#mask monday

[0m3g4skanohiforge]

MASK MONDAY

Today's the Eclipse! I wanted to make a mask specially for today, but unfortunately it didn't come out as I'd hoped and I'm out of time/material again lol (don't worry, material is on the way)

My hope was to have a white-edged mask with black forming into the center, similar to how I made my Shadowed Kanohi for comic con.

However it seems such a pattern isn't as easy as I believed, and is influenced greatly by the shape of the mask... more tests will be needed to see what different blend styles I can make

[charaznablescanontoyota]

portrait of the artist with 10 minutes left at work

download mad rat monday my final message

[ladyveronikawrites]

[catilinas]

how big does my philosopher king’s enclosure need to be to stop him turning evil. asking for a friend

[eighthwholove]

Some of my favorite Paul McGann photos, part one.

Happy McGann Monday!!!

[silverfoxstole]

The trademark McGann double facepalm/prayer hands.

[kirby-the-gorb]

[freshbaked-bread]

mandy monday (im posting this on a friday)

(edit: this is now available as a print :3)

[breezypunk]

when your favorite shirts don't belong to you, and they smell like him. ♥︎

[0m3g4skanohiforge]

MASK MONDAY

This is another reeeeeally old one! My initial strategies were basically the worst way of going about it, and would very often result in pockets of air getting trapped. Even then, I would try to fill the gaps by adding more resin, but that didn't work as well back then...

This one went back into the mold probably... 3 times? Minimum 2, based on the colours. Of course, the largest two holes never got filled 😒 but it makes for a great corroded mask!

Back when I was babysitting nearly every week, I would bring my Toa Mata and tell the Legend of the Bionicle, using this mask to represent Makuta. Since then of course I've got better parts to use, but I still think it was a cool effect

[belligerentbagel]

even Atlas has only two hands

vent art

[arthistoryanimalia]

#MetalMonday:

Rabbit Mask

Guerrero Nahua (Mexico)

1940-1960

Copper, cotton cloth, paint

26.5 x 18.2 cm

Smithsonian NMAI 24/5904

[ladyveronikawrites]

🗡Masked Monday🗡

[catilinas]

mary……………………

[eighthwholove]

Favorite Paul McGann Pictures, Part 2

Happy Monday!

[jumpstreamer]

MASK MONDAYS EPISODE 2: PROSPERA MERCURY

Welcome back to week 2 of Mask Mondays! You thought I wouldn't do it, but I did. And when I say "you" here, I mean "me."

For any tag browsers, I have recently resolved to analyze a different mask, helmet, or headgear-adorned fictional character every Monday until I quit this website forever. I'll be real: Returning to Tumblr after two years' break has been quite the balancing act. It's addictive in a particularly draining way, and reconciling that has taken a lot of energy I would rather have spent on research. Therefore, this week I'll be discussing a character who I already have strong and well-informed opinions about: Prospera Mercury, the principal antagonist of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury.

Okay, folks, let's be on the level here. What the fuck? Why does no one ever talk about Prospera? I know the show is popular here, it's what pushed me to watch it in the first place. Everyone loves posting fanart and talking about how endearing the protagonists are. But there's NO ATTENTION PAID to Prospera Mercury? Compelling arc and presence of character aside, I would've assumed the tall evil lady in the business suit would've been enough for a ton of people. Something is certainly amiss.

What bothers me most about this situation is that Prospera Mercury is arguably the most well-realized character in her show. As a text, the Witch From Mercury has strong opinions about Gundam, The Tempest, and the world at large, and all of them are brought together by its antagonist. Prospera Mercury is an absolute well of material, far more than can be covered in a single post. So while I'll be returning to her later, I want to spend this week laying down foundations: If you'll allow me, I'll be trying to prove once and for all that The Witch From Mercury isn't just using The Tempest as set dressing.

