Age

More medieval dyes for y'all!

More European Renaissance Art Vocabulary

for your next poem/story

Halo - The gold circle or disk placed behind the heads of Christ and saints, a symbol of their sanctity or the light of God.

Hatching - The drawing or engraving of fine parallel lines to show shading. When the lines intersect each other, it is called cross-hatching.

Horizon Line - The line where the sky and earth appear to meet. The horizon line is drawn across the picture at the artist’s eye level.

Hue - A particular variety of a color, shade, or tint.

Lunette - A semicircular shape.

Magus - A member of the ancient Persian priestly caste, skilled in Eastern magic and astrology. In the New Testament, the Magi are the three wise men who came from the East to pay homage to the newborn Christ Child.

Majolica - Tin-glazed earthenware.

Palazzo - An Italian word used to describe a large building. It may be a mansion or palace, or an official government building like a town hall, court, or embassy.

Passion, or The Passion of Christ - The events surrounding the Crucifixion of Christ; a popular subject for religious drama, painting, and sculpture.

Perspective - A technique that artists use to represent the three dimensional world on a two-dimensional surface, such as a piece of paper, canvas, or wood panel. Using perspective, an artist can create the illusion of depth or space and show the proper proportion between objects. Without perspective, a painting or drawing will appear flat.

Pictorial Space - The illusion of three-dimensional space created on a two-dimensional surface.

Predella - An Italian word for the series of small paintings that form the lower section of large altarpieces. It usually has narrative scenes from the lives of the saints who are represented on the main and side panels of the altarpiece.

Putto - From the Latin word meaning “male child.” In 15th- and 16th century poetry and painting, putti are depicted with wings and connected with the god of love, Eros, also known as Cupid.

Red - In Christian paintings, a symbol of the blood of Christ or the Passion.

Relief - A raised surface; for example, sculpture that is carved or modeled and which projects from a background.

Star - In Christian paintings, a symbol of divine guidance or favor. The Star of the East guided the three Magi to Bethlehem.

Triump - An ancient Roman tradition honoring the return of a victorious general, who paraded his soldiers, prisoners, and spoils through the city streets.

Tromp L’oeil - French for “fool the eye”; a style of painting intended to trick the viewer into believing that the minutely observed objects shown are part of the viewer’s three-dimensional world.

Vanishing Point - The point where parallel lines appear to meet on the horizon line.

Source ⚜ More: Word Lists ⚜ Part 1

Mya and Gwenys Rivers

+ chibi Brynden

Continue with Kofi requests 😩💜

I am a huge high cloud quintet enjoyer so it may surprise you to learn that I absolutely hate the quest “Clouds Leave No Trace”.

let me explain. I will admit that a lot of it stems from my issues with Jingliu as a character. I appreciate that she’s meant to be cold and detached, but what bothers me is that although she says considers herself to be a sinner alongside Yingxing and Dan Feng, she constantly acts like she’s better than them, criticising them, acting as if their choice was an easy one while hers wasn’t. Her humility feels incredibly insincere, and she becomes very difficult to empathise with as a result.

then there’s the quest itself. I split it into three parts.

one: redundant infodumping

For the first part of the quest, Jingliu, Dan Heng and Yanqing travel to different parts of the Luofu so Jingliu can bid farewell to her past home. It’s basically a plot device for her to drop some lore about Yingxing and Baiheng, which is fine on its own, but the problem is, none of the information she gives is new. All of it was stuff we could already figure out from character stories and other in-game text.

the second issue with this part of the quest is Dan Heng’s presence, or rather, lack of it. Considering he’s the main character tying the quintet subplot into the main story, you’d think he’d be important to the quest focussed on them. But he’s just… there. He says and does pretty much nothing. You could cut him from the whole quest and it wouldn’t be any different.

In fact, Dan Heng also suffers greatly from the timing of the quest. If we look at the voice lines for IL, it’s obvious that he’s a snapshot of Dan Heng shortly after this quest, since he knows Blade is the one who made Cloudpiercer. Ichor Of Two Dragons also seems to take place at the end of this quest. This is an issue because both release in version 1.3, making the quest which takes place in version 1.4 feel like a regression in his character development when actually the story was for some reason out of order.

part 2: Dan Feng gets mischaracterised to hell and back

This is the worst part of the quest by far. Jingliu does her self-righteous monologue and nails the coffin shut by giving the most biased description possible of the Sedition.

