His Serenity Edrehasivar VII
Finished rereading The Goblin Emperor and wanted to try drawing Maia in his imperial robes.

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@irasobrietate
His Serenity Edrehasivar VII
Finished rereading The Goblin Emperor and wanted to try drawing Maia in his imperial robes.
this dinner……………………..i can’t tell if it’s going to be Delightfully Chaotic, the Start of a Great and Beautiful Something Or Other, the third act of noises off, or just…..very very bad, but uneventful it certainly won’t be
okay wait let’s do a head count:
(Lord Auditor) Miles Vorkosigan, our host, inherently chaotic, In Love and Weird About It
(Lord) Mark Vorkosigan, nominally the Reason for the Season (dinner party) 1, Making Good Progress In His Therapy, currently also making some choices his therapist advised him against, trained assassin, clone, In Love and Trying Not To Be Weird (Or Decapitated) About It, hyperfixated on his new bug-comprising business venture, doesn’t really get or see the appeal of the whole aristocracy thing
Kareen Koudelka, nominally the Reason for the Season (dinner party) 2, head butter bug wrangler, youngest daughter, enjoys going to college and having premarital sex, would like to continue to do so, not sure how to reconcile her premarital sex-having college student self with her youngest daughter self back home around her family
Ekaterin Vorsoisson nee Vorvayne, the Real True Actual Reason for the Season (dinner party), mother, landscaper, soon-to-be college student, object of miles’s affections (unbeknownst to her and her alone), feeling some real fucking thirst and emotions for miles (recently beknownst to her), widowed out of a terrible marriage by her husband’s untimely and very messy death roughly two months ago, having some Feelings about all of the above
(Lord) Ivan Vorpatril, Would Very Much Like To Be Excluded From This Narrative, meddled in his cousin our host’s love life and is now potentially facing his Wrath, his hot, older ex-girlfriend is now his hot, older ex-boyfriend and the emperor/his cousin is dragging him into/not letting him weasel out of politics about it, just like his mother is dragging him into/not letting him weasel out of being her errand boy throughout her wedding planning for that selfsame emperor/cousin
(Commodore) Duv Galeni, recently engaged, recently promoted, recently involved in making sure his friend’s wedding to the emperor of the planet that invaded and colonized his isn’t ruined by any of his fellow colonized folks being violently mad about the whole colonization thing, a somewhat ambivalent and complicated relationship with mark the likes of which would require, say, a whole novel, one perhaps called “brothers in arms”, to cover, phd in history
DROU&KOU, had some personal run-ins with barrayar’s less progressive mindsets and engaged in some premarital sex of their own back in the day
Delia Koudelka, eldest daughter, recently engaged, wedding on hold until her fiance (see Duv) has successfully prevented the emperor from being assassinated etc. at his wedding
(Count) Rene Vorbretten, just wanted to make a baby with his beloved wife, but now it turns out his grandma fucked the enemy back during the War, so now he might lose his title and his house and his money and his friends and maybe even his wife if he can’t Get The Votes to counter his cousin’s claim
(Countess) Tatya Vorbretten, married a lovely guy, who apparently inherited some of that loveliness, genetically, from the same people who killed his dad, and now her friends are un-inviting her from their baby showers
Olivia Koudelka, middle daughter and apparently the only one of tatya vorbretten’s friends who isn’t terrible
Martya Koudelka, the other middle daughter
(Lord) Dono Vorrutyer, ne Donna, thrice married thrice…..divorced? widowed?……thrice become single once more, big fan of casual sex (see Ivan), engaged in a succession conflict with his very unpleasant cousin, chose a novel approach to the male primogeniture issue
(Lord Auditor) Vorthys, engineer, professor, pastry fan, imperial auditor, ekaterin’s uncle
(Dr.) Vorthys, “the professora”, history professor, ekaterin’s aunt, recently made aware of ekaterin’s feelings re: miles
(Captain) Simon Illyan, no longer in charge of preventing the emperor from being murdered, also no longer in possession of an eidetic memory, recently and pleasantly involved with alys
(Lady) Alys Vorpatril, society lady, widow, mother to ivan, aunt to miles, mark, and emperor gregor, in the middle of planning the wedding of the century, will make this as many people’s problem as it requires, recently and pleasantly involved with simon
(Dr.) Enrique Borgos, a very good scientist, a very bad businessman, recently rescued by mark from the consequences of the latter, dauntlessly attempting to share his hyperfixation (bugs) with the world
also present in the same house, if not at dinner (depending, i suppose, on the level of chaos lois is going for):
8,000+ butter bugs, huge potential, hugely hideous
I try not to fall into the "I never liked their work anyway" ditch when an artist/creator reveals themself to be a terrible person
BUT
a feeling I do have and will stand by is "While I enjoyed their work overall I did have some gripes that I overlooked out of affection and whimsy, but now that my loyalty is gone and my affection tainted there is nothing holding me back from enumerating my many grievances, to which the revelations of the creator's shittiness may or may not provide a new and infuriating context."
