"Guard Talks To God 3" (colorized) - I Loved It When In The Latest Pages Guard Said "It's Guarding Time"

Happy New Year everyone! Here's to a great year of the dragon!

[Start ID: A digital drawing of several dragon Pokémon celebrating the lunar new year. The Pokémon are performing a dragon dance parade on a dull green grassy field with dark blue mountains in the background. Several Pokémon are flying above the parade holding glowing red lanterns. There are also some Pokémon further back in the sky watching the parade. The sky is sunset colors, going from red orange at the bottom, light orange in the middle, to a blueish purple at the top with faint white stars. There are a few dark magenta clouds, highlighted underneath by the sunset with yellowish orange hues. There are also Fireworks bursting in the sky in light red, orange, yellow, and blue colors. In the upper left corner is handwritten glowing golden yellow text that reads "Happy New Year 2024".

At the front of the parade is the Pokémon Druddigon holding up a stick with a puppet of the Pokémon Minior attached. Druddigon's a spikey bipedal dragon and its body is mostly dark cyan, with tan underbelly scales, a red head and red spikes on its arms, legs, and tail. The Minior puppet is a golden yellow color, it has a roundish shape with five star like spikes. There are 5 ribbons flowing off of the puppet which have on ombre from reddish orange to light yellow. The Minior puppet is glowing and is meant to represent the pearl in a traditional dragon dance.

Behind Druddigon are the Pokémon Dragonite, Charizard, and Garchomp holding up with support sticks a large puppet of the Pokémon Rayquaza. The Rayquaza puppet is a long serpentine dragon, with two arms, and is meant to represent the dragon puppet in a traditional dragon dance. Rayquaza is mostly green, with a glowing yellow line pattern traveling down the side of its body, and red accents on the edges of its mouth and fins. Its mouth is open wide and one of its arms seems to be reaching for the Minior puppet. Holding the support stick connected to the Rayquza puppet head is Dragonite. Dragonite is a bipedal dragon mostly orange in color, with a light tan scaled underbelly, light tan antennae, and a teal wing membrane. Holding up the midsection support is Charizard, a bipedal dragon with an orange body, light yellow underbelly, blue wing membranes and eyes, and the tip of its tail is on fair. Holding up the last support is Garchomp, a bipedal shark like dragon with no wings, dull navy blue in coloration, with a red and yellow underbelly, and white spikes on its body.

There are several other young, smaller dragon Pokémon walking with the parade. Between Druddigon and Dragonite is Dratini, a blue serpent like dragon with a white snout, frills, and underbelly, and purple eyes. Between Dragonite and Charizard is Axew, a bipedal dragon with no wings, its dull green in color with a dark green head crest and red eyes. Between Charizard and Garchomp is Bagon and Deino. Bagon is a bipedal dragon with no wings, it's light blue in color, with a tan belly, and light grey head crest. Deino is a quadrupedal dragon with now wings, a dark gray mane with red spots, and a dark blue body. Behind Garchomp is Goomy and Jangmo-o. Goomy is a sluglike dragon, with a dark purple underbelly, green cheeks, and a light purple body. Jangmo-o is a quadrupedal dragon with no wings and is light grey, with a dark grey underbelly, and yellow accents on its scales.

Flying above the parade are Pokémon holding glowing red lanterns. At the front is Altaria, a birdlike dragon with a blue body and white cloud like wings. There is Noibat, a small bat like dragon that is mostly shades of purple with yellow eyes. There is also Flygon, a large slightly bug like bipedal dragon that is mostly light green, with dark green antennae and accents, and red accents on the edges of its wings, fins, and a red translucent shield over its eyes. Lastly is Dreepy, a small serpent like dragon that's a dull green teal with red accents and yellow eyes. Watching the parade from further up in the sky is the real Rayquza, as well as Latios and Latias. Rayquza's appearance matches that of its puppet, being a mostly green serpentine dragon with yellow and red accents. Latios and Latias are both jet-like dragons, with Latios being blue and white, and Latias being red and white. End ID]

