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Thank you for helping to solve something I've been wondering about for years...! (the manticore as it appears in RPGs and hence, popular culture). I still wonder where the wings came from 🤔

And as others have said, thanks again for running this!

Bestiaryposting Results: Mlekragg

Unsurprisingly, multiple people read the entry and immediately clocked what this was. (Thank you for not actually making a guess in text, so that people who don't recognize it are able to work without that preconception.) I didn't want to leave it out, because the mythological ones are fun, but unlike some of the others, the modern conception of this beast is pretty much exactly what the bestiary says.

Anyway, as always, if you don't know what I'm talking about, you can find an explanation for this whole thing at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting. If you want to join in, the new entry for each week is tagged with "maniculum bestiaryposting" so it should be findable. This week's entry can be reviewed here:

Below the cut you will find the drawings responding to it, in roughly chronological order:

@silverhart-makes-art (link to post here) decided to branch out in an unusual direction with this one, in order to avoid drawing the creature they'd identified from the entry and also have some fun with it. I just think this is some quality creature design. Love the mask-thing, love the springy tail, and that's a really good rendering of a cuttlefish face IMHO. There's a really interesting explanation for all of these features, what inspired them and how it all works together, in the linked post, which you should go read.

@moonygryffin (link to post here) took a more direct approach, with the twist that the creature here is modeled on American fauna rather than ones the medieval Europeans would have been aware of. The body is a mountain lion, and the man-like head is a golden-headed lion tamarin, which of course comes with its own mane. I enjoy the choice to not use a lion lion, but rather two animals with "lion" in their name; also I've always thought lion tamarins were very cool-looking. For more details -- and an example of an attempt by MoonyGryffin to draw the same creature several years ago -- see the linked post. (Also thank you for providing alt text.)

@sweetlyfez (link to post here) has made an attempt to take the entry literally without drawing the creature she has recognized, which is a challenge considering how specific the description is. I think the decision to give it flea legs to help with that exceptional jumping is clever. SweetlyFez describes the result as an "awful creature" and... honestly I can't argue, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near one of these. In fact I think I'm going to wrap up this commentary and scroll down so I don't keep making eye contact with it.

@pomrania has also decided to go the route of "let's get weird with it", and avoided the literal interpretation by re-analyzing the word "has". This is similar to that style of joke one hears now and then -- you know, "he has the heart of a poet... he keeps it in a jar at home." (Incidentally, props to Mary Shelley for being perhaps the only person who could make that claim and not be kidding.) So this creature has the face of a man and the body of a lion, not in the sense that it was born with them, but in the sense that it keeps them as possessions. Very clever, and the underlying creature design is also fantastically creepy in my opinion.

@coolest-capybara (link to post here) mentions that she didn't recognize the description, and has given us this really cool-looking, rather menacing creature in their excellent medieval style. (This is why I insist on not naming the beasts even when it seems clear what it is -- this amazing piece of art might have looked entirely different if someone posted a spoiler.) I'm really struck by how it simultaneously looks like a patchwork sort of creature (different front & back legs, etc.) but all flows together into a cohesive whole. Just really well done, I think. (Also, thank you for including alt text.)

@cheapsweets (link to post here) has drawn the creature mid-leap, showing off its jumping prowess by shooting straight up into the air. I think this drawing does a very good job at combining human and lion anatomy to make something unsettling -- and the inclusion of the skull diagram up in the top left points to the amount of thought that went into this. As always, please check out the linked post for a detailed discussion of the design. (Also, thank you for including alt text.)

@strixcattus (link to post here) has drawn one that's oddly cute, and looks a bit worried. However, according to the description they've written in the linked post, this reaction on my part is probably going to get me killed, because apparently they're still quite vicious. I like it, though -- and, as always, I urge you to go read the linked post for this one.

On to the Aberdeen Bestiary... oh, we can't, actually. This is another missing page. So here's the illustration from the Ashmole Bestiary instead:

So, first of all, this is indeed the manticore, and I'm sure most if not all of the people who said they had guessed it got that correct.

Second, we can also note that all the artists who said something along the lines of "well we know about the issues of drawing medieval scorpions, so the scorpion-tail description doesn't need to be literal" were also correct there. Apparently this time a scorpion tail is just spiky all over, which I have to admit does look kinda cool.

Now let's address the elephant in the room. WHAT is that thing on its HEAD? My best guess is that it's meant to be a crown -- medieval art often sticks hats on nonhuman creatures with human faces, almost as if the artist wants to make sure you know it looks like a human head on purpose. I don't see crowns that often, though; usually it's just a cloth hat. (The one in Bodley MS 764, where I got the text for this entry, is clearly wearing a Phrygian cap.) I find myself unable to see it as anything but a daring hairstyle that is absolutely not working for it, though.