#such a good summation of this actually#because yeah there’s usually things that were always present#but which were easy to overlook or give the benefit of the doubt#that suddenly become relevant after a revelation about the creator#and it’s really not the same thing as the self-defensive “’I never liked it anyway’
tags via chimaerakitten
I love when it's a story within a story, like when the character speaks directly to the reader or a scribe recounts events. One way or another, the fourth wall is broken and the reader is drawn into the world.
Hear me out: the funniest way to read the Emperor's Hand is as Darth Sidious accidentally honoring the traditions of his homeworld.
Because obviously TTT, Mara Jade, and the Emperor's Hand as a concept predate both the PT and Palpatine being from Naboo, but they're all perfectly backwards compatible.
And the Naboo handmaiden system is objectively insane.
I love it! It rules!
It is ALSO insane.
George Lucas was, as always, operating primarily on vibes and mythic imagery rather than asking uncomfortable sociological questions, but if you stop and think about the institution for more than a solid minute, it immediately starts raising eyebrows.
What kind of society elects a teenage queen and then surrounds her with a cadre of teenage noblewomen trained to impersonate her, carry weapons, participate in security operations, keep state secrets, and potentially DIE in her place?? That's not even a hypothetical, that's Cordé.
That's a state security apparatus specifically created from child soldiers wearing silk and makeup.
My favorite headcanon is that the answer lies buried in the institution itself!
Once upon a time, someone kept trying to kill the Queen.
Maybe it was rival houses. Maybe succession disputes. Maybe civil war. Doesn't really matter, the point is that Naboo's history was far uglier than its idyllic image suggests.
Eventually some desperate monarch, cornered by enemies and running out of options, came up with a brilliant solution: every major noble family would send a daughter to court. They would be honored guests publicly ... functionally they would also be hostages. They would be trained to fight, trained to serve, trained to imitate the Queen's speech and mannerisms so thoroughly that no assassin could ever be entirely certain who they were killing.
Viewed through that lens, the institution suddenly starts making a little more sense. What noble is going to sponsor a plot against the throne when the young woman wearing the crown might actually be his own daughter? Every major family now has a personal stake in the monarch's survival. The knives are still there, but now everyone has to think twice before drawing them.
Over centuries, the original purpose becomes obscured. The hostages become companions. The companions become handmaidens. The coercion gets wrapped in honor.
Which is exactly how cultural institutions survive.
And if you accept that premise, Naboo becomes a much more interesting place. Beneath the fountains and beautiful architecture is a society that normalized masks, doubles, hidden identities and carefully managed appearances.
The Queen pretends to be a handmaiden.
The handmaiden pretends to be the Queen.
Political survival depends on controlling appearances.
Which is EXACTLY THE CULTURE that should produce a Sith Lord in the exact flavor of Darth Sidious.
For most Naboo, the culture of masks and doubles becomes a defensive adaptation; for Palpatine, it becomes a worldview. The future Emperor spends decades pretending to be a kindly public servant while secretly engineering galactic catastrophe. He presents himself as a grandfatherly statesman while running the largest conspiracy in galactic history. He doesn't reject Naboo's political culture; he internalizes it and weaponizes it. Which is extremely Sith.
And then we get to the handmaidens themselves.
Because I am convinced that Senator Palpatine watched the events of TPM unfold and took notes.
Imagine him sitting there watching a bunch of fourteen-year-old girls with blasters repeatedly interfere with his plans.
Not just the Jedi or elite soldiers or master spies.
Handmaidens.
Loyal. Adaptable. Good at disguises. Comfortable with deception. Willing to risk their lives for the person they serve. Every time one of Padmé's girls successfully pulls off another switcheroo or security operation, Palpatine's reaction isn't just annoyance but professional admiration.
Somewhere in the back of his mind there has to be a moment of: I want one.
Not a handmaiden, exactly. That's too obviously Naboo. But the concept? The concept is excellent.
Fast forward a few decades!
