Caught the beginning of CR4ep3 livestream but fell asleep during it.. so now I gotta wait until Monday to see what happens. But I did wake up with this image in my mind, so I had to draw it :)

Did not anticipate these two being my favorite from the designs, but I am so intrigue. Love this dynamic for them.. or sorry that happened???

you hear the call of the nightingale vaelus!!! print club for november is C4 themed! you can join here!

imagine staying up the whole night, finding out your best friend with whom you have regular coffee/wine dates with to talk about arts is an ancient god-killing weapon and you are the most important person in his life and your art is the thing that made him really feel alive for the first time; and instead of being able to process all this you have to rush off cause the mother of your children and her surrogate necromancer son are in danger, but when you finally find him the boy is lying dead on the ground with his insides spilled and his heart ripped out, and for a split second you see your own son lying in his stead; but then! your ancient god-killing mask friend and some bursar wizard with great tits from the magic school pull a stone out of the young man lying there and he wakes up gasping although he doesn't need to breathe and now your baby mama, and a random guy who hates all of you, and an elf with a weird connection to the stone that is keeping the now-mostly-dead necromancer tethered to this plane are all saying goodbye and leaving to the east in the direction of a vast army your son may be fighting and then you realise you have work in two hours

cant believe it? happened to my good friend hal

also your brother died not more than two days ago

What an episode… Had to try my hand at a bigger illustration for episode 4. I am SO hooked!!!

Mass Effect is one of my favorite franchises of all time, but it can be so difficult at times to reckon with the fact that as a female gamer, they were simply not made with me in mind. And, ultimately, it suffers for it.

Ironically, the gender gap in the ME trilogy especially apparent when I recommend the games to a male friend. I finally talk them into playing it, and they will, more often than not, have absolutely nothing at all to say about the female characters (or lack thereof). Wandering through the games, you're bombarded with a diverse universe full of unique-looking aliens- but male aliens. Asari are the only female aliens you meet beyond Tali and a couple other female Quarians, until ME3, where we get Eve and Nyreen in the Omega DLC. Which means for two (and a half, let's be honest) games in the franchise, every Turian, Salarian, Krogan, Batrarian, Drell, Hanar, Vorcha, Elcor, and Volus is a male. But what is even more striking than this atrocious worldbuilding oversight is that, handing the games to your average male fan, they barely notice. It escapes them entirely as something worth mentioning. They don't perceive the empty echoes of the female voices we aren't hearing, of the other halves of alien populations completely unrepresented. It's as if the default setting of the world, fictional and not, is male.

Asari- the primary female voices in the game- are poorly written. We know this. An entire race of biotic-wielding, technologically-advanced aliens with lifespans in the centuries and incredibly rich culture and technology, and the most we see of them in the entire trilogy is as strippers and occasional mercenaries. Liara, Samara, Aria and Benezia break this mold, but not without their own flavors of sexualization. After all, Benezia still dies in what is akin to Turian fetishwear under the control of Saren. Her favorite color was yellow, remember?

But beyond Asari strippers, skin-tight Cerberus uniforms, and comically sexualized robots- all valid topics, but talked to death at this point- I truly believe the most astounding, hollow, and disheartening result of this casual misogyny is the Krogan.

The storyline of the Krogan cannot be emancipated from the concept of birth. An entire species near-sterilized, a war crime excused away for the greater good. The Krogan story IS the Genophage, and the horrifying explanations used by those in power to excuse atrocity. And for two entire games, not once are we ever shown what the Genophage has done to Krogan women. Not societally, physiologically, or psychologically. They are conveniently segregated away in briefly-mentioned "female camps," while the men discuss the horrors of a war crime that affects birthing rates. It takes until the final installment of the series to show you one female Krogan (who didn't even get her own model, they just covered her so you wouldn't notice) and to mention the absolutely devastating toll that a cultural pandemic of stillbirths, abuse, and chronic infertility-caused sickness can have on a population. Eve is a fantastic character. Truly. But after two whole games of the Genophage being such a critical cultural touchstone for so much of the galaxy, and so many player choices depending on it, it's incredibly difficult for this omission of perspective to be remedied by a few nuanced lines in the med bay.

On the other hand, I think about the Rachni a lot. The so-called ancient enemy of the Krogan people, the foe that led to them being uplifted by the Salarians (and then, ultimately, discarded by them) in the first place. A massive amount of pre-game lore is devoted to a culture that, interestingly enough, speaks to the player through a queen. In fact, the Rachni queen is one of the first female alien NPCs you encounter in the entire trilogy. And as you encounter her, she speaks of songs of mourning. Not for her, but for her children.

You are offered the chance to spare her twice, once in ME1 and again in ME3. Both times, she has been used for her control of her hive, her children, and the potential army that can be bred out of her. Given the choice to free or kill her, many argue she's too dangerous to be kept alive, her species too volatile to be left to reproduce unchecked. An eerily familiar narrative, echoed by the Krogan, creating very poignant foil to me. A species struggling to give birth, and another, their supposed enemy, constantly being taken advantage of for it. It is a struggle of mothers, being commodified by men, and everyone is losing.

