Well I finished my painting of Jester offering half her cupcake to the hag. I’m pretty happy with it! It’s been awhile since I finished a bigger piece.
I wrote twitter meta about the one good thing about this film (Adam Driver’s acting, the PURE character work he did with zero dialogue) because I finally figured out what he was talking about when he said he was using “mask work” with Kylo Ren. He wasn’t playing through a mask only when he wore the helmet, he was acting as if his very FACE was a stoic blank mask he was looking through. That’s why Kylo Ren as a character has such a specific feeling to him, and why the audience instantly responded to Ben Solo, who could show his emotions.
This character was always 100% a young boy hiding behind a mask that hid and disallowed every emotion except for his anger, the only emotion that men are allowed to feel. This character is an exploration of how toxic masculinity harms men. And what miracles can happen for men internally when they embrace emotionality and forgive themselves and use their energy to do good. (I’m crying about him again.)
“National teacher shortage” is a fun way of saying that the USA has made a passion driven job so ungodly inhospitable that even people who “just care about teaching, not the money” don’t even care about teaching anymore.
Caduceus is out in the cemetery, tending some of the older families, when he hears the creak of iron and, just out of range of his hearing, two voices. It’s a moment before it sinks in that there’s no reason for both voices to be familiar; another before he recognizes the voice of the visitor greeting Nila’s cousin Rull; one more and his feet are carrying him without much in the way of conscious thought between graves and back toward the temple.
Caduceus steps into the temple and comes up short. Hearing Fjord’s voice was strange enough; seeing him here, rising to his feet from the table where Rull seated him while the tea brewed, feels like some kind of waking vision.
1422 words, gen, post-campaign AU-ish “what if the campaign ended and Cad just sort of…wandered off, because he may have 20 WIS but he is also…a dumbass” scenario.