#and loved to anthropomorphise

[writing-in-mermish]

The Elf of the Rose

So in the prettiest rose on the rose tree (I thought they were bushes but, whatever) lives an invisibly small elf (also very pretty though that seems rather unimportant). He lives a pretty charmed life in his pretty rose house in the pretty garden where the rose tree grows.

One day he decides to take a long ass walk on the vein of a leaf to count his steps (man was ahead of his time), but because he is the littlest of guys (invisibly so) and started to late in the day, night hits before he gets half way. Things are cold and the roses are closed, he is having a bad time. But he recalls an arbor with honeysuckle (which cannot close up) and plans to go there to sleep.

On his way he overhears to love birds (humans to be precise) complain the the girl's brother hates her beau and is making him go away for business. The girl is hella dramatic and cries and kisses a rose so hard it opens up before she passes it to her lover.

The elf said to himself

and ventures inside to rest. But this dumb lover's heart is beating so damn hard our littlest guy cannot sleep! Also, he (like his sweetheart) keeps violently mackn’ on this rose.

Judgy brother shows up, lookin’ gloomy and wicked as hell, and fuckin’ stabs the fool to death while he’s kissing the rose. He cuts off his head and buries the body and head under the linden tree (brutal). He conveniently explains that this was his plan all along, because everyone would assume he died or disappeared on his business trip and then his sister would move on (absolutely unhinged behavior).

Bro accidentally brings the littlest guy with him in a dried linden leaf on his hat, who is horrified and angy at this situation. They get to bro’s house early in the morn, which gives him the time to go creepily laugh over his sister (dreaming about her boo) like a freak and accidentally deposit the leaf on the window sill.

Our littlest guy goes to the girl while she sleeps with all his indignation and spills the beans and tells her if she thinks she’s simply dreaming a linden leaf will be on her bed as a sign when she wakes.

She sees and believes and is gut wrenched with no one to talk to. The elf sees the window is open but is too invested to leave, so he parks himself in the monthly rose bush (so this one's a bush, what's the difference?) in the window.

Bro keeps coming by without a glimmer of guilt, so when night rolls around she goes to investigate and finds her lover and considers pulling a Juliet, but instead chooses to take up man’s severed head, clean him off and kiss his dead lips (that’s some gothic ass shit if I’ve ever heard it) and then. Takes. Him. Home. (and some jasmine too)

Then she got a big old pot and hid his head inside and planted said jasmine. The elf felt like this was enough sadness for him and dipped, only to find that his rosebush was withered, leaving him melancholy as hell.

He found a new rose to live in but kept coming back to home girl's room, watching her waste away, seemingly giving her life force to her jasmine plant through her tears and kisses.

Her bro told her not to be so weird, not understanding why she cared so much about this stupid plant (her lovers head was rotting inside).

Our littlest guy takes pity on her sleeping one day and pulls up to talk about more positive things from his life, in hopes of improving her dreams. And it did, as she dreamed of her lover. And the jasmine grieved with her the only way it knew how, by blooming beautifully.

Her bro got weirdly possessive of the plant and stole it to put in his room by his bed (I am both sensing a pattern of concerning behavior and some dark irony here).

The elf decides this is the time to spill the tea to the new flower spirits who say "we already know. We are born of this tea. It came installed." Our boy didn't understand how they could be so calm about it, so he told the gossip to the bees, who responded much more satisfyingly by telling their queen, who decided the proper response was to murder the lout.

But before they could, gothic girly dies and that night the jasmine spirits armed with poison go to whisper nightmares in the murderers ears and stab his mouth with poison, claiming their revenge for the dead.

Our littlest guy, the queen bee, and bee army rush over the next morning, only to find people hanging around claiming the scent of the jasmine killed him (oddly not that far off). The elf figures out what happened and explaines to the queen, who instructs her army to tend to the plant.

The humans, not understanding, want to get rid of the bees and have some poor sap remove the plant, which inspires one bee to sting, causing the man to drop the pot and reveal the lover's skull, which in turn reveals the murder to all.

The bees rejoiced and sang of the flowers and the elf for taking revenge and uncovering a murderous plot.

TLDR: an invisible flower elf uncovers a murder of a girl's lover by her brother. He gives her the deets to find his body, retrieve his head, and bring it home to plant jasmine on top of.

