Finally at the end of the last chapter a pilot dies and the newest chapter is titled "Dead Pilot Party" 👀 On the cover all the handlers are sadly drinking at a bar but we see the pilots are in their barracks putting all of the dead pilots belongings away for something called a "Boxburn"

but then the most senior pilot does this...

These characters are living on a ecologically ruined earth that sustains itself on the commodification of constant war. These characters are generations away from having any attachment to nature and we know their society is post-organized religion. Their spiritually with the "ghosts" comes from the fact that their memories can be literally trapped in the war machines they pilot (one of the main plot points in Kaxen's second comic Blind Courser). So any "spiritual" rituals they maintain are fragments of culture that have been telephoned to them from a distant past where that type of practice was preserved.

Rules: seven comfort films, seven people.

Master and Commander (2003)

2. The Scarlet Pimpernel (1982)

3. Dead Poets Society (1989)

4. Star Wars (mainly the original trilogy)

5. Little Lord Fauntleroy (1980)

6. The Young Mr. Pitt (1942)

7. 10th anniversary recording of Les Misérables (1995)

There is something kind of funny about admitting to petty crimes in a memoir

"Yes, I wrecked a chandelier and destroyed the evidence but everyone involved is dead now, so it's fine, also maybe it’s a metaphor for Franco-Austrian relations!"

Also never let me freehand a 24 branch chandelier again... >_> it looks like a cursed basket starfish crossed with a banana and I will not and cannot count. 

I alighted at the Imperial Palace, where apartments had been prepared for the ambassador; and when I took possession of my quarters in the evening of the same day, a little accident occurred to me which gave me a strange insight into the real nature of the apparently rich appointments of the Emperor's grand residence .

My rooms were adorned with a profusion of gilded bronzes, and the chandelier of the salon was of specially elegant design. I noticed the rich gleam from it and its delicacy of finish, and an unlucky impulse made me think I should like to try and lift it to see how much the twenty four branches of which it consisted weighed, for the golden chain from which it hung looked very thin. I climbed a chair, and what was my surprise at finding, when I lifted the chandelier, that it weighed no more than pasteboard or the lightest wood! I was so taken aback that I was perhaps not quite careful enough in removing my hands, and the four chains all gave way at once; the magnificent chandelier, falling with a crash, broke into a thousand pieces on the floor, revealing that the material of the whole thing—ornaments and all—was nothing more than larchwood. There was a fire burning in a magnificent grate, so I hastened to fling all the rubbish which had thus fallen a victim to my curiosity into the flames, and I never heard another word about the matter. But my thoughts involuntarily turned to the illusions of one kind and another which had led our Emperor to fix his choice on a foreign princess, and I feared that some day worse deceptions would be practised on him by the Court of Austria than that which on this occasion at Vienna made me realise so sadly the truth of the old proverb, “All is not gold that glitters.” 

“✒︎”  a random, dumb, pointless fact about my muse | accepting

@kaxen, the Thomas picture came!  It’s great; I can tell you put a lot more work into it than I was expecting when I won the contest.  And I loved the bonus drawing on the envelope.  As you can see, I am displaying it on the refrigerator until I can get a frame.  

@everyone else, See this great art, which is a physical object that I now have in my home?  Isn’t it great?  Based on the info on the artist’s commissions page, it looks like it was at least a $40 value; I won it in a contest.  It’s even more impressive in person; I recommend Kaxen for all your art needs.  She will draw almost anything except for cars, robots, and non-con.  In addition to her fandom interests, she also enjoys fish, so if you know a fish that wants their portrait done, head on over.  She does digital art as well as physical art that you can have in your home.  

No, you are not imaging things. I am actually posting this before the end of the previous month - though granted, part of that is because the birthdays are the first two days of February!

So here we go!

1 February 1989: first up is @kaxen, who is Parkbarrow and Nickter (Nick and Peter) shipper and loves fantasy AUs.

9 February 1997: finishing things off and leaving her teen years behind, is @thinwhiteduchess. And if you want to give Duchess a gift for her birthday, she loves Crowbarrow.

When you think an artist is gonna sculpt you in some actual clothes, but then he gives you the body of a greco-roman god and you’re pretty sure everyone is gonna make fun of you for having it so you ban it from public view...

....but the artist does not care you don’t like it and makes plaster copies anyway. 

....and your step-son gets a plaster.

....and eventually Wellington gets the marble one.

...and there is a bronze version too