this is a great tactic for storing a roulette of lilac scented shade and warm breezes on the upper arm and that tiny child telling at her dad about the ducks in random pages flip the book to a random page during a winter month and see what u get 👍

when the warmer weather starts it's like, this is it. it's time to start reading a fuck-off huge novel and cart it around various parks to read throughout the summer

murderbot.

i really love your take on mace & depa's relationship in playing the lyre and i just finished reading shatterpoint, which made me crazy by virtue of mace calling her the daughter he'd never have within the first fifteen pages!! do you happen to have any more general thoughts about what they had going on :0

an opportunity is afoot i get to talk about mace!

i actually really dig mace, and a lot of it is because there's a lot of interesting stuff with him in the legends republic comics, particularly surrounding his relationship to the war and the jedi order and the senate. there's several other extra-canon materials that kind of flesh this idea out further, particularly one segment from a novel (it may be the ROTS novelization?) where obi-wan thinks sadly that the dark side has really clouded mace's sight in the force, because mace says something distrusting of the chancellor, which a) implies insane things about obi-wan and b) implies really cool stuff about mace. so in my head i've kind of tried to delve into that a lot more, which has affected strongly how i see him and by relation depa.

a couple things:

i think a lot about what mace's role as master of the order tangibly entails, both from a logistics point of view and from a spiritual one. i like to think about the order as having been designed off of that one key relationship - master and padawan - that they seem to revere above all else, so the grandmaster, in essence, treats all living members of the order as if they were padawans. yoda's spiritual presence is about teaching and guiding, it's why he spends so much time training initiates, why anyone can seek him out for personal advice - you have your master, and then there's yoda, who is everyone's master.

'master of the order' entails exactly what it says; while yoda is the spiritual leader of his people, mace is essentially responsible for organizing the logistics of an order of space wizards that likely numbers in the millions (i know the stated number is 10k, but trust me i have thought about this i could walk you through the logic it's just that THIS POST WILL BE YEARS LONG IF I DO) but one ceremonial role i think the master of the order should perform is, i think mace should preside over the funerals of fallen jedi.

the reason i think that's cool is because that obviously kicks up during the war, but it explains why in all of this extra canon, mace has such a complicated, fractious relationship with the order's place in the war and the chancellor; he sees the fallout. he puts his people to rest. he's the logistics guy, he's the one watching their population fall off of a cliff because of this war they're fighting. there's a really fascinating exchange in one of the legends comics between mace and a group of jedi who are morally opposed to the war, and leave the order in protest, and it's - mace is hurt, in a really genuine way, and i think pairing these dynamics puts him in a really interesting position.

he, more than most other characters, is put at opposites with the chancellor. he's the one expressing the distrust. i think that's a fascinating expression of mace as a character, a guy who designed an entire method of magical swordfighting rooted in protecting people ferociously (i'm not actually making it about channeling the dark side, that's kind of wild and racist and a little story-breaking, and this fits with what i'm going for better); he's a guardian of his people. he's the great pyrenees watching over the sheep. he's studying the line of the forest, looking for wolves.

in that context, his ability to sense shatterpoints - which i've toyed with in one fic - is really really intriguing, he literally has a sixth sense for exactly that. as i write this, i'm wondering if it might be cool worldbuilding to have shatterpoint-sensing as an ability that masters of the order specifically train for, or if it's cooler to have mace be specifically and spectacularly suited to being master of the order, i actually can't decide. both are cool for different reasons.

anyway, i say all of that to explain why i think mace is cool, because maybe the reasons i think mace is cool are pretty extrapolated from what we're shown, but that's the fun in doing the fandom thing anyway. as for how this makes me see his relationship with depa, what i have here is a vision of mace that is inherently defined by a protective, watchful urge; he trains depa in vapaad so she can protect herself without him, because, in essence, that's what the entire form is about. i think it's wildly cool that mace invented a Sword Love Language that he and his padawan speak.

one thing that happens a lot in legends - like, a lot a lot - is the idea of jedi stumbling across force sensitive babies and bringing them back to the temple, and because it happens so often, i like to think this is a documented tradition, that jedi who find force sensitive children almost always take that child as a padawan later because the force pushed them together. a lot of lines in legends allude to them thinking of each other as family, or outright say it; i like the idea that this mutual and they're both aware of how strongly they feel for each other, but it's largely unspoken, because, you know, lol, not to get into attachments discourse, but if anakin's love of his mother is considered attachment (and it is), so is depa's love for mace. non-negotiable no debates in the notes haha. leave me be for once please.

