Second In The Series. I’m Really Proud Of How This Turned Out, I Kind Of Let Go And Painted Nonstop

Here's the full artwork I did for the upcoming Avatar concert! Thank you for having me🎶

Tour dates and info: https://avatarinconcert.com

Your one ask makes me wonder, did Ruck have any history with Crescia? He did know about that one tunnel in the palace too, which I think was under a different queen. Guess his experience shows that there really will always be more queens for him, damn

Ruck had some complicated history with Crescia but wasn't in her face like this. I'll write about it one day. Ruck was not Ruck then, he was a snivelling little worm lurking at the periphery of a much more powerful and wise efheby.

But I don't want anyone thinking Ruck had any influence over Crescia; he was just there in the world when she and her forces were establishing the beginning of the country. Even the senets then were impressed by her, and to this day put respect on her name.

this test of the mountain

Such a face of unbridled rage can only belong to The Johnny Jhonny. (I love it, thank ye)

"Send me a ✍ and a character and I’ll draw the character horribly on MS Paint." I have two words for you: Johnny. Jhonny.

Life’s greatest mystery: is this a drawing of Shou Suzuki or Johnny Jhonny?

Send me a ✍ and a character and I’ll draw the character horribly on MS Paint.

john berryman, this is a poem written from the pov of a sheep

At first hearing that Duane was at any point in his life anything other than a bookish, pedantic wizard nerd caught me off guard, but then you think of all the times he ends up punching people and begin to wonder if there’s more ‘bully’ left in him than he’d care to admit

Wait, what was the divine revelation that made Duane pursue priesthood? Or will it come up in the comic later?

I don’t know if it’ll ever come up in the comic, and Duane’s always been kind of embarrassed to speak of it aloud because it makes him feel like one of those backwoods zealots that preaches anecdotes from a stump, but yeah, he had an Experience when he was a kid. Ssaelism is a very rational faith. It doesn’t encourage you to go around saying Ssael appeared to you in a vision and told you where you left your lucky kedis foot. If you tell your priest that Ssael speaks to you he’ll roll his eyes and suggest you stop mixing beer and wine.

Anyway, Duane was badly injured in a street accident (it was totally Lemuel’s fault, he was being a little shit) and very nearly didn’t make it. Duane was a very rambunctious kid - some might say a bully - and though his grandfather was teaching him pymary Duane tended to use it like, well, Sette might. To make his brother and their peers miserable. After he was hurt he was bedbound for a few months and his interests abruptly turned bookish. At the same time, frigging Sonum Ssael started talking to him in the back of his head, saying he needed to straighten the hell up.

Even after he recovered Duane was hobbling for a year and never took up his old role of neighbourhood bully. Instead he began studying his grandfather’s books, reading everything Ssael ever wrote, and spending way too much time in the ghers library. He shocked his grandfather by beginning to beat him in their play-duels, and shocked his dad by humbly requesting to attend seminary and become a cleric instead of becoming his apprentice in their family print shop.

Duane always heard Ssael with startling clarity in his prayers. That voice went away after his bad night in the snow.

:-]

Well now you and Anon have me rereading Ch14 and I've noticed that... Lemuel is much kinder than Duane! Sometimes it feels like Duane is mostly kind when it's convenient, whereas Lemuel looks out for others even outside of his immediate sphere. Heck, just one example: Duane heard how Lem had to strangle someone to death and... didn't even blink twice! I know they're at war, but that seemed so cold. I don't know! tl;dr They're great characters that make me think :)

It’s an interesting observation! I think that Lemuel and Duane are both very kind, but they are also pretty masculine. And at the risk of perpetuating stereotypes, it doesn’t seem that masculinity generally allows a man to easily give voice to his concerns and emotions. So Duane wouldn’t hear that Lemuel had to strangle a foeman to desperately save himself, and then turn around to Lem and ask if he was doing okay. He wouldn’t even do it in private. Likewise Lemuel wouldn’t ask Duane how he was doing after his travails at the Academy and his scary stint in Fachlyne. They just weren’t raised to talk to each other that way. Blame it on them mostly not having a mother, or on their grandpa being a hardass or on Alderode generally expecting men to be so emotionally opaque - but it’s not how these boys communicate with each other

But it doesn’t mean they don’t love each other or don’t do kindnesses for one another. Duane worked very hard to get himself transferred to the same Order as Lemuel. Duane’s very presence is in fact a great show of concern for his brother’s welfare. Seeking him out to fight alongside him in that first battle in ch14 was an act of kindness and concern. After the vliegeng falls from the sky, Lemuel goes into the chapel with Duane to be with him because he knew how nervous the whole thing had made him. The Adeliers may not *say* the right things to each other, but they are *there* for each other.

There were some other more subtle relationship dynamics at play in that chapter as well. In a sense, Lemuel’s ability to show concern for others was a privilege he could afford because he wasn’t an officer. Duane was, and didn’t feel he could show too much compassion because that’s a vulnerability. His charges would respect him less and have less confidence in their own roles if he wasn’t always a paragon of authority and strength to them. So he was always very concerned with their physical welfare, but showing concern for their emotional welfare was off the table.

(you see this learned pattern perfectly repeat fifteen years later with him and Sette)

You also see the brick wall between them in chapter 7 after their stickfight. Duane nudges a brick out of it and invites Lemuel to tell him why he’s been acting weird, but Lemuel does not budge. And Duane does not insist. Just like he never followed up with him in the army. Lemuel breaks down and bawls in his arms one night and Duane looks totally lost, defaulting back to how he would comfort him when he was a little boy. Lemuel holds on to his asploded comrade’s tooth and Duane just yells at him to burn it. Lemuel hacks up a giant boar in the wake of another comrade’s death and Duane continues on with his duties. Lemuel sets a cart of war prisoners on fire and Duane decides not to ever think about it again for fifteen years.

No, I don’t think the issue is one of a lack of kindness. It’s not knowing how to express his (frankly quite severe) concern for his brother in a socially acceptable way. Duane would have done anything for Lemuel, would have died for him happily, but he didn’t have the emotional tools to do what Lemuel really, truly needed.

is ilganyag's interactions with the blacktongues out of sync with time and she has to actively look for -when- to screw around with people or does she keep relatively in sync with the living world?

I almost hate to answer this one 'cause it can curtail theorizing, but we're getting close to it coming up in the comic anyway.

Have you noticed that Sette is interacting with the world on her own timeline? She's not reaching through a waterfall and knocking Ssael's hat off. Living entities - human or senet - are bound to their own timeline. It flows down and around them, the lens through which they view and interact with their reality. Ilganyag is no different. She cannot time travel, personally, inside the khert.

Of course she can theoretically look at memories from any time and glean valuable, highly anachronistic information from them, but she herself is a causal being trapped inside the khert that cannot interact with instantiated reality and people from another timeline. This would all be so, so much simpler if she could change history. Instead all she can do is research the future through scavenged memories, and try to change what happens.

It's a really awkward position, I find, but fascinating. To know pieces of the future, to have goals that you want, to change little things over a long span of time and watch how you're nudging the future in a different direction. It's like playing labyrinth, tilting the board back and forth as the shiny silver marble rolls inexorably forward, avoiding pitfalls, riding the edge, red eye on that goal of goals at the centre.

cytherea tarot i did as a commission for @powerbottomblake <3