Latest Posts by stinkylittletoad - Page 3

Aliwarden art cause I miss them :>

05 / 05 / 2025 🌵🤠🐎

sorry for the lack of art altogether for the past many months

Arthur Morgan has me by the balls rn so i'm studying his face the past few days - his likeness is pretty damn difficult to capture

pray for me on my Red Dead journey

redraw of something old from 2023. smilesss

a lot of artists dont know how to draw bullets and to be real it bothers me a lot. here's my simple guide on bullets

it is what it is [bawling my eyes out]

i see the flash of your eyes in my dreams and turn -

only to see a retreating shadow

the endless search

— (fenris)

My beloved

I remember seeing somewhere these early sketches from veilguards artbook about the inquisitor`s choice in a story a few month ago ??? and they didnt let me rest in peace. So i had to finish the idea

Sharp teeth Solas

Why do people act like bitch is a slur fr?

Well if you want to get pedantic, it actually is defined as a slur when used against women. Perhaps you think "slur" means "a word I'm not personally allowed to say", but that is simply not true. A slur is any derogatory term or remark used against a specific group or identity. According to Cambridge University Press, "bitch has become a generalized term of abuse for women." The actual word literally means "female dog" and has thus been used to dehumanise, degrade, sexualise, harass, and insult women, and is specifically derogatory towards women. So.

In 'Rhymes with Rich': Power, Law, and the Bitch, author Yvonne A. Tamayo (a former law professor at Willamette University) states that "bitch" has specifically been used to harm women for six centuries, and has repeatedly been used as a means of degradation and sexual harassment towards women. Tamayo also included several court cases where "bitch" was used in the workplace from male employees to harass their female coworkers, and used in tandem with physical and/or other verbal sexual harassment specifically towards women, from men. Tamayo also discusses how "bitch" is used to remind women of their gendered place within the patriarchy, to punish them for behaving outside of the male expectation, and that "validation of male superiority is most effectively achieved by highlighting women’s “difference” through their alleged shortcomings, ineptitude and incompetence in the public realm" through the use of "bitch".

And in the paper "Bitch” as a Tool of Containment in Contemporary American Politics (which I have done you the service of putting on g*ogle drive, so you may view it without need for academic institutional access. yw.), author Karrin Vasby Anderson (Professor of Communication Studies at Colorado State University) says: " "Bitch" not only is a defining archetype of female identity, but also functions as a contemporary rhetoric of containment disciplining women with power." (Anderson's article specifically goes into the use of 'bitch' towards women in power in the US, but that line specifically is relevant to the topic). And "power", in this case, is applicable to any situation where a woman is perceived to have power - be it in general, or especially over men. In these instances, "bitch" is used as an attempt to punish and strip women of their power.

Ultimately, use of the word "bitch" and whether or not it counts as derogatory or harassment comes down to context, and intent. "Bitch" is used very commonly in modern language, and certainly in quite a few instances, it is not being used in a derogatory way against women. Friends call each other bitch with affection, some people and women have reclaimed "bitch" as a term of encouragement and approval, etc. However, when the context is a man using the term against a woman, and the intent is to be insulting, demeaning, critical, harassing, or dismissive, then it becomes a product of misogyny. Even when used against men, "bitch" does not have nearly the same effect as it does when used against women, because of the historical context of the term being used to degrade and harass women specifically.

And regarding my post about male character Alistair Theirin from dragon age, (specifically, this post), which is what inspired this ask, Alistair's intent of using the word "bitch" to describe Morrigan was entirely to degrade and insult her - specifically in a way he would not degrade or insult other men, and in a way that has been historically used by men to degrade and insult women - making it misogyny. Now, again, I do 100% believe this is a result of Bioware's own misogyny. Upon making Dragon Age, they thought it perfectly acceptable to call a woman a bitch. In Morrigan's case specifically, the perception and labelling of her as a "bitch" is all the more damning: she is powerful and strong willed; she has a personality; she has goals that she strives to attain; and most significantly, she does not make herself immediately and completely available to men. In fact, upon first meeting Morrigan, she makes a point to insult men - a result of both being raised by Flemmeth, a victim of harmful misogyny, and a result of witnessing herself the failings of men, especially in how they view women. Morrigan is unapologetic, unashamed, and does not submit to male desires. Because of this, she is labelled a "bitch". If you still don't see the derogatory misogyny of it, I can't help you.

It's only been fairly recently, at least in the past decade or two, that "bitch" has become widely understood by most to be a derogatory term that should not be used against women. Though not understood by yourself, clearly, or you wouldn't have felt so comfortable being so utterly ignorant in my inbox.

