laurasimonsreblogs

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Vampire movie being popular means I have to read things like “having to be invited in comes from that old vampire movie The Lost Boys”

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they found a small herd of unicorns in a hard-to-reach part of the Alps. the area was immediately blocked from human access and there’s a team of scientists observing the herd and documenting what they can. from analysis of collected unicorn poops, it looks like the unicorns are actually converting microplastics in their environment into usable magical energy. now the scientists throw them a plastic grocery bag full of styrofoam every week or so to help the younger ones grow up stronger.

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In the Bible, Saint Martha is best known for being the sister of Lazarus, of returning-from-the-dead fame. However, according to a French folk tale, she later visited Provence in the south of France and tamed a ferocious dragon-like beast called the Tarasque, which had been terrorizing nearby villages and eating the locals. This event is still celebrated with an annual parade in Tarascon on the last weekend in June, featuring a float shaped like the Tarasque.

There’s a tradition in art of depicting the Tarasque caught mid-munch by Martha, with a pair of legs hanging out of its mouth and a very contrite expression on its face, like a puppy who’s been found eating your socks. Here are a few of my favourite Tarasque-shaming pictures.

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Concept: cursed blade rehabilitation center. Destroying a sentient weapon is expensive and highly unethical, so adventurers bring them to the center where highly trained staff can care for them and eventually find them forever homes. It turns out most cursed weapons are products of trauma and are not strictly evil themselves. Some blades turn out to be fiercely protective companions. Others don't even want to be weapons at all, finding joy in simple work like blacksmithing or farming. Most blades just need to be loved.

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Losing it at “Carmilla would wake up late, would never eat but would take a cup of chocolate.”

Where is THAT in the vampire lore. We’ve been robbed. “I do not drink…wine. Hot cocoa only.”

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The Nacken (also called the Nixie) is a kind of dangerous water-spirit of the North. As with most other water-spirits, they are said to lure people to drown in lakes, streams, and ponds, in this case via the use of an enchanted violin.

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New comic up on itch.io! Neighbourly Help - Val & Cherry.

Val drops round to thank Cherry for a blood donation, monster/monster f/f. Also available for Patreons as well as the rest of my comics

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“You want me to do what?”

The princess gaped at her youngest brother in startled dismay.

“Make my shirt sleeveless!” the young prince repeated, hopping impatiently from one foot to the other. Soon the light of the setting sun would be all gone, taking the short time that the enchantment lifted would go with it, and he and his brothers would be swans again. “I thought you’d be pleased! That’s two sleeves’ worth of stinging nettles you don’t have to pick!”

“Yes, but, then you will have no arms!” his sister spluttered.

“I will have wings though.” The prince waved up at the sky with a yearning look. “I do want to be a human again, be all together as a family again. But I would miss flying so much.”

“Yes but to have no hands!” she argued and her vow to stay silent from the moment she started sewing suddenly seemed like a much larger task, if these were the kind of opinions she would have to be silent about.

“So I will learn to pick things up with my feet!” her brother insisted. “And wings can do much more than you think, wait and see. Besides, once we have found father again, he can ask the royal artificers to make me something I can use for hands and arms, I am sure of it. They make such clever things nowadays. But wings, now that is something no one can make for me.”

His sister frowned a very long older sibling’s frown at him, but the prince would not give in.

“I will not give up my family,” he said. “But I also will not give up the sky. It is my choice, is it not?”

“It is your choice,” the princess sighed with a nod, because she knew he was right about that. “They are your arms, and your wings. I just hope you are certain.”

“I am certain,” her brother grinned happily, wrapping his arms around her neck. “I will be able to hug you even better with wings, you shall see.”

“Hm,” the princess hummed full of worry.

He laughed. “Just you wait,” he teased. “You will see it my way when I take you flying one day. As soon as I’m tall and strong enough I will carry you on my back and fly you all the way to where the clouds are stuck to the heavens!”

And finally his sister laughed and shook her head at him, as she knew oldest siblings ought to do. And then she agreed he would have his sleeveless shirt, if that would secure his happiness. As oldest siblings ought to do likewise.

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Secrets of the Bly

The canopy sailed over the horizon line.

The mother looked out the window, snapping the sheets as she folded them. Her clear gray eyes were the same color as the morning sky and just as gloomy.

“Closer,” she muttered. She seemed surprised she had spoken, and her hands slowed, fingers lingering on the fraying edge of her own bed sheet. She wet her lips. Said again, “Closer.”

