Coffee plz

ALSO my twitter is: @EimanteJAN come one come all, I post art there.

self reblog with a reminder of my twitter:  @EimanteJAN 

What I really love about this is the symbolism. The Strength card, in tarot, isn’t about physical strength, but the things that are strong enough to restrain it (in both self and others). The Rider-Waite card depicts a maiden closing the jaws of a lion. This all makes it look quite simple and easy. In practice, as well as the story these characters go to, sometimes it isn’t so simple. Sometimes kindness and goodness are met with violence anyway. The Rider-Waite illustration works on that very subversion, of course–we expect the lion to be stronger than the maiden, to rip her to shreds, and the fact that that isn’t what happens is proof of some other power at play. But everything has a failure state, which isn’t to say that it had no power at all. Even strength of the physical kind can be met with setbacks and defeat. It can be difficult to discuss nonviolent resistance, especially when met with violence. There is certainly a pressure to avoid violence at all costs, usually coming from those who really would rather you showed no resistance at all, or at least “resistance” they could safely ignore. But the kneejerk against that can end up disparaging those who do use nonviolent forms of strength, or implying that such forms of strength and resistance don’t exist at all, an unfortunate erasure. The point of acknowledging such strength isn’t to say that it’s morally superior, or that everyone should use these tactics, or that the fact that it works sometimes means no one should ever use violence in self-defense–but simply to talk about the many possible forms of strength. The physical strength, that of the lion, was never forgotten, nor does it have a moral value, but it can be bested with other means–that’s the point of the Rider Waite card. This tells a slightly different story–one where that alternate Strength did win, eventually, but not without a price. The maiden closes the lion’s jaws, but with her blood on its teeth. I’ve been thinking a lot about interpretations of Beauty and the Beast (fairytale/all versions, but also the Disney version) and how there’s a bit of a modern feminist backlash, because the beauty “tames” and marries the beast. I think this is seen as a narrative where it’s the woman’s “job” to fix bad, boundary-violating, violent and threatening men. But I think people forget how controversial divorce was, only clawing its way into mainstream acceptance in the 1970s, and at times in the past, nigh unthinkable–and how marriage, if not always arranged, was at least not the romantic affair it is today, and how people might get hitched with lower expectations than True Love, and sometimes barely knowing each other. And in those, as well as in other, non-romantic situations, sometimes empathy, negotiation, deescalation, communication, and other nonviolent arts were not the best choice for moral reasons or even the individual’s preference, but the only tools she might have to defend herself. What modern feminists might see as “choosing” to stay with and put effort into a “beast,” may have at the time been a survival guide for girls stuck with beasts and no other options. That isn’t actually what’s going on with the OCs–I just mention it because one of the reasons people tend to disparage meeting violence with kindness is that it’s seen as weak, or broken, or generally inadvisable. Sometimes it is the last effective weapon in a trapped person’s arsenal, and I do think it’s important not to disparage people who use what they have. The other possibility, of course, is people who use it when they don’t have to–when they’re capable of using violence but show restraint, or trying to help someone they could just as easily walk away from. This is a more modern view of Beauty and the Beast as romance–the beauty could easily leave the beast to his misery, but she sees something worthwhile in him. Whether that’s good taste or bad taste on her part depends on the viewer, but meeting danger with kindness as a choice has an almost holy power to it. I don’t mean this, again, to imply that it’s good to do it or that we’re all obligated to try it–if anything, I avoid it whenever possible, and advise my friends against it. The feeling of grace one gets from it has to do, in part, with what a bad idea it is. It’s a form of self-sacrifice, and sacrifice has a sort of religious power, cross-culturally. It’s the sort of thing you don’t wish on anyone you love, but when you see its power at work, it can fill you with a sense of awe. It’s the power of goodness to redeem, to bring peace. The maiden closes the lions jaws, eventually. If she pays a price and digs deeper within herself for that determination to meet pain with kindness, that isn’t weakness or failure, it’s another form of strength. I should note, by the way, that these particular OCs aren’t actually in any kind of romantic relationship! I used the Beauty and the Beast parallels because it’s a well-known story of meeting beastliness with kindness and kindness winning. It can be good ship fodder for romances, and I do have tons of ships like that, but this is…not love and not even friendship, which I guess makes the mercy and compassion all the more unexpected and Good? Anyway yeah <3 when I saw this art I was like ohhhhh that hits hard. I definitely have a weak spot for self-sacrificial characters who are Too Good for Their Own Good, like the kind of person you’d smack upside the head and teach Selfishness 101 to if they were real.

