#here i made you a weird thing

[boyhood]

I think a solid few of my followers here are familiar with me through my on-hiatus podcast Museum of the Vanishing Dog that I make with @samsketchbook, as well as my practice as a studio artist. 

I’ve started a new project called All Miracles Are Strange: a podcast about grief and pain and about the bodies of female saints. In 2021, I experienced a lot of harrowing grief and also developed pre-vax covid which turned into long covid that gave me brain damage and ate all my joints. The next year, I experienced more losses and started to spend a lot of time thinking about the bodies of the saints: the way they suffered in such exaggerated, almost comical ways, and the way that suffering often extended well past their point of death. I have been trying to think of the ways these stories relate to me, a person dealing with both death and a body that does not work the way it used to and is in constant pain. 

Tonally, this work is different than The Museum of the Vanishing Dog, but true I think, to the ideas I present there. 

I have uploaded the first three episodes to most podcasting platforms.The first episode covers the situation in which I find myself now and an article about nuns by Eve Fairbanks. The second discusses what makes a saint and the self inflicted injuries of Sister Mary Magdalene di’Pazzi. The third discusses St. Veronica and the Mexican artist Teresa Margolles. Each episode is 15 minutes or less. 

I hope you like them. It’s been a weird little project, but one I have been working on pretty exclusively for the past several months. 

Listen here on spotify + Listen here on apple podcasts 

[planefood]

rules for thee and not for me

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

Eldritch/not-entirely-human Grunkle Stan stories have been eating away at my brain, so I have a silly little concept of Mimic!Stan.

He and his Mystery Shack are both mimics that lure tourists in as a literal "tourist trap" to gather and devour them! Since the house is alive, it raises a few (read: several) child safety concerns that lead to a LOT of rules to be created for Dipper and Mabel to follow when they eventually arrive, such as:

Be careful not to get lost in the winding hallways! The Mystery Shack is bigger on the inside, and you don't want to end up in the wrong areas.

Don't go through randomly appearing doors, they may eat you.

If you think you feel the walls around you breathing and the floor beneath you shifting, no, you don't.

If you think the walls feel a bit damp, you're imagining it.

Watch your fingers around windowsills! You wouldn't want to lose any of them.

Don't linger too long under the doorframes; it may start feeling like they are slowly constricting around you.

[flicklikesstuff]

“Maybe the flash was to blame. Or maybe it’s his shrunken state that gave the looming witch the illusion of being exactly 10 feet tall.

Whatever it was, it had flicked something within. Suddenly, he was no longer a lizard. Nor a great, powerful wizard. Not even “Rick Shades.”

He was a little Gourami.

Only 12 years old. Eyes wide and unobscured. Skin smooth from the lack of scars. But most of all, untainted by the horrors.

And unlike that little Gourami, he was entirely aware of what’s coming for them. He could warn the 12 year old. Maybe save them even. Tell her that continuing this approach is a bad, BAD, VERY TERRIBLY BAD IDEA!!

…

But he couldn’t.”

My inspiration pieces: :)

[guinevereslancelot]

what was with cameron house md she spends 90% of the episode saying she wants their patient to die bc he's a genocidal dictator and her colleague husband says "babe it bothers me for ethical reasons that you want our patient to die :(" and she said "hm maybe you're right :/" but when it comes down to it the genocidal dictator lays a finger on her in an aggressive manner and chase instantly commits medical malpractice to murder the guy and then when he tells her she LEAVES HIM bc boo hoo he's a murderer now like GIRL he killed a man for you!!! he's wracked with catholic guilt!!! he's being crushed beneath the weight of his sins because he chose his devotion to you over his devotion to god!!! he literally could not get any sexier at this moment in time!!!

