Ember Fell Publications

The home of Sylvestus Vol I: The Fall 🐯 Sylvestus Vol II: The Rise 🦋 Sylvestus: The Podcast 🔥 Each Separate Dying Ember 🦅 and more! JackdawLearningtoStay.blogspot.com/ bit.ly/sylvestus bit.ly/sylvpod

[ember-fell]

Unbelievable that I never posted this re-draw of a favourite Vol II scene

[feluka]

i hate the way fat antagonists have their weight moralized and used as a metaphor for greed and corruption and i hate the way it's overcorrected into fat people being "soft squishy friend-shaped cupcakes who look like they give incredible hugs" and i long for the day we have nuanced, interesting, and complicated fat characters and most of all i long for the day people are normal about fatness

[postarcadian]

tossing a grenade into a hornet's nest here but if I am being quite honest, I think the fandom-ification of certain aspects of ancient Greece and Rome combined with an approach that I can only describe as mining ancient societies and mythologies for (almost invariably M/M) shipping material does unfortunately lead a lot of people to (a) treat male homosexuality in Greek and Roman contexts as the punchline to a joke and not what it is, which is a spectrum of human sexuality that certainly included some relatively consensual relationships between adults of similar social status but far more often involved systematic abuse of people who for reasons of age, power, and legal status could not give meaningful consent, and (b) to downplay the extent to which the rhetoric of male homosexuality and homosociality in Greece and Rome is inextricable from both cultures' fundamental misogyny.

[postarcadian]

I should also probably say that it’s not the writing of historical slash fic that I take issue with, including fiction that depicts the violent or dubiously-consensual nature of most sexual relationships in the ancient Mediterranean - if anything, I think it’s significantly worse to present a version of ancient Greece or Rome in which everything is presented as totally negotiated according to modern standards of consent and everybody talks in modern therapy-speak. but it’s one of those cases that demonstrates how “you have the right to write and read about whatever you want, including uncomfortable and taboo things” and “fictional depiction does have real consequences” are not incompatible statements and when writing and reading historical fiction I do think it’s important to keep the actual lived experience of people who existed in past societies in mind. or to put it more bluntly, if your interest in Greece or Rome is coming from a place of “everything was super gay,” I do think you have a responsibility to not make that a punchline and to interrogate how homosexuality actually operated in those societies and what the lived experience of it was like (and not just for elite men!).

[postarcadian]

reblogging with excellent tags from @kallistoi!

[ember-fell]

Now with (one) colour

[ember-fell]

I support women's rights, but more importantly, women's wrongs.

[sinewywarp]

I really love it when a character's past self and their present self are considered entirely different characters

[keatsgay-deactivated20200126]

foreshadowing done well makes me go feral like there’s NOTHING better than getting to the end a book or an important storyline moment and realising that the author laced information so intricately into their writing that weren’t noticeable upon first read but when you read back sections they’re light giant red flags like wow writing is amazing

[antique-scarecrow]

the best stories contain two stories: the one you read the first time, and the one you read every time after that

[darklight-owl]

"Doomed characters who don't know they're doomed are great" ok but what about doomed characters who KNOW they're doomed but TRY ANYWAY?? Doomed characters who RAGE AGAINST THE DYING LIGHT??? Who have nothing to lose so they give up EVERYTHING??? Who are in DENIAL even???

[feluka]

we need more pathetic female characters written by authors who don't hate women

[feluka]

to be clear since this is making the rounds: she has to be an absolute loser in no way that can be pinned on her gender. no "i'm just a girl tee-hee" stuff. straight up just a loser (nondenominational)

[feluka]

addendum: she must be the most important person in the whole narrative

[feluka]

I decided to sit down and concentrate and properly write the list of rules that qualify a character for this role.

FIRST LAW: This character must be a woman.

SECOND LAW: This character must be a loser, but not in a way that can be pinned on her gender. Misogynistic response from the audience does not disqualify the character.

