black with low white spotting
Hims do a little dance
Okay... so this is right up my alley.
More weird whimsy and quirk in the romance genre... and more jaded suffer-no-fools women, instead of the creepy age-gaps, please and thank you
just FYI it's based on a short story called The Wicker Husband which I read here despite the small print because I could only find the opening elsewhere (the place it was originally published online is gone, but the author, Ursula Wills-Jones, says she hopes to see it in print soon!)
Mammal in a Sunday Dress explores the uneasy relationship between femininity, civilisation, and the animal body. At first glance, the figure appears modest and withdrawn. Her posture is composed, her gaze seemingly lowered towards her bare feet, recalling the conventions of nineteenth-century portraiture where women were often depicted as passive objects of observation. Yet as the viewer moves closer, the illusion collapses. Her eyes are not lowered at all. She is looking directly back.
The delayed eye contact transforms the encounter. The viewer approaches believing they are safely observing a woman; instead, they realise they have been observed themselves. The work refuses the traditional power dynamic of portraiture, denying the comfort of anonymous spectatorship. Looking becomes a reciprocal act.
For Cox, the painting considers humanity's persistent desire to separate itself from the rest of the animal kingdom. The title quietly undermines this distinction. A "mammal" is not another creature—it is us. The Sunday dress, rich with cultural associations of femininity, morality, and respectability, becomes an attempt to distinguish ourselves from nature. Yet clothing cannot alter biology. Beneath lace and ritual remains the same vulnerable animal body.
The work also reflects on the historical relationship between women and nature. Across art, religion, and philosophy, women have repeatedly been positioned as closer to instinct, emotion, reproduction, and the body itself, while men have been aligned with reason, culture, and civilisation. Mammal in a Sunday Dress does not reject this comparison. Instead, it questions why proximity to nature has so often been treated as something lesser.
Chiaroscuro isolates the figure within darkness, allowing the luminous dress to symbolise the performance of civilisation while the bare feet quietly return the body to the earth. Neither is presented as more truthful than the other. The painting exists in the tension between performance and instinct, refinement and biology.
Mammal in a Sunday Dress ultimately asks a simple but unsettling question: if every layer of culture were stripped away, what would remain? Not a king. Not a saint. Not a gentleman or a lady. Only another mammal, looking back.
I DIDN’T LEARN ABOUT THIS IN DRIVING SCHOOL
Stop says the red light, go says the green
Wait says the yellow light, twinkling in between.
KNEEL, SAYS THE DEMON LIGHT
WITH ITS EYE OF COAL
SAURON KNOWS YOUR LICENSE PLATE
AND STARES INTO YOUR SOUL
Is the guy in the cuck chair supposed to stay quiet or is he allowed to clap and cheer
he's supposed to take notes and make an intrigued hum when an interesting plot point occurs
one is getting cucked by the bottom and the other is getting cucjed by the top. Subject matter experts discussing the sex like a sports panel
One cuck always lies, the other always tells the truth. You have one question to determine who’s a top and who’s a bottom.
‘don’t you want your favourite character to be happy???’ no? i want my favourite character to be interesting. i want me to be happy. which sometimes involves my favourite character being in exquisite agony
when Ashley described Vaelus' weapon i immediately was reminded of this video i saw a while back, and i thought "someone needs to rotoscope this" but then i never saw it so i made it happen
forget elgar'nan and ghilan'nain. forget the blight. forget elven gods. when THE cassandra allegra portia calogera filomena pentaghast finds out that solas killed varric first instead of her, what happened at adamant will seem like child's play. veilguard, a fever dream. that yappy lil dwarf may have been the absolute bane of her existence but he was HER bane. god rest his soul