Palpatine is Emperor now. He takes the idea apart and rebuilds it according to Sith principles.
He keeps the loyalty. He keeps the secrecy. He keeps the personal service and the ability to operate independently. He keeps the willingness to sacrifice everything for the person at the center of the system. Then he strips away the humanity and replaces it with possession. He adds espionage, assassination, manipulation, and dark side conditioning.
Hmm, needs less sisterhood and more murder.
The result of course is Mara Jade.
At some point he absolutely had to workshop the title.
"Emperor's Handmaiden?"
No. Too obvious.
"Emperor's Hand."
Perfect, print it.
Everything gets scaled up, militarized, stripped of its humanity, and rebuilt in obsidian.
Which feels phenomenally appropriate for the dark side. Sith don't invent things from whole cloth. They corrupt, distort, and take something that already exists and twist it into a more selfish, controlling form.
And that's exactly what Palpatine does with Naboo. For all his claims of transcending ordinary beings, for all his efforts to become something greater than human, he never really stops being a product of his homeworld.
He just takes every institution he inherited and asks himself what the most evil possible version would look like.
The final irony is Mara herself.
Because in this reading she's the dark reflection of a Naboo handmaiden. She is the culmination of Palpatine's attempt to recreate and weaponize one of the defining institutions of his youth.
She's like the cultural fusion of Naboo and Sith cultures. Culturally orange chicken.
And after all that effort, after decades of planning and conditioning and control, she eventually defects, marries Luke Skywalker, and gets absorbed into the very family that destroys everything Palpatine built.
That's Star Wars AF.
holy shit the portugese covers for the imperial radch trilogy are so cool... the colours! the style!! the way the edges of the covers form a pattern together!!!
Chocolate Guy's Wario
rb and tag your favorite song that's not in english, japanese or korean
the thing I love most about how tumblr users use tags is that it’s like what if a social media website had a footnotes system
i feel like we kind of knew even before WaT that the contest of champions wouldn't end up being just a traditional duel, like there was always going to be some trick or secret or psychological game to it, not just two warriors beating the crap out of each other until one of them perishes. however i can't lie i kind of want to see the straightforward beating the crap out of each other until someone perishes version. having this 8000 year long war end with just brutal one on one violence is so simple of a plot that it kind of circles back around to being subversive. like yeah, rip each other's heads off, see how good you feel about winning after that.
Diabolically chained to the tags
I’m having serious thoughts about the contest of champions being Kaladin vs Moash bc like… it kind of brings everything full circle, right back around to Way of Kings. It brings back all of the questions that book raised that the rest of the series tried to sidestep. Can you actually protect by killing? What if that death that protects your people then means an entire other race of people gets subjugated— is Kaladin finally forced to confront his unease with slaughtering the Parshendi that he’s been sidestepping for 5 books? How good does he really feel to be letting someone he cared about die to protect people like Dalinar, to uphold the Alethi government that’s still taken almost no steps to rectify the abuse and injustice the darkeyes face every day, the government that will assuredly maintain the exact same caste system if it retains power?
Then, how do the Singers feel that Odium’s chosen Moash, a human, to fight for their freedom? (Assuming this is a timeline where Rayse is still Odium, since Taravangian basically lost interest in Moash entirely). Presumably Odium picked Moash partly because he knew Dalinar would pick Kaladin, and imagine the Singers like… hang on, is this a fucking game to you? We’ve been oppressed for thousands of years and you’re playing mind games with the humans?
And the thing is, Moash could actually maybe win, but not, I think, if he keeps letting Odium take all of his emotions away. He could win if he harnesses the energy he had in Oathbringer, when he protected the Singers in the caravan. He could win if he finds the part of him that’s capable of caring about others, that actually cares about real justice. But of course, feeling all that might also give him the space to wonder, is Odium justice?
The great irony is the fight brings them all the way back around to how they met, running bridges. Fighting on the front line of a war they had no part in starting, meant to die to protect everyone else. Because even after everything, the only solution Alethkar has to this war that it caused by relentlessly pursuing genocide against the Parshendi, by enslaving the Parshmen, by refusing to consider an ending without full dominion for the ‘forces of honor’, the only solution Alethkar has after everything that’s happened is the same solution it always has: feeding its darkeyed young men to the war. At the end of the day, no matter what you try to do, the Alethi war machine will take possession of you, will pit you against each other, will destroy your friendships, destroy your solidarity, kill your empathy, covet your righteousness, make you into someone you don’t recognize and tell you the fall of your blade is honorable. And then it will eat you.
