Art Credit to Bob McLe
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PHOENIX DRAGON SHADOWLANDS
by Leo Tan
The Sacred Temple of the Phoenix
Imperial Gift
There is No Hope
Emperors Peace
In time of War
Inheritance
The Return of Fu Leng
Battle at Isawa Palace
3 Silver Mine
3 Jade Works
3 Merchant Caravan
3 Small Farm
1 Gambling House
1 Hawks and Falcons
Air Dragon
Water Dragon
Earth Dragon
Void Dragon
3 Isawa Osugi
3 Isawa Uona
Isawa Suma
Saka Togama
Isawa Tomo -exp
Isawa Tsuke
Isawa Uona -exp 1
Isawa Uona -exp 2
Isawa Norikazu
Isawa Tadaka -exp 2
The Nameless One
3 Evil Portents
3 Test of Honor
3 Refugees
2 Block Supply
2 Feign Death
1 Shame
1 Confusion at Court
The Egg of P’ an Ku
Ring of the Void
Ring of Earth
3 Spirit Guide
The Ancestral Sword of the Phoenix Clan
The Jade Hand
The Obsidian Hand
The Emerald Armor
The Wasting Disease
Touch of Despair
1 Torrential Rain
1 Secrets of the Wind
1 Sympathetic Energy
1 Reversal of Fortunes
1 Fist of Osano-Wo
2 Touch of Death
3 Force of Will
3 Walking the Way
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Have I ever mentioned that one of my favourite mystical creature of all times happens to be the phoenix? Here is my interpretation of one
Those flying thingies around it’s head so uh. I imagined them as an enabler for disaster. So the tail fire isnt much damage on itself but if the two dot thingies from the head hit eachother really hard and in contact with the tail then everything goes up in flames for a certain radius. Self defense mechanism idk. Or just a bird who enjoys arson
[[MORE]]I am so sorry to all bird lovers I know its an abomination I just combined a peacock and a certain type of eagle 💔
I dont even know what to give as ref I freestyled most of it except the first drawing
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I’ve just re-read Matthew Rosenberg’s Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey (2017-2018) and the blatant disregard for past Phoenix lore in favour of the AvX style ’evil psychic genie that grants you your heart’s desire, so long as that desire is to be evil and also on fire’ pisses me the fuck off.
Like, I get editorially or just as a writer wanting to divorce Jean from the Phoenix; her being a cosmic avatar of life and fire can make it tough to tell grounded stories with stakes. This? This was just lazy.
For context, The Return of Jean Grey issues #1-4 jump between the wider X-Men teams trying to find the source of some weird phenomena, and a small town in New Mexico where an amnesiac Jean is working as a waitress in a town full of dead people who all also have amnesia.
Now, to start, I want to say I can forgive moments where characters who aren’t Jean or Rachel wildly mis-interpret the Phoenix because, as people who aren’t hosts and could never be hosts, they really should have a hard time understanding it:
ALT
ALTCalling it a “planet-eating monster” isn’t even accurate, but it’s not like Logan was there to see it eat the star D'Bari was orbiting around; whatever. The idea that the Phoenix could ever be bad for “the universe and life in general” is also insane, but the times Kitty’s encountered it are pretty exclusively when it has been broken or driven insane by something so, once again, whatever.
What I just can’t forgive is what it all leads to in the last issue, and how we just start retconning Jean’s relationship with the Phoenix for no good reason. For starters, Jean acting like she doesn’t know why the Phoenix is interested in her:
ALT“I don’t know why you gave it. And I don’t know why you keep coming back.”
Don’t you, Jean? I think it told you pretty clearly, back in Classic X-Men #8:
ALT“You cried out for aid. I heard. I came.”
And, sure, that’s pretty vague. But, luckily for you, your encounter with Death in Classic X-Men #43 clears things up:
Jean is, explicitly, “a spirit—a fire, if you will—carved most closely from [the Phoenix’s] own.” She is made from it and, in turn, she gives it its consciousness through her limited, human attempts to conceptualise a primal force of nature. They are tied together by a destiny the Phoenix itself forged:
ALTBut that’s not even the part that annoys me the most. Beast hypothesises in Issue #4 that the reason the Phoenix has made this literal ghost town to resurrect Jean in is because it’s preparing her to be its host again, but when she confronts it in Issue #5…
ALT“We can make the world whatever we want it to be.”
