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holy shit is this gorgeous.

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“If a society puts half its children into short skirts and warns them not to move in ways that reveal their panties, while putting the other half into jeans and overalls and encouraging them to climb trees, play ball, and participate in other vigorous outdoor games; if later, during adolescence, the children who have been wearing trousers are urged to “eat like growing boys,” while the children in skirts are warned to watch their weight and not get fat; if the half in jeans runs around in sneakers or boots, while the half in skirts totters about on spike heels, then these two groups of people will be biologically as well as socially different. Their muscles will be different, as will their reflexes, posture, arms, legs and feet, hand-eye coordination, and so on. Similarly, people who spend eight hours a day in an office working at a typewriter or a visual display terminal will be biologically different from those who work on construction jobs. There is no way to sort the biological and social components that produce these differences. We cannot sort nature from nurture when we confront group differences in societies in which people from different races, classes, and sexes do not have equal access to resources and power, and therefore live in different environments. Sex-typed generalizations, such as that men are heavier, taller, or stronger than women, obscure the diversity among women and among men and the extensive overlaps between them… Most women and men fall within the same range of heights, weights, and strengths, three variables that depend a great deal on how we have grown up and live. We all know that first-generation Americans, on average, are taller than their immigrant parents and that men who do physical labor, on average, are stronger than male college professors. But we forget to look for the obvious reasons for differences when confronted with assertions like ‘Men are stronger than women.’ We should be asking: ‘Which men?’ and ‘What do they do?’ There may be biologically based average differences between women and men, but these are interwoven with a host of social differences from which we cannot disentangle them.”

— Ruth Hubbard, “The Political Nature of ‘Human Nature’“ (via gothhabiba)

Yes.

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The Performer 🎭🎶 A character class for The Hidden Isle.

You can preorder the TTRPG here

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Jane Austen really said ‘I respect the “I can fix him” movement but that’s just not me. He’ll fix himself if knows what’s good for him’ and that’s why her works are still calling the shots today.

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Smoking cigarettes is bad for your health. Smoking green paint made of arsenic is worse~

More shenanigans involving Dante, a character from my wip illustrated novel about 19th century artists. Back then, most paints are made of highly toxic ingredients such as lead, mercury, and arsenic (for the the infamous color: Paris Green).

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the reef guardian 🦈

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I know I’ve said this before but vampires

don’t show up on camera

can fly/scale walls

immune to bullets

can break into any safe by turning into fog or some bullshit

could probably hypnotize security guards as needed

therefore I am in dire need of a heist film where a group of vampires band together to steal back their old stuff from museums

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Do you happen to know the origin of the fantasy trope in which a deity's power directly corresponds to the number of their believers / the strength of their believers' faith?

I only know it from places like Discworld and DnD that I'm fairly confident are referencing some earlier source, but outside of Tinkerbell in Peter Pan, I can't think of of any specific work it might've come from, 20th-c fantasy really not being my wheelhouse.

Thank you!

That's an interesting question. In terms of immediate sources, I suspect, but cannot prove, that the trope's early appearances in both Dungeons & Dragons and Discworld are most immediately influenced by the oeuvre of Harlan Ellison – his best-known work on the topic, the short story collection Deathbird Stories, was published in 1975, which places it very slightly into the post-D&D era, though most of the stories it contains were published individually earlier – but Ellison certainly isn't the trope's originator. L Sprague de Camp and Fritz Leiber also play with the idea in various forms, as does Roger Zelazny, though only Zelazny's earliest work is properly pre-D&D.

Hm. Off the top of my head, the earliest piece of fantasy fiction I can think of that makes substantial use of the trope in its recognisably modern form is A E van Vogt's The Book of Ptath; it was first serialised in 1943, though no collected edition was published until 1947. I'm confident that someone who's more versed in early 20th Century speculative fiction than I am could push it back even earlier, though. Maybe one of this blog's better-read followers will chime in!

(Non-experts are welcome to offer examples as well, of course, but please double-check the publication date and make sure the work you have in mind was actually published prior to 1974.)

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A skilled artisan is a joy to witness

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‘A good tragedy is always both preventable and inevitable’ is one of my main hills to die on. It’s literally so important to me. I’m fucking correct

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STRETCHING SIAMESE CAT 

by Lee Sangsoo

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I like the expression new-fangled. I don't know what it means for something to be fangled, but I sure as hell know it was recent

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Ocean of Storms 2

A knock made Apollo crane his neck up – only to realise the sound had emerged from the window instead of the door.

Birds knocked these days, did they? Because he couldn’t recall a tree outside and that left the only alternative as a person.

It was a person.

Apollo considered and dismissed it being an elaborate assassination attempt before wrenching open the window. “What are you doing here?”

Percy grinned up at him, appearing an unearthly thing indeed in the red light of the street lamps, with half her body enveloped in the fog creeping in from the shore.

“Well,” she drawled, “I believe we didn’t sort matters out to our mutual satisfaction.”

Apollo stared at her. “What matters?”

And how could anyone on this planet ever be satisfied by anything?

Percy smiled wider, her lips stretching into the curve of a bared scimitar.

