All of my gen art is on my DAaccount, some NWS Snarry on WTP

(You can find my all my HP Fanart by browsing my Fanart Masterlist or the hp_fanart tag. <- not really working atm)

- Commission info
- Art For Sale

This journal is more or less Friends Only. Art and occasional fandom related topics or artistic rants are posted publicly, everything else is locked. Comment and ask me to add you, if you want to read about my RL and random musings or see WIP posts.

If you are here only for the art, friend away, there is no need to ask.

Some of the entries may contain content of adult nature. Such posts are marked as R/NC-17 and NWS (not work safe). Do no read such posts, if you are not legally allowed to do so.

My huge and insurmountable writing block has shifted to include not only uni-related writing, but pretty much all kinds of writing. I mean seriously, I agonise over a one-line email. Never mind LJ posts. This is getting beyond ridiculous and it needs to stop.

I think one of the specific problems with LJ is that this journal has so much ballast. All the HP stuff that I don't really want to think about anymore, but still can't stop feeling guilty about, especially about not having updated even half of the image links since my paid account ran out years ago. I know that nobody is really interested in that old stuff, but I feel like I should preserve an archive here. Should do this, should do that. Should comment more. Should try to keep in contact. Should post more. (interesting. content.)

I think it's time to cut my losses here. Mieronna isn't an identity I still like or use or feel comfortable in. Mieronna is founded on too much I only feel guilty about, in RL and online. At the same time I don't really want to delete it all, because I know how annoying it is to follow links to obscure pages and find them dead. Even if it's unlikely anyone finds their way here, I don't want to be that annoying, content deleting person.

I'm not really sure what I'm going to do... I feel my interests fragmented all over the place - I follow many history/costuming/literature blogs via google reader. I have a dreamwidth account where I mostly read fandom/social justice meta. There is LJ with people who at least aren't completely anonymous names, even if my contact with them is zero. I want (or maybe I need) to have it all in one place. All under one identity.

While I won't be able to move all the stuff from google reader to dreamwidth or LJ, I think I can't least do something about the situation here.

I have this new (old, never used) account carthasis - Carthasis is a name I've used a lot lately in various places and it's beginning to feel comfortable (in the sense that I no longer feel the need to tell people to call me Miri, that's more me than Carth). I also have a new (fresh, sparkling, just created) Dreamwidth account by that same name: http://carthasis.dreamwidth.org

I really need to keep some kind of blog/journal, if just to get used to writing again, but I don't think I want it to be on LJ. If you use dreamwidth and you want to read what will likely end up as random one-sentence-per-day entries, then by all means add me there, I'll be happy to subscribe to and give access to everyone.

If you want an invite to create a dreamwidth account, I still have five available.

If you use LJ and want to read carthasis here, I'll crosspost all entries from dreamwidth, with a link to the dreamwidth entry but with the comments disabled. Feel free to friend me, I'll friend everyone back so you can have access to flocked stuff. I'm probably going to read Carthasis' flist here, but not with any regularity.

This account will no longer be updated from now on, though I won't change anything about what is already here.

See you around peeps, it was nice while it lasted.

I really need money and I really need to get drawing again... hopefully, with the influx of new people watching me on DA, I'll be able to land some small commissions there. Posting this here as well, in case somebody is interested. I'd be willing to consider Harry Potter themes as well (I'm that desperate...).


( Rates )



I'd also like to clean out the majority of my old Harry Potter fanart, if there is still someone interested in this ancient stuff. Under the cut is a list of all the pieces I'd like to get rid of. If you are interested in one or several of them, let me know and I'll give you a quote.
( Read more... )

It drew! And something that is not pixel dragons either.

Started in March 2009 - should tell you something about where I am artistically, that it took me so long to finish this.

NSFW (though nothing much more explicit than a kiss - unless you have imagination :D)
Coloured pencil on pastel paper, 24 x 32 cm

( Sinking in Oblivion )

Why is it so hard to find novels set in the 18th century that do not fall into any of the following categories?

