determined to gaze on brilliance and gaiety at any cost
Speaking of Jason Thompson, I just revisited his sketch for "The Outsider," where the protagonist is a mock man. I think this is my favorite illustration I've seen for that story.
("Mock men" are Thompson's invention from childhood, when he would draw a blob with stick limbs to represent a person. A mock man is kinda like a marshmallow person, kinda like a fetus, and kinda like Walt Kelly's Pogo. As an adult artist, Thompson seems to use them to represent people's inner selves: there are a lot of Lovecraft stories on the site, all worth reading, all using a mock man as the protagonist's appearance in the Dreamlands. I like how small, simple, and vulnerable they look against the elaborately over-detailed backgrounds.)
("Mock men" are Thompson's invention from childhood, when he would draw a blob with stick limbs to represent a person. A mock man is kinda like a marshmallow person, kinda like a fetus, and kinda like Walt Kelly's Pogo. As an adult artist, Thompson seems to use them to represent people's inner selves: there are a lot of Lovecraft stories on the site, all worth reading, all using a mock man as the protagonist's appearance in the Dreamlands. I like how small, simple, and vulnerable they look against the elaborately over-detailed backgrounds.)