but that tension - the truth of this relationship and the fact that they can't help but for it to be true, despite being some of the most accomplished jedi in the order, the fact that i held you when you were a baby, i saved you as a child, but we can't ever say that - really plays into all of the things i already love about mace's role in these extra-canon stories. he has such great moments of being somewhat aware that he's living in a tragedy, from his grief over jedi leaving the order over political philosophy, from his grief in the legends republic comics when he feels responsible for sending quinlan vos into missions he thinks contributed to quinlan's seeming fall to the dark side, his mounting distrust of palpatine and how that one paragraph from obi-wan's point of view would imply that mace was thought less of for voicing that distrust of palpatine. there's a bit in legends where depa picks up a force sensitive child from their parents, to bring to the order; this isn't a rescue, like she personally experienced. and she has a moment where she's like is this right? am i potentially doing something wrong here? and mace reassures her that this is necessary.

but imagine the messy, ooey gooey emotional and ideological conflict that comes in when you embrace the idea that mace himself starts experiencing disillusionment with the republic later down the line; is the war justified? is what the war's doing to the jedi as a whole worth it? is the republic worth saving? the tension of characters who start realizing they're in a tragedy and start poking at its seams is delicious, and it makes mace's death actually a little bit gutting. there goes the frog that realized the water was boiling. the jig is up. i really hate that mace is so often tied into the standard Power Of The Council, like his presence is associated with authority, when there are so many instances of him rightfully questioning it, when there's so much you can extrapolate about mace that makes him pretty fucking cool when you do embrace that conflict, that tension.

this is what i wish fandom understood; conflict makes characters good. to learn about anyone you have to sharpen their personality against a whetstone, see how they respond to it. this is the good stuff. this gives me a picture of a guy staring at his commlink in the middle of the night during the war, thinking of the way depa was crying into his shoulder when he saved her as a child, missing her presence and stuck in this tangled web of circumstances that prevent him from fully realizing how against this he's starting to become. this gives me a picture of a guy who offers asylum to droids - literal weapons of war - because no one sees the effect of this catastrophic violence more than the man who is witness to every funeral, more than the man watching his people kill and be killed. and his reward for his loyalty to the republic in spite of all of this is betrayal. fucking GUTTING. i want to see it ten more times. one of these days i will fuck around and finally write the "mace hits his breaking point and denounces the war to the council, abstaining in protest and this sparks SO MUCH jedi drama" fic i have always wanted to ONE OF THESE DAYS

Zhao Zhao (Chinese, b. 1982)

Constellations, 2021-2022

Embroidery on silk

Spring Stars Watercolor on Black Paper 2024, 8"x 10" Yellow Daffodils

going absolutely insane because this is one of my favorite quotes from the book

Childhood can be scary.

A collection of some of my hand-drawn horror looping animations!

It's not optional

eagle: so what do you think about stigmata

prometheus: you know we're in a pre-christian myth, right? like that word doesn't exist yet. your dumb joke is anachronistic.

eagle: stigma talons in your flesh

Couldn’t sleep the other day. Drew one of my favorite scenes

When South Africa dismantled apartheid, it did not end with the expulsion of all white South Africans. They became part of the new South Africa, just without the criminal discriminatory oligarchic powers the apartheid goverment had. When Bolivia recognized its indigenous heritage and became a plurinational state, it did not mean that people of European descent were expelled in masse. It meant the recognition of the previously discriminated indigenous and mestizo people of Bolivia and the beginning of a path of integration and revalidation.

What I mean is that it's ridiculous to think that decolonization inherently means mass suffering and relocation, that's what colonization does. Decolonization is recognizing the crimes of colonization, but more importantly, material, political and social steps to give power and self-determination to the exploited native people who were victims of colonialism and imperialism.

In multicultural societies, you don't go like in that Peter Griffin meme with a skin tone chart and saying 'well, you go back to Europe, you go back to Africa, you stay here'. You build a new society on the paradigm of dignity for exploited people and equality under the law. People are acting like this is some sort of fantastic utopia instead of real initiatives that were done in living memory, with successes and failures, as all such initiatives have. One must ask why are some so insistent that multicultural societies can't thrive, especially when for most of history, societies were indeed like that. Consider why you think like that.

