk. like. give me a woman who's, idk, tall and charismatic and strong and clever and talented at something (though honestly it's like that siken revised tweet, a lot of those characteristics are ultimately negotiable!), like women i've historically crushed on irl, and then give me a pairing for her that's like. another woman who's also enough of those things, or a man who's—honestly the kind of m/f i'm open to would be its own whole post bc holy shit am i fussy, it very much does exist but for now let's just stick a pin in that one—or somebody nonbinary, which… idk that i've ever actually seen nb/f in fic? i'm sure it exists! but i'm not sure it exists in any fandoms i've been into. pondering the question did get me really thirsty for a good 'farmgirl (of the luke skywalker variety) is absolutely stunned-and-ringing-like-a-struck-bell captivated by confident flamboyantly genderqueer love interest (example wanted)' dynamic, though…

[tamaharu]

AUGH i love reading trans academic literature

[choppedcowboydinosaur]

I notice on twitter that when it comes to media analysis your run of the mill conservatives can be very retarded but, the leftist are reductive and just down right deceitful with their analysis.

[cescalr]

The amount of ideas I have for characters from media I've not even watched is bordering on the absurd at this point