- American revolution (from the American perspective)
- French revolution/ last years of the Versailles court/ anything to do with Marie Antoinette
- romances (with highwayman and kilted highlanders and swooning ladies) <- Jacobite novels unfortunately often find themselves in here.
- pirate novels
- napoleonic wars/regency novels that claim to be about the 18th century, but actually deal with the 19th century by most sensible definitions.

It's as if nothing of interest happened between ~1680-1770

As with everything I do, I stopped writing up books I have read several months ago. Now I think it's time for another round of sporadic book list posts. Mostly for myself.

Books I read (or listened to) over the last couple of months:

Robin Hobb:

The Farseer trilogy (Assassin's Apprentice / Royal Assassin / Assassin's Quest) Dreadful narration by Erik Sandvold, luckily not available to buy. I really hope the recently released new recording is better.

The Liveship Traders (Ship of Magic / The Mad Ship / Ship of Destiny) Read by Roy Avers - excellent narration, despite the dreadful quality (cassette tape rip). Unfortunately no longer available.

The Tawny Man (x 2) (Fool's Errand / The Golden Fool / Fool's Fate) Read by Jack Fox - somewhat better than the Farseer books, but not optimal.

Rainwild Chronicles (Dragon Keeper) narrated by Saskia Butler - rather liked this one.

I really like the world Hobb has created, even though it is in essence very traditional 'high' fantasy, and I love her character-driven stories and the themes (gender, sexuality, privilege and discrimination of various groups) she writes about. So far none of the books I read have come off as preachy - one of the main reason I might be turned off from books that attempt to introduce very real issues in their fantasy - and I hope this remains that way. I also appreciate the fact that none of her main characters are perfect - they all have very real and at times excruciatingly annoying traits and weaknesses. Even the Fool, my most beloved (bad pun is bad) character is worthy of a headdesk reaction on more than one occasion.
There are aspects I find less likeable: the sometimes over-the-top villains, too much exposition in places, the endings (or individual plot lines) being wrapped up somewhat too neatly. The plots aren't usually too complicated - Hobb's primary strength are characters. However, on the whole those of her books set in the Elderling World are some of my favourite fantasy and I have read most of them several times now without enjoying them any less than before. Now, I hope I can get my hands on the new book 'Dragon Haven' soon, but somehow the audio book doesn't seem to be around yet, despite supposedly haven been published at the same time as the hardback.


Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind
Started listening to the audio book, read by Nick Podehl and couldn't get into it at all. The reader sounded like a sulky teenaged boy and while it might be fitting, considering the main character is a teen throughout the majority of the book, that was a bit too real an experience. Okay, this was just an overly convoluted way of saying that I found the narrator's voice extremely off putting. So, I picked up the book and found it much easier to get into. The beginning was slightly incoherent (though maybe the audio book is to blame) but after the first twenty pages or so I found it much more enjoyable. The premise is the good old gifted orphan makes his way in the world fantasy story (as told by the adult looking backwards), but the details and the world building give it a fresh look. The language is rich and beautiful without being ostentatious, which is of course an added bonus. I liked it a lot and I'm looking forward to the next book, whenever that might come out.

J.R.R. Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings
Audio book this time, read by Rob Inglis who does an beautiful job of it. I felt somewhat detached from it, maybe because I know it so well I didn't really listen any more. It struck me how very different Tolkien's style is from the more personal character-involved writing of more recent books. LotR is much closer to the epic narratives and legends that inspire the Silmarillion than to any of the epic fantasy books that followed after. While the story is no grander than many others, the language seems to widen the scope of it to such a degree that most of the characters remain little more than sketches, with the occasional glimpse of personality. This isn't bad in itself, but I think I wasn't really in the mood for this kind of story telling just now, which is why it suddenly stood out so clearly.
Also, this time around the ugly racial imagery really jumped out at me. It's a bit sad to realise that the world that fuelled my imagination for so long comes with a baggage that is difficult to ignore.


