#vulture friends

[asherelbein]

Earlier this summer, I met a very curious pair of Black vultures in a Central Texas state park These carrion eating birds are peaceable creatures with excellent eyesight and a sociable disposition. (A friend of mine who runs a bird sanctuary with several rescue vultures told me that wild birds occasionally turn up to hang out on the roof of their aviary.) Usually, Black vultures are wary of people. These two...were not.

Eventually they decided I wasn't that interesting--I was annoyingly alive, for one thing -- and went on to do a bit of sun-worshipping instead.

Delightful creatures, vultures. They get a bad rap.

[artofmaquenda]

Happy Summer Solstice Again haven’t had the chance to draw something new for the Summer Solstice :(

[wretchedprophecy]

[charcarts]

babifies your bacon feathers

[blackbackedjackal]

African Wild Dog Skulls - both were natural death and sourced from zoos.

[clovencraft]

What if we kissed over the remains of our slain enemies? 😳

[maxwell-grant]

(SPIDERVERSE SPOILERS)

Something I always really liked about the first movie was the way Kingpin’s design, besides being a Sienkewicz homage and all, complimented the handling of Fisk as a character and the threat he poses, and it’s more than just him being big and terrifying especially by contrast with Miles. Spiderverse Kingpin is a hate volcano tearing open the city and universe in the hopes that doing so is gonna get him his family back, get the only thing that can fill the void inside him that they left when they died, and nothing else matters. Kingpin takes up so much space everytime he’s on screen that every second of screentime he shares with another character is overpowering by default, and the wholly black suit makes it so that everytime Fisk shows up, the movie’s colors and style and everything it has, it all gets punctured to leave room only for him, to the point that in the final battle with Miles, Fisk might as well be part of the background multiverse debris overtaking and suffocating everything.

Doc Ock and Prowler get to have the fun, of sorts, they get to have colors and styles and cool fights, the movie has no shortage of vibrant and lively and colorful characters, but Fisk himself is a walking casket and little else, basic and banal even compared to other versions of the character. He is the Sydney Greenstreet gangster of old blown up to astronomical proportions befitting a danger to the entire entire multiverse, not so much an enemy for Miles specifically as he is one to Spider-Man the concept, The Ultimate Gangster as someone who couldn’t deal with grief responsibly and has to make it everyone else’s problem (that also being kind of an apt description for Miguel O’Hara, who both triples down on the “all-encompassing grief as poison that harms not just you but those around you” part and is also a much more sympathetic character trying his damndest to do the right thing).

It’s only for a few seconds in his flashback that we see what he looks like with colors, and textures, and a little bit of warmth on his face in the life he had, before his family died running away from him, trying to escape The Black Hole Monster that he is. Figuratively, Fisk is not so much a person, as he is a a person-shaped hole in things, losing what little claim he has to personhood right when his family, and all the families he could ever have, leave him again and so he has nothing left but to take away other people’s families.

And I emphasize that figuratively, because it turns out they decided to turn that into a literally, for the villain in the sequel.

The first movie’s villain was a lifeless thug threatening to undo everything and everyone as collateral damage to try and fill the all-consuming void in his soul. The sequel had exactly that, except we got to see The Spot work to get there in real time and on purpose. And so instead of a generalized enemy to Spider-Man, the hero Miles is trying to be, we get the enemy to Miles Morales, the person he is.

The Spot, funnyman nerd sidekick to the previous villain’s number two, just a gag character without even a name to him that we didn’t even know was there, was pushed every step of the way by the frustration of being perceived and put down as a wannabe never-will-be, driven to uncover the multiverse and make himself noticed and respected by his peers, (like a certain someone who was going to define his entire career prospects around the possibility of getting to meet his spidery friends again, and then they did that to him)

turning out to be a anomaly that was never supposed to be and is hunted as such, their spite nipping at their heels to push them forward, twisting themselves to be free from the expectations and scorn of potential-peers-turned-enemies.

And so at the end, obviously Miles must face the worst version of himself, before he can face the worst version of himself, and it has to be right after he finally understands what he’s up against, his own nemesis, and it has to be right after he declares, after embracing himself as a fugitive and someone-that-shouldnt-be-but-will-anyway,

“I beat them all“

[darknymfa]

I have acquired some delicious @barksbog meat. Delightfully huge monster. Everyone in the family has enjoyed giving him a pet, many compliments on how soft he is. I knew how big he was gonna be and yet I'm surprised every time I see him, big ol chonker.

[mishapen-dear]

something about qbad mentioning how much horror he put red team thru every time purgatory gets brought up... something about how proud dapper was of him.

like this is just my late-night read but- it feels like guilt qbad is trying to twist into pride. he keeps needling away at it. “i killed them all, over and over and over again.” “they were hunted by a monster.”

it’s like- reassurance. like a nail he’s trying o beat into his head. he’s had SO much trouble with legitimately hurting his friends, despite making that vow all the way back when the eggs first went missing, despite all the tree talk and the promises to save the kids no matter what. He never faltered with elq, and that protected them. He keeps faltering now. Sometimes he doesnt remember the code, or cucurucho, or skeppy. But that doesnt matter, right? Because he’ll protect the eggs. He’ll be the monster. he is the monster. he can and he will protect them even as his seams start ripping and he keeps breaking further and further apart. even at his worst, he’ll do whatever he needs to protect the eggs.

he’ll be the monster. wont he?

[sillycathorrors]

WILL WOOD WILL WOOD WILL WOOD WILL WOOD WILL WOOD WILL WOOD WILL WOOD WILL WOOD WILL WOOD WILL WOOD WILL WOOD WILL WOOD WILL WOOD WILL WO

[personostient]

Seeing Vulture made me wonder how MEGA FAUNA relationships work. Can they be friends, enemies, rivals? Maybe even something more.... romantic?

『 Comrades maybe, Coworkers mostly… 』

[gideonisms]

GUYS I just saw a rattlesnake. I love all the creatures in this world

[ronanlynchbf]

this is MY epilogue.

[lexezombie]

Spidersona? no lol I FORCED ALL MY FRIENDS TO BE SPIDERMAN VILLAINS WITH ME!!1

Scorpion: @ibbywondrous Spot: @spacey-jazz Shocker: @tired-o-fighter Doc Ock: @amevello-blue Lizard: @super-weed-ninja Vulture: @crownedcrowrow Electro: @ninjastar-ace Rhino: @kef-meister

and me, green gob (which was my halloween costume funfact, heres a pic)

my homie went as spiderpunk but I cut them out the pic cus they aint got tumblr

[seabeck]

Mummy coyote was a big dude!

[heedra]

not going to use the tag going round bc it feels gauche to post a real dead animal in there but LOOK at this field find.