#thank you for the enrichment in my enclosure

[misscrazyfangirl321]

Space Pirate + tree, please!

See, the thing was, right, he knew what it was. Like, objectively, he absolutely did. He might not have gotten the education Mister Fancy over there got (just because he was supposed to be on the ship, not the children of people who hid in the cargo), but he did read books. He knew what a tree was.

But man, that thing was massive. It dwarfed the four of them, branches extending out in all directions, at least twice as big around as him.

He moved without thinking, scrambling up the tree, ignoring the way the bark dug into his palms. It was much more textured than the shiny metal of the ship, much easier to hold onto as he pulled himself up. Higher, higher, not giving a thought to the ground; there was only up.

It was.... Okay, he could admit it: it was pretty. Maybe even beautiful, or whatever. From all the stories he'd heard up top, this place should've been a wasteland, but Allie's peeps... For all that the way they treated her was messed up, they'd done a good job with the land. Everywhere, as far as the eye could see, fields of vibrant green.

Ryn would love it up here.

Not letting himself overthink it, he called down to her (and whoa, okay, he was a little higher than he realized), "Hey, Ryn, come check this out!"

Her answer came with a laugh that did nothing to disguise her terror: "No thanks, I don't really do heights!"

Well. He'd have to help her with that sooner or later, but in the meantime... He grabbed a leaf, the most vividly green one he could find, and made his way back down, way less gracefully than he'd ever admit.

"Here ya go!" He held out the leaf, and Ryn grinned, tucking it behind her ear without hesitation. And... Yeah. She was beautiful.

[magic-fandoms]

∞ ∞ ∞ :3

I got so fucking excited when I saw this in my activity feed, you have no idea.

-

Song: No Time For Toxic People by Imagine Dragons

"Take a look outside, it's a beautiful day, yeah

Yeah, it's a beautiful day, yeah

I'm gonna keep it that way, that way, ayy

Take a real good look, it's a beautiful day, yeah

Yeah, it's a beautiful day, yeah

I'm gonna keep it that way, that way, ayy"

---

Song: Call Me What You Like by Lovejoy

"I like to think that I'm

The only guy she'll see tonight"

-

"I'm not paranoid, I'm a realist

I know you're gonna kill me"

---

Song: Hear Me by Imagine Dragons

"Maybe if I fall asleep, I won't breathe right

Can nobody hear me?

I've got a lot that's on my mind

I cannot breathe

Can you hear it too?"

[cottoncandytoomuchcheese]

I got to hang out with @beagleboysinc and make some awesome drawings togther. We switched every minute and I think they turned out amazing.

[neatnete]

they're bonding

[eavangeek]

I know this may sound stupid and you don’t have to reply if you don’t wish to, but your emmrich fics on ao3 have honestly brought me a good bit of joy in an otherwise dark time of my life and even if theyre smutty its still a comforting read !! thank you for writing, and i hope others send messages similar, we need to let the writers know how much we enjoy their work !

[moookar]

hola moookie do you perchance have beginner/intermediate tutorials on lighting and/or edge control? for some friends :)

I gotta go in a few so here's one video on edges !! I will return in an hour or so !! https://youtu.be/nnhj5efzN_w?si=vwsq7VujlgvtL9Wy

[charmwasjess]

🦷/ 🛳️ / 👻 for the ask game? 👀👀

Ohhhh, Rochen comin' in with some FUN ones! <3 Thank you!!

🦷 Is there a chapter, scene, or WIP you're dreading to write (but is necessary to your plot)? Share a snippet or tell us about it!

Jocasta Nu was tired. A colorless dawn rose somewhere on the Coruscant horizon, though obscured by endless clouds and smoke and traffic, she couldn’t see it. 

She leaned against the side of the duracrete building with her hood pulled up against the drizzle and listened to Count Dooku, erstwhile leader of the Confederacy of Independent Systems and sometime Lord of the Sith, be noisily sick over the rail. 

Oughh, 🤝 oh my brother in arms united against our tricky chapter fours! Yes, The Thunder Answered Back chapter 4 has been my bane. 

I think a lot of it is that for 25K, it’s really been the Jocasta and Dooku show, this really intimate boil between them, now the other plot threads and other characters are moving into intersection. A lot of this convergence is powered by mechanisms that I introduced in the first chapter, but now I want to go back and re-explain them to my intelligent reader, predictably leading to awful sentences.