I'm bored, my mind is full of thoughts, so here's a timeline I use to base my own headcanons off of, some fun history facts for the 1800s, and some RDR2 fun facts:

TIMELINE OF VDL GANG:

MID 1870s

Hosea and Dutch meet on the road to Chicago

1877

Dutch and Hosea con people in Kettering, Ohio, and escape the jail in March

Arthur is adopted into their group (he would be 14)

1883

The picture of Hosea and Bessie is taken

1885

John joins (he's saved from a hanging, he was 12)

1887

First major bank robbery done by the old guard (Dutch, Hosea, Arthur), they gave the money back to the poor

MID-1890s

Arthur, Javier, and Karen rob a bank in Arizona

1893

Bill joins (he was discharged from the army the year before)

1894

Abigail joins (Uncle brought her into camp, she was 17)

1895

Javier joins (he was stealing chickens and Dutch picked him up)

Jack is born

1898

Charles, Lenny, Micah, Jenny join (unknown order, though it seems Micah and Jenny were around the same time and the latest)

Copper died :(

(^^^^ This is the extent of what we know for sure that's canon as far as dates and when people joined, I use it to form my own headcanons)

Fun facts as far as historical stuff:

The Great Famine in Ireland lasted from 1845-1852

The Civil War in the U.S. ended in 1865 (I've seen this before, so just so everyone knows: Bill was born a year after that)

The Battle of Gettysburg was in 1863 (for anyone who likes that as the battle Dutch's dad died in: Dutch would have been ~8 years old)

Pony Express only existed from 1860-1862

The Gold Rush ended in 1858

Yellowstone National Park existed (it was the first National Park in 1872)

The first rabies vaccine was made in 1885

In 1886 Statue of Liberty was being constructed

The Wounded Knee Massacre happened in 1890 (this marked the "end" of the American Frontier Wars, but the conflicts/wars continued after this into 1924 <- this is what Bill was doing in the military).

X-Rays were identified in 1895

Handwashing was proposed in 1847 as a way to stop the spread of diseases.

1866 was the first documented train robbery!

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution had been written and published (most educated people/scientists were in agreement with this by the 1870s)

THINGS THAT EXISTED: (It is a good idea to look up the cost/look/implementation of these things if you want to use them in a story.)

Typewriters

Sewing machines

Bicycles

Anesthesia and antiseptics

Pasteurization

Telephones

Zippers

Blue jeans

Dishwashers

Soda (Coca-Cola)

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897)

Jane Eyre (1847), Wuthering Heights (1847), and Agnes Grey (1847)

FUN FACTS FOR THE GANG:

We have no idea when Bessie, Annabelle, and Susan joined the gang (or how they joined for that matter).

We have very vague/little knowledge about how Karen, Charles, Strauss, Uncle, and Swanson came to join the gang.

Most of the men give stories on how they joined or we're told how they joined through other sources (all easy to find on Youtube)

Karen has the least amount of backstory out of the younger girls (Mary-Beth's parents died and she became a pickpocket at some point, Tilly was kidnapped by the Foreman Brothers, Abigail worked in a brothel, Molly came from Ireland and affluence, but we know next to nothing about Karen)

The picture that Pearson has shows: Bill, Arthur, John, Hosea, Pearson, Dutch, Abigail (with baby Jack), and Susan. This is not indicative of who was actually in the gang at that time. Uncle was in the gang then, and he is not pictured.

Molly is from an affluent family, or "claims to be," and she has a camp interaction with Sean where they "argue" about this.

Tilly was 12 when she was kidnapped. The summary for her states that she ran with the Foreman Brothers (she says, "they ran with" her), so we don't know for how long she was kept there. (The age she was when she joined the gang is up for debate, but it likely wasn't 12)

Strauss's sister was sold, he was sent to America, and he was a sickly kid (a "weak heart").

Hosea had siblings!

Uncle was born sometime before 1849.

John's father and Dutch's mother died in the same year (1881)

We only know the canon ages of these characters (in 1899): Hosea (55), Dutch (44), Micah (39), Arthur (36), Bill (33), John (26), Abigail (22), Lenny (19), Jack (4).

Lowkey, the R* timeline is super hard to follow. Some things don't make sense and some things are contradictory. These are the closest things I know to be facts about the gang. If I'm wrong or you know other things that should be on here, feel free to share it in the notes!

Blackwall and Inquisitor <3

Dark Sun Gwyndolin

i genuinely believe that schools need to immediately expel students for using gen AI & blacklist them from any other program for at least five years, because i don’t want to fucking deal with these useless twerps being credentialed in any field whatsoever. these fucking people are going to be your lawyers. your healthcare professionals. these people who are too fucking dumb to read, who would rather blindly trust a glorified predictive text generator than spend five minutes studying or thinking on their own.

at this point, if you didn’t receive your credentials before 2020, it is infinitely safer for me to assume that your degree is hollow, your work is fake, and your knowledge nonexistent unless & until proven otherwise.