ALT“I don’t want any more of your illusions. You have nothing left to offer me!”
ALT“All of this—using people, playing with their lives, building fake worlds—it’s not right.”
The idea that the Phoenix Force—a cosmic embodiment of the cycle of life itself—would be desperately trying to drag Jean into a false reality where she could pretend that the people she loved are still alive is just baffling. Writing a story in which Jean needs to remind a force of nature that its power shouldn’t be used frivolously is already insane, and becomes even worse when considering how the Phoenix has been depicted in the past.
Hell, we don’t even need to get into the Claremont stuff; let’s just go back just 16 years to Grant Morrison’s New X-Men #128:
ALT“If I actually dared come any further into your consciousness, all my thoughts would turn to ash.”
“Only the ones you don’t need in the light.”
ALT“I am born and consumed in blood and flame and sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice” isn’t exactly the most ‘happy never-ending playtime’ of descriptors, but whatever. Let’s get a bit less esoteric and jump to Issue #139:
ALT“But the fire of the Phoenix burns through lies, you understand?”
Or maybe Issue #148:
ALT“You could be like a god, Jeannie. You could make your own universe and set it right…”
“The Phoenix isn’t like that, Logan…”
And, why not, let’s throw a tinge of Claremont in there with Uncanny X-Men #108, just for fun:
ALT“And the heart of the tree […] is Phoenix. Tiphareth. Child of the sun, child of life, the vision of the harmony of things.”
This entire story concludes with the Tiferet—a force of balance and miracles, kindness and judgement, which destroys lies to reveal the truth—needing Jean Grey to tell it how to do its job.
There’s no explanation given, either, like it having spent too long tied to Jean’s soul and, as a result, having forgotten its true purpose due to her limited human understanding of the universe and the lies we have to tell ourselves to keep going.
No. Instead, the cosmic embodiment of truth and light so vast that it can’t even be accurately quantified as a being is characterised as wanting to drag Jean into a delusion to escape her grief.
“You don’t understand. That’s not how things are supposed to work.”
The only thing that’s even remotely correct in those two pages is calling Morrison’s Jean her “best self”, because she really is at her most interesting as a stubborn, arrogant, wrathful bully trying desperately to be kind.
Sitting down and writing a script where the Phoenix Force would ever ask anyone to hide from the true pain of their reality instead of walking into the fire and the light makes me even angrier that Claremont gets name-dropped in Issue #2, and gives me serious doubts that Rosenberg read anything other than the Dark Phoenix Saga for research.
I’m so glad that, as disappointing as the new Phoenix series has been for me, we’re at least back to a status quo where Jean is the Phoenix, the Phoenix is Jean, and it’s not treated as some screeching, flaming devil on her shoulder trying to get her to munch on some suns and turn trees into gold for no reason.
If nothing else, re-reading The Return of Jean Grey has only made me more grateful to Louise Simonson and Kieron Gillen for fixing the mess the Phoenix had become.
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Old. Drew when I was studying with some other ppl online in the middle of the night. I lost contact with both of them, they were nice people.
I think the exercise was turn a rough black silhouette into something. I drew a hermit who practices fire wizardry. We had to draw on a time limit too.
Answer
Aries, actually
And, bingo! That’s precisely why. A Phoenix rises from the ashes
Thank you for being here & posting some really good posts.
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La noche estaba tranquila en el gran comedor vacío. Hermit tenía una taza de té de manzanilla a medio terminar y una playlist de música mexicana sonando en sus audífonos. Había descubierto esa música hacía unos años, primero por curiosidad, luego por gusto, y ahora era casi un ritual.
Le gustaba cómo sonaba el ritmo.
Le gustaba cómo algunas canciones parecían contar historias enteras.
Se acomodó el beanie negro y amarillo de Hufflepuff sobre el cabello rubio dorado y levantó el teléfono otra vez.
Las historias de Fénix seguían ahí.
La naranja.
El dilema moral.
El espejo.
Hermit apoyó el codo sobre la mesa y suspiró.
—You’re a strange one, Phoenix… —murmuró.