Named after Gundam 0079 antagonist Char Aznable, the "Char clone" is perhaps the most ubiquitous concept in its franchise. Almost every Gundam show, film, and OVA contains a morally ambiguous masked antagonist who challenges the hero's moral principles while maintaining a complex and terse relationship with the villainous faction. The Witch from Mercury too adopts this concept, but twists it to say something truly controversial. Prospera Mercury, the text argues, is not a Char Aznable clone. Char Aznable is a Prospero of Milan clone.

It's no revelation that The Witch From Mercury is loosely based off William Shakespeare's "The Tempest," but understanding why this choice is so important requires a summary of its principal antagonist. The antivillainous sorcerer Prospero is a natural talent and skilled manipulator unjustly exiled from his place of birth. As he grows in ability, he is overtaken by resentment and dedicates himself to exacting revenge. He executes a grand plan that goes off nearly perfectly, but when on the verge of total success, Prospero has a change of heart. Realizing that bettering the future is more important than staying in the past, he steps down, relinquishing his power to the new generation.

To dispose with subtlety, Char's character arc in the original Gundam series is nearly identical to Prospero's. There's a reason Prospera is closer to Char in terms of motivation and role than any other Char clone before her: She's channeling the primordial Char from which they all descend!

Insane as this sentence sounds, Prospera Mercury's position as Char clone manifests Prospero's flaws in ways other adaptations couldn't possibly emulate. Take Prospera's willingness to shatter personal bonds in service of pointless revenge, a quality unmistakable in Char, but quite well-hidden in Prospero. Prospero treats Ariel (yes, telling the names apart will get annoying) as an equal all throughout The Tempest, yet takes for granted that Ariel's freedom comes second to punishing Antonio and Alonso. Similarly, despite the two sharing a strong platonic bond if not a romantic one, Char is more than willing to send Garma to die if it means twisting the knife in the Zabi family's side. Robert Egan's "This Rough Magic: Perspectives of Art and Morality in The Tempest," a woefully undercited article despite being over fifty years old, summarizes the magician's moral perspective as follows:

"[A]n acknowledgement of evil as part of the natural condition of man is unacceptable to Prospero. His years of seclusion in his library have instilled in him a moral perspective rooted not in the real world but in the ideals of his art... In short, he rejects the sinner with the sin" (176)

In this lens, the actions of both Prospera and Char make perfect sense; any who divert from their morality deserves punishment by default, and any who agree would readily give their all to strike back at the wickedness in the world.

Prospero, Prospera, and Char all also share a deep hypocrisy that is literally worn on the latter two parties' faces. Yes, after who knows how many paragraphs, it's finally time to talk about the mask. Despite being well aware that the system she participated in does not value human life, Prospera rebels against it not by joining forces with its opponents, but by acting as a model citizen with the goal of dismantling it from the inside. Char, obviously, embraces an identical practice, as does, I wish to argue, Prospero.

Intriguingly, Gundam's interpretation of "working within the system" does not hinge upon a pragmatic argument, as so many real-world political treatises have done, but an ethical one. Char and Prospera successfully co-opt Zeon and the Benerit group to suit their needs, but in doing so, adopt the practices that made these so abhorrent in the first place. When given the chance to ally with the Earthians or the Mercurian working class that took her in, Prospera instead embraces the mask of the corporate elite and becomes the usurper she despises.

After so bluntly accentuating Prospera's hypocritical and egotistical tendencies, The Witch From Mercury almost demands the viewer to interrogate its source material in search of parallels. And indeed, Prospero's most academically well-treaded moral failings (most of which involve Caliban) without exception find their origin in his resolve to serve as a king and judge on the island where he could not in Milan.

I have a lot more to talk about with Prospera (I have been intentionally avoiding discussing her relationships with Eri and Suletta), but my ass is running out of time and I'm not risking another three-paragraph tangent. I probably won't make another Monday post for Prospera anytime soon, but the Mask Mondays exercise will continue, whether I like it or not!

Link to "This Rough Magic:" https://www.jstor.org/stable/2868575