#sapphos-scientist

[cryptid-s-wips]

late blorbo blursday question: what bad habits do your ocs have (e.g chewing nails, bad sleep schedule, perfectionism, etc.)?

for any wip/ocs you want to talk about!!

Gonna talk about my boi (in a girl way) Reid from Highway to Hell because she is literally just a collection of bad habits stacked inside a trench coat.

She has a terrible sleep schedule and doesn't take care of herself very much, especially when she gets really focused on getting something done. Her poor sleeping habits also mean she definitely has a caffeine dependency. She's kind of falling apart at the seams. Someone help her :')

Thalia actually has a very similar thing where she will get totally hyperfixated on something and forget everything else exists. Also her nails are all bitten down to the quick.

#answered #blorbo blursday #wip: h2h #h2h: reid #h2h: thalia #sapphos-scientist

[yourlocal-lichen]

📖 for the asks ?

📖 Share the last line of any chapter.

hoo boy uhhm here's the last line of an excerpt that I wrote for my newest WIP (which has yet to be named):

"The dark night got darker still, and eventually Osgood left the cottage."

#is this where i mention that i reblogged this ask game with the full intention of winging it because im scared of giving my wips a plot #that was also written at like maybe 1am so you know take it with a grain of salt #sapphos-scientist

[transmasc-wizard]

congrats on the bitches!

thanks !

#asks #sapphos-scientist

[tobias-fell]

i recall you saying you wanted to read more books by poc and disabled authors, may i suggest Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor? i just finished reading it and it was very good! really changed the way i think about the dystopian genre as a whole. heres the goodreads if you what its about since im horrible at summaries: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23281789-the-book-of-phoenix

anway, just a suggestion, have a good rest of your day/night!

i did say that yes, and this looks really cool!! ty for the rec :)

#asks #sapphos-scientist #book recs

[chroniccoolness]

2 and 19 for the asks!!

do you use any type of disability aid other than mobility aids?

i wear glasses, though i don't consider my mild vision issues to be disabling. i also wear noise cancelling headphones but that's for autism reasons not physical disability reasons

19. do you consider yourself visibly disabled? if yes, how does that affect your interactions with strangers?

uh, it's a weird grey area. people know something's wrong when i'm lying on the floor and refusing to get up in the middle of P.E., or when i'm falling asleep in class, or whatever, but they don't know what/that it's a disability necessarily. i'm also, like, semi-visibly autistic (people know something's up & weird with me but might not directly clock autism) so that factors in as well.

it doesn't affect my interactions with strangers much because i don't interact with strangers. i don't talk to new people unless i have to. it does often come with people being asshole-ish or concerned though on the few occasions i DO talk with strangers, though.

#asks #disabled ask game #sapphos-scientist

[gizmothorne-art]

meet my future ribbon master, Dorito, and her two parental figures, Hephaestus and Achilles

#pokemon #togetic #metagross #latios #ribbon challenge #they will do everything in their power to get their baby girl the ribbons she needs #also this is the togepi you get from the scientist in xd #not the late game coliseum togetic #she was donated to me by a friend bc i don't have the gamecube games <3 #she has the 100 battle tower ribbon too #i'm gonna try to keep tri attack on her bc that's kind of cool #just sucks that i chose the mon before the togepi line was completely deconfirmed in paldea >:[ #i want the cool marks #once i get around to catching latias im naming her sappho btw #mine #pkmn #fandom #framed

[icarian-angel]

Herbal Tea and Ice coffee for the asks :D

Herbal Tea : You’re at a candle shop, what scented candle do you buy?

Vanilla or lavender or both together :) very good scent

Iced Coffee : Do you like reading? If so, what’s your favorite book?

YES I LOVE READING!!!!!!! Very hard to pick a favorite book but recently I have been reading the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown because my friend told me to and akjdjqahpajka they're so gooddddd

#**sapphos scientist** #:D #ask game answers

[macrolit]

NYT's Notable Books of 2023

Each year, we pore over thousands of new books, seeking out the best novels, memoirs, biographies, poetry collections, stories and more. Here are the standouts, selected by the staff of The New York Times Book Review.

AFTER SAPPHO by Selby Wynn Schwartz

Inspired by Sappho’s work, Schwartz’s debut novel offers an alternate history of creativity at the turn of the 20th century, one that centers queer women artists, writers and intellectuals who refused to accept society’s boundaries.

