katabay - Tumblr blog

[katabay]

🌸🕶 sketch page :)

I draw so much dead romans art on my other blog I straight up forgot how shirt collars worked and had to spend a few days re learning the muscle memory for it lmao

anyway. I miss. them…..I think it may be time for a rewatch of the Abyss movie….

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[katabay]

The great general remained, and then saw a wonderful vision clearly shown him by the very God of the universe himself. In it he seemed to see the divine Meletius, chief of the church of the Antiochenes, investing him with an imperial robe, and covering his head with an imperial crown. The morning after the night in which he had seen the vision he told it to one of his intimate friends, who pointed out that the dream was plain and had nothing obscure or ambiguous about it.

Theodoret Ecclesiastical History 5.6

wahoo! Theodosius! so a repeating phrase in the gospel of Luke is 'do not be afraid,' but specifically: I'm most immediately referencing the annunciation of the shepherds (Luke 2:10) because I used this illustration for the last panel since it. sort of. connects to Valens, Theodosius' predecessor, who went from commoner to king at the will of his older brother. HOWEVER. because of that transformation. I cannot escape the 'do not be afraid' just a chapter before (Luke 1:30) that Gabriel gives to Mary because ascension to the imperial throne is an ugly, violent, and violating transformation. and. well.

Gabriel’s Entrance and Biblical Violence in Luke’s Annunciation Narrative, Michael Pope

also in general. prophetic dreams and visions. horrifying. it never goes well for anyone.

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Gert: Could be better! Could be better if I’m gonna be honest. Do you have a phone? OW: No, I’m sorry, I don’t have one on me. Gert: Do you know where the police station is? OW: The police are highly ineffective in Crestfall.

Obituary 01: Wyatt Died

the death by dying podcast is really fucking funny

[katabay]

listen. I know that thee ac2 ship is ezio/leonardo but please…consider…….ezio/machiavelli

the Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood novelization, Oliver Bowden

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app / tip jar!

[katabay]

hey! hi! the cartoonist cooperative has an e-sim drive for gaza, offering art for e-sim donations (instructions etc in the link)

[katabay]

Wait wait wait, so have you watched/read Urasawa's Monster??

ABSOLUTELY Naoki Urasawa’s Monster is one of my all time favorites, it’s a masterpiece!! I actually keep the first volume of the perfect edition on my desk because I turn to it so often. like I cannot overstate the impact this comic had on me, it’s so good what the fuck

[katabay]

lmao these are ocs I made wayyyy back in 2021 on a personal blog and I don’t think I ever posted them here, so I’ll do a quick recap!

the guy with the blue hair is marion. he hunts demons! baron is a librarian at a university only because everyone else who was actually qualified for the position died and he really just wants to go home and take a nap.

that’s about it! it was a story I started on because I wanted to draw cool outfits and big monsters after spending a weekend playing DMC5 during the lockdown, but recently it’s been getting some more serious depth as I build up the world.

the original desire to give everyone fun hair colors has remained the same tho, that’s not going to change no matter how serious this story does or does not get

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app / tip jar!

[katabay]

LOOK ALIVE, SUNSHINE

I was going to skip doing an Ides illustration this year, but I decided to pull out something from my illustrations vault at the last minute after watching the news in the Philippines the other night. the first Ides illustration was prompted by feelings of frustration and grief seeing the Marcos family come back into power and also that ballot substitution bullshit. and. well!!! you know how it is! we're on year 3 of making these illustrations, baby!

so let’s get into it: fuck Brutus, my man Cassius is getting center stage this time! after all, it’s Cassius who typically initiates the conspiracy while Brutus steals the spotlight. Brutus is here, though, he’s the one with blood on his hand, in reference to the account where Cassius accidentally stabs him in the hand trying to get another hit on Caesar.

it’s thematically compelling if you take into account that Cassius is mentioned at the start of Brutus’ biography as someone who finds tyranny intolerable (in addition: that dinner scene with Mark Antony)

Cassius and Brutus: The Memory of the Liberators, Elizabeth Rawson

Brutus, the Noble Conspirator, Kathryn Tempest

Cassius Dio 44.34

and Brutus is later mentioned to have taken part of Caesar’s power only to be dissuaded from people from fully embracing all of that

Plutarch, Brutus 7 (trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert)

and Cassius, by accident, wounds Brutus in the act of assassinating Caesar. It’s like….he’s being compelled…..to act as a hand of Justice on behalf of the Republic……a little bit…..

Life of Augustus, Nicolaus of Damascus (trans. Toher)

and to preemptively cut off people from doing Caesar apologia in my inbox: we are engaging in a long and established tradition of using the Ides of March and the people who participated in it to discuss other stuff. you know. allegory and allusion and all of that. also ancient Roman conspiracies are fun. thank you & goodnight.

