Rain Dog @Leucrotta@awoo.space

Honestly I thought Velma was straight and Daphne was female-biased?

Random reading about the Great Chevauchee gets me to the d’Albret family. You can tell a knightly family is old and powerful when their arms are gules. Not quartered or crossed or anything. Just gules.

She is beauty she is grace
That’s her shed fur all over the place

… and right now she could probably sleep through the Battle of Kursk. Luckily I probably don’t need to use that hallway. #siberian #gracefulsprawl

I don’t love Twitter, but it’s okay, and I really don’t want to move elsewhere when it becomes part of the Musk Cinematic Universe

Just if I felt I could, I would skip work today.

Anyway here’s a couple of #wip #drawings from today, a spaceship cockpit (with furry crew) and the court of a Fiendish lord of some sort (not DnD verbatim). Very rough but I feel good about the “blocking” and freehand perspective on these.

Anyway trying to think about happier stuff. I acquired a used book of Frank Frazetta art yesterday, and it's not just the big saturated color paintings but there's entirely too few inked drawings from the 70s which are... I don't think anyone idealizes Frazetta for being delicate, but that's the best way to describe his inks.

okay so I'm at Starbucks drawing (the company's evil, but there's 1 indy place between work and my apartment open after 1900), the barrista shows up to let me know they're closing in 30, says they like my drawings and asks questions - how long have you been drawing, do you work as an artist, but the weird one is "are you a *famous* artist?" Even if I were I can't imagine many people knowing about me beyond a tiny audience.

#drawings tweaked yesterday from the past week. Arctic fox and a friend’s rubber toy character as a hyena; a friend’s dwarf character and a Baphomet; cat, deer and fox pinup characters.

#drawings from the past week tweaked yesterday; if DnD were entirely my lore “ceremorphosis” would turn you into basically cephalopod fantasy MODOC. Here’s a mind flayer and their duergar minions!

The really low key horror is of course there’s a war going on while all this is happening and it’s NOT going well. These aren’t the actions of Germans flush with victory in 1940; most prisoners mentioned were killed in ‘43-‘44. With supply chains failing, Italy switching sides, and the Soviets rolling in, they have apparently limitless resources to kill unarmed people, often children and senior citizens. That’s how much they hate their victims.

This also really jams home the idea of normal folks who would’ve survived into the 1950s through potentially NOW, far more effectively than Holocaust photos I grew up around. There are a few Czechs (apparently Czechs tended to be in there for politics) and I’m actually shocked by the number of Poles (the Nazi hate for Slavs, less loudly proclaimed than their homophobia/antisemitism/anti ziganism/anti blackness, included basically colonizing Poland at a cost in Polish lives).

There’s this Auschwitz Memorial Twitter account I followed as I wanted more education and hopefully by increasing their following improves awareness. They post photos of prisoners (and occasionally SS men) which makes people more “real,” though Soviet POWs and Roma/Sinti rarely got photographed. Photos available of Jewish victims are sometimes pre war, and a time when photos are a big to do means you’re seeing people at times they considered significant moments.

And of course once I stop thinking of G-d as this blonde bearded man everyone loves, who I am are also required to love, and who will make me suffer unless I say the right things (because ability to punish is proof of goodness);

Then G-d includes the action of “acknowledge connection including that I sometimes hurt others and need to stop doing it.” Fear and resentment help me survive immediately, they aren’t long term - and again PTSD dicks my ability to think long term.

Did some thinking about upcoming holiday. Stripped of “pacify the angry adult” baggage (connection involves grief and acknowledging mistakes), Yom Kippur is personally useful but uncomfortable, spiritually equivalent to cleaning the toilet. Praying for longer seems it’d be mindful and potentially make new connections. I now plan to eat so I’m less irritable (being pissed off is the opposite of penitent) and to pray in evenings so longer blocks of activity can help me focus.

What’s coolest?

Riffing off “I’m at the age where I can think of myself as liking Star Wars AND accept that I’m just not interested in a Ki-Adi-Mundi series etc”;

this is complicated by childhood where I HAD TO like stuff, phrased as objectively good or bad (this really fucked me up with stuff I HAD TO like, f’rex turns out I actually like Iron Maiden, and dislike Dragonlance), AND how as sorta the test case for Millenials, GenX got hit by legitimately big game changers we were also told we absolutely loved.

I really hate stubble and am glad when it's gone, but I really hate having to shave daily too. No matter what's going on with me gender wise, if I can ever afford getting my facial hair lasered off I *will*.

Overall I liked it.

My big issue is that after a fairly nice slow build, the story suddenly moves *very* rapidly from

1) revealing one character as incredibly powerful and manipulating things from behind the scenes for some time to

2) revealing that a different character is actually the main villain, with her own motivation, which doesn't feel especially clear, and this feels abrupt enough before

3) there's a hugely long climactic fight which keeps ramping up and having possible endings and by the time *that's* about 2/3 over I'd largely lost interest and kept pushing on for completion's sake.