#(except not really anymore)

[random-kido]

Yippee! You’ve run into your ex roommate about 2 million years into the war

Not so yippee! You’re both 3 seconds away from adjourning the meeting you’re in to fist fight over a stolen can of engex from your college days

…Maybe you can post pone the fist fight for now

Pro: the two angry bisexuals are getting along and you’re being left alone by your annoying coworker to actually finish some work

Con: they’re two disasters waiting to happen and still have shit to work out. Plus they’re a little too tactile on the fucking bridge, so really, you’re not getting any work done. They're both distracting. You hate this.

[queenpawbeans]

Halffoot and Tallmen babies comparisan drawing by Ryoko Kui

[keepthisholykiss]

so i haven't deleted this account (an update)

I have spent the last few months primarily off This Website (and most others actually) thinking about impact, intent, and how using spaces like this impacts my own more personal or selfish goals. and my conclusion is this: i am going to stay on tumblr for some longer period of time until i find a viable alternative.

one of the major changes for me in the last 6 or so months has been the major reflection on my place in academia, the institution i work in and have been prepared to sculpt as an educator. and my resulting thoughts are that i do not want to be a part of it. im done with it and frankly the sooner i stop working in academia the better. my goals and beliefs are rooted in free education and resources for all independent researchers or just curious minds, but i won't wax poetic on the hellscape that is academia.

while i was gone i received a number of asks about how people were disappointed my research would be removed from the site and how it had positively impacted them. that is important, i spent months out of my year last year to argue at an academic conference just how important that exact thing was. and it feels hypocritical to leave and not help produce that valuable research.

the reality is that no company, no social media, and no institution values you over money. i will continue to produce free research, share some of my findings, and also share art or poetry or whatever fun things i can while i am here. i will ALSO continue to be outspoken on the state of this website and encourage everyone to divest from it in whatever ways they can.

i will not be regularly using this website or any other social media (aside from my cohost) but i will be sharing interesting things along the way. if you're still here and still reading this, thanks. this isn't a perfect solution in any way and it will continue to be imperfect but i am literally just one person trying to balance my harm and my good, both of which i am inherently creating by being a human living in a capitalist world. anyway palestine will be free in our lifetimes and i will continue to do everything i can to spread information and help provide resources for those willing to enact change in all of the world.

[spring-ephemeral]

So unfortunately much of the actual executive dysfunction shit still is as bad as before, but I've had some conversations, found some stuff I could still do right now despite everything, and now I feel much better just like, interpersonally and emotionally. So yay me.

[svtskneecaps]

FUCK IT!!!! I MISS WHEN MY MINECRAFT SERVERS HAD CULTURAL EXCHANGE IN THEM!!!! I MISS WHEN MY MINECRAFT SERVERS HAD LANGUAGE BARRIERS IN THEM!!!!! I MISS WHEN WE WERE ALL CRAMMED IN A PIT TOGETHER SCREAMING AND SHAKING AND SOBBING AND CONFUSED AS ALL HELL SITTING IN THE TUMBLR LIVEBLOGS HOLDING HANDS AS WE ALL EXPLAINED WHAT THINGS MEANT, WHAT THE REAL WORLD CULTURAL CONTEXT WAS, WHAT WAS GOING ON IN BITS THE TRANSLATOR COULDN'T GET!!!!! FUCK IT!!!!!!! I'LL TAKE ANOTHER GODDAMN PURGATORY!!!!! GIVE ME A BUNCH OF PEOPLE FORMING SIX PERSON FAMILIES OVER THE SPAN OF THREE TO FIVE DAYS!!!!!!!! GIVE ME THE EVIL SHADOW GOVERNMENT THAT NEVER MADE ANY GODDAMN SENSE, GIVE ME THE STUPID FUCKING EYE WORKERS THAT WERE AGGRAVATINGLY UNBEATABLE, GIVE ME THE CONFUSING ASS BLACK CONCRETE STRUCTURES THAT WENT BASICALLY FUCKING NOWHERE!!!!!! I'LL TAKE IT ALL IF IT MEANS I GET A FRENCH MAN AND A GUY FROM LUXEMBOURG AND A WOMAN FROM SOUTH KOREA SHOOTING THE SHIT IN A MINECRAFT PIT STARTER HOUSE AGAIN!!!!!!!!!! I'LL TAKE IT IF I GET BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE AND FRENCH AND ENGLISH AND SPANISH SITTING AT A FUCKING TABLE IN A SECRET UNDERGROUND MEETING ROOM THEORIZING ABOUT A MINECRAFT CHARACTER WITH AN APPEARANCE BASED ON A JOKE ABOUT A GUY'S DOG BEING AN AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE!!!!!!! GIVE IT BACK!!!!!!!!! GIVE IT BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!

