Finished up my Hairy and Downy woodpeckers. I will be using this illustration to show the differences between these two species, so look for that soon! Faber-Castell Polychromos colored pencil (with some Prismacolor white) on 9″x12″ Stonehenge paper.
“YOU WERE FRANTIC AND FOOLISH, YOU KEPT NO TRACK OF TIME, YOU RAN YOUR DELICATE BODY INTO ITS NATURAL END, YOU BURNED ALL YOUR CANDLES TO STUMPS, YOU ARE TIRED AND HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO LAY DOWN, YOU HAVE EARNED THIS REPERCUSSION, THIS REWARD, THIS RECKONING, YOU FINALLY NEED TO KNOW
Mary Kate Wiles as herself (with varying degrees of seriousness) in several miscellaneous videos
Happy Birthday, MK! Thank you not only for creating a ton of awesome projects, but also for all the effort you put into connecting with and understanding your audience. I think I speak for pretty much everyone who has ever supported you when I say that yes, it is very apparent that you love and appreciate us, and we hope that it is equally apparent that the feeling is mutual.
Whoa. When you’ve got Talking Marriage with Ryan Bailey you know you’re looking at a gifset deep cut.
“But [Tumblr’s] value, of course, is more than just what it isn’t, and what it points away from. Despite all the drama and discourse lurking in its corners, it’s easy to make your own Tumblr life as simple and as happy as you want it to be. There are no algorithmic threats lurking around every corner, no onslaught of promoted posts from politicians or influencers. More than anything else, Tumblr in 2020 is a self-sustaining ecosystem. It’s a semi-sealed and increasingly fertile terrarium, a nigh-impossible perpetual-motion machine of a platform going productively psychotic in its isolation.”
Gawd. Master and Commander. THE AUBREY-MATURIN SERIES.
Okay Anon this may or may not be the encouragement you’re looking for, but I got hyperfixated on a 21-NOVEL SAGA AND MOVIE at the best/worst of times, and I WANT TO TALK TO PEOPLE ABOUT IT. ALL HANDS TO MAKE SAIL!!!!
So THIS POST gives a pretty awesome overview of the Aubreyad (alternatively: the Maturineid) in all its ridiculous glory, especially the funny parts. And THIS POST gives you a quick snapshot of the first novel, Master and Commander.
BASICALLY: Master and Commander is the first book of a 20 (21, if you count the last unfinished book) novel series revolving around Captain “Lucky Jack” Aubrey, a captain in the British Navy in the early 1800s, and Doctor Stephen Maturin, his ship’s surgeon/ardent naturalist/revolutionary/secret spy against Napoleon. They meet-cute in Master and Commander when Jack gets his very first ship. Shenanigans Ensue for the rest of their married lives, including:
The famous escape from France with Jack wearing a fursuit
Jack’s ridiculous 14 gun sloop taking a 32 gun xebec, his half-drowned fourth-rate one-shotting a 74 gun ship of the line in the middle of a storm (Scary Bote!!!), and other exciting historically accurate feats of naval daring
60,000 bees loose on the ship (Stephen feels zero remorse)
Pride and Prejudice, but with more Needless Drama and sea voyages
“Jack, you have debauched my sloth!”
Winning the Hearts of the Crew ™ with Good Leadership and Rousing Out the Gunner’s Brains
Alliances with the most noble Nutmeg of Consolation, in more than one way
Although Patrick O’brian began writing this series in the 1960s, the entire thing is written in Regency-era Austen-esque prose. The pros of this are a TON of dry humor and a lot of jokes and tongue-in-cheek moments revolving around period conventions that would be unremarkable in an actual Regency-era novel, but which Patrick O’brian can sort of wink-wink nudge-nudge with a modern audience. The cons are some unfortunate period-accurate slurs (O’Brian works hard to make Jack and Stephen problematic enough to be men of their time, while as unobjectionable as possible in their essential behavior/beliefs/morals) and a CRAP-TON of naval jargon, tall-ship lingo, and references to countries and political entities that no longer exist by that name.
It is a wonderfully detailed and endearing read-through the first time around, although I’m on my first re-read and honestly? The Aubreyad is almost better the SECOND time through. This time, I understand enough of the naval jargon to really appreciate how improbable and explosive some of Jack’s victories are, and to notice the little emotional moments that sometimes get lost when you aren’t used to the prose. Jack and Stephen are such vividly drawn characters, both in their flaws and their preferences and the way their relationship affects them that you can’t help but get attached.
Also, if you can see the movie first, I would recommend it. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is named after a book in the middle of the Aubreyad, but really the movie is a pastiche of some of the most memorable scenes in the books. I watched the movie before and after the Aubreyad, and honestly? The movie is SPOT ON. Besides going balls to the wall for historical accuracy, the movie really just CAPTURES Jack and Stephen right down to the little mannerisms that they have in battle and with each other. It always helps me personally to have a face canon that I like when reading :))).
Central to the film is a reclamation of the Orpheus myth, a version of which the three young women read aloud together one night. Sophie registers distress at Orpheus’s fatal, selfish incompetence in looking back at Eurydice when he was told not to, and Marianne suggests he may have done it on purpose, preferring to lose the woman and savor, instead, the romance of his grief, making not “the lover’s choice, but the poet’s.” But it’s Héloïse who removes, for once, the fixation on Orpheus, his failings, and his loss. What if, she says to Marianne with an edge of defiance, it was Eurydice herself who chose art over staying together, who rather than leave the underworld with Orpheus, stopped and called out “Turn around,” preferring to remain down there and be preserved in poetry. A kind of freedom and a kind of permanence, rather than, as eighteenth-century marriage looks to be, an unwilling exchange of one for the other. — In Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Love is a Work of Art