So, I thought I might elaborate on these! A lot of my homebrew stuff is tweaking what’s already there–and sometimes I take the perspective that the lore that’s in the handbook is what people say about X, but not necessarily what X is. Aquatic elves have so much damn potential to be cool, but they never quite resonated with me. I think some of the many elf variants (aquatic elves, snow elves, desert elves, etc etc) just felt like the palette swap monsters in the early Final Fantasy games–just a way to get more mileage out of the same amount of effort. You’re already used to elves and dwarves and orcs and so on on land–so the same thing repeats in the water, and in the Underdark, and wherever else. Which steals a lot of the wonder of going someplace new? So I just didn’t do aquatic stuff for a while. But then…well, I can’t resist elves. Another peeve of mine is racial alignments, especially with obvious good/evil coding. We have Tolkien to thank for a lot of that, but a lot of D&D lore takes that uncritically–the “faerie elves” frolic and love nature, and the “evil” elves like drow have no word for love. Really, all I want to do is smudge those lines until there’s nothing but blur. So a lot of the bad things the manual tells you about drow are essentially just slander from surface folk in my book, for example. Likewise, I figured that land folk would not necessarily have the strongest handle on what’s a scaly elf and what’s another type of scaly ethereal water creature–and that they might tell tale of wonderful nature-loving frolicking elves when they got what they wanted, but of some other, evil species when the elves were not so accommodating. And that, in addition to these biases, they might also judge by appearance more often than not. So…here’s my story of the aquatic elves. Long ago, the Valley of Fallen Stars had a thriving elf city in it. But it was well below sea level, and over time the landscape changed, flooding the valley with more and more water. First they built dikes to keep the water back, then they transitioned to a Venice-like city of watery streets and boat travel, then at last, the flooding became so serious it seemed the elves would have no choice but to leave, though their hearts broke at the thought of leaving their only home. It was at this time that some of them began to have visions of a new god, Sashelas, who promised them if they stayed, they would be given the ability to breathe water. Some trusted in this new god, while others fled. Contrary to the beliefs of outsiders, Sashelas was asking the elves to abandon their pantheon rather than being part of it–elves are polytheists, but Sashelas was jealous, and would not share his followers. The elves who stayed became heretics by the standards of other elves, but were granted the ability to breathe water as Sashelas promised. They were still able to breathe air as well, though they would tend to wear a damp scarf to protect their delicate gills when out of water. As for the elves who left, well, some of them turned back and saw how Sashelas had blessed their kin, and regretted their choice. They returned to the watery city, pleading with the new god to take them. Sashelas found this hard to refuse entirely, but decided to make an example of them for their lack of faith in him earlier. He gave them the ability to breathe water, but not air, and marked them with scales. This mark became a sort of generational curse, passed on to any child of those who had returned. And though they had once been one people, a mark of disfavor from their god was a powerful divider. Though so many generations passed that the people would have forgotten whose ancestors stayed and whose returned, the god would not let them forget this old grudge. Most surfacer dealings are with the marel. (Note, in D&D lore, marel are a separate race from aquatic elves, an attempt to make a good/evil distinction such as between the standard elves and drow. I reject this, since good and evil depends a lot more on the individual you’re interacting with, and also your own standards.) This is for the fairly basic reason that they’re the ones who can breathe air. Malenti encounters with land folk aren’t unheard of, though. They can make up for their inability to breathe air with magic, much as someone without gills might use magic to breathe underwater. The comparison to sahuagin is nothing but a slur, of course, most likely overheard from the mouth of some marel and taken as fact. What outsiders might take for different “types” of elves or even different species are in fact one people, with a shared history and superficial difference imposed by a petty god.