No lo decía como crítica.
Al contrario.
Le gustaba cuando la gente tenía capas.
A él siempre le habían gustado los animales precisamente por eso: cada uno tenía una lógica distinta para sobrevivir.
Un halcón.
Un zorro.
Un cangrejo ermitaño.
Hermit.
Sonrió un poco.
Deslizó el dedo otra vez y volvió a leer la frase.
The zoo is full of beasts, yet the only one I cannot escape waits in my bathroom mirror.
—Yeah… —susurró.
Entendía más de lo que quería admitir.
A veces, cuando su cuerpo le recordaba la epilepsia.
A veces cuando la agorafobia le hacía sentir que el mundo era demasiado grande.
El zoológico podía ser ruidoso.
Pero entonces estaba ella.
Una Gryffindor con bufanda roja y dorada, lentes redondos y una mirada que parecía decir: sí, el mundo es caótico… pero seguimos aquí.
Hermit abrió el chat.
Escribió algo.
Lo borró.
Lo volvió a escribir.
Mientras tanto, al extremo opuesto, Fénix estaba ahí también! Pero se resistía a caer dormida, víctima de un reel random de ASMR en su feed.
La noche tenía ese frío ligero que justificaba su bufanda Gryffindor. Sus lentes redondos no parecían molestarle para recostarse en la mesa.
Lo último que hizo de forma consciente fue subir esas historias casi como un pensamiento en voz alta.
A veces sobrevivir a la depresión era así: decir cosas raras en internet para ver si alguien entendía.
De pronto el zumbido de una notificación en el teléfono la espabiló pero no era importante. Abrió de nuevo su red social y al checar las vistas de la historia se dio cuenta que Hermit había visto ambas.
Fénix ladeó la cabeza.
—Hmm…
No lo conocía tanto aún, pero había algo curioso en él.
Ese chico Hufflepuff con beanie que parecía tímido pero atento. Como si siempre estuviera observando el mundo un poquito desde afuera.
Justo cuando estaba pensando en eso…
Su teléfono vibró de nuevo.
Un mensaje.
Hermit.
Lo abrió.
El mensaje decía:
“If the world is a zoo…
I guess I’m just a hermit crab trying to understand the other animals.”
Fénix levantó una ceja.
Luego apareció el segundo mensaje.
“But I think phoenixes are my favorite species so far.”
Fénix se quedó mirando la pantalla unos segundos.
Una sonrisa pequeña, pero genuina, apareció en su cara.
Alzó la vista.
Del otro lado del comedor, la luz tenue de un celular iluminaba una figura.
Un chico con beanie de Hufflepuff, lentes cuadrados y el teléfono en la mano.
Hermit!
No estaban tan lejos…
Los dos bajaron un poco el teléfono al mismo tiempo.
Y por un segundo sin necesidad de contacto visual se reconocieron en la oscuridad. Se entendieron más allá del contenido digital.
Hermit levantó ligeramente su celular, mostrando la pantalla donde todavía estaba abierta la historia de la naranja.
—Orange is one of my favorites… —dijo en voz baja pero audible.
Fénix soltó una pequeña risa.
—¿El color o la fruta?
Hermit encendió la punta de su varita e inclinó la cabeza.
—…Maybe the phoenix.
Ella encendió su varita también y cruzó los brazos, divertida.
—Cuidado, Hufflepuff. Los fénix también muerden.
Hermit se encogió de hombros con una sonrisa tímida.
—Good. The zoo would be boring otherwise.
Por primera vez en mucho tiempo, Fénix sintió algo extraño.
No era presión.
No era expectativa.
Era más bien… curiosidad.
Como cuando dos animales en el zoológico se miran desde lados distintos del vidrio.
Y deciden que tal vez vale la pena acercarse un poco más.
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For 10 years, these Peak hightops have been part of my collection. They were a gift from my husband, purchased in China during his trip home.
It has been a while since I wore them. Yet, they always feel at home on my feet, like the warm embrace of an old friend.
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Kijk eens naar mijn nieuwe videopodcast
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phoenix + the girls are like. the snacking munchers. the morsel devourers. rip family size bag of lime chips u didnt stand a chance against 3 people who graze professionally
