#beast of gevaudan

[sabrebash]

I realized i hadn't posted all of the cards i completed last year, especially some of my favorites like the Rods and Mokole Mbembe, and since i didn't like the format i was posting them in anyway I figured i'd make a masterpost here. Sorry for the length! I'm not selling these at present since a 17 card deck is such an awkward length, but maybe i could add to it in the future? I love rods/skyfish so much man they're so dumb.

[eloaholiveira]

Teen Wolf AU espilver Espio drop!?

Have been debating for a while if I should make em a thing in this one, but they make me very happy, so yes they're there!

Espio is the Beast of Gevaudan Dark Gaia! (Yes, its based on Teen Wolf S6). Although he didn't know that, he only got to know when he transformed into it some night and Silver n co told him about it.

[crispycreambacon]

Spice In, Time Out!

— ☆ —

Wanna read a semi-crack fic about Beef Boy hanging out with a bunch of puppets? Maybe even do a little ramen challenge with his little blue fuzzy nerd friend? You're in luck, 'cause I wrote 6500 words of exactly that!

Among those thousands of words are a bunch of cool stuff such as:

Puppet shenanigans! Two of them may have planned to kill their friends (disclaimer: that murder will not be shown in the fic)

Actual history??? Yeah that's right you're gonna get hit with a Puppet History-style question so STUDY UP ON THE HISTORY OF RAMEN (or not) 👹

God being the worst! Again! They may have actually killed someone (disclaimer: that murder WILL be shown in the fic)

God/Professor allegations. Whether those allegations are true or not will be up to you

Overall a (hopefully) funny and wholesome bonding time between everyone at this table. They're all friends! :]

If all of that sounds like a jam to you, you can read the fic via clicking here, clicking the title, or searching up "Spice in, Time Out!" by crispycreambacon on AO3.

I hope y'all will enjoy this fic! I'm pretty proud of how it turned out especially since I was honestly not feeling it at the start and even contemplated not publishing it at all. Even if you don't read it, I hope you enjoy the art (bonus doodles down below btw!) and I hope you'll have a schmaculous day!

[aloysiavirgata]

Have you ever written a historical AU? Would love to see what you would do with that!

“Le professeur n'est pas à la maison!” she calls to whomever is banging at the door.

“S’il te plait je suis perdu,” a man’s voice replies in an accent she can’t place. Not French, certainly.

Dana rises, annoyed, from a table stacked high with books. She’d been lost in Bayes’ recent essay on probability, which her father had bought her.

She makes her way to the door, assumes Marie-Amélie is behind the house with Victor’s hand up her dress again.

Through the window she sees the man claiming to be lost. He’s about her own age, tall, wearing a suit of clothes in the English style. His hair is dark brown, tied at the nape of his neck with a green ribbon.

He looks unhappy and his boots are quite muddy.

Dana grabs the fire poker she keeps next to the door for this purpose. She keeps it tucked in the folds of her dress.

“Good day,” she says in English.

The man startles. “You speak English?”

She grips the poker tighter. “Pray, how can I help you? The professor is not home right now.”

He frowns. “Professor? I’m sorry, I’m not here for any professor. It’s only that I came out to see the country and I’ve…well. I’ve lost my way.”

Dana decides that if she needs to run him through she’d rather it be on her home turf. His clothes, while plain by French standards, are of fine stuff and newly made. His boots are well soled, his breeches have silver buckles.

“Come in,” she says, and lets him pass her. She returns the poker to the wall, then closes the door.

“You’re not English,” he observes, peering around.

“God forbid,” she says, crossing her arms. “Irish.”

He grins at that. “Well, we’ve something in common then. I’m a Massachusetts man. Oh, forgive me. Name’s Fox Mulder.” He pulls a much-abused envelope from his pocket. “Letter of introduction, if you care to peruse.”

She takes the letter but doesn’t open it.

Victor emerges from the kitchen. He has the audacity to look scandalized that she is alone with a strange man even though there is hay dust on his breeches.

“Mademoiselle Dana!” he says.

She shoos Victor back to the kitchen for refreshments. “We’re very informal here, Monsieur Mulder.”

“Just Mulder,” he says.

“Mmm. Where did you say you were staying?”

“I didn’t, but in Florac.”

