part of me wants to write a post about cryptids and settler-colonialism, but then i think about how incredibly broken my blog is thanks to kardala meta and change my mind
basically there is a difference between “fun weird thing we made up” and “actual being from an Indigenous culture we appropriated as part of the process of destroying their culture” and that’s an important distinction to draw. like, some of the beings that get called cryptids have important cultural context that gets stripped away when they’re shoved into pop culture will-nilly. Navajo skin-walkers are beings that shouldn’t be talked about, unless you want to draw them to you (and you don’t). on the other hand, telling stories about wendigos helps us understand traditional Cree (and Anishinabek) legal orders and customs.
b’gwus/sásq’ets
(sasquatch/bigfoot) stories have been told up and down the coast of the pacific northwest for thousands of years and now tourist traps run by settlers repackage culture and sell it for a profit that never makes it way back to the people they’re extracting stories from. i’m not expecting people to stop playing with “cryptids,” but i do kinda want everyone to be aware of the places and people these stories come from and that, for us, they have meaning.
So I had the strangest dream this weekend and nobody understands me so I need to share it with you because you might. Press J to skip this post if you can’t deal, I will accept this.
In my dream I was standing on the back deck of a rural cabin that overlooked a beautiful Vermont/Scottish Highlands landscape of unspoiled wilderness. It was a crisp, perfect autumn morning. I held a cup of cooling coffee in my hands as I leaned against the railing and scanned the perfect rolling hills in the midground, behind which the great patterned mountains with their snowcaps marched on until they blended with the horizon: #aesthetic
As I gazed at a distant meadow clearing in the trees, a pair of brightly coloured humanoid creatures emerged from the woods and began to dance for each other. It was an esoteric, beautiful mating dance, a strange combination of instinct and choreography. I felt awe washing over me. I marvelled. I felt a deep sense of wonder and peace as I observed this vanishingly rare encounter that I had never thought to observe in person. These animals were instantly recognisable but had never been studied in the wild. I felt incredibly humbled and privileged to witness this behaviour – I knew that I was the first human witness to observe this behaviour – and I reached for my phone, wondering if I should film it, so it could join the scholarly record, where it NEEDED to be. This could change everything. But then I held back – something told me “no,” to let the creatures have their privacy.
Ok, I can’t go any further without telling you that they were Teletubbies.
A red one and a yellow one. I know. I know. Stay with me here.
The cryptids melted back into the woods. My subconscious drew a discreet veil over the rest of their mating ritual, but I knew instinctively that this had been a dance of courtship. I was busy pondering the implications, because they were critical. You see, although the creatures were instantly recognisable as Teletubbies, as I had studied them, even at a distance, I had an incredible realisation.
They were adult Teletubbies.
This realisation dawned on me and in my dream I understood it fully. The ones that we know of – the captive ones that we have seen on television – are juveniles. In fact, they are the equivalent of toddlers. When you see the adults this becomes obvious. The garbled speech and silly movements of the four captive Teletubbies we know are the babbles of babyhood, a private primal toddler-language brewed up between sentient beings who have never encountered an adult of their own kind.
The adult Teletubbies have more branching, complex antlers and shaggy coats. They are less brightly coloured. They are terrifyingly large. Their strangely human faces, emerging from the thick fur, are unquestionably adult; remote, serene, reproachful. Their television screens are glitchy, esoteric and unknowable. They are cryptids whose public exploitation has undermined their rarity and their strange, alien dignity.
In my dream my feelings of awe and peace turned to great sadness at the fate of the captive toddler Teletubbies. I realised that I had to be the scientist who brought this discovery to the world and raised awareness of their plight. And I also questioned: are Teletubbies like axolotls? Do they exhibit neoteny? (Axolotls, the cute aquarium pets with flaring gills, are actually juveniles of an amphibious species – if given the right conditions they’ll grow up into land-dwelling black newts. But they can breed in their aquatic juvenile form, and most spend their whole lives in this form. Deprived of their wild potential, will the Teletubbies ever mature? Or are they merely experiencing a long childhood, natural for a species that is unimaginably long-lived?)
So in my dream my husband came out onto the back deck and I began to share these discoveries with him and before I could even bring up the axolotls he just said “what the fucking fuck” and went away again.
I woke up disgruntled and unable to capture the feeling of peace and sadness. I then tried to explain this to my husband in the waking world, and he said “what the fucking fuck” and walked away before I even got to the explanation of the Teletubbies being toddlers, which just goes to show that you never know someone as well as you think you do.
Anyway I’m sure you guys will join me in this knowledge. And also I’ve googled it and apparently the Teletubbies reboot features infant Teletubbies, so clearly they are getting more from somewhere and the time to question this is NOW
I read this to my brother, because it’s one of my favourite things, and he – who has never before shown any interest in making things – was inspired to make this monstrosity. He insists that this is the truth of the adult teletubby. I’m sorry.
Edited to add: My friend declares this one to be innacurate because it doesn’t fill him sufficiently with despair.
tell your brother that everything he thought he knew about himself is wrong. far from being someone who “doesn’t make things,” he is actually a webcomic creator. tell him that he needs to write a webcomic, for he already has everything necessary. TELL HIM,
The Hungarian term, rézfaszú bagoly, means exactly what it says in the title. Would you like to hear the explanation behind the copper appendage? Too bad, there is none.
The full saying states “Vigyen el a rézfaszú bagoly” which means “May the owl with the copper dick take you away.” I am not sure why, where, or what comes after, but I definitely would not wish it on my enemies.
This is the earliest known tomb painting in Europe, and it’s in Veii, Italy. It’s a very, very early example of the funerary frescoes which the Etruscans would be remembered historically for. This tomb is known as the Tomb of the Roaring Lions and it is probably my favorite thing of all time.
It’s also got some ducks, which were apparently super special to the Etruscans and nobody really knows why.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 