#cephalopodia

[wittymumbledon]

two more art attacks! I am never drawing cats again! 😀 /j

also gave my gal Cleo (on the right of the second one) a new outfit cause uh...booba. (i have no shame)

(her og design below for reference cause i dont remember if i've shared her on here before lol:)

[redacted-metallum]

I love squid. They're adorable, biologically weird, really fuckin stupid, and tasty.

[mrsremi]

New OC, Cephalopodia! <3

Saw blushstroke's Lucy who is also an octo mermaid and had to make one for myself ;w;

Cephy has multiple forms as seen on the side + her other colour pallette, she can just transform her legs into various shapes but she still needs a lot of practice with her magic, so she is learning from Lucy! Her symbol will be apparent in all her forms though, so it is still visible that it's her ^^

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

I kept thinking of a Greek word I knew at some point – Cephalopodia – and how strange it must be to be a monster, rather than just a powerful monster

[mahlie]

A long time ago, 700 million years ago, more or less, the great Tree of Life made a primary division between the vertebrates, the creatures with backbones, and the invertebrates. Evolving along the invertebrate line and reaching the greatest brain size and complexity of nervous system on the invertebrate side of things, were the cephalopods. These are the squids, and the benthic octopi, the eight-armed ones and the ten-armed ones. You may not realize that they were actually mollusks, related to escargot. So, they are an extremely primitive creature from the point of view of those of us with backbones and binocular vision and frontal lobes. Nevertheless, the interesting thing about benthic octopi is that they can change their color over a wide range. Now, you may have heard this fact and assumed that it had to do with camouflage against their surroundings so that they can avoid predators. This is not what it’s about at all. Octopi change color, and they can also change the shape of their skin from smooth to rugose and wrinkled, and then what’s called pileate, little points all over it. They can go through all of these color changes and texture changes. And, octopi have extremely well-evolved eyes. In fact, evolutionary biologists always compare the eyes of octopi to human eyes, as an example of what is called ‘parallel non-convergent evolution' because clearly the two are not related. But, the argument is made. You see, they solved the problem the same way in two different places, so it’s a very neat example of convergent -- non-convergent evolution. But what’s interesting for our discussion is the mode of communication of these things. They become their linguistic intent. This repertoire of blushes, dots, stripes, traveling fields, color changes, and then, because they are soft bodied, they can quickly reveal and conceal all parts of their body very quickly. So, if you watch an octopus in communication, its surface texture is changing, its color is changing, and it is hiding and revealing, it’s dancing. And it’s a dance of pure meaning perceived visually by the object of its intention which is other octopi. So, compare this for a moment to our method of communication. We use rapidly modulated small mouth noises. As primates, we have an incredible ability to make small mouth noises. We can do this for up to six hours at a stretch without tiring. No other thing that we can do approaches the level of variation with low energy investment that the small mouth noises do. A person using a deaf and dumb language is exhausted after 45 minutes. But, the problem with the small mouth noises form of communication is: I have a thought. I look in a dictionary that I have created out of my life experience, I map the thought onto the dictionary, I make the requisite small mouth noises, they cross physical space, they enter your ear, you look in your dictionary which is different from my dictionary, but, if we speak what we call ‘the same language’, it will be close enough, that you will, sort of, understand what I mean. Now, if I don’t say to you, "What do I mean?," you and I will go gaily off in the assumption that we understand each other. But, if I say to you, "Did you understand what I said then?" You say: ‘Yes. You meant that you don’t want to sit with Harry and Sally because their pending divorce makes you uncomfortable." So, "No, that’s not what I meant ." So there’s a misunderstanding because the dictionaries are not matched. Now, notice what’s happening with the octopi – there is no dictionary. Both parties are seeing the same thing because my body is my meaning. I become my meaning, and you behold the meaning I have become. I am like a naked thought. Not even a naked nervous system. More naked than that! I am like a naked thought, in aqueous space, unfolding in time. I maintain, this is why octopi eject clouds of ink, it’s so they can have private thoughts! Because, if you can be seen, you can be understood! Well, this is a perfect model condoned by nature for the kind of transformation that we want to lead our culture toward. And I don’t think it’s that outlandish. Our previous animal totems were chosen unconsciously, and were rather unfortunate, I think. I take the totem of the 19th century to be the horse, expressed as the steam engine. And the totemic animal of the 20th century is the raptor, the bird of prey, expressed as supersonic high performance fighter aircraft, which is just, you know, the leanest, meanest machine you can get together these days. But these mammalian and avian images are too close to the rapacious heart of the primate inside us. Embracing an image of the soul, like that of the octopi, is a permission for a strange and alien kind of beauty to be led into our lives, and these things are strange and alien, let me tell you. The situation I describe with these octopi was coastal, shallow water octopi. So called circolittoral octopi. But, they have also evolved into the depths. The so-called abyssal octopi that exist below 1500 meters in the sea where there is absolute darkness. And to carry their intention to communicate into that darkness over the past 700 million years, they have evolved phosphorescent organs, and have covered themselves with lights, with eyelid-like membranes that can be rapidly blinked and flickered, so that when you descend into the abyss, you then see pure linguistic intentionality among the cephalopodia because they have become what we aim to become under the wise leadership and stewardship of George Bush; namely, a thousand points of light!

