this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
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"i love my pet so much, I want them to be with me forever, bereft of everything I loved about them"
I've never understood taxidermy. I keep some pictures of one of my dead cats in the wall/as a wallpaper on my phone, and it still is sometimes upsetting to see him and remember that he's gone.
For real. I have a plaster cast of my dog's paw print and that's enough. It seems morose. You wouldn't do that with a relative, right? "Sure am glad I got Grandpa stuffed and mounted here, next to the TV. It's like he's still with us"
Shit, now I want to be taxidermied after my death. I could actually haunt people
I have told a few people that, should I die, I'd want them to keep my skull somewhere on display
A deceased friend's skull as a decoration and occasional ceremonial sippy cup would be metal as all fuck
If they truly want to honor my life after I have passed, they shall drink Dr. Pepper from my skull!
I try not to judge people who like Dr. Pepper; it's not like it's your fault your preferences came out like that.
Ok I don't actually judge anyone for that, I just personally dislike it so viscerally that the smell is a bit nauseating, and I wouldn't be surprised if this is one of those things where N% of people have some gene that makes some Dr. Pepper ingredient taste different, like with the bitter super taster gene or the cilantro soap gene (both of which I have π )
Honestly, I just chose Dr. Pepper for something anticlimactic. I do like Dr. Pepper, but it's not my favorite beverage or anything. Still could be a genetic thing, though. My dad hates Pepsi because to him it just tastes like soap
If I'm gonna hate a soda, it's gonna be Mountain Dew. That shit tastes and looks like it was harvested from the fertile grounds of Chernobyl
Heh, we can do a Classic Humanβ’ and unite in hate: I really don't like Mt Dew either. I think the US version is like even more toxic-looking (and possibly literally toxic for that matter) than what they sell over here in Urop, or at least I remember it looking exactly like you described.
I didn't know the versions would be so different, but it makes sense. There's no way they'd get away with selling Mt. Dew in Europe without getting rid of at least some of the alien blood and nuclear waste. I swear, if you put it next to a geiger counter, it makes a droning sound
their are a number of technical difficulties with taxidermizing humans that make the results usually not worth the effort. better to just get your bones interred in a ceramic skulpture of yourself.
Interesting! Do you know if these difficulties are specific to humans or would eg. taxidermizing a pig have some of the same ones?
they are specific to humans, though fur does help to hide (heh, get it) a lot, so it wouldn't surprise me for there to be extra challenge to a pig. in addition to the lack of fur though, humans also have very thin skin, which tears easily.
furthermore, if you're taxidermizing a human, you would generally want the end product to look like that person. most of what makes a human look like themself is not the skin. it's the bones and muscles and fat in the face, and the perceptions of living humans are incredibly sensitive to subtle variations in those features. to have any hope of recognizability, you would probably need an extremely detailed sculpture of the subject's head to be made ahead of time to be used as the form. at that point you really might as well just use the sculpture to commemorate the person, rather than wrapping their skin around it at all.
π₯
Pretty much what I suspected about "naked" skin vs fur, which just intuitively seems way more "forgiving."
Ohhh this makes complete sense now that you say it; we're incredibly well tuned for recognizing faces, so I guess not only would it be hard to make the person recognizable, but it might also be hard to not have imperfections in the face that give everyone an "uncanny valley" sort of feeling that something's off about it?
I can definitely say that the problems with taxidermizing humans was definitely not something I expected to learn about today (or necessarily ever really), so thank you for taking the time to explain all that. It was honestly interesting to learn about something that I had absolutely no knowledge of beforehand.
If you don't mind me asking, do you know this stuff via actually doing taxidermy, or are you just another infinitely curious person?
yep, precisely so.
the latter, i suppose. i've had a fascination with the history of sideshows, professional freaks, medical anomalies, and the like since i was a wee lass, and attempts at taxidermizing humans come up somewhat often in that course of study.
Oh neat. That definitely qualifies under infinite curiosity.
Hmm, I wonder if they'd put my hands so they could hold like beers or a shelf... I think I'd be a nice conversation piece.
A ex took me to his relatives house which had two key features. One was a giant shed with rabbits in tiny hutches stacked 4 high, must have been 70 rabbits in there, absolutely disgusting, and she spoke about each of her beloved pets as if she cared. The second was her living room with 4 of her favourite deceased rabbits stuffed and on the shelf. She encouraged me to touch one of them to see how soft he was. Grim.