#birbwellspeaks

[birbwell]

as much as i love dashboard unfucker, its awful that the community is being left to clean up the mess that staff keeps leaving behind. like. i dont want our dependence on it to make us lenient to the change. i really hope we dont end up just saying "waiting on the new xkit extension to unfuck this!!" every time staff tears out the wires in our dashboard

[birbwell]

i ordered a Hatsune Monku from my Inprnt for myself and wahh i'm very happy with how it came out!

i'm offering a 20% discount on the print with the code LIXCPC which i am running until Dec 22! check it out here :]

[birbwell]

ummm girlmonks and boynuns. send post

[birbwell]

me when im in the shits and want to say "tch blorbo would never let this bad thing happen to me" but the blorbo in question is a terrible horrible person who would absolutely let it happen to me

[birbwell]

thank you for my life doomstar requiem

[birbwell]

i know my art has breached containment not bc of the note count but bc there are people expressing surprise at drawn tonsure. insert This is the bad place screenshot except This is the bald place

[birbwell]

this Artfight please remember to not slim down fat OCs please and thank you . ok.

[birbwell]

why the FUCK does tumblr look like this. stop twitterifying it or ill start fucking biting necks

[birbwell]

i find it So hard to bring myself to do even things that I'm supposed to like and I know will enrich me,,, how do people just start a book or start a game or,,,,,

[birbwell]

happy White Ship sinking to all those who celebrate 🥳

[birbwell]

fandom? tch... walks into the desert to become some sort of hermit monk

[birbwell]

do you have a monk sona? :-3

brother birbwell is an establishing cistercian scribe who is really proud about sticking it to the benedictines but like secretly really misses the laxness. but its like cooler to be antiestablishment so he shuts up about it. he draws sexually explicit depictions of the abbot on the margins of his manuscripts. he dies at the ripe old age of 26 after giving in to the siren song of eating arsenic-rich yummy paint

[birbwell]

i think you guys have either forgotten what kim and harry look like or only know what they look like through a terrible high-static game of telephone

[birbwell]

Your art is so so pretty… hugeee fan of the textures and the soft colours you use!! I really wanna know- what’s your favourite brush?

thank yew... you probably mean texture/color brushes but have to be honest i barely remember what i do when i color like every time. but i do remember my favorite lineart brushes

[birbwell]

btw im on cohost as birbwell. of course. holds out my hand.. lets chost together

[birbwell]

Tell us about different monastery burning motifs! Would be interesting to hear how each of them work narratively

hi! this was mostly explored when @st-vesta and I were yelling incoherently about it. I also don't have a very good grasp on The Name of the Rose as I've only watched the show. tbh I'm really only confident of my interpretation of PotE SO WITH THAT IN MIND

[SPOILERS FOR THE NAME OF THE ROSE, THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH AND PENTIMENT]

Right from the get-go their burnings are very different in when they come into the narrative. It comes very early on in Pillars of the Earth, with Kingsbridge Cathedral burning down right near the start. It's the force that drives the plot. Pentiment's Kiersau Abbey goes up in flames in the end of the second act as a culmination of the long-standing tensions over the course of five (?) years. The Name of the Rose ends its story with the burning of its mountain monastery.

How do they happen? Till the last second, Kingsbridge's fate was kinda just strung on a line of bad luck and split-second decisions. A forest boy named Jack tags along with a mason's family, becomes refugees of a burgeoning civil war, and ends up in Kingsbridge. He gets the idea to burn down the cathedral to give the kindly mason a job, and isn't even fully sure of his decision as he lights the vault boards on fire. He’s just a child. 

And yet.

Fire is a catalyst. As much as it is a catastrophe, it also presents three groups of people all fucked by the hellscape of 12th century England with an opportunity to build something brighter. Aliena’s family and earldom taken by the Anarchy, Philip and his languishing priory, and Jack, coming from the fringes of society all working together to pull their futures out of the ashes of the cathedral… Kingsbridge and its town start thriving again. 

(Fire is very much a motif in PotE. Someone as powerless as Jack using this volatile force of nature to bring down something as grand and sacred and built-to-last as a stone church! The Church controlling fire to produce a ‘miracle’ and restore faith in the institution! Fire as Hell, the only thing that has ever scared William Hamleigh! Fire as hope, Philip treading the aftermath and watching the sun rise with Tom!! I;m very ill)

Kiersau and Tassing, on the other hand, have been fostering tensions that would eventually destroy the monastery. It is the powder keg’s inevitable explosion. Neither the village nor the abbey are willing to back down, so it culminates in a situation where one or the other caves in. Nobody has been having a Good Time for a Long Time. Especially not Claus. In his grief, he walks into the library and sets it on fire.

Fire is an answer. It is a terrible, terrible night. We are told that the Benedictines scattered to the wind. We don’t get to see the immediate aftermath, but does it matter? Magdalene explores the abbey and it is still the same derelict cathedral from years ago. She wasn’t there to witness it, but there its soot-stained carcass stands as a reminder of tragedy. Some saw it as a victory, certainly- the humble villagers triumphing over their Benedictine landowners. Things grew from it, though- Wojslav and Matilda find their new chapter of life here, Mathieu and Illuminata find new, loftier prospects outside of Tassing, and Andreas finds a way out of an unhappy life.

The mountain monastery in The Name of the Rose has a long-kept secret, and attempts to unearth it are met with death. It goes up in flames after a week of murders as a last-ditch effort by Jorge to destroy its library and bury its secret for good.

Fire is the end. No matter how grand and complex the library labyrinth was, it would have never held up against fire. William and Adso didn’t succeed. They couldn’t have saved the library and they couldn’t stop the deaths. Jorge did what he set out to do! The elusive Finis Africae is still shrouded in mystery and anyone who knew of the contents is dead! The monks disband and William comes out of it disillusioned. 

TBH, all three of them make use of monastery burnings to destroy some hidden truth or secret. The history of Tassing? Records largely in flames, and even given to distortion, since we, the player, are able to interpret that segment! The truth about the White Ship? Gone with Prior James’ bones! And Finis Africae. Fire, if anything, can hide and rewrite. 

TL;DR: fire do many thangs and pyromaniacs everywhere are right.