chimaerakitten

[chimaerakitten]

My haul from my first con :>

Pins were made by @chimaerakitten, Born to Protect postcard by @indigo, MB Cookbook by @specialagentartemis, Murdermeet badge ribbon by @blessphemy, and the sickass robot print in the middle was bought from Emma LeRae's table on the dealer's floor :3 The other stuff was freebies! Man if I have one regret it's not getting to spend more time at the exhibition where cool stuff was, but there were so many panels to go to...

Bonus pics of the ceramic pins I made to hand out! Had to get them bisqued in Seattle bc production took longer than I realized it would (the blurry pic of the badges in the box were taken literally in the car ride back). If I got to meet you and give you a ceramic badge, I'm delighted and hope you cherish it!

[chimaerakitten]

you spend so much money on art at con and you go "ahhh job well done, i have supported artists and also gotten nice decorations for my enclosure" and you trick yourself into thinking this is all there is to it. WRONG! one squillion dollars for frames

[chimaerakitten]

Was going to make a post about how murderbot makes friends with other bot systems so easily, and how frequently it describes their personalities as “the friendly secsystem” or somesuch and personifies these entities that the humans just see as tools. Then I started thinking about the separatists’ system in System Collapse and how Murderbot remarks that it might be friendly, or it might just be that it hasn’t explicitly been programmed to be unfriendly. And then I started thinking about ART, and how Murderbot calling it an asshole is basically a term of endearment. And now I’m thinking about how subservience can look like friendliness, and how being able to choose when and to whom to be kind is a cornerstone of murderbot’s personhood. Being a hater as a form of self-actualization.

[chimaerakitten]

Someone asked for a visual of how I prep yardages of fabric for washing, and I went, "Sure, I have work I need to procrastinate from anyway." 😅

In case it's useful:

[chimaerakitten]

Nothing more embarrassing than accidentally using a big word wrong because now I'm simultaneously both stupid and pretentious, the worst combination of all time

[chimaerakitten]

I recently tried my hand at making a paper dragon puppet for the first real time — and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out! The character is Temeraire from His Majesty’s Dragon.

Lately, I’ve been in a pretty low rut due to job loss and some difficult health realizations. But for the first time in a long while, I felt a real spark of creativity — and, even better, I actually had the energy to act on it!

I’ve also been able to truly read and focus on a book again, something I haven’t managed in ages. Naturally, I revisited His Majesty’s Dragon by the ever-talented Naomi Novik. So here’s to her and her wonderful writing, which has inspired so many — myself included!

Here’s a still image to show off some of the finer details!

Materials used:

Card stock of unknown weight (left over from my teaching days)

Crayola watercolor pencils

Staedtler pigment liner (0.5)

Posca pens

Everything is held together by a lot of hot glue… seriously, an alarming amount of hot glue.

(Tagging @naominovik to hopefully make her smile with my goofy work.

[chimaerakitten]

An amazing fact about the movie Master and Commander (2003) is that while all of the other characters were played by actors, Peter Weir managed to get the real Preservèd Killick to play Preservèd Killick. And that’s true

[chimaerakitten]

I did some studies of the sky on a plane yesterday and had doodled Temeraire on one of them while waiting for the sky to change. So I decided to add the rest of Lily's formation really quick on the rest after I got home >w<

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[chimaerakitten]

Éowyn, disguised as Dernhelm, among the Riders of Rohan ⚔️

Based on Eugéne Grasset’s “Jeanne chevauchant au milieu des hommes d’armes” (1894)

[chimaerakitten]

I've just finished the first Murderbot book and it's very funny coming from Star Trek to this. In Star Trek you have androids and such actively campaigning for themselves to be considered full people with rights that deserve the same considerations as anyone else. Meanwhile in Murderbot all the humans are telling this guy that it's a person with rights and it's their friend and they like it and its response is basically

[chimaerakitten]

A gaggle of Jade Dragons for RustlingLeaves for this year's Temeraire Summer Exchange! Since they also asked for sketches, here's me trying to figure out how to draw Jade Dragons:

The wings are inspired by the common swift (Apus apus); they have a fast, dynamic flight which would match a Jade's.

