#syen

So I've been making a lot of Outer Wilds art recently and I'm gonna start posting some of it here! Beginning with one of my Hearthians, Syenite!

Syen is a herpetologist on Timber Hearth who studies sociality in lizards, frogs, and salamanders. Their favourite critters tend to be in very hard-to-reach places, so they've taken up rock climbing to get up close and personal when making their observations.

HAHA LOOK AT MY BOYS

The human on the left name is Syen! He's actually not actually a human but a species that's very close to what a human was, his planet is something similar to earth but very different as well!

I'm not sure what to call the species yet! He's 6 foot something and does a lot of physical labor.

P.S. He's a trans man

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The alien on the right name is [ALIEN SOUND THAT CANT BE MADE EASILY BY MOST OTHER SPECIES] His species uses sounds to communicate with eachother but can speak other languages very easily, so his name can be translated into a more replicative sound but is shortened to Doga by himself because it's still very complicated sound.

Had a lot of fun with this one! Unfortunately, I had quite the litany of issues with my tablet toward the closing of the project, but Toon Boom’s line correcting AI works fairly well and helped me through to the end. 

Hey, a word of warning: this will definitely contain some spoilers. 

Rating: 9.2/10

I’m not even calling this a review anymore, this is more like a general reaction slash re-cap of the book (so yes, a lot of spoilers). Anyway, I started reading The Obelisk Gate around July 2019, and then I got caught up in a lot of university stuff so I stopped reading for a while. In the last week of December 2019, I finally picked it up again and yesterday, on the 2nd day of January 2020, I finally finished the book. 

In this second book, N.K. Jemisin changed up the way she tells the story. It’s not until much later on in the book that I realize who the narrator is. It’s pretty cool.  Anyway, we see more of what really happened the day Uche died. The first chapter of this book is probably one of the most heartbreaking chapters in this series so far. It’s probably because we see more of what Jija is like, because in the last book I’ve always just referred to him as that heartless bitch.

We also see more of Nassun, and how brilliantly amazing this kid is. She might be rivaling Nynaeve (from Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time) as my favorite fictional character of all time (for now, at least; I haven’t read the whole WoT series yet). Nassun is smart as hell. She knew she was travelling with someone who could murder her in a heartbeat and she played him--and it was well-played indeed. And she seemed to have figured a lot of things by herself, through the mere process of feeling them out. 

This book is both sad and beautiful (so beautiful), the (distant) aftermath of a horrible, horrible event that happened in the first book. I think I had mentioned in my account of the first book in this series that the story is really interesting; well, now, it’s even more interesting. Pieces of the puzzle start to come together and we start learning more and more about each character. 

I have a lot more to say that isn’t really all that relevant, so here goes. I really, really wanted for some reason for Ykka and Hjarka to end up together? I mean, I don’t know. But then Hjarka started courting Tonkee and so I was happy about that because I actually like Tonkee. They cute. 

Also, I kinda expected that Schaffa-Nassun father-daughter relationship but I was too afraid to accept it. Schaffa is still evil in my eyes. And I think Nassun could do better, or do better alone. But I get that she’s still a kid and needs somebody to love her like a parent should love a child. I get it.