#an illusion of wings

[lady-merian]

For @scarvenartist. It’s been too long since I drew Cazda <3

[siena-sevenwits]

Some live reactions to the first scene of An Illusion of Wings by @scarvenartist

“Mist rose from the icy canal, fog swirling around the eight ghostly monuments arrayed on both sides of the bridge.” – WHAT a wonderfully atmospheric opening! The tone – the visual! And the rest of the paragraph is a cut gem too – I can see this, I can feel this. It gives a remarkable sense of city’s age and the time of year. And given what I know of this story, that shapeshifting into animals is a feature of the story, it’s very fitting to start with these images of heraldic beasts. Reminds me ever so slightly of the opening montage of shots in the film adaptation of A Man for All Seasons.

Man. The way you plummet us straight into this duel situation while evoking all these hints of the broader worldbuilding. I’m impressed.

I had to look up “sable hat” and am pleased that I now know the name for those things. I am now educated.

“But I had been wandering the streets for hours in a futile search for my thieving feral sister, and these privileged gentlemen had decided to settle some insult on a public thoroughfare, inconveniencing everyone else. It offended me.” I love how voicey she is – this is so expressive of someone just done. Just absolutely done. “Thieving, feral sister” – the frustration in those words! And now these chaps dare to block up a public footpath with their stupid potential-murder-tiff – it’s just rude, it is.

Gonna call it now – this is going to be all my favourite things combined. (I have an advantage in that I read an older version of the first chapter of this story once before, but I still feel justified in calling it now.)

Yeah, Cazda, you’re taking all the angsty brooding out of the situation! Have some manners, dear!

As someone who struggles with finding smooth ways to slip a character’s age in organically, I applaud the way you got the fact she’s sixteen in early in a way that further characterizes both Gospodin Spectacles here and Cazda – he’s condescending in his elation, she’s touchy (though understandably so just now.)

Again, I’m at an advantage having read another version of this part, though it was some time ago and it’s only coming back to me as I read. But in light of that advantage – masterfully done, dropping that hint about how he wasn’t there when the initial offense that gave rise to the duel happened – that he’s not the man he appears to be. His remarks about “believing he had to be restrained” and all. And when Cazda catches that it’s a strange thing to say, he plays it off in words that might make us assume he was drunk at the time, and not wonder about it any further.

The description of his eyes turning “brittle blue” is very striking.

Cazda seeing the guardswoman and picturing herself similarly is a good character establishing moment – glimpses of what she values (“authoritative, confident, independent”). what she aspires to.

Oh, whoa, Officer, you’re putting a sabre to a young girl’s throat? You mean business! Yike!

I’m so curious now – her father was arrested? She was interrogated? She felt a confused guilt? There’s intriguing stuff here to be uncovered.

A teen girl wearing her father’s old coat – another hint about her circumstances and her family’s.

Swallow-man (Kiro, I know it’s Kiro, and I’ve loved him for years now even before my earlier reading foray because he’s so characterful in the art) is well-known to the police – at least his tendency to disappear as a swallow is. Oooh, and not just to the police it seems. OK, the Firebird, sure, he’d probably like that better than “Swallow-man.” Cazda doesn’t seem so inclined to be impressed, and indeed seems eager to disillusion her siblings. It will be interesting to see how much of this is a temporary fit of frustration and how much is her normal character.

Just the sight of the coin makes her stomach churn with hunger- yes, she and her family are in a bad way.

Nezka! I don’t really remember her much from the previous read, but I know she’s feral Magpie younger sister!

Hm – having a different human face is more serious that shapeshifter duelling. Yeah, I can see why that would be considered more dangerous to society in the eyes of the law.

And we're ending the scene with a return to Cazda's envy of the guardswoman - significant, foreshadowing.

[arctic-hands]

Every time there's a food recall that spreads from one company to the next, even from generic brands that are unique to the store selling them, it makes me realize the illusion of choice under capitalism hyped up by conservatives is a bunch of bullshit.

Oh and uh, don't drink apple juice for a while. Arsenic. And it's more than just Aldi and Walmart

[smokbeast]

kofi sketches done for @missmurbertime! Thank you so much !

[h-o-u-s-e-p-l-a-n-t]

So uh, was looking at some baroque inspired photography and had an idea

[its-leethee]

cute lil rayllum cheek kiss for y'all

(slightly) sandwichy versions below the cut:

and i'm gonna count these for body worship and hands, 'cause nobody here is grading my bingo card but me.

