Russ Epp-Leppel 💜💀
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leppeppel.bsky.social
Russ Epp-Leppel 💜💀
@leppeppel.bsky.social
620 followers 75 following 1.7K posts
Author. Engineer. Armchair polymath. (formerly @purpleskull14 and @leppeppel on the bird app)
SFFH or STFU | ADHD, Kinsey 2 | Memento Mori
linktr.ee/leppeppel
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leppeppel.bsky.social
You: "...until death do us part."

Me, an intellectual: "Cherish or perish."

#SundayPunday
I am proposing to my partner with a dagger. Rings may be traditional, but knives are practical and damn cool.
December 1, 2025 at 3:06 AM
leppeppel.bsky.social
Mods are asleep; we're isoposting!
Armadillidium vulgare isopod or "pill bug" infected with iridovirus, causing it to turn a beautiful shade of bright blue photo by Cynthia Bingham Keiser — source: projectnoah.org/spotting/824432
November 30, 2025 at 2:16 AM
leppeppel.bsky.social
Calling Smilodon a "saber-toothed tiger" is a surefire way to annoy paleontologists, but consider the Tasmanian tiger. Other organisms to have "tiger" in their common names include salamanders, sharks, moths, and lilies. Suddenly, just being a felid seems close enough.

#BigCats #Caturday
Life restoration of Smilodon populator by Charles R. Knight, 1903 last common ancestor with panthers: Pseuaelurus, ~20MYA Tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier) last common ancestor with Osteichthyes (bony "fishes," including mammals): Janusiscus, ~415MYA Garden tiger (Arctia caja) last common ancestor with vertebrates: the urbilaterian, ~600MYA Tiger lily (Lilium lancifolium) last common ancestor with animals: primitive eukaryote, ~1.6BYA
November 29, 2025 at 6:28 PM
leppeppel.bsky.social
Thanks, but we've already got one! 😉
Paleo-sculptor Werner Kraus and a full-sized life reconstruction of the giant myriapod Arthropleura
November 29, 2025 at 3:56 PM
leppeppel.bsky.social
MULTICHRIST
A portrait of Jesus with three conjoined faces made to represent the Holy Trinity. Absolute nightmare fuel.
November 29, 2025 at 3:44 PM
leppeppel.bsky.social
A dragon with one head is just a dragon. Dragons with three or more heads is often called hydras (especially if the heads can regenerate), but is there a term for a two-headed dragon? 🤔🐲

(I'm going with "bidra" until further notice. 😉)
#FantasyFriday
Two-headed dragon fantasy art by Jan Patrik Krasny Devon & Cornwall from Quest for Camelot The Eborsisk from Willow Zak and Wheezie from Dragon Tales
November 28, 2025 at 6:14 PM
leppeppel.bsky.social
The homunculus from Dungeons & Dragons looks far more like a miniature gargoyle than a miniature human.

#FantasyFriday
A gargoyle and a homunculus from D&D 5e; both have rough, grey skin, pointed ears, and bat-like wings, and they're even standing in similar poses. It's giving off real "Don't ever talk to me or my son again" vibes.
November 28, 2025 at 2:07 PM
leppeppel.bsky.social
In 16th alchemic lore, a homunculus was a miniature but perfectly formed human being. In Dungeons & Dragons, it looks nothing like one, more closely resembling Koura's "homunculus" familiar from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.

#WizardWednesday
a homunculus from Dungeons & Dragons, 5th edition Koura and his homunculus from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) Both are small creatures with rough, scaly skin, batlike wings, and large ears.
November 26, 2025 at 9:25 PM
leppeppel.bsky.social
Guillermo del Toro's London After Midnight (with Doug Jones as the vampire, obv.)
Lon Chaney as the vampire in the silent horror film London Midnight (1927) directed by Tod Browning, currently lost
November 26, 2025 at 12:44 AM
leppeppel.bsky.social
Introduce yourself with four spaceships.
Serenity from Firefly, because I am a Browncoat Lego Insectoids series Celestial Stinger (6969): one of my favourite LEGO toys to play with as a child, in no small part due to the little shuttles that came off the sides... which are kinda like the shuttles on Serenity, now that I think about it. Zoltan Cruiser (layout A), one of my favourite ships to play in FTL: Faster Than Light The Millennium Falcon, the original Cool Rustbucket, AFAIC
November 26, 2025 at 12:18 AM
leppeppel.bsky.social
🎶 First you get down on your knees, fiddle with your rosaries, bow your head with great respect and... genuflect, genuflect, genuflect! 🎶