John Connolly - The Book of Lost Things
Audio book read by Nick Rawlinson. Rawlinson has a pleasant voice but an odd tendency to slow down the reading speed and lower his voice to almost a whisper at the end of some sentences or paragraphs - often in places where it made no sense. But apart from that the book was very well read.
I feel very ambivalent about this one. It's a story about David, a boy whose mother dies and who can't get to grips with his stepmother and -brother. He finds his way into the land of faerie and has various encounters with more (or less) well known characters from stories and myths. My favourite was Roland who was based on the knight from Browning's poem.
The resolution was pretty predictable, the twists on traditional fairy tales not quite so. Despite the premise this is not a children's book - it's much too violent for it. So far so good.
I liked the story, I liked the writing. What I did not like (with the exception of Roland) were the twists on the traditional tales. Pretty much all of them in one way or another (sexuality, eating habits, looks, behaviour) villainised (is this a word?) the female characters. In a way this is explained from within the story (David's negative feelings towards his stepmother) but all the same, it was too much, especially since it went hand in hand with most of the females in the story being in some way brutally killed - several times while their nakedness was in some way exposed. It did all make sense in the narrative, but the continuous repetition of the theme ended up lessening my enjoyment of the book.

David Liss - Spectacle of Corruption
Audio book read by Michael Page. Nicely read. I would have liked a bit more variation in the different voices, but that's my only qualm.
Murder mystery set in the 1720s. The protagonist and first person narrator is Benjamin Weaver, a Jewish thief-taker who gets framed and convicted for a murder he didn't commit. He flees prison and then proceeds to resolve the political intrigue surrounding the murder and his conviction. This is the second book about this character, the first is 'A conspiracy of paper' and I have not read it. This might be the reason why I found it difficult to connect to the (recurring) characters and understand their motivations and relations to each other. Apart from that it was an okay book, but not exactly what I was hoping for. For me it failed to bring the time period it was set in to life, though I'm not quite sure why. The details on daily life and politics were well researched (with a few exceptions) but all the same, I somehow didn't feel as if I was reading something about the early 18th century.

Roger Zelazny - The Chronicles of Amber 1-5 (Nine Princes in Amber, The Guns of Avalon, Sign of the Unicorn, The Hand of Oberon, The Courts of Chaos )
Read this one myself for a change. For some reason I expected this series to be (high) fantasy but it's actually somewhere on an undefinable scale between fantasy and science fiction. It's... pretty odd for lack of a better word. The set of characters is extremely limited for a series that has almost 800 pages (in my edition) - so limited in fact that other persons/peoples/beings are almost abstract, which of course is one of the points of the set-up. The main focus of these books are the wold(s) created within them and the philosophy behind them, not so much the characters. I only began to be really invested in the story of the first-person narrator and one of the central figures of the limited cast in the middle of the second book. I think I'll maybe read this cycle again at some point, but as a rule I'm a very character-oriented reader and as fascinating as the world and its concepts were, I'm not really tempted to read more about it - there are 5 more books focusing on another central character and some short stories, I think, and for now I'll not bother with them.

Scott Lynch - The Lies of Locke Lamora
Audio book read by Michael Page (again) No complains about the voice variety this time. I think he goes a tittle bit overboard with the intonation sometimes, but it fits the characters.
This one is about a group of con artists and thieves operating within the network of organised crime in a city based on early-modern Venice. An engaging book with likeable characters despite them being, well, thieves. It takes the stories of the merry exploits of a band of (thieving) friends and mixes it with the violence and savagery of organised crime and drops it all in a sunny world that has a distinct Mediterranean feel to it (from my POV at least), despite being strictly fictional. One thing I really liked about this world was the gender equality in the society of Camorr - it isn't absolute and it isn't unquestioned: there are assumptions that in some positions a man would be expected to have authority but on the whole the girls give as good as they get and in the background tumult there are as many girls and women passing by as man in as a wide variety of occupations, including artisans and soldiers. In fact it almost seemed as if the author was making a point by always saying "men and women" whenever describing a gathering of people. I wish this wasn't something I'd take notice of, but it was there and I enjoyed it.
I liked the book quite a lot and I'm now listening to the second book, 'Red Seas under Red Skies' which is also excellent.