Dana frowns. “Monsieur, you traveled all the way from Massachusetts to stay in…Florac? And pray, sit.” She gestures at a sofa, sits in the chair opposite.

Mulder, looking grateful, complies.

Marie-Amélie arrives with a tray of cake and wine, curtsies, and scampers back to the kitchen.

Dana scowls after her.

“I’m in Florac only as a base of operations, you could say. I’m here to do some…investigating.” He sips his wine.

She is intrigued despite herself. Bayes can wait a bit longer. “Investigating?”

He tips his chin up a bit, as though preparing for a reaction from her. “The Beast of Gévaudan,” he says.

She stares, then lets out a bark of laughter. “La Bête?” she says. “It’s a wolf!”

“They say it has a breast as wide as a horse, a body as long as a leopard's, and fur that was red with a black stripe. What wolf is that, Mademoiselle?”

She rolls her eyes. “When I was a lass I thought the barn owls were the bean-sídhe keening.”

Mulder delicately pokes at a walnut on his slice of cake. “Wolf or no, people are dying.”

“Aye, now that’s a thing people are good at around here.” She sets her wineglass down. “When you’re finished I’ll have Philippe drive you back to the village.”

“That’s very kind,” he says. He sets his plate down. “I’m ready now.”

“I need to return to my studies,” she tells him, waving over the maid. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

Dana leaves her guest with Marie-Amélie. She hears the door open and close, and soon the strange man from Massachusetts is forgotten amid the doctrine of chance.

[ratsandfashion]

@SHOFARSOGOOD SORRY TUMBLR WOULDN'T LET ME REBLOG???

BUT

OH MY GOD YOU HAVE OPENED THE FLOODGATES HNNNGH

Okay, so you're in France in the 1760s. Specifically, you're a peasant in the Gevaudan province.

AND SOMETHING IS KILLING THE SHIT OUT OF EVERYBODY

It's described as being "like a wolf, yet not a wolf" and these people, they're shepherds, they see wolves ALL THE TIME, so if they say this thing WASN'T a wolf, I trust them. But the problem is, we don't know WHAT it was. Descriptions vary a LOT, probably owing to the people who saw it being terrified and trying to get away, combined with a typical "game of telephone" deal where the thing got changed each time someone told someone else about it, combined with people just lying and SAYING they'd said it, combined with the fact that if it was an exotic animal (more on that later) people just had no idea what they were looking at. But some fairly consistent traits are that it's BIG, it's got a long tail with a tuft, and it's a reddish color with a black-striped back and white underbelly.

Sounds like a tiger, right? That's a common theory. A lot of nobles kept zoos of exotic animals that peasants would never have seen before and have no reference for, so the fact it's a big furry predator on four legs was probably enough to make it "like a wolf but not a wolf" if it wasn't a bear (and we don't think it was a bear because people also knew what bears looked like) Some good candidates are a tiger for the aforementioned reasons, a lion (tufted tail, some drawings have a mane), and a hyena (wolf-like, has the bite force necessary for decapitation, as many of the corpses had the head removed from their bodies, another unusual feature)

So this thing just fucking runs around the countryside savaging peasants. And they can't do much about it because it's illegal for peasants to have guns. If you ever have to make an argument for the right to bear arms, bring up the Beast of Gevaudan, gurantee no one will see that coming!

Some peasants made do with what they had though. A group of boys managed to save their friend with, iirc, sharpened sticks, though they did not escape unscathed. One had his cheek basically TORN OFF, and as a result the king funded his education for the rest of his life, which was a big deal for a peasant boy who wouldn't ordinarily receive it. And a girl, Marie-Jeanne Valet, successfully fended it off with a homemade spear (she described the beast as a large dog) A statue still stands in her honor today.

Speaking of the King, the news about all this was reaching him. So he started sending out hunters and dragoons (a type of cavalry that would dismount to fight) to get the wolf. But, to no avail! They couldn't seem to kill it. And when they DID finally get a great big wolf, as well as a female wolf with unusually large pups that had traits not normally seen in wolves (ex: double dew claws, which some large dog breeds have, indicating wolfdog hybrids) the killings stopped for awhile. . .and then started again.

This became one of the first international news stories; other countries thought it was HILARIOUS that the King of France and all his men couldn't handle one little WOLF!