[temporarytemporal]

sketchbook

[v-arbellanaris]

i knowww everyone wants maric to be alistair so bad and i know the books present a younger maric like alistair but im so invested in a completely rotten through to the core maric theirin who has sacrificed everything he has ever had and wanted for power and is now left with nothing but that power and no peers, no great loves of his life and no real family. stuck in a marriage with a friend he didnt love, suffocated by loghain's constant presence bc its a reminder of all the way he's lacking and all the things he "allowed" loghain to push him to do (bc its easier to blame loghain than take responsibility ofc) and loghain's refusal to understand or empathise with his struggle, and stuck with a son he doesn't quite know what to do with and who he can never really make understand everything it cost for him to have this life that even maric himself never got.

[cup-o-stars]

Last part for old GF sketches

(Actually, most of these aren't old at all, but their average is brought down by the last picture, which I drew back in August and kept forgetting to post)

[paradimeart]

i want the sirens to look weirderrrr

[meat-louse]

i keep thinking about this warped sense of history veilguard has. like the lack of tranquil(or mentions of), the lack of acknowledgement of the major atrocities and political events of the previous games. because 10 years is, yes, a long time for one human lifetime, but through the lens of history it’s really not. i mean you don’t even have to be a historian to understand that history keeps living through a societal memory. and if you acknowledge societal memory you can also start talking about the manipulation of the past, of the illusion of “historical fact”, like the previous games did to an extent. sure, maybe there’s no tranquil anymore, but wouldn’t such a horrific practice be spoken about or mentioned by npcs? hell, not only was he alive, but emmrich is a scholar who probably has peers from circles where mages were made tranquil. not even a passing comment about how magic was studied in countries outside of nevarra ten years ago.

and that’s not even mentioning neve being a fucking human mage from tevinter. you can’t even ASK her about elf racism. how is my elven rook supposed to immediately trust her? i feel like if this game had even an ounce of the care that previous games did, even if it still ended slavery in tevinter, it would have treated it in a way that was reflective of real life— the player could meaningfully engage with it. like, basic historical knowledge of the united states, for example, tells us that when slavery ended, the government simply shifted its methods of exploitation. why couldn’t we have seen the effects of a post-slavery tevinter society when there are already so many examples of ways that elves were exploited and marginalized without slavery in the other games.

it’s like, basic a+b=c thinking like i genuinely don’t understand why they made so many changes to the previously established societies if they didn’t want to write the fallout of those changes. dragon age’s depictions of social issues were never spot-on, but at their best they encouraged the player to engage with those issues and ultimately seek to change society for the better. veilguard has no interest in changing society.

sigh short ramble over

[iztea]

an older femzai page design from last year ( the linework is messy on purpose this time btw)

closeups:

[thunderbottle]

*EVERYTHING IS SUBJECTIVE YOURE ALLOWED TO LIKE THE THINGS I DONT LIKE AND VICE VERSA

if youre my mutual and any of this goes against your blog history its okay bc we have a warriors bond and i love you no matter what

[superbat-lmao]

Bruce Wayne dies, and like a prayer, Jason Todd returns to Gotham. Always too late.