And how blindingly she shone upon him: a pearly melon-green glare, which swept through the murky space between dreams and lit everything in its wake, so that pale anemones and soft moss and wild blueberries grew in the traces it had warmed, marking a trail for him to follow. She was difficult to miss, and he was loath to deny her even if he could. XVIII. The Moon

I wanted to practice drawing kissing and it kind of got out of hand? I love them too much haha <3

(some day I'll actually write the one-shot of why anemones are important I promise)

I'm going to put a video here where a published author and content creator is talking about the way readers frequently interact with the book world, and specifically Sarah J Maas readers and their ilk. The video isn't hating on readers, or Maas or the types of books Maas & clones write. I am not posting it in relation to the topic of plagiarism. The reason I'm posting it is because of the way people have responded to Veilguard. It's not very long, and I'm sharing it because he summarizes and briefly discusses the following points:

anchoring bias

schema theory

cultural myopia/commenting on things when you have limited cultural exposure

other people dealing with the consequences of a critical poster getting 15 minutes of attention

I thought the video was a good poke into problems coinciding with people criticizing (not critiquing, there's a difference) Veilguard, where anything from themes, plot points, characterization or even costume elements in the game are being torn apart...and the people doing the tearing are approaching the topics with often *self-admitted* lack of experience on what they're criticizing, and zero curiosity.

A concrete example: there was a discussion swirling recently in which there was an attempt to criticize Veilguard for the funerary practices Rook and Bellara go through. This in spite of the fact that a Dalish Rook and Bellara can have an in-the-moment discussion about the differences between their clan practices, and in DA:I Solas can mention how clans are different from each other, and there have been many, many posts on this site discussing from a lore perspective how the elves are not a monolith. I don't have to tell you that the posters criticizing the scene were myopic on both a cultural and personal preference level in their criticisms of the scene.

Critical posters have also frequently spoken over users who attempt to explain the diverse cultural, political, or queer experiences and influences which align with Veilguard's portrayals.

I thought it was great that this creator brought up how authors are affected for a considerable amount of time by shitty online takes. Recently there were screenshots where Trick mentioned that making Veilguard was traumatic, and folks passed them around with bioware/EA/Veilguard critical tags, but didn't include that maybe the fans themselves continue to bear some of the blame for this experience.

I don't think Bioware/EA are blameless as companies, or that Veilguard is a perfect game, but there's been a distinct trend where 'fans' claim to be critiquing things and are really only whining (and sometimes harassing creators) that they didn't get what they personally wanted. And if pressed about what they wanted, the examples they give aren't coherent narratives meant for published or produced media - if they were, those fans would already be working in those fields making art. Social media has made it very easy to 1) get access to and attention from creators, and 2) get validation (and very little pushback) from other fans for pithy remarks. In other words, it's easy to feel undeservedly "right" for shitposting.

sorry i never replied. everyday is blending together and im losing sense of time

how many times can one guy draw the same two losers tangled up with the same red string damn

if there's one thing the breeding kink discourse taught me, it is that most of you aren't weird enough to handle solas. i'm taking him off your hands. solas dragon age is my character now and i decide that he's a freak. i decide that he's a slut and a freak and that he is capable of doing bad shit with bad intentions.

solas did drag a low approval inquisitor to the eluvian by the arm and shut it off to dismember them most traumatically. he did that shit and he was swinging his hips as he did so.

solas will sometimes bite into something particularly crunchy and think fondly of times he was in his dread wolf form eating animals bones and all while they were still alive. he might even have a lil smile about it.

solas is of the persuasion that everyone around him is inferior to him, that the lives of everyone who survived his error hold so little value that he's willing to sacrifice countless of them. he has a prejudiced and highly racist remark for every inquisitor be they elven, qunari, human, or dwarven. solas is a cunt.

and yeah, this is the same cunt who protected a random wanderer who fell asleep between the paws of his statue. yup the very same as the one who goes "that was a kind thing you did" with the softest voice in the world if his companion goes out of their way to spread some stranger's ashes where they would have wanted. same dude as the one who beelines to offer his aid to hurt refugees at the crossroads in da:i. and yes it's the same freak who loves dancing and gossip and tiny cakes and painting and who calms cole down from a panic attack. he is all of those things at once.

but give me warlord!solas. give me the solas who followed a man for twelve years to drive him to madness with laughter. give me the solas who carves vallaslin into the faces of his foes when he kills them. show me the solas who faced mythal for the first time after betraying and rebelling against her. the solas who saw the first dwarves crawl from the titans and perceived them as being beneath him, as being the severed arm of a once mighty hero, lying in a pool of blood, undirected, whatever skill at arms it had gone forever? zoom in. enhance. rotate. this solas is just as true as the caring, wise, sad solas.

i'm not saying he's evil, i'm just saying that he's not a good man. he isn't. treating him as one and excusing his failures and crimes as exclusively poorly executed but well-intended mauls him. he's such a complex, multidimensional character and i wish people would stop woobifying and sanitising him because it is such a waste!!!!! it's such a waste!!!!! let him be freaky!!!!!

