#except the lava larva

[kivinelock]

2 Subnautica art pieces in a day?

it's more likely than you think

This is a space right between the blue brine pool and the lava pools. Drawn from memory.

[psalm22-6]

So I was searching through french national library website, as you do when you are bored and your favorite media is les mis, and I found this monograph by Fanny Dénoix published June 1862 titled “Les Misérables : à M. Victor Hugo” so if you are interested in reading one of Hugo’s contemporaries’ reaction to les mis, addressed to V Hugo himself, I’ve done my best to translate it (keep in mind that I am not a native french speaker so if anybody is interested in clarifying any points I might have missed, feel free) 

For context, I had to look up who Fanny Dénoix was and there’s not a whole lot of wikipedia (english or french) that helped to understand her position on certain aspects of the book (namely the part where she calls victor hugo a brother of satan haha) but basically what I got was that she was a writer who “ corresponded with many French intellectuals of the time including Victor Hugo”

Anyways, I liked that she quoted the text a lot (it seems like she had maybe only read up to the robbery at the gorbeau house) and she liked some of the same quotes that I did and I’ve marked all the chapters she referenced. And I liked that she she liked certain characters and seemed to dislike certain digressions and you can read that all below. Hope other people might notice something interesting in here! 

I. 

What beverage do you dare to put on our lips, Man, demon, genius or god? In your tremendous goblet we imbibe fever, we drink fog and fire! 

Who, poet, would hazard to follow you down so many strange paths? In your personal paradise is there a planet which is reassuring to the eye of man? 

With you, at the same time, here is the den, the summit, the tears, stamp and the irons: Here is the dawn, the flowers, the darkness, the abyss, the heavens, the ecstasy, the underworld! 

Yes through you, we the elect have tasted the delight, have felt the prick of the thorn: through you, we the damned have known the torment, have weighed life and death.

At times you seize us with sadness, with fear. At times your indescribable accent brings us a caress or a chisel, leaving an imprint of ice, of lava, or of blood! [okay so as I was reading it up until here I was like okay so she really likes him?]

And wonder! Who follows your invincible steps surrenders all liberty. To free one’s self from the imperial yoke? Impossible: That yoke is made of eternity! [and then this made me think that maybe she did not really like him]

By what right do you dispose of our destiny, supreme being, giant being. What! You, along with God, hold the chained soul in eternity, in the void! 

So then what are you? Must we doubt or believe? Vagueness irritates our spirits. Night, sun, or chaos, in your opinion is this glory? Is it a shame to be in love?

In response your cry releases flames and terror freezes us still- Then, the sounds of azure skies, you thrill our souls with dreams of wings of gold.

But finally we want to know what you are: Were you born among mortals? What are you expecting from the world? Denouncement or celebration? Chains, a throne, or an altar? [this part was pretty funny]

Accepting the unexpected, because of your essence humanity must feed itself, because we must, without thanks, live in your power, to shine or to die! 

Go! Your acrid prestige surrounds us in vain; Go far away! Sinister unknown, get out! All the stars shine in vain in your crown; You are nothing but a brother of Satan! 

Oh! No, I blasphemed! May your soul forgive me, genius with the magic candlestick! Illusion, happiness, only your appearance gives them. Otherwise, it’s the coldness of the tomb. [And these two parts were really the best]

Let’s beware of running from them, those strange regions where you evoke by turn sylphs, demons, larva, and angels. The soft dove, the cruel vulture! [inconclusion to part one, I don’t really know what her problem is with him except his ego, which is fair enough]

II.

With you, let us be carried away by the storm, Collide, succumb to the depths! Let us get lost from the real to the mirage, nail all the living in the casket! 

With you, let us burn with enthusiasm, initiate assaults, be lulled by the winds, be killed by the miasmas, be bound to the registrar of the convicts! 

Valjean, what a victim! There, what a miserable thing! Well what a precious appearance! Who does not love him? And, before this man unlike any other, who does not bow in respect! [I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic here?]

Whether he is a number, Leblanc, or Madeleine, Valjean keeps his appeal. Will he go away? We search, we hold our breath, to see if Valjean reappears. 

How the harshness of days gone by brings us back to earth, and what agony of death, when, riveted by a chain and thrown on the ground, Valjean cries and does not understand! [1.2.13]

Even to our eyes deceived by appearances, There are only victims of circumstance! There are only hearts rebelling against unjust suffering, They see the good with horror! [and maybe she was being sarcastic here? I really didn’t understand]

Once caught, yes the soul is dumbfounded, Filled with suffocating regrets! This thing, cruel readers, Jean Valjean did it to feed seven little children! [1.2.6]

Poet, why do you sully with this muck one so brave, so good as Valjean? What a rage you write onto this face of an angel. Coward, thief, ingrate, crook! 

Your fantasy outlined his presence, Valjean, he is the heavens set ajar. But with all fairness, with all goodwill, why set off the horrible Javert? 

And of Javert, why this harsh personality? We shiver at the thought of seeing him again! And yet, my god, with this austere style, what a proud slave to duty! [I think she likes Javert lol]

And Fantine, why, under bitter torment, bend this fragile shrub? Why these hard efforts, a mother’s torture, and the scorn of the gutter?

You could say that it is like the grating of a file against the flesh and groove of a burning iron when Fantine can, frightening and sublime, sell her hair and her teeth!   

And all the others we run from, run from what is necessary, but have pity as is their right! And this poor orphan, skinny and naked, who holds herself against the cat to be less cold!  [ 1.2.6 At first I thought that this was a reference to Cosette but then when I found the quote in the text I saw that it was a reference to Valjean’s niece] 

Cosette, poignant day! Must we bring her to the den of a murderer? Poet, is it really true then that in the human race there exists Thenardiers? [I also hate the thenardiers] 

Monseigneur Bienvenu, may he always be admired, may his cult become law. These rare virtues exhibited by the priest, rekindle your courage and faith. [just adding in a throw away line here about Myriel I guess] 

III.

With what vigor you paint distress, the valiant, celebration, combat. Without ceasing you are struck by vertigo, by drunkenness, everything from here on earth. 

There, suddenly you illuminate in history a feat which was sleeping ignored. Here Napoleon, by force of glory, makes in Europe a gilded people. [ 3.4.5 lol this is a quote from Marius’s speech to which Combeferre responds with “to be free”]

Here you expose these cloisters from which there is no exit, this lethargy from which there is no waking, all these brows covered by a veil woven by night, all these shadows in the sun! [ 2.7.2 ]

Crime, abuse, cowardice, your hand overwhelms them, your hand tears down false appearances, where does your hand not run, vigorous, relentless, taking destiny hand to hand? [3.1.11]

Without truce, around you what a bizarre assemblage of the fresh, of black colors! Your most shady path (all skies have their clouds), you sow them with gold and flowers! [okay I really am not sure I translated this part well]

However, the streets, the gamin, the grisette, we waste too much time. But, the grass, a grain of sand, a nothing, a little flower, you frame it with diamonds! [what I took from this is that she does not like the digressions...although she did talk about them a lot above]

By you, from the lost mountains, from the steppe, from the pebble beach to you, as the scene is evaluated! With you, what is glory? With you, how one dreams of the furrows of Waterloo! 