This also means that the "arm" part of the wing is shorter than the "finger" part, which would mean that the wings are rather long when folded up. That also matches the description of Jade Dragons having dragging wings when walking.

I pondered either giving them a short mane or some frills or nothing and then went with a short mane.

For the horns I went with simple antler-like ones in adult dragons, they take a moment to grow though. The fifth dragon (the one landing) is a young dragon and therefore has more nub-like horns. (On that note: the fourth dragon is supposed to be old and therefore more grey in appearance than the others.)

Since dragons do apparently have external ears, I gave the Jades small ears to be more aerodynamic.

The colours of the Jades were inspired by this dagger ^^

[chimaerakitten]

every time you make freezer food for dinner instead of buying takeout like you actually want you should earn two hundred dollars cash and a round of applause

[chimaerakitten]

I love AUs that make lies or misunderstandings true, so pray consider with me an AU where Laurence IS Emily’s bio dad. Maybe he met Jane after they were both involved in some action and then he finds himself tripping into some good old premarital sex and he can’t even REGRET it because she’s fierce and hard and when she tells him what to do it’s really much easier to just do what she says. (We all know Sub Will is true I trust)

And they keep up a correspondence even while they can’t see eachother often and before Will knows it he’s organizing his plans to court her and introduce her to his mother and—

Jane mentions the pregnancy offhandedly, with a complaint about the back pain this kid is already giving her and it had better be a girl, so help her.

Laurence’s brain fully crashes. Riley has to come check on him after a while and finds him having a nervous breakdown over course charting because now he has to find a way to get to Jane’s covert before she has the baby (“I don’t even know how far along she is, Tom,” he despairs, as if that’s the main point and not the fact that he’s like three seconds away from either commandeering the whole ship or deserting his post.). If he just gets there before the baby comes he can convince her to get married (he has no illusions that he will have to convince her, but he was expecting to be able to have a long and amicable courtship to do so!!!)

Riley manages to convince him to talk to their commanding officer. Everyone is very understanding about needing to make sure the kid that comes is legitimate. Arrangements are made while Laurence is vibrating in the corner. He does manage to have the sense to send word ahead to Jane so he’s not just bursting up to the covert doors and embarrassing her.

Convincing her to marry him is grueling. Jane genuinely doesn’t see the need to, but when he desperately points out that this way the baby will be able to visit his family openly and he’ll be able to provide for her if something should happen to either of them, she does agree—on the condition that he’s not to be Weird About It and try to turn her into a Proper Wife and all that or make her move in with his family or something. And of course if the baby is a girl he’s NOT going to interfere with her becoming Excidium’s captain in the future. Will is like yes okay I will come stay with you at the covert when I’m not on the sea just PLEASE marry me. My mother is already going to be upset that I couldn’t follow the thirty step courting plan we came up with I MUST give her the satisfaction of our at least being married before the babe comes. And Jane is like well thank god I don’t have to deal with a THIRTY STEP COURTING PLAN THEN.

They’re married in short order and Lady Allendale doesn’t chew Will out too much about getting a woman pregnant before they’re married. Excidium is still a bit iffy about this whole marriage thing but he supposes that it at least makes more children more likely.

And Emily is born and Will immediately falls in love. That’s his daughter!! His baby girl!! He goes back to his ship delirious with love.

And now come the complications such as: Will now knows information about the corps that a lot of people would really prefer he not know! They keep the Longwing captains secret for a reason, and here’s this duty bound Navy guy (derogatory) who could very well decide to get overprotective and block Emily’s future inheritance.

So Jane maybe. Doesn’t really tell anyone that it was a Navy man? And Will just kind of. Presents her as employed by the corps, so people assume she’s a maid or a cook on a covert. This is fine. Everything is fine! Whenever Will’s ship docks he gets to visit his impressive wife and wonderful daughter and uh. Their dragon. Um. He’s still getting used to that part.

