![\"Spider](\"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/spiderwalrus-300x169.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Prepare for a trip down the rabbit hole on this one, kids.<\/p>\n
BoingBoing recently mentioned<\/a> a mobile game called “Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon,” in which you play as a little spider. Since some people (for some ridiculous reason) think spiders are icky instead of adorable, there’s a cheat code that lets you play as a tiny striped walrus instead.<\/p>\n In the comments, someone noted that this would properly be called a “Smallrus” and linked to Ursula Vernon’s drawing<\/a> of said creature.<\/p>\n This is the rabbit-hole part.<\/p>\n In addition to the drawing, Vernon describes their behavior, typical call (“Inhale a good lungful of helium and yell ‘GRONK!’ and you’ve about got it”), and many other silly factoids. And she’s got an entire site full<\/em> of the same kind of thing. There’s the Bog Unicorn<\/a>, far nobler than the disgusting common unicorn. Throggle the demon’s stuffed Beelzebear<\/a>. St. Dodus the Intolerant<\/a>, who isn’t the patron saint of anything but his medal worn around the neck will warn off hugs from well-meaning strangers. There’s the Demon Rat of Vercingetorix<\/a> who avenges particularly ill-treated mice, and a depiction of Where Zombie Babies Come From<\/a>.<\/p>\n And that doesn’t even begin to cover the happy little shoggoths, Battle Hamsters of the North, potato priests, and a couple of paintings illustrating the adventures of, quote, “Happy Little Capybara in the Mayan Underworld” which litter her site. I spent a whole afternoon going through her gallery, and if you click over there you probably will too.<\/p>\n Her whimsy and imaginative descriptions shouldn’t be surprising; Vernon is a Hugo Award-winning author<\/a>, and also accidentally spawned an internet meme when her Biting Pear of Salamanca<\/a> was transformed into the LOLWUT pear<\/a>.<\/p>\n She’s got a deviantART gallery<\/a> too, so when you’re done with her site you can click over there and blow another couple of hours. She sells prints of her work quite inexpensively–I think I may have to get the tea label set<\/a> for the kitchen–and occasionally does commissions (although her FAQ<\/a> suggests that right now she isn’t doing many non-commercial ones).<\/p>\n The art is great and many of her descriptions also include interesting information about the materials and techniques she used, so clear an afternoon and go have a look. And keep an eye out for Smallri in your garden.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Prepare for a trip down the rabbit hole on this one, kids. BoingBoing recently mentioned a mobile game called “Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon,” in which you play as a little spider. Since some people (for some ridiculous reason) think spiders are icky instead of adorable, there’s a cheat code that lets you play […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-needful-things","category-resources"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25827"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25894,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25827\/revisions\/25894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}