Here they reappear, these camps, horrible tombs of which the thrones make a game! Here the Emperor's prestige falls: the colossal man annoyed God! [2.1.9 glad to see this line has always been appreciated]   

In the chasm of blood, the thundering inferno, braver still Ney stood up! Greater still, he wants to die. -For French bullets destiny had reserved him. [2.1.12 Well I’ve just wondered before what people thought of the Waterloo digression. At least this is proof that they really read it] 

The wild and dreadful retreat unfolds, Because the king of king wants it to, Here is a demi-god whose power is collapsing.--Listen to the cry of every man for himself!  [2.1.13]

A man, towards nightfall, while everything folds and retreats, to combat returns isolated; It was Napoleon, immense sleepwalker, Alas! From this crumbling dream!  [2.1.13]

For a long time we said to ourselves, how glory dazzles: Look at the signs of the times. Is he really dead, he who rang in history the fanfare of the titans?  [3.4.5 This is another quote from most cringe Marius’s speech, love that it had such an impact]

IV.

Whereas your affect is pleasant when you describe a flight of the wind, the shock of a storm, how we salute you in this description of Paris in which the smile is the mouth of a volcano!  [3.1.11]

What does this fracas matter, what does this scum matter, so much as its ideal does? Yes, Paris is everywhere where the future is illuminated, where man dresses the altar!  [3.1.11]

With each step, how your eloquent power expresses hope, expresses regrets! How your natal sky and your absent fatherland cries in each of your strokes! 

With what emotion our guts palpitate, when your intimate expressions brings a soul to the soil, brings breath to the walls, brings cries to the household. 

When you paint the manx sown in nature, we respond with an oppressed heart: What sorrowful labor, my god, may these ties to the past be ruptured! [ 1.5.8 This one seems like a random throwback, it’s from a chapter about Fantine and I never really noticed this line] 

May a movable destiny break us, caress us, Yes, let us keep an untamed front: Yes, your teachings prove that distress is the wet nurse of pride!  [3.5.1]

Yes, when the happiness of a false title is named, when glory weighs so little! The punishment is a crucible into which destiny tosses man if destiny wants to have a demi-god. [3.5.1]

The fertile lessons that you know how to sow, we chisel them into our memory. Everywhere, we are happy, we are proud to take you for a prophet of the future. [I mean now with all this it really seems like she really likes him so idk why she called him a brother of satan earlier]

But how to support, storm or meteor, your unlimited path! Mysterious being, the spirit which devours your treats, blinded by clarity!

You, whose chariot of lightning in the infinite roles, provoke useful congress:  extricate the abuses of an old world that’s crumbling beneath the stars of progress!  

Because of the elegance in your heart and in your conscience, we dream of a more beautiful tomorrow. But why present the candlestick of science to the pathless voyagers? 

Science, in your eyes would be the first of the sparks of honor? What! Your repeated cries of light! light! would be the omen of happiness! 

But what peril, with these golden chimeras, to pierce the shadow of the night! This science impedes roads. See already what it produces! [why does she hate science and what science is she talking about]

V.

What does it matter, innovator: praise for hope  which replenishes that which is around you, for braving the peril, for vanquishing ignorance, alone, for marching more firmly than all others. 

You, who in the infinite the eagle would take as a brother, you who surpasses our wish, what will you not dare to do? Your audacious finger would even remove God like one would a caterpillar!  [1.7.5 Got to be a favorite quote and I knew just where to find it when I read it]

Too wonderful a plan! But the mistakes are numerous, so one wants to chase them. To what the beautiful wish? Sad truth! The shadow is difficult to lay low!  [2.7.3]

Have faith! Back in time to when the soul decayed beneath so many ignoble interests. Undermine, of course kill the spirit of coterie, the pale enemy of progress! 

You, of the generous times, wake up your memory: war on the vile love of self! You of the cult of honor and the cult of glory, regenerate the holy faith! 

Yes society, let it be pruned by your finger, despite its vain roaring. You, intrepid athlete, oh! You of the new world, rebuild the foundations! [again, strong praise and now you’re calling him an athlete?]

Fie! Of those backwards people, who want us to put the light beneath the bushel! When the people enamored with you acclaim you in crowds, laugh at the fool, laugh at the idiot! 

Let them howl, rail against egoism, envy, plot against the various parties. Like the Creator, pour out floods of life: illuminate the whole universe

VI.

Blessed be the return of Valjean, of Cosette! Surprise! We are not breathing anymore! How this night, the night of the Jondrette, would make us scared if not for your honest Marius! [Blessed be Cosette :) Glad she liked that chapter]

There, our hearts gripped with supreme terror, taking in the terrible plan! The criminals of the hovel and the Javert, himself. Will they take Valjean or kill him? [what will happen next??]

But what! Of your heroes we are already losing track! So soon! Why this sad goodbye? Continue, dear cruel one, we plead for your mercy; we beg of you as much as we do God! [my exact reaction when V Hugo changes the subject right in the middle of the plot]

 Without you, love does not remain, without you, doctrine does not remain which does not provoke a mocking laugh. King of the world, without you the air is missing from our lungs, the beating missing from our hearts! [I think she likes the book]

FANNY DÉNOIX DES VERGNES.

 Beauvais, June 1862.

[mst3kproject]

The Navy vs the Night Monsters

Of course, it’s not like bad things stop happening now that 2020 is finally over… we just get to start counting again from zero. Kind of like how I’ve started counting thirty-six Episodes that Never Were per year, beginning with this one. It was co-directed by Wyott Ordung from Robot Monster and features familiar faces like Russ Bender and Mamie Van Doren, the latter for once not playing a teenage delinquent.  It also has one really obscure MST3K connection: it was based on a story by Murray Leinster, which the sharp-eyed will remember as the name of the ship attacked by Evil Count Zarth Arn’s lava lamp weapon at the beginning of Starcrash!

A plane carrying specimens of Antarctic flora and fauna makes a rather rough and unexpected landing at a naval base on remote Gow Island in the south Pacific.  There appears to be nobody on board except the pilot and a few penguins – the former is in a catatonic state, and the latter are... well, penguins... so what happened to the rest of the passengers and crew is a complete mystery.  Did the pilot go mad and kill them?  Did the penguins?  Or did it have something to do with those mysterious ancient trees discovered growing around a geothermal spring in the heart of the frozen continent?

The first ten minutes of this movie are spent trying to be a comedy.  Before we get anywhere near the plot, we first have to listen to the guys on the plane try to be funny about their lunch and their tastes in women.  Then on the island, we watch a guy who can’t seem to figure out how to inflate a balloon, followed by a dude talking to his dog, and then a really icky bit where two women convince a man he had sex with both of them, which he buys because he was too drunk to remember.  Only then do we finally establish what’s actually going on.  The impression one gets from this beginning is that The Navy vs the Night Monsters is going to be peopled entirely by Jackass Comic Relief characters, and I actually turned the film off and sat on it for a couple of days to psych myself up to watch the rest.

