#The Hungry Mind

[uwmspeccoll]

It’s Fine Press Black Friday!

Last Wednesday we presented a few understated wood engravings by the noted upper-Midwestern engraver and fine-press printer Gaylord Schanilec from a portfolio of literary broadsides documenting the 1998 Hungry Midnight reading series at The Hungry Mind bookstore in St. Paul, Minnesota. For this #Fine Press Friday after Thanksgiving, we present the broadside portfolio documenting the previous year’s Hungry Midnight series featuring the work of Sherman Alexie, John Dufresne, Paul Metcalf, Margaret Atwood, Charles Baxter, and Jonathan Lethem.

Entitled Context is Everything, after a prose piece by Lethem, the portfolio was printed by Schanilec, with his original wood engravings, in an edition of 20 copies (with variously editioned broadsides) at his Stockholm, Wisconsin farmstead studio Midnight Paper Sales in 1997, with each broadside signed by its respective author. 

View other posts on the work of Gaylord Schanilec.

View more Fine Press Friday posts.

View more posts with wood engravings!

[puppyeared]

my attempt at making a fursona

[grimpyr]

The placement of Gale's telescope in the Lower City camp is only midly concerning

[frankiebirds]

oh i know garcia bragged about this for weeks.

[skawdia]

"Well, you look like yourself, but you're somebody else, only it ain't on the surface"

(flora cash - You're Somebody Else)

Vampire-Ascendant-Astarion always shows up to Grand Duke Wyll's parties uninvited. Wyll is not amused that his ex keeps trying to seduce him.

close-up under the cut!

[almondcroissantsandink]

my little sister got gonched in this year of our lord 2024 and when she brought it up i literally thought she was trying to trick me in some weird delayed goncharov shenanigans. she's devastated it's not a real movie we can watch lol

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

self-love is me resisting the urge to eat the leftovers I have in the fridge as a bedtime snack, out of compassion and adoration for future-me, who deserves to wake up in the morning and eat something delicious without having to cook it first

[jururenu]

day 5: growth / habits

he likes rain now

happy birthday my sweet baby

[wi1dshxpe]

durge: now let’s seal this alliance with a blood pact

gortash being polite: okay…

durge post blood pact licking their hand clean: your blood tastes like power

gortash: thank you?

gortash: *offers a hand to durge to help them up from their chair*

durge: *looks at him confused*

durge: *licks the blood the blood off of gortash’s hand*

durge: *gets up on their own* thank you.

gortash: *is hard*

durge, placing hand on gortash’s shoulder: you’re hard *leaves*

[nervocat]

Boothill gives cat vibes honestly.. like he'd be the cat to follow you around and stay attached to your hip when he doesn't have anything to do.

Very affectionate as well. Since his head is the only thing he can feel your touch from, he'll nuzzle into the crook of your neck like a cat would bump it's head against you asking for affection.

Boothill likes to put his weight on you as well. He'll lay on your chest, when your standing he'll hug your wait from the back and lean on you (which makes you stumble bc of his heavy metal body, but you manage to (maybe) stay standing. Maybe you'd fall).

On the other side though, he's very sassy. Pobably. Like Boothill would bite you (playfully + spitefully, depending), keep you from moving, say (silly) snarky remarks, you get it. Maybe.

But yeah um. I'm tired and ik I have more thoughts on this specificly but I can post more later.. gn reader btw and didn't proofread this.

[uwmspeccoll]

Wood Engraving Wednesday

American color wood engraver Gaylord Schanilec is well-noted for his highly detailed and even photograph-like engravings, but he is also a master of wood-engraved simplicity that speaks with the same authority as his detailed work. As examples, here are details from a few broadsides in a collection entitled 3 Hungry Midnight printed by Schanilec in 1999 for a series of readings at the nationally-recognized independent bookstore The Hungry Mind in St. Paul, Minnesota (later Ruminator Books, which closed in 2004).

Printed in an edition of 30 copies under his Midnight Paper Sales imprint at his farmstead in Stockholm, Wisconsin, the portfolio consists of six letterpress-printed poetry broadsides signed by each poet, including Barry Lopez, Anne Michaels, and Clare Rossini.

View other posts on the work of Gaylord Schanilec.

View more posts with wood engravings!

[thevalleyisjolly]

There’s something really fascinating about the different ways in which the Hungry One is understood and conceptualized in Calorum.  In the Bulbosi Church, it’s characterized as an apocalyptic Satan-figure, the cause of suffering in the world and the thing that will one day come to devour everything just because that’s what it does.  Where things really get interesting is in the different sects within and around the Church.  Adherants of the Ramsian Doctrine, for example, believe that it is necessary for the Hungry One to devour the world so that the Bulb can triumph over it - and they believe that the Hungry One will not devour the world so long as it contains “junk food.”  In a similar manner, the Prophidian Heresy and the FDA believe that the Hungry One will not devour the world if it is full of waste -only the FDA consider waste to be general rot and decay rather than the Candians specifically, misanthropy vs xenophobia GO- and that this is therefore the key to preventing the destruction of the world. 