Eventually, it was brought down for good by a local hunter named Jean Chastel. Legend sprang up that the beast, which was said to be immune to ordinary bullets, had been felled by a bullet which had been made by melting down a medallion of the Virgin Mary. At the time, the fact it was killed by a holy icon was what was significant, as some people thought it was a werewolf and those were seen as creatures of the Devil at that time (rather than innocent people afflicted by a disease/curse as in modern media) but the fact the medallion was silver may be the source of the modern "silver bullet" myth which isn't from any real werewolf folklore and seems to be an invention of Hollywood.

The royal notary examined the animal after death and recorded in what is known as "The Marin Report" that "This animal which seemed to us to be a wolf; But extraordinary and very different by its figure and its proportions from the wolves that one sees in this country." and details a "monstrous head", unusual body proportions, aberrant morphological characteristics, and unusual fur colors. The report also includes the dental formula (number of molars, number of canines, etc) of the animal, which does seem to indicate a canid of some type. The report is preserved in The French National Archives.

So, this wasn't an unsubstantiated cryptid. It was pretty darn meticulously documented.

Unfortunately, photos didn't exist then, and by the time the corpse was taken to Versailles, it was so rotten and badly decayed that no one wanted anything to do with it, and it was in all likelihood dumped somewhere like garbage. I reckon everyone was just happy to be done with it.

While the beast was dead (or at the least, the attacks ceased) the speculation never has. Some people think it was just a big wolf or wolves, but like I said, I think these people knew what a wolf looked like. Other people think it was a wolfdog hybrid or family of such, which would account for the large size, unusual features, and lack of fear of humans. This, I think, is the most likely option. The escaped exotic animal is the next most likely imo; I remember that there's no records of. . .it was either of any such zoos themselves at the time or of no escapees, but like, if I was a noble and my tiger got out and it was eating people, I don't think I'd say anything.

Then there's more fringe theories. The werewolf thing, of course, but also the idea it was a conspiracy against the king, or some big political plot, often involving Chastel (the hunter who shot it) or his son, or that it was a serial killer dressed in animal skins, or a serial killer that had trained a dog to hunt with him as his method of killing. I...kind that pretty unlikely, just because I've never heard of a serial killer doing anything like that, like using an animal is just not 'intimate' in the way serial killers seem to like to be? But I'm no expert.

My PERSONAL favorite Unlikely Fringe Theory is that it was a mesonychid. See, some descriptions of the Beast claimed it had hooves. And while no modern carnivore has hooves, there is a prehistoric class of carnivores called mesonychids who are often described as "wolves with hooves" and whose appearance---monstrous head, longer tail---do match up pretty well with a lot of accounts.

Now, is it likely that a breeding population of huge prehistoric predators just...survived THAT long into the present and just NEVER got noticed by humans except this ONE time, and no other remains to indicate their survival have ever turned up? Yeah, no. But I really like the idea! That and the werewolf are my FAVORITE options, but in all likelihood it was a wolfdog(s) or escaped exotic.

[daughterofholysaintattila]

[meowtalhead]

His name is WOLFwood? And he's a PRIEST??? And he carries a CROSS around?????

Beast of Gevaudan???????

[fierce-little-miana]

I am currently researching the Gévaudan beast for a writing project. Among the books and articles I am reading, one author (who is an historian of rurality in France) uses death records, most notably death records of child victims, to advance his thesis. He routinely quotes them in the text.

I was deeply surprised to notice that in a lot of case when both parents are mentioned in the death certificate, the mother is most often not designated with her married name but with her maiden name (her name). It was so common that I started paying attention to it. I would say that it was the case of 75% of the directly quoted death certificates where both parents are mentioned. It isn’t related to the marital status of said parents, legitimate children have their mother designated with their maiden names nearly as often as other.

Most of the mentioned death certificates are from before the French Revolution (the period in which it became forbidden for a French person to change their family name without a judge allowing them to) and after the Renaissance (so from the mid-1500s - The period it became mandatory to have a family name since they had to be officially registered - to the 1780s).

While French women do not legally change their family name even today when they marry, they can “use” their spouse name, it is often a use that is forced on them by administrations and other service providers without their explicit consent. I find fascinating to find evidence that this name change was actually never really commonplace in France. Turns out misogynistic “traditions” are often not traditional at all.

