[The balizloob is another Maya monster, but unlike the xtabay is very obscure in English. I could find references to it in the Spanish book Monstros Mexicanos (thanks to @abominationimperatrix for the translation!), and a French master’s thesis that refers to that book. Their physical description is basically nonexistent, but since they’re said to live in caves, be highly social and good parents, I knew I wanted to make them something like a flightless vampire bat. I had the darnedest time finding an image I liked (as opposed to something more like the Future Predator from Primeval), until I remembered that some people had interpreted the chubacabra with a similar design.]
Balizloob CR 4 LE Magical Beast This slim creature looks something like a
flightless bat with a long tail. It has dark fur on the upper side of its body,
and pale skin on the underside. Although its long arms bear sharp claws, more
fearsome are its scissor-like, forward facing teeth.
Balizloobs
are mammalian carnivores that live in caves, particularly in humid tropical
environments. They are ambush hunters with keen senses, using a combination of
echolocation, vibrations and scent to track down even hidden prey. Although a
balizloob would be dangerous enough on its own, they are cooperative pack
hunters, and their favorite prey is human beings.
A balizloob
is smarter than an animal—smart enough to know that frequent predation on
human settlements result in their colonies being hunted down and destroyed. So
they limit their attacks to travelers, drunkards, the homeless, and other
people on the outskirts of society who will attract little attention if they
disappear. Mothers sometimes use balizloobs as bogeys to encourage children to
close their windows, lock their doors and keep up minor repairs around the
household, as these monsters are adept at getting into buildings and hiding in
very tight spaces. The bite of a balizloob creates deep, bleeding wounds, and
the monsters use teamwork to surround and overwhelm their prey.
Despite
their savagery towards other species, balizloobs are social and nurturing among
themselves. The young are raised communally, with some members of the colony
staying behind to guard them while others go off to hunt, and both babies and
babysitters provisioned with meat and blood vomited up by the hunters. They are
sensitive to sunlight, so typically sleep deep in their caves by day and go
abroad to hunt by night. Balizloobs do not go out of their way to collect
treasure, but the bodies of anyone who stumbles into one of their caves are
left where they lie, and may have useful items remaining on them.
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Convergent evolution is wild, bc like, crabs keep evolving to look the same but aren’t closely related, nature is just like: BIG MEATY CLAWS, little legs, pincers, head, tiny eyes, let’s do it again!
and trees look the same but oak trees are more closely related to rose bushes than they are pine trees, fucked up
nature just likes these damns shapes:
but on the other hand, mammals flying with powered flight?? That shit only happened ONCE and it had to do some janky shit to get there, especially with bat immune systems
like bat’s immune systems are HYPER-POWERED as well as repress most of their inflammatory reactions because in order to fly they needed a bonkers-high metabolic rate which unfortunately also create waste products from the process called “free radicals” that damage cells
however, despite these free radicals they manage to live up to FORTY YEARS, which is super long for a species their size, because their immune system are basically always ON and in an anti-viral state that make them incubators for disease due to warfare between their jacked immune systems and disease
bats are so gdamn weird, I love them, no other mammal has been able to copy off their homework and accomplish the same shape, and for that they are the anti-crab of the natural world, God bless
It really worked out for them too, like it’s a hell of a lane and they have it all to themselves, so they’ve really filled their niche. There are more bats than almost any other kind of mammal. Like, there are a higher number of individual bats, but also the most KINDS of bat.
For example there are about 30 million white-tailed deer alive in the world, whereas there are 15 million Mexican free-tailed bats living in ONE single colony in Texas. But also, there are about 43 species of deer on the whole planet, 38 species of feline, 34 species of canine… and about 1,300 species of bat.
It is estimated that one out of every five living mammals on Earth is a bat, or, to put it another way, if you took every single mammal on the planet and counted them as individuals, 20% of those animals would be some kind of bat.
TL;DR, I’m reading Goosebumps books and listening to some relevant podcasts that I can recommend to other readers.
I started reading the Goosebumps books and just kinda blazing through them since each one can be read in less than two hours. They’re fun reads, but since I’ll likely never read these again I wanted to support my readings with additional materials to help it all stick before I move on.
It started by doing the thing where I search for a lot of relevant information and references in the usual wikis but then realized, oh, there’s surely a podcast for that.
(There are many.)
(Never mind the video essays and reviews on YouTube, I’m not even going to start down that rabbit hole.)
I listened to various episodes and wasn’t kind finding everything I wanted in a single podcast (some comedy, some plot exploration, some reading too far into texts designed for children), so I decided to choose three podcasts and listen to each show’s episodes for a given book as trios of roundtable discussions and lectures on the works of R.L. Stine. It was also important to me that the podcast actually covers the core 62 books in the original series because I’m a completionist (to a point), and these do!
Also, these are all podcasts about children’s books but very much meant for adults. So, you know, parents may wanna find other ways to chat with their kids about the crusty old Goosebumps books they grew up with.
These are the podcasts I have in rotation and the order in which I listen to them after I finish reading a Goosebumps book.
Hosted by twin brothers and Goosebumps megafans, I like this show for the comedic stylings of the hosts, their clear love of the Goosebumps series, and perhaps most importantly the fact that they do the play-by-play breakdown of the plot as a core part of each episode. That makes it a good first episode to get reminded of what actually happens in the story. Bonus: they always talk about the TV episode adapted from the book (if there was an episode), something the other podcasts only occasionally brush against in their discussions of the stories.
This is the run-of-the-mill podcast experience. The hosts are three straight white men (in fact all of these shows are hosted by white Americans, which bums me out but I couldn’t find podcasts with more varied host backgrounds), they are all performers or writers working in TV, and they love to veer off into tangents unrelated to the Goosebumps book they’re discussing in the episode. One gets the sense that they feel there’s not enough meat on the bones of just talking about the books so they improv for a while to pad out the runtime. That said, they’re funny guys, and I like to listen to their takes on these books just for the chuckles. But I’d say this podcast is skippable for anyone who doesn’t wanna cram this much Goosebumps material into their brains. Also, early episodes of the podcast are during the Obama presidency when it was seemingly alright to joke about eugenics and culling people, which, yikes. Listener beware.
This newer show may be my favorite after listening to twenty episodes or so of each podcast. The hosts self-describe as queer and are both funny and keep the tone light, but they are also educators and approach the discussion of each book almost like a class lecture, asking each other questions in order to draw out more thoughts and theories on what was going through R.L. Stine’s brain or what aspects of the real world may have informed the choices in the text. Initially, it really felt like a classroom setting where I was being asked questions and didn’t have answers, but I’ve grown to appreciate these hosts’ more critical analysis of the stories. I save these episodes for last so that I come away from the experience of having read a Goosebumps book with bigger questions and analysis than I would otherwise develop by simply reading the book and moving on.
If you’d told me my mid-life crisis would take on the form of engaging with licensed media from my 90s youth in myriad obsessive ways I’d probably have believed you and waited quietly for it to hit.
not to be a nerd but it’s so crazy how he (Bernini) really did that from cold hard stone……. truly a spectacle, truly breathtaking, an honor to behold
I think you should know he was 23 when he finished this and the ass gets a lot of attention but the hand on Persepina’s side/tummy is also exquisite
before i saw the caption I knew that HAD to be bernini.
I try not to make sweeping statements but I think there’s a case to be made for bernini as the greater sculptor there’s ever been.
here’s his bust of costanza bonarelli
here’s apollo and daphne from the front, where she’s mostly human
from the back, where she’s mostly tree
and details
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