[batfam-stuff-posts-0]

(Curious because I have 4 (this is my main one but I had a tumblr once before and realized putting all my obsessions in one blog doesn't really work for me))

[sergle]

I'm thinking abt that pretty fall leaves embroidery pattern post and about how like... it is categorically a repost, it's a reupload. right? a thing that is generally disliked. but because it's credited, it's genuinely boosting the artist in question. and it could ALWAYS be like this. reposting content could ALWAYS be a symbiotic relationship, but because sourcing back to the original creator of something is so uncommon, it's just easier to ask people not to repost it at all. and people still don't understand the difference. or they'll go to the effort of cropping out usernames/signatures to repost something, which is More Effort than literally crediting the creator of something you liked enough to want to repost. Like. I literally don't actually care if my own shit gets reposted, you have to understand. I just don't want it STOLEN. But "do not repost" is easier to write on my art than "you can repost this, but don't alter the image/remove my signature, don't you dare write 'credit goes to the artist' because that is not credit, please link back to my original post or someplace that you can actually find me. please use an actual link/url instead of writing a non-clickable link of my username, because making it text instead of a clickable link cuts the number of people who will go to the effort of visiting my own page in Half." All those aggregate themed accounts, those fuckin annoying as hell instagrams and facebook groups that are like "body positive art we love wamen 💕 hashtag feminism" and then MASS-STEAL plus sized art created by women, if pages like these that always go and steal my older self-portraits and other works... If they just put a link to my prints of those pieces in the text of those posts, or, fuck, my commission info page? I would literally be living on the moon right now. I would have a house on the moon

[zivazivc]

Say hello to my bug eyed baby boy 🐛👀👶

He was in an egg since September but about a week ago he finally hatched! 😊😅 jk jk but it did take me this long to finish this plushie of baby Leslie that I can hold close and snuggle. 🥰🧡

In the last few days I took him out with me so he could explore the woods for the first time, and so I could take some photos of him for you guys (and me lol).

No I could not trim this photo set even more, do you have any idea how many photos I took?? and he's precious in all of them. 🥺

I don't have a sewing machine or any other special equipment so he's entirely handmade with a pattern I made myself by trial and error, but I did use two of my plush toys as reference to study how they're stitched together.

I was pretty limited with my material choice because I had to find everything in Leslie's colors or at least the closest I could get to his colors, and I've realized that they're not very popular colors. His hair sadly ended up being the most off, but I'm still happy with it.

His body is something like sweatshirt fleece but the fabric being turned the wrong way so that the soft fuzzy side is on the outside. But I had no luck trying to find sherpa fleece fabric that would fit his coat colors so his fur is all embroidered using a stitch called turkey work.

And his lil pickle dreads are made with the same technique as friendship bracelets, just that they loop around. I've made so many friendship bracelets in my time that this wasn't hard to figure out how to do lol. And in the end I also sewed shiny pearls onto them to act as sparkles, since I'm not a fan of glitter or sequins. 😅

And lastly his hair is made out of genuine hand dyed sheep locks! Wondering how to tackle the hair gave me the most trouble. I was thinking of sewing it together out of fabric, or tying together fluffy yarn in the style of macramé and other ideas I can't recall anymore, but either the idea didn't sound good enough or I wasn't able to find the right material to try to pull it off. In the end I stumbled on sheep locks kind of on accident while browsing etsy and the idea was just too tempting. They're the only part of him that I ordered online and I was really worried it wasn't going to be what I needed, or that I won't like the color once I see it irl, won't like the feel, etc. But I'm super happy with how it came out in the end. Yes it's much lighter in color and now he's curly, but I think it really suits him, and it feels soft like actual hair. 🥰

Some details from up close:

[nattravn-art]

Laketober 2024: Grounds - Family tree

[rustedleopard]

Chujin's opinion of Starlo is that he is an immature loudmouth who only grew physically beyond middle/high school. He's a reckless moron that has no regard for the fact that he is poisoning the minds of monsterkind with his admiration for human culture. He thinks that Starlo's desire to bring a slice of the Underground is a waste of time and that if Starlo REALLY wanted to help monsterkind's situation, he'd try to figure out methods to escape the Underground instead of finding escapism in a pale imitation of the Surface. He is unable to conceive why Starlo even likes humans except out of some twisted, Stockholm Syndrome-esque fawning over monsterkinds' captors.