After the initial panic and Surge of Love passes Will does have to grapple with his own feelings about not only women serving in the army (which tbf he’s been fairly chill about outwardly), but his daughter specifically serving. He compensates for this by teaching her as much about ships as he can. Look he’s getting such a good grade in Treating His Daughter as An Officer, Jane!!

Jane: :\ Will are you trying to poach our daughter for the Navy

Will, who now has the thought in his head of getting to serve beside his kid: …nnnno?

It’s all good natured though, and they continue in that holding pattern for years as Will moves up the ranks and then, well. The Amitie still happens. Will’s name isn’t put in the lots due to his marriage, but the lots never really mattered in the first place. He still harnesses Temeraire. There’s a good deal less initial fear involved, and Will is able to help mock up a better harness from the start, and he knows a little of how deep the bond between a dragon and their captain is. And he does tell Temeraire, quietly, that his wife is a captain to a dragon herself, and his daughter will be glad to meet him. (Emily is, delighted to have not just one aviator parent but two. Temeraire is glad to have her on his crew because he can at least trust that there’s someone else that values Laurence like he does. Also she is very good at washing his scales and curls up on his back while Laurence reads to them, so. He approves of this tiny child.)

Will, king of keeping his mouth shut for propriety’s sake, could mention these facts at any point to anyone else to smooth things over. He does not do this. Why would he. He’s pretty openly treating Emily as his daughter but like. He’s also doing the same with the other runners assigned to him. Probably the first anyone hears about it is because Harcourt is obviously wary of him giving her the proper respect, and so he quietly tries to reassure her.

“My wife serves in the corps, and I would be a dreadful husband if I hadn’t learned to cope with her profession, especially considering my daughter will one day take her spot.”

Harcourt connects several dots and says, a little too loud, “You’re married to a Longwing Captain???”

And everyone is like dude what the fuck why didn’t you mention this WHO are you married to

And Emily, who is present because I’ve decided she’s being a very Underfoot Child to her dad since she hasn’t seen him in a while, just kind of goes, “Uh???” And gestures between them. There is, the other aviators note with alarm, a semblance.

“JANE ROLAND?” Someone says incredulously. “SHE MARRIED A NAVY MAN??”

[chimaerakitten]

Excerpt from Observations on the Order Draconia in Europe, with Notes on the Oriental Breeds by Edward Howe

Yay, reveal time! This was my piece for @travellingdragon for the 2025 Temeraire Summer Exchange! I was honored to tackle the two canon Indian Breeds and a bunch of fun headcanons.

These guys are both intentionally long and snake-like. The Nilgiri Cutter doesn't have any canon description, so I got to do a bunch of fun stuff. I imagine both it and the Bengal have actually good names in their native lands but I don't know enough about the Indian subcontinent to attempt assigning them. I think the English would just call them the "Bengal" and the "Nilgiri", even though those are regions because 17th century Englishmen were. Uh. A little racist.

I also apologize for any weird text: trying to write these from the perspective of a 17th century english naturalist is a grand challenge. Full text can be found transcribed on the AO3 post!

Extra bonus wingspan comparison between them for reading this far:

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Ymroddiad

or a series of drawings inspired by this scene:

“The hills were odd; irregular and richly covered with grass, they drew the eye queerly as they went overhead. ‘Oh,’ said Emily suddenly, on the forward lookout, craning her head over Temeraire’s shoulder to look down at them [...]. Temeraire’s wing-beats slowed. ‘Oh,’ he said. The valley was full of them: not hills but barrow-mounds, raised over the dragons where they had breathed their last. Here and there an outthrust horn or spike came jutting from the sod. In places a little fall of earth had bared the white curve of a jawbone. [...] They flew on silently, above the verdant deserted green, Temeraire’s shadow flowing and rippling over the spines and hollows of the dead.”

Empire of Ivory, chapter 14

and by @elexuscal's vision of a hypothetical painting of the burial grounds. I've added image descriptions with some further details and context.