#armeleia

[tashvi]

Finally got the antique bottle totes hung! Now all my tiny planets have a home, along with some of our other crystal and mineral specimens. I'm sure I'll end up messing around with the display over time, but for now, it's just nice to have them out where they can be seen.

Many of the planet-spheres came from @bekkathyst while others were found at local flea markets and yard sales, along with many of the specimens, or were gifts from others.

[birbarmy]

Two new pocket-riders that arrived yesterday. I want to take some time soon (if I get any...) and take real photos of all of the newest recruits. There are so many beautiful little details my phone just can’t capture.

[clockwaysarts]

armeleia replied to your photo “A photo of some of my current sculpts that I got cleaned up! I figured...”

Love the tall bird

superqueerpasta

replied to your photo

“A photo of some of my current sculpts that I got cleaned up! I figured...”

I! Love! Tall bird! Oh my gosh this is the first time I've seen the legs!♡♡♡

Thank you! And was confused because surely I had shown the finished tall bird?? But no! I hadn’t! That one is technically my junk cast- or the first pull from a new mold- but it’s pretty spot on though it will join my personal army as many junk casts two. And the next were cast and given for xmas and I didn’t have time for any photos! Aaaah shame on me!

[frozensunset]

@armeleia is probably hands down one of my favorite sculptors and creators of art toys. I have five pieces from her now, and her art is enchanting. I hope to collect more in the future! She's just a really great artist, and I'm happy to support her creations! C:

[raelinkun]

Look who came today!! ฅ'ω'ฅ So stinking perfect and stupid cute!! And @armeleia was sweet enough to send them with a Pumpkin Spice Chai tea bag!

[captainofthetidesbreath]

@armeleia:

TBH, Etain was the reason I couldn’t finish Hard Contact, and why I haven’t continued reading the Republic Commando series.  I found the clone stuff really interesting, but Etain was just so… terrible that I couldn’t even deal.

First, her very introduction, the previously mentioned rape attempt, was… strange.  So… she basically runs, hides face-down in manure (humiliating!) and never ever pulls her weapon to defend herself from a Weequay who’s intent on raping her… but… she pulls her light saber on an unarmed farmer like five minutes later?  She’s obviously not actually defenseless.  So reading that, I couldn’t help but feel that the threat of sexual violence was only included as a means of establishing a certain kind of vulnerability and introducing her as being a fuckable female character. Why else would that be a character’s freaking INTRODUCTION??

She also falls into that “not so pretty and oh no, she’s clumsy” heroine type.  She is basically portrayed as inept, and the only time she shows any proficiency at anything is once her skill has been complimented by a male member of the group.  The only way that she derives any confidence whatsoever is through the praise of these attractive young men… despite that she’s a competent Padawan and she’s survived by herself for awhile since her master’s death left her stranded. Just based on that, I could pretty much tell that she was going to break her vows and bang one of them at some point, if not in that book then in one of the future ones.  

Which deeply bothers me because of how she perceived the clones through the Force - as children.  The biological age of the clones is mentioned explicitly… and yet they’re going to shoehorn her into a sexual relationship with them?  That’s creepy and predatory… especially when they also establish in Hard Contact that the clones are conditioned to want to please Jedi, to the point of disregarding other behavioral training if the Jedi seem to favor it.  So the combination of the child-like mind as perceived through the Force, plus the questionable consent of someone conditioned to please a superior… I just don’t feel comfortable with what that says about Etain.  It’s bad writing.

It’s a terrible treatment of a female character and an embodiment of the worst, most frustrating tropes.  The fact that it’s by a female author was just so disappointing.  I want more female characters, especially Jedi, and it was just… uugggggh so frustrating.

I agree the rape attempt is used as shorthand. To make her vulnerable in something that’s coded as a female vulnerability, but I very hard disagree that it was meant to present her as “fuckable”. Despite everything, I doubt even Traviss would’ve meant it to do that. Especially since Etain’s described as not pretty enough to make someone want to rape her immediately after anyway—which is nasty in itself. (In general, throughout the series, it’s constantly mentioned that Etain is apparently not conventionally desirable in any way and that it’s weird anyone wants to date her, which is awful thing to write about Etain in itself.) Yeah, it’s her introduction to quickly establish that Etain is in danger—and the awful trope is that to establish a female character is in danger is to try to rape her.

Etain pulls her lightsaber on the farmer because she believed the farmer figured out she was a Jedi, so she believed she wasn’t revealing new information about herself. She did not pull the lightsaber on the Weequay because the Weequay obviously did not know, so if she took out her lightsaber, she would reveal this information. That particular thing is what it is.

I generally believe it’s misogynistic to hold it against a female character for being “not so pretty and clumsy” trope. Yeah, it’s a common trope, but most don’t hold it against male characters for falling into “farmboy chosen one” trope. The series also has an unreliable narrator, and most of the assessments about Etain we get are from Etain herself, who throughout Hard Contact is suffering a crisis of confidence and she herself views herself as inept—rather than outside forces. Her crisis in confidence is also very specific. Etain is very confident in her more mundane skills, the skills that allowed her to survive after her Master’s death, but she has little faith in her abilities as a Jedi and as a military leader. It’s probably not changing anything in the long run about “female ineptitude” vibes, but it reframes that a little differently.

It’s difficult to comment on the fact that it’s a group of men having faith in her that gives her the strength to find self-confidence, because there’s literally nobody else around. But, in my opinion, it’s generally not portrayed as it’s because it’s men who have confidence in her and only because it’s men, and it felt to me rather that it’s literally anyone at all has confidence in her.

I generally won’t comment on the shipping, because that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But Triple Zero makes it a point repeatedly to say that by the time Etain finds Darman attractive, he (and the other clones) are firmly well beyond that whole child-like thing and they don’t remotely scan as children in the Force anymore. Bit of a nitpick but the biological age of the clones in Hard Contact is actually twenty, as mentioned in the novel, not that of children; it’s their chronological age that’s that of a child. But shipping with clones is a whole thing and it’s not really Etain specific—it’s something that is across the entire franchise and, I imagine, you find it a problem everywhere it comes up.

[mischief-maker-me]

Are I fluffy and cute? Yes. Yes I are. @seed-arts / @armeleia Wol with face up by @tashvi

[roterwolkenvogelbjd]

Kendra von Roterwolkenvogel

Ahhhh, my Mom's Christmas present arrived! A @seed-arts Wol head <3

She is Kendra, Goddess of Wisdom (cause you know, owlish features? /gets bricked) and this is not her wig. Cause I gave s.o the benefit of the doubt and now I run in circles trying to get one goddamn wig. Don't do that people. Next time I just suck up that EMS fee myself and save me that hassle.

Anyway, doubt you will see her done soon, she has an unholy amount of parts that need to be painted (face. wings, cap, hunting horn, maybe the claws)

The 'what is what' Seed Dolls Wol/LUTS KDF body, Soom Dune wings, Soom Pel cap, wig from eclipse21, eyes from Taobao