🛳 Are there any new ships you want to write for? (Platonic, romantic, or anything in between.)

—OOOH SUCH AS CASUAL LOWKEY BACKGROUND CODYWAN IN MY TIME TRAVEL AU BECAUSE YOU GAVE ME BRAINWORMS ABOUT THAT SHIP IN RIFLE??? SUCH AS THAT, TUMBLR USER ROCHEN? <3 <3 

I also want to write some Sifo-Dyas/Dooku/Jocasta, a ship I’ve loved to read but haven’t done a lot with. I just think those two deserve to make a nice Dooku sandwich. Gay man, aro woman, and their bisexual confused idiot.

👻 Is there a new genre you'd like to write?

Humor! It’s weird, one of the most highly prized compliments I ever get on my work is when people find my fics funny. (The one I get the most frequently is “weirdly” funny, which is frankly even better to me, because it suggests it was a surprise.) But I’ve never considered myself a humor writer. Partially because it seems like humor and crack are sometimes expected to be synonymous, and while I love crack and respect people who write it, that’s not what I’m doing - whatever humor is set in otherwise “serious” fics.

I think it’s also just daunting to say “hey I wrote this because I was trying to be funny on purpose,” because of course, how horrible to admit you’re trying to do something and have it flop, and humor can be so subjective! So, anyway, I want to do more with that genre in the coming year and be more brave about it. We could all use a laugh sometimes, and actually, I think I’m funny as shit, so at least one person will be having fun with it.

[pulledpurplecurtains]

baps your hanging planter so you swing around. gently

do owls purr is that a thing that they do? probably not so i shall instead be hooting softly while enjoying my gentle swings thank you 💜

[persephonaae]

It’s so refreshing that there are queer people where I work, it is so comforting

[subzeroparade]

What's a ballet with real snazzy costume work, in your humble and/or professional opinion? c:

Oh, you’ve activated my trap card - asking about costume design and ballet and not expecting me to barf up the entirety of my PhD. I’ve also done work on the ballet blancs costumes (Giselle and La Sylphide specifically) but they are interesting on a theoretical level and not so much visually, so I’ll skip that.

So here are some personal favs of mine - the highlights, if you will. Caveat: long post, and mostly limited to the work of the Ballets Russes, because they are my longtime obsession and I think (and have argued) for their role in fundamentally changing stage and costume design (to say nothing of dance, and George Balanchine can sit the fuck down). I didn’t put that in my thesis but I wanted to.

Anyway tldr in the first decade of the 20th century a troupe of dancers from the Russian Imperial Ballet (later the Mariinsky) travelled through Europe under impresario Serge Diaghilev, for what became known as the Saisons Russes, or Russian Seasons. They performed both opera and ballet, and are probably best remembered today (if at all) as the troupe that danced the premier of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and caused a riot at the Theatre des Champs Elysées. The eminent artists that worked with them include Debussy, Cocteau, Picasso, Chanel - and these are only a few recognisable names. But my focus was primarily on the Russian roots of the ballet, in their visual language and presentation of gender and nationality, more precisely around the work of artist Leon Bakst and dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. 

Second image of Nijinsky from Le Dieu Bleu, and Bakst’s set design from Scheherazade (1911). These are mainly photos and scans I have from the year I spent in the archives of the Palais Garnier (the Paris Opera) where all the good stuff is.

The crux of why these costumes are insanely interesting to me is because they are very specific to their time - they are a product of a resurgence in nationalist interests in Russian art (Diaghilev ran Mir Isskustva and worked with Savva Mamontov before he organised the BR) as well as a carefully crafted, highly artificial presentation of Otherness, expressly destined for export to the west. French audiences in the first decade of the 20th century (because there is a stark cut-off at the beginning of WW1) still had an appetite for Orientalism, despite their flagging colonial power. What the Russians brought them was compelling mix of performative Orientalism just vague enough to be appealing and fantastical, visually intriguing, and refreshing to a society that had otherwise come to recognise itself as decadent, fallen “victim” to modernity. In the athletic virtuosity of Russian bodies, Bakst’s exotic visual language and the soaring music of Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky, the French devoured what they deemed a sort of noble savagery (yes, that kind). Despite the oversaturation of Orientalism in painting throughout the 19th century, the French identified a kind of masculine vigour and freedom in these live performances they found they themselves lacked, and longed for. Primitivism, as demonstrated in myriad ways by the BR, was for them a way to reconnect with a virility that they felt modernity had stolen, or at the very least, weakened. If you think this sounds eerily akin to the discourse around mounting desire for war to “cleanse” or “reset” Europe during that same period, you are right. 