ALL THE SINNERS BLEED by S.A. Cosby

In his earlier thrillers, Cosby worked the outlaw side of the crime genre. In his new one — about a Black sheriff in a rural Southern town, searching for a serial killer who tortures Black children — he’s written a crackling good police procedural.

THE BEE STING by Paul Murray

In Murray’s boisterous tragicomic novel, a once wealthy Irish family struggles with both the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash and their own inner demons.

BIOGRAPHY OF X by Catherine Lacey

Lacey rewrites 20th-century U.S. history through the audacious fictional life story of X, a polarizing female performance artist who made her way from the South to New York City’s downtown art scene.

BIRNAM WOOD by Eleanor Catton

In this action-packed novel from a Booker Prize winner, a collective of activist gardeners crosses paths with a billionaire doomsday prepper on land they each want for different purposes.

BLACKOUTS by Justin Torres

This lyrical, genre-defying novel — winner of the 2023 National Book Award — explores what it means to be erased and how to persist after being wiped away.

BRIGHT YOUNG WOMEN by Jessica Knoll

In her third and most assured novel, Knoll shifts readers’ attention away from a notorious serial killer, Ted Bundy, and onto the lives — and deaths — of the women he killed. Perhaps for the first time in fiction, Knoll pooh-poohs Bundy's much ballyhooed intelligence, celebrating the promise and perspicacity of his victims instead.

CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

This satire — in which prison inmates duel on TV for a chance at freedom — makes readers complicit with the bloodthirsty fans sitting ringside. The fight scenes are so well written they demonstrate how easy it might be to accept a world this sick.

THE COVENANT OF WATER by Abraham Verghese

Verghese’s first novel since “Cutting for Stone” follows generations of a family across 77 years in southwestern India as they contend with political strife and other troubles — capped by a shocking discovery made by the matriarch’s granddaughter, a doctor.

CROOK MANIFESTO by Colson Whitehead

Returning to the world of his novel “Harlem Shuffle,” Whitehead again uses a crime story to illuminate a singular neighborhood at a tipping point — here, Harlem in the 1970s.

THE DELUGE by Stephen Markley

Markley’s second novel confronts the scale and gravity of climate change, tracking a cadre of scientists and activists from the gathering storm of the Obama years to the super-typhoons of future decades. Immersive and ambitious, the book shows the range of its author’s gifts: polyphonic narration, silken sentences and elaborate world-building.

EASTBOUND by Maylis de Kerangal

In de Kerangal’s brief, lyrical novel, translated by Jessica Moore, a young Russian soldier on a trans-Siberian train decides to desert and turns to a civilian passenger, a Frenchwoman, for help.

EMILY WILDE’S ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FAERIES by Heather Fawcett

The world-building in this tale of a woman documenting a new kind of faerie is exquisite, and the characters are just as textured and richly drawn. This is the kind of folkloric fantasy that remembers the old, blood-ribboned source material about sacrifices and stolen children, but adds a modern gloss.

ENTER GHOST by Isabella Hammad

In Hammad’s second novel, a British Palestinian actor returns to her hometown in Israel to recover from a breakup and spend time with her family. Instead, she’s talked into joining a staging of “Hamlet” in the West Bank, where she has a political awakening.

FORBIDDEN NOTEBOOK by Alba de Céspedes

A best-selling novelist and prominent anti-Fascist in her native Italy, de Céspedes has lately fallen into unjust obscurity. Translated by Ann Goldstein, this elegant novel from the 1950s tells the story of a married mother, Valeria, whose life is transformed when she begins keeping a secret diary.

THE FRAUD by Zadie Smith

Based on a celebrated 19th-century trial in which the defendant was accused of impersonating a nobleman, Smith’s novel offers a vast panoply of London and the English countryside, and successfully locates the social controversies of an era in a handful of characters.

FROM FROM by Monica Youn

In her fourth book of verse, a svelte, intrepid foray into American racism, Youn turns a knowing eye on society’s love-hate relationship with what it sees as the “other.”

A GUEST IN THE HOUSE by Emily Carroll

After a lonely young woman marries a mild-mannered widower and moves into his home, she begins to wonder how his first wife actually died. This graphic novel alternates between black-and-white and overwhelming colors as it explores the mundane and the horrific.

THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE by James McBride

McBride’s latest, an intimate, big-hearted tale of community, opens with a human skeleton found in a well in the 1970s, and then flashes back to the past, to the ’20s and ’30s, to explore the town’s Black, Jewish and immigrant history.

HELLO BEAUTIFUL by Ann Napolitano

In her radiant fourth novel, Napolitano puts a fresh spin on the classic tale of four sisters and the man who joins their family. Take “Little Women,” move it to modern-day Chicago, add more intrigue, lots of basketball and a different kind of boy next door and you’ve got the bones of this thoroughly original story.

A HISTORY OF BURNING by Janika Oza

This remarkable debut novel tells the story of an extended Indo-Ugandan family that is displaced, settled and displaced again.

HOLLY by Stephen King

The scrappy private detective Holly Gibney (who appeared in “The Outsider” and several other novels) returns, this time taking on a missing-persons case that — in typical King fashion — unfolds into a tale of Dickensian proportions.

A HOUSE FOR ALICE by Diana Evans

This polyphonic novel traces one family’s reckoning after the patriarch dies in a fire, as his widow, a Nigerian immigrant, considers returning to her home country and the entire family re-examines the circumstances of their lives.

THE ILIAD by Homer

Emily Wilson’s propulsive new translation of the “Iliad” is buoyant and expressive; she wants this version to be read aloud, and it would certainly be fun to perform.

INK BLOOD SISTER SCRIBE by Emma Törzs

The sisters in Törzs's delightful debut have been raised to protect a collection of magic books that allow their keepers to do incredible things. Their story accelerates like a fugue, ably conducted to a tender conclusion.

KAIROS by Jenny Erpenbeck

This tale of a torrid, yearslong relationship between a young woman and a much older married man — translated from the German by Michael Hofmann — is both profound and moving.

KANTIKA by Elizabeth Graver

Inspired by the life of Graver’s maternal grandmother, this exquisitely imagined family saga spans cultures and continents as it traces the migrations of a Sephardic Jewish girl from turn-of-the-20th-century Constantinople to Barcelona, Havana and, finally, Queens, N.Y.

LAND OF MILK AND HONEY by C Pam Zhang

Zhang’s lush, keenly intelligent novel follows a chef who’s hired to cook for an “elite research community” in the Italian Alps, in a not-so-distant future where industrial-agricultural experiments in America’s heartland have blanketed the globe in a crop-smothering smog.

LONE WOMEN by Victor LaValle

The year is 1915, and the narrator of LaValle’s horror-tinged western has arrived in Montana to cultivate an unforgiving homestead. She’s looking for a fresh start as a single Black woman in a sparsely populated state, but the locked trunk she has in stow holds a terrifying secret.

MONICA by Daniel Clowes

In Clowes’s luminous new work, the titular character, abandoned by her mother as a child, endures a life of calamities before resolving to learn about her origins and track down her parents.

THE MOST SECRET MEMORY OF MEN by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

Based on a true story and translated by Lara Vergnaud, Sarr’s novel — about a Senegalese writer brought low by a plagiarism scandal — asks sharp questions about the state of African literature in the West.

THE NEW NATURALS by Gabriel Bump

In Bump’s engrossing new novel, a young Black couple, mourning the loss of their newborn daughter and disillusioned with the world, start a utopian society — but tensions both internal and external soon threaten their dreams.

NORTH WOODS by Daniel Mason

Mason’s novel looks at the occupants of a single house in Massachusetts over several centuries, from colonial times to present day. An apple farmer, an abolitionist, a wealthy manufacturer: The book follows these lives and many others, with detours into natural history and crime reportage.

NOT EVEN THE DEAD by Juan Gómez Bárcena

An ex-conquistador in Spanish-ruled, 16th-century Mexico is asked to hunt down an Indigenous prophet in this novel by a leading writer in Spain, splendidly translated by Katie Whittemore. The epic search stretches across much of the continent and, as the author bends time and history, lasts centuries.

THE NURSERY by Szilvia Molnar

“I used to be a translator and now I am a milk bar.” So begins Molnar’s brilliant novel about a new mother falling apart within the four walls of her apartment.

OUR SHARE OF NIGHT by Mariana Enriquez

This dazzling, epic narrative, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell, is a bewitching brew of mystery and myth, peopled by mediums who can summon “the Darkness” for a secret society of wealthy occultists seeking to preserve consciousness after death.