I've decided the only valid answer to the question of "Could another Master have trained Anakin better/saved Anakin from Falling" is Jon Antilles.
This has absolutely nothing to do with any sort of personality differences between Jon Antilles and Obi-Wan or any belief that Jon Antilles would be a better teacher or has anything in particular in common with Anakin, and everything to do with the pure rage-fueled aneurysm that being Jon Antilles's Padawan would give to Palpatine as he tries to contact Anakin and is told for the 7th time now that Anakin and his Master were just declared dead again and no one's sure if it's stuck this time.
#the jedi aren't even TRYING to stonewall palpatine this time#this is just normal for jon antilles and nothing changed when he took on a padawan#palpatine keeps sending his agents after anakin and somehow they keep winding up dead#and worse: before they die they manage to leave behind yet another clue as to his entire plan#he has dooku send jango after them and they discover kamino and the clone army#palpatine sends dooku instead and they discover either sifo-dyas's fate or geonosis#palpatine finally goes himself and funnily enough the last planet they were seen on was malastare#but when he arrives the dugs tell him they're pretty sure the two jedi are dead and his rage creates a massive sinkhole#and what could be in that sinkhole you ask? it's a zillo beast with a metal chair!#jon and anakin were actually just off meditating for a few weeks nearby and come back when they feel a major shockwave in the force#neither of them are particularly pleased to have to make ANOTHER call to the council about a really weird mess that just happened
This sick bleach shirt I made. Something to showcase my undying love for prehistoric cave art.
Some of the bleach burned thru the shirt bc this was my first time bleaching anything ever, but it kinda adds to it.
I know in my heart that shane is the type of person who would never bring up essential personal details until they are immediately relevant and then would also be so understated about them
he and ilya are hanging out in the yard and some bees are buzzing around because some watermelon juice spilled on the ground earlier and shane suggests they go inside or rinse the juice off the patio and ilya teases him about being scared of little bees and shane SO nonchalantly just, "no, but i am allergic and you don't know where my epipen is"
and ilya
reblogging with my own tags because i'm also CACKLING imagining the implications of this not being specific to ilya, either. they're having a barbeque at hayden and jackie's house and hayden is good-naturedly encouraging shane to try a piece of coffee cake or something and ilya just goes, "no, bad for you"
and hayden IMMEDIATELY is on the defensive because what? you get to tell him what to eat now? where do you get o-
"no, bad for him because it has walnuts in it, pike. you want him to die? this is what you want?"
"what are you talking about?"
shane: "i'm allergic"
"??? since WHEN??"
"since always??"
"you've eaten over at my house HOW many times?? and never brought this up? the fuck, dude?"
"jackie knows"
"WHY DOES JACKIE KNOW AND I DON'T"
yuna and david dialing IN to "if you don't freak out, they won't freak out" during shane's formative years to the unintended and unfortunate side effect of ending up in situations like bb!shane going *calm tug tug on david's shirt* "yeah buddy?" *big inhale that audibly wheezes as his throat starts swelling shut*
the idea of ilya on instagram accidentally pressing like while DEEP in allergy mommy blogging territory and natalie from That Allergy Mama DMing him to be like "hi, my husband wants me to tell you he says hi and that he's a big fan and also that call against you against san francisco was bullshit." "hello, husband of natalie. also do you have any suggestions for substituting peanuts in this recipe?"
shane at the other end of the couch after thirty minutes of ilya not looking up is just ??? who the FUCK are you texting down there??? and ilya still without looking up just, "many many sexy women who are crying because i am married now. they are very upset." as if his ass isn't diligently taking notes from a married mother of four on a good allergy-friendly pad thai recipe because shane mentioned in passing that it smelled good the last time ilya ordered some and now ilya wants to find out how to make some he can try.
I laughed so fucking hard at this
“What the fuck do you think freedom means, Earl?” is right up there with “Harold, they’re lesbians.”
Reblogging for pride month.
Bringing this one back again for pride month.
There's really some bitch proselytizing in a fucking grocery store restroom. Like damn let us pee in peace 😒
[Video description: Gritty is turning the crank on a flagpole to raise the Progress Pride Flag. He gesticulates angrily that the flag is not blowing in the wind, then gestures offscreen. The flag begins blowing. As Gritty begins raising the flag more, the camera pans out to show a man in a suit and sunglasses, looking like a stern Secret Service agent, is holding a leafblower that points at the flag. End description.]