I should be writing right now

please remember that I am a Canadian illustrator and it is fucking bizarre to come to me with medical questions

Why would you limit yourself to drawing Canadians?

everyone else unfollow me I want to be alone with arsnof

@belle-ofthebrawl 🥸

Meowsieur Purroit

today I learned that in 2008, the city council of florence overturned dante’s sentence of execution if he returned from exile. yes, dante’s inferno dante, who died in 1321.

but the funniest part of this is not that they were debating the exile of a man who has been dead for over 500 years.

the funniest part is that the vote was 19-5. five people voted to uphold dante’s exile.

The objectively funniest part of this is actually that the city that holds his remains, Ravenna, refused to give his remains back. This was a ploy from florence to have his remains moved back for the tourist money and its been ongoing for a long time. Florence had a fake tomb built in the city to trick people into visiting, and have tried to force the return of the remains.

His actual caretakers have been very steadfast in keeping them hidden, moved, or generally out of reach to respect his choice in life to never, ever, ever return to florence, even when he was first offered the chance to return. This is at this point an almost millenium long feud that florence is really, really mad about losing

so basically the five people who wanted to uphold his exile were in the right

i think any vietnam vet with the audacity to go back to vietnam on vacation should be overwhelmingly grateful their tour guide doesn’t just murder them

so don’t get me wrong because a lot of arthurian stuff is super misogynistic. but it’s never really in the damsel in distress way you expect. like the most helpless damsel is lancelot trapped and crying in a tower, completely useless, until this random girl who made him behead a guy in front of her fifty pages ago rolls up with a pickax and rope and is like “ok I’m minecrafting you out of here.” and this works.

Another direction you’ll see this go is, like… okay, so in Arthurian texts, violence is very much The Province of Men. But women often want violence done for one reason or another, so they’re out there asking knights to fight such-and-such for them & the knights are of course honor-bound to accept under certain conditions, which by genre convention are easy to engineer.

All of this means that one of the standard female roles in Arthurian romance is “quest-giver”. And in some texts, this can drift from “these are damsels in distress and the knights must help them in various ways” to “it kind of seems like the women are the ones who actually know what’s going on & the knights are just being led along to wherever they’re supposed to be”.

It’s still ultimately an example of misogyny and strict gender roles, but it ends up often looking pretty different from the stock “damsel in distress” scenario people expect.

...Is the woman in Arthurian myth who Wants Violence Done but must conscript a man to actually do it the literary ancestress of the modern Femme Fatale? Discuss.

She slipped into my office that night like a demon into the mind of a pious monk, seductive and dripping with heresies. Her gown and headress were of rich silk befitting a maiden, but her eyes were cold and sharp as the executioner's sword, and her lips as red as the apple that tempted Eve. Her legs, presumably, went all the way up, but the aforementioned gown was floor-length, so it's hard to say. Also she'd ridden a horse into the building for some reason, which was quite distracting.

"Sir Knight," she said, dismounting and retrieving something from her saddlebag, "I have a job for you." She tossed a severed head onto my desk.

I peered at the severed head. It had noble features, and had managed to land exactly on top of one of the stains left by previous severed heads. "How did you find me?" I asked. "I swapped my red shield for a blue one; the disguise should be impenetrable."

"The hermit told me where you'd be", she answered in a voice like the bells on a horse's harness before battle.

That tracks. Those hermits are always poking their noses into my business. "How may I serve you, fair lady?" I asked. "I'd kneel, but my armor's gone a bit rusty in the legs."

"The Baron D'Iverjoure has slain my lover," she said, gesturing at the head, the rings on her fingers clinking like manacles in a wicked king's dungeon. "I need you to avenge him."

"I have no quarrel with the Baron D'Iverjoure," I said, knowing as the words echoed in my helmet that I was saying them just for the form of it and I'd end up taking this quest regardless. "I have heard he is an honorable man."

"That may be," said the damsel, in tones as lovely as a reliquary and just as filled with death, "but you took an oath to obey the next lady to ask you a favor, and I'm calling it in."

I silently cursed my habit of swearing rash vows. They always get me in trouble. But you know how that goes. "Your wish is my command, milady."

She nodded and remounted her horse with the help of her two servants who I hadn't bothered to mention before now. "I will listen for news of your success," she said as she left.

That's the way it is with damsels; they always know about the oaths. Even the ones you spoke into a dented chalice, empty of wine, after everyone else had left the feast. And now I've got another quest I can't turn down without losing my honor.

#as lovely as a reliquary and just as filled with death is a BANGER OF A LINE

I'm glad you appreciate it. I was wracking my brain trying to come up with enough "beautiful but dangerous" similes to fill this out in the over-the-top way I wanted -- the reliquary one was the only case where I stopped and thought "that's actually not bad; i should remember it." Probably needs workshopping, but I like it in concept.

love that Ratthi and Gurathin are, while being at opposite ends of the friend spectrum, both equally down to clown

yes i will use my lunch break to help you break into a mysterious spaceship that needs unspecified help for unknowable reasons

yes i will wake up in the middle of my night to help you break into a mysterious spaceship that needs unspecified help for unknowable reasons

AND NOT ONE OF THE THREE OF THEM CONSIDERS THE POSSIBILITY OF A BIOHAZARD.

lookin at you Ratthi you’re a BIOLOGIST

(also as a side note i feel like the memes

Ratthi Stays In The Shuttle

and

He Should Have Been At The Club

are on a collision course…)

Why would you make me choose!? 😫

It has been a hot second since i posted but here’s some of Obi, Quin and Bant :)))

Continue Reading.

Okay this is actually sick as hell

wikipedia 3d gif of the LLVPs!

Russian Winter is enemies to lovers I guess but it's kinda like

"I don't hate you. I hate what you choose to represent. That symbol you put on your chest each time you go out into the world. I hate watching you suffer. Watching people wearing that symbol hurt you. I hate that no matter how much they do, you still wear it. But no matter how much you wear the badge of the organisation that killed my mother, I could never hate You, because you are a victim too even if you never acknowledge it,"

And it makes me feral.

"Get out of my yard strange cat."

"we are the same, you and i. we share a warrior's bond"

please spread this so that it can actually be funny instead of just 1 person voting

Everyone voting chimney like

Equal parts chimney and foundation rn

This is probably the worst that anything has ever aged

i see you kids out here with your lifespan angst and i am appalled at your lack of faith in vox machina's resident geezers

guy who is definitely not about to fall into a surprise midday nap with an aftermath worse than a hangover: it seems like a really good idea to lay in bed and get cozy under the blanket as part of my plan not to fall asleep. I do not know why.