#prehistoric clowns

[orc3dprint]

My asks are open

ask me for my opinion on

Prehistoric animals as pets

Fictional/mythological animals as pets

Creatures from whatever fandom you are in as pets

Other things I have not thought of as pets

[linahopeeeee]

This is what I have to deal with and I don’t even be on here 🤣🤣

[the-moon-files]

Aaaaa yay, you updated for Linked Universe again! 🙏 And right when the hyperfixation was coming back for me, too 👀 

I was looking over your posts for LU, and if you don’t mind, I’d love to share some of my own random thoughts with you! I hope that’s okay 👉👈

After I read your “Humans aren't just round-eared Hylians?” post I have had,, many thoughts 👀 One random difference between humans and Hylians I thought about was the possibilities of varying strength,,, You briefly mentioned how Hylians seemed lighter than they seemed to Guide!Reader, and let me tell you, it was such a small detail, but I was transFIXED. I have this image of humans/Guide!Reader just being naturally stronger than the average Hylians - and it made me think of scenarios of the Reader just effortlessly hauling around two Links on their shoulders like sacks of potatoes- And them also picking up things that are supposed to be really heavy with ease! Like, Four would make a longsword, and Reader picks it up out of curiosity, expecting it to be really heavy, but it’s actually not that bad?? (Four in the background: 🧍)

If the Reader is already pretty strong (and maybe even has a profession in fighting, like a boxer or something,, [I might be projecting slightly—]), then ooo 👀 I can see there being this one time where a bunch of monsters ambush the Chain, and as everyone is fighting with the Reader giving them advice and whatnot, a Lizalfos managed to slip past everyone and sprint towards the Reader to attack them. The others are panicking because they won’t be able to reach the monster in time, but just as the Lizalfos raised its sword, one single punch from the Reader sent it flying back into the fray, knocking it into a Moblin. Reader is just standing there with their fist still in the air like “👁️👄👁️ h u h … whY ARE YOU GUYS STARING, YOU’RE STILL FIGHTING—”

In your newest post about the Guide!Reader’s voice, you mentioned how some entities could hear them, and I don’t know if he would, but I think it’d be kinda funny if Ganon and all of his other reincarnations could hear the Reader talking to Link- I’m not sure if he remembers his past lives, but if he does and hears/recognises Reader’s voice, I love the image of him thinking “Oh god, THIS guy again??” Because Reader WILL clown on him-

Dehydrated Ganondorf: *insert evil monologue here*

Guide!Reader: Uh-huh, sure, bold words for someone whose skin looks like a prehistoric riverbed. :|

Sage: *w he eze*

As I was writing all this, I had to think to myself, “Huh,, Guide!Reader doesn’t die when they fall into lava, aren’t really affected by harsher temperatures and winds, and also can swim against strong currents. They’re environment-resistant basically. But there’s bound to be at least one weakness to it all, right?” I did come up with said weakness, and I think it’s kinda basic, BUT one idea I had was that because Guide!Reader is so resistant to the natural elements of Hyrule, they are conversely quite weak to unnatural causes in turn. If they get injured, say they get cut with a knife by a Bokoblin, then that wound would take much longer to heal than it should. Any injuries that the Reader sustains in Hyrule are harder to heal (which I feel like could make some interesting angst,, 👀); their injuries would take more magic to completely heal them, or have more healing potions to drink. I also thought of the Reader being very vulnerable to any sort of poison- Like, if they get a pinch or two (or three) of strong poison in their system, they get knocked out for like two days 💀 

So basically, Guide!Reader is very resistant to the environment, possibly quite strong, but does not have any good constitution,,

[On another note, maybe it’s just a me thing, but I personally love the thought of Wind looking up to the Reader as like a big brother figure,,]

And also!! Happy birthday!! 🥳🥳🎉 As a way of procrastination, I’ve been compiling memes with Guide!Reader and the Chain because the brain rot is hitting HARD,, I can share it with you in the future if you like! /gen /pos And sorry if this is such a long post dkjfgndf-

NOT SOMEONE BEING HAPPY I UPDATED UwU

ur ideas, ur compliments, ur bday wishes, etc. hitting me like^^

Sun: Masc!Reader (he/him) this will be default unless ppl specify otherwise! , Guide!Reader, Boxer/Martial Artist!Reader

Orbit: Headcanons-ish

Stars: Most Links of the Chain mentioned + Sage (Totk Link)! No focus/centric Link

Comets & Meteors: Content Warnings: light cussing, & Trigger Warnings: none known.