A few of Bakst’s lesser known designs from the archive, for context (including a reprod by Barbier which I don’t have the OG of but is saved in my Bakst folder so please take my word for it). I have a thousand more of these but tumblr has an image limit per post 😤

Tamara Karsavina, who often performed with Nijinsky, and one of my most beloved historical figures. The existence of a strong classical ballet cirruculumin the UK today is in part thanks to her. 

One of her most famous roles, as the Firebird:

Nijinsky is by far the most interesting figure to come out of the BR. He combined virtuosity and strength (that most audiences identified as masculine) with a glittering, joyful, and expressive queerness on stage (and off). Some of his greatest roles are expressly feminine in their costume design: Le Spectre de La Rose, for example.

There’s a colorised version of this out there where you can see every pink rose petal on him.

While others are much more decorative but still markedly Orientalist (or Russian-Orientalist): Le Dieu Bleu, La Peri, Les Orientales, L’Oiseaux de Feu. 

This last image above is not, the last I saw it, in a private collection. It hangs above the vestibule of the Palais Garnier archives (also Napoleon’s private hangout room) where it faces the sort of “diptych” version that features Karsavina, and on occasion I would stand below them and weep quietly).

Either way, there is an argument to be made about Nijinsky’s physicality and, more importantly nationality as a kind of avenue of permission through which the French could admire both his beauty and athleticism and even, to a degree, imagine themselves in his place while still maintaining that safe distance of Otherness.  

But I would argue that his greatest role was the Golden Slave in Scheherazade, a wild, erotic orientalist fantasy that has little to nothing to do with the actual tale of Scheherazade. In it, Nijinsky - bejewelled, wild, ecstatic, (and yeah often in blackface) - cavorts with Zobeide, the Sultan’s favourite, in a very sexually explicit storyline. Both characters are equally decorative in their costumes, and both, in real life, were recognisably queer(ed) figures. It’s Scheherazade in particular that helped accelerate an obsessive trend in fashion (Paul Poiret was at the centre) for Orientalist design. Bakst himself did some silhouettes that are hard to distinguish from his costume design, and through the remarkable illustrations by Paul Iribe, Georges Lepape and Georges Barbier, we can see some of the blatant repetition of motif and silhouette in these ensembles that are designed, among other things, to be worn to the theatre. 

3rd and 5th are depictions of costumes of the Firebird and Zobeide respectively; the rest are fashion plates. This doesn’t even include the lampshade dress - which I don’t have a handy picture of, but have seen in real life - that is a pretty blatant melange of the Firebird and Zobeide, as designed by Poiret. Below is one of my favourite examples: A woman in a lampshade-style dress, standing against a backdrop not unlike Bakst’s set design above, attended by a archetypal oriental servant wearing Nijinsky’s Golden Slave costume.

These motifs also proliferated in advertisements and in all kinds of other consumer products (perfumes, for example, and decorative objects). Thus, there’s a performative aim in wearing these designs that I read as a sort of pseudo-kinetic empathy (and can funnnily enough probably be compared to cosplay). There is an attempt here to channel what is being presented onstage, to reenact it, to physically embody it, in the way that fashion is, at its core, a tool through which to construct identity. That the French pulled inspiration from an openly queer man leaping across the stage dripping in jewels, and from femme fatal-style odalisques, says a lot about the visual and cultural impact the BR had on the theatre-going public at the time.

You can see in these fan designs by Paquin some pretty obvious references to the BR aesthetic: L’apres-midi d’un faune, Daphnis et Chloe, Scheherazade, even a little Le Pavillon d’Armide in that first one. 

Nijinsky was not the only one to queer the stage: despite not being a dancer trained to the level of the BR troupe, Ida Rubinstein, no doubt purposefully channelling Sarah Bernhardt, was also a beloved stage presence, whether as the sly harem favourite Zobeide or as the strikingly androgynous St Sebastian, gayest of saints. 