Tad Williams - The Dragonbone Chair
Started listening to the audio book read by Erik Sandvold, didn't finish. In fact didn't even get far into it. It's the same narrator who pretty much ruined Hobb's Farseer books - the man reads completely without intonation. I got used to it with Hobb's books, because I know and love them, but I couldn't enjoy a completely new book with this narrator. I might try it again if I find a cheap paperback somewhere.

... You know, the one when you finish a book that you absolutely love with characters you adore and with a completely unsatisfying ending. But, you think to yourself, that's what fanfic is for and no matter how obscure the fandom there's bound to be a fic out there that makes it all better! Let's go find it, yay! And then you remember that the book's author is one of the most vocal fanfic-haters out there. *weeps*

We recently got a delicious recipe for a cherry cake and it would be criminal not to share it.

You need

For the dough:
1 cup flour (1 cup = 200ml)
5 table spoons powdered sugar
100 g soft butter

For the filling:
2 eggs
2/3 cup sugar (or 3/4c)
1/4 cup flour
1/4 tea spoon baking powder
2 tea spoons vanilla essence (Vanillinzucker/ or just take real vanilla)
ca 350g pitted sour cherries (ours are sugared)
3/4 cup chopped walnuts

Heat oven to 180° Celcius.
Mix dough ingredients in a bowl - use a fork or your hands, not a mixer.
Press the dough into a baking dish, we use a 26cm (=10 1/4'') metal springform pan. It should cover the floor of the pan with a thin layer.
Bake for ca 15 minutes until gold-brown.

While it's baking, you can make the filling:
Beat eggs (not separated) with sugar until soft and creamy. Add flour, baking powder and vanilla, mix well.
Once the pastry is done baking, pour half of the eggs over it, lay out with cherries, pour the rest over the cherries. Then top everything with a layer of the chopped walnuts. Make sure no big chunks stick out or they'll burn.
Bake at 180°C for at least 30 minutes. The topping should be baked through, but be careful not to burn the nuts.

Let it cool, then serve with hot drink of choice ;)

Unfortunately I can't take a picture as the camera is on its way to France right now, but believe me it's scrumptious.

I've seen many fic writers mention it lately and decided to poke around to see if it allows art... surprise, surprise - it's geared towards fic. And I can't help but feel a little disappointed. It seems to me that in the majority of big fandom archive projects fanart (and other non-written media, but I'm a fanartist so my POV is certainly biased) is usually only an afterthought and tacked on to the fic part of the site. Whenever I looked into submitting art to an archive it was either not possible at all or it was only possible within the same uploading system the fic used without any accommodation of the specific needs of a visual medium. Or, though that was really a very long time ago and I'm sure that has changed by now, art had to be submitted to and added manually by the moderators.

Now, I have dropped out of the actively producing part of the fandom a few years ago and while that had many reasons, many of them personal, fandom's general* stance towards fanart and and the treatment it got in fests, recs, archives and other projects did play some part. It always seemed to me that fanart was somewhat outside the mainstream of the fandom. Certainly liked and welcomed (in most cases) and it never lacked for squee - but still always an afterthought. Tacked on because either fanartists complained at being excluded or because the organisers wanted to add a bit of special flair to their project - not because it was considered to be as much of an integral part of the creative fan community as fanfic.

I looked into the AO3 because I had the vague hope that this attitude towards fanart has maybe changed and was very disappointed to find that it hasn't.
From the FAQs:

What is a work?