#RIP Tom Lehrer, 1928-2025
Pope Leo speaking passionately into a microphone
November 24, 2025 at 2:49 AM
leppeppel.bsky.social
Say what you will about Larry Buchanan as a director, but the man had a clear vision of what a swamp monster looks like.
The monster from Creature of Destruction (a 1967 remake of 1956's The She-Creature) with green skin, a protruding brow ridge, slit pupils, and fangs; this frame comes It's Alive! (1969, a loose adaptation of Richard Matheson's horror story "Being") which reused the monster suit The monster from Curse of the Swamp Creature (a loose 1968 remake of 1957's Voodoo Woman) with green skin, a protruding brow ridge, slit pupils, and fangs
November 24, 2025 at 12:37 AM
leppeppel.bsky.social
I can't draw either, but I can use GIMP badly... which is good enough for my stupid purposes.
The Green Lantern (2011) poster with Harry Dean Stanton's face pasted over Ryan Reynolds' and the text "HARRY DEAN STANTON" over the film's title. The poster for Attack of the 50 ft. Woman, but I modified it so that the eponymous woman is now Raquel Welch as Loana of the Shell Tribe from the One Million Years B.C. poster The frog from the poster for Frogs (1972), but a smouldering cigar has been added to the hand protruding from its mouth, and it has another hand pointing a 1911 pistol at the viewer. a right spaulder and besagew placed on a snail (Helix pomatia) in place of its shell
November 23, 2025 at 3:01 AM
leppeppel.bsky.social
You've heard of DINK (Double Income, No Kids), but my home is a DITCH: Dual Income Two-Cat Household.

#Cats #Caturday
Minxie and Negroni on the couch together. (She doesn't know he's there.)
November 22, 2025 at 11:12 PM
leppeppel.bsky.social
Blep from the Void.

#Cats #Caturday
Negroni bleps as he naps on a bathrobe. Negroni is awake and stares at the camera, still blepping just a wee bit.
November 22, 2025 at 5:57 PM
leppeppel.bsky.social
Tonight's aesthetic is... whatever happened to the mummy? 🧟‍♂️🐺🧛‍♂️
the central pair from the poster art for Universal's Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), featuring Frankenstein's Creation battling a werewolf the central pair from the poster art for Al Adamson's Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971), featuring Frankenstein's Creation battling Dracula covert art for Philip J. Riley's book The Wolf Man vs. Dracula (a script for the proposed sequel to Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man), using poster art from FMtWM and Dracula (1931)
November 22, 2025 at 1:31 AM
leppeppel.bsky.social
Enos Fry ogles a cowboy in a sexy calendar.
November 21, 2025 at 10:56 PM
leppeppel.bsky.social
Today's aesthetic is animals designed by Guillermo del Toro.
a tarantula hawk wasp, Pepsis sp., the size of a person's hand with curlicue antennae outdated paleoart of the prehistoric shark-relative Helicoprion with an external double tooth-whorl a hermit crab using a discarded baby doll head as a shell African jacana bird, Actophilornis africanus, carrying chicks under his wings, making it look like he has many spindly legs ending in long, creepy fingers
November 20, 2025 at 7:41 PM
leppeppel.bsky.social
Tonight's aesthetic is pre-code horror films.
King Kong (1933) directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack and produced by RKO Island of Lost Souls (1932) directed by Erle C. Kenton and produced by Paramount Freaks (1932) directed by Tod Browning and produced by MGM Doctor X (1932) directed by Michael Curtiz and produced by Warner Bros.
November 19, 2025 at 2:08 AM
leppeppel.bsky.social
Presented without context
the woman yelling at cat meme she says "diary of art" he says "diarrhea fart"
November 18, 2025 at 11:55 PM
leppeppel.bsky.social
Today's aesthetic is... just what kind of animal are you?
Elephant hawk moth, Deilephila elpenor Raccoon butterflyfish, Chaetodon lunula Tarantula hawk wasp, Pepsis grossa Zebra bullhead shark, Heterodontus zebra
November 18, 2025 at 4:22 PM
leppeppel.bsky.social
Okay Trekkies, post a picture from your first #StarTrek movie.

Additionally, First Contact might be the first piece of TNG media I ever watched. (Middle school was a long time ago; it's hard to remember.)
Captain Picard with a Tommy Gun and white tux on the holodeck, from First Contact.
November 17, 2025 at 4:14 AM
leppeppel.bsky.social
Bleet your favorite Star Trek character. Wrong answers only.
Willrow Hood AKA Ice Cream Maker Guy. from Empire Strikes Back
November 15, 2025 at 4:30 PM
leppeppel.bsky.social
I didn't think it could get worse than this:
toe jibbitz
November 15, 2025 at 4:22 AM
leppeppel.bsky.social
Tonight's aesthetic is not what I'm called.

(i.e. erroneous identification)
The "NOT WHAT I'M CALLED" meme, featuring the alleged death mask of Agamemnon, being ID'd by Heinrich Schliemann. Some scholars believe it was modified or even wholly fabricated by Schliemann, but there is no evidence to suggest it belonged to Agamemnon. The so-called Bust of Josephus, a Roman-Jewish historian, based solely on stereotypes about the large "Jewish nose." Current scholarship definitively rejects this identification. The Meroë Head, initially identified as Emperor Augustus' great-nephew Germanicus, but now believed to depict Augustus himself.
November 14, 2025 at 11:42 PM