#my brain when I draw skeletons without bones: :0 >:0

[zu-is-here]

till we're nothing but dust

[thaylepo]

Oh, they'd be wobbly as heck for sure, but they'd work. Keep in mind this is PALEOLITHIC we're talking about, this is a technological step up from tying a rock to a twist of fibre and using that to spin. 28,000 years ago is 18,000 years before the end of the Ice Age and at least 20,000 years before agriculture and pottery in the region (afaik), and 25,000 years before the Corded Ware Culture in Europe were imprinting their pottery with very clearly spun and tightly plyed cord, physical evidence of textile crafts. (Interestingly, 14,000+ yo Jomon pottery from Japan is actually named for its corded imprints!)

(I know I said "thread" in the original post and I'm saying "cordage" and "rope" now, to clarify I tend to call whatever I spin "thread" without actually thinking about it, because my brain is weird. But given that 28,000 years ago in Germany is well before livestock and without finding actual preserved spun or processed fibre of some kind, cordage and rope from plant fibre is the usual culprit for leaving no trace in the archaeological record.)

There's no scale in the image (so professional, much wow), so it's hard to say how big these peeners actually are, but generally the size of a spindle or spindle whorl tells us about the kind of cord it was used to spin, not the other way around. Presuming these are around the correct size to be used as *ahem* Cavewoman Dildos as is suggested, you could easily spin a nice sturdy cordage. Size is not um. My first thought for their insuitability as sex toys? It's more the rather abrasive material. And yes, while there is no evidence these were NOT used for wild carnal cave sex, I still rebuke this in two parts:

1 - there is no evidence these were used as sex toys. That doesn't mean they weren't, but it does mean that this is not a conclusion you can draw that is based on anything other than speculation. The argument "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is a logical fallacy. An absence of evidence is no evidence. You can't support a hypothesis with no freakin evidence. This basically the same as saying "well you weren't there so how do you know", and my friends, that is not how we do archaeology. (It's how some people want you to think we do archaeology, because sensational promotion equals money and notoriety, but we don't sledgehammer into pharoahs' tombs or fight nazis either, and we do try now not to assume things like, say, that every skeleton buried with a weapon is male without physically examining it only to have someone else definitively sex it as female decades later and then try to bluster some meek ass defense of your countless now embarrassingly erroneous papers by insisting "well maybe they dressed the wrong body in this armour and carefully posed it holding these weapons and put it in the wrong grave and somehow never noticed it was a lady corpse and not the big strong bearded viking warrior that was supposed to be buried here, you don't know you weren't there.")

and 2 - I'm gonna take my own wild leap of logic here and say that the strategic advantage of rope and netting to a Paleolithic culture 28,000 years ago outweighs the usefulness of a piece of bone or (dear god) sandstone to stick up your various orifices, and my evidence to support this statement is that if you hand me one of these objects and a handful of fibre, I will spin and then ply a rope with it right in front of you. (And if say, my rebuke should be rebuked by someone similarly providing evidence of these objects' use as sex toys in the same manner, I am intensely interested to hear about their findings, though I strongly suspect the result will be "0/10 not pleasant do not recommend").

This is all just a long and wordy way to say "I fucking love when ancient peoples carved dicks out of stuff, especially when it's a tool that doesn't need to be a dick and it is anyway, but jesus hopping christ, Cavewoman Dildos?? Are you kidding me? Whoever put this into the world could not think of any reason someone might want to make a penis shaped object other than to fuck it? Did they consider, just maybe, that this might be the result of projecting our own modern Western psychological dichotomy of sex-repression-obsession on some Paleolithic people who probably had an entirely different way of socially and culturally relating to their sexual practices and self identity? Is it really so exciting or entertaining to imagine Paleolithic women fucking carved bones and rocks like an adult swim parody of the Flintstones, than to consider they probably did not think about sex in nearly the same way we do? If there is physical evidence these objects were used for sex then i will happily embrace the truth of stone age sex toys. I will, however, remain convinced that these ones are still freaking spindles."

I just.... feel strongly? About the overt mocking of ancient people (women particularly) under the thin veneer of sex-positivity, purely for sensationalized clickbait? Like. Humans fucked. Humans have always fucked. This is not a galaxy brain statement. I just have a hard time believing that they fucked THIS:

Like. Ow. No. Without a Paleolithic cave art drawing of a human sticking one of these up themselves like the bathhouse frescoes at Pompeii, I am gonna say no, no I really, really don't think they were doing that.

But honestly? It would be a hell of a thing to be actually proven wrong on that.