Please comment if I missed any. /gen

In reference to This Post! Wait, Humans Aren’t just Round-Eared Hylians??

YOUR BRAIN>>>????!!!

This was such a yummy treat tysm for this, sharing is caring 🫶

I absolutely think Humans could be 10x stronger than Hylians, I mean if we base everything abt their universe off of Link weighing ~8 apples lmao

that means swords, armor, broadswords/claymores, battle axes, huge shields, if those weigh abt like fake swords/wooden ones back on earth to us, then i cant even imagine what canons/horses/tree trunks/boulders weigh 💀

like props on a stage weight rather than the real thing lmao

No but how many Links can you fit in one carry??

ok u got a heavier Link on your back, like Time, Twi or Wars, then Four/Wind/Hyrule/Legend (yes he’s light/smaller side, tho he may deny) in ur arms like one Link per arm, maybe 3 Links if you can like wrap ur arms around them

so like 4 Links total? well, Wind or Four r so light/small one could possibly ride on ur shoulders, so 5 LMAO??? that's like half the Chain already AHALJFAfJLL-

on another note,

I LOVEEE ganon being able to hear Guide Reader bc spent too long around them, also i originally based that off of characters who’ve shown they're meta/highly magical kinda (esp the meta part where they may have directly addressed players/broke 4th wall)

No bc Ganon would just be SO fed up by like, Wild’s time, it would literally be EXACTLY like what u said I’d imagine:

(u just playing the game and not realizing until later they can hear you)

Ganon: “ugh that blonde twink again, god when will this plan actually work-?!”

You: “eyyy, Ganon! omg, why’s he?? Hot??? damn, botw best ganon version fr”

Ganon: “you know what maybe you should just kill me right now, hero Link.”

(the thought of Ganon never being able to escape ur voice whenever Link was near him bc u didnt have a body to fight/kill, and instead he just had to deal with ur comments is SENDING ME)

changing subjects again sorry

YES!! that's the weakness/drawback I was thinking abt for Humans in Hyrule, while yes their environment isn't that effective on us, (i like to use “inside a video game” as the reason bc i think its neat)

humans are notoriously fragile in our own world already - we get sick, we get acid-reflux/throw up from bad food/food poisoning, etc.

so it makes sense we’d be more sensitive to this new environment, but even if we got adjusted,

we’re more external-proof, not internal-proof

(u know that's another reason why it works for Hylians and not Humans, we aren’t automatically healed by food, but their world does, and even in botw/totk when u have “dubious” food, its never inedible, its just useless to eat, so technically Hylians can kind of eat most anything off of that logic, like there is no such thing as “bad food” for them)

and u could take this either way tbh,

like we’re either entirely resistant to magic/dont take to it well bc our world didnt have it so potions/fairies don't work and we have to heal naturally

or just yeah, its like ur in a new country tbh, new germs/nature/food/etc. and u def cant guarantee u wont get a little sick from that

this would definitely include genuine poison!

bro the amount of WORRY the Links would feel after realizing the human guide guy who’s physically here now can barely handle their food??

Wild’s making a thorough list of what foods work for you and what don't, like safe foods to go back on, including recipes,

the way Time/Wars would absolutely be willing to take little detours/stop by towns more to make sure you have the right food you can eat,

and even tho Wild’s cooking, Sage is constantly testing for poison, like the dish itself, the herbs/plants, every ingredient needs to be extra safe even by Hylian standards (like not eating adventurous stuff like pufferfish or smth that could possibly have poison if cooked wrong/not enough etc)

that is to say, even if Wild makes a new recipe/other meal, he always has a backup safe meal to give you instead on those nights, and just way too many in general (yes he knows it doesn't buff ur health but he cant help his Hylians instincts to stuff the hurt person’s face with food ok??)

