#lot of emotions in this one

[demi-shoggoth]

2023 Reading Log, pt 1

It begins again! With a straggler from 2022.

151. All the Living and the Dead by Hayley Campbell. Last year, the book that made me cry was Women and Other Monsters. This was the book this year. This book is about the author’s grappling with death via the act of visiting and interviewing people who work in fields handling the dead. Morticians, grave diggers, autopsy technicians and cremation operators are interviewed, as are people who you might not think of—crime scene cleaners, a company that works in PR and cleanup for disasters, a bereavement midwife. The material about the death of fetuses and infants is especially devastating, both for me and for the author; her sense of detachment is derailed upon seeing infant corpses being cleaned after autopsy, and coming to terms with that is a major theme of the book. The book ends with the COVID pandemic, and how death has become a much bigger part of everyone’s lives, after decades of denial pushing it to the fringes. This was a powerful read, and I have a lot of emotions about it; I’m glad I read this book, but I will likely never want to read it again.

001. Upstate Cauldron: Eccentric Spiritual Movements in Early New York State by Joscelyn Goodwin. This was not the book I thought it was going to be when I picked it up. It covers most of the bases—looking at the “Burnt Over” region of Upstate New York and how it was the site of a lot of religious development throughout the 19th century. It covers the well known ones—the Millerites and their more successful spinoffs, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh Day Adventists, the Mormons, the Spiritualists. It also talks about the interweaving of spiritualist beliefs with leftist politics in the 19th century, and how people like Susan B. Anthony and Fredrick Douglass had connections to séances and channelers. What I did not expect was the strong bias of the author. He is clearly friendly to Helena Blavatsky and Theosophical ideas, much more than an impartial historian would have been of that notorious fraud. The final chapter, where the author lays out his Neoplatonic philosophy and his belief that New York State is the site of ley lines, reads like the reveal in a horror movie. There is useful information to be had here, but it should be taken with more than a grain of salt.

002. Dinosaurs: Profiles from a Lost World by Riley Black, illustrations by Riccardo Frapiccini. The author of this book is on tumblr! Go follow her @rileycatrocks​ , she’s awesome. This book is an overview of what we know about notable dinosaur genera, as well as other Mesozoic reptiles like pterosaurs and crocodiles. The writing is good at summarizing modern research in a readable style; this is a good book for interested laypeople. The art is done using photomanipulation to create the textures on the animals, all of which are featured in a profile head shot. I think it works mostly, but there are some issues. I really like the animals’ eyes, which feel authentic (I especially like the horizontal pupils on many of the ornithiscians). The textures are more hit-and-miss, though. The same sample of monitor lizard skin is used on multiple pieces, and there’s a Brachiosaurus covered in Galapagos tortoise hide that looks really awkward and misshapen. This book was published first in Italy, so I’m a little surprised European dinosaurs don’t get more featured. Although the somewhat obscure and very strange Italian pterosaur Caviramus shows up, which I appreciated.

003. The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu by Dan Jurafsky. This book is part food history and part computational linguistics. The book discusses both how foods travel around the world and change when they meet new cultures (like how ketchup was first made with fish, and how much of English and American foodways come from the Middle East). It also covers the linguistic tricks used on menus and food packaging to sell to specific markets, and the similarities in language used on Yelp reviews. These two halves don’t quite gel together the way the author may have hoped. I liked the book, but maybe it could have used a little more scaffolding.

004. what if? 2 by Randall Munroe. This was the hardest I’ve laughed at a book in some time. Highly recommended for the joy factor alone. This is the third of Munroe’s pop-science Q&A books, and like what if? and how to?, it answers questions, some simple, some absurd, with the science of how they would actually work. A lot of planets are destroyed, black holes created, and other chaos ensues. Most of the questions involve physics or chemistry, but there are a few biology questions included (like how many people would a T. rex have to eat in a day, which becomes how many T. rexes can be supported by a single McDonalds).

005. Parasites: The Inside Story by Scott L. Gardner, Judy Diamond and Gabor Racz, illustrated by Brenda Lee. This book is another “recommended for interested laypeople” text, this one about the evolution and ecology of parasites. The book is divided into thirds; the first third covers parasites of humans, the second the life histories and evolution of major clades of parasites, the third individual case studies, most of them involving the first author. The illustrations are a high point—the life cycles of featured parasites are illustrated, and the back of the book has a spotter’s guide to the individual species discussed in the text. I wish it were longer, though—this book is 190 pages, which includes a 10 page glossary and 40 pages of bibliography.

[hinamie]

I don't want to regret the way I lived

[menelaiad]

the infamous 'last sighting of a barbary lion in the wild' photo taken by marcelin flandrin (1925) haunts me to my core. there's something so achingly poetic about it.

[chloesimaginationthings]

The death of Vanessa and the birth of Vanny in FNAF

(Inspired by this art by Yuto Sano)

[hg-aneh]

peruvian croli brainrot 🇵🇪🦙💥

[stuckinapril]

friend wanted to see my tumblr, and when i told him i can’t show it to him bc it’s basically my personal diary he went “oh so I can’t see it but a bunch of strangers on tumblr can??” he literally does not get me. no one will get me like the people in my phone get me

[girlboyburger]

had an identity crisis, prime time for a slight sona redesign!

it's cow! (again!)

+ a closeup because i'm really proud of the eyes

[ravenpureforever]

On one hand, Young Justice is kind of neglected by the actual superheroes that should be looking out for them in a lot of crucial ways and very much failed by the adults around them

But on the other hand Red Tornado straight up hosts a parent-teacher conference where their respective legal guardians all show up, barring Batman who’s in traffic so Nightwing fills in instead because Robin’s dad does not know he’s a vigilante which is objectively hilarious

[anniebass]

high spice tolerance, my ass

(old man smut)

[remxedmoon]

i hit 1k followers recently!!!! yipee!!!!!!! thank you all!!! so in celebration here’s all of my completed isat doodle pages, from oldest to newest. go nuts with them!! and maybe don’t look at the first doodle page too closely. it’s Old.

