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Der erste Stern 1 [ENG]

My fav GerIta doujinshi of all time!

Part 2 coming up……..

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Ahem, there... I made this in like October but okay

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Ahem, there... I made this in like October but okay

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This animation without the filter because it fucked with the framerate for some reason (this isn't the intended look otherwise, but bleh)

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this is the funniest thing I’ve seen in weeks

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sometimes the way humans use words actually makes me tear up a little

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Literally sobbing. A judge, a US judge defended us. A judge brought up intersex people, uaing the term intersex, to *defend* us by not allowing our erasure. I'm having a lot of feelings right now

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all RIGHT:

Why You’re Writing Medieval (and Medieval-Coded) Women Wrong: A RANT

(Or, For the Love of God, People, Stop Pretending Victorian Style Gender Roles Applied to All of History)

This is a problem I see alllll over the place - I’ll be reading a medieval-coded book and the women will be told they aren’t allowed to fight or learn or work, that they are only supposed to get married, keep house and have babies, &c &c.

If I point this out ppl will be like “yes but there was misogyny back then! women were treated terribly!” and OK. Stop right there.

By & large, what we as a culture think of as misogyny & patriarchy is the expression prevalent in Victorian times - not medieval. (And NO, this is not me blaming Victorians for their theme park version of “medieval history”. This is me blaming 21st century people for being ignorant & refusing to do their homework).

Yes, there was misogyny in medieval times, but 1) in many ways it was actually markedly less severe than Victorian misogyny, tyvm - and 2) it was of a quite different type. (Disclaimer: I am speaking specifically of Frankish, Western European medieval women rather than those in other parts of the world. This applies to a lesser extent in Byzantium and I am still learning about women in the medieval Islamic world.)

So, here are the 2 vital things to remember about women when writing medieval or medieval-coded societies

FIRST. Where in Victorian times the primary axes of prejudice were gender and race - so that a male labourer had more rights than a female of the higher classes, and a middle class white man would be treated with more respect than an African or Indian dignitary - In medieval times, the primary axis of prejudice was, overwhelmingly, class. Thus, Frankish crusader knights arguably felt more solidarity with their Muslim opponents of knightly status, than they did their own peasants. Faith and age were also medieval axes of prejudice - children and young people were exploited ruthlessly, sent into war or marriage at 15 (boys) or 12 (girls). Gender was less important.

What this meant was that a medieval woman could expect - indeed demand - to be treated more or less the same way the men of her class were. Where no ancient legal obstacle existed, such as Salic law, a king’s daughter could and did expect to rule, even after marriage.

Women of the knightly class could & did arm & fight - something that required a MASSIVE outlay of money, which was obviously at their discretion & disposal. See: Sichelgaita, Isabel de Conches, the unnamed women fighting in armour as knights during the Third Crusade, as recorded by Muslim chroniclers.

Tolkien’s Eowyn is a great example of this medieval attitude to class trumping race: complaining that she’s being told not to fight, she stresses her class: “I am of the house of Eorl & not a serving woman”. She claims her rights, not as a woman, but as a member of the warrior class and the ruling family. Similarly in Renaissance Venice a doge protested the practice which saw 80% of noble women locked into convents for life: if these had been men they would have been “born to command & govern the world”. Their class ought to have exempted them from discrimination on the basis of sex.

So, tip #1 for writing medieval women: remember that their class always outweighed their gender. They might be subordinate to the men within their own class, but not to those below.

SECOND. Whereas Victorians saw women’s highest calling as marriage & children - the “angel in the house” ennobling & improving their men on a spiritual but rarely practical level - Medievals by contrast prized virginity/celibacy above marriage, seeing it as a way for women to transcend their sex. Often as nuns, saints, mystics; sometimes as warriors, queens, & ladies; always as businesswomen & merchants, women could & did forge their own paths in life

When Elizabeth I claimed to have “the heart & stomach of a king” & adopted the persona of the virgin queen, this was the norm she appealed to. Women could do things; they just had to prove they were Not Like Other Girls. By Elizabeth’s time things were already changing: it was the Reformation that switched the ideal to marriage, & the Enlightenment that divorced femininity from reason, aggression & public life.

For more on this topic, read Katherine Hager’s article “Endowed With Manly Courage: Medieval Perceptions of Women in Combat” on women who transcended gender to occupy a liminal space as warrior/virgin/saint.

So, tip #2: remember that for medieval women, wife and mother wasn’t the ideal, virgin saint was the ideal. By proving yourself “not like other girls” you could gain significant autonomy & freedom.

Finally a bonus tip: if writing about medieval women, be sure to read writing on women’s issues from the time so as to understand the terms in which these women spoke about & defended their ambitions. Start with Christine de Pisan.