Hyrule! Is!! Losing!!! It!!!!

he has all the healing magic in the world and the one man he wants to help the most, for keeping him from being lonely on his adventure/looking out for him/being on his side no matter what, now he finds out he can’t even help them??

mans would literally keep trying to heal u til he’s drained it all out to just try and get the wound to close, if u didnt stop him

U get injured for the first time, and while a bruise/cut taking weeks to heal (depending on how bad) is normal to you, Hyrule + lowkey everyone is Freaking Out

Wounds DO NOT take weeks to heal?? They take hours at most??? Dude, are you dying-

(Wind got elbowed for that one, purely bc he voiced Sky/Hyrule/Wild/Twi paranoia out loud lol)

that is going with the version ur mostly unaffected by magic, but u could also do the human thing where we get adjusted to things over time (at least more than nothing), including food/sickness

The way All the Links just surround you or outright don’t let you come into crowded parts of town so ur poor immune system wont make u sick again 😭

on the bright side they'd all get rlly good at preventative measures like this, and taking care of sick you lol

(yes, u bribed Wind to get little bro cuddles when ur sick, it wasn't hard, he sees u as the most genuine bigger bro probably bc ur likely hte most affectionate out of all the Links)

(should I get into cultural differences between humans/hylians like humans being more openly cuddly/affectionate? like how in humans are space orcs fandom they acknowledge its unusual for us to “packbond” so easily to so many different species? and how this could possibly apply to not only Hylians but any Friend-shaped creatures across the Hyrules?? ..nah. I’ll save that for another post)

AND YES!! feel free to shoot rambles/thoughts/not even requests my way! Id love to talk abt it or just post it for the world to marvel at too lol

ohh mY God;; YOU HAVE MEMES FOR THIS?? PLEASEEEE SHOW ME????

thank you for this, srsly /pos

Peace out,

🌙

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Can I ask for a quick run down on what damage ark has done?

ark: survival evolved has countless prehistoric creatures inside of it that are not particularly well known. when people search for information on said critters, ark results are often the first to come up. the way the animals are portrayed in the game, in terms of physical appearance, are extremely inaccurate. designs from the game have been replicated and used by many people, including professionals (such as documentary makers), for their own designs, perpetuating that inaccurate idea. Heck, the Stephen Fry documentary has Ark dinos.

the inaccuracies aren't trivial, when we're depicting prehistoric animals people do not have a frame of reference to compare them to to understand what they were like. If you draw an elephant wrong, people can look up what an elephant looks like, or see one at the zoo. we don't have that for the dead.

Instead, you look up an image, and you see what's on google, which is often yet more inaccurate images. And suddenly, someone has a very skewed and incorrect view of prehistoric life

then on top of that, because the critters ark has aren't well known, sometimes ALL the results on google are just inaccurate depictions from ark

this has real consequences. as a docent, I had just as many people become extremely disappointed when I told them that ARK had it wrong as I did Jurassic World.

why does reality and accuracy matter? well

reality isn't going away, and we have to acknowledge that. you can't just create a new one. we have the one and only reality and its consequences to deal with. see: global warming happening literally right now

the idea that reality can be whatever you want it to be or that opinions matter when it comes to facts is exactly how politicians and other people who desire control manipulate people. see the "fake news" phenomenon

people ignoring reality and how it functions leads to a variety of extremely bad things, including cults, hate groups, and - once again - global fucking warming

as such, anything that makes it seem like reality is more murky than we know - such as filling a google images result section with inaccurate portrayals - makes people question the fact that reality is, actually, unmoveable

in this case, birds being living dinosaurs and dinosaurs being portrayed accurately is extremely important for people to know because it demonstrates that humans are not actually the "main character" of planet earth, and we have to stop acting like it (there is no main character)

why do we have to stop acting like it? well, for one, the extreme amounts of destruction we've caused on this planet. for two, because we can go extinct, we operate under the same rules as all life (one such rule is more diversity = more chances for survival), and we have to stop clowning around and arguing about shit that doesn't matter and actually focus on repairing the harm that we have done to the planet and to each other

so yeah. that's why accuracy in paleomedia matters.

because reality matters.

and reality isn't up for debate.

p. s. I don't care that it's a fictional game that says its fictional, if people are coming to me with misconceptions from a thing and thinking they're real, then that thing has fucked up. end of story. and I had *so many* ark fans come to me at the Field Museum. so many.

[joker-tarot]

should I buy Splatoon 3 + Side Order?

