Not By Her Beauty But The Loneliness In Her Eyes

I got attacked by intensive impostor syndrome today. So I made few studies, I think this one is the best 🥹Yes, that's their hands. Drawing hands is slowly getting my comfort zone...

curious how the breakdown is considering its something ive always been open to but i know some people would never do ever

I hope they have a “call-before-you-dig” hotline in Baldur’s Gate because if you even think about getting a basement your whole house just plummets straight down into whatever ancient crypt or murder cult headquarters or demonic ritual enclave happens to be in your zip code

Actually reblogging again because some of the tags deserve to get peer reviewed bc y'all are cracking me up. XD

@checkadii

@maliciouscrow

@yoshiintheweb

@krahka

@invinciblerodent

@moosebeans

@fireballandfailure

@corgiteatime

@lelianaslefthand

@theladygrim

@wetcatspellcaster

@rodatirhaalo

@leyside

BG3. Raphael/Haarlep. Relatable.

Warding spells are real, if you want me to stay far away from you forever tell me that you practice reiki.

The nice thing is that I will probably never bring this kind of thing up. I'm never going to go out of my way to figure out if the people around me are, like, really into homeopathy. The less nice thing is that if you bring it up with me I am never, ever, ever going to shut up about it and if you attempt to show me a *study* on the healing power of prayer or the use of chiropractic to treat asthma we are forever enemies and I probably won't talk to you again but I will use the several hours of furious debunking that I did after our conversation to make arguments against your beliefs in the future. You are already a lost cause to me but other people are less stupid about the way that ice crystals form and I can work with them.

I *loathe* medical woo, it kills people and the people who engage in it are shitty human beings who are hurting other human beings.

RE: Herbalism

I don't think that there's a proponent of science-based medicine alive who doesn't understand that plant compounds are important in medicine and it is important to research them. We *DO* get a lot of medicine from plants.

But "medicine from plants" and "herbalism" are not the same.

The example that most people like to bring up is aspirin and willow bark tea. You can use willow bark as a painkiller, you can collect your own and brew it up when you've got a headache.

What you can't do is control the dose. You can't do this for a number of reasons, including having little control over the conditions the tree grew in and variations in preparation technique. If you're measuring very exactly you can control for some of these things, but even if you were in charge of the willow tree you collected the bark from it's not going to be the same at different places on the trunk or in different seasons.

That's not a huge deal if you're using aspirin for a headache, it can be a much bigger deal if you're using aspirin as a bloodthinner.

And the example that people LIKE to use is aspirin because it *isn't* a big deal. The example they *don't* like to use is foxglove (digitalis, which produced digitoxin, which can be used to treat heart failure) because that's a medicine from a plant that you can't fuck around with using herbalism, it needs extremely careful extraction and preparation because if it's done wrong it'll just straight kill you.

And then you get into herbal treatments that are generally safe and largely not harmful even if they may not do anything, and it can feel totally reasonable to recommend red raspberry leaf tea to a friend who is having cramps. As long as that friend isn't diabetic because red raspberry leaf interacts with insulin. And as long as your friend isn't on an anticoagulant because red raspberry leaf can ALSO act as an anticoagulant.

And those are just examples of what can happen if you know you are actually getting the plant that you think that you are getting and that it is unadulterated with fillers and uncontaminated with anything else and is properly prepared (or is prepared the same way as the last batch you bought and so it can be dosed the same way).

There are two ways that Kava Kava can be prepared; do you know which of those two ways is associated with more deaths and liver transplants? Do you know not to take Kava if you have a history of liver issues or if you are on antidepressants? (ctrl+f for "Hema Ketha" for the study from that overview that goes in depth on that; for whatever reason you can read the whole article in the overview but if you click on the link you only get the abstract)

Are you attempting to take therapeutic doses of turmeric? There's some evidence that it can help relieve joint pain. However you need to take really, really high doses because the medicinal compound in turmeric has low bioavailability. And because you're taking high doses you may be swapping out the risks of NSAIDs for the risk of lead poisoning, because it is unfortunately very common for turmeric to be contaminated with lead.

One of my big, big problems with CAM - including herbalism - is that people turn to it because they think it is safer than "allopathic" medicine. They think "it's better to drink raspberry leaf tea than it is to take midol because midol is full of chemicals and raspberry leaf tea is just tea." But midol doesn't interact with insulin, and most people are *aware* they're taking a blood thinner when they take NSAIDs.

