Billy Draws (She-ra)

In the Great Bear Rainforest, within the ancestral territory of the Kitasoo Xai Xai’s a beautiful melting pot of wildlife and ecosystems collide. It’s a sacred refuge for bears, wolves, cougars (mountain lions) on land, to name a few, and orcas and humpback whales at sea. What a beautiful experience it was to immerse myself in this remote magical realm of wilderness, guided by the keepers of wisdom of land & sea, indigenous communities. Native land stewarded by native people, the way it should be.

This massive black bear, probably the biggest black bear I’ve ever seen, was fishing for salmon, and after many tries, he got one. Pacific salmon is a keystone species that feeds life into the entire region. This bear didn’t eat the salmon in the river, he took it to the forest and, in doing so, fed the soil with very important nutrients. A perfect example of how protecting spawning streams and migration routes and allowing salmon to return and reproduce everywhere they roam in the wild is essential to keeping our planet and all its inhabitants healthy. The critically endangered southern resident orcas further down south are a sad example of what happens when we interfere with salmon routes with dams and overfishing, driving the southern resident orca population to near extinction.

Ah, I rambled about Alecto size/build thoughts recently here!

I also just think it would be fun if she's not 'that' much different as Alecto than as Nona, by which I mean her body is warped and unnatural and she hates it but that stands out all the more because there are parts that are similar. If there's nothing any onlooker would consider monstrous about her body, if she looks uncanny but not intimidating, then it adds something to how terrified some of the Lyctors were of her. If she's as easy to underestimate as Nona and then she's so blindingly powerful and doesn't even seem to realize it...

I would also love to see Pyrrha still braiding her hair just like before, which, I mean admittedly would also be really sweet and in a way sweeter if she's gigantic jaowejaoiwej, but there's something nice about it mirroring really strongly, too.

Also on a much dumber personally indulgent level:

It's implied Mercy is pretty small, so like.. With John and A— and M— having been in some kind of polycule/situationship even before the Resurrection? Followed by, for all that they treated each other so so badly and he devalued everyone around him compared to Alecto, John was still in love with this woman for over 10,000 years (not that he's ever once in his life loved anyone well); and crystallized in time or not, the myriad of ill-advised affairs among everyone show that their feelings can change, and his for her and Augustine didn't. That suggests something about how strong his feelings were before, so I like to imagine her also subconsciously influencing his idea of A Perfect Woman, heh.

(Naturally, not that she would have ever known, but if she did Mercy would hate this—but in a way that's like. As preoccupied as she is with appearances and as much effort as she puts into hers, yes obviously, he is correct, she is perfect. But also, what the hell John, you applied this observation to that thing? You basically replaced her as the most important woman in your life with this fucking simulacrum partially based on her??? What is wrong with you. D:< This idea just amuses me in a terrible way wjaiojeoiajwea)

But thay said thematically I enjoy the idea that physically, she looks well idealized or perfectly formed (by John's standards) when she is dead or still and more conventionally sized and proportioned. This would be in contrast to her literally proportioned like a Barbie, rather like an idealized person based on johns memory of such.

But in motion/in life people find her anger and mein unsettling and see her as a monster and that warps how they interpet her physical appearance.

Since John made her as a object/maze/idealized doll it reminds me of the uncanny of if a marble statue came to life (Frankienstien's Monster/Galatea etc). The very idealized perfection of her form highlights how she is *not* human and people find that uncanny and disturbing and of course slot different and angry into 'Monster'.

giggling kicking my feet giggling kicking my feet giggling kicking my

i still think about them…

But the beyond, the physical, there's a huge psychological effort she puts into being appealing.

She defintily lacks a stable sense of independent identity and self worth right? We see her trying to mirror other people and make herself valuable to them pretty consistently.

Look at how she so so Envys Gideon both in GTN when she tries to fence her, and when she beleives Nona is Gideon. She *desires* to be consumed by another person and to find her identiy in them.

And part of that, I think, is fear of what emptiness she is without another person,.(but she realised that Corona was excited, and also very nervous. It was like the queenly, confident Corona of old, masked over badly damaged stuffing) She has learned to be a vessel or a mirror for other people, to be an 'illuminated reflection' (this is Gideons second impression of her) of someone else, reflecting their best qualities and desires back a them because she believes she has none of her own. She wants someone to be drawn to her and give her that stability she feels she lacks on her own and I think she fears what she might become without that.

'Here, now, at the end of the world? Save me, Jody. Bind me to you, or who knows where I will go? What throne will I mount, if you don’t bind me down?'

“What are you doing?”