(I won’t lie it’s mostly because of Yuri but I do remember having fun playing the original Splatoon, and I have a soft spot for roguelikes, but at the same time I don’t wanna spend a bunch of money on something I don’t end up liking)

inverted polarity, drunkard, ancient joker

another complicated one! you’d think the cards would serve me up something easy like squid joker or nintendo switch joker, but apparently those aren’t real jokers so alas

reversed polarity - i think this one means that you should make the opposite decision from the one you want to make, and do a total 180. honestly i don’t fully get this part but it seems like things are going to make a pretty abrupt reversal of some kind here.

drunkard - in this case the drunkard can mean indulging in vice of any kind, perhaps using video games as escapism? god knows we’re all guilty of that in these troubling and unprecedented times. I for one endorse games as escapism. If I didn’t have hit indie game Balatro by localthunk I don’t know how I would even face the world!

Ancient Joker - this one seems to me to say that you should try out older games that are still pretty high quality and frequently on sale or even free; a lot of last decade’s beloved hits still really hold up and have barely aged at all. But with the label “Ancient” you really want to go back to prehistoric times, like the Wii era. Super Mario Galaxy and Mario Kart Wii, things of that nature. Personally, my favorite retro game is Earthbound for the SNES, though I never got past the creepy evil circus in the third town. (That’s an offensive clown stereotype! Only some of us are evil!)

Happy gaming!

- Perky

[merlyn-bane]

this is what i have so far, i'm pretty pleased with it 😌😌

shout outs to @catawampuscorner for the lovely bebe Fox and Wolffe and @thecodywanzine for the Codywan hearts up in the corners 🧡🧡

the stress of trying to artfully choose and place stickers on a new device 😭😭

[undercovermcdfan]

ive been a follower of your blog and your friend sebbie (?) art for some time now, and honestly I think you and them are the reason why i still have small amount of tolerance towards travlyn. For a long time - still feel this way - i never liked travlyn, even felt uncomfortable or had a disdian for it only because how it was portrayed in mystreet since the beginning of the series. It just felt tacky and more platonic than romantic and genuine, and i’ve always felt like i was forced to like it because it’s the apart of the holy trinity of aph ships. I still kinda didn’t see the vibe with them in mcd only because mystreet version of them ruined it for me and i just had a lot of bias at the time (ironic since i started with mcd first, but gravitated towards mystreet more [gotta love urban fantasy])

But every time i read your ramblings about the pairing, i slowly understand the dynamic between these two characters and why their relationship should matter. Like I genuinely forget travlyn was your crackship in early mcd prehistoric fandom phase, and jess loved it and popularized to the point i can’t tell the difference between how you viewed them vs how she viewed them.

Honestly? Based for disliking Travlyn due to Mystreet. Youre valid for that because I hate them too.

If you can see my reaction over them at the time and what they became, you would see my utter outrage!

They had no basis. Zip. Nadal. Legit just a crack ship that me and my buddy Inês lost our minds over. I really think Travis originally was meant to either be another feather in Aph's harem cap (replacing Laurance's flirty boy slot because Laur became Mr. Dark and Twisted) OR Lucinda's love interest because of the witch/wizard dynamic.

What drew me in for Travis and Katelyn was partly because they were two characters I thought would mesh well. I have a soft spot for girls who are rough on the outside to guard a vulnerable inside and guys who perform a clown to protect themselves. I thought they were direct opposites, mirrors, and making them kiss was such a good way to resolve that ☝️😌✨️

Honestly MCD s3 had the dynamic better on display. They are two people who are hurting to be close to another and be themselves. Katelyn being the type to show claws, Travis being the type to show his belly, both afraid of affection yet sooooo deeply want it.

In a fucked up, it's kinda what draws me to Katevy too. I like pairing Katelyn with people who make her confront her nature and disarm.

Genuinely, Mystreet is not canon to me in this mind palace of mines. It NEVER was. When I made the ship, I never expected it to be canon. Same with most ships I liked.

I'm just a literature major who saw two characters who embodied tropes I like and thought it would be interesting taking those tropes, having them interact and make them kiss. It's like literary chemistry.

Travlyn is made by a bisexual and lesbian lolol the version we're fucking with is a wife/husband with Travis assigned malewife.

[prisiidon]

List of zora designs i haven't seen yet or super rare! feel free to add other suggestions :)

Flasher Wrasse

Lancetfish

Flying Gurnard

Arowana

Piebald sharks

Longnose Hawkfish

Clown Triggerfish

Velvet Lantern Shark

Butterfly fish

Tripodfish

Emperor Shrimp

Hermit crab zora (shells on their heads)

Sea Raven

Zora that'd be cool to see more of!

