Agender (they/them/their). An adult. Astronomer. British. Bisexual. Christian. Feminist. LARPer. Writer. On AO3 as Triss_Hawkeye. Here you'll probably find a lot of fandoms, social justice, SPACE!, awesome music, and whatever else I happen to be into at the time. Nowadays there's a lot of C-dramas and video games. Sometimes I give a voice to Birds Rights Activism.Â
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It really does piss me off how people talk specifically about van Gogh because it has a very saneist kind of naive flavour
like ohhhh be was just a lil guy who painted his lil pictures capturing his lil life cause he Saw The World Differently
(the apotheosis of which of course is that goddamn Doctor Who episode where aliens make him see things squiggly and you see THAT'S WHY HE PAINTS LIKE THAT, not because of any CONSIDERED ARTISTIC DECISIONS)
people ascribe a naive 'painting what he saw' ideal to van Gogh and it is super tied up in the role that being Mad and repeatedly institutionalised took in his life.
with this (as with a lot of so-called Outsider Art) we expect that the power of the art comes from being an unfiltered and childlike expression of how someone sees the world every day. because they're just Painting What They See uncorrupted by theory or the whims of the art world.
which robs the artist totally of agency, of personhood, and of the ability to make critical decisions. and also just is not true.
like Vincent van Gogh wasn't trained as an artist from his youth, that's true. Um. He was a professional art dealer, though. He was in social circles with a bunch of the artistic luminaries of his time. He went to France's most prestigious art school for a year. He had Opinions about academic art. He was not insulated from the theory and history of art, he was actively engaged with it. He references the Old Masters in his work, he experiments with new avant-garde styles like Impressionism, Fauvism and Cloissonism, he has a strong and clear understanding of formal composition, and more to the point he's got a clear idea of what he wants to achieve, which is why in his painting he's often hacking away at the same idea or subject 20 times until he's got it where he wants it.
I don't think it's coincidental that it's van Gogh who always gets the brunt of the "naive expression" framing. He was, after all, Mad, and that's how we're taught to think of Mad people - as childlike/animalistic and without complex reason.
But it's just fucking bullshit. Yes van Gogh was Mad, and his Madness shaped his artwork, if only because he only seriously started painting because his brother suggested it after he lost a bunch of jobs and got institutionalised.
But his artwork isn't journaling and it's not a naive outpouring of his feelings.
He was an artist making considered (and educated) technical and imaginative decisions on how to express something. He learnt from others and he was consciously exploring ideas in his art.
And with van Gogh specifically we know all this. We know what his motivations were, and what he was learning, and what he was interested in exploring technically, and what he wanted to pull out of his subjects. We know this because, famously, after his brother got him into painting Vincent wrote to him constantly about how his artistic journey was going, about his latest pieces, about what he was interested in exploring, etc. We have an enormous body of written evidence that van Gogh's work is no more naive or less considered or technical than his contemporaries, and that he thought about it as a technical and theoretical artistic exploration.
but he was Mad and he killed himself so we don't have to take any of the things he said seriously. so that's ok.
maybe he just took medication that made him see yellow better and that's why he made Sunflowers, not because he was interested in pulling out the thing that drew him to a subject. perhaps aliens made him see the sky swirly and that's why he painted Starry Night. perhaps he never made any conscious artistic decisions or had any complex and structured ideas around formalism in his work, because he was just craaaaaaaaaaaaaazy.
drawn by me, colored (and painted, and edited, etc!!!) by @rudycomics ! this will be available at anime expo artist alley table K43 as a medium sized print :) see you there!
For the @dashcon-two Crow Exchange, I made custom DashCon/Magic the Gathering trading cards. They were a huge hit! Unfortunately, it was my first convention I've ever gone to and I accidentally handed them out wayyyy too fast and had people tracking me down all day and had to send them away empty handed.
So to make up for it I've decided to publish the files for them here! Feel free to print them out and stick them on your own cards. If you end up playing any games with them I'd love to see.
