His Father's Last Gift

Last Will by Nikolay Kurganov

if it sucks hit da bricks <- litany against sunk cost

take it easy but take it <- litany against burnout/apathy cycle

fuck it we ball <- litany against perfectionism

now say something beautiful and true <- litany against irony poisoning

Please tell me your red hilt conspiracy theory. I know very little about the narrative surrounding the sword so I’m curious.

oh my god. okay okay i got into it like a few months ago and that post is so incomprehensible so this time i am going to attempt to not just rant like an insane person.

okay. lets go chronologically through le morte, my main source for this whole thing.

In Book 2 chapter 1, a damsel arrives at court challenging people to draw a sword from a scabbard. They fail and she continues on, meeting Balin on the road, who successfully draws her sword in chapter two, which is summarized thusly:

“Balin, arrayed like a poor knight, pulled out the sword, which afterward was the cause of his death.”

He refuses to return it to the maiden, who warns him that “ye are not wise to keep the sword from me, for ye shall slay with the sword the best friend that ye have, and the man that ye most love in the world, and the sword shall be your destruction.”

Soon, as she predicts, Balin, after doing a whoopsy daisy Dolourous Stroke, kills his brother Balan and is mortally wounded in the same battle. Merlin shows up, buries them both, switches the handle of Balins sword with a red handle, and says:

“there shall never man handle this sword but the best knight of the world, and that shall be Sir Launcelot or else Galahad his son, and Launcelot with this sword shall slay the man that in the world he loved best, that shall be Sir Gawaine“ (book 2 chapter xix)

Then he plunks the sword in a rock and sends it magically floating in the river. Cut to like thirty years later, the rock floats to Camelot, arriving at exactly the same time as Galahad. uh oh galahad!

In the vulgate grail quest, the knights find this rock, and it is first presented to Lancelot, who refuses to attempt to draw the sword. Arthur then asks Gawain, who also initially refuses, but is unable to deny Arthur when he gives him a direct command. Gawain reluctantly attempts to draw the sword and fails, whereupon Lancelot immediately gives him shit for it even though it wasn’t his fault--! he is warned that this will have dire consequences.

whatever. Then, because percival <3 percival tries it, specifically so gawain wont be embarassed at being the only one to fail. i love percival so much. he also fails though. then galahad tries it and succeeds. horay!

(this goes down much the same in le morte, and lancelot says: “My lord Sir Gawaine, said Sir Launcelot, now wit ye well this sword shall touch you so sore that ye shall will ye had never set your hand thereto for the best castle of this realm.” again, not his fault, but go off i guess lancelot)

except not horay. this is where the speculation starts in earnest but:

knights in the grail trio who die on the grail quest: galahad, percival

knights in the grail trio who dont die on the grail quest: bors

knights in the grail trio who touch the red hilted sword: galahad, percival

knights in the grail trio who dont touch it: bors

ya know??????

anyway so galahad dies and the sword gets passed to lancelot, who uses it to eventually deal a fatal blow to gawain, fulfilling both the prophecy of the sword and the doom gawain earned by attempting to draw it.

conclusion: sword bad. should have kept secace instead. fuck the sword with the red hilt all my homies hate the sword with the red hilt

I call this one

Fire Starter.

This is Dainix from @comicaurora. Not a whole lot of symbolism to say for this piece. I just wanted to draw my favorite fire boi <3

As for technical things, I used 6B Pencil from Procreate for the ink (I’ve been using it so much since I discovered it; WHY WHERE YOU ALL HIDING THIS FROM ME?) and a custom coloring brush I made. I used a whole bunch of chromatic aberration and red/blue rendering bc it looks amazing, but the hardest part was trying to render the fire in Dainix’s cruicible form. This was mostly a practice for an upcoming project of mine, but it went out of my control and ended up as a fully rendered piece.

you will never beat the biphobia allegations until you radically accept bisexuals who are stereotypical. you must accept the sluts, the polyamorous, the girls with straight boyfriends, the questioning, the confused, the ones who want to be another couple's unicorn, the ones who are in a phase and will eventually identify differently, and even the ones you suspect aren't truly bisexual but just want attention. take people at their word when they tell you who they are. let them live and express their identity as they see fit. happy bi visibility day

Come and sit by the fire. Soup will be ready soon.

OH FUCK

@tatouchantilly @charnel-doll @sensarna @copitix I tried answering all your prompts! Prepare for a baby avalanche.

good news I found more outer space

impulse / fix

Why is “pretty boy” considered an insult like call me a pretty boy Call me a pretty boy right now I want to be the prettiest boy you’ve ever seen