Nudibranch

Jellyfish

Crustacean

Seahorse

Prehistoric

[quartings]

Random Godzilla thoughts:

I've been on a Godzilla binge recently, having watched Monarch Legacy, Godzilla X Kong, Minus One, and Chibi Godzilla just this year and I've had some interesting thoughts on all of them that I hope Godzilla fans can answer!

It's funny how in the American movies, Minus One, and some of the classic movies too, Godzilla still has the origin of being a unique standalone prehistoric monster in the modern day that just gets bigger and irradiated from the atomic testing, as opposed to being an ordinary animal that gets mutated into a kaiju (Which was a misconception I had as a little kid). It's interesting how that specific choice adds an extra layer of needing to suspend disbelief- not necessarily in a bad way though!

Also it's interesting how Godzilla gets his name in-universe between versions, seeing as the real origin for it is so lighthearted and campy, being "Gorilla" + "Kujira" (Japanese for whale) because he was meant to be SO much more of a giant monster than that darned American King Kong, haha. In Minus One it's just what the locals of the Pacific island called it, but in the Monsterverse we still don't actually know where the name comes from. In the Monarch Legacy flashbacks it's just referred to as "the creature" or something, and then in a more recent 1950s flashback, Dr Keiko is already calling it Gojira with no explanation on where the name came from. So as the Monsterverse shows and movies continue, I'll be interested to see if they ever want to explain where the name comes from! In GxK, Skar King and Shimo are named in ancient translated Iwi records (Isn't it WILD that the Iwi named Shimo after the Japanese word for frost?) so maybe Godzilla's name exists in some old carving too, elsewhere in the Monsterverse.

My whole life I've thought the beam of energy Godzilla fires from his mouth was officially called the Atomic Breath. But in Godzilla X Kong, Minus One, AND Chibi Godzilla, it's officially called a Heat Ray. So is "Atomic Breath" just a fanon thing? Because actually it would make a lot of sense- in the back of my mind I always wondered how Godzilla movies rarely talked much about how the mere presence of something as radioactive as Godzilla should make even the un-destroyed parts of cities uninhabitable after an attack (The Monsterverse films get away with it by claiming that many Titans eat "bad" radiation and convert it into "good" radiation). But if the beam is just mostly heat energy with very little radiation, that makes more sense. And even moreso for the versions of Godzilla who actively eat radiation to live, because otherwise why would they just spit it back out all over again?

If I got something wrong here, hardcore Godzilla fans are more than welcome to clown me, but I'd love to hear more discussion on small little details like these that are surprisingly consistent across very different Godzilla projects!

[stoned-shark]

boy blogger biggest fears

(based off me and my best friend and most of these are normal)

testosterone weight gain

prehistoric Australia

locked in syndrome

being in a marriage like the one their parents are in

being like their father/mother

calories

breaking a bone

being like my grandparents

testosterone induced male pattern balding

house fires

clowns

spiders

heights

being lost

being kidnapped and killed (and killed is what makes it scary)

[sillysaurus]

request info!

moodboards/stimboards/outfitboards

will do

agere

petre

plushies, toys

animals (including bugs)

mythical/fantasy creatures/cryptids

dinosaurs/prehistoric animals

food, drinks, etc

movies, games, cartoons, anime, etc

horror sources

scary/villain characters

cartoon/anime/other tv show characters

game characters

movie characters

boyre, girlre, etc

weirdcore/liminal spaces

aesthetics (cottagecore, kidcore, etc)

clowns/jesters/etc

won't do

real people

religious

gore/excessive blood

sexual/NSFW/kink/etc

headcanons

will do

platonic

familial

caregiver

regressor

pet

caregiver to regressor of a certain personality (shy, energetic, talkative, etc)

disabled (regressor and/or caregiver)^

neurodivergent (regressor and/or caregiver)^

mentally ill (regressor and/or caregiver)^

characters of fandoms im in*

^please specify what condition(s), symptoms, and/or mobility aids, etc

*fandom list:

pokemon, like the ACTUAL pokemon, not the characters/people

stardew valley

animal crossing

(TWST) twisted wonderland (i am not finished playing yet)

criminal minds (the main cast, not the unsubs)

Z nation

epithet erased

(TADC) the amazing digital circus

naruto (not rn because i desperately need to rewatch it)