When I finally turned it back on, to my relief the movie turned out not to be quite that bad, but it’s still pretty damned bad.  The dull and unfunny opening is followed by an abrupt shift of tone, as a man maddened by terror jumps from the plane to his death!  The only thing set up by the opening that turns out to be relevant is Spaulding the meteorologist’s crush on Nora the nurse, when she’s in love with the base’s second in command, Lieutenant Brown.

I complain frequently about useless love triangles in movies.  This one is very useless, and all the more so because the script totally forgets to resolve it.  Spaulding hates Gow Island but stays because he’s in love with Nora – he wants her to go back to Miami with him and marry him.  When he puts this idea to her, however, it becomes obvious that Nora can’t stand him, and it’s clear enough why: Spaulding is an asshole and he treats Nora not as a partner but as a possession.  Never does he show any sort of tenderness towards her.  Every time they speak to each other, he seems to end up shouting, and his jealousy of Brown repeatedly leads to violence.

Brown, on the other hand, treats Nora with respect and actually shows vulnerability around her.  He’s been left in charge while the base’s commander is on the mainland attending an important meeting, and he’s really feeling the pressure as the base is surrounded by tree monsters in the dark.  He talks about his anxiety and Nora comforts him, and the audience rolls their eyes because it’s perfectly obvious which of these guys she’s going to pick.  And sure enough, at the end she’s in Brown’s arms… but nothing about the whole situation is exactly resolved.

Brown and Spaulding did get in a fist fight, though it wasn’t explicitly over Nora, but nobody ever talks about the problem. Spaulding never realizes that he’s treated Nora badly, and it never seems to even occur to him that she might prefer Brown over him, or even that she has emotions or preferences at all.  He definitely never seems to understand that he’s lost.  Brown and Nora seem to feel a need to hide their love affair from the other base staff, but we’re never given a reason why (although I guess ‘Spaulding’s a dick’ is reason enough).  Nora never tells Spaulding that she prefers Brown… maybe she’s afraid he’ll assault her?  I hate everything about this situation, but nothing more than the fact that as the movie progresses we get hints that Nora may be warming up to Spaulding, as if she’s supposed to consider these two guys equal contenders for her affections!  Fuck everybody who wrote this, seriously.

It’s kind of sad to see Mamie Van Doren in a role like this after meeting her in things like Untamed Youth and Girls Town.  Those movies were gross and exploitative, but Mamie’s characters were central to their plots and she filled those shoes reasonably well.  She wasn’t Oscar material but for what the films were, she was enough to carry them.  The Navy vs the Night Monsters is a little closer to being a ‘real movie’, but in this respect it represents a step down for her, as she is relegated to being something for two men to fight over.  Furthermore, Silver from Girls Town and Penny from Untamed Youth were both characters who required some range – Nora the nurse mainly spends the whole movie being annoyed with the men in her life.  Van Doren could have done much more if anyone had bothered asking it of her.

Let’s see… what else do I hate about this movie? I hate Private Chandler, the guy who stays a Jackass Comic Relief character once that opening is over. Shockingly, The Navy vs the Night Monsters actually kills him off, but he’s not nearly as annoying as Dropo or the guy from Outlaw, so his death merely feels mean rather than having any entertainment value.  The guy was just about to actually get laid by one of the women who’d made fun of him earlier – though she, like Spaulding, showed no sign of being sorry for past jerkitude.

I hate the monsters.  Normally I have a soft spot for plant monsters.  They’re a cliché in their own way, I guess, but they’re a fun idea.  The ones in The Navy vs the Night Monsters kill and digest people with acidic sap, and a character theorizes about how and why such a thing would evolve, which is cool. The execution, however, sucks. While the poster for the film shows us a humanoid Treebeard-looking thing, the actual monsters in the film are dumb-looking stumps that waddle along like a couple of guys trying to move a piece of furniture corner-by-corner because it’s too heavy to lift.  The result reminds me of The Creeping Terror, in that you have to want to get eaten by these things.  At one point a guy walks right up to one, inspects it, and escapes its clutches merely by backing away slowly!

The trees reproduce using insect-like larvae that are, themselves, lethally venomous.  This is also a neat idea which is, once again, ruined by the execution. The tiny ones are being pulled along the floor by a sometimes-visible string, and then they grow into stumps that look like they should be stools around a boy scout campfire, which move even slower than the adult trees!  There’s a scene where the characters are holed up in the base under an onslaught of these, with planes arriving to napalm them just in time, and it is ludicrous in its attempt to feel threatening.

I do like that Gow Island is a bleak middle-of-nowhere rather than a tropical paradise.  The landscapes kind of remind me of the Falkland Islands, though the weather on Gow is evidently better.  You can see why some of the characters hate it here, surrounded by barren scrub inhabited mostly by ten thousand smelly, raucous seabirds. Unfortunately this backdrop makes the ‘comedy’ opening seem even more out of place, though it’s also kind of nice that they didn’t give us any stereotyped ‘natives’ as either comedy or monster fodder.

As for a theme… well, The Navy vs the Night Monsters is clearly about an invasive species.  The biologist, in suggesting how the tree monsters evolved, points out that they are suited to the hostile environment of Antarctica in ways that make them nearly unstoppable anywhere else.  We’re told that they devoured all the penguins the scientists were bringing back for study, and as well as eating the people, they wreak havoc among the Gow Island seabirds and reproduce out of control.  The parallels to things like cane toads in Australia, or housecats just about anywhere, are obvious.

This isn’t something the characters care about, though, even the ones who profess to be scientists.  At the end, enough of the trees are destroyed that the humans can safely evacuate, and what happens after that is clearly Gow Island’s problem, not humanity’s. I really would have liked to see the script go into this a little more, but then, The Navy vs the Night Monsters is not a movie that wants to go into anything, even stuff it sets up in some detail.

At the end, The Navy vs the Night Monsters feels pretty half-assed.  Somebody wanted to make a movie, and then put in the bare minimum effort possible to have all the parts present.  They clearly understood how movies work, but they didn’t have the money and didn’t want to go to the trouble.  The result is deeply mediocre.  There’s a few laughs out of the dumb stump creatures, but mostly it’s just bad.

[monochrome-monarch]

Tthis took longer than expected buuut

Guess who finally gave in to making fankids again?

Am I being original yet, ma? Also, Idk how to draw babies so here have hem at their adult forms with little bad doodles of them as babbies

I know, The names aren't the best but they're stand ins until I find better names. Except Alphard. Alphard sounds cool and has meaningful name all over it, dude.

Anyway, here are some notes regarding these kids:

Lepittra

- Name is from the name Lepidoptra, the order where Moths belong to

- She's a bit bigger and bulkier than Mothra and sadly my art doesn't portray it well but still significantly smaller than Godzilla.