This is not to say there haven’t been wonderful and brilliant costume designs since - and quite a few known fashion designers working alongside dance companies, to great success or otherwise. I will, however, shoutout my favourite contemporary work: Akram Khan’s Giselle, which has everything and yet nothing to do with Adolph Adam’s 1842 piece. I don’t even want to post pictures because the costumes of the nobles (the landowners, in this very apocalyptically late-stage capitalist version) are so fucking breathtaking in relation to the overall design, and their entrance itself is probably one of the most spectacular parts of the ballet, that all I can say is just see it. Or buy the dvd. What Khan does gesturally is beyond words, what Vincenzo Lamagna does with Adam’s original score is visceral and haunting and churns my insides. I make a point to see it live at least once a season when it’s touring with the ENB, and I will do so until it leaves the repertory or until I die. It’s my contemporary Scheherazade. It’s a gesamtkunstwerk. 

Tldr Leon Bakst is one of the greatest costume designers of the 19th and 20th century and criminally underrated. 

It’s not ballet, and it’s not the sumptuous costumes from Boris Godunov, but as a bonus here’s my favourite image of opera star Fedor Chaliapine as Ivan the Terrible.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

i would kill for your de/isat swaps theyre so good already and i am eating it up. so glad im not the only one who saw the parallels 🔥

Thank you! I have been having an absolute blast drawing them; the parallels are too good to not have fun with it!

[snek-eyes]

You recently claimed "there are no stupid questions," so I'd like to know what nail polish/manicure you'd choose for Crowley, Aziraphale, and whoever else from the cast tickles your fancy. :) And does the choice vary if they walk into your salon and tell you it's for a ~date~? :D

Aaaha 😂 okay, to the salon we go! 💅✨

Aziraphale canonically gets his nails done regularly, but I think he'd normally go in for a simple manicure without polish, maybe just a clear coat. He enjoys the experience and the practice of keeping his corporation neat and tidy, but doesn't feel the need for alteration.

That said, if he walks into my hypothetical salon and mentions he's going for a date, I think I could nudge him into something with a subtle bit of sparkle.

(Rumor has it, Portfolio, Hope, Aria)

I doubt he'd actually go for Aria, but I'd suggest it to get a laugh and make the others seem reasonable. And hey, maybe someday!

He'd pick one of the subtle ones and giggle over being daring. And of course, Crowley would actually notice and be impressed by the change.

Crowley I see as a matte black creme for most days, but he's a multichrome guy when he's feeling fancy. Maaaybe some understated shimmer. I don't really feel sparkles for him, but threw a couple in to tempt him with.

(Eclipse, Lights Out, Annabelle, Diablo)

He's briefly intrigued by Diablo, until he notices the name and gets annoyed at falling into a cliche. Maybe if there was something as dark as Annabelle but more red, he's got an aesthetic to maintain, after all.

If we want a touch of angst, for things they'd avoid: I think Aziraphale would have complicated feelings about applying earthly golds to his corporation in such a way. And Crowley would find magnetics that imitate space charming, but find them too lacking to enjoy wearing them himself. Which is a shame, because he could miracle them perfect without having to wait for the dang magnet.

Maggie I see as a person who enjoys the self-care ritual of painting her own nails. She would mostly do solid cremes or jellies, but once in a while she'd enjoy an afternoon playing around with stamping and other cutesy nail art.

(The entire Tea Crèmes collection is so her aesthetic. Stamps from Maniology, those photos are me and I can't currently remember all the colors, but the orange is Zyler The Cat.)

However, for a special occasion, I can see her branching out like Aziraphale and having fun with a jelly flakie or a shimmer.

(Gumdrop, Fairy Dust)

Nina initially grumbles about getting dragged along for this hypothetical, but then her eye gets caught by the foils. Maybe she goes with the classic gold, but her coffee shop suggests she likes blue. She spends the rest of the day catching sight of her nails and smiling to herself.

(Skyline, AU)

[tangledinink]

man you are on FIRE with the comic updates!! Every single one of them is fantastic and we (the fans) are thriving! Don’t burn yourself out tho please, yes this many updates at once is fun and cool but I hope you’re taking care of yourself too :)

YOU THINK IM DONE!? I HAVE MORE--

[shannonsketches]

I have a headcanon I'm curious about your opinion on if you don't mind, as I've seen many differing opinions on this.