“I did do you the great service of rescuing you from the ocean,” she pointed out wickedly. “A little recompense would be … appreciated.”

“Like …?” Her presence at his bedroom implied certain things – but she was dressed in a black diving suit that, while doing wonders for showing off every inch of her body, would be a travail to strip off. She’d even put on a transparent cap that plastered her hair to her scalp until she might as well have had only skin for all the difference it would have made.

She didn’t look ready for bedroom activities.

Her words cemented that conclusion. “I’d like some of that Earth coin you brought with you,” she informed him cheerfully. “A little monetary recompense, you know?”

Ordinarily, Apollo wouldn’t have been completely against awarding acts of merit. But he had read up on Pan before his ignominious exit from Earth, which included learning about its economy.

Things from Earth sold for exorbitant prices. The exchange rate for one golden drachma from Earth might have been a hundred Pan planas, but collectors would bid as much as ten thousand for it.

Secondly, and more importantly, he wasn’t a fool.

“I wouldn’t have needed rescue if it weren’t for you,” he retorted.

She stared at him from her perch atop the pipes running the length and height of the building, before snorting. “I’ll have you know, you nearly died all by your own talent.”

Tiring of hanging from a slim piece of tubing that Apollo would be having removed as soon as she vacated the premises, Percy climbed in through the window.

Sullenly, Apollo moved backwards to give her space. It would serve her right if he pushed her out instead – but he hadn’t yet gained a thorough understanding of the surveillance around the governor’s mansion, nor gathered a set of trustworthy retainers who would dispose of bodies for him.

He didn’t need another murder on his hands. Especially one Hera couldn’t be forced to acknowledge as necessary. His dear stepmother would be ecstatic to change his exile to execution.

Percy dropped down onto the synthetic wood flooring with the ease of long practice, light-footed like a ball of fluff. Though he supposed even fluff would be reduced to a waterlogged rock in this humidity.

Percy took a quick glance around the room, easily clocking in the unpacked trunks in the corner, the wardrobe door half open to reveal only spare bedsheets and a folded towel, and the rumpled bed. Apollo refused to feel embarassed about having flopped onto the bed without even changing his clothes.

“Honestly,” she continued once she’d satisfied herself with peering into his room, “I find it quite insulting that I save you and all I get in return are accusations.”

“My ship breaks down and you just so happen to be there?” Apollo asked skeptically. “You expect me to believe that was pure coincidence?”

“I call that your good luck,” she said in rejoinder. “You landed in the Ocean of Storms, you know?”

“So?”

She laughed in incredulity. “So, you should scrap your navigation system and fire whoever input the coordinates because Camp was two hours away.”

“Two hours isn’t a terribly long time if your ship works,” Apollo sneered. Which it would have if the landing spot hadn’t ripped a hole through the shields and the hull.

Spacecraft didn’t land in uncharted territories but well defined spots proven to be safe. Well, unless you were an adventurer.

Though … it did seem doubtful that Percy was the only person in the vicinity. And even that he’d landed on water despite the town having a perfectly adequate spaceport at its outskirts.

Apollo had the unsettling feeling that he’d missed something. The way Percy looked at him, as if she’d never seen a greater fool, merely compounded that feeling.

“Ocean of Storms,” she drawled. “How do you think it got its name?”

“An allusion to one of the first landing sites on the moon?” he tried. And he ought to know, considering he shared his name with the spacecraft that had performed the landing.

Percy burst out into peals of laughter. “I always heard that knowledge could be deadly but I didn’t expect this!”

Apollo scowled and straightened his shoulders, only to instantly feel like a porcupine puffing up its quills. Or maybe a chick its feathers considering the ineffectuality of the gesture.

The mocking edge to Percy’s smile made his fingers itch to scratch it off her face.

“What would a layperson assume, do you suppose, if they heard the words ‘Ocean of Storms’?” she queried.

Humiliation slithered down Apollo’s spine, inciting fury wherever it passed. “You mean it wasn’t an allusion but a description.”

Percy shrugged. “You’re lucky I was there. Very few pilots can navigate the storms in that stretch of the ocean. Even luckier that you landed in a small whirlpool that vented all its power demolishing your shields.”

Lucky? Was it luck that the coordinates had led him to a secluded region of the planet instead of the spaceport? Luck that he’d landed atop a confluence of currents swirling into a whirlpool determined to crush his ship to pieces?

Luck that he’d nearly died, would have died if not for an enterprising diver who part-timed as a mechanic and managed to wrestle his ship into airworthiness long enough to escape the series of waterspouts on their tail.

No, he didn’t think it was lucky at all.

And if it wasn’t luck, then it could only be by design.

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#pjo #fanfiction #perpollo #percy jackson #apollo #percy x apollo #fem percy #outer space #magic science and intergalactic politics #exoplanets #storms

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Total Solar Eclipse l April 2024 l U.S. & Canada

Cr. Deran Hall l Rami Ammoun(236) l GabeWasylko l REUTERS l KendallRust l Joshua Intini l Alfredo Juárez l KuzcoKhanda