- Probably has gills but wings are definitely water resistant. Larva stage likely has gills, tho I guess

- Dorsals, Eyes and Wings light up when charging up and firing

- Might get a fankid sibling if I'm feeling productive or creative. However, regarding her parents' canon children, Lep is sorta like the Megan to Minya and Mothra Leo's Drake and Josh. Still cares about them, tho

- Rather peaceful and keeps to herself. Almost borders distant as she ignores humans and has no interest of starting a cult (however she is kinda interested in continuing her mother's cult) but doesn't mind them as long as they don't provoke her in anyway. Has a pretty long fuse so it's hard to piss her off, though.

- Isn't much to interfere with human affairs and mostly ignores them, unless A) One or Both parents are involved and/or B) Her mother's followers are being threatened or attacked.

- Plays peacekeeper/tired mom friend with her mom but will fight when desperate times call for desperate measures. Prefers intimidating the enemy into standing down but, again, will fight if necessary.

- Mommy and Daddy's Little Princess but they will call her out when she steps out of line

- Loves lamps and other bright lights

- Either fires atom blasts or light blasts, whichever works but will stick with atomic blasts for now

- Can reincarnate like her mom

- Has an unexpected friendship with the Three-Headed Heir with a lot of expected reactions and controversy buuuut Lep doesn't care much. Also is more or less the trio's impulse control. Will still kick their ass if they do anything destructive

Alphard

All Three

- Name is from the name Alphard, the brightest star in the Hydra constellation. Also, the word Alpha is there so

- Is small compared to Rodan and Ghidorah but they're still growing. Derecha is impatiently waiting lol

- They're gonna be three-headed because I wanted to be unique but I added a two-headed option because I was feeling a bit curious

- Strangely, the heads look different from each other. Then again, could be because they're a hybrid

- They either breath fire or gravity beams, might change but will kinda stick to fire for now

- Can regenerate but strangely, Izquierda's horn is regenerating in a slower pace than usual

- Speaking of Iz's broken horn, the three of them refuse to spill on how it got broken

- Can so far only start up hurricanes when they fly but there are hints of lightning there so there's a chance that they can start up storms

- Heads spend more time bickering than doing anything serious or destructive but when they agree on something, they would put their heads together haha and make for a scary team until something goes wrong in an also sitcom like fashion

- Can survive intense heat and is seen lazing around in lava more than once

- Has an unexpected friendship with the Little Princess with a lot of expected reactions and controversy buuuut the trio doesn't care much. Also is more or less her bodyguards(???).

Derecha

- Name is the Spanish word for Right

- The one head that takes after Ghidorah more

- Angry and aggressive, jokingly referred to as his parents' combined rage in titan form. Will fight anyone, even his parents and other heads but he never wins, especially against his parents since his other heads don't have a death wish. Also the only head who would gladly fight Godzilla at the Area 51 parking lot. Respects fighters, even if they lose, though.

- Despite his firey nature, he cares about his loved ones and would fight tooth and claw for them even if he does fight them a lot. Reacts even more erratic and angrier when anyone the heads gets beheaded. Loyal af, however, will follow you no matter who the Alpha is or what the Alpha says. He's never much for obeying authority, anyway

- While he's wild, he does, reluctantly, follow Centro's orders but will gleefully participate when Centro and Izquierda are in a mood for destruction

- Distrustful towards anything that doesn't remotely look like his parents or siblings. Hates humans and has breath fire at any humans or human vehicles that come too close or was at the wrong place at the wrong time

- Not the smartest head but he is by no means stupid and is actually quite a quick-thinker and makes decent, pragmatic decisions

- Doesn't care much about ruling the monsters or destroying/terraforming the Earth, he just wants to fight. Becoming king of the monsters or destroying the Earth is merely a bonus

- Is pretty annoyed that he isn't center head/leader and makes it known. Dislikes Centro's 'passiveness' and 'laidback' nature and wants him to show his true colors and act on his destructive tendencies more. Encourages Iz's trigger happy tendencies but does feel bad if he goes too far. Has no idea how to calm him but tries

Centro

- Name is the Spanish word for Center

- The head that's a nice balance of both parents or well, I hope he does

- Is seemingly the 'nicer' head. He seems pretty easygoing and laidback, uninterested in wrecking havoc. Doesn't pick fights with any of the other titans or attacks any human settlements, hell, he's even friends with the Princess. Doesn't even mind humans approaching him. Seems to be rather indifferent and content with minding his own business.

- However, He doesn't mind wrecking havoc, either, especially if he and his heads would get some benefits from this, even if it's something as petty as relieving boredom. He doesn't care how much destruction they cause, if they get something out of it, then who cares? He does, however have some standards but its mostly just "We won't get anything out of this."

- Openly cares about his loved ones, especially his brothers, even if they fight a lot and he wants to dunk their heads in lava

- Is rather laidback in how he reigns in Der and Iz. He mostly lets them do their own thing but he does pull them by the horn when they're getting too wild/stupid, mostly Der. He's usually the one that calms Iz down, especially when their parents aren't around

- Interested in becoming King of the Monsters and maybe terraforming the Earth, having no interest in destroying their only home, but is waiting for the perfect time to strike. Is also lowkey kinda scared of Godzilla but hahaha, as if he'll ever admit it

Izquerda

- Name is Spanish for Left

- Head that takes after Rodan more

- Curious if cautious, wants to explore but is paranoid, knows very well that in any moment, they might die because of their parentage. Thinks everything and everyone is out to get them. Is rather trigger happy because of it but luckily, he only fires really, really close warning shots

- The incident where his horn got broken made it worse, especially as his horn is growing back slower than normal. Really adamantly refuses to say how his horn got busted

- Feels safer and calmer when around family and friend. Lepittra is the only outsider he trusts. He's calm around his brothers but if they're both beheaded or if he's the only conscious head, he'd start becoming erratic and get closer to a breakdown.

- Is more cheerful and calm when not being scared. Chatty too, only shuts up when he gets scared and paranoid again. Also shown to be focused and a quick-learner when not panicking.

- The mediator between Der and Cen's arguments, as Der only encourages fights between Cen and Iz and Cen doesn't intervene immediately. . . But that is if Iz isn't arguing with them too. Then Leppitra is called in. And butts their heads together

- Distrustful towards humans. Has seen what they can do and speculated on what they are capable of but isn't stupid enough to kill. Only warning shots. Not destructive but will still participate if Cen is on board

- Kinda interested in becoming King of the Monsters? He knows it's their birthright or whatever but he's definitely scared of Godzilla. More interested in terraforming the planet, though but well, he can't if he's not king of the monsters so "Ugh, fine!"

[at-the-exd-of-everythixg]

K let's knock this brain cell around the peanut cage

Wulf ends up falling from a height that even Asgardians can't really heal from easily - its funny because Rhys obviously can't carry a man that big,,,I think,,,

Wulf and Edith go back home and whoop Rhys is probably never going to see him again cause of dumb rules so it ends up becoming a matter of home or heart.

Possibly can happen in the power swap but Dae's boss coming and working up a deal that can end with one of them going back to a torture house.

Dae gets too cuddly and WHOOP suddenly Rhys is getting some toxic spit and dealing with crystals spreading and the guilt of his boy??? Unreal.

