I’m Still Dreaming

I came across a xiaohongshu post that showed pictures of an abandoned traditional village in a mountainous region of China with very little surrounding greenery that had the captions: “so sad how traditional villages like these are empty and abandoned”

But the top comment was: “I am so happy for the villagers who finally made it out of the mountains and into new homes in prosperous cities. It often takes multiple generations of hard work to get the entire family out. Every family in this village achieved this. What you are looking at is the evidence of their success!”

And the second highest liked comment was: “You can tell this area has poor agricultural resources. The ancestors of the villagers were likely forced to settle here because more powerful villages have occupied the attractive fertile lands. Who knows how long they had been trapped here? I’m glad they finally made it out!”

Another comment with high likes: “My grandparents’ village was like this. Poor air quality from burning coal in poorly ventilated buildings. Bitterly cold in the winter. Dry and hot in the summer. Short growing seasons. And there was always a shortage of water. My parents got factory jobs in the city and after working and saving for years, they finally got all of us out.”

And it occurred to me how when we romanticize old fashioned villages and mourn the loss of the type of community they provided, we sometimes downplay and overlook the extraordinary liberation and agency that industrialization brought and brings to people who in previous generations had no option but to remain where they were born for most of their lives.

This is The Blog of the Great and Righteous yet Super Evil Dictator Floyd

Good day from Canada. My name if Floyd, and you all shall know my wrath soon enough. For now, I shall try to keep things short. as future immortal ruler of all the nations, I believe it is my duty to make a record of my goings on and daily exploits. Be sure to check in often, because over the next few years, your gonna see a lot more of me in the news. 

Build a Bunker,

Floyd

ANYWAY you cannot convince me that the air nomads didn’t have any sort of trade good based on the flying bison and aang just didn’t have the time or safety to make and sell any of these while trying to stop ozai. they probably did so much spinning just because drop spindles are super transportable, it’s something to do while flying long distances, there’s always a weaver somewhere willing to buy yarn, and there’s always, always large amounts of shed fur just. around. look at how much came off of appa that one episode. so much fur

so three things happen the summer after ozai is defeated and appa starts shedding in earnest again

aang starts spinning and selling yarn because that’s What You Do and he’s clinging REAL HARD to every possible air nomad tradition because, well, who else will remember these things?

toph hears about this and scruffs him before he can sell too much because she’s a merchants daughter and holy shit aang do you understand what you’re selling?? yarn from the last known sky bison! the avatar’s own spirit guide!! spun by the avatars own hand!!!! what are you doing aang!!!!!! she has to drag katara in at this point because aang is real unhappy with the idea that his normal flying bison yarn of, uh, questionable quality is being sold to exclusive high class weavers so they can make shawls for filthy rich nobles for baaaaaank just on the basis of his name. this isn’t how the monks did it :/ and he doesn’t WANT a lot of money anyway! he’s a monk!! he only asks for what he needs to survive!! anyway katara manages to talk toph around to donating most of the money to reconstruction efforts, charities, and orphanages and convinces aang that having an emergency fund is a good thing and he should keep something. aang accidentally ends up with a reasonably full bank account and is really confused about how that happened, why it’s there, and what he’s supposed to do with it

there is a real weird period of time where it’s In Fashion for high noble ladies to have shawls and scarves dyed the same color as aangs clothes (because that’s how you know it’s made with special avatar yarn!) or have images of appa woven into them (can you imagine a shawl that’s just a full length body shot of appa?? amazing) and all the earth kingdom nobility are just rocking green and orange like nbd. weaving decorative shawls with slubby yarn becomes really in fashion, too, because aang is not great at spinning. he’s 13 and it’s boring, ok?

BONUS sokka is just. so mad. you could have been making bank with appa the whole time we were scrambling around the planet aang? do you realize how much more food we could have had? how many more hot baths?? how could you betray me like this

(probably the air nomads also did a lot of weaving but it was mostly the pregnant nuns and the really old nomads so it’s a little off aangs radar. and does aang eat cheese? it never comes up in series but I would also believe that the nomads made a lot of air bison cheese and bison butter tea)

Get fit for the summer with no exercise, I'm down 10 pounds!

I don't think fantasy writers play enough with the concept of the different fantasy races having distinct ethnicities. Like imagine a group of mixed peoples, where the dwarves are all roasting each other like dwarves do, and one of them remarks that when he first saw one of the other dwarves in the group, he mistook her for a man. The other dwarves in the group blink in surprise - the closest that dwarves will go to an audible gasp of shock - and she pulls out a knife and tries to stab him.

Once the dwarves have been separated from each other and the situation has calmed, one of the humans asks another dwarf what that incident was about. Naturally a human woman would have been insulted too, but dwarves are so jovial about insulting each other, why was this matter different?

And the dwarf who was asked explains that there are things you can brutally insult another dwarf about, and there are things you simply do not touch. The dwarf-woman in question is from a completely different region of The Great Underground as the others, and her people have different norms about what kind of patterns men and women braid into their beards. The dwarf insulting her wasn't only insulting her appearance, he was being racist.

The human is surprised to learn that dwarves have different peoples, and the dwarf looks at them like at an idiot. Of course they do, they even look completely different from each other. And the human listens as the dwarf lists off various distinguishing clothing details too nuanced for a human to notice, and then how dwarves coming from different corners of the world have different physical traits, according to what kind of conditions their local stone types dictate.

The human spots a connection and goes oh! We have that too, though ours are not about rock types and tunnel air, but the weather aboveground. Humans' facial features vary by how hot, cold, arid or windy their ancestors' homelands were, and our skin tone varies by how much the sun shines in their native region.

The dwarf frowns at the last part, going "I thought you people just paint your skin and dye your hair for fun", and the human admits that yeah, we do that too, but not all the time, and not the whole skin. The dwarf asks, what of that tall woman the colour of dravite, her palms and the soles of her feet were lighter than the rest of her. Does that mean she paints herself dark to be more beautiful?

The human says no, that just happens naturally. Maybe it's because one's palms and feet aren't exposed to the sun as much, so they are paler.

The dwarf nods, still unsure whether this is actually legit or just the human habit of lying for fun, and proceeds to ask about the wild northman of their party. He is as pale as an olm, but the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet are dark. Are they painted, or naturally that way?

No, the human answers. That guy just doesn't bathe.

day 1 at the communal puzzle club: i see a puzzle with a sign next to it that says "please help with our communal puzzle" and i say to myself "don't mind if I do" and did the whole thing

I draw way too much tracer and moira, and that's okay?!!

Am also testing some shading styles 🙌

“You don’t know what student pranks can be till you’ve seen a magician’s college”

- Three hearts and three lions by Poul Anderson

I know it’s super late, but I recently bought “The Search” comic series. Aww, it makes me miss the old Avatar series (maybe it’s time for a re-watch) I decided I’d do some fanart, but what I didn’t expect was as I drew each character, it made me think back to my friends in our Avatar cosplay group! Lots of love to all the amazing people I got to cosplay with, to this day it’s the most fun I’ve had in costume!