PINEAPPLE STREET by Jenny Jackson

Jackson’s smart, dishy debut novel embeds readers in an upper-crust Brooklyn Heights family — its real estate, its secrets, its just-like-you-and-me problems. Does money buy happiness? “Pineapple Street” asks a better question: Does it buy honesty?

THE REFORMATORY by Tananarive Due

Due’s latest — about a Black boy, Robert, who is wrongfully sentenced to a fictionalized version of Florida’s infamous and brutal Dozier School — is both an incisive examination of the lingering traumas of racism and a gripping, ghost-filled horror novel. “The novel’s extended, layered denouement is so heart-smashingly good, it made me late for work,” Randy Boyagoda wrote in his review. “I couldn’t stop reading.”

THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS by Vajra Chandrasekera

Trained to kill by his mother and able to see demons, the protagonist of Chandrasekera’s stunning and lyrical novel flees his destiny as an assassin and winds up in a politically volatile metropolis.

SAME BED DIFFERENT DREAMS by Ed Park

Double agents, sinister corporations, slasher films, U.F.O.s — Park’s long-awaited second novel is packed to the gills with creative elements that enliven his acerbic, comedic and lyrical odyssey into Korean history and American paranoia.

TAKE WHAT YOU NEED by Idra Novey

This elegant novel resonates with implication beyond the taut contours of its central story line. In Novey’s deft hands, the complex relationship between a young woman and her former stepmother hints at the manifold divisions within America itself.

THIS OTHER EDEN by Paul Harding

In his latest novel, inspired by the true story of a devastating 1912 eviction in Maine that displaced an entire mixed-race fishing community, Harding turns that history into a lyrical tale about the fictional Apple Island on the cusp of destruction.

TOM LAKE by Ann Patchett

Locked down on the family’s northern Michigan cherry orchard, three sisters and their mother, a former actress whose long-ago summer fling went on to become a movie star, reflect on love and regret in Patchett’s quiet and reassuring Chekhovian novel.

THE UNSETTLED by Ayana Mathis

This novel follows three generations across time and place: a young mother trying to create a home for herself and her son in 1980s Philadelphia, and her mother, who is trying to save their Alabama hometown from white supremacists seeking to displace her from her land.

VICTORY CITY by Salman Rushdie

Rushdie’s new novel recounts the long life of Pampa Kampana, who creates an empire from magic seeds in 14th-century India. Her world is one of peace, where men and women are equal and all faiths welcome, but the story Rushdie tells is of a state that forever fails to live up to its ideals.

WE COULD BE SO GOOD by Cat Sebastian

This queer midcentury romance — about reporters who meet at work, become friends, move in together and fall in love — lingers on small, everyday acts like bringing home flowers with the groceries, things that loom large because they’re how we connect with others.

WESTERN LANE by Chetna Maroo

In this polished and disciplined debut novel, an 11-year-old Jain girl in London who has just lost her mother turns her attention to the game of squash — which in Maroo’s graceful telling becomes a way into the girl’s grief.

WITNESS by Jamel Brinkley

Set in Brooklyn, and featuring animal rescue workers, florists, volunteers, ghosts and UPS workers, Brinkley’s new collection meditates on what it means to see and be seen.

Y/N by Esther Yi

In this weird and wondrous novel, a bored young woman in thrall to a boy band buys a one-way ticket to Seoul.

YELLOWFACE by R.F. Kuang

Kuang’s first foray outside of the fantasy genre is a breezy and propulsive tale about a white woman who achieves tremendous literary success by stealing a manuscript from a recently deceased Asian friend and passing it off as her own.

#new york times #100 books #reading list #2023 #books #reading #have you read any of these titles?

[plasmapop]

01/11/22 • catullus 51 via sappho 16 via new scientist issue 3397

Some say aircraft and helicopters and some say telescopes and batteries and some say fuels and flight technologies are the most lovely thing on this dark Earth,

but I say it is the aim of holding you skin-to-skin, human-to-human, text-to-text, without any reflection of a god written between us.

this isn't the real issue. you smile, and your mirror image in history looks away, and I watch and lose focus and all communication systems fail—

(I have been running out of the words for this story for the past 2000 years.)

We need surgery to repair a broken silence. We need pulses of electricity, coursing through bone and muscle and skin. to replace the malfunctioning solar panels of my eyes.

and I remember. I would rather see you again than all the emergency luminescence of a major spacefaring nation, burning through the future like jet fuel.