Leaning towards more of his hallucinogenic side but Rhys accidentally consuming some of Dae's spit and Dae having a freak out that has an affect on Rhys (I probably have more details to go on about the effects if this wasn't three am rn)

Dae in the middle of removing some of his diamonds and its really messy and emotional for him and old memories surface and just,,,,bringing up some of Rhys's locked away memories?? (By that I probs mean when he was actually locked away and not dealing with amnesia,,,,unless he is??)

Dae has a fight with Peach and heads to Rhys half drowned and panicked. Could also work with Rhys meeting Peach by accident or confrontation just going to the mysterious place Dae lives??? Possibly more there to chit chat about.

Mahogany going too far and accidentally taking a proper bite into Rhys oof get a bandage son.

Magni getting shot and could either get a bit more feral and refuse to go back or just gets worse and somehow Rhys finds them impaled in the forest????? Posisbly more.

Rhys finds Mahogany in the middle of a very late night and very human snacc, body horror wh oop.

Kinda drafting away but flicker back to your exotic being verse and possible Rhys being a buyer of a genuine wendigo or alien, heck, could be a prize? Dae gets sold as decoration lmao like a lava lamp. Oof maybe Rhys gets sold for his first time mhm mmHM

Kay Sal lives his worst fear again and explodes near Rhys, might cause some heavy damage and brings up the previous people he's hurt. U know,,,,memories bout why he couldn't love.

Sick Sal (slick hehe) but hitting into the alien bit where he's stuck by antimatter (check A-force, Singularity vs Anitmatter G) and woof Sal shifting red feaatures and suddenly he's struggling to move and in lots of pain and he's lost his only brain cell

At this point I'm brainwaving at some nutjob getting a "d a t e" with Sal and maybe he's just had a fight with Rhys so he's cocky and a bully but whoop suddenly said nutjob is trying to dissect him and he's coming back with his gut sliced up but its hitting more of my body horror love so.

Rhys having a freak out and slicing at any one of his partners with shadows. Emotional torment of having his partner stand and watch him while blood starts to drip.

Rhys ends up at Dae's boss's place and gets to see what exactly his bf's been though all those years (could also lead to amnesia stuff) could lead to lots of body horror depending on comfort levels

Amnesia Rhys or Dae getting to meet and deal with each other >:3 lots of scenarios and discussions

Dae and Rhys getting into a fight and Rhys gets to see the muscle reflex Dae has for the first time (aka Dae getting real upset when he suddenly can't talk and knows that the man he loves recuxed him to silence. Hoo hooo I'm sleeping well soon)

Rhys meeting Ava or Dahlia because God I'm snorting at him seeing a possible monster or Ava attacking him and he's torn between "I'm being attacked by a vampire" and "why can't it be Dae who's aggressively biting my neck"

Back to the person selling thing except Rhys gets sold to Sal's planet ironically and possibly meets his mum??

UwU away from angst but au where people get bridal sacrifices or whatever and Rhys gets Mahogany and its mostly an excuse for me to wendigo world build.

Wulf gets more and more strained and panicked after Rhys gets hurt somehow and he doesn't know how to voice his worries of his smaller love and he just gets more wound up and upset as time goes on.

More on that? Wulf causing a tornado or hurricane or whatever is more wind themed and Rhys gets nervous feelings or what his boyfriend's like when he's real mad and just slow feelings about Rhys getting hurt??

Side note but I'm fucking inhaling at another wendigo getting into Magni and leaving a cow heart or smth and they're just panicked heart eyes and Rhys is just "what the fuck its three am" (3:30 am rn sobs)

Ksy ending with some quick cute morning ideas

Wulf waking Rhys up early for chores and he's wearing dumb tight clothes to lure Rhys out.

Rhys meeting Honkers when he gets a face full of angry duck because Daddy forgot to wake up early enough curse his long sleeping dumb bf who makes the bed so enticing.

Mahogany getting into bed with Rhys and it's a nightmare because they went out and now the bed is so cold.

Rhys waking up and realising that if tempted, Sal can and will stay inside his shirts and just cling like a koala. He's an alien, he has no weight to worry about and if Rhys loves him then he'll do this.

Kay double quick but some sort of happy au where Sal is trying to give dating a go and it's just nervous baby who throws up before literally every date

Nsfw where same au and Sal giving any form of control to Rhys but I can't stop laughing about Sal constantly shifting and trying to fight a good position because "no that's not right" and Rhys just "I'm going to wear u as a dick warmer if u don't stay still-"

Kay kay but even funnier is Rhys going and taking Magni into their first building and it's a pet supply store (gotta get meat where u can take it) and he learns the hard way that Magni Will and Can eat those many boxes of bugs you always see at pets at home.

Extra and for sure last one but delirious funny thoughts of OT3 and Sal screaming at Rhys and u have two tiny boys grabbing their toll wendigo lover as they proceed to eat an entire box of larvae.

EXTRA LAST but Rhys finding out the hard way that Dae can also eat anything thanks to his acid mouth and sitting in horror as Dae proceeds to burn and eat a plate what the fuck.

@blind-mutant

[brazenautomaton]

Fixing Heart of the Swarm’s Story, Part 4

Last time we covered Zerus, where Kerrigan gets her purple suit back. Once Kaldir, Char, and Zerus, are completed, it’s time to go on the offensive. Mengsk’s/Narud’s mole in the Golden Fleet has been ensuring any planet you can build up on has been cleansed (and since we don’t want to extinct the Primal Zerg, we need to mention that that’s half the reason we’re not establishing a force on that planet, the other half being that any brood we leave behind will be eaten). So we need to go after his shit instead of building sand castles for him to kick over. At this point we unlock Skygeirr Station and Dominion Space.

We have the Primal Kerrigan upgrade at this point, but Abathur reminds us, we don’t now nor will we ever have the raw power of the Queen of Blades, who could micromanage billions of Zerg with the raw force of her psychic power. We have superior resilience, superior adaptability, superior ability to mold ourselves to the situation we face. Like, you know, the Zerg.

Skygeirr Station

Skygeirr is a station orbiting around in the atmosphere of a caustic, inhospitable planet that’s hidden by virtue of the fact it’s so inhospitable to Terran life nobody wants to go there. In it, “Emil Narud” / Samir Duran performs secret experiments on Protoss/Zerg hybrid, with Mengsk’s blessing and material support. There’s Tal’Darim Protoss in the core of the station platform that I guess the Dominion workers don’t know about?

We’ve had more time for Stukov to talk to us about how much he fucking hates Duran and all the suffering and chaos he’s caused, AND we’ve hopefully established a strong, or strongER, link between Duran and Mengsk. Between Kaldir and here and Mengsk smugly calling back to him, we should think he’s a smug little cocksucker who hides behind others and turns them against each other because he can’t stand up in a fight, and we’re going to fucking pwn his face. 

Also, for Mission 3 to work, we need to have Kerrigan throw a bone to / be shown working with each of her 3 action-capable underlings, or at least Zagara and Stukov. Because we could have got each one of the in the mission immediately previous, it might be jarring if it looks like they become super loyal right away.

