Gwennafran

Pale Lights - Think of The Story

Song, Angharad and Maryam

Pale Lights book 3, chapter 61

Mari, Lana and Void character sheet

Charactersheet for a comic I want to do. Title being "The Cat is Not a Cat".

Details may be changed up, but I think the basics are down, now. The comic probably will be in greayscales, so honestly I'll probably ignore all the colours eventually and make a great-scale version to work from.

Mari is a rogue-like character, althugh obviously one of the more heavily armored ones.

Lana is a warrior type character. Her light streak in the hair (which is very visible from the front) is a magic mishap. It's also gathered in some sort of bun at the back below her hat.

Mister Fluffybum most definitively is Lana's cat. Slander suggesting he may not be an actual feline will be ignored.

Pale Lights, book 3, Chapter 55

You saw the subject line. It's Ferranda time. Let’s have fun with wild theories.

For the talk between Angharad and Ferranda, I think two things are notable.

Neither of them really want to make peace with the other person, and

Ferranda cares so little about Angharad, she isn’t even talking to her. Throughout most their talk, Ferranda is talking to Song. It doesn’t matter that Song isn’t there. Ferranda is perfectly capable of continuing the talk she and Song had, just using Angharad as a rubber duck stand-in to say “Song, I am better than you and here’s why.”

Now, from both Ferranda and Angharad’s perspective, they are right and the other person is wrong. But seriously, Ferranda’s arguments to Angharad specifically are horrible. If I really thought she was meaning to talk to Angharad (rather than actually addressing a Song not there), Ferranda should have her stripe privileges removed.

Song acknowledged to Ferranda she shot Isabel for the wrong reasons. Ferranda is not an idiot. She knew the wrong reason’s can be summed up as “Angharad”. Ferranda goes “Angharad is not the main character in my world, so I had the right reasons AND did the right thing”, without giving the background talk for this to Angharad.

Imagine someone walked up to the Thirteenth, shot Tristan’s brains out in front of them, and then went “you can’t be mad at me, because I knew Tristan back in Sacromonte and he deserves this. And seeing how this is not about you that I murdered someone you care about, you have no right to be upset about it. Stop acting like you are the main character just because I murdered someone you care about. Pft! Self-important much?” THAT is Ferranda’s argument to Angharad. Shockingly, it’s not very effective.

Angharad in contrast comes after having been up against Nathi. So she doesn’t dare using anything but the core fact she feels can’t be argued about: “Shooting an ally from behind during enemy combat is WRONG”, and no fancy wordplay will change that”. No talking about her feelings. No trying to actually argue against what Ferranda says. She just sticks to her one truth no matter what Ferranda says.

The irony in all of this is that while neither of them moved on the Isabel part, I think Angharad may very well have been an instrumental part in shattering a part of Ferranda’s upbringing at the end of this chapter.

Going off information from Tristan, Sacromonte is a capitalist hellhole that chews up everyone. Ferranda was part of the 1% at the top, but I think she too has learned her own “eat or be eaten” lessons. I think Ferranda has had most her kindness and altruism clinically removed during her upbringing much like Tristan.

Especially in book 1 – on the “no rules and everything goes” murder island, we actually see Ferranda choose to do the right thing repeatedly, even when it might cost her.

She confronts Isabel and tells her how much she hates her, even though this is a horrible idea for long term relationships should they both survive.

She ruins the second gate, so Tupoc’s group has to go with her group and Angharad’s group. Even though letting Tupoc die probably would have been to her advantage. But she didn’t want Lan, Aines and Felis to get hurt.

I think Ferranda wants to do good things. But I think she has been taught this is bad. So, she keeps doing selfish things instead. Or try to do good things but make them also selfish at the same time. Cao would be proud over this. 

And here’s Angharad going “just help people, you dum dum”. And for once, Angharad isn’t meet with eye-rolls or people going “so naïve, but that’s why we like her”. Ferranda seems to listen. Because Ferranda wants to hear this. She wants to be told that helping people just because you can, will also be the smart and cunning action she has been taught she always should take. She wants an excuse to do something good for the sake of doing good.

A4 watercolour - Meant to be a quick little thing. I ended up spending four evenings on. Talk about bad planning on my part. ;)

I did enjoy adding several different shade gradients and tones.

Pale Lights - Storebought

Pale Lights fanart joke that has been running on the Discord this week.

If you don't have homemade morals Storebought is fine

Pale Lights fanart - Book 3 chapter 48

POV: Everything was going so well, and then suddenly, you are the victim of a skiritai that just refuse to fall in line. Can’t be bought. Can’t be reasoned with. Doesn’t care about the social fallout. WTF?

Zhaomeng did a wonderful fanart of this chapter with Angharad in a black dress. And it made so much sense for her to wear the Watch colour for this, I took it a step further and made her outfit the sort of noble lady riding dress that combines a big feminine court dress with a masculine justacorps. Granted, the fashion starts around 1700, so it’s juuuuust a bit too modern for a world where the fashion is meant to end there. But it just felt so perfect.

Fortuna forcing his eyes to meet hers, her golden locks and eyes dimming.

“Scholomance,” she whispered. “It’s taking us into Scholomance. I bet on you.”

-

Pale Lights Book 3 chapter 47 fanart

Tristan and Fortuna - falling.

Pale Lights Book 3 chapter 45 Students

I filled out a couple of Brigades. 3rd and 9th are starting to seem more and more important.

Jeronimo: We got surprisingly little about what Jeronimo looks like. So, I pretty much just guessed. So many of my Lierganen portraits get mid-brown hair, just to add a bit of variation to all the super dark hair.

