I think I need to start pasting more of my art to the walls

all my csp settings got reset and im relearning all the basic brushes that i love. watercolour brush and pencil brush and gouche brush my loves

hmm. retainers.

actually, let's first talk about the leylines of sornieth. the network of magic running beneath reality that all magic flows through. the world's natural mechanism for cycling magic.

all magic flows from the leylines, returns to the leylines, and is broken down by the shade within so the cycle can start anew.

(as you might have noticed, the leylines and the shade both are the source of many superstitions and misunderstandings, but this isn't about them.)

near-to-all creatures on sornieth are magical in some way, which means that their magic, too, will return to the leylines upon death.

all that is to say that the leylines are the afterlife. purgatory. whatever. which means that every now and then someone will realize this and try to break out. because that is something people will want to do, because a good few people do not want to be dead and/or do not want to simply fade into oblivion. and because that is something you can do, since magic can, in fact, flow out of the leylines.

(which means that you can, in fact, revive someone if you drag them back out but WE'RE TALKING ABOUT RETAINERS HERE.)

retainers aren't actually dragons. they are just kind of... spawned in by purgatory to keep people from breaking out of the afterlife. luckily, they're usually passive. won't bother you if you're just chilling (or, more likely, dying a second time) in purgatory.

they'll beeline for anyone causing trouble though. this includes people trying to break out, people trying to break in, or people who have already broken in and are running around in the leylines while still being very much alive. they will not pursue people out of purgatory, but they will remember and they will come for your ass once you die again.

physically, they're pretty damn big. about the size of a particularly large imperial. they don't have any limbs by default, but they can grow any number of them so one can absolutely have, i don't know, twenty arms if it needs that many. their wings and haloes (for the ones who do have haloes, at least) are not quite solid, but you'll encounter some resistance if you try to touch them.

they can technically be killed if you fight them hard enough, but so long as they retain a connection to purgatory they simply will not stay dead. "killing" one is a pretty tall order in the first place. they're stupidly big, they can channel lightning (not actually lightning- just raw magic. remember, purgatory is inside the leylines) they're able to teleport, and they can straight-up change the geography of purgatory at will. if you want to get out of purgatory, you're better off trying to avoid these things instead.

they seemingly answer to the employers, despite the employers... not actually having created purgatory. still, some of the employers have taken it upon themselves to watch over purgatory and have managed to intertwine their own magic with that of the leylines. as a result, they have some degree of control over both purgatory and its retainers.

anyways out of universe um. hi it's me i'm being insane about madness combat and making fandragons of the most random things. gabriel ultrakill is here because it makes the most sense. he's a retainer now because it's my lore and i get to pick the writing also i use "the leylines" and "purgatory" pretty interchangeably above because they are interchangeable. two names for the same thing. btw sorry i keep drawing things that are not actual flight rising dragons who are actual flight rising breeds. it Will happen again

studio qb, strangerville

"Why would you need a 2 TB ssd?"

Me hoarding thousands of photos and videos of my every favorite character:

Housemate is letting one of her rabbits walk around at night again :/

my prints from @theshatteredsilhouette came in today and I'm in love

Beauty and the Beast is my least favorite fairy tale to retell because the vibes are always the same and it’s way too overdone and there’s no mystery to the plot, except for the times when it’s my favorite because that familiar vibe is exquisite and exactly what I want right now.

Throwing away all my old art from my teens, can’t decide if it makes me feel lighter or not.

Idk how influential you are on the LT fandom on a Whole but you definitely inspired me to check out the originals, and especially appreciate Porky/Daffies more. It helps that my favorite short for years was Yankee Doodle Daffy!

AWWWWWWWWW THIS IS SO SWEET THAT IS 100% MY GOAL THANK YOU!! you don’t know HOW much this means to me!

i tend to stay away from fandom spaces/don’t consider myself a part of the fandom, so quite honestly your guess is as good as mine—i HOPE people think of me or associate me with these cartoons HAHAHAHA but 100%, my goal is to spread the joy of the originals and shed a light onto the people who made them and how their experiences and input inform the cartoons as a whole, and maybe how our perceptions of these shorts and characters have changed as time has gone on…

there’s no right or wrong way to enjoy the franchise, but i really do think it is a more fulfilling experience to Experience The Originals for yourself. i really enjoy talking about cartoons that are given less love from a mainstream angle and that 100% includes the Porkies and Daffies (and is also why i’m so adamant about spreading The Porky Gospel; he gets such a bad rap and is so underappreciated and every person i’ve spread my gospel about him to seems to really like or appreciate himself after HAHAHA. Daffy will always be my #1 favorite but he doesn’t really suffer from this, though i absolutely think his ‘40s persona gets a lot of misunderstanding as well)

THIS REALLY MEANS A LOT TO ME GENUINELY. making the plunge and checking out the cartoons is the best decision i’ve ever made. there’s a lot of rightful hesitancy to be had since there are SO many cartoons and it’s hard to find a starting point (and not to mention the many, many, many, many aspects that have aged poorly and/or were poor to begin with), but i can’t begin to tell you how fulfilling this experience has been.

so, if anyone who’s following me is cautious about making the plunge, i encourage you to give the originals a chance, ESPECIALLY if you’re into more modern LT media to familiarize yourself with the source material. you absolutely do not have to be a nut like me and watch every single in chronological order, but these cartoons are so ingrained and formative in the animation landscape today that i think anyone with an interest in animation should definitely give them a chance. and, if you’re a bit of a history nut like me, it’s very fun to see the evolution of culture as a whole as the years go on… radios evolve into TVs, the rambunctious attitudes of the shorts during the war years take a more domestic turn after the war, celebrity references depend on the decade, even the stylings of music, and of course the art styles of the shorts themselves… it’s so fascinating from a multitude of reasons. i really can’t tell you how happy i am to hear this (and Yankee Doodle Daffy is a GREAT favorite to have!)

