beenumber6

[beenumber6]

Hiii, I was just wandering if you wouldn’t mind blabbing about the symbolism and stuff behind some of your design choices with the horse men that you might not have mentioned. Like with pestilence and death specifically I feel like there’s a lot of symbolism I’m picking up on without fully understanding. Like with Death’s sickle, both a homage to the classic scythe and a nod to the “reaping/harvesting” of souls. And with pestilence I feel like there’s something that I’m skirting around without grasping. The multiple legs strike me as a deliberate similarity to insects, and if I’m right I think that the rider is bound in a body bag type deal, similar to how disease and pestilence is so often both spread through the improper disposal of body’s, and how wide spread pestilence leads to mass graves filled with disease and the horrible anonymity that comes with being just one face in a pit of hundreds etc? All of this is, ofc, to say that I’ve adored your series of the horsemen so far and would go absolutely rabid for some insight on some of your design choices<3

My horsemen of the apocalypse! I will add the original commentary and some extras, less about the symbolism and more about what brought me to design them the way I did.

The symbolism is for you to chose, there is no wrong answer.

WAR

I can't bring myself to represent war with a cool knight. It's horror. War is a bound child crowned with shrapnel, tied to a wounded horse that is being pulled forward by unseen people.

I've read a handful of books regarding war. A lost quote said that it should be shown as horror, it should make generals vomit, it should make you sick. I haven't seen war but my family has.

It was the first horseman I've designed, and it was in my sketchbook for months (maybe over a year, maybe even more) before I had the courage to draw it. I was really scared about how people would react to a mutilated child.

Recommended reading: The Red Crown - Mikhail Bulgakov, a short story about a man coping with the loss of his brother in the war

FAMINE

Someone who lived thro a famine shared that their head was only occupied with thoughts of food. Famine consumes your mind. All animals were eaten. Neighbors gave their pets away cuz they couldn't do it themselves. People walked around town as if in a dazed dream, slowly

Recommended reading: The Last Witnesses - Svetlana Alexievitch, a collection of testimonials of people who were children when WW2 began. Some quotes below;

'''A cat! A cat!' Other children saw it and started chasing it. The educators were local habitants, looked at us as if we were insane. In Leningrad there were no living cats left...A living cat was a dream. Food for one month...We talked about it, but they didn't believe us.''

''During the first year of evacuation, we didn't notice nature, everything that was nature provoked in us only one desire - taste to see if it's edible. Only a year later I noticed the beauty of the Urals''

''I dreamt of catching a sparrow and eating it...''

''A candle burns and the shopgirl cuts the bread pieces. People follow her with their gaze. Her every movement...with burning eyes...crazed...and all that in silence.''

''People walked slowly through the city like shadows. Like in a dream...a deep dream...As in, you see it, but you think you're seeing a dream. Those sluggish movements...floating...As if a person walked on water and not on land.''

''In Leningrad there are a lot of monuments, but one is missing that should exist. They forgot about it. The monument to the dogs of the seige. Dear doggy, forgive me...''

I don't like talking about it. It made no sense to draw Famine with a horse.

PESTILENCE

Based on the notes of a doctor who said the most frightening thing about viral disease was how it didn’t frighten. People didn’t know or didn't care. They lived and spread until it was too late and they became another name on the record

The clothing being made out of shredding plastic is no coincidence; pollution is a form of pestilence too

Recommended reading: Notes from a Countryside Doctor - Mikhail Bulgakov. Roughly translated quote below;

''Ah, I verified that here syphilis was frightening precisely because it did not frighten. That was why I evoked that women.* I remembered her with a kind of affectionate respect: because she had been afraid. But she was the only one!''

*Early in the chapter, doctor mentions a woman that appeared in the clinic with a letter from her soldier husband, where he wrote that he had syphilis and told her she should go to the doctor too.

DEATH

Recommended reading: Voices of Chernobyl - Svetlana Alexievitch. The Death of Ivan Ilitch - Lev Tolstoi

“Death is the fairest thing in the world. No one's ever gotten out of it. The earth takes everyone - the kind, the cruel, the sinners. Aside from that, there's no fairness on earth.”

Death is the only horseman that doesn’t need to mount their horse; they will reach everyone eventually. Who is the saddle for then? Open ended question because this one you have to figure out personally

Many people pointed out how the horse is a Clydesdale. Good eyes! I purposefully asked a friend to guide me towards what type of horses are the sturdiest and most-friendly looking. I drew the horse grazing. It's not injured, it doesn't gallop. It's grazing peacefully because life moves on.