Mission 1 of Skygeirr, “Infested” has one big change that would have to happen no matter what, and then some other ones to fit in this story. The big change, of course, is that the mission can’t be about infesting Terrans, because Kerrigan and Stukov both had that happen to them and it’s driven them to revenge; they can’t inflict it on others. Instead, we’re going to say that this facility makes a lot of Zerg biological waste -- they do lots of experiments with it, after all -- and it’s kept in silos on the outside of the facility, isolated for safety’s sake, until a periodic ship comes to pick it up and dump it into the star. Sending the Infestors to make virophages on these silos causes them to basically infest all the dead Zerg sludge to pull out any useful biomass, resulting in a stream of Broodlings that spit acid, and by sheer coincidence have the stats of the infested Terran units from the previous iteration of the mission. The Broodlings are described as “little more than a living shard of anger”, which Kerrigan will say can add up into a river, and she knows she can point it in the right direction. Because controlling Zerg, flow of emotions, etc. They still fall apart when the Terran mystery gas leaks, because they’re unstable and have low constitution.

Narud should have more of a presence in this mission, mocking or taunting Kerrigan and by extension the player. It should go without saying, this can’t be Azmodan-tier “you may have defeated the last 67 of my invincible guys but guy 68 is INVINCIBLE!” taunting. It should be stuff about Kerrigan throwing her life away, being unsubtle and unable to understand what’s going on, can only interact with things by smashing them so all she wins is destruction and ruin, etc. Kerrigan can shoot back about his cowardice, hiding behind other people, all his men are terrified and disloyal and when they flee there’ll be nobody to hide behind, etc. (Easter Egg conversation when you get the “kill 60 units with Neural Parasite dominated units” achievement: “Of course my men are going to be disloyal, you keep flinging neural parasites at them!”   “If they actually felt any connection to your side, they’d be able to fight it off in about ten seconds.”)

Also, we gotta throw a bone to Zagara, but it’s hard, because we also need Zagara to be missing for the duration of one mission and we cannot yet tell the player why. So, ideally, this mission would have playable Zagara alongside Kerrigan, and they’d have battle dialogue showing respect for each other and a connection. But you need a suite of abilities for Zagara to be a hero Queen (I think an independent mobile supply of larva like a Hatchery, Creep Tumors that don’t need to go on Creep, and either free Transfusions or faster energy regeneration), and if you do, the mission needs to be something that highlights those abilities. If I could do that, I’d make it something like “the mystery gas health-drains all your units except heroes, workers, and larva (maybe burrowing saves certain units, like infestors and swarm hosts), mineral patches are gold and you have more gas, so it’s about using the Zerg ability to build units simultaneously instead of a queue and react to the type of army your opponent has in order to support the Broodling stream, and Zagara helps with that by being your mobile building base.” But I’m afraid I’ve already used up enough of my “change mission credits”.

So if I can’t change that mission, then before the mission, Kerrigan needs to have a conversation with Zagara and send her on a mission. Problem is, we can’t yet tell the player what that mission is. So she has to lay it on a little thick, I need you to do something special for me, you’re the only one who can do it, because you led your brood to flourish on Char for years with no support, through lava trenches and acid swamps, against the Dominion opposition, etc etc etc. And then she’s gone for a mission. That could be the bone thrown to Zagara, but it’s pretty blunt. If I can change mission 1, then an abbreviated version of this happens during the mission, and she’s absent from the Leviathan in mission 2. 

After completing MIssion 1, Stukov also finds there’s a bunch of infested Terrans who are already there, because they’re either experiments, or results of insufficient lab safety by the Dominion. He wants to take those guys in and see if there’s something he can do for them or with them, clearly having A Thing about his own infestation and feeling as though he’s abandoned or betrayed his men, or humanity in general. Kerrigan says “Alexei, that isn’t really how the Zerg work, they don’t have their own thoughts any more... But there is a chance they could be brought back to their own consciousness, and if anyone can do it, it’s you. I’ll have Izsha clear some of the Leviathan out for you to hold them in. I’m warning you though, if they go crazy and attack the rest of the crew, I’m gonna be really miffed.” She acknowledges his feelings and that this is important to him, and empowers him to pursue his own emotional resolution, showing she respects him as a person and respects his capabilities. She presents the idea they could be a danger, which makes it have weight that she lets him do this, but understates her anger, showing that she doubts it’s going to happen. This is her bone thrown to Stukov. 

Okay, that was a lot! Mission 2, “Hand of Darkness”, needs less changing. We can’t say it’s identical (all of the mission dialogue is bad, so it all has to change to be in line with the things we’re doing), but it requires few high-level changes, they’re mostly “make dialogue that is in line with what we’re doing”. You’re in the heart of the Terran facility where they have Protoss/Zerg hybrids, you need to kill them, and when they’re sprung from containment cells, they start a timer before Kerrigan dies so you gotta kill them first.

Now, the whole “timer on psychic attack” thing works fine and doesn’t need changing on its own -- but it’s redundant with a change I wanna make in mission 3 to fix something that doesn’t work, so it has to change to accommodate that. Off the top of my head, there could be a fail-safe system that does something Kerrigan doesn’t want (floods the level with a super-concentrated version of the gas from mission 1? if it crashes the station into the planet, she could in theory just pop a containment cell and leave to kill Narud, but then her unwillingness to do that could be explained later). Anyway, it’s some other mechanism causing the 5-minute death timer. We can have Dehaka, not playable but giving dialogue, running around in the ductwork, tearing and chomping wiring in an attempt to break the security systems, and that’s the tiny little bone we throw to him.

Other than that, this mission just needs more presence from Narud being a slimy fuck who we want to stab, and dialogue from the Terran units indicating they’re paranoid and holing up and not sure who to trust, which plays into Narud’s theme and hints to the player “hey, drag those hybrids over to the Terran units, they’ll fight!”

MIssion 3, “Phantoms of the Void”. This is the only other ZvP mission, because somehow a bunch of Protoss were hiding in this high-security Terran facility. Roll with it, or use it to show how manipulative Narud is. Anyway, this is the mission with the stupid fucking DBZ Beam O’ War between Kerrigan and Narud while Stukov runs around and deactivates temples, then the stupid fucking fight with Narud where she gets owned by basic shapeshifter tricks. In addition to being stupid, the order of this is wrong. She overpowers him in beam o war, then gets fucking humiliated by him afterward, in a way that doesn’t flow. She also gets picked up by her minions and saved, off screen, abruptly.

So instead of that, you’re going into that mission with just Kerrigan, and she’s telling Narud somethign like “You’re almost out of bodies to hide behind. I’m going to make you beg me to spare your life, Narud. Then I’m going to make you beg me to end it.” Narud is clearly nervous, has one last ditch attempt, etc. He attacks her psychically, using the power of all those temples you have to disarm. If she was the Queen of Blades, she could no-sell it and keep going, but she’s not, so she crumples. Narud taunts her unconscious body, “Now, your Swarm will consume itself, and then I will dissect what remains of you.”