[jayscryptidhunts]

Top Five Cryptids

Here's my top five favorite cryptids. No I won't elaborate (yet).

Fresno Nightcrawlers

Mothman

La Bête du Gévaudan

Jersey Devil

Nessie

[cryptid-quest]

On This Day in Cryptid History

December 2nd: In 1765, two young boys were attacked near Gevaudan, France, insinuating that the fabled beast who had been terrorizing the region was not killed by Francois Antoine a few months prior, and was still at large.

[beasts-flesh]

HAHAHHA

[sheocheese]

Beast of Gevaudan

Inspired by both the actual legend of some monster eating a bunch of people in france, and the song of the same title by Powerwolf.

This piece was VERY experimental and took like. Several weeks. In hindsight there are a lot if things I could have done better, but I still like it and I learned a lot!

[ironwoodatl01]

The Beast of Gevaudan

Hyaenodon.

The Beast.

[monikokii]

27. Beast

[crispycreambacon]

Fuck it if this doesn't get notes eye dee kay (idk) and eye dee sea (idc) anyways I LOVE PUPPETS!!!

Don't you love puppets? "Well I love humans." Then why not both? Why not mix them up? Puppets!!!

You can read more thoughts of the puppets down below. I think about them a normal amount.

The guy and the puppet on his shoulder in the 2nd drawing are indeed Human!Professor and Puppet!Ryan. I need to draw them at some point.

The Flower Boat (连奕辰 or Lián Yìchén, Yìchén being his name, he/him) seriously has one of the most underrated songs ever. The emotions are off the charts??? THE LYRICS ARE PURE POETRY??? LizLuvsCupcakes on YouTube said, "This boat is the only ex I respect. His whole breakup song is "I miss her so much but I hope she's happy where she is."" and THEY ARE SO RIGHT!!!

He's typically closed off emotionally, trying to maintain a happy but subdued mood, but he will absolutely be starry-eyed when he talks about Ching Shih (fun fact: she's also known as Zheng Yi Sao). He can also help y'all get through a break up or really any romantic troubles if you sit down with him for a drink.

The Beast of Gévaudan (Gevariel, sometimes referred to as Gévau, he/him) and Policarpa's Spool (Poli for short, she/her) are besties!!! They're both trans and despise romance. They'd rather spend Valentine's Day studying a corpse.

Poli is such a cool gal. She rallies against injustices whenever she can, and she hates how the police system has been used to enforce the marginalization of minorities. When she investigates with a given suspect, her priority isn't to find enough evidence to condemn them but rather look for all evidences possible, even ones that may contradict the suspect being the murderer 'cause she firmly believes in "innocent until proven guilty". Basically, ACAB, baby!

The Mummified Goose (Merneith Gomaa, referred to as MG or Mery for short, she/her) is a hell of a hypewoman! If you're trash-talking yourself, she will shut that shtick down QUICK. She's so unapologetically confident and self-assured that it infects the others around her ehe. She also collects antiques as a hobby to the point her house is kind of a mess, but she takes care of them very well!

"Wait if Poli hates romance, then what's up with–" Queerplatonic partners, my friend!!! Poli and Mery share a deep emotional connection together, and Mery, despite knowing her romantic feelings won't be reciprocated, still loves Poli very much. She adores how determined Poli is in getting the truth, and similarly, Poli loves how much Mery brightens up the room :]

Intermission: Sapphics who are into Puppet History, can you show yourselves plsplsplsplspls I just need assurance that I'm not the only sapphic in this fandom 🥹👉🏽👈🏽

I don't think Gévau would pursue any kind of relationship whatsoever (even friendships are rare for him, he's a loveless aro babyyyyy), but he can get behind cannibalism as a metaphor for love 👉🏽👀👉🏽 (and giving heads as gifts. 'cause what better gift can you give really <3)

The Oar still has no shame and shows his erotic manga to anyone who asks. The Professor has had to scrub his brain so many times (to absolute failure </3)

I'm still stuck on Ken (剣) and Oru (オール) being the Sword and Oar's names ngl. If y'all have actual names for them, I'd love to hear them 💃🏽💃🏽💃🏽

[deathianartworks]

CRYPTOBER DAY TWENTY: BEAST OF GÉVAUDAN