I learned all this doing the reading for WATCHERS OF OUTREMER, my series of historical fantasy novels set in the medieval crusader states, which were dominated by strong medieval women! Book 5, THE HOUSE OF MOURNING (forthcoming 2023) will focus, to a greater extent than any other novel I’ve ever yet read or written, on the experience of women during the crusades - as warriors, captives, and political leaders. I can’t wait to share it with you all!

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(source)

Unsplash -  photography, illustration, & art

Pixabay - same as unsplash

Pexels - stock photos and videos

Getty Images - photography & illustration

Veceezy - vectors and clipart

Gumroad - photoshop brushes (and more)

StockSnap.io - stock photos

Canva - needs login but has lots of templates

Library of Congress - historical posters and photos

NASA - you guessed it

Creative Commons - all kinds of stuff, homie

Even Adobe has some free images

There are so many ways to make moodboards, bookcovers, and icons without plagiarizing! As artists, authors, and other creatives, we need to be especially careful not to use someone else’s work and pass it off as our own. 

Please add on if you know any more resources for free images <3

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I feel confident enough to post these now. A collection of all the existing posters after some edits from the other post that got 13k notes! These are full size/quality. Go nuts.

You may use them for wallpapers, tabletop campaigns, whatever. Consider tipping me or buying a print or sticker on ko-fi here! If you do use them, let me know what for, or send pictures!

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So uh….some dude apparently recreated Adobe Photoshop feature-for-feature, for FREE, and it runs in your browser.

Anyway, fuck Adobe, and enjoy!

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sketch

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Moon Eater~ I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and ate everything and more!

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Ding Bao and the Unicorn by Lin Chang

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upholding my self imposed silvester tradition of redrawing this legolas photoset, this year the most low effort one featuring the new "botw2" design for ganondorf that i keep failing to draw properly

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[This is set after the episode of the Society of the Blind Eye and contains vague spoilers for it.

I know that in the Lost Legend comic Toot-toot still has “butts” written on his head but I saw that in the cartoon the few times he appears he doesn’t have it anymore and I went with that.

Insert usual "There's an OC there too if that might annoy you avoid this one" disclaimer here.]

Toot-toot McBumbersnazzle is a strange individual, really.

He appeared out of nowhere and he either wanders around or plays the banjo for a bit of cash, that’s what Rosa learned both from her clients and by what she saw.

The hairdresser doesn’t really care what Toot-toot does; something that actually confuses her is that she doesn’t know why but not only he looks familiar when she’s pretty sure she had never seen him before, but he makes her feel uneasy.

Is it because of the tattoos on his head? They’re weird, but she wouldn’t go as far as to call them spine-chilling and some say he once had a “butts” written with a marker by probably some prankster or himself trying to be funny.

His expression? No, he just looks lost all the time and not threatening at all.

How he plays the banjo? Maybe he’s not the best player she has ever heard, but he isn’t bad neither and even if he was, it would be just annoying.

Rosa is used to her mind ringing alarm bells even when unnecessary, but with Toot-toot is almost ridiculous: he’s the one more likely to fall victim of some mean-spirited prank by the local teens or getting hurt in some way or another; and from what she heard the few times he acted hostile was in self-defense or when someone or something frightened him.

Despite this, even during a same-as-the-others workday while standing outside during a break, she can’t help but look at him while he’s sitting not too far from her shop, on the sidewalk.

As usual, he’s looking into the void while his banjo lies at his side.

She realizes how creepy she might look while staring at him and focusing too much on how he’s rummaging in one of his pockets, but her mind tells her to pay attention and to brace herself for something… and she’s not sure if she now looks more creepy or stupid when Toot-toot takes out an energy bar.

What did she expect, really? Why is she so relieved?

The relief is short-lived when he suddenly moves his focus on her. Of course, he had to notice she was staring at him sooner or later.

«Hello, Toot-Toot is my name!» He just says with a wrong too cheerful tone and lightly smiles and Rosa is surprised when he does, as if she gave from granted he wasn’t capable to.

She must look really stupid with the way she gasps and barely manages to say: «Hi, Rosa is my name.»

He blinks, squints his eyes, then shakes his head and smiles again.

«Hello Rosa.» He replies with a now calmer and more familiar tone. «Why the long face? There there, just time for a snack and I’ll resume playing shortly - if you got any request, you can come closer and tell me.»

Rosa can only nods and try to ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach, while he moves his focus on the energy bar he’s now opening.

[Tl;dr for the OC here: as I wrote before Rosa's a former member of the SOTBE (but she was kicked out decades earlier, she wasn’t present during the episode’s events) and she and Ivan have some past beef they both don’t remember (thanks memory-wipings!)]

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SHAPE HELL

Yup.