Within the FDA and the Prophidian Heresy, there’s also an intriguing link between body and soul that contradicts mainstream Bulb theology.  Whereas most of the Church believes in a rigid delineation between body and soul, that after death, the body returns to the ground and the soul (if it is not damned) goes to the Bulb, the FDA’s plan of filling the world with rot and decay so that the Hungry One will not devour it suggests, quite radically, that the body just as much if not more so than the soul is what the Hungry One devours.  Mainstream Bulbians believe the stomach of the Hungry One is Hell for damned souls who do not go to the Bulb - the FDA seems to believe that the state of the material is just as important to the Hungry One as the metaphysical and that large enough volumes of rotting decay (which could also be the moral decay that comes with actions in war, but in this case the FDA themselves have the most rotten souls of all) can keep this Devil-figure from consuming anything, regardless of the state of the soul.

On a different level, with Karna, we find the idea that the Hungry One is not just a powerful over-arching entity but rather something which people can relate to and personally interact with.  When Karna kills Sir Drunon and the woman, she takes part of their bodies and burns them “in offering” to the Hungry One.  As the audience, we know that Karna is mechanically a warlock of the Hungry One, with the specific subclass of The Great Old One.  Combined with the offering, the characterization of the Hungry One is as an active, powerful being who, to some degree, can engage with people personally.  Not necessarily in a reciprocal way -you can burn an offering as a sign of respect or acknowledgement without any expectation of receiving something in return- but people like Karna can and do engage with it on an individual and personal level.  Given the fact that when she kills, a new rotten spot appears on her body, it suggests that her relationship to the Hungry One does, in some part, go both ways, that there is something on the other side receiving her votives and responding to them.

Also fascinating to observe, when she kills Sir Drunon, she says “We are all eventual food in the maw of the Hungry One,” and immediately thereafter as she kills the woman he’s with, “I’m sorry, but we are all eventual waste.”  This presents another perspective on the relationship between the Hungry One and the concept of waste. In contrast to the FDA or the Ramsian Doctrine, which believe that the Hungry One won’t devour the world if it is full of waste or junk, Karna’s statements suggest that the process of dying inherently involves becoming waste - and that the Hungry One will still eat that waste nonetheless. 

Then there’s Cumulous and his specific monastic tradition (which is not actually one and the same as the Order of the Spinning Star because it’s stated that there are monks in the Order who draw power from the Bulb; overall, the Order seems to be more an organization of people dedicated to the same goal rather than a religious enclave of people with the same spiritual beliefs).  In ACOC, the first thing Cumulous ever says is, “The Hungry One must feed.”  It’s an interesting phrasing because there’s a very passive connotation - not “The Hungry One must consume” or “The Hungry One must eat,” but rather the use of the term “feed” suggests a little less agency and purpose.  It isn’t going out looking for something to eat, but rather it is feeding on whatever it is given.

Later, Cumulous explains to the party that he does not worship the Hungry One and that it is just a source of power to him.  He can tap into it, just like the Bulbosi miracle workers can tap into the Bulb, but it’s not something that has a real consciousness or its own will and he does not interact with it as if it does.  Combined with his monk subclass (Long Death), the characterization of the Hungry One is less a supernatural powerful figure but more a manifestation of inevitable death and entropy.  Very similarly to Karna’s perspective, it’s going to feed on everything eventually because everyone’s going to die one day.  It might be today, if you happen to be a cheese sailor trying to murder your lawful child duchess, but that’s neither here nor there.

And as Lapin realized in his last moments and as he later showed to Liam, this seems to be the closest understanding to the actual nature of the Hungry One which we have encountered so far in either campaign.  The Hungry One is just a cosmological ball (add that to the list of significant TTRPG orbs!) and while it certainly contains a lot of power, it doesn’t do anything with it other than eat what is delivered into its mouth.  The power and the destruction and the death associated with the Hungry One?  All of that has only been wielded or used by living people, for their own aims and agendas.

Anyways, all this to say that while I don’t think it likely to happen, my dream scenario is for a couple FDA members to flee the scene of whatever plan they had that some or all of the Scrumptious Scoundrels have managed to foil, and as they escape, they run straight into a group of Candian monks (aka what they were actually doing during the Ravening War).  The last thing they hear, after all their scheming to “save” the world, is “The Hungry One must feed.”  And it does.

[dennydraws]

I've been playing some Fire Emblem Heroes and I'm sad Julius has no alt... so ... I guess I'm drawing my own food :D;;;

[frankiebirds]

so nice of reid to offer to do elle's files for her. what a gentleman! <3 no takebacks!

(Not included in the subtitles on the last image: Cross-talk with Reid saying "What?!" while Elle is saying "four of mine" and Elle following "Yep," with "Mmhm."

also:

Hotch smiling! twice in one episode!

[wellfine]

(he read it)

[happyheidi]

a little bunny trying to get his meal, passing by

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