So what if there’s just six of them, and only three even have the “slug” creature type?
In 2011 I talked about this fantastically strange and eerie incarnation of Audrey II on Bogleech, but had little information until her own designer, Clive Hicks-Jenkins, came across the post and sent me some bittersweet background story just today! He writes:
The full-scale Audrey went into storage in Mold, but I’m quite sure she’s long gone as that was over twenty years ago. We’d hoped to nationally tour the production, which had been a great success at Theatre Clwyd, but financing was not forthcoming. I heard that the model for the ‘expressionist’ set was still knocking around in the carpentry shop ten years later, but no doubt that too has now vanished.
There’s an interesting and rather poignant tale about the first-stage Audrey puppet. It went with the actor Michael Finesilver, who had played Seymour, to live in New York. Ten years later a box arrived by post at my home in Wales. Inside was Audrey looking rather the worse for wear. The latex she was made from was crumbling and her cable-controls had broken. With her was note that read:
“Audrey II has been with me for a long time now, but I fear I can no longer look after her. Time to move on. Please give her a good home. Love Fikey.”
She stayed with me for another five or six years, and then a time came for me too to move on. By then every time I looked another piece had fallen off the poor old thing. Finally I called it a day, and she was consigned to landfill.
I’m so touched to find an image and an appreciation of Audrey II here. Thank you for that.
Clive Hicks-Jenkins
Aberystwyth
So the younger, smaller plant lived a fairly long life before finally deteriorating and returning to the earth, but the ultimate fate of its fully grown form is unknown. While it likely crumbled into a heap of refuse as well, there’s a charm to not really knowing exactly what it went through since the show.
Clive’s Artlog offers an even clearer, more detailed shot. There are only these few scraps of evidence that this fantastic thing ever existed and performed in a musical, but I’m grateful there’s any at all!
Over twenty years later, Clive is once again doing awesome design and directing work for the stage - this is a piece for a musical adaptation of The Mare’s Tale!
I’ve also heavily updated the information in my original Audrey II article!
Those beautiful, amazing toys I found on a questionable Chinese wholesaler weeks ago REALLY DID ARRIVE….with SECRET SURPRISES! Click above for an in-depth review!
I’ve never had a swig of alcohol or a drag of anything in my life, but when I look at the words I typed about this early 90’s toy line, I’d swear I was drunk or something. Especially when I get to the ones I can’t ever have.
I don’t even know what happened. I started writing about these guys and some sort of fiery, rambling passion just poured out. I HAVE LAID MY SOUL BARE FOR YOU, TRASH BAG BUNCH.
My first “Magic: The Gathering” creature review in six months! Here’s twenty-something “Elementals” of interest, featuring mudskippers that smell bad and dogs full of bees. You know, like, the elements, duh!
INTERNET GERM #8
“Egomaniacox snoflakia”
“Who cares if you’re hateful, arrogant, ignorant, selfish, rude, lazy or just plain mean? That’s just called “being yourself,” and it’s your most basic right as a human being! You’re the only you in the world, and if you could put a price on that, it would be, like, infinity! You’re right as long as you think you’re right, and you’re owed whatever you want to be owed - isn’t that what it means to be an individual?If they can’t respect your special, one of a kind feelings, they’re probably too self-absorbed to be worth your consideration. If they don’t care about your needs and wants (the same thing, basically) you never need to care about theirs. If they can’t appreciate you just the way you are, then I guess you’re just too REAL for them! It’s not easy being born with this much individuality, but just keep being you, and sooner or later, the whole world will see just how important you are…one way or another!”
This is the last one!
I borrowed the dreaded Dreamworks face because I’m pretty sure it’s the most irritating, cocky expression ever formulated by the art world.
Entitlement is funny. Absolutely everyone hates it, but nobody ever thinks they have it until it’s far too late. It can seem only harmlessly obnoxious at first glance, but can likely be found hiding out in just about any negative human behavior imaginable; from cutting in line at the grocery store, to cutting off heads.
INTERNET GERM #5
“Overreactus moralis”
You know, you and I have worked awfully long and hard to reinforce rigid limitations on what we privately consider acceptable language, humor, artwork and taste in hats. Why should you let anyone else sour our culture with their inconsiderate, indecent, careless self expression!? Your personal boundaries are clearly the correct boundaries the whole of society should conform to, and it goes without saying that you speak for EVERYONE else who matters! They’ll RUE the day they made that inappropriate comic, blogged those almost totally uncovered mammaries or used the Q-word that time…raise enough ruckus, and maybe we can even get A. essjaysalmonella on our side!