BNHA/my hero (also need to rewatch first)

minecraft (mobs, not smp's)

creepypasta (i don't know all of them but i will do my research if i don't)

(COTC) craig of the creek

clarence

we bare bears

metalocalypse

regular show

undertale + deltarune

TMNT (ive seen rise, 12, and mutant mayhem but i have yet to finish 03)

invader zim

ed edd n eddy (not eddys brother)

gravity falls

the nightmare before christmas

won't do

romantic

sexual/NSFW/kink/etc

real people

violence/abuse/kidnapping/etc

fandoms i am not in, i can't make headcanons if i don't know anything about the characters

keep in mind that the headcanons will take longer than a moodboard. i prefer to be accurate and thorough. also please add as many details as you can, it would help me a lot <3

[finishwhatyoustarted-event]

Finished It Friday Masterpost - Non-Written Works

This special post celebrates all the non-written works posted during this spring Finish What You Started event!

With the exceptions of some fiber arts from the Discord I was given permission to post to, I will only share links to these pieces of art. Please go enjoy them on the original poster's post!

--

Illustrations

Original characters by outofyourvector

Animatic

Calling All the Monsters by griseldagimpel

NSFW, content warnings: body horror, Nudity, Graphic Violence, torture, harm to animals - The Magnus Archives - rated M-16 - additional tags include: Police Brutality, Murder, Bugs, Spiders, Snakes, Dehumanization, Clowns, Self-Mutilation, canon-typical the horrors content https://archiveofourown.org/works/64667326

Fiber Arts

Floral socks by @ginneke

a pair of handknitted socks. Further details in original post> promo post

Friendship bracelet by Léto le Gaosaure

[ID: a friendship bracelet with a square spiral pattern. More details in alt. End ID.] pattern link

friendship bracelet by Léto le Gaosaure

pattern link

Longisquama by Léto le Gaosaure

"Though this version is a cartoonish design, the longisquama is a real, though extinct, prehistoric reptile! (Wikipedia page.) I used this pattern so if you happen to own the book, the clever bend for the legs is on pages 61-62 =)"

[Full ID in alt. A grid of pictures of the Longisquama from different angles.]

[euphoriabled]

Talking to @goldblumstandard about Jurassic Park and coming up with a muse who is a documentarian that more or less realizes midway that this isn't film festival winning footage: it's going to be found footage.

But also: picture any fandom with a documentarian in there.

Returned to my home town of Derry, Maine and wanted to film a little doc about the --- was that a fucking clown?

Crime in Gotham has reached an all-time high, and I'm here to film a man who is all about justice here. Harvey Dent !

Hi everyone, I'm here to discuss something that's really been bothering me. We love heroes who gained their powers from horrific accidents or experimentation from various government procedures. However, those born with powers are seen as a threat to us all? Where does Anti-Mutant rhetoric start and how can we stop it?

John Hammond has invited me to document the behind the scenes prep-work for one of the most incredible feats humanity has ever accomplished. Walking side-by-side with history. Prehistoric history. My friends, join me as I discover what lies behind the gates of Jurassic Park.

I know, I know, the last thing I need is more muses when I'm already planning to add some from Kaos, but still !! think about it. it's kinda fun ! ! !

[ntls-24722]

i think an important part about my djmm is that he looks like a natural member of the family bbq ecosystem

Also. Possible new ridiculous lore? He used to be a physicist and proceeded to abandon that career with the weirdly-more-successful one of being a clown. Literally just because he didn't like it anymore.

It was either him becoming a physicist or becoming a clown and when he became a physicist there was a red nose-shaped hole in his heart. He couldn't deny his clowny nature. Also sleep deprivation.

he made a major contribution to science and went "seeya✌️" to become a clown immediately after

Drohnen concepts!

Comet is not a comid or an immobile but a Secret Third Thing: The drohnen equivalent to the Haemonymphs!

There were actually MANY sophonts made during the Intervention by various groups of drohnen's ancestors but only Comids and Immobiles rose to the globalwide popularity - due to, erm, prehistoric violence against all others. The Haemonymphs managed to survive on by mimicking the Comids, but as to honor their ancestory, their faces are split down the middle so that they can fold out into the early "beaked" appearance of their ancestory.