Zagara, Dehaka, and Stukov all notice this, that you’re fallen and defenseless. And then Zagara and Stukov say “We have to save her!” (Dehaka wants to consume your essence but they put the kibosh on it.) Zagara’s on a friendly AI team, her unit is on the little platform with Kerrigan, constantly casting Transfusion on her and throwing out drones to spawn Zerg buildings that can ablate some of the damage (Kerrigan’s HP takes the place of the beam timer). Stukov has the same role, he’s your hero unit and he is the one who disarms the temples, but he’s less “the hand of Kerrigan” and more “oh God how am I supposed to do this I am not good with the Zerg” in tone. The whole moment is about your friends coming together to save you. Because these fucking weirdo space monsters are your friends and your relationship means something and it pays off. And emphasizing that they’re kind of uncertain how to do the thing shows why they need you, too, but having them triumph shows how determined they are to save you even if it’s hard.

So you fight off the Protoss and destroy the amplifier temples and save Kerrigan. At this point, you’ve taken everything this conniving, manipulative fuck can throw at you, so when you kick open the door to his inner sanctum, he should be terrified. He runs from Kerrigan and trips in panic. She grabs him and he turns into Raynor, says something like “Wait, It’s me! You don’t want to hurt--” and she slaps the living shit out of him with her spiky, clawed Zerg hand. Maybe do the gag where he cycles through forms that should have meaning to Kerrigan, and she keeps slapping him through them. Because we’re showing “Hey, this guy has a ploy to use her emotions against her, and it doesn’t work!” He fights futilely and she juuuust owns the shit out of him, until he’s on his knees. He begs for his life like a pathetic, mewling wretch, promising that he’ll work for her against Mengsk, just please don’t kill him. And she says “Why are you worried? I’m not going to kill you.” and steps to the side to reveal Stukov, smiling evilly. Stukov is all “Hello, ‘Samir��,” and then Narud starts begging Kerrigan not to let Stukov get to him, as we zoom out and/or cut away.

[nanonaturalist]

Complete Metamorphosis

I previously wrote about incomplete metamorphosis, where insect babies (nymphs) hatch from eggs more or less looking like adults. Complete metamorphosis is a totally different game--the babies (lavae) look absolutely nothing like the adult form, to the point where you may not even know that they are insects at all. Once you know what to look for, identifying larvae is much easier.

Questions to ask when you see something that might be a larva:

Where do you see it? On a plant? On the ground? In the water?

How is it shaped? Does it have a visible head? Does it have legs?

If it does have legs: how many? What do they look like? Are there any other appendages, like jaws or prolegs?

Photo examples above:

Green lacewing larva. These larva are predatory and have large biting jaws. Some species also use camouflage, covering their bodies with debris which may include the emptied out husks of their prey. If you ever see a white fluffly blob meandering around on a tree, chances are you are seeing a green lacewing larva.

Mosquito larva (Asian tiger mosquito). Mosquitos spend the first part of their life in the water--females lay eggs on the surface of stagnant water, and after hatching the larvae wiggle around with their tails out of the water (they breathe through a tube at the end of their abdomen--you can see a little knob in the photo). It’s interesting to note that mosquitos are flies, yet I don’t think anybody would mistake a mosquito larva for a maggot. Even within insect orders there is substantial diversity.

Lady beetles. While the lady beetle family has a variety of species that look very different from one another, most people picture a black-spotted red beetle when they think of a ladybug/lady beetle. The larvae of these particular lady beetles also look fairly similar, and it can be hard to tell them apart unless you know what to look for. In general, they are black and orange, are textured and look “armored,” and have three sets of fairly long legs. You will often find them on plants that have aphid infestations, as the larvae are predatory on them.

Leaf beetles (blue dock beetle). Leaf beetles are another very large group with few similarities between species. You will typically find leaf beetle larvae (you’d never guess) on leaves of their host plants. These larvae can do a substantial amount of damage to crops if they go unchecked. Like lady beetle larvae, they have three sets of legs and a segmented, textured body. When I first saw these larvae, I was able to guess what species they were because this plant was infested with the adults (and they were the same color!)

Scarabs. Another beetle, but this one is much different. Scarabs are an enormous group of species, but their grubs generally look the same and develop concealed underground or in rotting wood. The grubs are soft and fleshy, with three sets of very long legs and a prominent head capsule. It is fairly rare to see one without busting up old logs or digging holes, but they do occasionally venture out in to the wide world. The adult shown here is a masked chafer, but I’m really not sure about the ID of the grub (they are hard to tell apart!)

Io moth. On to caterpillars! Most people are familiar with caterpillars (the larvae of butterflies and moths), and may even be able to identify (or at least recognize) a few. But caterpillars can be tricky as well, because they look so different from one another, and there are a few other types of insects with caterpillar-like larvae. Sawflies, for instance, can look almost identical to caterpillars, except they have a different number of prolegs. Prolegs are those little fleshy suction-cup things caterpillars have to keep them from falling of leaves they are feeding from and living on, but they are not true legs, and butterflies/moths rarely have more than 5 pairs of prolegs (inchworms and loopers have two or three sets!). Sawflies will have more than 7 prolegs. Some caterpillars protect themselves with venomous spines, like this io moth caterpillar. If you are able to get a side or bottom view of a caterpillar, you can see the number of prolegs to confirm that what you see is a caterpillar after all.

Tawny emperor. These caterpillars are interesting to me, because their head capsules are covered in little horns (I think it makes them look like Dutch rabbits!), but otherwise they look fairly standard for caterpillars. As with all larvae, you’d never guess what the adult looks like from seeing the babies.

Posted August 18, 2017

[formwille]

Translation of Botho Strauss’ Der Spiegel article about Odd Nerdrum

Will we ever again be able to see the Nakedness of Man? Or has it vanished forever, together with the bodies crammed into the gas chambers? Or under the lotion of sunbathers with noninflammable souls, under the cosmetic mud of narcissism, under the veil of images of the world’s destitute and sprawling bodies? Under the thousand tattoos of immodesty?

It can only show itself suddenly, in an epiphany. And that is how it shows itself in the dark paintings of a Norwegian, Odd Nerdrum, born in 1944, whose Lorenzo Lotto-like distortion of beautiful and classical forms, painted in the manner of the old masters, makes use of bizarre and eccentric subject matter.

"Twilight" (1981): a very beautiful nude of a big woman seen from behind, squatting in the woods, defecating, her gown pulled up to her shoulders, her heels raised, supporting herself with her hands, her thighs exposed; what comes out of her looks like a phallus emerging from the earth, penetrating her.

Three entwined blind girls at a parapet, sisters of the sun, greeting the dawn with waving arms and loud singing ( "Return of the Sun", 1986). "Our age lacks sunrises,” the painter says in an interview.

The subtlety of the brushwork contrasts with the abnormality of the subject matter. The wounded, the maimed, the spastically ecstatic. A self-contained

fantasy world like Blake’s, but with no mythology, no

storytelling – instead, enigmatic encounters, ritual choreographies, not individuals, not social beings, but perfectly isolated existences, brought back to a state before history: re-creatures. Often, in the distant background, the dawn; but the core color is brown-grey, brown-black; Rembrandtesque darkness embroidered with golden threads. Barren highland horizons, Icelandic lava deserts, with the earth’s curvature often discernible.