#GLUE LOCATED. HERE'S THE FULL POEM #tagamemnon #catullus #sappho #constructing ruins #translation #p

[justjupitersart]

jellyfish doodle :)

taglist: @autitm @spookykestrel @sapphos-scientist

#first time i’ve drawn a jellyfish- i’m really proud of how it turned out :) #it was very fun to draw too #i might doodle them a lot more idk. #just jupiter #my art #jupiter draws #traditional art #art #jellyfish #animals #sea creatures

[cream-and-tea]

LAY ME DOWN. chapter six excerpt. unedited. featuring: fivers attempt at honest conversation at a very bad time, the first of many. a category five Pallas Mental Illness Moment. thoughts of violence.

[transcript under the cut]

don’t ask if i’m posting this excerpt just to make this joke. you already know the answer. anyways me when i try to comfort the teenager that HATES me.

TAGLIST (ask to be +/-). @vellichor-virgo @transmasc-wizard​ @houndmouthed @muddshadow @just-wublrful @corkywantstowrite @shrunkupthejams @andromedaexists @kingsinking @lungs-and-gills @lychniscitrus @phantomnations @onomatopiya @sapphos-scientist @arctic-oceans @perilous-prologue @redbloodprose

Pallas leans their head against the stone railing and tries to think calming thoughts. Colour-coded notes, pens lined up in a perfectly neat row, the feeling of freshly laundered clothes against their skin, old-book smell, sticking their thumbs into Calliope’s eyes and watching his head explode like an overripe melon dropped onto concrete…

No. Not that. Not now. Cold water. The bite of frost in early morning air. Coffee so hot it scalds their taste buds going down. Slowly, infinitesimally, they allow themself to breathe.

Then sound, the scuff of a boot against the floor. For a split second of stupidity Pallas considers that merely thinking about Calliope has summoned her to torment them like some kind of bloody mary demon. They spin sharply on a heel, bristled, already narrowed in on a heartbeat and ready for a fight; only to find someone far worse darkening the tower door.

The man, tall and rangy with waves of blond hair pulled unsuccessfully back from his face, stops dead in his tracks, hands raised in the universal gesture for surrender. Fiver (as in the fictional rabbit, not the currency) looks, as always, like a problem that should have been dealt with years ago.

Pallas narrows their eyes, not moving an inch. “How did you know I was here?”

He shrugs, signature laissez-faire smile painted across his face, signature gaudy coat brushing just above his ankles. He's wearing red heart-shaped sunglasses and the overall effect is patently ridiculous.

Pallas isn’t certain why the Director tolerates Fiver at all. He’s a wanderer and a wretch who doesn’t even have his name logged in the ledger. He appeared out of the blue when Pallas was a child and has spent the years since darting in and out of The Library's halls whenever it suits him, like a stray cat who only wanders back when the weather gets cold. He’s far past the age of a student and yet hasn't taken up any official post, so Pallas has deduced that he is either an man so abominably foolish that the Director considers him below her notice, or he somehow holds knowledge that could be useful to the cause, in which case it’s not their place to question her. They don’t have to be cheerful about it though, not when Fiver knows things about Pallas that no one should know and insists on popping in and out of their life as if he doesn’t.

“Lucky gue-”

“You followed me.” Pallas cuts him off so they don’t have to listen to his voice. They narrow their eyes. Fiver takes a step further onto the balcony as if he has any right to.

“Calm down pal-o-mine, my ears were popping three floors away. I think everyone in this building can tell you’re out of it. I came to the place furthest away from everybody else. Trip not go so well?” He has a smile like the Cheshire Cat, it doesn’t once slip from his face. Instead of answering Pallas turns around to face the air. That’s right, they think, you’re so little of a threat to me that I don’t even care that I’m leaving myself exposed to attack from behind.

“Yeah, it’s like that sometimes,” Fiver continues lightly. “Hope it wasn’t a total horrorshow at least.”

Pallas crosses their arms on the railing and leans their chin on them. If they ignore him long enough eventually he will give up and leave. Still the footsteps draw closer and then, horribly, he appears next to them, leaning his arms against the railing as well. They resist the urge to move away, opting to keep staring straight ahead and trying not to think about the dirt smeared on their cheeks or the pine sap making their fingers stick together or their messy hair or anything else that will confirm to Fiver that they’re just as weak as he obviously believes. Heat floods to their face, ugly and rioting. What does he know? What does he know about anything?