THIRD LAW: If the audience does not enjoy this character, then it becomes impossible to enjoy the show/film/book/game altogether. It is not possible to ignore this character, for better or for worse.

FOURTH LAW: The character must make bad decisions, and not just be a victim of poor circumstances outside of her control. The character can also be a victim of poor circumstances outside of her control, but it has to be primarily her personal choices that deem her a loser.

[max1461]

Well I'm gonna say at least some of them didn't

[astraldraco]

My (late) contribution for Make A Terrible Comic Day! I've been going to the library more often lately so this has been coming up a lot, cause I want something to read but have had trouble finding anything that I'm comfortable with.

If anyone has recommendations please please let me know because I am struggling.

[duckprintspress]

If the only valid queer rep is explicit queer rep, that's a huge problem. There are lots of old books that simply could not include explicit rep. There are lots of new books that it wouldn't make sense for the rep to be explicit. There are a lots of settings where they're not going to take a moment and go "by the way, I'm bi, not gay."

There has to be room for subtextual and interpretative queerness, even when discussing a canon where queerness is never acknowledged as existing.

There also has to be room for people to disagree with those interpretations, and of course some interpretations will be more supportable, canonically, than others, and sometimes we simply won't be able to say "this character is that rep (as opposed to some other rep)" conclusively.

There has to be space in our readings of books to be comfortable with this ambiguity, and there has to be a minimum good-faith acceptance that if someone says "that book was queer to me," even if the book isn't explicit queer and doesn't read queer to someone else... that doesn't change the nature of the queerness.

Some of y'all really need to accept that there's not only one way to read a book, and there never will be, and that's okay.

[jackdaw-crest]

Art dump!

Living my truth with realistic body types on my characters, via Sylv and Lavi - the bodies I always knew they had but was never brave enough to draw. I didn't use references for either of them and it's my first time in a long time using markers to cell shade like I do w/ my digital art, so am chuffed with them tbh. No-one gets to see Sylv's penis tho x

Nakisisa, my blood hunter from my friend's afrofantasy 5e campaign based mostly on Ghanaian mythology. Naki uses the lycanthropy subclass flavoured into a bouda, the Ethiopian legend of hyena shapeshifters / spirits. I practiced hyenas for a bit in my new sketchbook then did a few in his elf and yeen forms. I definitely wanna do more bc he's a lot of fun to draw and I'm pretty solidly settled on a design for at least his elf form now, though still workshopping the hybrid form (I want him to be clearly differentiated from a gnoll but it's hard to translate that from my head to the page lol).

And finally, the GM of that campaign's own PC in my current Icewind Dale campaign, Turker the goliath! Goliath art near-universally makes them very pale-skinned and muscular with no fat. My friend is neither of those things so I wanted his character to reflect that and still be the badass he is. Not super happy with the outcome of the watercolours, but at least we have accurate token art now lol.

[ember-fell]

Reblogged from my main, some authentic Sylv and Lavi (among others)!

[purpleyearning]

I love antagonists who mirror the protagonist instead of contrast them. They are the most extreme version of the protagonist, someone with the same dreams and beliefs who believed these things could only be achieved by the sharpest tools. The crushing weight of knowing that could be you.

[enigmaticpink]

I think some people forget that some literature and some media is meant to be deeply uncomfortable and unsettling. It's meant to make you have a very visceral reaction to it. If you genuinely can't handle these stories then you are under no obligation to consume them but acting as if they have no purpose or as if people don't have a right to tell these stories, stories that often relate to the darkest or most disturbing parts of life, then you should do some introspection.

[frodo-of-the-nine-fingers]

deeply unlikeable and unpleasant female characters are actually so important for the ecosystem and also as a good litmus test over if a person is Weird about women or not

[p4nishers]

its "queer subtext" this "queer subtext" that until its aromantic subtext then its fucking CRICKETS from everyone. embarrassing

[p4nishers]

say it best friend!! @divorce-enjoyer