This is the only design that had a painting serve as a base - The Reaper, by Alexey Venetsianov. Not much or nothing at all is written about, I saw it in a book. It is a literal reaper but it haunted me, as if it's portraying more than a person.

The choice to make it a woman was due to a book about a crematory (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes - Caitlin Doughty) that connected women to death because everyone born is bound to die.

Ahhh, I don't want to give it all away. It's fun to figure things out. About them all. From the enviroment, to the movement, to the horses themselves. Many people even mentioned details that I did not notice and didn't add purposefully that were so inspired and amazing. I truly mean that the interpretations of the public enrich the works even more than my own words. And it's an honor to share that work with everyone.

Thank you anon!

[beenumber6]

[beenumber6]

Is it the weight of human conscience that keeps us down when the Hammer of Thor is placed upon us? Because we know a single clothes hook can hold the weight of the hammer, so is the hammer not that heavy, but it is simply our own guilt and morality that holds us down when the hammer is on our person?

[beenumber6]

wolf in sheep’s clothing and the reprise, so goated and you know i’m right

[beenumber6]

cat mama

[beenumber6]

really feeling wobbly all the time

[beenumber6]

Fuck y’all for saying this is slander. I love the maned wolf, it is in my top ten animals thank you very much. Can one not love with the passion of a high school bully?

Maned wolf don’t look like a fox head on two sticks from the front challenge: impossible

oh your length my sweet child

trying so hard to get your head as far away from the earth as possible, oh how I relate

[beenumber6]

Just finished watching A Haunting in Venice and by god do I need more from you Kenneth Branagh

Just a banger trilogy that I want expanded into even more movies

If you have not watched these movies, what the fuck are you doing?

The greatest cinematography, the perfect scripts, star studded casts, hard hitting emotional beats, and a through line of lost love oh my fuck I am gnawing at the polystyrene cage that is my brain

Watch these freaking movies!!!

[beenumber6]

>be me

>subscribed to a lot of youtube channels

>like a lot

>its a tuesday, a time when none of them post except maybe game grumps

>be sitting on my computer

>finish the game grumps video for the day

>face pressed close to the screen

>frantically refreshing

>vido?!! O.o

>none appear

>be me

>sad :(

[beenumber6]

hello! :)

just wondering, what fandoms are you in? ( or what tags u follow)

ok byeeeeeeeeee

Oh god. Just. Soooo many. I think right now I’m in my Hunger Games era (and might become an english teacher so I can teach it to my students lmao). But I’m in quite a few dystopian/fantasy/adventure/detective fandoms. I’ll list some of them:

Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, Percy Jackson, Eragon, The Summoner, Rangers Apprentice and Brotherband, Demon Road, Spooks Apprentice, Shadow and Bone, about to start Six of Crows, Legend, Dan Brown, Jane Austen, Agatha Christie, The Land of Stories, Artemis Fowl, Ruby Red, Ruby Redford, Gone, Stacy Gregg, A Good Girls Guide to Murder, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Silverwing, Emily Rodda, Spin the Dawn, Narnia Chronicles, Kathy Reichs, Matthew Reilly, Series of Unfortunate Events, Wings of Fire, Frankenstein, Lord of the Rings

I could go on forever lmao. I’m such a massive nerd, especially with books

[beenumber6]

Person A: Wanna go to the liquor store?

Person B: Liquor store? I hardly know her, WHORE

Person A: …

Person A: You really need to chill man

[beenumber6]

do not forget the patron saint of these weeks that we celebrate ourselves proudly and openly in the streets

her name was Marsha P Johnson, and we have her to thank for so much.

remember, the first Pride was a riot, and she was one of the brave souls who endured it to help carve the path which so many of us walk today. she helped found several activist groups regarding LGBT safety and wellbeing. and she was absolutely radiant, too.

thank you, Marsha. we remember you.

[beenumber6]

me

Oh your parents won't let you hang out with girls *morphs into a male* there :)

[beenumber6]

it’s time y’all

its that time of the year

[beenumber6]

Give me more fucked up female protagonists like Amber from the Demon Road trilogy by Derek Landy

Give me someone who cares deeply about others, but also themself and who will make the wrong decisions sometimes

I love women’s rights and women’s wrongs

Also more who are gay but that’s not a big part of their fucked up-ness nor important to their story

[beenumber6]

Maned wolf don’t look like a fox head on two sticks from the front challenge: impossible

oh your length my sweet child

trying so hard to get your head as far away from the earth as possible, oh how I relate

[beenumber6]

gnawing at a raw carrot the way rabbits eat dandelion stalks