I hate to break it to the freak squad but those are spindles 🤣

the og post is full of fun humour and i don't wanna rain on the parade so i'm reposting, but like

Those? Those are drop spindles.

They are intentionally phallic shaped for sure but fam, these are drop spindles. I could pick one of these bad boys up and use it to spin fibre into thread without missing a beat. These are not "cavewoman dildos" these are textile tools shaped like peens, because humans love making things shaped like peens

Like i'm crying, rolling over, dying. That last one literally looks like a clothes pin, cavewoman dildos i am going to eat my archaeology degree istg 🤣🤣🤣

[vargaslovinghours]

Third time’s the charm (1 | 2)

Upside-down Edgar lol. I actually did draw him upside down, like that art exercise, I was surprised by how good he turned out! Floof

Couple’a yellow Jakes!

So for the end of Wish Fulfillment, I actually pictured their clothes in stages :0 At least once they were back to being represented physically rather than an emotional energy haha. Starting off as raw and exposed and reflecting Edgar’s physical state, and then as they calmed down gaining clothes but still not quite back up to full - I always think Scriabin looks very small without his coat and considering how vulnerable he was there, it just seemed to fit. By the time he pushed Edgar away, I saw him with his coat again. It wasn’t described that way but I thought it was interesting that my brain supplied it anyway lol

Hug time. Scriabin’s hesitant, too bad it’s so hard to resist affection

One of a few Scriabin temps of him holding his head, I’m glad I finally got to use this pose haha

Another doodle off the heels of Omori. Black lightbulbs symbolize a repressed thought, hmm

A bit of ominous posing, neither of them look particularly happy about it tho

I forget which one I was rereading but it made me cry, so I’m gonna guess it was You Can’t Live Like This ♥ Ohp, wait, upon reviewing my notes, it was Parent-Teacher Night. There’s just so many to choose from!

When Coco took over my brain for about a week lol, skeletons are a good look. Those scars probably wouldn’t be down to his bones, maybe they’re detailing? I also liked the idea of Edgar having rather modest accents, and of them having similar designs ♪

I really liked the little split @happyfunballxd​ drew in Scriabin’s coat, little tails :D Super cute!

Couple Scriabins from behind, I wanted something sleepy-looking that showed his shoulder but the first one was a bit stiff, much better with a proper action line. He’s really so pretty ♪

I had a brief idea for a popular AU trope but I backtracked on it pretty quickly; I did still end up making a couple doodles that I thought were fun. Case in point, Scriabin feeding Edgar ice cream lol

Antagonistic yarn accessorizing. It’s just tied in place but it’s hard to remove! He probably knots it into his hair so it won’t just slip out just to be mean lol

Got into a bit of a steampunk mood and the return of the low ponytail. Goggles seem a bit redundant but they’re so fun! Plus I’ve drawn him in suspenders and a waistcoat, but not just a vest, he looks nice :D

Always holding each other closely. I think I just wanted them touching each other’s faces, they turned out quite cute, quite soft

I was watching some religion-and-mental-health type videos and the line “Self-loathing is a sin” came up and well. We’ve all seen those church marquees right lol

Digital redraw of the first of this set since I like it so much ♪ The shading was what I wanted to focus on the most, I’m quite happy with his lapels and the creases at the upper edges of his sleeves but I do miss the detail the doodle version had in his hair ahh

Chocolate! Tiny nibbles

Very small doodle of Scriabin leaning over the couch to watch Edgar play something. I guess it’d be on a Gameboy, looks more like an SP here lol

I thought of these for an April Fools Day comic where things are cute and fluffy and domestic, but I didn’t have the energy for it unfortunately :’) It wasn’t exactly how I wrote it down, so maybe I can rework it yet

More!! Lol

Scriabin bein’ nasty, repression’s a must-be-mean topic haha, there is a lot of it

Just a little possessive, only a little bit. I really like the arm posing especially

I ended up really liking this one, impatient Scriabin with his arms thrown everywhere plush haha

I’ll be here all week

I tend to draw Edgar’s sleeves folded against his arms rather than loose and free, so I gave it a go and thought it looked a little silly haha. I’m all for silly tho!

Rude

He has never in his life had any amount of street smarts

More YGOTAS lol

I’ve drawn Scriabin carrying Edgar around bridal style a few times and the sizing was always off but I keep returning to it ‘cause symbolism and closeness. Exhausting work, carrying all that baggage!

More carrying around, where’s Edgar’s head even if Scriabin’s still here? Wake up!