“What’s closer?” the daughter asked.

The mother didn’t jump, but the air changed as if she did. Her shoulders stiffened. Her hands went back to work. “Nothing,” she said. Then, not being able to help herself, “The forest is growing quickly.”

“Teacher says that trees don’t grow fast. Only an inch or two a year.”

“You couldn’t see the Bly when you were a baby,” the mother said. Her heart stung. She knew her daughter wasn’t calling her foolish. Lately, when the little girl spoke of her teacher, something she never had, it makes something sour in her want to lash out. “Now look how tall it stands!”

The daughter came to the window. Her clothes were ill-fitting. She looked as if she tumbled in and then out of fresh laundry only to come up wearing a whole bedspread. The dress she wore used to be the mother’s from when she was young. Her eyes traced the horizon. “That’s faster than teacher said.”

“Not even a teacher knows everything,” the mother said. Her own mother’s voice rang through hers. That made her jump. She thrust the laundry away from her and finally looked at her daughter. “Some truths are only learned while living—”

The daughter stared at her bare feet. Shoulders rounded. Lip jutting out so far the mother could see it through her hanging, flaxen hair. The mother’s heart stung different.

“The Bly is…different,” the mother said. It’s her own voice this time. Softer and more yielding. She kneeled so that the daughter could see her right away when she chose to look up. “It’s a secret I’d like you to keep.”

The daughter’s eyes darted up, meeting the mother’s. Her lip contracted a centimeter. “A secret?”

“Just between us two,” the mother agreed. Was the little girl old enough? She would give anything to bring her daughter’s chin up again. “Your teacher is right that trees grow slow. The Bly is different here. Only here.”

“Only here?”

“On our land. You see, the Bly is home to another kind of creature. Like us, but not. They are mischievous and kind and cruel. More importantly, they’re magic.”

“Fairies,” the daughter said confidently.

“The Good Folk,” the mother said in her own mother’s voice. Then to soften it, “And that’s not the secret.”

The daughter reached out to put her hands on her mother’s shoulders. She jumped in excitement, using her mother to steady herself. “Tell me! Please, tell me.”

The mother smiled and placed her hands over her daughters. She tilted her head forward and was rewarded when her daughter stopped leaping about and pressed her own forehead against hers. She whispered, “The secret is that once, a long time ago, I stole something from them. That’s why the forest grows so quickly over the horizon. They’re looking for what I took.”

“What?!” The daughter was amazed. “You said never to steal.”

“I did. I needed it very badly, mustn’t I have?”

“Yes,” the daughter said. Her quick mind tumbled through her mother’s confession. “So you’ve been in the Bly? What was it like? Teacher says there are wolves in there. What did you steal?”

For a moment, the mother was not there. She raced through dense old growth with her feet cut to ribbons and her skirts sticking wetly to her legs. Her breath came in cold clouds in front of her and she ran through them just as quickly as they formed. She could use only one hand to shield her face from vines and branches. Her other arm was curled around the bundle in her arms.

“One day,” the mother said. She stood but wrapped her hands around her daughter’s so that she knew it was only a necessary retreat and not a complete one. “One day, when you’re older, I’ll tell you all the stories I have.”

The girl’s lower lip was out again. “How old?”

“When the Bly hits the edge of our land,” the mother said. She held out her pinky. “Promise.”

The girl was suspicious. “It grows fast?”

The mother’s heart stung differently again. “Very fast.”

“Deal!”

---

(Patreon)

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Daughter of fantasy villains decides to rebel against her parents by actually going through with her arranged marriage to a local golden retriever of a prince instead of running off with some local villain-to-be or conquering said golden retriever’s kingdom and ruling it solo like her parents expect her to. Plus, sue her, she’s into the clean-cut earnest look.

At the same time, local prince charming discovers that he’s actually very into the gothic fiance his parents have landed him with in order to try and establish peace with the local evil lair down the lane, he would never have guessed a spiderweb pattern could look so fetching on a ball gown…?

Meanwhile, two pairs of parents in a tizzy because they both expected their offspring to whole-heartedly reject this union and give them an excuse to conquer their goody-two-shoes/evil neighbours, they’re not supposed to actually like each other-!