I wonder what narrative depths this series could have discovered in the tragedies of the Krogan and the rich cultures of other alien civilizations if they had considered, even for a second, that female voices could support a story where male voices simply cannot. What would we have learned about Salarian women, and their opinions on fertilization regulations favoring male offspring? About Turian women in the line of duty and their place in the hierarchy? Does the Batarian caste system have a bias on the basis of sex?

Obviously, there is nothing that can be done about the erasure and treatment of women in a game series over a decade old. But, I do believe it can be used as an example going forward to show how cultural and environmental storytelling is genuinely made worse by the oversight of female voices. All that to say, I love this universe and these games. Sometimes, it's just difficult to remember that we were only given half a galaxy to truly appreciate.

pennies on the eyes

little guy

rushing to the other side

The names in CR 4 are so good. Here are some fun things I noticed.

Please tell me other things y'all may have caught. As a name nerd I am eatin' good.

I like how Marisha made Murray look like an eccentric bard and gave her an accent stereotypically considered "uneducated," and it turned out she's a financial administrator at a wizard academy. And then the wizard academy is facing political pressure from noble houses of sorcerers, former sun god worshippers, and fairy realm colonizers (?) who are trying to make casual, accessible arcane practices illegal. Wizardry as democratization of magic where anyone of any background can do it if they try and gain upward mobility. Themes are theme-ing.

As a southerner with an accent who use to work with universities and college related places, man is it so nice to see someone sound like me but isn’t the butt of the joke.

I use to hate watching in real time someone form a low opinion of me based on how I sound. Or ask me, “they have schools down there?”. Like bruh I have a doctorate and all my education was done in the south, and I still somehow know what I’m talking about. Crazy right?

they will bring mirth and song to this place, but the past will linger, heavy on your heart

POV: your public execution has created a domino effect which will last at least 100 four-hour long actual play d&d sessions.

So happy with how this turned out! Speedpaint available here and here!

I didn't like how Thimble was turning out so I didn't render her. I'll try her again one day but for now I am moving onto the next one.

every time someone calls a cis man an egg because he decides to deviate even slightly from traditional masculine gender norms, an angel loses its wings

you do realize that cishet men deciding to goof around with things that are traditionally feminine doesn't automatically mean that they're queer, right? you understand that?

the same bitches who see a man trying on candy scented perfume rather than axe body spray and go "omg you go girl!!" "see you during your transition sweetie! 😘" "which could mean nothing!" are the same bitches who decry the gender binary and say shit like "makeup has no gender!" "clothes have no gender!" "your self expression doesn't equal your gender!" it's almost like y'all see queerness as inherently feminine. hmm.

maybe this is a hot take, but goofing around with gender expression isn't restricted to queer people, nor should it be. cishet men can wear skirts and eyeliner. cishet girls can bind and cut their hair short. cishet people can get funky with presentation and still be happy as their agab. stop reinforcing gender binaries by calling every seemingly cishet person who decides to deviate from gender norms an egg

also while i'm at it and not at the tags yet, if you use this post to bash trans people in any way, i'm throwing tomatoes at you.

Let's make it even simpler. Calling someone who self-identifies as a man a woman is misgendering them. It doesn't matter how many trans women you know, it doesn't matter if you're a trans woman yourself, in the moment you are misgendering someone, and that's cruel. Full stop. Respect people's self-identification.

Lord Asriel and Stelmaria

Mrs. Coulter and the golden monkey

Art by Clement Poumirau

One moment that makes me think of lost potential was when Orym told Keyleth that Imogen was Liliana's daughter, Imogen knocked him for it, and Orym didn't care.

If Liam hadn't taken a back seat with Orym at every turn, he could have poetically been the biggest time bomb in all of Bell's Hells by virtue of being "the normal one" more loyal to his community than to the dubious weirdos he's only known for months. He could have drawn on the party's history of entertaining Ludinus's ideology and losing it on each other and answered Keyleth, "No, I don't trust them with this." He could have confessed to her that one of her greatest enemies was a threat again, and why.

At the very least he could have refused to let Laudna enter the same room as Keyleth, bedridden and at her most vulnerable, unable to heal, when Orym knew from the gnarlrock incident that Delilah could take over Laudna's body. Or even if he didn't know that specifically, he could have deduced something close to it based on what he knew about Laudna and what Imogen told him about her causing harm without meaning to.

Some guard he is; no wonder Keyleth sent him away to play detective instead. If I were her and I found out about all his lies by omission, I'd revoke his title lol

turns out I can no longer listen to classic rock or hair metal without thinking about Volcano Manor from elden ring. so, inspired by the soundtrack and mental image as I poured my coffee: