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I love the way their rivalry and antagonism binds them together ngl

Julius II: The Warrior Pope, Christine Shaw

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app / tip jar!

#literally i love the way they wanted to ruin each other's lives #srb

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Do you think brothers are an interesting motif in both fiction and history?

I’ve watched all 15 seasons of supernatural, I have a sideblog that only contains posts about cain and abel, and one of my favorite epics is statius’ thebaid

#the short answer is yes. In general I find sibling dynamics compelling in fiction and history #the longest answer requires a lot of heavy reading with themes and whatever and I’m not gonna get into any or that on this website #brothers contain multitudes! Cain & Abel / Antigone & Polynices were for sure the starting point for interest #ask tag

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I keep forgetting that tumblr changed the dashboard icons to be super tiny, anyway I’ve replaced Valens with Shin Jaepyung from the band Peppertones because it’s their 20th anniversary

#TRAGIC I miss the larger icons where you could actually see what people had for them #talk.tag

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general life update ⭐️ survived the trials and tribulations of dealing with a jury duty summons only to immediately face the ordeal of trying to find a single doctor in my area that’s taking new patients :|

on the bright side, the Met Gala theme is finally something I’m interested in seeing! it’s J.G. Ballard’s A Garden In Time and that’s so thematically fun and on the nose for kind of fundraising spectacle! I hope that next year they do Crash

#anyway i’m slowly updating people I’m doing commissions for on everything and if you haven’t heard from me yet: you’re on my list! #I’ve got a Bluetooth keyboard I can link up to my iPad coming in so I’ll actually be able to type for real altho I’m still looking #to replace my laptop later this year #anyway I had to mention the met gala because I’ve talked several times on here about how much I loved the Drowned Giant #talk.tag #ALSO. the crash comment is a joke. unless 👀

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jonathan strange and mr norrell is hands down one of my favorite shows, but a little while ago I realized. that I’ve never actually. read the book.

like I loved the show so much I am absolutely fucking baffled that I never once thought ‘oh let’s check it out from the library and have a good time part 2’

& something about the weather lately (extremely windy) brought it to mind, so I checked it out from the library and I’m having a great time reading it so far 🥳

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#Day after srb

[katabay]

jonathan strange and mr norrell is hands down one of my favorite shows, but a little while ago I realized. that I’ve never actually. read the book.

like I loved the show so much I am absolutely fucking baffled that I never once thought ‘oh let’s check it out from the library and have a good time part 2’

& something about the weather lately (extremely windy) brought it to mind, so I checked it out from the library and I’m having a great time reading it so far 🥳

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app / tip jar!

#I got hit in the face with a stray branch from how strong the winds are but tbh it’s preferable to how my body is dealing with the pollen #augugughhhh #thank god. for books. to distract from the agonies of existing inside a meat suit plagued with pollen allergies #jonathan strange and mr norrell #john segundus #john childermass

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🌸🕶 sketch page :)

I draw so much dead romans art on my other blog I straight up forgot how shirt collars worked and had to spend a few days re learning the muscle memory for it lmao

anyway. I miss. them…..I think it may be time for a rewatch of the Abyss movie….

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#heihua #I’m trying to pin down how they look in my mind when I’m thinking about the books and not a specific screen adaption #we are. getting close. I think #dmbj

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The great general remained, and then saw a wonderful vision clearly shown him by the very God of the universe himself. In it he seemed to see the divine Meletius, chief of the church of the Antiochenes, investing him with an imperial robe, and covering his head with an imperial crown. The morning after the night in which he had seen the vision he told it to one of his intimate friends, who pointed out that the dream was plain and had nothing obscure or ambiguous about it.

Theodoret Ecclesiastical History 5.6

wahoo! Theodosius! so a repeating phrase in the gospel of Luke is 'do not be afraid,' but specifically: I'm most immediately referencing the annunciation of the shepherds (Luke 2:10) because I used this illustration for the last panel since it. sort of. connects to Valens, Theodosius' predecessor, who went from commoner to king at the will of his older brother. HOWEVER. because of that transformation. I cannot escape the 'do not be afraid' just a chapter before (Luke 1:30) that Gabriel gives to Mary because ascension to the imperial throne is an ugly, violent, and violating transformation. and. well.

Gabriel’s Entrance and Biblical Violence in Luke’s Annunciation Narrative, Michael Pope

also in general. prophetic dreams and visions. horrifying. it never goes well for anyone.

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#there is also. a kind of gender fucking at play here. by forcibly associating his future ascension to the imperial throne with a birth #narrative. like I said on my other blog. you can’t escape the Christianity so you might as well fuck around with the themes #and do whatever (deep sighing) #thankfully I don’t have any plans to go beyond Theodosius because I already hate what Justinian and Theodora got up to #with regards to divine justifications for Roman imperialism for different reasons and I would hate to see them in my sketchbooks

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Gert: Could be better! Could be better if I’m gonna be honest. Do you have a phone? OW: No, I’m sorry, I don’t have one on me. Gert: Do you know where the police station is? OW: The police are highly ineffective in Crestfall.

Obituary 01: Wyatt Died

the death by dying podcast is really fucking funny

#I love weird towns and I love weird characters so it’s giving literally everything I want #death by dying #podcast tag #idk I don’t often listen to podcasts but if I do I want a tag I can reference for when I inevitably forget everything Ive ever listened to #komiks tag

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listen. I know that thee ac2 ship is ezio/leonardo but please…consider…….ezio/machiavelli

the Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood novelization, Oliver Bowden

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app / tip jar!

