Magic and Moonlit Wings

You just joined a crew and found out that they have a human crewmate. You’re curious and excited to meet them, given your species look so similar, it’s uncanny! Unfortunately, it doesn’t go so well.

Garments of Grass and Flowers by Jeanne Simmons Fuse Bodies to the Landscape

anyone on these interwebs wanna talk about……… clowns?

Hey d'you want to know why some clowns are scary?

i am definitely apprehensive but sure i would like to know

So I learned to be a clown briefly in grade 7. And here’s the thing, clowning is taking the worst aspects of yourself and amplifying them to the point of hilarity (It’s quite good for self-esteem, actually). But here’s the thing, some people try to make their clown a happy clown when they themselves aren’t a happy person, and that is, technically, lying. And our brains are REALLY REALLY GOOD at detecting lies, so warning bells go off. And therefore we get scared.

TL:DR, the only scary clowns are the ones who are lying.

“the only scary clowns are the ones who are lying” is a mood and im not sure how but it really really is

@vague-magnus-archives

Drew my favourite carousel horse as Sleipnir and then that turned into drawing other horses from this carousel as figures from mythology/fantasy/folklore and now it won’t feel Complete unless I figure out something for the whole outer row, but there are 12 of them SOS

Great news, looking into this lead to me learning about Hinduism’s Uchchaihshravas, who has 7 heads. I have a preliminary list now for what the rest could be but some are um.. less than ideal, so I would happily take more ideas

Wasn’t sure about doing a centaur because picking a style for the human half felt like a whole thing, but I had a Fantasia-related epiphany and now she’s one of my favourites? Also looking into physical characteristics of kelpies I found ‘backwards hooves’ which on the one hand sells it and on the other I viscerally hate.

Most & least obvious ones so far. Wanted to do one of the horses in mythology that brings the morning across the sky, but a chariot would be too big so Greek was out & beyond being bright-maned Skinfaxi doesn’t really look like anything. But maybe just attaching the sun..? And then yeah a unicorn.

Thestral! Two left, and unfortunately this is only the beginning of the uhh.. spooky section.

Ti.....kbalang..........

Last and absolute most horrific! Big “thanks I hate it” to Scotland for the nuckelavee - like no skin alone is bad enough, and then we also get the torso and the one eyeball??

Anyway that’s all 12 of the outermost horses on the carousel I grew up loving, converted into gods and monsters. Thank you for indulging this spiral.

Anthropology major answer: “There absolutely was such a time! Modern humans and our ancestors shared territory numerous times over prehistory with cousin species like homo neanderthalensis, homo floresiensis, and many, many others!” 

Folklore student answer: “Also, almost all cultures have something like djinn, faeries, hulder, fox spirits, and other similar creatures who can appear at least human and are very, very dangerous to humans!” 

Both of these things are true, and may be connected both to the above and to each other. :D

Biology majors: it’s dead bodies guys. Corpses.

Listen I hate this take on the uncanny valley so fucking much because many subpsecies of homonids lived in the same areas but some of them got along well enough to coexist and neandertals had enough desirable genetic traits to the point where human women (see here for a blanket on female vs male choosiness) would often pass up incel homosepian for the chad neandertal.

Genetics aside, various hominid species didn’t start visually looking all that different until 50,000 years ago, while under the skin changes began as early as 89,000 years ago (ie the development of the Y chromosome but I might be oversimplifying at this point) Point being, even our non-human cousins didn’t. look. that. different. from. us. Especially comparing the diversifying of humans themselves crossing trans continental as it was. And even then neandertals still had advantagious traits for living in the Eurasian hemisphere.

Also I digress, regardless of it being intentional, and with few perserved records from that chapter in our species’ history, I don’t like the implication that the uncanny valley effect stems from humans being inherently racist (for lack of a word for hatred of non-human intelligences). I know that sounds off the wall but prejudice and sense of superiority by birthright is vastly different than othering by means of the sucess of social groups and the need to compete for territory or resources. Racism is entirely a Eurpean fabrication and it’s been proven time and time again to be a cultural outlier and purposfully designed to further the agenda of corroded theocratical religious divinity (here, here, here) and the financial benifits of the exploitation of colonism that otherwise has not been replicated by other cultures to the same degree. (this is the only example off the top of my head but I’m know there’s more.)

You know what’s older than racism?

You know what’s more flesh crawling than neandertals?

fucking rabies

You know what LOOKS like a human but doesn’t ACT human ENOUGH? Do you know what might bite you and get you sick or turn you into something that also moves about in a non human way? Brain parasites that give you painful headaches and intensifies agression and confusion.

Say you’re a monkey and one member of your troop gets bitten by something. Later he starts twitching and swaying about. He keeps stumbling out of trees but barely feels anything when he hits the ground. He won’t eat sleep or drink. He makes guttural noises that keep alerting predators and he’s in obvious writhing agony. Suddenly he’s not your friend anymore. He doesn’t recognize you and he attempts to bite and claw at anything that moves.

Up until preventitive oral medications and vaccines were developed in the 1970s there was NOTHING stopping rabies and it still prevails today and kills hundreds of thousands of people in third world countries with limited medical resources a year. There’s no cure for rabies once youve got it and the only reliable diagnostic is a brain autopsy.

Rabies. TB. Leoprosy. Syphilis. Meningitis. Toxoplasmosis. Anthrax. Mercury Poisoning. Prion disease. These are all bad and in different varying degrees can cause limps, sores, agression, confusion or dazed trances, ambled pacing, convulsions or uncharacteristic behavior in humans.

Basically everything that people are terrified of when it comes to zombies. Vampires bite. Werewolves rip people apart. Demonic possesion? Easy. Changlings take the place of your loved ones.

Also I don’t think that it’s a conicidence that the things we find uncomfortable with the uncanny valley also just happen to line up with predatory behavior, smiling too wide or staring you down, blinking too slowly or moving towards you with a slow steady speed. It’s just a danger signal to keep other monkeys in a troop from getting bitten by an infected monkey. Simple as that.

After all what’s scarier? A dead body, or moving body that will MAKE you dead?

I’m not going to be a hypocrite by pointing out racism being excused as a stemmed human behavior without claiming that the deep seated primal fear of disease doesn’t make a good excuse for ableism as well. I mean we use othering to discern friend from foe, and then at some point decided that was a good enough excuse for racism. Theres legitimate proof that ancient homonids could and would be hospitible to the disabled out of compassion. The point of having these initial fears is to guage saftey measures first, but once someone or something is proven to be harmless that normally should be the end of it. I mean if an adult wild silverback gorrilla can look at a spycam and decide it’s chill after a moment of inspection then there’s really no excuse for any of us.

Healthy othering =/= newly invented racism.

healthy fear of infectious diseases =/= excuse to hate disabled people.

But yeah rabies is more likely the reason for the uncanny valley effect thanks for coming to my goddamn ted talk.

Reblogging this version bc of sources and I personally think this makes for much more interesting (and terrifying) lore than any other post in this thread.

She has very pretty eyes~

🎶Who is She?🎶

she is a goddess and she knows it

Sorry to say, but they do the exact same thing for humans too.

It’s amazing how people in the notes and comments are absolutely FURIOUS at me for the included Frozen comparison. Special shout out to everyone trying to prove that real people look like this.

Not to mention that when people edit these characters to have better facial proportions, the originals look like bizarre fish people.

How humans draw themselves is always fascinating to me

op why are you speaking like you aren’t human i’m scared

Eh…perhaps read my blog description.

this post has EVERYTHING

I think I know the reason for why people prefer “unrealistic” animation.

For some reason, humans really don’t like things that look like humans but aren’t quite human. Hence why a lot of people are uncomfortable with movies with animation like Monster House and The Polar Express. It looks too realistic to us and sets us off.

Scientists call this the “Uncanny Valley” effect and its thought to be an evolutionary tactic for survival.

The funny part is. No other animals that we know of experience the uncanny valley effect. Only humans. Which leaves the question: what was out there that mimicked humans so well and was so dangerous to us that we evolved to have this as a tactic for survival?

Oh hell yeah this is what I’m here for

Which leaves the question: what was out there that mimicked humans so well and was so dangerous to us that we evolved to have this as a tactic for survival? 

