churchyardgrim - Tumblr blog

[churchyardgrim]

i adore u all

now sit tight while i get my slideshow projector set up, i know the butler left the folding table around here somewhere

mutuals i am reclining on a fainting couch in ur parlor. mutuals i am pining for ur company. mutuals i have many matters of the heart to discuss with u. yes this is about old men i insist on calling babygirl. now come here and listen to my tales of woe

[churchyardgrim]

Top five protective gear items!

oh boy, workplace safety!

gloves. no picture bc there's a glove for every task but literally a good set of gloves will carry you so far. even tasks that don't strictly speaking Need gloves, i enjoy wearing them for - i'm sure i get weird looks for just Moving Things Around with my welding gloves on, but those things are gross! and have rough spots and Textures that i don't want to touch! (sidenote this is also why i probably won't be learning how to run a lathe any time soon. machinists can't wear gloves of any kind other than very thin nitrile gloves, bc of the danger of fabric getting caught in the works.)

headphones/earmuffs. these bad boys are so much better than earplugs for me, and they're comfortable and effective and cheap. literally stole a pair for home use my first week on the job, zero regrets.

3. kneepads. i don't do much kneeling normally but if you're doing a lot of physical work, these just make life so much more comfortable. you've only got one set of knees! they hold up ur whole body! take care of em!

4. the only reason fuckign welding helmets aren't higher up on the list is bc i hate wearing things on my head but like. literally what more can i say about them lmao. they do the job and they do it well, and since they're not protecting u from impacts u can plaster them with stickers as much as u want. shield thine eyes from the retina-melting lasers, and look sick as hell while u do it.

5. n95s are a covid standard for a reason, and when you spend any amount of time grinding metal or working in dusty environments.... yeah these things are a godsend. they do lose points bc i also hate wearing things on my face, but that's not their fault

[churchyardgrim]

somehow the poor cops who we were told are simply too understaffed and underpaid because of Woke to deal with 'rampant rising crime' have found the strength to beat the shit out of college students across the whole country for peacefully saying "divest from the country killing innocent palestinians in the tens of thousands"

[churchyardgrim]

*based solely on the medication situation, not your personal ability to survive an apocalypse (because who knows what type of apocalypse it is!)

[churchyardgrim]

What's up, I made a meme that I'm sure is extremely broad-audience and relatable

[churchyardgrim]

[churchyardgrim]

learning that apparently several hundred people have been pronouncing 'miette' as 'mighty' has actively worsened my day

[churchyardgrim]

you're going about your normal day when, suddenly, surprise! you've been pokémon mystery dungeon'd!

unfortunately, due to budget cuts, the pokémon assigning quiz has been canceled. instead, you must spin THE WHEEL, assigning you a random, unevolved, non-legendary and non-mythical pokémon. you must now go on some sort of world-saving adventure as this pokémon. good luck!

tell me in the tags what you rolled, and how you feel about it - for bonus points, you can spin the wheel again for (or just take your pick of) a pokémon to be your partner.

bonus rules:

you're not shiny unless the wheel tells you you're shiny

take your pick of regional forms and evolutions (for example, if you roll vulpix, it's up to you whether that means normal or alolan vulpix)

apply whatever logic you like with regards to gender

have fun and be yourself!

[churchyardgrim]

Sorry for tagging your art with just # oogh or # oh. Just know this means im profoundly moved

[churchyardgrim]

It just makes a lot of sense why Marcille and Laios would be good friends, really, because Marcille Will Tell You What Is On Her Mind. If she doesn't like something, she throws a tantrum. If she's down to clown, she clowns like a champ. If she has an opinion, she voices it clearly and concisely. Laios knows exactly where Marcille stands in pretty much every topic.

On Marcille's end, she's down to clown more than people give her credit for. Laios said "yo let's play with these bones and rearrange them in funny ways" and Marcille joined right in. Like, yeah, she'll want to bonk his skull in sometimes, but aside from the monster and dungeon (well, she does have this one, just differently) fascination, she's pretty much in the same wavelength as Laios when it comes to most things.

Which is cool! Because they could've made them hostile siblings in law but they are besties actually.

[churchyardgrim]

My boyfriend and I are watching Ratatouille and he made a comment about the complexity of the sewers at the beginning.

So I, a nerd, go "oh boy do I have a book for you!"

Amd he goes "oh? What book goes that in depth about the Parisienne sewers system?"

And my friends, he was shocked at my answer.

[churchyardgrim]

put “top 5” anything in my ask and i will answer ok go

[churchyardgrim]

Hands down one of the most gorgeous cats I've ever seen. She's a Russian blue and a bit over a year old.

[churchyardgrim]

Top five reptiles.

1. Goanna, and yes it's because of Rescuers Down Under

2. Green tree python, cuz they change color from when they're babies AND they are always sitting there like that

3. Tuatara cuz they're the only remaining member of their whole clade, they're very special. Gotta include them as the underrepresented guys

4. Alligator snapping turtle. This animal would kill me. On purpose!!

5. Alligators. I fear them, I respect them, i dream of them nightly.

[churchyardgrim]

Inevitable been thinking about how that one anon viewed Laios as a monsterfucker, and I think it made me realize the source of that confusion:

I think many monsterfuckers, and also many (dare I say most) monster devourers like Laios, both derive their desire from the same source: a latent wish for apoteratosis, the wish to become a monster.