[ego-osbourne]

..yea

I drew more ponies lmao

They’re so fun

@bforblitz @mellowscrolls @kururu666 and myself were in a vc coming up with pony names for our ocs and various other characters, so creds to them for the names above and for feedback on the pony designs ^w^

Raven Wing is Raven Camoran, a unicorn who uses his powerful magic to make himself appear as an alicorn. His cutie mark are crescent moons of Masser and Secunda, with his focus on Secunda (had I drawn Ruma, her cutie mark would have been the same).

Sweet Heart is … Sweetheart (already a valid pony name we decided, though Tear Jerker was a good alternative), a pegasus whose cutie make can’t be seen here but would be two candy hearts <33

And Fools Gold is Ego, another pegasus whose wings are metal rather than their limbs. They’re a blank flank, which ties into their amnesia and not having a solid grasp of their identity, past or present.

[arowinter]

i suppose i can post festival here! my specialist old man

[winged-wheel]

Buddies trump the protocol!

[skull-pun]

Seeing viral videos of conservatives being dunked on just feels like this now

[siena-sevenwits]

More Chapter One Reactions - An Illusion of Wings (@scarvenartist)

I can tell it’s an awful wrench to have to sell Papa’s books. When you haven’t got your father, selling something beloved to him, that you’ve held onto into poverty this far, would be hard. Especially when he’s personalized them so much with himself.

“I herd my bewildered siblings through a sonorous funeral ceremony.” Oh, what a tone this line sets – details like the oppressive heat, the disapproving portraits, sounds bouncing harshly off surfaces – this is such great environmental story telling, and different from the usual details writers might choose to reflect grief, confusion, and that terrible sense of the world having to change completely when all you want to do is cry. And then to have to hear people talking of them and their prospect that way…

All the organic, tiny bits of worldbuilding are adding up so naturally – it’s like zooming in on a picture and seeing more and more and more, but never unfocusing from the story.

“It is like we are about to be auctioned off, like a family of serfs.” - !!

Every time the ten year sentence is mentioned, it feels more and more like this isn’t just their father’s sentence – it is the children’s ten years of hard labour too– of a different kind.

I love you, Cazda. I am sorry you have to be the one who stands up for all of you, and what that is doing to you. But I also love you for it.

How odious you make the old woman with only a few suggestions.

“ I can’t defend her now. In one fluid, balletic motion, she rises onto her toes and lifts her arms like wings, forming an oval with them, her fingertips not quite touching over her head. Veins of black trickle down her arms, traveling from her inky fingertips to her elbows.” This moment is absolutely stunning. This is a money shot, up there with the misty bridge with its monuments and duelists.

I can only imagine what’s going on inside Nezka. So far we’ve only gotten a taste of the sisters, and each of them are dealing with this situation in radically different ways.

This note about how Cazda’s not a shifter but she is under pressure and strain, and would have grown fangs by now, and nature has decided she is beastly in a sense, that’s cool and sets some things in place.

Second time in chapter that we have heard about the possibility of being committed to an institution – I see why that fear for her sister lurks in Cazda’s mind.

[timelykeimiyamadoodles]

i made a modded kei avatar for minecraft

[ashtonisvibing]

think i'm getting better at this whole scowl thing

[raisans-art]

Six days late to my own Submas Anniversary orz

Welp it’s been over a year of these fucking train men XD here’s to even more bullshittery and tomfoolery! Have this drawing of me and a bunch of emmets ^^

Enjoy!

[anxiety-problem]

Hello tumblr do we fw periprune

(Periwinkle Cookie is my oc and is a subspecies of faerie. Her species lives in Crispia! Military school faerie my beloved)

[moonshynecybin]

im not a coward sending on main. first of all i love u callie :) kisss second of all i think its weird that that one orange f1 driver got cancelled for trump association so now on my dash ppl r shipping carlos sainz jr known son of a facha with the other orange guy 😭😭 stand by ur shipping guns go down with the ship man like the titanic band none of these men will meet saint paul at the gates

thank you for coming to me with formula one drama flames. surely this will have no consequences. second. and i’m not plugged in here i’m forming opinions based on mutuals and their posts. i literally do just think it’s because lando norris is whinier (i DO NOT like that guy) than oscar piastri and oscar didn’t have a hot little barbie doll to scissor in the paddock yet. also i thought he hated carlos. i will also agree that comparing these little tax evaders politics like a morality bar where you can reach a shipping quota is so. so.