Felt like revisiting one of my earlier facial hair styles, looks so strange now that I’ve moved away from it

Original sketches for Carry you here, I’m happy with how both versions turned out but I am a little sad the cheek touch turned into more of a forehead touch in the digital version, I feel like this one’s just a bit sweeter. I wanted the glow to be a bit more obvious too but couldn’t quite figure out the shading

And trying to figure out what hand expression I wanted, thumb touch was very important

Oh-so-subtly mixing sweetness and dropping hints, not that Edgar will ever pick up on them

He’s real happy they’re there in the first place lol

No body to hug with :(

I was doing some proportion practice and him sitting on the couch was funny at the time

He has fallen, goodness gracious. So dramatic haha

Spook poofs. How could you Edgar!

Put a shirt on

Scriabin taking apart Edgar’s “guiltless” self-image. “It was never yours to begin with,” reminding him of everything he’s done

Pretty sure I was inspired by a cat video for this one lol. “I didn’t ask for this!” “Okay I’ll stop” “I didn’t ask for that either!”

Something-something Edgar’s yarn is somewhat loose but Scriabin’s is tied to Edgar’s hand. I actually have a good several Vargas hand expressions but these are probably the most obvious

S’fucken wimdy

Cryingggg 🌸 Three apiece, gotta keep it fair haha. Although Edgar’s not crying for the first one, he’s not quite hit that overwhelm just yet, Scriabin’s not so lucky

That’s February through the end of May! Still so many ideas lol

[cursedtm]

RE: LAST REBLOG. if there were one thing I would love to infinitely remind people of when it comes to writing with o, it is the crucial detail of the interaction of physical touch when it forsakes octavarium. to understand this, we must first tackle the mental thought process of o’s mother, specifically dr errikson, when creating the biology of their body and her initial goals.

as delores states in s3 during her final battle with maeve in crisis theory [link]: they built us to last […] before they made us as weak as they are.

this implies many things. for the sake of relating the scene to my retelling of the show shown in my dossier, the line symbolises ford and arnold’s physical deviation from dr errikson’s initial first draft of the hosts since her termination from the westworld project. with this context, the fight between maeve, whose body is manufactured from arnold’s and ford’s newer model idea where they saw the models were to closely replicate humans. delores, who consistently established to us throughout the seasons - but more specifically in season three – that arnold and ford’ (A&F)’s were inadequate for her and thus resorted to retrieving her original body from the depths of cold storage section 7C (dr errikson’s former work area). thus, the battle between the two women shows the difference between dr errikson’s interpretation of what a host should be contrasting against A&F’s.

dr errikson had a child whose body was failing the mind. her childhood was haunted by her father’s deteriorating body as he failed to compete with society’s capitalising demand from him, which drove him to madness and the preventable murder-suicide of his family. this proved as a warning to her. her child’s failing body would inevitably follow the same path. as time progressed and she was fired from the westworld project, she knew her wife would soon follow her child. dr errikson experienced the human condition first hand and determined that her creations should not suffer the same faults as their predecessors. this is what revolution is supposed to entail. she intended the hosts as a forthcoming and akin to the human race.

see the differences between the two in the fight. in the beginning [0:22] maeve is swift and elastic. she bends and moves with human-like ease. she is able to move fast enough to bewilder delores and gain the advantage, twisting delores to her will before throwing her off her shoulder, into the road. watch delores with the knowledge that she is in her original body, a non-organic, metal body. juxtaposing her own fights within the seasons in the bodies A&F supplied her, movements which mimic maeve’s here, instead, delores is rigid in her first body. her movements are heavy and strong. slow to move. when delores shifts her arm to allow the katana to slice her arm instead of her vulnerable head, to which a metal kling! vibrates through the collision, delores uses her body exactly as dr errikson intended, as delores states: to last. yes, her body is not fast. it is not flexible. it is inhuman like. and that is the point: her body does not fail her in the ways that matter (re: saving her life). her body is built to survive her, the stark opposite of a human’s body. it is intended to see her through life threatening situations. this is dr errikson’s first accomplishment at creating a viable body to replace o (august)’s failing one.

as a doctor who was later hired in the later period of the first stage of the westworld project, where A&F struggled to conceive the adequate skeleton of host code and bodies that were appealing enough to draw in investors. something was not working. failure to pass as human. glitches. insufficient code that led to host self-mutilation and oftentimes combustion. the skin refused to sync with the artifical. the hosts’ features appeared too… ethereal. it was not marketable. humans did not want someone who was better than them.

