#exotism

[geritsel]

Adrien Jean Le Mayeur de Merpres - Vessel, Venice. Charcoal and gouache on paper, 1921.

[shotofstress]

Is telling when some white ppl say "We have culture" and then proceed to speak about consumerism, their household traditions or of drinking chocolate milk, talking to ppl (no joking, literally someone said that), and singing at the bar.

No traditional art, no songs with cultural meaning, no games, no traditional clothing nor traditional food, no dances and traditional music, no shared pain, no historic joys nor wounds, no stories, legends nor mythology, no vestige of anything older than 100 years, no indigenous roots, etc.

That's how you usually know that this white ppl will threat other white ppl as "exotic" or other terrible way like that for having culture, like when the British Empire created the concept of "Near East" among others and all that bc they couldn't deal with people that looked like them (and yet "not enough", they do, and they don't too, you know), but were at the same time "too similar" to the uncivilised non-white people.

This reminds me too how some usa and british ppl (thus the media they produce and affects the ppl that consume it too) sees scottish, irish and welsh ppl as magic half faeries coming from the "untamed lands of the north" or even as "good uncivilised". Not forgetting how some time ago I saw a ton of irish people being tired of the fetichization of Hozier at hands of some of his fans and speak about how this is terrible common and how they are portrayed in media. I'm not even begin with "vikings", the whole fascism surrounding that and the victorians lying time and time again and the adoption of that fantasy fic as truth, and giving a shit about colonialism and the indigenous ppl still being displaced and killed while cosplayers of the show vikings see themselves as children of wotan.

Fuck up that ppl prefer to lie and/or adopt consumerism, capitalism and upper class lifestyles as culture than admit how colonialism and capitalism don't gives them the culture that they see the groups they hate have nor will they care about the people they invaded and still invaded, nor care about the indigenous people of the territories they occupied.

[stevenrogered]

Dame Maggie Smith as Muriel Donnelly The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015)

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

Pssst... something new is coming...

...this weekend!

Free, non-AI animal art references.

[sparrowlucero]

The greatest injustice ever faced is that I almost certainly started the still thriving "clown husbandry" tag on here, but any discussion about it (from a know your meme page to a youtube video with 500k views) says it's a joke of "unknown origin" or credited to this post, likely bouncing off of mine (which was actively circulating at the time with like 30k notes):

This is a tragedy for many reasons, most of all because it wasn't just an offhand joke but actually a direct response to some of the funniest online hate I ever got:

They're erasing the truest history of tumblr: its desperate need to seethe and argue over every obvious joke with more than 10 notes.

anyways here is the canonical pet clown. according to me

[happycrabitat]

Take the memory, leave the shell! Watch what happens when we return seashells to the beach & marine hermit crabs!

Seashells are so important to beaches for a whole host of reasons.

🐚Over-shelling can affect hermit crabs because it reduces the availability of suitable shells for them to inhabit. Hermit crabs rely on empty shells of other creatures for protection and shelter. When there are too few shells available, hermit crabs may be forced to inhabit inadequate shells & pollution as homes, which can hinder their growth and make them more vulnerable to predators and environmental stressors. This can ultimately impact their survival and reproductive success.

🐚Shells provide homes or attachment surfaces for algae, sea grass, sponges, coral and a host of other microorganisms.

🐚Animals such as decorator crabs and octopus use shells as camouflage and many fish use shells as hiding places to avoid predators.

🐚Shells help to stabilize beaches and anchor seagrass.

🐚Shells are used by shorebirds to build nests.

🐚When shells break down, they provide nutrients for the organisms living in the sand or for those that build their own shells. (Shells are a major source of calcium.) I’m a firm believer in when we know better, we do better. I once shelled, and then when I learned all of this, I returned all shells that were not sprayed with a clear varnish to the beach & watched the marine hermit crabs go wild changing shells that were so needed!

[thegayneapigs]

he's had such a hard day. look at him. exhausted.

[chloesimaginationthings]

FNAF movie Mike learns about Michael's awful diet

[animalphotorefs]

Free, non-AI art reference images: Cheetahs!

Yesterday was National Cheetah Day, so I'm a little late to the party, but we can still feast our eyes on (and feed our pens/pencils with) these spotted icons.

Sourced from the Exotic Animal Photo Reference Repository

Artists creating derivative or transformative works (without AI) have blanket permission to use these photos as references, including works that will/may be sold.

Want more cheetah reference images? Find them here.

** Patreon ** -- *Ko-Fi**

[geritsel]

Adrien Jean Le Mayeur de Merpres - Impressions of the borders of the Ganges river in Benares, India. Charcoal, watercolor and gouache on paper, 1921.

[iluvjuicybooty]

💖💖💖

[crazyrichxplainr]

Dev Patel for The New York Times (ph: Justin J. Wee)

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

The Exotic Animal Photo Reference Repository is live!

You can find it at: https://www.animal-photo-references.com!

Here's how this repository works: all photos were taken by me, a human, at zoos, aquariums, sanctuaries, and other facilities with animals in human care. There is no AI involved in the photo editing or creation and there never will be. Right now there's 56 species on the site; my catalog has over 300 and I will be uploading the rest of them as fast as I can.

Artists creating derivative or transformative works (without AI) have blanket permission to use these references. Yes, even for work you're going to sell.

All other usage/reproduction requires permission, but assume I'm friendly and please do ask! That's educators, researchers, the media, people who need images for a school presentation, etc. This is just to retain copyright/control in case they're scraped/reused unethically - it doesn't meant I don't want folk to have access! So please do reach out via the contact form on the repository website, I don't bite and I'm most likely going to say yes.

Please don't repost the repository photos to your own blogs: I've created @animalphotorefs as a dedicated blog to share photos from the site, and of course I'll reblog a lot of it here! That again just helps with retaining copyright and sourcing of the images. If you really want to repost some for a specific purpose, please just ask me first!

Also, folks, this project has no funding. It's just me and my camera.

There will never be a paywall on the site - I believe resources like this absolutely must be free for everyone to access. So please, please, please support the repository if you use it. Want sneak peeks at photos, cute videos I take, or to help choose what I photograph and what gets posted first? You can do that through Patreon (and there's a free trial on the most interactive tier!) If you'd like to just drop a tip, I've also set up a Ko-Fi.

I can't wait to hear what everyone thinks of the repository.

To whet your thirst for cute photos, here's an Indian rhinoceros contemplating a goose.