Andreu: This is my “EE better not kill this cutie” art. This fandom is keeping the chatty gay pirate, telling you all this now! He even canonically has a hat. Which amusingly is most of what we know about his looks besides curly hair.

Ruo Xuan: We actually got a bit of confirmation on the hairstyle from EE on the discord. I guess it makes sense that Song would either want to kill or marry this guy. I think he needs to add a design-element that’s slightly off. So she in theory easily could correct it.

Jingyi: Izel’s honey-voiced friend. We… Know he has glasses. But let’s be real, he’s almost part of Izel’s exponentially expanding harem. He gotta be cute.

Yaotl: Updated her art by removing the facepaint. Because something tells me she might not be wearing that for much longer.

Fox Spirit

A4 watercolour fun

Oh hey, we finally got Ferranda’s POV. As expected, it explains a lot. But also reveals a bunch of faults and biases.

Ferranda really needs to sit down and talk to her brigade. They need to get on the same page. As is, part of her issue is that she wants to do top-down management. But also at the same time keeps doing what her friends say they want to really do, even if it goes against the vision only she knows.

More interestingly, I think it’s fascinating how book 1 is lurking in the background of the Grief Trio.

Shalini keeps voting against any situation, where her contract might attract a bunch of lemures that could put her group in danger. Considering this was part of what got Ayanda abducted in Book 1, this is pretty understandable. And probably a big reason for why Zenzele can even be friends with her long term.

Ferranda is terrified of the idea of making the wrong decision that will get someone she cares about killed. She even in this chapter references “running in the wrong direction”. The thing she did, when she and Sanale decided to run away from the rest of the misfits in book 1, hoping the big monster would take so long eating the others in that group, she and Sanale could escape. This in the end got Sanale killed. And he was the reason she was even there in the first place. Ferranda being super focused on keeping the two people she subsequently trauma-bonded with alive makes sense. Her actions on how to do that are more questionable.

Zenzele on his part is highly focused on making long term allies that will show up even when everything else has gone wrong. It may seem a little more subtle at first, because this not only fit him being a diplomat, but the other reason behind technically goes back before book 1 started. Zenzele got cast out of his own family, and had an assassination contract placed on him from the family he was supposed to marry into. And his aunt decided to stand behind him, reasoning the only chance for Zenzele and Ayanda to make it was the watch. And then he lost both his aunt and his girlfriend in book 1. In part due to backstabbing. And said assassins. To make matters eve worse, once they get to Scholomance, Musa goes for him the day before school start trying to eradicate Zenzele’s reputation. Only, Zenzele got saved by an unexpected ally stepping in between him and Musa. And he later repaid Angharad by supporting not taking her into his cabal (that decision probably by now is haunting him).

It’s not that strange Zenzele's threshold has been reached. Zenzele no longer will support actions that will take away the only allies he feels actually are worth having. Because for Zenzele it’s not important to have a lot of fair-weather allies. What for him is important is to have those few depraved but talented lunatic allies, that are strong enough to scare away powerful people trying to murder him and those he cares about. And willing to show up to do that. Somewhere in that process, Zenzele's top one priority "to keep him and his loved ones safe", has ended up working directly against Ferranda's preferred strategy, that she wants to use "to keep her and her loved ones safe".

Pale Lights Book 3 chapter 43 silly sketchbook fanart.

“He was never very good at using anyone else’s,” Nenetl said. “When we were children, he was unbeaten at hopscotch – until I did beat him, so he altered the rules we played by. Age has not much changed him, save for a little polish.” Song diplomatically decided not to touch that with a ten-foot pole. As if sensing her discomfort, Nenetl offered up a smile and knocked back half her cup of wine before setting it down. “But you’re not here for old tales,” Nenetl said as Song mirrored her with a small sip. “You are here for better terms than what he’ll squeeze out of you.”

Pale Lights Book 3 Chapter 43 – Tolomontera Residents

At some point it had to happen. The non-student sheet (I ran out of rows I could add in Clip Studio Paint on the other file, and wanted to move the Orels. Turns out: You can only have 50000 pixels high files in CSP).

To celebrate, I added a couple of portraits. I planned to do more and edit some things, but then Real Life hit me.

Actual new art not reused from earlier art overviews collected at the top.

Nilan Achari: An argument was made for turning the headwear pickles coloured, but then I didn’t open the file Again, because real life hit me. It was kinda nice doing a portrait of someone old.

Ishanvi’s Friend: Art reuse. I’m not even ashamed. Also, have you all considered just how tiny a thumb-sized little creature is? Just, measure your own thumb, and then consider how much space that would take up on a picture including full sized humans.

Crystal Cave

A4 watercolour, white ecoline and coloured pencils

My new fancy cotton paper gave me a scare when I started out. The wet on wet start looked so grainy, I was basically going "oh well, there's always the next painting" before letting it dry up some more. Then it all smoothed out when drying.

Pale Lights Book 3 Chapter 41

I added a couple of antagonists. I planned to add some other characters as well, but life got n the way.

However: There’s now a background colour code for Hunters and Library Delvers.

Bad news for Tumblr users. I was too lazy to split this up into 9-10 seperate images for better Tumblr viewing. I hope you manage.

New characters:

Diego: I can never quite figure what the Akelarre special uniform is supposed to be. I think EE has retconned it from robes to a special tunic between book 2 and 3, but I have no idea how to not make it robes to give it a proper Renaissance Scholar look. XD Anyway, it’s been suggested I should also add a fancy scarf to our mercenary fashion lover. But I never got around to make that add on. Might happen at some time.