She is sad, her brother's mad and steals her bloomed pot of jasmine away. Elf spills the tea to the flowers (who already be knowing) and then bees, who want to murder.

Sister dies, flowers take revenge, bees and elf come by and see some people at the aftermath. Bees sting some dude for removing flowers, revealing skull which tips humans off to the plot, bees rejoice and praise the jasmine and elf for their good deeds.

[squidsploitation]

a compilation.

[hymnostic]

who’s up thinking about the mars rover

[lucaswarmhotchocolate]

I fuck with magic trees so hard. If your world building has a magic tree I love you. If your fic adds a magic tree I love you. If your fic expands upon a magic tree I love you. If you are a magic tree I love you.

[dandyghest]

having a lot of fun with this beaftie lately :o]

[stuffyflowers]

if you cant tell i am..... haha..... cooking something..... for a certain day for utyversary.......

[misterradio]

your honour it is the inherent autism of robots

[inbarfink]

So let’s go through this one-by-one, shall we?

Red Guy

Flat affect in voice, not very expressive 

Or from the perspective of other Red Guy, he is far too expressive and tend to smile at inappropriate situations

Express emotions either ‘too little’ or ‘too much’ in terms of volume, very little in-between

Speaks very bluntly 

Feels physically uncomfortable with bright colors

"Well, this isn't that fun, is it? can't make out where I am in the room like this. What if I'm standing in an embarrassing area?" "I actually don't mind it. Kind of a nice break from all of those... garish colors"

Duck

Loves cataloging and organizing things as a recreational activity

Anthropomorphise inanimate objects (like ACTUALLY inanimate, not teachers)

"You have to jab it hard or it won't respect your choices!"

Has a hard time fitting in in ‘normative’ social groups

Odd sensory sensitivities

"You're supposed to say that the floor is too loud or the window is disrespecting you"

Yellow Guy

Relies on a heavy amount of social mimicry in unfamiliar social situations

"I'm making bits and parts, although sometimes I feel a bit like the bits and parts are, eh, making me."

Tends to understand metaphors and turns of phrases very literally

Which is actually a trait that he displays even in his hyper-intelligent ‘Charged’ mode

"Oh there he is, it's about time." "Yeah, what have you been doing?" "Um, okay, let me see... We were learning about electricity... I completed a crossword puzzle..."

Who is also very sensitive to sounds when two or more people are speaking at once

He also seems to have ‘clumsy’ motor functions in both ‘forms’

In conclusion:

[local-hellhound-steals-spaghetti]

Would you say that the intelligence and emotional capacity of dolphins are overstated? Would you say the same for orcas(I know they’re dolphins lol but for every “dolphins are evil post I see “us flawed humans can learn so much from them” comment under an orca post).

Don’t get me wrong, they’re intelligent but I think in a “baboon/crow/parrot smart and not “human/mystical higher being” smart.

Oh 100% yes.

Certain lobbyists and activists love to overstate the cognitive capacity of dolphins and orcas and essentially anthropomorphise them into basically "humans with fins".

It tells me that these people haven't spent a lot of time around them because they're definitely not that.

They're certainly smart and they learn new concepts very quickly - but most of their intelligence comes from social intelligence rather than complex thought.

Most of what makes them unique is based on the environment they live in. Signature whistles, for example, makes sense for a social animal that interacts in the world through sound. Echolocation also makes sense for an animal that often navigates dark/murky waters or has to detect prey over long distances.

But yeah there's no actual scientific evidence that suggests dolphins are these hyper intelligent beings that are beyond human intelligence. And after spending many long hours observing behaviour and working with bottlenose dolphins, I would say that they don't need to be.

They are their own incredibly complex animal with indvidual variability and personality that is very well adapted to the ecological niche they occupy. Honestly I don't even like comparing animal cognition to human cognition becuase it measures them up to something that they have no evolutionary reason to be.

And they don't need to be "just like us" to be worthy of attention, conservation and study.

Anyway here's a picture of Caliban because she's gorgeous and she deserves the world.