- Terence Mckenna: The World Could be Anything, July 1990.

[wittymumbledon]

this didn't get much love on DA when I first posted it there early Sep '23 but I feel like y'all would like it. so that octo-person and squid-person world i mentioned once or twice, right? one of the things that me and a few friends did was...get WAY too into fleshing out the lives and drama of one specific boyband (to the point where we have more written about them than we have about literally everything else to do with this world lol) anyway, here's Mocha and SP (short for SugarPop) on a magazine cover i spent way too long arranging

(you might even recognize a callback to another character I've shared on here before in one of the titles ;3)

[wittymumbledon]

I suppose it's about time I make a more official pinned info message thingy so here goes Salutations, the name's WittyMumble. Feel free to call me Witty for short. English/Russian, though I don't post in the latter much aside from on ao3

I post art, both personal and fandom-related, but it might be a lil hard to find through the reblog spam without some tags.

Multifandom. (frequent features are TF2, Minecraft and Good Omens. Gravity Falls has been pretty frequent as well lol. but rest assured - there are WAY more. Like the occasional Homestuck)

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Notable Tags

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#eclipse inc - the tag I have been posting the most for lately. scifi robot company thing I started years ago and am finally making stuff for. bit of a multimedia exploration.

#cephalopodia - a world me and a few friends created over quarantine. yknow catgirls? well these are octopus people and squid people (takos and ikas respectively). presently a little barren despite how much ive drawn of it over the years but I might start using this one more again, who knows

#concept design and #uni project - self-explanatory: me sharing the joys and woes of university. prepare for periods of practically nothing but that TuT

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.°˖✧Links ✧˖°.

Eclipse Inc Crosslink - because I realise its a bit hard to find as of rn

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I've seen a few people reblog my art and I feel honoured to receive that attention! Thank you so much! While that is completely fine (and encouraged!), however, please do not repost my art :3

I hope you enjoy your stay :3 :3 :3

[wittymumbledon]

help he got sexier

[wittymumbledon]

well this was meant to be a sort of warmup/tester for a version of this character I was *actually* planning to draw digitally but I kinda went into a trance for the while afternoon and emerged on the other side with...this beauty??? anyway in case you havent met him before, before you is Gem Latrell, owner of the renowned casino "The Oyster"

...I fucking love him even if he wouldnt love me JHDFHJDFHJ

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

@shinnegamitensei replied to your post “I kept thinking of a Greek word I knew at some point – Cephalopodia – and how strange it must be to be a monster, rather than...”

bears are weaker monsters, and I'm sure they live full lives even now

But then – how do you compensate for the loss of freedom time in this world?

Imagine someone who can now spend one second infinitely much of whatever, and so will never come close to spending the rest of their life wasting it as some Homeric monster would.

Now consider how you feel. For most of your life, surely, you have felt like you were one moment so powerful that your every thought could destroy the world. Now the world has changed so that you're not so omnipotent. But the idea of having your power reduced to a point where the world does not even want you any more, but you are not some weak powerless thing but a force – that just feels like a betrayal.