// uhhhh gonna be out of the house for most of the day but in the meantime

sets down the tag for this dummy:

I have finally fixed and updated my desk wall

Ta-da!!

Guess who has two thumbs and got kicked out of her barn? 👍👍

So two weeks ago I ran into this woman at the barn as she was taking her horses out of the arena and I was taking one in to ride. I know her, her barn is right across from a) the barn with the horse I currently ride and b) the barn just next to it, where I worked for seven months. Seven. And I still occasionally work at the barn where I currently ride. Following me?

Well. She completely forgot who I was and that we had met quite a few times, actually, over the past two years. I said hello as I passed her and she gave me that very specific look middle-aged white women give you that’s somewhere between “are you a criminal” and “you don’t even go here”. She said “are you Lena? [daughter of the people whose horse I ride]” I said “uh, nope”, weirded out by the fact I’m so easily forgotten. She then says “we’ll, are you related to [this horse’s owners]?” I again said no, and “I just ride this guy.” Gave the horse a pat, tried to keep walking. At this point she went full school marm and said “are you on file with the stable committee office??” As in… have u signed all the hold harmless paperwork that everyone has to sign in order to do anything with horses at any barn anywhere. Again… I have worked and ridden at this damn barn for two years right across from this woman’s barn.

So I said “yup, I’m on file, I’m totally legal! I’ve done all the paperwork”. She immediately changed tone and laughed and said “oh you know, I just have to check!” And I fake laughed and said “yep! Ok!” And told her to have a nice day. And it sat in my craw for days and I couldn’t shake the feeling she was going to contact the horse’s owner and “report me” or something.

Fast forward to yesterday morning. I get a text from the guy whose horse I ride and he says that this bitch (not how he referred to her, of course) has been made head of the stable committee. And she has decided that no one is allowed to ride a horse they don’t own, regardless of waiver status, unless the owner is present to supervise. in summary I, a non-wealthy young person, am not allowed to ride at the stables unless the horse’s owner agrees to come out and babysit me like I’m a child.

Also, I am definitely not a worse rider than most of the horse owners at this place (not the ones I ride for) who know nothing about horses and never ride, (which is why they hire me and people like me to take care of their horses for them)! But that’s not the point, the point is this woman has cited “insurance liability” as the reason for banning non-owners from barn activity. She has taken over from the previous committee head, who is an actual lawyer, and decided that the paperwork the actual lawyer prepared isn’t good enough to ensure the barn’s interests are protected… even though it has been doing exactly that for at least five years without incident. This is the same woman who used barn funds to put up a slew of cross country jumps all over the bridle path even though there’s only one (!) other eventer in the entire stables, so no one uses them. It’s utter nonsense.

The worst part is that because I’m not an owner I’m not privy to the stable committee meetings, so I don’t actually know that this is a real new policy, or if she simply told this specific horse owner it was for his, and my, benefit. If my name was somehow brought up at this month’s meeting, my former “friend” who hates my guts now would absolutely have started throwing shade and making up crazy shit. By now most people at the barn know she’s crazy, but too few know me well enough to have a dispute. So I can’t even say for certain, because horse people Are Like That, that this is even a riel now and not just something they brought up for me specifically, without having a better reason to boot me out. Less drama this way, you see. Knowing this woman loves control (turning the entire bridle path into her own personal playground!), I’d like to believe it’s just a whole rule now, but I don’t know for certain.

Anyway… as soon as I read that text message I was like *stares in Tired Horse Bitch*. I was lucky that these folks allowed me to ride their horse, and I had other people offer too, when the family I worked for retired their horses and I was out of options. And it chaps my entire ass that after all the work I’ve done and all the connections I’ve made, the owners didn’t even get the right to tell me when to stop. They can’t even make that decision now. And it has lit a fire under me to just stop lurking on horse boards and checking out boarding barns and commit to horse shopping, because I cannot deal with being beholden to the whims of random old crones any longer. I need a horse of my own that no one can tell me what to do with. Do I currently have the budget I was hoping I’d have? Nope. Am I going to start looking at horses anyway? Yep.

So I'm leaving work and something darts in front of me, maybe 10ft away, too fast for me to see what it is. Peek around the tree blocking my path and I see this

Just like... a whole ass hawk. Dude's gotta be about 1.5ft tall. Massive fucking bird. And it's just staring me straight in my soul like this, even as I try to move ahead. It didn't budge. And there's only this path back to my car unless I want to walk on a busy highway. So I have the option of Death By Raptor or Death By Truck.

So I walk in the poison ivy filled patch off the sidewalk. Guy still isn't moving. Still staring me directly in the eyes. And I do this thing when animals are behaving strangely where I'll talk to them, so I'm just like, "Hey, man. I don't know you. You don't know me. This feels really threatening. I'm just trying to get to my car, dude. Can I get some space please? You're a big fucking bird. I see those claws. You could kill me right now, but I'd appreciate if you didn't, ok?"

It didn't move until I was about 2ft away. Again: I'm as far from it as I can be without walking into the street. It clearly wasn't going to budge. I walk past, thing flies up (silent, btw. Scary) and lands on a brick wall a little further ahead

Anyway. Weird guy. Nearly shit my pants when I noticed a bird big enough to carry off a fully grown cat was just... there, staring me in the face, unwilling to move away from me, a human, something it should see as a threat. I watched behind me the whole rest of the way to my car, just in case this bird decided to help me shed this mortal coil. 10/10 experience. Super cool guy.

me, the man who specifically requested that my sleeve not come down onto my hand so i can still hide all my tattoos with long sleeves: hm. i kind of want a neck tattoo