I bet octopuses think bones are horrific. I bet all their cosmic horror stories involve rigid-limbs and hinged joints.
To an octopus, a human is like a thinking being with blood-stained coral growing inside it.
I need to sit down and breathe into a bag for a while.
Its parts were obscenely limited in their movement. Each hinge could open or close only a small amount before reaching its limit, yet by working in concert they demonstrated unexpected dexterity, moving and manipulating the objects before it with cunning equal to my own. It was more torso than limb, as though a seal had been stretched and warped, given long grasping tentacles filled with bones like bars of coral. It’s head was most horrid of all, flat and ovoid, jutting out too small from the trunk as though it belonged to a beast half its size.
The thing rose upon its lowermost appendages, two long trunks that ended in flat, protruding flippers that branched into stubby, grasping mockeries of a sucker. It’s triple-hinged uppermost limbs were similar, but the ends branched into five smaller tentacles, each with three hinges of their own.
I froze, as the thing’s gaze fell upon me and it opened its hideous fish-jaw, filled with thick, many-shaped teeth like white shards of stone, and spoke in a shrill, discordant babble. I felt its horrid dry grip on my flesh, as those hinged appendages closed on me like the legs of a crab.
I felt the heat of its body, tasted its noxious, oily flesh through my touch, and prepared for the end, and all went black as a swoon overtook me.
I awoke, some time later, the cold and comforting water, banished back to the comfort of the sea and the dark. I should be grateful I am alive. I should cast aside the experience like a half-remembered dream.
I shall never again go swimming in search of lights above. The last thing I recall before the darkness took me was my right eye popping free of the thing’s grasp enough to see into the distance for one brief moment.
Bueno! Me ha hecho muchísima ilusión hacer la portada para el nº 6 de Autobulling! me daba tanto respeto que tardé un montón en dar con una idea que me gustara. Finalmente opté por hacer una versión del Maycar, el after de mala muerte de Santiago en el que últimamente he pasado más tiempo del que debería. Espero que os guste y que vengáis a visitarlo pronto los que todavía no lo conozcan.
[scene: actor Andrew Robinson (Garak on Star Trek Deep Space Nine) is seated on a couch across from actors Dominic Keating (Malcolm Reed on Star Trek Enterprise) and Connor Trinneer (Charles ‘Trip’ Tucker on Star Trek Enterprise) as they record an episode of Dominic and Connor’s podcast, Shuttlepod Show]
Andrew: And then the next thing that happened, was when I walked on set to do the very first scene with Sid, I saw Sid. And he was one of the most beautiful young men I have ever seen in my life. And I thought, “Wait a second… wait second! I wanna f**k this guy. This is what this is about.” You know, forget about the spy shit. I have no idea what that means. That’s no action–
Connor: You can’t play that.
Andrew: And you can’t play that. But I can play… if I wanna get–if I wanna f**k somebody, I know how to play that.
Connor & Dominic: Right.
Dominic: Now they had no idea that this was–
Andrew: No idea.
Dominic: –some back thought.
Andrew: And Sid, god bless him, ‘cause the moment I put my hand on his shoulder…
Ecco the Dolphin – The Tides of Time filmed on a Trinitron PVM using RGB SCART.
I’m just marveling over how much I feel from watching and listening to this.
Like I’m picturing myself being a man in his 60s who sits down in his comfortable chair on sub-level 47 of the communal bunker, turns on the vorb, and loads in footage of Ecco the Dolphin – The Tides of Time to remember the good old days.
This was my second time watching Enterprise and my gut reaction was “hm no still not something that sticks with me” (same reaction I had after the TOS rewatch), but now after a shower and some time I think I’m upset? Like I feel like these characters were wronged and deserved better. Which is a very broad reaction that many people have when something that they liked watching has come to a close but obviously this show’s final finale really seems designed to engender that in a viewer.
And feeling upset means something about watching the show again got to me. Perhaps how flawed it is, both the intentional flaws of these pre-Federation characters who are trying to join a complex galactic community and the behind-the-scenes upheavals of each season as its creators tried to adjust its heading based on continually falling viewer numbers. Some of my fellow Star Trek fans bemoan that the newest stories have gotten away from the episodic nature of the earlier shows, but Enterprise’s first two seasons are all about that and don’t quite click. Then season 3 stretches a premise out for a little too long but is still the most memorable chunk of the show. And of course season 4 seemed to find a sweet spot with a series of short multi-part stories. It makes for some compelling ups and downs at least.
I don’t have plans to do much more DS9 art now that I’ve gotten thru the main crew, but here’s a Morn as a treat.
Creators on itch.io will be like “name your price I think $1.99 seems fair” and I’ll smack down $20 easy because making anything hard is and video games is really hard.
