For #Caturday:

Ceramic bottle modeled in the form of a standing feline, decorated with resist-painted motif. Gallinazo style (aka Virú culture), NW Peru, Early Intermediate Period, c. 200 BCE - 600 CE. Spotted at the American Museum of Natural History NYC.

PS: this vessel may depict the Peruvian subspecies of Pampas Cat aka Northern Colocolo (Leopardus colocola garleppi). The Andean Mountain Cat (Leopardus jacobita) is also often suggested, but their range is more southern and higher elevation than where the Virú were? Also note the stripier legs on the Colocolo similar to the ceramic:

POV you are about to be Conquered™️

The thing that drives me crazy about people's opinion of Visenya in-universe is that they generalise her as "the stern one" or the "evil sister". Visenya may have been aloof but she loved with every bone of her body. She won the Vale banking on a mother's love for her son. She kept her word to a small boy despite a tense situation and grieved his death years later. She went to extreme lengths to form the Kingsguard to protect Aegon. She risked her own life to torch Dorne after it claimed Rhaenys. She counselled Aenys wisely throughout his reign. She counselled Maegor despite how close he came to bringing down House Targaryen, the legacy her bother and sister helped her build and left her with. Visenya helped build House Targaryen into what it was, not out of fire and blood but out of love.

Silly little concepts I had for the conquerors

I've been thinking a lot about the inhumane Targaryen beauty and in what way I should try to translate it to the paper, so I searched for roman statues and roman noses with those very high nasal bridges and sharp angles on their (very beautiful) noses, at the beginning I've felt a bit of fear about not making them attractive enough but honestly if my Visenya doesn't look as sharp and dangerous as Dark Sister, I don't want it

Sometimes I forget that I can draw whatever I want, regardless of how cringy. I feel like creating fan-kids are something of an old tradition in fandom.

Here are adult versions of the kid designs I made for Darth Revan.

The reason why HOTD doesn’t work is because the Dance of Dragons, while devastating and tragic, especially for women in terms of ruling and inheritance, is meant to set up the success of Dany’s arc (bringing back dragons and magic, reviving house targaryen, being queen regnant), but GOT ends with Dany’s failure and villainization. There will be no payoff after rhaenyra is killed during the war and no woman is allowed to sit the throne in her own right for the next 100+ years. Dany gets the throne for a day before being murdered in front of it. Then it goes to a dude who absolutely doesn’t deserve it. GOT has damned HOTD by fucking up the point of this event in ASOIAF history. So now we have the HOTD writers trying to retcon and shift the focus from “both sides were capable of doing some fucked up things, but ultimately this was a crime perpetrated by the greens against Rhaenyra that really ruined things for literally everyone” to “both sides were equally bad and wrong and everyone should’ve just gotten along.”

Pencils mostly as an exercise in movement- inspired by some Coptic depictions of dancers

I don't know where the textile is housed, but these are in the Benaki Museum and Brooklyn, respectively

of course other central asian cities have the 'old' city as well but tashkent stands out to me bc the central part was almost entirely destroyed by the 1966 earthquake & had to be rebuilt

Clarence Brown directing Greta Garbo:

"Working [with her] was easy because she trusted me. I never directed her in anything above a whisper. She was very shy, so we'd go through the changes I wanted in a little quiet whisper off in the corner, without letting others know what I was telling her. I learned from experience that Garbo had something behind the eyes that told the whole story that I couldn't see from my distance. Sometimes I would be dissatisfied with a take, but would go ahead and print it anyway. On the screen Garbo multiplied the effect of the scenes I had taken. It was something that no one else ever had."

man I just wanna work at a historical archives or museum.. actually use my 2 degrees.. instead I'm playing archivist for a convent 😑

i may be drawn and quartered for this but the way some of u talk abt mandalorians is making me think u guys don’t actually know what (american) imperialism is

Happy #WorldFrogDay! #DYK there are currently 7582 species of frogs documented, accounting for 88% of all amphibians?

This happy greenstone frog lives at the American Museum of Natural History. Unfortunately very little info is available about its exact origins beyond it being pre-conquest Mesoamerican; the museum's records list it as having been collected from the Valley of Mexico, Chalco, possibly Veracruz, and added to the collection in 1901. Dimensions: L: 13.5cm W: 16.0cm D: 25.0cm.

for the ask game, number 1 for lottie!

(screenshot of lottie for those curious)

soooooo lottie. where to begin. originally she was just supposed to be a joke character for my first run, basically what-if-lottie-matthews-was-the-dark-urge bc i was really into yellowjackets at the time. but lottie tavews really morphed into a character of her own, and i couldn’t be happier.

so lottie is my dark urge, a human (bhaalspawn) blade pact/great old one warlock who uses she/they pronouns. they accidentally triggered every single romance through high charisma and sheer sluttiness but ended up going through with the shadowheart romance (though i HC they’re in a bit of a qpr with astarion as well). i really didn’t want to miss out on much content on my first playthrough, so lottie was my attempt at a balancing act between resisting and indulging the urge. ultimately, they renounced bhaal— a decision that was impacted mainly by shadowheart’s own decision to spare the nightsong. (out of character, i really wanted lottie to be much more passive, and for their own decisions really take cues from the other origin characters).

my hc is that lottie is much older than she looks (probably around 40, though i didn’t touch the age slider during cc so she looks really young), despite being human, and was originally from luskan before the urge drew her south to baldur’s gate. if i could give her a D&D background other than haunted one, she probably would’ve been a charlatan, given her very playful nature and natural tendency towards deceit. she’s also transfemme and pansexual, though the former doesn’t come up in-game really at all.

and to close this out, just a little fun fact about them: despite being a great liar, lottie is terrible at cards

Visenya and Ronnel Arryn is something so precious to me, but it often gets me thinking what she was thinking when she found Ronnel alone in the courtyard. Did she see just a little boy amazed by a stranger and her dragon? Did she see Aegon at that age? Did she imagine a son of hers in the future? Was it strategy or just maternal or big sister instincts kicking in? Because Visenya could have taken the Eyrie as a show of strength and reminded the world of fire and blood. Perhaps that was the plan. But she changed her mind. She chose kindness.

Can I request please an art of the conquerors beloved queen Rhaenys I ? 🙏🏻

I once saw a mood board of Targaryens inspired by ancient China so decided to try it out. Hope you like it ^///^

Do you do pre-ASOIAF fanart? If so, would you be ok with drawing the Amethyst Empress and the Bloodstone Emperor or Aegon V's sisters meeting Dunk since they have yet to show up in the Dunk and Egg books?

I've never drawn the characters you mention, but who knows. Maybe one day... if I get a cool idea about them.

Here I leave you the pre-ASOIAF fanart I made.

On the Age of Heroes: Crowns

On Aegon's Conquest: Planning the conquest, Dark Sisters, Three Rhaenys'

On F&B: Harwin x Rhaenyra, Cregan Stark

On Robert's Rebellion: The Vale, Ashara Dayne, Lyanna Stark, Lyanna and Elia, The royal family, The Knight of the Laughing Tree, The triangle, Promise me, Tower of Joy