They want to wash their jacket. They want to take everything out of their jacket pockets and arrange it all on a table and throw out anything that’s useless and then wash their jacket and then after it’s clean put everything back in the pockets and feel satisfied about all the excellent objects they have in their pockets and how well organized it all is. They don’t want anyone to look at them. They don't want to talk to Fiver, especially today, when thoughts that usually stay locked in the back of their mind have been so quick to claw their way to the surface.

#fiver is trying so hard he’s trying SO HARD you guys #it would be funny if it wasn’t deeply deeply tragic. nothing on this earth more sisyphean than trying to help someone #who doesn’t want to be helped. it’s like buddy this is rlly rlly sweet but u are getting NOWHERE #pallas voice ugh why can’t you just leave me alone to isolate and self destruct in PEACE old man (<-25 year old) #wip: ghost story #creme does a writing #creme does an art

[homerstroystory]

free summer reading groups in ancient studies

howdy <3 Saving Ancient Studies Alliance (SASA) in a volunteer-driven nonprofit that works to stimulate interest in the ancient studies and combat downward trends in humanities education across the globe. to support this mission, they're offering 16 FREE summer reading groups. check below the cut for more info.

Painted Stories: Reading Maya Mythology in Codex-Style Ceramics, June 1-29, Thursdays at 4PM EST: This reading group introduces participants to key mythological themes in Classic Maya (250-900 CE) material culture, particularly as seen on a subset of ceramic vessels known as "codex-style" vessels. No prior knowledge is necessary. RSVP HERE

The Alexander Romance, June 2-30, Fridays at 11AM EST: This reading group introduces participants to the ancient reception of Alexander the Great, with a focus on the Alexander Romance. Attend to join discussions of the ancient Macedonian hero through texts in translation. No prior knowledge is necessary. RSVP HERE

Is This Your Neighbor, Is This You? Looking at Others and Ourselves in Theoprhastus' "Characters," June 2-16, Fridays at 2PM EST: This reading group introduces participants to philosopher and natural scientist Theophrastus (371-287 BCE) and his thirty unsavory "Characters" inspired by real citizens of ancient Athens. Explore the ideas of stereotype and ethics, and examine modern methods of perception. No prior knowledge is necessary. RSVP HERE

Mother, Murderer: Medea's in Antiquity and Beyond, June 4- July 2, Sundays at 3PM EST: This reading group introduces participants to Medea, the infamous Colchian princess who endures in ancient mythology and beyond. Readings will range from Euripides and Ovid to Toni Morrison. Discussion will explore themes of revenge and gender studies. No prior knowledge is necessary. RSVP HERE

True Stories: Classical Sci-Fi and Fantasy, June 5-July 3, Mondays at 5PM EST: This reading group will introduce participants to the relationship between Classical works and the genre of science fiction. Discussions will explore similarities and differences through exciting themes of fictional empires, Roman utopia, and spaceships. No prior knowledge is necessary. RSVP HERE

Beyond the Silk Roads: June 8-July 6, Thursday at 9AM EST: This reading group will guide participants through the "Silk Roads" with a particular focus on Central Asia. Discussion will focus on pre-modern globalization, through primary source readings such as the Sogdian merchants' letters and Dunhuang texts. No prior knowledge is necessary. RSVP HERE

She's Just Not That Into You: Unrequited Love in Antiquity, June 8-July 6, Thursdays at 2PM EST:This Reading Group will guide participants through the theme of unrequited love in antiquity, and explore how tales of love and rejection are universal and timeless. Readings include translated texts of ancient poets, such as Sappho and Horace. No prior knowledge is necessary. RSVP HERE

The Pyramid Texts: The Earliest Egyptian Rituals, June 8-July 6, Thursdays at 3PM EST: This Reading Group will guide participants through the oldest religious literature in the world: the Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Discussions will explore beliefs and myths as present in the mortuary texts, and how they manifested in rituals. No prior knowledge is necessary. RSVP HERE

Tomb Robberies in Ancient Egypt: Prevention, Persecution, and Punishment, June 13-27, Tuesdays at 11:30AM EST:This Reading Group will introduce participants to the methods of Egyptology through primary texts and archaeological sources. With a focus on the Late New Kingdom, discussions will explore the questions of who and why involving tomb-robbing, and traditions of funerary practices. No prior knowledge is necessary. RSVP HERE