There's this tea shop I go to that has maybe a hundred different kinds of herbal teas, some of which are clearly supposed to be medicinal, but the one that always stands out to me is the St. John's Wort tea that has "NOT FOR PREGNANT" on the label. It's good that they're recommending that pregnant people don't select that tea, but that tea is also not for people on antidepressants, triptans, birth control, warfarin, stantins, protease inhibitors, or people who have had solid organ transplants.

But it's just tea. And what could just tea do, right?

(It could make your anti-rejection meds so weak that it kills you. That's what just tea can do. But maybe one cup of older tea, or one cup that is more leaf than flower, or one cup that wasn't steeped as long doesn't hurt, so you drink it and you think it's fine, it's not a problem, and it isn't a problem until it is but you don't know the difference between one cup of tea and the next because this shit is impossible to dose)

This is also why I'm extremely leery of the "you can try CAM as long as you are using it alongside your doctor's care and you do what the doctors say" thing because that is relying on:

So long story short I'm not particularly bothered if you try herbalism on yourself after looking into things that you think will help you. I do have a problem with people who *recommend* herbal treatments without A) a full medical background understanding of the person they recommend the treatment to and B) comprehensive knowledge of whether the thing that you're recommending will interact with any medications they might be taking or exacerbate any conditions that they might have and C) some kind of accountability mechanism in place - like a malpractice suit or the loss of license - like a doctor might if they prescribed a medication that was dangerous to their patient.

Because that's the other infuriating thing - CAM practitioners often aren't held to the same standards as medical professionals. Patients who trust CAM practitioners often think of them like doctors, but they don't have the same protection from CAM practitioners like they would from doctors. If your herbalist tells you to treat your cancer with apricot pits or black salve - even if that's in addition to chemotherapy - it could end up seriously injuring you and they're not committing malpractice because there's no legal standard for their practice. Nobody can remove their license because there's no such thing as an herbalist license, so whatever harm they did to you can be done to other people after you with no professional consequences.

I have pretty much limitless tolerance for things that people want to do to themselves. If you want to take valerian because you think it helps you sleep (in spite of essentially no evidence that it does so and more adverse reactions among natural sleep aids than things like camomile - which also has no evidence that it's an effective sleep aid) I don't care, just make sure to check for drug interactions first.

If you want to replace your elderly parent's NSAID painkillers with clove oil, fuck you.

If you want to replace your elderly parent's NSAID painkillers with clove oil, fuck you.

As someone who ended up with multiple dead teeth and an abundance of scar tissue inside my mouth in my teens because I was only allowed to medicate my sore teeth with clove oil because it was "natural" (yes, it's an analgesic, but it also burns soft tissue and can damage the dental pulp if used too frequently or at too high a dosage. It should also never ever be used on children or infants), I second the fuck you.

they call me the vampire talker cuz well i love to talk about vampires

am i good at talking about them? well. that doesnt matter. i love to talk about them. and i will continue to do so.

did u know.. they suck ur blood,,,,,

If you like the word “queer” reblog.

#fun umbrella. we r all sitting under it like the big rainbow thing in elementary school gym class

actually kind of ticks me off a little because this is an excellent example of what is probably my favorite editing technique, Match Cutting

Note how the Tom and Jerry footage cuts right on the impact frame, going strait to the impact in the anime footage, and how care is taken to maintain the same direction of the momentum in both, creating a feeling of connection between the sources, even when the quality of video and styles of animation couldn't be more different.

This is a technique that happens all the time in filmmaking, one of my favorite examples is this scene from the Kingdom Hearts 2 opening, which is recapping events from Chain of Memories, cleverly using match cutting to show two important fights that happened at about the same time as each other.

And going back to the original video, not only is it satisfying to look at, but it also (albeit probably unintentionally) illustrates the ways in which western and eastern animation have basically always been in conversation with each other. Classic Tom and Jerry is (at least in my opinion) the pinnacle of slapstick comedy, with it's excellent animation capable of selling punchy and hilarious impacts. Take this shot for example:

A slow build up, as Tom shaves the log down into a bat, followed by a sudden impact on the dog. It works because it starts slow, and hits fast, and that is the basis of all slapstick comedy. And the wonderful thing about slapstick is that unlike other forms of comedy, like puns or observational humor, it requires no translation. Tom and Jerry in particular almost always depicts a David and Goliath struggle, a clever underdog against a large and powerful opponent, which is relatable and understandable to all audiences, and easily localized due to the shorts having little to no dialogue, thus explaining why the series is beloved throughout the world. It's been referenced in manga and anime from Stardust Crusaders to Fruits Basket!

