he's a demigod cimera knight who was brutally defeated and then spared by a tyrant queen, with the caveat that she cut off his goat head and uses it as a hostage to keep him loyal to her. unfortunate but what are you gonna do
I’m usually not someone who wants to buy a new printing of a book just because it has a different cover but the Temeraire art by Rovina Cai has me so tempted!
There is even spine cover art for the entire collection!
This series remains one of my favorites and I implore everyone to read these wonderful books! Dragon riders in the Napoleonic wars, with rich cultures from around the world, intense battle scenes, dragons arguing for fair rights and pay, and more!
I think Gortash's design is very interesting. Yeah sure even his coat's description mentions "a maddening attention to even the most minute details of the filigree," but what I really enjoy about is the sharpness of it all. Humans are all soft, rounded teeth, round ears, even sharp features are in reality, very soft. Gortash's coat's details are all sharp. You couldn't hug him without several pointy miniature horns poking at you. His right hand, has a metal claw on every finger. If you're not careful, even a handshake with Gortash could draw blood. On his left hand, only the ringfinger and pinky are clawed. A gentle touch from that hand could be followed with a sharp blade cutting skin.
His back however? Completely bare from any decoration. He doesn't think anyone will approach, or even see him from behind. His clothes are meant to be seen standing, in front of a crowd, maybe on a throne. Ruling over everyone. However, it's a strange choice to leave your back so bare from what protects you on all other sides. Maybe he thinks his god has his back. Maybe he knows there's no one there. Maybe his trust in himself and those under his rule is firm enough.
Temeraire, eyes wide : You ARREST Laurence? You arrest him like the criminal? Oh! Oh! Destruction for the government ! You are a cruel and unjust country and I Am Going to Scream
Ok, one day I will see a cool beholder mini and not be consumed by the need to paint it.
That day clearly isn't today though, and I'm not sorry.
Really happy with how this guy turned out, especially the eyes. Doing a sort of fade from the pupil rather than a hard edge to the iris worked really well with the black I think.
I took two tries to get the base colours of the skin down, my first attempt was more purple than pink/red in the recesses. I think the red version makes it much more fleshy in all the worst (best) ways.
As someone with anger issues myself, I actually think Viren has good anger management skills.
The episode Smoke and Mirrors is a great example of this. He throws a candelabra on the ground in anger, which starts a fire, but then he puts it out. You'd expect a big explosion next--that's normally what happens when the villain gets angry--but instead, he just puts it out. He lets himself be angry, sits with that anger for a moment, then breathes. And a little later, you see him cleaning up after himself with a broom. (Fuck knows the number of times I've cleaned up shattered wood from our backyard.) He's not above cleaning up after himself, and he can recognize "yeah, I broke some stuff in anger."
Other than the, you know. Villainous acts. We never really see him get physically violent because of his anger. He takes things out on people sure, but not in a way that leads me to believe he struggles with anger management. He's able to take a breath when he realizes he's yelling, and he's angry, yes, but he's able to keep his voice reasonably level for the amount of anger he feels. He can take a step back and think. (Which is honestly impressive, considering we don't get that a lot from villains and antagonists.) Even though his threats of murder/violence/etc are real, from my POV he has fairly good anger management. Maybe it's not exactly healthy all of the time, but hey, it's something.
And throughout seasons 4 and 5, after he comes back from the dead, he can manage his anger much better. He's made peace with dying and renouncing dark magic. He doesn't get as angry as often and gives himself permission to just exist.
I'm not defending Viren's actions in any way, I just think the way his anger is handled is kinda nice. It's oddly validating to see a villain with anger management skills.
Toward’s the very end of TSR’s lifespan, the company launched the Monstrous Arcana line, a multi-product look at several iconic D&D monsters. The idea was to release a detailed sourcebook and then spin three linked adventures out of that material — I like that arrangement a lot! The first subject was the beholder, in the pun-titled sourcebook I, Tyrant (1996 — it also plays on the title of Robert Graves’ I, Claudius).
Within the 96-page book is pretty much everything you could ever want to know about beholders, which is probably a lot, since they’re such bizarre creatures when you stop to think about it. Without hands, how do the do stuff? What are their homes like? This is the “Ecology of” articles from Dragon Magazine taken to their natural, wide-ranging conclusion, and anticipates books like Lords of Madness and Liber Mortis in 3E.
The book also answers questions you didn’t know you had, like: do beholders wear pants? Yes! They do! They have a variety of magical mech-things they can sit in that have arms and legs. I love that. I love it more that one of the options is a hollowed out undead humanoid corpse. Gnarly.
The book isn’t limited to traditional beholders, either, or beholders at all. There are seemingly endless variants, and a handful of new, strange mutations. Accompanying this all is a ton of art, much of it in full-color. This is a swanky book! Arnie Swekel and Randy Post are both standouts — they define this late era of 2E for me.
I'm watching The Mario Bros Movie (the newest one) while sketching badly on my Cintiq
All I can see when Bowser talks about his plan to marry Princess Peach is Malleus talking about the MC in an Enemies-to-Lovers-ish Evil Overlord AU lololol
*accidentally gives self idea for possible oneshot/headcanon post*
....alright if anyone wants that to become a thing, lemme me know in either the comments or my ask box lol.