Atoms and Void: Lucretius' "On the Nature of Things," June 13-July 11, Tuesdays at 1PM EST: This Reading Group will introduce participants to the great Latin epic De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), and its author Lucretius' key ideas of Epicureanism. Discussions will explore the poem's provocative ideas on pain and pleasure, and how they have impacted early modern science. No prior knowledge is necessary. RSVP HERE

Reading the Abbasid Past: History and Islamic Heritage, June 14-28, Wednesdays at 11AM EST:

This Reading Group will guide participants through the era of the Abbasid Caliphate, or the "Golden Age" of the Islamic World. Exploring a wide range of themes including science, philosophy, and art, discussions will explore the fascinating socio-political lives of the affluent Abbasids and their impact on present-day materials and heritage. No prior knowledge is necessary. RSVP HERE

Queer Lives and Loves in Ancient History, June 14-July 12, Wednesdays at 1PM EST: This Reading Group will use Queer Theory to explore and uncover evidence of LGBT+ lives in the Ancient World. Readings will involve Ancient Greek, Latin, and Near Eastern literature, and participants will be encouraged to challenge Western norms of identity, and modern approaches to historic interpretation. No prior knowledge is necessary. RSVP HERE

Curse Tablets: Personal Communications with the Dead and the Gods in the Ancient World, June 16-30, Fridays at 2PM EST:This Reading Group will explore the relatively unknown realm of curse tablets in the Ancient World. Through evidence left behind by women, men, and slaves over the span of 1,000 years in history, discussions will explore the motivations and consequences of such writings. No prior knowledge is necessary. (RSVP link broken)

Defying the Gods, and Forgotten Female Rage, June 18-July 30, Sundays at 11:30AM EST:This Reading Group will encourage participants to explore the representation of women in heroic tales through significant ancient texts such the Epic of Gilgamesh and Homer. Discussions will focus on the tragedy and anger of female characters in epics, who primarily appear as accessory to male heroism. No prior knowledge is necessary. RSVP HERE

From Harlots to Heroines: Royal Women in the Hebrew Bible, June 29-July 13, Thursdays at 12PM EST: This Reading Group will focus on three royal women in the biblical texts: Jezebel, Esther, and the female lover in the Song of Songs. Reading and discussions will explore primary sources, and how engendered narratives highlight writer bias and impact modern interpretations. No prior knowledge is necessary. RSVP HERE

Unlocking Beowulf, August 4-18, Fridays at 11AM EST:This Reading Group will explore Beowulf as a reflection of both the Norse and Anglo-Saxon worlds. Participants will gain a cultural and historical understanding of the poem, and explore various issues of identity, politics, gender, and nation-making in the Early Middle Ages. No prior knowledge is necessary. RSVP HERE

#archaeology #academia #ancient studies #academic accessibility #isaac.txt

[opia-tarot]

hi!

Can you tell placements that someone is a genius? (where it is more evident, like known for their intellect).

Thanks

Hiya!

Okay so from my experience and also just analysing charts these are the placements i would regard to be genius placements, using the term lightly because genius could point to a variety of different things.

genius placements

Intellectual genius

Mercury trine uranus!!! The difficult aspects are known to astrologers to be the mad scientist placements ahahaa. But the trine is definitely a more organised or an easy indicator of intellectual genius.

Mercury conjunct sun

These people have a nature of intellect. A very natural ease in terms of strengthening their intelligence and they usually have an easier time grasping more difficult concepts.

virgo stelliums

mercury 1h

Dark intellects/macabre philosophers

Pluto 3h

These are the philosophers and they tend to be drawn towards the darker aspects of intellectual horizons. They are deep researchers so they have the ability to keep digging until they find what they’re looking for. Intellectual persistence i would say but most definitely the darker intellectuals

8h mercury!!

Most definitely!!! They can grasp complex topics and they have a deep understanding. They also can grasp the taboo or the more morbid topics others might avoid.

Capricorn stelliums

mercury opposite/square/quincunx pluto

saturn 9h

chiron square sun

Artistic geniuses

Sappho conjunct sun

Asteroid vasari conjunct neptune

Venus conjunct/sextile/trine neptune

venus 2h

Asteroid melpomene in scorpio

prominent pisces particularly 🌛

prominent libra (usually stelliums)

venus conjunct/sextile/trine north node

Asteroid chiron sextile/trine venus

Leo 🌛

Leo venus

Libra venus!!

