Court dress ca. 1908-10

I mean look at this thing:

Like, every post about them on tumblr going “lmao let’s be real, if I saw this shit I would stop at nothing to explore it” is highlighting the central conceit of the yucca mountain project.

The project is VERY aware of humanity’s tendency to explore, and the people involved are tormented constantly by the fact that ANYTHING they do to indicate “this specific place is extremely deadly and there’s nothing valuable here, GO AWAY” is going to become a fucking MAGNET for treasure hunters, explorers, adventurers, mystery enthusiasts, conspiracy theorists…like, the MOMENT it’s discovered, people will flood that place.

That’s what makes the project so fascinatingly difficult! There’s so much they have to convey, but at the same time, they have to do so without making the site itself interesting in any way, and without making it significant. Many possible warnings don’t incorporate a message at all, focusing instead on simply making the site as ugly, inconvenient, and unimportant-looking as possible so that it’s just never disturbed because nobody is interested in getting close. (It’s why seemingly crazy ideas like the color-changing cat priesthood are actually more viable than the seemingly “practical” example above, which still depends on written warnings guaranteed to be extremely interesting to future humans AND depends on the idea that those future humans will be able to decipher any of our languages. The most viable ideas focus on exploiting superstition and the subconscious, rather than LITERALLY trying to communicate “This place is not a place of honor” etc in as many words. Those are general ideas to be gotten across, not a script.)

The impossible catch-22 of the nuclear waste warning projects is that they absolutely MUST communicate the level of danger and the importance of keeping your distance…while also being acutely aware that warnings on the walls of ancient burial sites about the horrible curses that would afflict anyone who disturbed them did jack-fuck all to dissuade archaeologists.

For this Witch Hat Monday I drew Coco in a Starry Night Dress! It's a continuation of the Starry Night Hat I painted a while back :)

Time lapse below, the full hours long art videos, PSD file and HD image will be DMed on Patreon the 5th of each month :)