At the moment, 'work' on the Archive refers to individual fanfics. In the future, works will also encompass other kinds of fanwork (such as vids and fanart), which is why we use the generic term, but we haven't yet built this functionality.

Yet again fanart doesn't start out on an equal footing with fanfic, but it's pushed to the side to be added later - an afterthought. I wonder how many artists will feel welcome adding their art when/if the feature is implemented, knowing in advance that their work was not deemed important enough to be a part of the first public appearance of the project. I have the suspicion that once the AO3 will officially allow art and provide the facilities for it, it will be firmly established as yet another big fandom fic archive.

/emo rant over


*I say general, because I know there are other examples and my own flist is definitely much more welcoming to all things fanart <3

Edit: I'd really love to hear other about fandomers' and artists' experiences regarding this issue. Or if you even feel it's an issue at all. Speak up!

Edit2: I wasn't around yesterday and won't be on today much, so I can't moderate the discussion should it become necessary. I doubt it, but still. Behave. I will reply to you all within the next days. Thank you so much for commenting with your thoughts!
~~~~~

Also, FLIST. HI! How are you? I really need to get back into this posting entries and commenting thing - I just wish I had something to say ;)

It does, despite drinking the juice of the berries of this plant almost every day. Recently I wanted to tell a friend about this delicious winter staple in my family but couldn't think of the name, so I googled it and imagine my surprise when almost all German and also English sites listed it as not edible. Let me tell you, oh ignorant Western Europeans, that this is patently not true, as any Russian speaker who knows the plant as Kalina can tell you. Or rather not the whole truth. The unripe berries of Viburnum opulus do indeed contain the same poisons as the bark and the leaves, the ripe berries however can be eaten. It's true that they are very bitter and sour when raw, but that's what sugar is for. They should be either cooked to jellies or marmalades or simply sugared until they let juice. The syrup then can (and should! yum!) be drunk with tea or simply diluted with hot water. Home medicine says that the juice in combination with honey is good as a treatment for mild colds or sore throats.

Now, don't say you were never told.

In other news... life mildly sucks, it's cold (-10° celcius yesterday!) and today I saw the local population of parrots in the small spruce grove opposite our house. That's right, there are wild parrots in Germany. I've no idea how they survive the winter, but they do and apparently successfully. Very pretty, all bright green plus turquoise tail. A lovely sight, especially compared to the usual drab birds you normally find here*. Who knew?
I wonder if they'll settle in our trees. If they do, I hope they won't push out the wood pigeons - I really like those and they have very pleasant voices.


*Apart from magpies of course, but I don't like magpies. They are very pretty, but their voices are really annoying.

I haven't really posted my finished sprites here, but just to have some actual content, here they are:

Clay Dragon (red=male, blue=female)
( Breed details )


Wallowing Dragon (left=female, right=male)
( Breed details )


Quilltail (left= male, right=female)
( Breed details )


Nocturne (tan: day, blue: night); Concept and prelim. sketches by Hypnotic
( Breed details )


Loch Ness; Collab with one Floari




And here are some WIPs: ( Read more... )

All said, I'm not sure if I should consider this serious work or a magnificent waste of time, but it's fun. And will ruin my eyes.

Two things.
First: This was quite enough meta for one season, show, can we please get back to the plot?
Second: If you are going to make a joke based on a foreign accent, please do your research, show. Germans do not (as a rule) roll their Rs when speaking English. Apart from speakers who have certain regional accents they don't do it when speaking German, so why should they start when speaking English? They do however devoice all word-final consonants and have major problems with the 'th', both voiced and voiceless. Those are two of the main hall marks of a German accent. Not a strong R.

I saw that Gareth David-Lloyd will be a guest at the next Fed Con (Stark Trek & SF convention in Bonn) and while I'm usually only half-interested in the actors and more in their characters, I'm still very tempted. There's no way I can afford the tickets (well, maybe the day ticket...) but there is this option of registering as helper - either reception&sale or security. Has anyone of you ever volunteered at a con? How did it work out? And what if I can't combine the talks I want to hear with the working hours? Eeeps. And it's SF, the other guests are all Star Trek, Stargate or BSG, none of which I watch (maybe I should - I've seen BSG floating around my flist). On the other hand, it would be a shame not to go... who knows how long I'll stay here.