Gerry my beloved 🖤

just made some BONES :3 (aka I'm finally starting a Harrow cosplay and obviously the rigcage is first. day 1 progress pics and process under the cut)

I have a PLAN for the ribcage, and we shall see if it can come to fruition. if all else fails, I will still have some sick wall art 👍

Pt. 1 is making the sternum, I'm embedding a wire armature for support and also to integrate secure rings-i-can-attach-other-bones-to directly into the bone, to hopefully minimize future cosplay emergencies and malfunctions. I AM making the sternum 3 different articulating bones, because they are important #TO ME

I'm using paper clay (which i have never used before) because I have a very contentious relationship with foam clay and I dislike baking things in my oven (its a very bad oven. and very small). Trying lots of new things so let's see what happens!

Pt 2 is the vertebrae. I want to make a spine that goes down the back over MY spine, so I'm making basically the entire thoracic section, posterior part only as it is like, on my body. Cutting it at the pedicles if you catch my drift. Using wire again for both structural and rings-to-attach-other-bones reasons.

Fun fact, a good way to remember if you are looking at thoracic vertebrae is "does it look like a giraffe?". (lumbar vertebrae look like moose. meese?)

I'm basically making the connection between vertebrae happen at the junction of the articular facets, aka not sculpting those and keeping that part as wire only. I also has a really fun time making vertebrae that *progressed* from T1 to T12, aka from "looks kimda like cervical" to "looks kinda like lumbar". Definitely not perfect but good enough IMO. Yippee!

definitely should have like, considered rib attachment and such when I was making the armature for the vertebrae BUT i forgot. so we ball. I think I will attach them to the main articulating chain and just like... attempt to space it out with jump rings. we shall see if it works.

Next steps are scapulae, clavicles, and ribs. Still sorta unsure how ribs 1-4 ish are going to work due to my arms being in the way but I will figure that out when I get there 👍

The thing about having read our way through two previous books full of necromancers and weird eldritch shenanigans is that the absolute horror of what happens to John as a person doesn't quite register.

John's own glib, matter of fact narration tells the story as an apotheosis. He was doing great. He'd have fixed everything if only people had listened.

But reading between the lines in the John chapters, you glimpse something rather different.

John basically spends the first half of the Jod chapters sitting in the dark with his creepy yellow eyes, not eating or sleeping, literally stroking his favourite corpses and coming out with chill and fun statements about how he can feel their skin when he's away from them and he's 'waking up'. Cool, cool.

Passing swiftly over the cow dome, Presidential Puppet Pals, and the suitcase nuke, day to day life in the cow dome must have been fun... You're all on the Interpol watchlist, the Vatican is asking a lot of questions, the police are outside and John - who hasn't slept in a week and doesn't eat anymore and is probably wearing some kind of weird novelty tshirt - comes wandering past while you're eating breakfast, followed by a dozen silent, dead-eyed corpses like some kind of mother hen. He makes a cow joke, and then zones out because he got distracted by listening to the bacteria in your gut.

And then some guys die accidentally and it turns out he can eat death energy. So now he's got creepy Twilight eyes, an entourage of corpses, a cape, some very dodgy eyeliner, and he's barely breaking a sweat as he instantly kills over 100 people, says it was an accident, and then, dead serious, tells his followers to drag dead UN peacekeepers inside to add to his 'skeleton army'.

By the end, he's not slept or eaten in weeks, is tweaking his own bodily processes on the fly, is puppeting the dead US president and possibly an army of over a hundred corpses, monitoring G- in Melbourne, carrying on at least two conference calls, and helping to build barricades out of chairs.

And I just keep thinking how weird it must have been for his friends. How sometimes he would have seemed like the man they'd known and loved for so long, and sometimes he would seem different. Did they ever find themselves mourning the man he was? Did they ever stand there as he tuned into something they couldn't fathom, staring at them with those yellow eyes, and feel some awful, uncanny valley terror? Did he ever feel like he was losing himself? At what point did the cow jokes stop feeling like oh, classic John and start to be a reminder that his desire for vengeance and the scope of his powers were outstripping his remaining...perspective?...restraint?...humanity?

SuWING BATTA BATTA

Hoid-Kaladin dynamic is awesome bc Hoid isn’t even that annoying to Kaladin. He’ll truly just be like “rough day huh Kaladin” and Kaladin will go “do you ever shut the fuck up”