He never followed his plans or became Red Hood, instead finishing his schooling and traveling for a while with Talia to stay in shape. He and Damian on and off text or call, but they both know the other is living the way they need to. They’ll always be there, but sometimes you need your own space to figure out what you really want.

When Dick takes up the mantle and Damian becomes Robin, Jason takes a posting at Gotham University and rents an apartment in the alley. Damian comes to visit and Jason tells him stories, as many as he can remember. The kid wanted to know his Dad, after all.

They don’t tell the others. Instead, grieving the loss of their Father together. When Jason came back to Gotham he expected anger. Now he just feels lost.

It’s completely on accident that Dick learns his identity. He gets a call one night from Damian, not panicked but alert. He’s calling for backup because Batman was shot.

Jason has the two of them in the back of a stolen car and makes it all the way past the security of the Batcave before he really comes to his senses. It’s a bit of a clusterfuck after that, between Alfred and Leslie trying to prioritize Dick while interrogating the imposter until they’re satisfied he’s just Jason. Their Jason.

And maybe it gets a little better. Jason has to go out as Batman until Dick’s back on his feet, so he and Damian patrol together and come home to Alfred and Dick. He goes to see Babs at the Clocktower and she introduces him to his sister, Cass, one of the few people Damian speaks highly of.

It’s different, and weird, and he and Dick have a couple of fights. But it could be worse. Slowly but surely, they figure things out. Try to move on.

And then Tim comes home and like a prayer, Bruce Wayne is alive again. Always too late.

[seyaryminamoto]

My latest completed commission may have been a bit ambitious... because I went wild with it. But I certainly relished in doing so :') Combining my favorite ship with my favorite-ever Disney movie is, uh... a dangerous concoction :'D

The commissioner specifically requested for Azula as Mulan, Sokka as Shang, and Xin Long (my OC dragon from Gladiator) as Mushu. The rest of the cast was up to me to choose, and I pretty much went wild rewatching this movie and picking out some of my favorite moments to recreate them in my style, with these characters. I came up with a lot of correlating characters between both ATLA and 1998's Mulan, but I couldn't hope to draw EVERYTHING, unfortunately. Still, if you want my reasoning for the cast correlation... check out the Read More! Beyond that, feel free to reach out to me if you'd like to commission me, or if you want to join my Patreon!

The Herbalist as Mulan's grandmother might feel arbitrary but she honestly felt like the ATLA elderly lady with the most similar personality to Grandma Fa. Fickle, with a unique connection with a seemingly perfectly ordinary animal, old and sassy? Figured it fit! So for once, the Herbalist is Azula's grandma! xD strange notion, I know, Azulon/Herbalist is not a ship I ever thought I'd accidentally put out in the world but there have been wilder ships than that in this fandom...

Momo became Cri-Kee, I wasn't 100% sold on it but when I considered that Avatar features soooo many hybrid animals... I figured he could be a hybrid cricket-lemur. Weird, I know, but eh? Better than nothing xD

Aang as Chien-Po was a no-brainer. He's the only character I settled on instantly, never even considered anyone else for the role. Their personalities line up really well, and Chien-Po's tendency to be OP and resolve things that are outside of other people's reach sounded like he was prime Avatar material! So, while their dietary preferences are an obvious difference between them, I decided to go for it nonetheless considering all their other similarities!

Kino (another Gladiator OC) is Ling, and he actually did give me a ton of trouble to choose. I considered many characters for the role right up until I realized that Kino's personality actually lines up fairly well with Ling's, down to being a class clown type (who ABSOLUTELY would have cut gym class!) and breaking out in song about the hypothetical woman he'd like to fight for? Yeeeeah that's right up his alley xD but there's another reason why I picked Kino...

... And that is my likely unexpected choice for Yao:

ZUKO.

ZUKO IS YAO.

YES.