(Deep deep deep deep deep down, Chujin knows that Starlo is a kind person who doesn't have bad intentions. And, he can begrudgingly admit that if the Wild East prevents some monsters from falling into despair, (which is a death sentence for a monster,) then it does some good. But you'd basically have to dislocate his shoulder from twisting his arm so hard if you want Chujin to admit this.)

Starlo's opinion of Chujin is that he is some above-it-all asshole. He insists that he remained civil and respectful of Chujin ever since Chujin and Ceroba started dating and he started to get tangentially involved in Starlo's life, yet all Chujin's done is scoff at him for following his dreams. Chujin must think he's soooooooo great being some smarty-pants scientist instead of a nobody farmer/sheriff like he is and that's why he looks down on Starlo, what a snob! And as for Chujin's belief that all humans are evil? Greatly exaggerated! If humans were such wicked things, why would the westerns they make show such relatable concepts like justice and freedom and how cool revolvers are? Starlo's just trying to inject some fun into the Underground and distract everyone from how dire things are getting and Chujin has a massive stick up his ass about it.

(Deep deep deep deep deep down, Starlo knows that Chujin is a kind person who only wants the best for everyone. Chujin is beloved by Ceroba and the Sunnyside family and other residents of the Underground for a reason. The fact that he's such an admirable person drives him a bit nuts, because Starlo knows that he would never be able to measure up to him. It's no wonder that Ceroba fell for him so quickly. How could he ever compare? And as for Chujin's opinion on humans? While he strongly disagrees with Chujin's outright hatred, he does recognize that some humans can be dangerous.)

I would say that Chujin and Starlo would bitch at each other like two Southern belles backhand complimenting each other, except I feel like Starlo lacks the subtlety to be able to dish out those sorts of insults, let alone pick up on them. Instead, they'd try to be silent in each other's presence out of respect for Ceroba. It's a........... very tense silence, to say the least....

[i-really-like-phrogs]

Re-design of my un-named Beetlejuice OC from back when I was thirteen

Original Reference under the cut:

[paintpanic]

invader from another world

[fisherrprince]

You have made me interested in balloon smp but I feel so old and of touch because I cannot find the past streams on twitch. Cannot figure out where and in which order to watch...can I ask where you've been watching the videos/streams?

ok, so, there’s ~36 people all doing it concurrently, which is a lot. But! Here is the list of players, if you know someone you like on that list pick them and just watch sequentially day 1->finale. if you don’t know Anyone on there and you want a point to start at for just. Getting most of the plot, pick someone from A B or C. Or E. Team F has a really great plot but they stay a bit out of the overarching plot until the last weeks, and I haven’t gotten to team D yet so I don’t know what they know im sorry team d 🥺

Many of the players have VOD channels up on YouTube or playlists of balloon vods specifically, lots of people who don’t have the streams in their twitch archives somewhere (like, “past broadcasts” usually), look for player vod channels. Some don’t have saved archives and some didn’t stream it! I know for certain sophie robby skull kuu gibson buggle and jame have up to date vod channels because I’ve seen them… woops and skullvolver are making edited videos rn but theyre Both team a… and im not sure who else is planning on it!

tldr, pick someone and watch them in order and peek in on other peoples’ vods from time to time when something Happens because sometimes seeing it from another angle is cool. Also, sometimes seeing it from another angle is Important because there’s Lore no one else got to see. Search “playername vods” on YouTube and it should direct you to the right place.

more specifics that kinda get into spoilers:

Here’s some plots of interest that certain people see and others don’t (ONLY BASED ON WHAT I KNOW I am not a lore master I don’t have 36x8x32… uh… good gravy 576 possible hours. of content. I DONT HAVE 576 HOURS TO SIT AND WATCH STREAMS someone was going to put together a lore doc somewhere though):

woops: tries to keep track of lore, goes on ghost knight swordquest

sophiebaybey: unwitting accessory to world murder, sees WAY more of PG and balloons lore than most people on account of The Events.

skullvolver/socksbx: revenant revengequest x2 and soul link plot, also socks is a mod and they get up to some funny business. poke in and watch one of them for the end of day 14 trust me 🫵

robbydude: doomer gnome made me cry but that’s not important. ghostquest continues upon the holy land even if we DONT WANT IT TO. jerry mouse is there

jame7t: sees kind of all of it from a distance, good coverage, citadel time (I like building streams)

shinigamieater: it’s possession clues. What if you were 15 ants of dubious morality in a human body

padabana: instigates the end of the world, once if you’re realistic twice if you’re being pedantic. it’s paranoia clues

kaoiji: there’s time travel, and it gets worse from there but I can’t FIND their vods so im redirecting you to robbydude

renobee: GOD??????????