Linguistic side note: apotheosis, becoming a god, breaks down to apo- (towards the end point), theo (god), -osis (turn noun into verb), so I swapped in the root for monster, hence apo- terato -osis. Side note over.

Monster devourers are a rather rare archetype in (mainstream) fiction, but they do exist. Those who seek to mimic or emulate the monster's power, those who find them endlessly fascinating and study them well past the point of obsession, those who wish to show their dominance over the monster by proving that they can kill and eat it... and I think Laios is the first I've seen who takes the title quite so literally, where his obsession goes straight to monsters-as-food.

Monsterfuckers, meanwhile wish to become close to the monster in a non destructive way (or at least a typically less destructive one, usually the only casualties are furniture and few bandages are needed, but I'll acknowledge that exceptions definitely exist). They wish to bond with it, to connect to it through lust or intimacy, to be able to stand at its side. They wish, on some level, to join it. Side note, I'm not saying this is true of all teratophiles, some are just kinky and driven by the thought of positive physical pleasure, or who find the personality of a given monster appealing, but I do think the apoteratotic desire is an underlying driver for many, I'd guess well more than half, it's just a subtle enough thing that I don't think most are consciously aware of it.

There's also a third point to the secret apoteratosis triangle that might surprise you: the monster slayer. Sure many, even most, slayers are driven by something like disgust or xenophobia or even rationality, but a significant minority land in the "if you can't join 'em, beat 'em" a.k.a. "I can't be you, so I'll destroy you" camp.

And these three reactions are, I notice, the three most common reactions that people have to one thing: the unattainable desire. The sentence begins "I cannot have it..." and these three camps end it different ways.

The teratophages say "so I shall dominate it." They seek what power they can grasp so they can have some modicum of control, so they can try to "have" it anyway. The kaiju corpse scavengers in Pacific Rim including refined and suave mob boss types just smacks of this attitude.

The teratophiles say "so I'll get as close as I can." There's a werewolf romance book where they're considering trying to turn the girlfriend, though they have no idea if she'll survive it (boyfriend was turned by accident then abandoned, so he's clueless, and they haven't found any others to teach them), and she says that she's fine remaining human, because she shares the power through him. "I have it, because you have it." The façade eventually breaks and in a vulnerable moment she confesses that she'd be willing to risk even a likely death to try to be turned. When they get in contact with an elder who can turn her safely she doesn't even wait a week.

The teratophobes write that whole sentence as "if I can't have it, then no one can." I'm sure everyone has seen enough examples of this behavior to understand that it's just a kind of love turned corrupt.

I'm not the first to notice the underlying apoteratotic urge: the aforementioned werewolf story, indeed many werewolf and vampire stories romanticize the transformation of a human into a monster. Back to Dungeon Meshi, author Ryōko Kui is fully aware of it with how Laios's underlying desire is eventually brought out of the subtext and explicitly named as his dysphoria with humanity, and his wishing that he could be a monster. For Laios that desire skipped right past the socially unacceptable monsterfucking, explicitly a form of bestiality in that world, to the socially acceptable devouring, though tempered by his respect and admiration of monsters into a desire for symbiosis with them. He cannot become one in truth (or so he thought when younger) but he could become part of their food web. It's as close as he thought he could get. Of course, that's the Watsonian explanation; the Doylist explanation is that Ryōko Kui wanted to subvert expectations, and also wanted to explore this angle of it.

So, all taken together, I think people read Laios as monsterfucker coded simply because teratophiles, teratophages, and teratophobes all share the same root motivation: apoteratosis. Thus, all three branches are coded very similarly.

It's similar to something I've seen in Batman fandom: some fans project romantic love between various members of the Batfamily, which is both wildly against canon and thoroughly hated by some other branches of fandom. But it is understandable, since familial love and romantic love both come from the same root, love of another. If someone doesn't recognize the simultaneous similarities and distinctions, it's all to easy to conflate them. If you don't actually understand the distinction, then the signs of affection between siblings might look the same as the signs of affection between lovers. Likewise, if you don't understand the distinction, the urge of the monster devourers (or ecologists) might look the same as the urge of the monster fucker.

I've sat on this for near a month, partially because of my repeated absences, partially because I wanted to honor it with an equally in-depth response. But 24 days later I've still got nothing, while I can't speak for that particular person I think in general you hit the nail right on the head. I got no notes. Even with Laios...like all I can add is how supplemental materials actually confirm he did want to be a monster researcher but found books too dry, the only one who seemed to really *get* monsters was shunned. and how wild he goes when talking with an actual werewolf, "The existence I thought unobtainable is now right in front of me".

[churchyardgrim]

SMALL-HEADED FLY SMALL-HEADED FLY 👀

Maybe Pterodontia sp? I'd never seen any small-headed flies before, and there's only 3 Florida sightings in the family on iNaturalist. Absolutely bizarre chonky creature. Basically no head. Evolution can't keep getting away with this.

[churchyardgrim]