she first says that Dan Feng was trying to revive Baiheng. Dan Heng’s and Jingliu’s character stories reveal that this is probably not the case, and that his actual goal was to create another high elder,

she also says that the reason Dan Feng did what he did was selfishness and an inability to accept Baiheng’s death. She fails to mention the fact that the Xianzhou treated him like a convenient weapon instead of an actual person, that he hated how many innocent people died in the war between Aeons, that his people were going extinct because of said war, that he hated how he gave the Xianzhou the power to cause so much death, that he had probably attempted less dramatic rebellions in his past lives to no avail, that the high elder succession was incredibly screwed up and he didn’t want to have to pass that burden on to his next incarnation (granted that lasts part’s only implicit). Not to mention that she didn’t actually bear witness to any of the events she described, only the aftermath.

part 3: Blade monologue

This is the only redeeming quality of the entire quest

he acknowledges that Dan Feng and Yingxing weren’t simply upset with Baiheng’s death, but with the unfairness of everything in general

he expresses genuine regret

and the way he looks up to Jingliu after she tortured him is the only time where that story genuinely presents her as someone who’s done terrible things, showing how she managed to break Blade so badly that he feels thankful for it

in conclusion, do not play this quest if you want to actually understand Dan Feng as a character

TELEMACHUS☺️

saw a post that headcannoned telemachus having heart-shaped bangs and thought it was cute so here😌🤲

besties who hate each other so bad (aka sisters)

I've been slowly obsessing more and more about asoiaf fashion in the past 6 month, and really developing in details how it would look in different regions, classes, etc (the North being the one I have the most complete picture on). And I wanted to put some of this to paper instead of endlessly turning it in my head before I go to sleep. Usually when I costume design it is confined to a specific character, I've never done like worldbuilding fashion design, but idk asoiaf really gets me going.

So here's the North ! I could have kept going and added more stuff, but if I try to spew all the shit that's in my head I'm never gonna finish this x) So I focused mostly on great houses/nobles fashion for this. Maybe I'll do a sheet for smallfolk or practical clothing like battle armour after I'm done with all the kindoms. I already have to continue the anti AI quest...

I've been getting at lot of House of the Dragon videos on the toktik and uh...i don't really know why? Maybe I just liked too many cool edits.

So, of course, I've heard a lot about the Velaryon boys: Jace, Luke and Joffery. And I'm always constantly amused by the people who actually care about their legitimacy. I have a whole blog post on my (official) blog planned so I wont go into detail here but...it makes me laugh that people care so much about hair colour.

Hair colour is no real proof of anyone's parentage. Not even the Baratheon children. We only know they aren't Robert's because Cersei tells us in a very, very vivd way.

...Like there are some things you should keep to yourself girlie...

Back to my point, hair colour is not the key to the answer of 'who's the daddy?'

"After all." I said to myself, "Arya is the only Stark child that has the 'Stark look'. Are we suggesting that Catelyn Tully successfully cheated on Ned at least four times?"

but as I was laughing about that, a thought occurred to me. Just a little thought that made me go 'oh...oooh!'

(bit of a disclaimer here, this is just a little conspiracy theory. It's meant to be a laugh, don't take it too seriously.)

In the space of one rebellion, Ned Stark returns to Winterfell with two sons: Robb Stark (with his surprise war bride Catelyn Tully) and Jon Snow (with the mysterious Wylla/or Ashara Dayne). This is potentially a rather conservative number compared to some men in Westeros, but it's still interesting because getting pregnant in one night is a low percentage.

So either Ned Stark has the aim and timing of fucking Zeus, or things are not as they seem.

We don't give Brandon Stark enough time. Ned and Lyanna constantly haunt the narrative, and Benjen is always off doing his own thing. Even Rickard Stark has his Southron Ambitions™ to ensure we're all...intrigued by him.

But Brandon is usually just left as a hotheaded fuckboy. And that's not wrong but it's definitely reductive.

He stormed King's Landing because his sister had been kidnapped. He threatened the heir to the throne because his little sister had just disappeared. He lost his life trying to save his father from being burnt alive.

His family is clearly very important to him.

Brandon broke it off with Barbary Dustin to get married to Catelyn Tully, because that was his duty. And part of that duty would be...having children.

Let's all be entirely honest with ourselves, Hoster Tully would do anything to ensure that his daughters married into Great Houses. He even made it a condition for his help in the rebellion. So I can completely imagine him ignoring Brandon walking down the corridor to Cat's room one evening if it would guarantee that his grandson would one day be Lord of Winterfell.

After all, Brandon was in Riverrun prior to Lyanna being kidnapped, preparing for the wedding. It's not entirely impossible. He and Cat are getting married soon, there's no reason to wait...

But then Brandon is murdered. By the King. And Catelyn is wed to her future husband's younger brother.

And even if they did consummate the marriage, that doesn't ensure that Cat would get pregnant...with Ned's child...

TL;DR - there could be a high chance that (at least in one universe) Robb Stark is Brandon's son, Jon Snow is Lyanna's son and Ned Stark spent the first five years of his marriage curled up in the corner thanking the Old Gods and the New that both boys take after their mothers.

