It's rabbit holes all the way down.

Mountain Mint

I love this majestic plant so much. You can never have too much Pycnanthemum around.

...Until you have too much Pycnanthemum around. Then you have a mint party

Probably started by bringing her injured animals to doctor on as a kid. Later on, not necessarily a lot later, he started dragging in bullied disciples to patch up and hide from Wen Xu or somebody, and then probably he'd just kind of...fold a lot of them into his canonical personal retinue of loyal subordinates, however that worked exactly.

Wet kitten Wen Ning constantly dragging smaller wetter kittens back to his big sister to protect. She has tried all the arguments already. She knows there's no budging him.

Also lmaoooo hang on, Wen Ning had Wen Qing outnumbered a lot of the time, didn't he. She didn't have personal minions she could trust like that. These people just extracted a high-status prisoner from the custody of an erratic and violent superior pursuing a personal grudge without blinking, for their Wen-gongzi.

and i was like hmmn what did i say??

#they were supposed to watch his back! #and keep him busy! #and take a sword for him if the opportunity arose probably; wen ning wouldn't want that but wen qing would

#these unnamed subordinates with no lines are rapidly becoming my favorite mdzs supporting cast #like what did they think about the plot #wen ning got pressganged by jin zixun in the company of his subordinates #so some of them probably lasted all the way to the Siege

#there might have been a guy who personally carried jiang cheng out of the charnel house of lotus pier #or retrieved his parents' bodies from the corpse heap #and roughly four to ten years later#watched jiang cheng come to kill him #and had his corpse dumped in the blood pool #and knew for a fact that jiang wanyin did not even know he existed and wouldn't care if he did

#it all goes in circles and some of us get ground up in the gears

Wen Sect Leader Wen Ning lives rent free in my mind. Saves everyone from Wen Ruohan. Frees Wen Qing up to do her medical research to her little mad scientist heart's content. Makes Wen Yuan his heir. Depending on where it falls in the timeline, he can two-birds-one-stone reconciliation with the Jiang sect and getting rid of his own rivals by handing the likes of Wen Chao to them, or just prevent a bunch of tragedies altogether. Time traveling fix-it fic Wen Ning going hmm I wonder if I still have some corpse powers and then punching through his uncle's ribcage to test it.

like. you could not tell he was the kind of guy who would quietly and unapologetically rescue his sect's enemies out of moral conviction, but he was. people contain multitudes. so same way, in this scenario the political world is rocked by this mediocre, sweet-tempered, unassuming teenage Wen cousin purging the upper ranks of his family and usurping the sect by force.

Wen Qing's reputation before the war (at least the part Wei Wuxian bothered to recall) notably consisted of one part 'medical genius' and one part 'only normal person in the Wen leadership.' Wen Ning turning out to be the most insane murderer in his family would be accepted as narratively coherent, despite being a shocking twist.

bets would be on about whether he and Wen Qing would go on to kill each other off. i feel like they'd lose a lot of vassal sects and guest disciples on account of the sect doesn't seem as stable or powerful suddenly.

diplomatic relations would not normalize for a while, unless he managed to do this during the war so all the other sects felt it was a favor to them, because killing family members for power tends to be frowned upon. nie mingjue in particular i think would be of the opinion that Sect Leader Wen Qionglin was a mad dog.

which would baffle everyone, given they met once. and, huh, that interaction with Wei Wuxian championing this kid against his mean cousin, whom he went on to clear out of the way of his succession, would look really different suddenly in hindsight lmao.

if this was back far enough that the qishan indoctrination never happened, wwx wouldn't even feel more than moderate dislike toward wen chao lmao. he's just an especially obnoxious young master.

further thoughts: if Wen Ning did follow up impulsively killing Wen Ruohan with deliberately getting rid of Wen Chao and Wen Xu so as to carry off a coup, it would not be because he wants to be sect leader.

so to what extent would it be to protect Wen Sect, or at least people in it, from being run by Wen Xu, to what extent would it be to protect all the other sects from the possibility of Wen Sect still waging a war, and to what extent would it be to protect Wen Qing from the fallout of his murder?

i feel like the last part is not non-zero, given she died the first time because he punched someone to death.

but making the decision to double down on the violence in order to be able to control the outcome is a fascinating move, it is not even in the top five most likely reactions for him to have.

the characterization here would be so interesting to get right, because Wen Ning is so passive right up until he plants himself like a mountain, and he's never had to stay in mountain mode the way he would to pull this off. so he'd be taking leaves out of Wei Wuxian's book, deliberately.

but much as he admires him, he knows how comprehensively things wound up going to shit due to partly Wei Wuxian's choices (particularly the impulsive choice to reanimate Wen Ning's corpse to murder people) and is ultimately confident enough about rejecting wwx's reasoning to blow things wide open with Jiang Cheng.

so he'd have to be trying to copy Wei Wuxian's way of seizing control of the circumstances and do insane things because someone has to do them, while also applying his own sense of caution, and pursuing the idea that you can't just seize control when you want to and then let it go again, it's something you have to maintain.

ironically making him more like wen ruohan than he has any business ever becoming.

i think if he didn't tell Wen Qing everything he'd blow up.

but while he's more of a talker than Lan Wangji, he is not someone who uses a lot of words, or who would be good at explaining as large and complicated a story as this would be. so 'everything' would take a really long while to fill in.

Amazing Cloud Recesses Cake

I am in awe at this? The painting on the top of the cake?? The skill to write Gusu’s rules that tiny on the side of the cake???

And I must sae

That mother kik me

Far awae

Lyke futbal twas

And now I fears

She goes to jayle

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

GIVE IT UP FOR BIRD NUMBUH 5, THE CANADIAN GOOSE, Branta canadensis!!!!

bird 5/14, Bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata

birds 6 and 7: American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis, male and female

BIRD NUMBER 8, (yellow shafted) NORTHERN FLICKERRRRR, Colaptes auratus

genuinely made me start questioning my sanity around day 3, it's half the size the of the goose, WHY did it take me 4 days to finish??

Bird number 9: Red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis

my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on

this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg 🙏

BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos

the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise

ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!

aaaand another one bites the duck,

we're movin right along with bird numero 11!! The lady Mallard!! Anas platyrhyncos

power couple that they are, here's bird number 12 and 13,

the Northern Cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis

and NOW that they are complete, ITS GO TIME, in the next five days (library's closed for mother's day 😭😭) i need to have the GBH fully rendered, the names of the birds vectored, weeded, masked, applied to the wall, and then painted, plus additional cattails throughout. I may be able to get away with just getting the GBH done in time for the unveiling and then just have the names and cattails added later, but i'm gonna really try to get it all done in time. BUT, i have a plan. Part of why i take so long on these is because i really am just figuring it out as I do it lmao. there have been many a time where i am sitting on top of the ladder googling "how to paint birds" but I think if i take the time tomorro to do all that figuring out how to approach it beforehand, this will go a lot faster. I may also recruit some of my artist friends to help with the placing of the names... hrmm we'll see.

Anyways, shout out to the librarian who tracked down exactly the thing i needed so i could figure out where to place the highlights in my birds eyes, ur the real mvp

Bird number 14 out of 14,

The Great blue heron, Ardea herodius

thank you to everyone who reached out or got excited about this project, it genuinely gave me the fuel i needed to keep going. In total, the 480+ total hrs it took me to cover this wall pales in comparison to how long its expected to spend on there, hopefully imparting a sense of beauty and love for the natural world to the next generation and here's hoping i'm only getting started with these.

no its one of my fancy pencils :)

image massively undersells wildness.

You're right, that could have been more helpful.