And that brings us back to Anime. Slapstick is a huge part of the humor in tons of series, to the point where it even bleeds into some of it's tropes. Just think of one of the classics, a character finds himself in a compromising situation with one of the girls, and what happens as a result? (for some reason this outdated meme was the best example I could find as an isolated clip im so sorry)

This scene from the same series is practically a slapstick sketch in and of itself:

And of course, that same level of power initially developed for comedy proved itself highly effective for action, and nowadays anime action scenes are well known for their moments of high impact, utilizing the same animation techniques

tl;dr: Without even meaning to, by tying together the western slapstick comedy of the past and the eastern action sequences of the present, this meme edit is a celebration of how far we've come. And that's pretty cool.

Had a dream that there was a new Pokemon that was ghost type and it was like. Half a greyhound. It was a spectral dog that was known as one of the fastest Pokemon. And yet it only had it front legs. There were wispy floating stubs on its back half which sort of implied there COULD be legs, but they never reached even close to the ground. It stood on its front legs as if the back legs were still there.

I don’t know what this Pokemon’s name was but its appeared in many of my dreams so either they made it real and I forgot or I’m being haunted by a Fakemon.

I have been informed it is not a real Pokemon so I’ll share another detail I recall seeing about it more than once.

One of its main features about it is that it could run stupidly fast, like, a solid 100 MPH (at least thats my best guess from a dream) but more impressively or eerily is that it could go from 100 to 0 almost immediately, stopping in a stance where it stood up straight and at attention

I think I love this weird dream dog

I assume this is for artists so sure thing

I imagine that this dog is very tall and sleek (like a good five feet tall), with a sickly pale (with just a hint of light blue hue). Its eyes are a pure empty (yet still piercing somehow) white. Along its front half across the back and its legs are pale green sets of stripes, almost like racing stripes.

As for how the ghostly “back legs” worked, they looked sort of like this

with his physical form slowly transitioning into an pale blue ectoplasm, and there were amorphous hints of what could have possibly once been legs. Despite completely missing his back half, the posture seen here is still its regular posture, standing straight up, as if a soldier at attention.

Hope this helps!

Hehe i really like this concept

@legalarson

SO TRUE BOOZOI

One of the best shot of Total Solar Eclipse from 08-04-2024.

Via @nasa-official

Susanna and the Elders, Restored (Left)

Susanna and the Elders, Restored with X-ray (Right)

Kathleen Gilje, 1998

Oooh my gosh this is rad. This is so rad.

For those who don’t know about this painting, the artist was the Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi.

Gentileschi was a female painter in a time when it was very largely unheard of for a woman to be an artist. She managed to get the opportunity for training and eventual employment because her father, Orazio, was already a well established master painter who was very adamant that she get artistic training. He apparently saw a high degree of skill in some artwork she did as a hobby in childhood. He was very supportive of her and encouraged her to resist the “traditional attitude and psychological submission to brainwashing and the jealousy of her obvious talents.”  

Gentileschi became extremely well known in her time for painting female figures from the Bible and their suffering. For example, the one seen above depicts the story from the Book of Daniel. Susanna is bathing in her garden when two elders began to spy on her in the nude. As she finishes they stop her and tell her that they will tell everyone that they saw her have an affair with a young man (she’s married so this is an offense punishable by death) unless she has sex with them. She refuses, they tell their tale, and she is going to be put to death when the protagonist of the book (Daniel) stops them.

So that painting above? That was her first major painting. She was SEVENTEEN-YEARS-OLD. For context, here is a painting of the same story by Alessandro Allori made just four years earlier in 1606: 

Wowwwww. That does not look like a woman being threatened with a choice between death or rape. So imagine 17 year old Artemisia trying to approach painting the scene of a woman being assaulted. And she paints what is seen in the x-ray above. A woman in horrifying, grotesque anguish with what appears to be a knife poised in her clenched hand. Damn that shit is real. Who wants to guess that she was advised by, perhaps her father or others, to tone it down. Women can’t look that grotesque. Sexual assault can’t be depicted as that horrifying. And women definitely can’t be seen as having the potential to fight back. Certainly not in artwork. Women need to be soft. They need to wilt from their captors but still look pretty and be a damsel in distress. So she changed it. 

What’s interesting to note is that she eventually painted and stuck with some of her own, less traditional depictions of women. However, that is more interesting with some context.  

(Warning for reference to rape, torture, and images of paintings which show violence and blood.)