Neptune dominant

Astrology geniuses

Asteroid urania 12h/8h

Asteroid urania conjunct mercury

Futuristic geniuses/innovators

Mercury-uranus

uranus dominant

prominent aquarius placements

saturn-uranus

mercury 11h!!

I’ve probably missed some but this is what i can think of off the top of my head🖤

#opia’s ask away

[transmasc-wizard]

8 and 17 for the aromantic ask game?

Do you associate anything with being ‘aromantic culture’?

green and arrows for aromanticism specifically, and dragons for aspecs as a whole! (i have a green aro dragon sticker and its so cute)

Do you have any aro related labels that don’t fit into the other groups (like loveless / lovequeer / amatopunk / etc)?

lovequeer & amatopunk i think

#asks #ask game #sapphos-scientist

[serenanymph]

how well would your ocs do against a cockroach tag game

rules: yeah that's it. that's the tag. idk if anyone has done this before but rate your ocs by how well they'd do against a cockroach.

gonna be a lil annoying and tag a biiiiit more people sorry lol. no pressure to join in tho!!! and anyone else who wants to can hop in. @lyssa-ink @reneesbooks @macabremoons @space-writes @squarebracket-trick @scribbling-stardust @toribookworm22 @lorenfinch @sapphos-scientist @e-klair @arctic-oceans @sidhewrites @loopyhoopywrites @hallwriteblr @talesofsorrowandofruin @cream-and-tea

(anyway the rest is under the cut bcuz I have a LOT of characters so I'm gonna go a bit insane. Pulling from Beast as always)

Crys: - doesn't bat an eyelash, kills it easily - merciless, 10/10

Icarus: - a lil startled, will jump if it flies at him, but manages to catch it and set it free outside - 8/10. this boi is too good for this world

Rhyme: - begins by trying to smash it to a pulp - rapidly gets more and more irritated when she keeps on missing - finally lets out a primal scream of rage and fireballs it - 6/10 because she nearly burns down the house

Sol: - lets out an undignified squeak - leaves the room - if it flies at him he's sprinting out of there - 3/10

Dahlia - rolls up a newspaper and whacks it a few times?? like a normal person??? - 9/10

Beatriz: - faints - poor bbg can't handle the terror - 0/10 - alternatively shoots her feathers and skillfully punts it out the window - so overall actually 5/10

Honorary mentions

Iri and Yuan: - incoherent screeching - KILL IT KILL IT WITH FIRE - both trying to get behind the other - so many feathers embedded in the floor. so many - Iri scales up Yuan's back and stays there on his shoulders like an overgrown squirrel - 0/10

Jorge and Jordan - they catch it - and store it with their dozen other cockroaches used to prank people - 10/10, but I'm docking points for the malicious intent

#is this?? how you make a new tag game??? I have no idea actually but whew that's a long title #I have an itch to make an entire series of hyperspecific oc tag games. Why #breaking news: local author takes avoiding writing to a new level as she starts infodumping about her ocs vs cockroaches instead #my posts #writeblr #writeblr community #wip: beast #beast #tag game #sorry if this is a bother!! (I'm mildly nervous about tagging these many people hhhhhhh) #(“lol” I say silently shaking in my boots) #I am going to get a good grade in making a tag game. something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve #and uhhhh CHARACTERS. oh dear there are so many #char: crys #char: icarus #char: rhyme #char: sol #char: dahlia #char: beatriz #char: jordan #char: jorge #char: iri #char: yuan

[chroniccoolness]

sorry I didn't realize those were asked already! 17 and 20 instead?

17. when did you start to consider yourself physically disabled?

i SHOULD have been considering myself physically disabled in, like, april 2022, but my impostor syndrome is Bad so i started considering myself physically disabled on a consistent level (like, not saying "i'm physically disabled!" one day and then "haha no i'm just a physically abled person who struggles a bit" the next) around...... early October 2022 probably.

20. do you have other physically disabled friends? if yes, how did you meet?

yeah <3

there's my tumblr friends, who i met either directly through the physically disabled community or through something else we have in common. then there's my best friend of years and years, who started displaying chronic illness symptoms about 5 months before i did. twinning! i guess! worst possible thing to twin in, but twinning!

#asks #sapphos-scientist #disabled ask game