It's not a thankless task

(art by shyangell)

Propaganda:

Mass attack on various Celestial and Imperial OCs in art fight!

In the same order as the dragons below: Cubelis' Defiance, @nighttimepatrons' Genereux and Chardonnay, @crushed-icee's Ehre, and @mist-the-wannabe-linguist's Ling Qin Huan.

I visited @verdet-cadet a little while ago and after doing a bookbinding workshop, I couldn't think of a better gift to bring than a physical copy of her own Temeraire fics.

You can go read her amazing work here.

My evil masterplan was to make this a surprise gift, so I decided to keep mum about it to everyone. That only lasted so long though and I finally spilled the beans to @travellingdragon who is also into fanbinding. When I mentioned sleuthing the internet for good layout graphics and fudging around with vector graphics for dragon silhouettes, they said hold my pen and came back ten minutes later with the silhouette of Temeraire himself that you can see on both the title page and chapter title page. My amazing bookbinding press logo is also courtesy of them.

The endpapers depict Flowergirl Volly (@bichobolitach for the Temeraire Summer Exchange, 2023) and A New Chart of the World, on Mercator's Projection (John Cary, 1801).

The deadline for the Temeraire Summer Exchange is approaching! Assignments are due by Wednesday, August 5 @ 5pm UTC.

Please contact the mods ASAP if you are struggling or need to default. And if you haven't already contacted a mod in some way to indicate your progress or already posted your prompt fill to AO3, please look out for an email sometime next week checking in on your progress.

I really do love it when a character gets to safety after some grueling experience they survived and got out of by their own strength and skill and cunning, and... then gets drastically worse very rapidly afterwards. Just utterly collapsing, sick, out of strength, in so much pain, hardly able to get out of bed without help, probably emotionally an utter mess too

Because they've just been pushing their body on and on, to its limits and past, because they had to, because it was up to them to deal with it all, there was no help, no back-up, nothing to rely on but themself. So their mind and body have just burned up all the reserves and endured it all as best as possible, they've held together until they got out of that situation

But now that they're finally safe, their body recognizes it. Now that they're finally safe they no longer need to endure more, they no longer need to keep anything together, to push the pain and exhaustion aside and refuse to feel it in order to go on. They're finally safe to stop all of that. And so- they collapse. All of it catches up with them all at once, and they have no optipn to keep it at bay anymore, they just have to feel it. Have to suffer the consequences of all the injuries, exhaustion, whatever illness they might've picked up, whatever's going on

Seven years a changeling / Seven years of trials / To see you coming back to me, my child... Til the tide turns, and the sea calls out once more...

Brian Haberlin (American, born 1963)

Pygmalion, 2025

Watercolor on paper

21 × 14 in (53.3 × 35.6 cm)

🎶No understand Word. What is Sploot, Question?…What is funny? Why Grace Laughing, Question?🎶