Mom. Get Out. I'm Doing Spells.

Mom. Get out. I'm doing spells.

The Keensighted Yagstong

My response to this week’s BestiaryPosting challenge, from @maniculum - thanks again for running these challenges!

Pencil sketch, then lines in Sailor fude nib fountain pen, using Diamine Sepia ink. A very quick one this week, but I'm pretty pleased with how it looks given the time spent :)

Thought process under the cut…

"There is an animal called in Latin [redacted], because it chooses to live in rugged places; some call it [redacted]. These are the tame Yagstongs which the Greeks called [redacted], because they have very sharp sight. They live in high mountains and can tell if men approaching a long way off are hunters or travellers."

So, an animal that lives in rugged places, or high mountains. Probably something very sure footed, and with a thick coat to keep it warm in the high altitudes.

We also know that it has excellent eyesight. For various other reasons noted below I went with a goat-like creature, and of course one of the things everyone on tumblr knows is that some goats have horizontal/rectangular pupils... Now, this is actually to give them sharper panoramic vision (and also gives them better vision in high and low light). Now the really weird thing is, apparently their eyes rotate in their skulls when they raise or lower their heads, maintaining that panoramic vision and allowing them to scan for predators even when grazing...

The Yagstong has these characteristics: when grazing, it moves from high to even higher pastures. It picks out good grass from bad by the sharpness of its eyes. It feeds by chewing the grass. When wounded, it hurries to find the herb dittany and, by touching it, is healed.

So, a grazing animal, that lives in rugged terrain. Definitely an ungulate, probably (but not necessarily) a bovid. The mountainous terrain is definitely giving me very mountain goat vibes, so we have a goat-like creatuer heavily influenced by ibex and mountain goats.

I chose not to give it the impressive horns of an ibex because I feel like this sort of characteristic feature would most likely be mentioned in the bestiary entry. As such, the horns are a little understated.

It has thick downy hair on its back, and shaggy hair on its limbs to protect it from the cold of the mountain nights. It also has the widely spaced, cloven hooves of a mountain goat, and prominent dew claws to aid with gripping on those rugged slopes where it lives.

Okay, it keeps getting brought up in multiple entries - there must be something really special about dittany (mostly, it seems to be slightly toxic 🤔). I'm pretty sure I've drawn this in a previous entry, but I feel like I'm getting slowly better at drawing plants as well - the flowers on Dittany are really pretty!

[The following appears in a separate entry on the same animal for some reason]

The male Yagstong is a wanton and frisky animal, always longing for sex; as a result of its lustfulness its eyes look sideways — from which it has derived its name. [Etymology redacted] Its nature is so very heated that its blood alone will dissolve a diamond, against which the properties of neither fire nor iron can prevail. Young Yagstongs take their name from the word for eating, for the young ones are very fat and taste delicious.

The eyes on the side of the head tracks with everything else we already know about this animal. We have some other interesting features mentions (including the fact that this beast is so frisky its blood can dissolve the hardest material on Earth...

Since I didn't have the time to draw cute round baby Yagstongs, I'm hoping that someone else took the opportunity!

dead metaphors are really interesting honestly and specifically i’m interested in when they become malapropisms

like, the concept being, people are familiar with the phrase and what people use it to mean metaphorically, but it’s not common knowledge anymore what the metaphor was in literal reference to. people still say “toe the line” but don’t necessarily conjure up the image of people standing at the starting line of a race, forbidden from crossing over it. people still say “the cat is out of the bag” without necessarily knowing it’s a sailors’ expression referring to a whip being brought out for punishment. some metaphors are so dead we don’t even know where they come from; like, there are ideas about what “by hook or by crook” references, but no one is entirely sure. nobody knows what the whole nine yards are.

and then you throw in a malaprop or a mondegreen or two, where because people don’t know what the actual words of the expression refer to, they’re liable to replace them with similar sounding words (see “lack toast and tolerant”). so we can literally go from a phrase referencing a common, everyday part of life to a set of unfixed, contextless sounds with a completely different meaning. that’s fascinating. what an interesting piece of the way language and culture are living, changing, coevolving things.

maybe part of the reason we can’t figure out where some phrases come from is that over time the words themselves have changed! one of the theories about “the whole nine yards” is that it’s a variant of “the whole ball of wax,” which some people further theorize was originally “the whole bailiwick,” meaning just “the whole area”! the addition of “nine yards” might be related to “dressed to the nines,” which might reference the fucking Greek muses! language is so weird and cool! (and I only know any idioms in two languages!)

the point is. I just came across the words “nip it in the butt” in a piece of published, professional fiction, and now I can’t stop giggling.

Grasshopper's Dream Cafe Located: Jeongseon, South Korea

Found an old tutorial of mine. 

Solid advice, past-me! <3