(no greyscale version below for once! just some mushy ramblings. you don’t have to read them don’t worry)

hhhhhha?? so many people. where did you come from. how did you all find me.

ok but seriously, thank you all so much for all the support. i never really. expected to make it this far? like, ever?? i’ve mentioned it a few times on here, but i’ve been a lurker for the past… 2 years, i think? and even before that, i never gained much traction outside of a couple posts. so this has been. very new to me!! in a nice way!! it’s weird to feel like an actual member of a community!! that people know about!

the idea of finally coming back to social media was Daunting (i literally got stress hives writing my first post lol) and the warm reception really. meant a lot?? i don’t think i would’ve ever gotten the courage to come back if i hadn’t been encouraged to by the people over at the isat discord!!

the fact that people actually care about my art still doesn’t feel real?? seeing people take inspiration from my art is just. surreal. just. auagssh. thank you all so so much for everything, i really do appreciate it!!! i’m really glad to be in this community. sorry if this all sounds sappy and long winded i’ve just got a lot of emotions about this whole thing!!

(also as a bonus for reading all this or whatever. here’s a concept page for isatscryption! it felt a little out of place next to my normal canvases so i’m putting it down here! yipee! sorry my notes here are so disjointed auauau…)

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Oh I realized a thing about the Paul/Feyd-Rautha fight. So usually if you have a big fight scene, but especially if you do something like have a character get injured in a way that would definitely be fatal if they weren't cursed with inescapable Main Character Energy, you follow up the fight scene with some moment of comfort or relief or something, which serves to release the tension for the audience and let them know whew, that was scary, but it's okay now. Your character is hurt but they're gonna survive. (Or alternately, if they're dying heroically, it was worth it and what the narrative demanded.)

But here there's nothing. Paul is surrounded by devoted followers; his mother; his lover; one of his oldest teachers and a loyal servant of House Atreides. No one steps forward to offer a shoulder to lean on or help him to his feet. He's left them all behind. He's not a person who got hurt in a fight anymore; he's a myth that people shrink back from. So he pulls the knife out by himself. He stands up by himself. Other than the emperor very begrudgingly touching his hand to kiss the ring, I don't think anyone touches him at all for the rest of the movie. He's completely alone. They never release that tension, because Paul's alive but it is very much not going to be okay.

[lucabyte]

i feel like people are sleeping on the occam's razor situation of how buckwild it is to outright accuse a guy of being a clone of your friend even if you DO have a lot of circumstantial evidence. there's other options is what im saying. they could just be like. a guy. that's a sensible deduction. you should explore that deduction. ignore my shirt that reads I <3 RED HERRINGS.

i still think odile has the correct theory on lock but she's smart enough to know it needs like... a real smoking gun to be able to bring it up without sounding insane.

anyway. (mirabelle voice) i know its rude to speculate but has anyone else noticed the grieving? they seem to be grieving. does anyone have any thoughts on the grieving? i have some thoughts on the grieving.

[hinamie]

close again and closer still

[xandrikart]

[infinite-beginnings]

The line when Charles said, "Edwin's told me loads of stories about Hell," and him seeming to know he'd find a map in Edwin's book always hits me hard.

Now I acknowledge Charles might’ve been posturing to reassure the Night Nurse he could navigate Hell, but let's assume this fact was real.

Because that means that Edwin felt comfortable enough to talk about all of his trauma to Charles. He mentions Hell a lot in passing in front of the girls, but he never goes into specifics. However, it seems as if he actively told Charles quite a few details about Hell. I also noticed that Charles is very calm when he's going to find Edwin. Yes, he's studying the book a lot, but he is also navigating the space with a certain amount of confidence. I'm sure it's partially due to Charles' tendency to do things without thinking and project confidence. But also, it seems as if he might have at least a very basic level of knowledge or familiarity with the levels of Hell based on the stories Edwin told.

I think this is probably another reason why Edwin struggled to believe the fact that Charles had faced abuse in his past and never shared it with Edwin. Because Edwin was always up front and honest with Charles. He told him the very first time they'd met that he had just escaped Hell. I'm sure Edwin did not want to relive his memories of Hell, and maybe it took him decades to feel like he could share. But I bet when he started talking about it with Charles, he felt relief. Because sharing your trauma with someone who accepts you and loves you no matter what is always a relief after holding it in and pushing it down.

So I just imagine Edwin feeling that relief after sharing his stories from Hell and feeling closer and more bonded with Charles because of it...and then he finds out that Charles has this huge amount of trauma from his past that he has been keeping inside. It probably breaks Edwin's heart that he hadn't been able to offer Charles the same relief he'd felt.

And yes, Crystal mentioned that Charles was probably denying the trauma even to himself. We all know that Edwin knew something was off with Charles and that he was probably frustrated in himself because he hadn't been able to figure it out, but Crystal apparently had.

But I also think there might be another level to it. The boys have been solving cases for 30 years. I find it hard to believe that they never had another case involving abuse or at least someone with a controlling personality that would've reminded Charles of his father. Maybe Edwin thinks back to a couple of those cases and how Charles was acting strange and withdrawn during them and realized he'd missed a huge clue about how his friend was feeling.

All those years of sharing his stories from Hell and being comforted by Charles and Edwin hadn't been able to do the same. Edwin is definitely hurt that Charles didn't feel like he could confide in him and heartbroken to think about how much pain his friend was going through alone.

[canadiangold]