I'M NOT EVEN SORRY.

(For the uninitiated, Aang, Zuko and Kino are best friends in Gladiator, very often together, and they make a really good team, so that's the extra reason why Kino became the obvious choice for Ling aside from having really similar personalities, definitely closer personalities than, say, Jet, for instance.)

People have likened Zuko to Shang a LOT since ATLA aired. This is the main reason why I'm even making this huge note! I suspect it's primarily because of the aesthetic, let's be real here, and because he becomes Aang's teacher, but people have exaggerated Zuko's alleged similarities with Shang, or taken them out of proportion, in many ways. I actually remember an AMV ages ago with "Be a Man" and it was Zuko "training the Gaang"?? It... didn't feel right to me. Obviously, someone might rebuff with "well, how does Sokka make MORE sense than that, though?" And believe it or not, I have arguments for that... (when do I not...?)

Not only is this what the commissioner specifically requested (and it obviously lines up with the ship we love!), but let's examine the actual reasons why Sokka as Shang adds up:

Sokka actually had to train a bunch of toddlers who weren't paying any attention to him. You know. Kind of how Shang had to train the unruly soldiers who weren't getting anything right. Sokka has a positive relationship with his dad (Zuko, ofc, does not). Shang also has a positive relationship with his dad! And not only this, but there's a military component to both relationships, specifically with Shang wanting to follow on his father's footsteps and aid him in the war... so much like someone else I know, who jumped at every opportunity to rejoin his father in the war, even wishing to join him as a child until Hakoda tasked him with protecting their Tribe instead (kinda like Shang is tasked with training soldiers rather than joining a battlefield).

And the final cherry-on-top that I'd loooove to hear Zuko fans try to argue against... is sexism :') didn't Sokka get characterized as a sexist guy for four episodes, which made people decide that this was his main character trait even if it went away that quickly? Um, yes, that happened. Shang literally sings the memorable song that's a crazy ode to masculinity, including the rather sexist line of "did they send me daughters when I asked for sons". Shang outright abandons Mulan once they discover that she was a woman all along (while, admittedly, choosing to abandon her rather than KILL HER, which as we saw from Chi-Fu, he was NOT supposed to spare her!)...

So, is this REALLY what Zuko fans, who willfully believe their boy is a feminist king (... why? beats me...) are trying to compare their unproblematic blorbo to? :'D Me? I have no problem linking Sokka with Shang due to Sokka's beginnings and due to the fact that both Shang and Sokka have similar growth when it comes to accepting femininity is as valid as masculinity, and as they both learn to respect women as fighters and potential heroes! (I simply do not believe Sokka's ENTIRE tenure in ATLA was about that, though, and that's what I continue to clash with the fandom over...) So... all this is why I've reasoned that Sokka is a VERY solid choice for Shang, in fact, better than Zuko could hope to be.

... but this isn't all.

Maybe some might accept my arguments for Sokka-Shang. And then, they might ask:

WHY ZUKO AS YAO, THO??

... And the truth is it took me long to see it, myself, but HOLY SHIT, DOES IT FIT!

What is the primary thing we remember about Yao in Mulan? This guy is constantly itching for a fight, to prove himself, surely riddled with insecurities that he exteriorizes through overcompensation of masculinity. He's funny as fuck, but he's taking himself 100% seriously as a manly man all the time, and he's always ready for violence. But there's one more thing...

He treats Mulan as his RIVAL.

And more often than not? SHE SCREWS HIM OVER. Intentionally or not.

What does that sound like? Why, yes, it sounds a LOT like Azula and Zuko's sibling relationship!