So, Gentileschi’s story continues in the very next year, 1611, when her father hires Agostino Tassi, an artist, to privately tutor her. It was in this time when Tassi raped her. He then proceeded to promise that he would marry her. He pointed out that if it got out that she had lost her virginity to a man she wasn’t going to marry then it would ruin her. Using this, he emotionally manipulated her into continuing a sexual relationship with him. However, he then proceeded to marry someone else. Horrified at this turn of events she went to her father. Orazio was having none of this shit and took Tassi to court. At that time, rape wasn’t technically an offense to warrant a trial, but the fact that he had taken her virginity (and therefore technically “damaged Orazio’s property”. ugh.) meant that the trial went along. It lasted for 7 months. During this time, to prove the truth of her words, Artemisia was given invasive gynecological examinations and was even questioned while being subjected to torture via thumb screws. It was also discovered during the trial that Tassi was planning to kill his current wife, have an affair with her sister, and steal a number of Orazio’s paintings. Tassi was found guilty and was given a prison sentence of…. ONE. YEAR……. Which he never even served because the verdict was annulled.

During this time and a bit after (1611-1612), Artemisia painted her most famous work of Judith Slaying Holofernes. This bible story involved Holofernes, an Assyrian general, leading troops to invade and destroy Bethulia, the home of Judith. Judith decides to deal with this issue by coming to him, flirting with him to get his guard down, and then plying him with food and lots of wine. When he passed out, Judith and her handmaiden took his sword and cut his head off. Issue averted. The subject was a very popular one for art at the time. Here is a version of the scene painted in 1598-99 by Carivaggio, whom was a great stylistic influence on Artemisia:

This depiction is a pretty good example of how this scene was typically depicted. Artists usually went out of their way to show Judith committing the act (or having committed it) while trying to detach her from the actual violence of it. In this way, they could avoid her losing the morality of her character and also avoid showing a woman committing such aggression. So here we see a young, rather delicate looking Judith in a pure white dress. She is daintily holding down this massive man and looks rather disgusted and upset at having to do this. Now, here is Artemisia’s:

Damn. Thats a whole different scene. Here Holofernes looks less like he’s simply surprised by the goings ons and more like a man choking on his own blood and struggling fruitlessly against his captors. The blood here is less of a bright red than in Carrivaggio’s but is somehow more sickening. It feels more real, and gushes in a much less stylized way than Carrivaggio’s. Not to mention, Judith here is far from removed from the violence. She is putting her physical weight into this act. Her hands (much stronger looking than most depictions of women’s hands in early artwork) are working hard. Her face, as well, is completely different. She doesn’t look upset, necessarily, but more determined. 

It’s also worth note that the handmaiden is now involved in the action. It’s worth note because, during her rape trial, Artemisia stated that she had cried for help during the initial rape. Specifically she had called for Tassi’s female tenant in the building, Tuzia. Tuzia not only ignored her cries for help, but she also denied the whole happening. Tuzia had been a friend of Artemisia’s and in fact was one of her only female friends. Artemisia felt extremely betrayed, but rather than turning her against her own gender, this event instilled in her the deep importance of female relationships and solidarity among women. This can be seen in some of her artwork, and I believe in the one above, as well, with the inclusion of the handmaiden in the act.

So, I just added a million words worth of information dump on a post when no one asked me, but there we go. I could talk for ages about Artemisia as a person and her depictions of women (even beyond what I wrote above. Don’t get me started on her depictions of female nudes in comparison to how male artists painted nude women at the time.) 

To sum up: Artemisia Gentileschi is rad as hell. This x-ray is also rad as hell and makes her even radder.

I love art history.

I’m reblogging this again to add something that I also think is important to know about Artemisia Gentileschi. Back in her time and through even to TODAY, there are people who argue that her artworks were greatly aided by her father…. As in he either helped her paint them or just straight up painted them himself. Hell, there are a number of works only recently (past several years or so) that have been officially attributed to Artemisia because people originally saw the signature with “Gentileschi” in it and automatically attributed it to Orazio. So, not only was Artemisia Gentileschi an amazing artist and amazing historical figure, but I don’t want it to be ignored that there are people over 400 years later who still won’t give her the credit she deserves, just because she’s a woman and obviously women can’t paint like she did.

I fucking love Artemisia Gentileschi!!

The X-Ray doesn’t show Artemisias original work but was done by the artist named above, Kathleen Gilje, in 1998, as a reimagined version

his ass is NOT getting away from the sound of the woman that loved him 😂

when will people learn that overly sheltering people from knowledge about vampires is how the vampires get you?

you ever get surprised by your own recurring issues. like come on man. I thought we were past this.

I don’t get people who say sexy vampires can’t be scary. I’m pretty sure the horny part of the brain is next to the scared part of the brain. I’m often horny and scared at the same time, like on rollercoasters or of Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter.