Jugend: Münchner illustrierte Wochenschrift für Kunst und Leben - 1906, Band 2 - via University of Heidelberg
A deer wanders quietly in a church in France.
![historyarchaeologyartefacts:
“ [OS] Sculpture of Deer In Lacquered Wood, China, Eastern Zhou Dynasty (4th-3rd Century B.C.), Miho Museum, Kyoto, Japan [600 x 800]
Source:...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/6442e7b90730596a65fb43ffc6cc9aaf/a568625be7564fbc-bf/s640x960/76c217d7dab29b271786ee9e8d728f3542e99cb9.jpg)
[OS] Sculpture of Deer In Lacquered Wood, China, Eastern Zhou Dynasty (4th-3rd Century B.C.), Miho Museum, Kyoto, Japan [600 x 800]
Source: https://reddit.com/r/ArtefactPorn/comments/dxy95q/os_sculpture_of_deer_in_lacquered_wood_china/
Pazyryk Wooden Stag Finial, ca. 1000-500 BCE.
Cedar wood, leather.
Found in kurgan II in Altai mountain range.
State Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia).
You’ll find it deep inside the house, where no one ever goes—down a lightless hallway, in the darker rooms below.
“Ring” + “Before long, the suitor fell in love with a mischievous stag.“
This year, for Inktober, I’m combining the main Inktober prompts with twitter.com/fairytaletext tweets, and playing with imitation gold leaf.
these fawns laying amongst a million pillows is how i want to live my life every day
(credit to fuzzyfawnwildlife on instagram. she is a fawn rehabilitator and they’re all alive and well, just being transported)
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.
No idea if this commentary adds anything or not but since monsters are generally couched in terms of danger and threat, and therefore fear, in my mind these posts broke themselves down kinda like this:
The “was not a deer” monster speaks to fear born of deception, dangers that approach under the guise of familiarity, with varying levels of success to infiltrate the familiar before lashing out
The “not a deer anymore” monster speaks to fear born of coercion. Whatever it is was once familiar and perhaps even comforting but through the action of another agent the familiar has become grotesque and dangerous.
The “…and maybe never was a deer” monster speaks to fear born of self-doubt. Most people spend most of the time in a sense of vague assurance that they’re doing the right thing, or at least a right thing, in the situation they find themselves in. This fear lies in the danger of *thinking* you understood, only to be eviscerated by the cruelty of “no…you were never correct, and this is your consequence.”
Yes this. Good analysis.
Actually, in light of this I’d like to propose yet one more type of monster to this list. The monster is a deer. But you realize you were very, very wrong about what deer are like.
The deer itself has not changed, you were just wrong about deer from the very start.
This was horrifying to read while high and now I have an unhealthy fear of deer in general so thanks for that.
fear the deer as baby birds do:
I also want to add that the difference between “was not a deer” and “was not a deer anymore” that makes the latter worse (imo) is that the first implies it was already a monster, something recognizable as such and, presumably, out of the ordinary.
The second implies any other deer could become one, which makes a whole lot of ordinary deer suddenly a lot more scary even if nothing is wrong with them. Because it means every single one of them is just “nothing wrong with them… Yet.”
@wellntruly have you seen this post? because, deer and monsters and thoughts on deer monsters feels like something very much in your aesthetic wheelhouse
I have indeed seen & reblogged this before, but at that time it did not contain a video of a dear eating a bird and oh boy