[fictionadventurer]

If Laura Ingalls Wilder had written The Wizard of Oz.

Kansas would be portrayed as a wondrous, beautiful place at least as good as--or better than--Oz.

Dorothy would come from a very devoted loving household.

Her father would be in the house with her when the tornado hit and would be her guide and protector through all their adventures.

Dorothy would absolutely still have a devoted dog.

Dorothy would not go to the Wizard to ask for help. The "kill the Witch" requirement (or some other quest) would be presented early on as the condition she had to fulfill to earn her way home.

Instead of giving life and backstories to inanimate objects (like the land of the porcelain figurines), the people and creatures Dorothy would meet would provide explanations for things that happen in nature (like, explain where the colors of sunset come from).

[bayetea]

just all of this from moa regarding frank/hazel/leo. the most uncomfortable romantic tension ever because nobody understands it and nobody involved wants it to be there

especially "Hazel's eyes glittered like gold. 'Gold is easy,' she said. It didn't seem that way to Leo--not when he looked at her." like we can interpret this in a few ways. what an interesting thing to think about a girl you just met

and the whole "if this is a private special thing that she's only done with her boyfriend then I either really don't want to try it or I really really do want to try it" like STOP cut the cameras

[thegreatyin]

And thus, with the passing of 24 hours, Caeru's ambition truly comes to an end. Major Nemesis spoilers below the cut- we're talking endgame ambition business here. Mostly on a character RP front.

The Doomed Scientist made quite a few... choice decisions, in the end. Killing Cups once and for all, recording his story as one of grief-

And sparing what little remained of Mr Mirrors, leaving it free to roam Parabola as it sees fit.

Some of them, he can explain. Others, he's still left to feel... discontent.

Cups needed to die. That much was certain from the start. It was a tyrant, as all Masters are, and complicit in the bargaining and eventual destruction of four (potentially five) cities, as all Masters are. It was an obstacle. A murderer. A petty monster that felt no remorse even on its deathbed, and it went out of its way to ruin multiple lives just because it felt owed its own sick and twisted idea of revenge.

It killed his first love. It looked him in the eyes and he knew what it had done and he knew from the start it was going to die.

Perhaps, in the end, it knew too. And yet it still pleaded, and wanted to live, and-

It made a bargain.

A bargain Caeru didn't take.

Not because he didn't want to. Gods, he wanted to. He wanted it. He wanted it more than anything else in the world. To have Greylu back, to give him the gift of life, of love, to show him the wonders of the Neath and the beauty of the correspondence and all of the people Caeru has met and loved and found home with along the way-

But. He couldn't.

Because Cups was a monster. And no matter what, it deserved to die. And he could not, in good conscience, allow it to live.

Even if sparing it meant everything he's ever wanted.

So he's left here, now. With a bloodied traveling coat, and a bloodsoaked knife, and a favor finally fulfilled.

And nothing to live for. No resurrected lover, no charming visits to Helicon, no slow dances in the living room, no memories to rebuild and lives to live and he won't live again-

Nothing. All he has is a coat born of obligation, not to his love, but to people he's never even met. To lives he's never even touched. To a paramour, still alive, with hair of rose-pink, who doesn't even remember her own brother's existence.

Cups didn't die for Caeru's sake. Cups died for the sake of all who wanted it dead. For the revenger's court, and the ghost screaming in his ear, and the reckoning that will not be postponed indefinitely.

And Caeru, who acted as a tool to carry out their wills? Who all but betrayed his own lover, just to satisfy a cause he never knew existed?

All Caeru is left with, is regret. Regret-

-And grief.