Still didn’t think any other word worked better than “hypersensitivity,” even though I don’t like it too much.
I kept jumping back and forth between using this design for the hypersensitive or the hypercriticial…I’m still not sure which one works better.
INTERNET GERM #1
“Testestosteron deebaggicus”
“Bro, you and I both know that this “fight” for “women’s rights” was already settled, like, two grandmas ago. Heck, it could even stand to pedal back a couple decades! It’s not your fault if feminazis are always on the rag and secretly aching for like a million dongs!!! What they need is a real man™ like you to give them something better to do with their big mouths! Ooh, I know! You should, like, say exactly that! And I’ll be rooting for you while I weed out all these weenie brain cells crowding up your skull. Then we’ll have room for my hot tub!”
(OH BOY the comments I might be inviting)
Following in the footsteps of the 80’s “Worlds of Wonder” Germs and Germs of the Body, INTERNET GERMS are the things that live in horrible wretched people who ruin every community and conversation they touch!
I spontaneously doodled a bunch of them at the doctor’s waiting room the other day, and liked them enough to start scanning and coloring them. I have nine so far, but if I come up with designs I like for more, I might go further.
MISOGYNY GERM is meant to look primarily like a Y chromosome, but the first thing you probably thought he looked like wasn’t accidental either. His dumbbell eyes could also possibly be gonads. I almost made his lower thingy end in his brain but I thought I’d done enough and he probably just doesn’t have one.
GERMS of the Body!
Here I review an epic Spanish sticker set in which the following happens:
You’re DYING to see more, aren’t you?!
Don’t miss what this thing is supposed to be!!
NEW MORTASHEEN MONSTERS!
Originally planned on spacing these out over the past weak, leading up to 2013, but here they are in one big last-minute, late-night load! This brings the Mortasheen world up to 500 canonical monsters.
They are as follows:
Cacchinnox - a horrible dolphin-like Joker. This makes four monster classes where a dolphin is the worst one.
Mothstrous - a conventionally “cute” Moth-man (yeah, the same design could be a male or female) nevertheless considered really creepy and gross in Mortasheen.
Astarath - a star-shaped Devil Bird who lies all the time. Jerk!
Abnortis - a giant dead fetus in the sky!
Oovule - the “ultimate” Zombie Spawn, sort of tying the whole zombie spawn class together into a weird cosmic horror thing.
“HEY TUMBLR CATS ARE UGLY AND THE ONLY THING GAYER THAN HOMESTUCK IS DOCTOR WHO. LET’S SEE YOU FUCKING LOSERS BLOG HARD ENOUGH TO END MY MISERY BTW GOD HATES POKEMON”
Headed South
This is the longer “sequel” to the short horror story I posted last week, which has come to be known as The Five after somebody was nice enough to put it up on Creepypasta wiki.
Both stories were written the same day, but I kept working on the ending to this one until I liked it enough to post. It’s crazier and sillier, and I don’t know if I really regard it as a sequel so much as a whole new narrative in another continuity, since I like how “The Five” ends with no further explanation, but I also like the half-explanation here. It does raise even cheaper, more infuriating questions, and no, I don’t have any answers I’m holding back.
I’ve left genders ambiguous in both stories, so the narrator really could be anybody at all.
Again, not a zombie story, but I tagged it as such for some superficial similarities to a zombie apocalypse.
The “sea elephant” video Realmonstrosities posted in their article. I remember footage of these animals in nature documentaries when I was little, and I’ve written about them before, but I have NEVER gotten over how fanciful they are. Isn’t it SO FUCKING WONDERFUL that there are animals like this? It’s like an insane fairy-tale being nobody would ever believe. It’s like a cartoon ghost.
Yes, those are adorable beady eyes, and the “trunk” out the top ends in its mouth. It spends almost all of its time swimming in what we would consider an upside-down orientation. It has one fin on its “belly.” Its eyes are incredibly sophisticated, some of the most advanced of any mollusk. It’s impossible not to see wonderment as it looks around and around in circles, though it’s likely just looking for prey.
YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND.