(Also included is the Tumblr University card that no one got because I accidentally left them behind in the U.S. lol)
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Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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can anyone on this gay ass website give me an opinion on which translation of the epic of gilgamesh i should read? ive been wanting to read it for ages but theres a number of common translations and i know translations can make or break a story; i dont want to start with the wrong one
I've read a few so I can offer recommendations! I started with the Sandars translation, which is a good starting point but a pretty early translation. Benjamin Foster's translation is one of my favourites, and the version I read (Second Norton Critical Edition) includes some really interesting discussion essays with it. Andrew George's translation received an update a couple of years ago so is up to date with Foster's translation, though I prefer how the language flows in Foster's.
I would also recommend Gilgamesh Retold by Jenny Lewis for a translation with a more modern poetic take.
Benjamin Fosterâs Gilgamesh condenses all the different tablets weâve found together to make one cohesive narrative which is way less intimidating and therefore my go-to if you want something that feels cohesive while also sticking very close to the language of the original. 10/10
Andrew George is the most thorough and up-to-date, and sticks as close to the text as you can get. It does, however, separate out all the different tablets, and feels very unedited in its style. Definitely not a âprettyâ version. 10/10 cuz heâs a legend and this is the most definitive scholarly edition but donât start with it.
Maureen Kovacs has a lovely translation with some very interesting footnotes on word choices. Her Ninsun is absolutely incredible and if you want to cry your eyes out over Gilgameshâs fate thatâs the one for you. Itâs one step up from Fosterâs in terms of poetic-ness but still pretty close to the original. 8/10
Sophus Helle is more poetic than Kovacs but BRILLIANT, one of my favourite Enkidus and his Shamhat is wonderful. Top favourite of all time. This is a very good starting point. 9/10
I wouldnât recommend Sandars simply because itâs prose, and also condenses the twelfth tablet into a nice tidy ending that doesnât really work with the Standard Babylonian narrative. 6/10
Lewisâ Gilgamesh Retold is more of a poetic retelling than a translation; itâs beautiful but definitely not a starting point. Sweet and gentle Enkidu though, very charming. 7/10
Stephen Mitchell Iâm not a fan of. He smooths the poem out into something tame and very expected. This is my personal bias but I really dislike his Shamhat. His Enkidu and Gilgamesh are also explicitly more like brothers, which is a valid interpretation but also again not one I lean towards. 5/10
Herbert Masonâs Gilgamesh has some stunning moments in it (Enkidu! They do not know you like I know you!) However it is nowhere near the real text BUT closer than Lewisâ. Changes the ending of the poem so itâs about Gilgamesh mourning Enkidu rather than mourning his own mortality; a much sadder conclusion with less resolution than in the Standard Babylonian. 7/10
BONUS ROUND:
Derek Hinesâ play GILGAMESH is fucking DERANGED guys. Ten Gilgillion out of ten.
The trailer for the Project: Anglerfish prototype, the Myst game I was art directing back at Cyan that got shared at Mysterium last week.
SUCH a lifelong dream to get to work on a new game set in the Myst universeâstill hope weâll get to see it through someday, but Iâm thrilled we can share the trailer at the very least. â„ïžđ
Some of my concept art for Project: Anglerfish (the Myst game I was art directing back at Cyan) that was shared in Cyan's recent State of the Union presentation at Mysterium last week!
A lot of the appeal of this pitch was the idea of shifting, dynamic environmentsâvs. the more frozen worlds of previous Myst gamesâso a fair amount of our exploration was finding ways to pull that off with lighting, atmosphere, and some more... drastic measures.
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Another one of my classic âoh, I have actually improved incrementally over the years, I was just being mean to myselfâ drawings. Last time I drew Narancia was in 2018 (8 years ago đ« ) and this one may not be perfect but itâs inarguably better, which is a nice feeling.
Fun fact! one of Strelka's puppies was named Pushinka and given to JFK as a gift to help ease Cold War tensions. Pushinka later had puppies of her own and her descendants are still living as of 2024.
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