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sketch

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The governess says to always stay behind the walls with wrought-iron fencing, but what does she know ANYWAY, huh

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A Witch and a Crow || Original Animation || @maepletea

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Medusa has become quite a polarizing figure, and perhaps of all figures in mythology demonstrates how we reuse and interpret myths to make sense of our experiences and the world around us. 

Personally, I subscribe to earlier Greek interpretations of Medusa, where she’s a monstrous goddess born with the curious condition of mortality and not subject to the lust of Poseidon or the wrath of Athene. For my design I referenced the motif of the running gorgon, common on pottery in the mid-sixth century BCE depicting a rather broad and muscular looking figure in a short tunic. Funnily enough, I was also inspired by the tusks and physicality of half-orcs from DnD for her overall body type. I liked the idea of arranging her hair in an Aphrodite knot to give it some interest, and instead of wings I gave her some feathers on her arms to streamline her overall look (I find wings on upright quadrupeds to be a bit clunky). 

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Concept: Vampire character that represents strengthening ties to humanity and the natural world instead of dividing them

Vampire gets HEAVILY invested in eco conservation because they *can't* just shrug it off as the next generation's problems

A vampire that goes around eating oil tycoons and clear-cut logging CEOs and climate-denying politicians because their childhood village is a dirt pit now and the animals they saw growing up have become endangered

Immortal guys who anonymously donate huge sums of cash to wildlife preserves that oversee forests they used to hunt in

Fellow who, instead of succumbing to the boredom and waste of infinite time, has become feverishly obsessed with making sure this one specific species of snail will still be around in another hundred years

5000 year old woodsman who can still mimic the calls of extinct birds, who still remembers the mating calls of mammoths and wooly rhinos and wild horses

Ancient vampire who can still vaguely recall a cave somewhere with her whole family's hand prints in it, and not sure of it's precise location, keeps the whole area void of human activity so it doesn't become a tourist attraction

Vampire archeologist who digs up their old friend's remains and has the figure out how to prove, with evidence, how they know exactly who they were and what they looked like

Immortal anthropologist who reconstructs a face from a skull only to realize that they'd met them before a long, long time ago

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The Devil went down to Georgia.

And I interviewed him about it.

The Devil takes a long drag on his cigarette. When he exhales, a long sigh, there’s no smoke. he looks at it thoughtfully and puts it out.

"The thing about the fiddle…” he says “The thing that people don’t get, is that I was never going to win.”

He looks at the stump of his ciggy and grinds it out.

“That wasn’t the plan. The plan was to lose. I mean… a golden fiddle? I wish you could have heard it, it sounded like…” he waves a hand. He’s oddly reticent to swear.

“It was awful. Flat, screechy. And I mean, I made it sound good as it could get, y’know? But it was never going to be as good as a real fiddle.”

He laughs. It’s a warm, indulgent laugh, plummy and full of amusement. “No the plan was to lose it. You know how much a golden fiddle you won from the devil is worth? It’s worth… well more than gold.”

He pauses. “The smart thing would have been to take a hammer to it and melt it down, but who’s going to do that? That’s uh… just under 17 kilograms of gold. More than half a million these days.”

He takes another cigarette out and taps it, put it between his lips, takes a long suck that reduces a third of it to ash. I almost don’t notice that he never lit it, because I’m making a note that the prince of lies apparently favours Metric. Or thinks I do.

“It’s worth more with provenance, though. It’s rarer than a Strad - if you could get people to believe it was my actual fiddle, you could sell it for around twenty… thirty million, easily. But that’s the thing.”

And this is where the ol’ devil grins. It’s a brilliant happy smile, the smile of someone who pulled a caper off.

“… Some dumb farmboy goes out, comes back with a solid gold fiddle and a crazy story? Everyone wants the damn thing, for the gold, even if they don’t believe anything else. Family, friends, then the landlord and the Mayor, pretty soon everyone from the governor down was trying to levy taxes on this thing, or confiscate it - That kid killed two guys who broke in before one of them got him. The family started a vendetta against the people they thought they’d taken it. Both of them got beggared by taxes for something they never had…” he chuckles.

“The girl who stole it tried to pawn it, and the guy running the place took her in the back and garotted her with a handful of bootlaces. Bootlaces!” he stops to chuckle. “And then - He got robbed and there’s been at least four heists and ten lawsuits over it. Even I’m not sure where it is.”

He pauses again and stares into the distance, eyes unfocussed.

“Oh the Mar-a-Lago” he states. “Huh. Actually, I think I need to make a call about a certain hidden vault…”