In BotW, Urbosa brings up Nabooru by name, even stating her to be the namesake of Divine Beast Vah Naboris. The Divine Beasts are also believed to be based off of the masks once worn by the ancient Sages, and to me the way the avatars wear the old sage helms when you put on the Divine Helms all but confirms it.

The Nabooru we know and love, I am not sure how likely it is her name alone survived all the way to Hyrule, especially having the ancient part of TotK being over 10,000 years before the Era of the Wilds, and OoT being even further before that (at least as I headcanon it. Hyrule has been destroyed and refounded before. Why couldn't it have happened again?)

That being said, I believe that while the tale of the Sage of Spirit may not have made it to the creation of the Divine Beasts, her name did, often being a beautiful and strong name for young Gerudo. Eventually this name landed upon the young girl who would eventually grow up to harness the very power of the skies, gaining the graces of the newborn kingdom of Hyrule and fighting against her people's corrupted, demonic king, donning a mask that would inspire a machine that embraced her power and then mothering a bloodline of strong matriarchs who would carry her command over lightning in their blood.

Therefore: I believe that the Sage of Lighting from the Era of Myth is named Nabooru, likely unknowingly sharing the name of another great Gerudo hero from a time long forgotten.

That's a great headcanon, and it works well within your framing! And I agree that there's probably been thousands of children named after the original sages. It sounds solid to me!

I haven't read much on the differing headcanons, so I'm in no place to really compare them opinion-wise, as I personally don't place the Wilds Era with the other timelines. It feels to me like a retcon/consolidation of all the games, so I don't try to place it in concurrence, but I salute those of you who do! It's hard work!

This isn't intended to debunk anyone's theory, I'm just gonna ramble about neat things in Game Design real quick lol

I do think there are very distinct and intentional design pulls from Nabooru in the SoL's design that are not (as far as I know) consistent with other Gerudo design, including Riju and Urbosa. Though her design is Completely Different from Nabooru in OoT, there are a lot of very subtle detail references:

Credit to @/sidonisms for the model pull

The most obvious to me is the color of her secret stone: Despite the color for lightning stones in both BotW and TotK being topaz (Ganondorf's favored gem and pre-triforce ability in OoT) and it becoming more of a gold on Riju, this sage's stone is specifically the color of the Spirit token from Ocarina of Time (shown more clearly below). It's also the same shape, but I've dismissed that since they're all the same shape.

She also appears to be one of the few if not the only?? Gerudo with a vertical earring, where most of them wear hoops (also true in OoT! The other Gerudo wear studs like Ganondorf did pre-timeskip -- fun fact, Ganondorf wears hoops in TotK).

While most Gerudo wear an arm band or two, most of them are solid bands. The Sage's, I suspect, is intentionally complex (albeit much more simplified than OoT's) to be reminiscent of Nabooru's. The placement and shape language in her necklace, the placement and stone pattern of her belt, the golden leg braces that only resemble Ganondorf's also imply references to me (only Nabooru and Ganondorf wore the star shaped crests in OoT), and her neon lip color! Which I take to be a reference to Nabooru's original Ganguro Girl design influence.

ALTHOUGH,

It's also very possible that they split Nabooru's aspects into two separate characters; As this woman's high ponytail in a golden cuff, distinctly shaped/colored necklace, and apparent status as Ganondorf's right hand also appear to be direct references to Nabooru:

Maybe it's like Majin Buu and they split her into Nabu and Ru.

Or OOOOH MAYBE it's the SAME character, and it IS a direct reference to OoT Nabooru, since they both have the same eyes and lips and skin tone (and nail polish!), and she just changed her look when she started doubting Ganondorf. I think I just gave myself a new hc, haha, thank you for making me think about this.

ANYWAY!!

For me and my headcanons I feel exactly the same way about the Sage of Lightning that I do about TotK Ganondorf in that -- Yep, that's Nabooru. Also, it's not Nabooru at all. It both is and isn't. It's Naboo-AU-ru.

But my personal hcs aside, I think yours work very well within your framing and make a lot of sense! My opinion is "Yes, Good."

[hauntedpotat]

Marching band marching band marching band

MARCHING BAND!!!! 💯✨️👍🥁🥁🥺💯💯‼️‼️👍👍💯💯🥺🥁🥁🥁‼️✨️✨️

[b-blushes]

FINISHED THE DRAWING I'VE BEEN WORKING ON FOR LITERALLY MONTHS WOOOOHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!