Mostly Critical Role and The Untamed, pretty words and pictures, and self-care mixed with depression humor. Regular appearances from ATLA, Tolkien, and Swan Queen.
Grammar demon, writing, attempted positivity, salt both literal and metaphorical. She. Leather jacket bisexual. Feel free to say hi or ask me to tag something. I tend to disappear but always come back.
Today I found some time to sit down and colour this mer Xichen machting this mer Wangji and mer Mingjue!
[image ID: a fully coloured digital drawing of Lan Xichen as a merperson from The Untamed/MDZS. He is swimming with two small fish, his long hair and fish tail moving behind him in a flowing motion. His hairdo is canon-adjacent but his hairpiece is made out of shells, coral and pearls. End ID.]
I can’t stop getting emotional about how tenderly a shepherd caresses his dog’s face on this marble sarcophagus from the third century
The dog’s face is just so lovingly crafted and it’s much more finely detailed than some of the other animals in the piece. The expression is pure contentment and devotion. This scene is a tiny portion of a huge elaborate sculpture but I really feel like the artist was trying to capture a specific emotion with these two. The way that you feel when you look at your dog is thousands of years old.
An extract from
Cynegeticus [On Hunting (with Dogs)], by the Greek writer Arrian (86-160 CE), about his dog, Horme [Dash]:
While I am at home she remains by my side, and accompanies me when I go out, following me to the gymnasium, and, while I am exercising, sits by
me. On my return home, she runs in front of me, often looking to see
whether I had turned off the road; and as soon as she catches sight of
me, shows symptoms of joy, and again, turns and trots in front of me. If
I am going out on any government business, she remains with my friend,
and treats him exactly the same. If she has not seen either of us for a
short time, she jumps up repeatedly by way of greeting, and barks with
joy. At meals she pats us, with one foot and the other, to remind us to
feed fer.
Having been beaten with a whip as a puppy, if anyone, even to this day,
mentions a whip, she will come up to the speaker cowering and begging,
and will jump up and hang on their neck, applying her mouth to theirs as
if to kiss them, and will not let go until she is appeased.
Now really I do not think that I should be ashamed to write the name of this dog; so that it may be left to posterity.
[I] had a greyhound named Horme, who was of the greatest speed and intelligence and, was altogether excellent.
to you, it’s a shitty sentence. to some random bitch 500 miles away, it’s a fire line that’ll haunt them for the next 17 years.
you don’t know how impactful your writing is because it’s been in your brain for far too long now. you’ve stared at it for hours and repeated “this sucks” over and over again to the point that you killed your capacity to feel anything about your work.
but trust me, once you get your shit out there, someone’s gonna go over that paragraph you hate and go “jesus fucking christ” and put the book down to have an existential crisis.