But then... I've always been more tempted by the kind of conventions made by fen for fen with fan-content, rather than the for-profit type with 'official' guests and I've never heard of any of the former happening here in Germany, which is really a pity.

In case you aren't aware of it, the super-awesome art crit and beta community artbeta is up and running again with new mods: the lovely glockgal and yours truly. It's now opened to all fandoms as well as original art - basically, if you draw or paint in any digital or traditional medium and you need a fresh eye to look over your next masterpiece before you throw it to the wolves present it to your adoring audience, this is the place to go!

I haven't poked around LJ styles for a while and I'm seriously pissed right now. As far as I remembered it was always possible to pick a layout (smooth sailing, flexible square, classic and so on) and then to fully customise it yourself. Some options would be reserved for paid users of course, but it was possible to change colours, font sizes and other important things as basic account user. Now, all I get are the already customised styles that I can choose from and I can hardly change them at all. Where are the basic layouts gone to? Is it no longer possible more or less customise one from scratch?

I wish...

well, I wish a lot of things, but right now most of all I wish that people who are campaigning against factory farming would stop going on in the most dramatic and emotional terms about how eating meat is disgusting and inhumane and whatever. You know what? Congratulations, you've just convinced me to stop reading your arguments and stay away from anything you write in the future.

I. Am. Not. Interested. in your vegetarian missionary agenda. I happen to think that vegetarianism isn't the optimal diet for humans and I also happen to like meat and I also happen to loath the disgusting treatment the vast majority of domestic animals undergo today. And you know what? These things aren't mutually exclusive.

You think eating meat is inhumane and beastly? Well, here's news to you. Humans are animals. Omninovorous animals, too. And that includes animal protein. So, sorry but I'll stick to my steak and my chicken soup and my chilli con carne and I'll fully enjoy the cracking bones and hot gravy of my roasted chicken.
Oh and I'll also try to pay attention to where my meat and my eggs come from whenever I can afford to. But it weren't your pesky rethorics that convinced me to do so.

For some reasons, due to scheduling and such I always seem to end up with courses about (US)American literature - all perfectly valid and interesting classes of course, but considering that I was always kinda hoping to do other areas, a little bit ironic. First it was American Utopias, then it was Native American Writing, now it's American Literature and Human Rights. Oh and in between I had a tutorial on narrative analysis where we read American short stories and two short novels.

My reading list for Human Rights is mostly historic - I was kinda hoping for contemporary authors and contemporary settings - if you have any related recommendations or places where I can find related recommendations, they'll be very appreciated.

What is on the list so far is:
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, by Frederick Douglass
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Native Son by Richard Wright
The Plot against America by Philip Roth - this one's obviously by a contemporary author, but I understand the content is again historic.
And some as of yet unspecified short stories and essays or speeches.

This is kinda silly, but... pictures like ( this ) and the perfectly well deserved anger directed at them (and the institutions who feel the need to photoshop models to look like that) make me actually feel really, really good about my own ample curves and those extra pounds I normally feel the need to fret about.

Depressing election results are depressing.

So I was reading this book - speaking of which. OMG! I finished a novel! In a short time, too! And for no other reason than wanting to read it. This hasn't happened in months! - it was a pretty good book. It had a few flaws here and there, but as a whole it wasn't bad, especially considering that apparently it was this author's first published novel. However, there was this one instance that made me go - huh? Whenever a situation was meant to be really dramatic, dangerous and threatening the author inserted random German words and expressions instead of the English term. And I wondered... is it something commonly done? And if so... WTF? That really threw me out of the narrative every time. I haven't noticed it before, but then I don't read much fiction set in modern times.