This is my second time doing an image ID so feel free to let me know if it needs any changes. I feel like it may have gotten a little too long, but with like 18 characters in a drawing there's probably going to be a long description no matter how concise one may try to be.

through starless sky to blackest ground

There's this sort of anthropomorphizing that inherently happens in language that really gets me sometimes. I'm still not over the terminology of "gravity assist," the technique where we launch satellites into the orbit of other planets so that we can build momentum via the astounding and literally astronomical strength of their gravitational forces, to "slingshot" them into the direction we need with a speed that we could never, ever, ever create ourselves. I mean, some of these slingshots easily get probes hurtling through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Wikipedia has a handy diagram of the Voyager 1 satellite doing such a thing.

"Gravity assist." "Slingshot." Of course, on a very basic and objective level, yes, we are taking advantage of forces generated by outside objects to specifically help in our goals. We're getting help from objects in the same way a river can power a mill. And of course we call it a "slingshot," because the motion is very similar (mentally at least; I can't be sure about the exact physics).

Plus, especially compared to the other sciences, the terminology for astrophysics is like, really straightforward. "Black hole?" Damn yeah it sure is. "Big bang?" It sure was. "Galactic cluster?" Buddy you're never gonna guess what this is. I think it's an effect of the fact that language is generally developed for life on earth and all the strange variances that happen on its surface, that applying it to something as alien and vast as space, general terms tend to suffice very well in a lot more places than, like... idk, botany.

But, like. "Gravity assist." I still can't get the notion out of my head that such language implies us receiving active help from our celestial neighbors. They come to our aid. We are working together. We are assisted. Jupiter and the other planets saw our little messengers coming from its pale blue molecular cousin, and we set up the physics just right, so that they could help us send them out to far stranger places than this, to tell us all about what they find out there.

We are assisted.

And there is no better way to illustrate my feelings on the matter than to just show you guys one of my favorite paintings, this 1973 NASA art by Rick Guidice to show the Pioneer probe doing this exact thing:

"... You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. ..."

Gravity assist.

Reposts from DA, the Sparklestalker saga. (AKA just DarkStalker but kinda sparkly)

SPIRIT PHONE

A quick drawing of Fycus

[Start ID: A digital drawing of a headshot of a red and green dragon named Fycus. Their scales are a deep red with flecks of bright green. Their underbelly scales are a light yellowish green and get darker closer to the head. They have two wavy horns on top of their head, and a horn on their cheek and nose which are a gradient from a bright green to a light green. The spines on their back are also a gradient of green to lighter green. Their eyes have an off-white sclera with green irises and black pupils. They have a faint smile on their face. The background is a muted turquoise green with a pattern of leaves spreading from the right. At the bottom is a watermark of the username "TheCraftyDragonC". End ID]

🌟 WOO! The draft is prepped for release! Came out being 11:11, how fitting! 🌟

Assuming everything goes right, Pretty Pretty Please I Don't Want to be a Magical Girl the animatic pilot will premiere TOMORROW, February 28th @ 10am PST for the last day of Black History Month!

Look for this thumbnail ^^^ or sub to my youtube!

YouTube

Kiana Khansmith

27 y/o | Director @ Disney Television Animation | Story Artist/Character Designer | Pixar@CCA Story Intensive '17 | 🇯🇵🇯🇲 | 🏳️‍🌈 | she/her 💕

[Start ID: Digital drawing of my dragon character named Fycus. They are drawn in a chibi style with a large head and eyes and a simpler body. End ID] A fun little Fycus drawing!

GOAT month is nearly over, but there's still time to join sneepsnorp club for goat-themed papercrafts and stickers! :D the $10 tier gets three goat stickers plus the papercraft patterns, $5 tier gets papercrafts! :)