hi I'm from your pseudo-medieval fantasy city. yeah. you forgot to put farms around us. we have very impressive walls and stuff but everyone here is starving. the hero showed up here as part of his quest and we killed and ate him
i don't doubt they would have leveraged tain hu to exercise control over baru, and above all baru wants to be untethered from these higher powers, so it's not that she gained nothing towards her aim. but that she carries out the execution as she does out of posturing for her new imperial coworkers / to give off an image of loveless detachment and not only does everyone see through it, but there is not a single response among her peers as she was gunning for. it utterly alienates the coworker that has commonality with her in this hostile world and who had previously been hopeful to bond with her over it. cairdine farrier is DELIGHTED. not even in the way that she would have wanted him to be in her ruse. he knows she loved tain hu. he doesn't want her to not be gay. he wants her to be gay and suffer the anguish of KILLING what she loves in order to prove that she can overcome her base instincts of being gay. he sees her actions as evidence corroborating his theory. she becomes another cog in his plan by it. you didn't even get what you wanted out of this, you can't help but think. you blew up everything for worse than nothing.
snake and poppies
One more for @xiranjayzhao's Iron Widow, because when I read the descriptions of Yizhi's tattoos I knew I had to draw it. (I think there were other flowers mentioned, but my copy is back home so I couldn't look it up). I am rather happy with this turned out. :)
Cover art I did for 'Necrobane' written by Daniel M. Ford, and published by Tor Books. This is the second book in the swords and sorcery series following Aelis De Lenti. She's journeying deep into the snowy wilderness with Maurenia, the mercenary she's fallen for, and Tun her half-orc friend, to find an immense necromantic power to stop an undead army, and prevent a war. Tun is a returning character. A fur trader, naturalist, and close friend of Aelis. I again had to interpret what he was going to look like based on my reading of the text. Admittedly, I didn't get to read this one because of the schedule, but he is described in the first book, so I had it. Tun is a Nordic word and given he comes from the snowy mountains of the North and has braided hair I read him as a viking orc, which sounded cool to me and hopefully it is to you too. Thanks to AD Esther Kim!
My last piece from 2022, in which I tasked myself for some reason to a redraw of la belle dame sans merci with my favs. Closing off the year with this art piece was a little major for me (backgrounds ugh) but super excited to get into 2023 with renewed creative vigour!!
filled up my reading notebook so until i get another one. microblogging
i've always wanted to visit the beautiful city of chicago because i love their citation style