Time and Place

My participation for this year's Tennocon Community Art! "Mama's Stars" Thought I could draw the boys, because I really, really love them. And they seemed perfect as an excuse to have fun with my acrylic markers! Step by step process below!

with even more under the cut. highly recommend that anyone who wants frames from the trailer as wallpaper grab screenshots themselves because tumblr does NOT do these justice

Using lying as a tool on his soldiers and even himself? I know in my heart that at least one those "creative techniques" he learned to keep the other kids from beating the fuck out of him was to lie. Just like him cultivating the image of being "a devil" and "a monster" to keep everyone away from him. He says lack of familial connections helped him focus on military stuff, but I read that "I needed a distraction." and it simultaneously taught him tactics on how to survive attacks from other kids.

"I understood from the start - both on the battlefield and in the bedchamber - the path to victory through seeming submission.”

The part of me that takes things literally is reading this as he learned this lesson when he became a commander and was with Nitokh, but the other part of me is like...that can't be when he first learned that. Roathe was learning about military strategies since he was a child, it had to have come up then. When he was getting beat up, one of his ways to get through it was probably to not fight back and just to wait until it was over.

"Where the enemy finds you yielding, there you can be sure he will push; and so you may easily trip him.” What an interesting choice of words, Roathe. You're talking about the fall of the Orokin Empire here, but that gives me a very specific image. Tripping? Hmm. (Again, that may be me reading into things too literally.)

Thinking about how Roathe is a character that shows how trauma doesn't make you a good or bad person, it just makes you traumatized. It's what you do after that defines your life.

Thinking about how as the Drifter, if you follow your preconceived notions and biases about the Orokin and project them onto Roathe, and tell him that what he did was just in his nature as an Orokin, and that he doesn't need to be held accountable, you basically foster a mentality in him of "I am what I am." (in his view, devil and a monster just like all the Orokin) and turn him into a villain.

Are we deadass going to ignore that Drifter spent a millennia being tortured and killed daily? Duviri was created shortly after the Zariman incident which was when the Orokin empire was still around and Drifter only managed to escape some time during the New War era, so they were stuck there for at least a thousand years and had to emotionally lobotomize themself just to keep their sanity (which I'd argue isn't really staying sane, now is it). Quincy literally calls them "space trauma" in chat, and that trauma doesn't just magically stop or go away. Because they're now essentially in another loop where it's possibly the only thing keeping the techrot from transforming their protoframe friends into full-fledged faceless husks, all while wrestling with the fact that they're in the same position as Thrax with the power to subject the Hex to the exact torturous limbo existence they experienced in Duviri, but sure. They've got somebody to fuck now, I guess.

Like, i want nothing to do with motherhood, my womb will forever have an 'out of order' sign on it; but seeing Jade, a woman who very dearly wanted a child to raise and to love, held on to life for eons at the cost of her own life, to bring them into the world. It's so fucking beautifully tragic and makes my heart ache.

Some people want to have children, some people are willing to give their lives so that their child can live. There is nothing wrong with that in my eyes, it's a tragic part of life and a sacrifice I can never and will likely never understand.