Painting has not conjured up such visions for a long time.

For a while, one still feels reservations in the face of the overly-staged, of the shocking contrast between technique and figurative content. We see someone making a journey to his dead friends, the Old Masters. He yields to the siren song of pre-modernist art - only to let his most intimate monsters emerge in its light, without ever losing himself in pastiche, quotation or copying.

The manner, the old masterly style is like an incantation or, if one prefers, a probe, to see beyond time. "I know I'm destroying the new with the old." But what he brings with him from his descent, a descent thanks to which he is able to return, to rise again with greater power, is a never previously seen, unidentifiable universe of imagery.

A dying man and woman ( "Dying Couple ", 1993): naked, lying flat on their backs on animal furs, head to

feet, a distance of almost the length of a body between

them. Chin, eyes, front teeth thrust upwards, towards the sky. His right arm, her left arm bent, both with their thumbs under their fingers, both dying in an identical gesture, a gesture of spastic fear and existential awkwardness.

A sleeping bag reverts into a larva, a mummy’s cocoon. "The sleeping courier" with his old rifle, lying next to an enigmatically round hole in the earth.

An old motorcycle cap from after the war, a black leather cap, reverts into the headgear of an archaic tribe of herdsmen.

Three singing women ("The Singers", 1987/88): a trio of extremely long-legged figures, dancing in front of the yellow morning sky, jubilant, leaping on stretched toes, while the toes on the right foot of all three uniformly cramp inwards. Three identical figures, differing only in the positions of their heads and the direction of their eyes, forming particularly lively, graceful variants.

There is probably only this one struggle: the struggle between silver and gold. Between the cunning and the monstrous. It cannot be, that the world should fall victim to passionless science, to rational idiocy (as the artist puts it in an interview).

Modern art stands in a soothing relationship of reciprocity with its time. Not to speak of the indifference of the postmodern. But what sort of image is strong enough to

wedge itself between us and all this designer trash,

between us and this soaring mound of emptied yogurt pots?

Probably, these ecstatic, elemental human beings are not only from before time, but also before language. They do not speak, though one is called "The Storyteller". Yet, clinging to a dark rock, he presses his lips shut, raising his clenched fist (again with the thumb drawn in), with which he has thrown a burning branch before his listener. They do not speak, they sing, scream, jubilate, boister, gargle and growl. Blind, mutilated, sub-normal, doubled, Macbethian, soldiers of solitude. A mysterious tribe of herdsmen, appearing among us from beyond history, searching for its lost herd.

At the most, they form a community when sleeping, or singing to the light. Beyond communication and the horizontal gaze, they only converse with the space Above and with the incomprehensible distance. Whom could they still encounter? Low clouds, hovering calamitously, densely packed like dark cliffs. The naked wanderer communicates with the cloud, its shape speaks to him, and he mimics it gymnastically

( "Wanderer Imitating a Cloud", 1990). Man before Descartes and Newton, a fragment of nature, but more helpless than a stump of wood drifting in the rapids, ricocheting from rock to rock.

The naked torso of a buxom beauty, the stumps of her arms and legs contending with the curves of her

breasts, spread out on her back like a Baroque

Odalisque, but who, instead of receiving into herself, proffers something, urinating across a radiant beam of light – the gleam lingers over the puddle, her face (except an open eye, seeking the viewer) remains in the dark.

In the background, the screaming invalid with his raised fist and his dog, and even farther back, against the dawn sky, the shelter, the refuge to which this rudiment of a woman could only roll and writhe like a seal. Missing arms and legs are attributes of the totally denuded human being, for man’s gait still clothes him, as does a seductive eye. No one should underestimate the beauty of disfigurement, the attraction of the repellant ( "Pissing Woman", 1997/98).

Nor should anyone underestimate the brutal violence that is the ultimate denudation between man and woman in their godforsaken nakedness: a couple rushing in panic lift off the ground, they flee through the air, the woman with a dagger in her right hand hunts her already wounded, bleeding beloved, who is thrusting forward with his shoulder dislocated - one cannot tell whether they are flying at a furious speed, or are floating with leaden slowness ( "Woman Killing Injured Man", 1994).

This is the humanism of this pagan and art worshiper. There are many quiet retreats for bitter or kindly anachronists, but this man is a desecrator of our epoch, and he draws his fire from out of the earth. Rarely has

an artist so cuttingly contradicted modernity - not with

critical or sarcastic polemics, but with a fully developed, self-contained counter-creation, which says: “There are other worlds than those of rational idiocy.” He was educated at an anthroposophic school, and was for a time a student of Beuys in Düsseldorf.

Technological civilization, a history of prostheses from its very beginnings, has now penetrated so subtly into our minds that the beauty, the carnal radiance of the primordially invalid human being, who renounces all prostheses, can almost no longer be experienced. This technological world, which penetrates into our innermost core, will nevertheless not have the last word about the possibility of grasping and experiencing things. The veil of its cynicism is as thin as that of any other ideological curtain of our time, which at any instant can tear and disintegrate.

There is always one more robe to cast off, one more knot to untie, one more ring to pull off a finger, one more trace to efface... The Nakedness of Man must be designated anew from out of each epoch. It has only ever appeared in unforeseen instants of unveiling. Even today, with its catastrophes and virtualities, to wait for man means only to wait a little longer in the dimness, just to be able to witness the few seconds of a shattering opening.

In every epoch, the Nakedness of Man must be uncovered again, each time through other means. There is always an Existentialism.

The power of reason is so great that it is able to blend with a quantity of madness (destroyed forms of life), and forces us to use rational concepts to describe these catastrophes.

Inevitably, there is hostility, rejection, deep wounds. For a time he has a pupil and lives with her. Then she is accepted at the State Academy of Art, where she learns to despise her master. Perhaps she even joins in with the protests when a lecturer dares to elevate this Nerdrum to the rank of a great contemporary painter. “Reactionary kitsch!”, a chorus screams from the auditorium, and perhaps his little mistress screamed with them, in an uncontrolled moment full of frenzied rage.

Several times she comes back to him. She tells him about the hostile mood at the academy. She tells him about her sense of conflict. The truth is, she already made her decision along time ago. In the meantime, there is a classmate with whom she often meets and who zealously explains to her that the American fame of Nerdrum is a disgrace to the progressive art of Norway.

For many, his centaur-like art is intolerable: stylistically an integralist who rejects fashionable fragmentarism, in his subject-matter and inventions he is an anti-classical, effect-conscious eccentric. Isolated by his colleagues and critics, he suddenly performs a singular turnabout, not as an artist, but as a self-interpreter. Yes, he concludes from his previous work, I am the king of Kitsch. I only painted kitsch. I did not know it. I thought it was the art of the Old Masters, timeless, reappearing in the work of every serious artist. But that is not the right term. The right term is: Kitsch. I am, however, the highest point, that this movement has produced to this day.