[dustedmagazine]

Ed Kuepper & Jim White — After the Flood (12XU)

The lone Saints song on this boundary pushing set, “Swing for the Crimes,” comes from the final original line-up album, Prehistoric Sounds, the one where you can hear the band sawing at any remaining tether to their punk rock beginnings. This version is one of eight re-imagined songs that span Ed Kuepper’s journey through the Saints’ seminal punk, Laughing Clowns’ free-jazz infused post-punk and some riveting solo material. In it, and throughout the album, Ed Kuepper’s restless, disruptive energy joins very effectively with Dirty Three drummer Jim White’s explosive, non-time-keeping percussive style. Neither player is much interested in conventional forms or consensus thinking.

Kuepper wields a wavering, vibrating, emotion-warped tenor, his timbre not too far from Tom Verlaine’s quaver. He seems, always, to be wandering through his songs, picking his way in a circuitous fashion and stopping occasionally to admire some unexpected element. He is unpredictable, in other words, in a questing, searching way. Add to that an elegant violence in the guitar work, whose volatile slashes and clangs inhabit a structure, but loosely, as if the four-four walls were old drywall, apt to give way easily to a sledgehammer. And White, well, he’s doing what he does, building three-dimensional, melodic architectures out of percussive rumble and thump. He doesn’t so much hit the drums as paint with them.  

If what you love is a tight three-minute pop song, best to move along now. None of these cuts are anything like that. Yet while both musicians extend and slur and elide structure, they do so while listening carefully to one another. The songs may not fit into pre-existing boxes, but they work very well on their own terms, whether in the pounding, galloping “Crying Game” (a Laughing Clowns tune), the loose-jointed but lyrical “Ruins” (which hails from Kuepper’s 2015 solo album Lost Cities) or the off-kilter anthemry of “Demolition” (from the 2013 solo record Jean Lee and the Yellow Dog).

It’s a balancing act of sorts, delivering eight songs that long-time fans will know, but making them subtly (or less subtly) different. “Demolition” veers from its home-recorded, acoustic foundations, translating the steady progress of acoustic chords into a grander, louder more electrified stomp. But it also incorporates the original’s eccentricity—the clacking beat of a struck guitar, the wild outbursts of dissonance—in this stately version. There’s quite a lot of life in it, too.  Both Kuepper and White come from storied pasts, but their playing here is absolutely of the moment.  

Jennifer Kelly

[tyrantisterror]

A Hundred Some New ATOM Kaiju Pt. 7

On this installment of the unfinished ATOM kaiju showcase, we've got still more aliens for you.

Rosunwell has a bit of a story to it. See, the Beyonder Alliance - i.e. the big coalition of alien invaders on ATOM's setting - creates synthetic organisms tailor-made to new planets they wish to interact with, since most of its citizens don't want to modify their bio-chemistry to adapt to the wildly different environments of other planets, and it's easier to just custom build those foot-on-the-ground explorers anyway. These custom explorers are made from a gray biological sludge of stem cells that's easily molded to resemble native life - hence humans more often than not seeing gray, humanoid aliens when being abducted. Well, during the Beyonder Invasion, one ship was ruptured and leaked out its collection of inert gray sludge, and said sludge got caught between an explosion and a Yamaneon fault line, and thus suddenly became a kaiju.

The sludge slowly figures out what shape it'd like to be, beginning as an amorphous, shifting pile of goo sculpting various alien anatomical features, before finally coalescing into a final form. Rosunwell would be the 100th ATOM Bonus Kaiju File, which would make it the 150th file overall (not including the contest entries), so to be cheeky I made it loosely resemble Mewtwo, the 150th pokemon.

Four more fun Beyonder monsters: a killer clown from outer space, a monster based on a toy batmobile I saw that looked kinda loke a monster head, a spider-like alien that takes more than a bit after Venom and Spider-Man (pretty proud of the name "Galachnid"), and a three-eyed goober.

In the past I designed more Venusian monsters than Karamtor, and while most of them remain abandoned, I guess I had a soft spot for Vrank, the living tank monster, so I gave it another go.

To finish this batch, we have four martian monsters that would feature in a story about the prehistoric war between the Martians and the Beyonder Alliance - four comrades of Kemlasulla and pals. They're all exercises in taking Kemlasulla's body plan in strange directions, just as Earth has spun the tetrapod body plan into a multitude of very different beasts. I think they may still be too similar to Kemlasulla to really reach the diversity I wanted, but then maybe I only think that because I'm looking at them with earthling tetrapod eyes.