Anyway. The manticore is an odd one in its continuity here -- a lot of the mythical creatures in the bestiary have been changed, reinterpreted, or forgotten in the intervening centuries. I think maybe the manticore happens to have hit that sweet spot where it's popular enough that people remember it, but not so popular that it gets excessively telephoned through widespread transmission. I think a couple people noted that the Standard Fantasy manticore is more or less spot on to this description, and indeed, I can only think of one change:

(Art from the Magic: the Gathering card "Crimson Manticore", artist Daniel Gelon)

At some point, those bastards got wings. It's not universal at this time, but if you do an image search for "manticore", the majority of the modern ones are winged. I'm not really sure where that came from.

(Side note: I tested this by doing a Google image search, and one of the top results was a particularly odd-looking image, so I clicked on it out of curiosity. It was at the top of an... article? on a webpage I'd never heard of, and the opening of said article included the sentence, "In medieval bestiaries and art, the manticore was depicted with unique features such as paws, teeth, and fur." You don't say there, bud.)

Interestingly, the D&D manticore is slightly different from the description in an additional way.

Instead of a scorpion tail, it has a tail covered in spines. This has apparently been part of the D&D manticore since the beginning -- the above image is from 2e, but the 1e version had the same tail. (I just didn't use it because it's not as clear in the picture.)

Now, scroll back up to that Ashmole Bestiary image. The one where the tail doesn't really look anything like a scorpion's. Looks... similar to this in broad concept.

I doubt that Gygax or Arneson or whoever designed that aspect of their manticore after one bestiary image, so I popped over to bestiary.ca to see what else was out there. Out of the 38 medieval manticore images collected on that website, there are only two with a tail covered in spikes: the Ashmole manticore and one other that's clearly just a less-skilled artist working from the same image (it also has the same hat). Looking at the text sources, though:

"...it has a tail like a land scorpion, in which there is a sting; it darts forth the spines with which it is covered instead of hair..." -- Aristotle, De animalibus

"To the end of its tail is attached the sting of a scorpion, and this might be over a cubit in length; and the tail has stings at intervals on either side." -- Aelianus, On the Characteristics of Animals

Okay, that's the D&D version, mystery solved. New question: is it a coincidence that the Ashmole illustration fits Aelianus's description? Remember, the page is missing from the Aberdeen bestiary and the Ashmole bestiary isn't translated. The text comes from Bodley MS 764, which does not have a spiky-tailed manticore. My Latin is terrible and I'm untrained in palaeography, so I can't tell whether the entry there preserves the spiky description.

If any palaeographers out there want to solve this one for me, it's Bodleian MS Ashmole 1511, f.22v-23r, available digitally here. (I'll put some screenshots below, but I expect it's easier to zoom properly on the library's digitized manuscript.)

Okay, that's all I've got. Enjoy your week everyone.

[cheapsweets]

I wanted to put a more positive spin on the popular skeleton leaving meme

[cheapsweets]

In my headcanon/theory of orcs:

Orcs are uniformly tone-deaf, no exceptions. But they do sing. It just doesn't sound so good to anyone who isn't tone-deaf.

(Melkor, if he noticed, appreciated the dissonance, but Sauron was Not A Fan.)

Also their sense of rhythm is fine and orcish drummers can get quite sophisticated.

Common subjects for orc songs:

Fear Us

We are doing a task [which isn't very interesting and this at least livens it up]

We are going to kill you and destroy everything you love and have fun doing it

A 'and then there were none' backwards-counting song of elf-princes, some verses inspired by real events

A prince of cats got his ass kicked by a girl and a dog, definitely not inspired by real events, honest, but also definitely not to be sung in Mordor

We've been marching a long time and it's annoying

The Sun is a bitch

I Fear Nothing Except The Sea Which Is Fucking Terrifying

My warg is the best warg, she's eaten lots of babies

Behold my gruesome trophies

My body is the most fucked up and uncomfortable but I make it work

There's Something In These Caves (It's A Dragon And Planning To Eat Us)

These Orders Indicate Our Senior Leadership Has Shit For Brains

I Wish I Was Back In Goblin-Town

Today Is A Terrible Day To Die But I Guess That's What We're Doing

[cheapsweets]

[cheapsweets]

Oh, that is so cool!

OK I've taken pictures before ironing bc who knows when I'll get round to ironing. Some months ago I fell down a weekend research hole with some antique needlework books and read a Bunch about jacobean embroidery.

And then I drew a rocket. All the stitches are found in actual 16th century embroideries. The flame and tree of life are my own interpretation of designs that were a common motif.

I tried so many different things in this piece, and I can't decide what my favourite part is.

[cheapsweets]

blogging

[cheapsweets]

Happy Lesbian visibility day to all lesbians, saphics, and wlw (and Xena fans)!

Item: Xena cereal. If eaten in late 2001 when it was released or soon after, grants 1 hour of expertise with throwing circles and ridiculous flipping skills where if you make a successful Dex check you can do a sweet flip to any spot within 200 ft. (If eaten after it’s expired, 1 hour Nauseated.)

Note: “A Taste of Honey”? They really managed to find a name for a cereal that sounds like the title of, y’know, what back then we called a Lemon FemSlash

[cheapsweets]

Underfist Jeff from the original promo art I made to sell the show. I altered the contrast to make it more visible since it was a pretty light drawing. Back then, I'd hand these off to our delightful cleanup artist Frank Homiski, and he'd put the final line on it. I did one of these for each of the characters and then assembled them in photoshop.

