The other day, Mary stopped by the lab and immediately spotted two spiders lurking in the crannies that I hadn’t even noticed before. Obviously, females were endowed with superior spider spotting skills by Evolutionary Psychology in the Pleistocene, when it was their essential duty to scour the cave of venomous spiders while their man slept in, or ate his raw mammoth, or knapped flint spearheads.
Anyway, then I ran across this painting of Mary’s bronze-age Nordic avatar, so I had to include it.
(possibly by Docatto, from a game called Legend of the Cryptids)
The image is captioned “The remote areas of the Outlly continent are under the control of the snow spiders and their riders. The leader of the riders, Kastehelmi, patrols the sparkling snowy fields on her trusted friend Salomo to drive out any unwelcome intruders. The only colors they want painting the endless white expanses are their own.”
There’s another image also captioned appropriately, “When Kastehelmi sights an interloper, she summons a swarm of snow spiders. Suddenly, the ivory plains are speckled in scurrying black dots of all sizes. Mealtime has come at last. They pierce the flesh with their legs and crush bones with their tough mandibles. Not even a drop of blood is left behind, as this would blemish their perfect domain.”
Yep, sounds like her.
That costume looks a little… cold for a snowy biome.
Perhaps, unlike the wimpy little ectothermic ones, this spider generates a lot of heat?
I think that would require some sort of alternate energy source. Maybe these spiders consume coal as well as meat?
Cleavage window and bare midriff? I think Kastehelmi needs to dress more appropriately for her environment.
Or maybe male fantasy artists need to start viewing women as human beings with internal organs that need protection, and depict them accordingly?
The name probably isn’t meant to convey anything, but kastehelmi is Finnish for “dewdrop” or literally “dew pearl”.
Good grief. This getup is almost a parody of The Female Warrior as Idealized and Illustrated by Horny Men With No Thought to True Clothing Needs. The long blowing hair would also get in the way of aiming her spear. I would have my hair in a pony, tucked into a big full body spider-fur coat with hood up. I think this woman is in severe danger of hypothermia.
It’s nice that the artist gave her a fur collar to keep warm.
Another view:
https://www.odeith.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/huge-spider-anamorphic-2018-odeith.jpg
Not going to lie but the comment on the linked page made me laugh, specially compared with PZ’s enthusiasm.
zoniedude (#8) –
It reminds me of this.