@hitodama89

Okay, I’ve seen this thread a dozen times before, but not with this addendum.

i made the original post in the throes of unmedicated depression because that’s where my sense of humor was at the time. i don’t check my activity page. seeing it barge onto my dash months later with +250k notes and this exchange attached to it like a bunch of rattling tin cans attached to the tail of a rabid dog running loose is fucking WILD

So sometime after whenever humans developed the uncanny valley effect, did we just hunt this mysterious predator to extinction? Or did it die out on it’s own? Or did it evolve as well into something… else? Could it still be living on Earth today?

Idk why dont we ask the “people eating cryptid” who claims to be from a species that’s easy to hide and apparently passes as human who’s like, 3 reblogs above this?

Hey fun fact;

Back when Homo sapiens weren’t the end-all of hominids, we also had some other two legged “humanish” cousins like the Neanderthals, Denisovians, and more!

There were nine different species of “humans”

By 10,000 years ago, they were all gone. The disappearance of these other species resembles a mass extinction. But there’s no obvious environmental catastrophe – volcanic eruptions, climate change, asteroid impact – driving it.

Instead, the extinctions’ timing suggests they were caused by the spread of a new species, evolving 260,000-350,000 years ago in Southern Africa: Homo sapiens.

Neanderthal skeletons show patterns of trauma consistent with warfare.

Like language or tool use, a capacity for and tendency to engage in genocide is arguably an intrinsic, instinctive part of human nature.

Optimists have painted early hunter-gatherers as peaceful, noble savages, and have argued that our culture, not our nature, creates violence. But field studies, historical accounts, and archaeology all show that war in primitive cultures was intense, pervasive and lethal.

Basically: the reason we as Homo Sapians find other human-ish figures unsettling and have an instinctual fear/aggression response called “The Uncanny Valley” is because we literally TOOK OVER THE WORLD by hunting down and killing every other hominid on the planet.

Dunno if the “9 species of hominid genocide” was a result of uncanny valley or the cause of it, but it’s a pretty sure bet to guess they’re linked.

Read more about it here :)

This is a wonderful post.

Another interesting train of thought I’ve read for why human characters are animated or drawn in a relatively abstract style is the idea that, the more simplified the faces are, the easier it is for an audience member to emotionally project themselves into the character. (Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics)

A wolf goes for a walk in the woods and meets a dog for the first time

I am totally here for “dogs as wolf body horror”.

Bi-bi-booop

[Caption: four pictures of mushrooms that are growing in a way that makes them look like 1. fingers reaching up from under a fallen tree, 2. screaming mouths or beaks on a branch, 3. outer ears breaking through bark, 4. a hand coming out of the ground.]

free him

free him

free him

Fools….he is sealed for our protection

idk why old navy is literally always ahead of the game in terms of uncanny valley + retail horror

Free them

YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE FREED THEM

I’m going to make a new font called Times New Bastard

It’s Times New Roman but every seventh letter is jarringly sans serif

With one line you activated every bone in my body and all of them are in attack mode

This is more unsettling than that one special effect font with the letter-like scribbles descending and ascending from the text to make it look ‘demonic’ or whatever the goal of that one is. I feel almost but not quite like I’m reading a ransom note, or like something’s wrong with the computer, or wrong with my eyes, and the uncertainty makes it worse. 

All the Cthulu mythos and suchlike should be written in this font.

There is a specific and terrifying difference between “never were” monsters and “are not anymore” monsters

“The thing that was not a deer” implies a creature which mimics a deer but imperfectly and the details which are wrong are what makes it terrifying

“The thing that was not a deer anymore” on the other hand implies a thing that USED to be a deer before it was somehow mutated, possessed, parasitically controlled or reanimated improperly and what makes THAT terrifying is the details that are still right and recognizable poking out of all the wrong and horrible malformations.

hey I totally fucked up and forgot the 3rd type, which is “Is Not Anymore And Maybe Never Was” monsters “The thing which was no longer a deer and maybe never was” implies a creature that, at first glance, completely appears to be a deer, but over time degrades very slowly until you realize (probably too late) that it is not a deer anymore, and had you seen it in this state first, you wouldn’t have recognized it as a deer at all, and there’s a decent chance that it was never actually a deer to begin with but only a very good mimic, and what makes this one scary is the slow change from everything being right to everything being wrong, happening slowly enough that you don’t even notice it until its too late, as well as the fact that something now so clearly not a deer could have fooled you to begin with.

@crackedkandys