Relevant gif:

You've mentioned how one thing GRRM could have done in terms of world-building to add distinctiveness to each of the 7K would have been to come up with different cuisine for each region. Could you elaborate on that? After reading your amazing posts on military doctrines and burial customs I'm interested in your take on that. Thanks.

When it comes to designing regional cuisine, the things you have to think of are, what foods are available in that region? What vegetables grow in the soil, what game are in its wilderness, and whether or not the area is suited for pasture. Anybody who’s a grower, a farmer, or just likes old school au naturel foods feel free to add anything, I’m a rank amateur when it comes to this stuff.

The North: The North is cold, so sheep would be the primary animal crop instead of cattle, and oats and barley would take the place of wheat. I’d imagine the commoner would typically eat boiled roots, herbs, wild onion, and other hardy winter vegetables in a pottage. Meat would be rare except when the herd needs slaughtering during long winters, and the bones would be left to flavor the soup as stock. Blood sausages and hearty roasts of mutton, venison (elk if you can get it), and cold weather birds like grouse. Meals would be filling, so they stay with you longer when rations are tight. The crannogmen would be eating swamp vegetables and frogs, primarily, with a lizard-lion if you could catch one.

The Vale: You’ve got rich black soil for tasty, hardy vegetables, and mountain valleys for cereal grains and pasture, so I’d imagine a healthy mix. The Vale would probably produce fine sheep and goats. Space is a premium, so more ‘efficient’ animals are desired. The soil is rich and dark (probably peaty), so legumes, mushrooms, root vegetables, and some dark leafy greens that can handle a chill. All of that makes a fine hearty, brown stew. I’d imagine the Vale, snooty learned and cultured that they are, would produce exceptional cheese, as well as whiskey.

The Riverlands: Given how large the Riverlands is, there’d be a lot of variety between different regions. The colder climate of the Twins would be different from the warmer climate of the Blackwater Rush, after all. But given the plentiful water resources. There’s plenty of food and forage for a wide variety of meats, so you’d expect different places to have beef, pork, venison, and boar, with a nice variety of ducks, geese, and chickens for poultry. Fish would be salmon, trout, pike, carp and perch. In lands with little in the way of arable land, you’d have fish and wild game, while flatter, richer lands that can support large-scale irrigation works would have fine wheat. Anything that doesn’t require the hot climate of Dorne can be grown in the Riverlands. Viva variety.

The Iron Islands: Since space is a premium, most of the bounty comes from the sea. Saltwater fish is the primary delicacy, caught fresh and poached with a light sprinkling of salt, or salt-cured, even fermented like rakfisk. Other sea creatures would find their way to Iron Islander tables, too, I can’t imagine the Greyjoys worship krakens so much that they wouldn’t pass up good octopus, and who doesn’t like a good dish of clams and oysters? Hardy, shaggy sheep call some of the smaller islands their home, and they’d form a place to, in warm stews and meatcakes.

The Westerlands: The soil of the Westerlands is probably has chalk and/or clay in it, but that wouldn’t stop the early First Men from growing fruit trees and summer vegetables like cucumbers, squash, and eggplant that thrive in that good clay. Good grains like millet, rye, and wheat, cooked into porridges and baked into breads would be the common fare. Nobles would eat warm roasts and sauteed vegetables. Some of the more southern Westerlander houses probably have a fair hand at making crisp cider.

The Reach: The verdant fields of the Reach mean a wide variety of crops, and a wide variety of flavor. More than any other region, the Reach would turn cooking into an art form, with prized chefs being valued and well-compensated servants. Crisp fruits are simmered and stewed, vegetables are chopped and arranged, and seasonings are bountiful. A Reachmen might think other regions as frightfully bland (except Dorne and their love of spice), even their breads would baked with herbs to give it a unique regional taste. Wheat is the primary cereal crop, so lighter breads than the darker North. Once you go to the Reach, you might never want to leave.

The Stormlands: As we might expect, the Stormlands is rainy and heavily forested, so primary meats would be game: boar and red deer. The heavy rains means that farmers need to worry about drainage, but that also means that a wide variety of crops can grow in the Stormlands. You’d probably have dishes made of meat, spinach, onions, and bread, served in a dark broth, which keeps you warm on those wet, windy days. Commoners probably make do without meat, eating hard bread and milk.

Dorne: Lucky for us, Dorne has been well-developed already in terms of foods, with olives, citrus fruits, and spicy peppers for a fine Mediterranean diet. Lighter fare is essential in the arid deserts of Dorne, and those on the Greenblood would probably prefer fish to meat. Foods fried with the native olive oil and spiced with peppers, tart red wines on the side, and blood oranges as a midday snack, Dorne’s palate jumps from one flavor to the next.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King