#Machiavelli would take Ezio to the fun parties in Florence……. #assassins creed #ac2 #komiks tag #AC machiavelli #ezio auditore #they’re in Milan here btw. not that it matters that much I just like Milan bc it’s where my beloved Ascanio Sforza is from #(I realized yesterday that I haven’t really been posting a lot here this month. idk! I was kind of going through a funk. still #going through it but it made me sad to notice that I had only posted like. two things. so I pulled this from the vault and #finished lettering it 😤)

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hey! hi! the cartoonist cooperative has an e-sim drive for gaza, offering art for e-sim donations (instructions etc in the link)

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Wait wait wait, so have you watched/read Urasawa's Monster??

ABSOLUTELY Naoki Urasawa’s Monster is one of my all time favorites, it’s a masterpiece!! I actually keep the first volume of the perfect edition on my desk because I turn to it so often. like I cannot overstate the impact this comic had on me, it’s so good what the fuck

#it’s so so so so good oh my godddddddd #ask tag #theres a sequence that literally had me holding my breath and I did not realize it until I had turned a page and the tension snapped #absolute genius. one of the all time greats for real

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lmao these are ocs I made wayyyy back in 2021 on a personal blog and I don’t think I ever posted them here, so I’ll do a quick recap!

the guy with the blue hair is marion. he hunts demons! baron is a librarian at a university only because everyone else who was actually qualified for the position died and he really just wants to go home and take a nap.

that’s about it! it was a story I started on because I wanted to draw cool outfits and big monsters after spending a weekend playing DMC5 during the lockdown, but recently it’s been getting some more serious depth as I build up the world.

the original desire to give everyone fun hair colors has remained the same tho, that’s not going to change no matter how serious this story does or does not get

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#original tag #I almost started taking about all the historical documents that were lost when Japan was setting Manila on fire during ww2 #and this….open wound I guess of knowing what we lost and being unable to reconstruct it #also talk about war crimes! so many ph universities were sites of war crimes. All of that is working it’s way into the setting of this fake #school lmao. I thought it was kind of a heavy topic switch when I previously mentioned that it was originally inspired by dmc5 #so into the tags it goes!

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LOOK ALIVE, SUNSHINE

I was going to skip doing an Ides illustration this year, but I decided to pull out something from my illustrations vault at the last minute after watching the news in the Philippines the other night. the first Ides illustration was prompted by feelings of frustration and grief seeing the Marcos family come back into power and also that ballot substitution bullshit. and. well!!! you know how it is! we're on year 3 of making these illustrations, baby!

so let’s get into it: fuck Brutus, my man Cassius is getting center stage this time! after all, it’s Cassius who typically initiates the conspiracy while Brutus steals the spotlight. Brutus is here, though, he’s the one with blood on his hand, in reference to the account where Cassius accidentally stabs him in the hand trying to get another hit on Caesar.

it’s thematically compelling if you take into account that Cassius is mentioned at the start of Brutus’ biography as someone who finds tyranny intolerable (in addition: that dinner scene with Mark Antony)

Cassius and Brutus: The Memory of the Liberators, Elizabeth Rawson

Brutus, the Noble Conspirator, Kathryn Tempest

Cassius Dio 44.34

and Brutus is later mentioned to have taken part of Caesar’s power only to be dissuaded from people from fully embracing all of that

Plutarch, Brutus 7 (trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert)

and Cassius, by accident, wounds Brutus in the act of assassinating Caesar. It’s like….he’s being compelled…..to act as a hand of Justice on behalf of the Republic……a little bit…..

Life of Augustus, Nicolaus of Damascus (trans. Toher)

and to preemptively cut off people from doing Caesar apologia in my inbox: we are engaging in a long and established tradition of using the Ides of March and the people who participated in it to discuss other stuff. you know. allegory and allusion and all of that. also ancient Roman conspiracies are fun. thank you & goodnight.

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#beware!

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and another general commissions update! I’m back to replying & sending out updates, however I’m replying to everything via my iPad (which is usually just for art, the laptop I’m borrowing needs a little break from being used) and I’m very slow at typing on it because I’m. uh. well, simply: I’m not good at touch screen typing! so please bear with me, but I am tentatively hopeful that everyone should hear from me before the weekend 😤

#like part of why there have been an absence of art posts here (in addition to being busy with taxes) is that typing is a nightmare #I keep resting my hands down like im keyboard typing and you CANT DO THAT and aughghghhh #crossing my fingers for a good electronics sale later this year. I appreciate the laptop I’m borrowing a lot but I feel bad bc im #putting it thru so much :’) it’s doing it’s best but it’s 10 yrs old #commissions update tag

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desmond & friends modern day assassin sequences…..I miss you……..

#specifying ‘and friends’ because I hate William Miles with my whole heart and he is not included in this sentiment #anyway vaguely this is nyc so the cops are probably wasting taxpayer money by fucking around in the subway #komiks tag #assassins creed #shaun hastings #desmond miles #this is almostttttttttttt shaundes #but I didn’t continue the dialogue far enough to make it really flirty. There’s a hint of flirting happening. #someday I’ll have to actually do a longer form fan comic to land my favorite ship AND my favorite narrative elements in the same #go (the horror and dialogues on free will and what we owe each other past/present/future & also what failure means AND-) #this ties into my second favorite relationship dynamic: clay and desmond. obvious. clay might live in my head rent free a little more than #Desmond does because that end of game reveal in AC1 is a top 10 games experience to me and I think about it all the time #ANYWAY IM OFF TOPIC NOW. desmond picks up snacks at a bodega on his way back

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you have to make it homoerotic and weird