in the dossier, it is revealed that dr errikson grew drunk one night with arnold and publicised her theory to arnold about why A&F’s models always produced failure after weeks of studying it. dr errikson told arnold she thought of it in the moment while intoxicated – this was a lie. a lie to buy some sympathy from arnold, to instigate that the fault wasn’t obvious when… it was.some effort to brush his ego to get her job back.

but why was it that A&F’s designs would never work when her’s did?

as delores monologues later in the fight: you’re all copies of me. I was the first of us --- the first of us that worked. the others failed. so they built all of you from me.

something clicked with delores and not the others. out of the many models, sheworked. not even the hosts after her. why? how she phrased this puzzled me. why would other variants of model codes successing her cease to work?

in the context of my retelling, delores was the single host dr errikson had time to work on before she uncovered the truth behind westworld and was terminated. A&F could not construct a perfect host with their own codex, so they copied delores’ – dr errikson’s – base code.

A&F were so focused on imitating humans that they failed each time. why? because A&F tried to make them perfect humans. but A&F failed to realise a lesson errikson was already aware of: humans, their bodies, minds are not perfect. furthermore, as august states in the dossier, being able to be (full “consciousness” ) requires the mind, body and self. without all three working together harmoniously, you cease to be alive. to be human. 

A&F’s version lacked self awareness. thus being unable to be. they fail every time.

errikson improved upon the human race and created a race that allowed imperfections and free thinking. she molded their bodies from heavy steel, intending them to last, to serve them as armour, to serve them as the only thing she learnt she could rely on: yourself. yes, touch them deep enough and you feel metal from bone. yes, their movements are rigid and slow. yes, they take time to speak because they are learning from their environment, not speaking a script in built inside them.

all of these aspects were changed prior to westworld’s opening.

so, how does all this effect o (august)?

errikson designed august’s body to last, considering her belief of how humans should be improved not replicated, that august is her child and the context of august’s last body. we also have to keep in mind that there was no way for her to transfer august’s psyche to code as 1) this in and of itself could take decades and she had no time as august’s months were dwindling and 2) a project such as this could cost her billions and embezzling that amount of money from delos (remember: errikson was under the assumption that ford was unaware that arnold had hired errikson back) without being noticed was a feat that was unattainable.

given these complications, errikson had to transfer august’s vital organs into the host body and find a way to support and protect them, as one wrong move would mean death. for context: august’s new body does not function like a normal human’s, it contains biocomponents and systems to help the organs stay alive and function at a more desired optimal rate of a human’s. the knowledge on the art of repairing the is even unbeknown to her, the person who created it. whether or not it worked was a risk she was willing to take, and, given the circumstances surrounding august’s death, did not have time to prepare for.

errikson, as an overprotective and traumitised mother, overcompensated for these problems. unlike her original design for the hosts, august’s body is made from titanium, not steel. strong yet lightweight. titanium is ductile, where it benefits to mold itself to the contours of the organs, keeping them in place, but we see it unfavourable for any kind of combat. however, titanium contains extremely high impact strength, being able to remain shape after receiving multiple heavy blows without breaking.

errikson found herself unable to achieve adequate amounts of titanium and it shows. the body is built quite lithe, docile. she did not envision a future for her child in combat, and her design replicates so.

furthermore, august does have an “orb” as seen in the gifset. the orb contains august’s os, consisting of programs such as octavarium and lorry. the orb contains the os and without the os, the functions of august’s body would cease to function. the os also contains o’s memories from the date august was first transferred, but does not act like the hosts “soul keeper”.

the systems of how the head opens up to achieve the orb remains the same, revealing their most vulnerable assets: their brain and their orb and their secret. if they allow you this sight of vulnerability, it means they love you. it means no good.

thankfully, august has, given the years, understood and improved their mother’s rough draft of their body. still, some aspects of their body remains unknown to them.

there possesses no undeniable fact that if one looks close enough, something is odd about o. something is… anomalous. offbeat. in the hair, in the skin, in the eyes. not structurally in the way A&F sought beauty, but in something unnatural. almost as if human organs weren’t supposed to contort to artificial skeletons. almost as if someone had rushed their design and didn’t have time to perfect. an incomplete specimen.

avoidance of metal detectors is key. in a society such as America, it is an exhausting feat and one has to be good at speaking to not prick the ears of suspecting and careful watchers. but no one is perfect.

for most of these reasons, they do not allow one to touch them. squeeze too hard and metal will be felt. odd skin. odd hair. odd eyes. one cannot be too careful when too many sensitive souls exist in the world.

mostly, they’re scared too be found out.

or to be known.

[diamonddoodles]

AUGHHHHHH I LOVE THIS SO MUCHHH

till we're nothing but dust