[cheapsweets]

absolutely enraptured rn

[cheapsweets]

And the second one (that I've spent way too much time thinking about);

🎶✨when u get this, list 5 songs u like to listen to🎶✨

So here goes;

Toriena - CQC

Khirki - Father Wind

Let's Eat Grandma - Levitation

Onuka - Zenit

Konvent - Puritan Masochism

Thanks again @sweetlyfez for the ask, any excuse to talk about music 😅

Also, videos...!

Two music asks for the price of one:

shuffle your favorite playlist and post the first five songs that come up. then copy/paste this ask to your favorite mutuals <3

🎶✨when u get this, list 5 songs u like to listen to, publish. then, send this ask to 10 of your favorite followers (positivity is cool)🎶✨

Okay, first one for starters;

Shuffle your favorite playlist and post the first five songs that come up

Hoaxed - The Call

潘PAN - Space Bird

The Hirs Collective (feat. Nø Man, Thou, and Jessica Joy Mills) - Sweet Like Candy

John Fruscianti - Amethblowl

Sleep - Marijuanauts theme

Have a bonus video of the first track to pop up;

[cheapsweets]

rise, lesbians!

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A dobsonfly and her little pseudoscorpion buddy.

[cheapsweets]

The anthropophagous Mlekragg

My response to this week’s BestiaryPosting challenge, from @maniculum (thank you again for running these!)

Pencil sketch, then lines in Pentel brush pen, and colours with Derwent inktense paint.

As ever, reasoning under the cut...

"In India there is a beast called the Mlekragg. It has a triple row of teeth, the face of a man, and grey eyes; it it blood-red in color and has a lion’s body, a pointed tail with a sting like that of a scorpion, and a hissing voice. It delights in eating human flesh. Its feet are very powerful and it can jump so well that neither the largest of ditches nor the broadest of obstacles can keep it in."

Now, I'm 90% sure I know what this is, and if it is the case, it's interesting to read the original descrption… With that in mind, I figured I'd go with exactly what the authors wrote...

The first thing I wanted to work out was how the face worked; I looked at lion skulls, cat skulls and human skulls, and tried to combine the three - that's the drawing in the top left of the image. The rearmost (and longest) set of teeth are those of a lion, the middle set are those of a human (with the squared-off incisors), and the front (and smallest) teeth are those of a domestic cat. I used this as a reference when drawing the face of the creature. The ears were a little tricky to work out, but I figured I'd just stick with a lion's ears here, since they's almost part-way between a domestic cat and a humans's ears.

The eyes, I didn't have a grey paint, but I wanted to make them shaped more like a human. It felt like it needed a bit more going on, so I added some thick fur (almost a mane) on the back of the head and the neck; I really want to look at some other brush pen art, to get a better idea of what it's possible to do with this medium (I was hoping to get more of a flowing look to the hair actually like a lion's mane, which didn't pull off, but I feel this works with the general vibe of the creature…)

To reflect it's jumping prowess, I have the Mlekragg leaping straight up in the air. I really liked the idea of the image flowing like an 'S' shape, so that heavily informed a lot about the image. I did look up some reference from leaping cats (particularly snow leopards), but the size of the page and the decisions I'd already made meant the pose was kind of stuck - I feel like if I were to revisit this type of thing, I'd have it making a horizontal leap, arms outstretched. A lot of the proportions were taken directly from lions, but the unusual pose makes it look a little weird.

@sweetlyfez made the very valid point that at this point, its a running joke that we can't trust bestiary authors to know remotely what a scorpion looks like, so as long as there is some kind of 'stinger' we could go in any direction with the tail. However, I really wanted to draw a scorpion tail, so that's what we ended up with (scopions are rad). Did you know that in some lions, the tuft on the end of their tail conceals a sharp bone spur? (Lions are also rad)

It's red, it's got a very clear colour guide, what encouraged me to pull out the inktense paint blocks, and which was a nice change of pace too. I also think that next time, I need to draw the outline in pencil, ink with the brush pen, then colour - I painted the colour on before inking the lines, which meant it was really hard to see the pencil lines…!

[cheapsweets]

When they realized women were using their sacks to make clothes for their children, flour mills started using flowered fabric for their sacks. The label was designed to wash out.

[cheapsweets]

GET YELLED AT

photos by carl bergstrom

[cheapsweets]

Two music asks for the price of one:

shuffle your favorite playlist and post the first five songs that come up. then copy/paste this ask to your favorite mutuals <3

🎶✨when u get this, list 5 songs u like to listen to, publish. then, send this ask to 10 of your favorite followers (positivity is cool)🎶✨

Okay, first one for starters;

Shuffle your favorite playlist and post the first five songs that come up

Hoaxed - The Call

潘PAN - Space Bird

The Hirs Collective (feat. Nø Man, Thou, and Jessica Joy Mills) - Sweet Like Candy

John Fruscianti - Amethblowl

Sleep - Marijuanauts theme

Have a bonus video of the first track to pop up;

[cheapsweets]

I actually… love this