[whensuddenlycats]

It's not for the worse tho. Sometimes you need to raise and rehabilitate a young thing and then release it back into the wild. The animal grew and changed and learned to thrive on its own. Keeping it will only hold it back and leave you unavailable to new orphans that need you. The toaster loves the toast, so it sets it free. Later it'll help more bread slices come into themselves, reach their toasty potential and set *them* free and the cycle continues. It is beautiful and kind and heartbreaking and it'll keep doing it bc someone needs to.

you ever think about how toasters love bread but hate toast

[ljsbugblog]

a wonderful encounter with a Spiny Grass Mantis. mantids are really something special, it feels like there's a lot of intelligence and awareness about them (or perhaps I'm just anthropomorphising lol).

at any rate, she* was very patient with us as we fawned over her and took a ton of photos, before gently returning her to the fence to continue her prowl.

I especially love this photo of her foreleg, such wonderfully intense spines!

*I don't actually know how to sex mantids, my guess is based entirely on their short wings and generally large size. I welcome any corrections or tips on determining mantis sex!

Spiny Grass Mantis, female(?) (Archimantis armata).

[fujosh33p]

Been reading Watership Down.

It's strange to say but I love how unmistakably about rabbits it is. Characters are anthropomorphised but clearly are not human, they're always confused and scared, they immediately forget anything they don't quite understand, it's normal for them to get so frightened they can't move.

The rabbits' mythologies and Lapine language help a lot with this, like how they can't count past 4, or have specific words for bits of rabbit culture that humans lack.

[planefood]

something I don't see talked about a lot in objectum spaces but people have agreed with me when I've brought it up is how difficult it is to draw objects in a way that feels true to its beauty and essence. At least without doing a 1:1 replication of an image. But I don't like doing art that way. My objectum artwork is a constant battle between trying to make art that's creative and enjoyable to me while keeping the same energy of the object I'm portraying in the piece. I've gotten some (mean) criticism in the past for putting my anthropomorphic object drawings in the objectum tag but that's just the easiest way I can convey how an object makes me feel in artwork. It's hard to portray how much an object feels like its bursting with life and personality to me by just drawing the object as it is, as gorgeous as I might find the object in particular. Not because I don't find objects beautiful on their own I just really want to really show how the object makes me feel in the art I make. I consider myself a cartoonist first and foremost.

I will admit though, sometimes adding too much character to an object can make it lose its "objectness" and when it comes to a sexuality surronding objects that's, kinda important... For example a plane looks quite a lot different once you add a face to it:

(and I'd be lying if I said I didn't find the regular plane 100x more appealing than the disney one, despite there being relatively minimal changes)

At the same time though, I could happily draw regular planes, computers, cars and whatever all day with zero added features. I love them after all. But me and a lot of other people can really connect to an object seeing it portrayed more anthropomorphised. I've had a lot of people come to me saying that specific brand of my objectum art introduced them to object sexuality because it showed objects in a different light than say, a still life could to an uninformed observer.

Either way that being said, I put a lot of thought into making my object art appealing to objectum people as an objectum person myself, it's not going to be to everyone's taste because I'm not them. But I hope one day I can really find that perfect balance for myself of object and anthropomorhisation that doesn't take away from the regular object itself.

[sparkylurkdragon]

A detail I really love in the Watership Down comic is how every rabbit in Cowslip's warren is almost constantly smiling widely. It is incredibly unsettling, given the characters usually have minimally anthropomorphised expressions.

Like, here's a smile from (I think) Pipkin. Note how it still reads as a small little bunny mouth and is just barely enough to tell he's smiling.

And then there's THESE SHADY MOTHERFUCKERS.

Like, here's some with Strawberry side-by-side with Hazel and Bigwig so you can see the contrast.

It's a wonderful tell that Something Ain't Right.

[weirdchristmas]

I love how this one, tho obviously damaged, still leaves such a confusing vibe of "pastoral veggies and fruit!" with "devil and anthropomorphised cat."

[canisalbus]

Ough, it is a shame that your setting is strictly dog-people because I absolutely would've loved to indulge in some un/just retribution-fantasy upon Giordano by the means of a polite and swift "Kind Regards, Kept your teachings in mind" message delivered by my own anthropomorphised-creature character, followed by an impolite and equally swift 'unkind regards' delivered by a heavy, blunt object.

Like, yeah, I've been following your fantastic art and blog for a while and whilst my heart aches (In a good way) for a good tragedy, every piece of tragic history sparks another part of me that yearns for a 'good ending', where these two lovers can be happy and safe from the misery they've endured.

I guess what I'd like to say is that it's not often that I'm moved to such feelings over fictional characters, and that I hope to continue to enjoy your work for as long as you create it. :o

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