The fact that Yao is a temperamental dude who lashes out easily at things (oh, something he has in common with Zuko!), that he specifically resents Mulan (in this case, Azula, just as Zuko does!) and is either constantly looking to defeat her and prove his superiority over her (... wait, just as Zuko with Azula??), that he has a black eye perpetually across the movie, and it's his LEFT EYE (just as Zuko's scar is on his left eye! :'D), that he's friends with a pacifist he has basically nothing in common with, personality-wise (just like Zuko and Aang!), and that he pretty much has a REDEMPTION ARC in which he goes from a bitter, asshole rival to Mulan to treating her as a friend and ally, to the point where he was disappointed to leave her behind and THEN joined her at once when she says she has a plan? :') I have always been critical of Zuko's redemption arc, goes without saying. But if ANY of these characters redeemed himself in any significant way, it certainly seems to be Yao to me, and with people gushing NON-STOP about Zuko's redemption? Why, he ought to be the character who goes from bitter rival to loyal friend, right?

So. I'm not even sorry. Zuko is Yao. And I'd dare say that he should be flattered by the comparison, even, because Yao ends up being cool as FUCK!

I don't really talk about this much nowadays, but Mulan was my favorite Disney movie growing up, it ABSOLUTELY had a formative influence on me as a little girl, and Mulan was my favorite female character for a looooong time. Thus, any excuse to rewatch this movie makes me happy as heck. With the wisdom of age I know, of course, that it's not perfect, it's not what China wants, it's not the most thoughtful depiction of Chinese culture or the most faithful adaptation of Mulan's poem (... but I'd also dare bring up that the 2009 Chinese adaptation ISN'T all that faithful either...), but it has a kind of magic in it, a solid storytelling flow, so many memorable moments one after the next, that I could hardly choose which scenes to depict... Disney has never again seen the storytelling heights it reached with Mulan in 1998. I don't even care if that's a controversial opinion in any way... this is their best animated feature for me, and nobody can change my mind.

So... depicting Azula, my beloved, in all these scenarios as this character I adored and idolized as a child, was so damn fulfilling for me. While some might think that, personality-wise, these two ladies don't have much in common, the fact that Mulan is sent to a matchmaker who basically tells her she looks good but is going to be the worst wife ever...? Our girl Azula, with all those insecurities about being unloveable and a monster, probably would relate big time to that.

Mulan is also an INTELLIGENT soldier rather than a brawny one, which is how she starts to make progress in the army, it's how she manages to overcome the huns with that avalanche... and Azula's primary difference with most other antagonists in ATLA is that she's smart as fuck. She is very strong, no doubt, but a LOT of that strength comes from her intelligence, from assessing situations in unique ways, from planning and strategizing. The way Mulan finds the most unexpected solutions that still pay off reminds me a lot of how Azula achieves unexpected feats through rather unorthodox means, capable of taking over a city with basically no bloodshed while her nation has spent 100 years trying and failing to do so through major army incursions and who knows how much senseless violence. Obviously, I'm not saying what Azula did is GOOD and it's kind of dumb that we always have to point that out... I'm merely comparing the magnitude of the feats, and the fact that they both come from ladies who use strategy and intelligence to achieve their goals rather than muscle and physical power.

And while anyone would rage at me for the comparison between Fa Zhou (her dad) and Ozai, the truth is the dynamic between them CAN be compared, if loosely: Mulan literally goes to war to keep her father safe. Azula goes to war under her father's orders. Hell, she makes herself BAIT in the Eclipse to make sure the Gaang won't get to her dad?? While it's very much possible to say that both characters have different personalities and attitudes in life... I'd also bring up that their contexts are evidently completely different. I wouldn't say for certain that Azula, had she been raised outside a Royal Family, would be EXACTLY like Mulan... but they might have more similar traits than one might expect. Ultimately, though... I love them both. And this opportunity to swap their places was pretty much a dream come true!

Alright, that was plenty of rambling xD ultimately, I had a blast doing this commission, as I'm sure is obvious by now. So! If anyone wants to commission me, feel free to check out my prices right here and hit me up if you're interested!

[arttsuka]

you like asterix and obelix!? hug for thee!

Of course I like Asterix and Obelix

[gotchibam]

Commissioned piece for Gabriel!