Found my old sketches of Arthur

some silly sketch about this guy

FOREWORD BY DAVID GAIDER

I wrote Dorian over a period of about a month at the very beginning of 2014. Prior to that, he’d been conceived as a Tevinter mage who was actually a good guy – someone who had ideals, and who strenuously objected to the moral decay of his homeland, where blood magic had become a common thing almost every magister needed in order to get a leg up on their rivals. The character didn’t really come together for me until the team started discussing which followers would be romances, however, and the possibility of including a couple of gay characters was raised.

Of course, a character being gay is not a substitute for them having goals or character development, but in this case Dorian’s role in the game was more or less already established. What I lacked was a clear picture of what made him who he was, and in particular why he left his homeland. The idea that maybe he was gay, and that this perhaps played a role in his rejection of his family’s intended life for him, was rather intriguing. Homophobia didn’t exist in Thedas per se, but Tevinter society has a very rigid set of requirements regarding what was acceptable behavior for their elite citizens. The truth was immaterial: you had to look the part, and more than that you had to devote yourself to a good marriage and to your family’s cause. Anything less than that and you were a pariah, your family too weak to even maintain the expected façade… if you couldn’t manage that, after all, then how competent could you truly be? Dorian being someone who rejected that life, despite all the benefits it could offer and despite his parents’ worries and best intentions, because living truthfully meant more to him? That spoke to me on a personal level in a way I don’t think it would for a writer who wasn’t themselves gay.

Which is not to say that only a gay man could have written Dorian. Writers are accustomed to creating characters who have very little in common with their real life. All it really takes is to reach down inside yourself and find that part of you which connects with what you’re writing… but in this case it’s safe to say I didn’t need to reach very far. I think we all have some experience with what disappointing our parents feels like, but LGBTQ people experience that at such a visceral level it often dominates their lives. The fear of rejection by those you love most, the utter relief that laying down the burden of self-loathing and shame others have placed on your shoulders, the constant battle with the idea that maybe you’re being selfish by insisting on not living a lie just to make the world a more comfortable place for those around you… these are things we’re all too familiar with. So while I may not be the scion of a wealthy family, and my parents never threatened me with rejection or therapy or otherwise tried to force me to change, I still knew Dorian’s struggle. Perhaps better than any of my other characters.

Oh, it’s true that I didn’t need to make his character arc about him being gay, or about his relationship to his parents. Sexuality doesn’t need to be a story device, after all, it could simply have been a fact. Considering that, prior to Dragon Age: Inquisition, I never had the opportunity to put this much of myself into a character, however, I felt like it was worth trying. It’s a personal story that in no way resembles my life, and yet at the same time it does. Writing the scene with Dorian’s father was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and required me to access deep-seated fears that were so raw and uncomfortable it was at times almost beyond endurance. But I did it, and so many people have contacted me in the years since to tell me how close to home Dorian’s story hit that I’m glad I did it.

If you’re reading this and you’re one of those people, then I thank you. If Dorian’s experience hit close to home for you because you actually went through anything close to what he did, then my heart goes out to you. Maybe the day will come when stories like Dorian’s won’t need to be told, when I won’t look upon such a rare opportunity as something to be snatched up and shared, but that’s not today. This isn’t Thedas, but we live with our own demons and have our own monsters to face, and if you’ve contributed towards #BornPerfect then you’re playing a small part in the battle and I salute you.

As for me, maybe one day I’ll get to revisit Dorian. I expect he’ll be peeved I’ve been away so long, and the two of us will get to have a long and scandalous conversation while we drink too much wine. I’ll comment how his ass has become famous, and he’ll say that it goes well with his full head of hair, and then oh how we’ll laugh.

Life is sometimes good to us. Try to remember that, if you can.

— David Gaider

The Reluctant Victor, inspired by The Reluctant Bride by Auguste Toulmouche - I just thought that this painting was SO perfect for Katniss and I had to draw it!

|| “The Maker smiles sadly on his Grey Wardens, so the Chantry says, as no sacrifice is greater than theirs.” ||

The Harrowing

the inquisitor is ours with @starrythroat

Appreciation post for all the beginner artists who work hard despite the AI ​​looming over us. You are fabulous. You are precious. Keep up the hard work, you are needed.