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[katabay]

and another general commissions update! I’m back to replying & sending out updates, however I’m replying to everything via my iPad (which is usually just for art, the laptop I’m borrowing needs a little break from being used) and I’m very slow at typing on it because I’m. uh. well, simply: I’m not good at touch screen typing! so please bear with me, but I am tentatively hopeful that everyone should hear from me before the weekend 😤

[katabay]

desmond & friends modern day assassin sequences…..I miss you……..

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you have to make it homoerotic and weird

[katabay]

sometimes you read about the alliance line ups and family drama in the Vatican, and your thoughts wander a bit because hey, the Pope and the Cardinals are supposed to be one Body, and Holy Orders are a kind of marriage to God, and the Pope is God’s representative on earth

all of that is to say that sometimes I read about all of this and I’m like wow just like a kabit serye. incredible. show stopping. unparalleled.

this was originally a totally different comic! It was supposed to be about Ascanio’s recurring periods of (checks notes) extreme despair with some erotic subtext in the dialogue about the intimacy of confession

but uhhh I didn’t want to spend that long looking up the props I would need to draw for the scene to look good! I’m tired! so very abruptly (you can kind of tell where the decision was made lmao) I decided to refocus on Alidosi and Giuliano because that sure was something to talk about (& because Alidosi is on my mind, like, he has parallels with someone and once I figure out what this one historian is talking about, I’m going to crack him open like a walnut)

Cardinal Alidosi, Michelangelo, and the Sistine Ceiling, James Beck

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⭐ and other places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app

[katabay]

Have you ever drawn cowboy bebop?

yeah!

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anyway. tentatively: I’m crawling out of tax filing hell, so once my stress levels even out, I have some weird dream comics to post

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hi! i know you've literally never said anything about this but (from your last ask about what fiction authors/books you like) have you ever read the locked tomb series? the first book's a murder mystery and the series focuses on the mechanisms and unravelling of an imperial civilization

it’s on my reading list!

I started to read it last year because I was told there’s some real fucked up and weird relationship dynamics in it (which I have been known to enjoy from time to time) (and cannibalism? I was told there’s cannibalism and necrophilia) but I have been in such a weird funk with reading fiction (literally, most of what I’ve been reading for the past four years is nonfiction) so I didn’t finish it.

I plan on trying it again someday, though!

[katabay]

Can you share a link to the Andrew A Smith interview you mentioned? I’m intrigued

hell yeah!

here's the interview, and there are some really good hits out of it that really reshaped my approach to how I write, but this part of one of his answers specifically is what I keep in mind when I get to editing

In writing the story though I never for a moment entertained the possibility that what was happening to Jack wasn’t real. I always wrote, from my perspective, that everything that was happening to him was absolutely real.

I struggle a lot with the impulse to reign in my own ideas to try and make them more package-able, even though I'll ultimately drop the story from my creative shelf because I'm no longer interested in working on it when I do that. later, I'll usually think back to the above quote, and I'll add back in whatever I cut out that I thought was too much, and ultimately find that makes the story I want to tell what it needs to be. be unflinching, etc.

[katabay]

Do you have specific fiction authors that you like to read? What aspects of a story make you want to really dig your fingers in it? Is it horror?

I’ve got a couple! Keigo Higashino for sure. anything Naoki Urasawa does: I will be reading it. Priest (Guardian and Mo Du are all time favorites). also KJ Charles and Andrew A Smith!

ngl I don’t really have a concrete list of favorite fiction writers, I spent several days thinking about this one: like, I have favorite books for sure, but I don’t often find myself considering an author to be a favorite just because their book blew my mind. I’ve only read three of Andrew A Smith’s works, but he’s here because he gave an interview years that changed my entire approach to storytelling, and I still revisit it whenever I start editing a story.

honestly the big thing is that I like character!! I like compelling characters (extremely varied definition of compelling, it doesn’t have to be much, but it does have to have something) I like it when something goes full throttle into whatever it wants to be. I’ll watch a slow paced slice of life romance with the same amount of enthusiasm that I had for Devil Judge, and the 1vs10 beat down in Ipman takes up just as much space in my brain as the ‘let’s not see each other from now on,’ breakup in the Heirs (but for extremely different reasons lmao)

however. if I have to pick something more thematically specific: I like seeing people in power get what they have coming to them, I like explorations and confrontations of political and social injustices. kingdom is one of my favorite shows, and the horror is great, but it was the political-class-power aspect of it that solidified it as a memorable watch to me. kamen rider build did something fundamental to the circuitry of my brain. etc.