#and its thematic intersection with

[divinekangaroo]

As I've plugged along through DAII microexploring Kirkwall (and meeting all Hawke's 'year of servitude' colleagues/connections that they very clearly fostered carefully), and listening to the Layers in Leandra, Carver etc, what strikes me is that it's less a Peaky-DAII fusion-AU verse that compels me, but rather a DAII verse which applies some of that very striking Peaky lens, particularly to the crime-rise of Hawke, the class dynamic, the family dynamic, to the conscious articulation of those barriers and the nature of passing through. (Not forgetting the Veil/Fade becomes another passing-through.) The over-the-desk 'they will never let us [back] in' that Leandra struggles so viciously to swallow. The guilt for the precipitating event that she carries, sees, in Hawke's 'so like your father' face. Yes, cascades, environmental conditions, class/sociological conditions, all that contributions to choice limitations etc etc etc but Leandra *never* had to leave: she chose, she is not to blame, but she was the precipitator. Orsino's 'they should have killed us at birth'/why do they even bother letting us live - cannot help but wonder if on the dark nights Hawke ever sat and stared at their sleeping mother and thought some unthinkable things.

Because I've been letting the kidlet choose the dialogue, he's not being consistent about one kind of Hawke, either, so I'm hearing things that I don't necessarily remember from the first batch of playing those years ago. What strikes me is that any version of mage!Hawke is unspeakably pragmatic about their position in society. Gamlan is pragmatic. Carver is pragmatic (if angry). But Leandra is fascinatingly not and so fascinatingly unselfaware compared to the self-awareness imbued in her children.

Anyway: the anger in Hawke. I want the anger in Hawke and I want it in a manner I have yet to find in any DAII fanfic. I want a Hawke where rage demons bow and fawn, lapping at their feet. I want Hawke standing in the stairs of their regained Amell mansion staring at Anders mouthing off about blood magic or something and just losing their fucking shit. I want Hawke viciously and repetitively using blood magic because they've realised it distances the Fade: blood magic kills the dreams; the dreams are nightmares irrespective of literal or subconscious demons; blood magic is a better/worse high than lyrium with more lasting effects.

[seventeendeer]

just watched the barbie movie everyone was discoursing about last year and I can't help but feel like a lot of the problems in its execution could have been avoided if the kid character's arc had been about learning to embrace girly stuff as an act of rebellion against the adultification of teen girls while barbie went full butch transmasc

[thydungeongal]

What are some good RPGs that would say are good examples of being queer?

Sorry it took me a while to reply to this!

Anyway, my favorite capital Q Queer RPGs are Monsterhearts and Dungeon Bitches. Monsterhearts is the subtler of the two, being basically a game about playing a CW style teen drama with monsters that is basically a genre mashup of Vampire Diaries, Ginger Snaps, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Jennifer's Body. The queerness is very much textual but it's more so thematic and symbolic. The game's themes are queerness and adolescence and growing up, the vehicle it uses to explore those themes is monsters, because queer teens often get made to feel monstrous for having feelings and desires that fall outside of the norm.

Dungeon Bitches by @cavegirlpoems on the other hand is much more explicit about its queerness, in the sense that the queerness is also explicitly and unambiguously written into the fiction of the game. It is a game that is very much grounded in the dungeon-crawling genre of fantasy but that asks the question of "what kind of people would actually get into the dungeon-crawling life" and answers that with "people who are otherwise marginalized in so-called civilized society, especially queer women." It's very much a game that uses the dungeon crawling lifestyle to present a dialectic between the "safety" offered by the closet and normative society, and the precariousness and danger and the undeniable thrill of living as your true self. It's a game that is resonant to me not only as a fan of dungeon crawl type games but also as a trans woman making her first small steps towards transition. It's a fucked up game for fucked up dolls.

There are plenty of other queer games too, including Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Queerz, Girl by Moonlight, Dream Askew, and many many more. I think Thirsty Sword Lesbians is the most well-known and I do own it and at the end of the day it kind of leaves me cold. It feels like it's trying to play things a bit too safe and at the same time I feel its politics of identity are just messy.

Anyway, this is something I've been thinking of for a while, but since I've been thinking a lot about queer games not only in terms of "does it have the Gay" but also in terms of "does it thematically intersect with questions of queerness," I have to mention Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy by @anim-ttrpgs.

So okay having been involved in the community surrounding Eureka for a while there is something about that game that appeals to LGBTQ folks, especially trans women. Now, Eureka has of course been written primarily from the point of view of disability: the main writer is disabled and the game makes it explicit that many of the supernatural elements, including the monster investigator types, are symbolic of the experiences of the disabled. But because the experiences of marginalized groups tend to intersect a lot, many queer folks also end up seeing themselves there. Vampires in Eureka are written very much from a Christian folkloric point of view so that many Christians may see them as inherently anathema even while they may still maintain their faith; something that many queer Christians may resonate with. Similarly, one of the monster types, the Thing from Beyond, is all about being an alien shape shifter trying to navigate a society that is ultimately scary and alien to them. There's also Living Dolls up in that thang!!!

There is more to Eureka that makes it appeal to many queer readers, but the main thing is this: it is written from a point of view that is ultimately empathetic of the "freaks" and outcasts. And while it does approach these topics from the point of view of disability, it is also very open to queer readings.

And this is sort of a source of gentle ribbing within the Eureka community: that the lead writer ends up writing stuff that resonates deeply with his friends and fans of the game, a significant number of whom happen to be trans women, and that this has to be pointed out to him constantly. It's really sweet and funny. (Fun anecdote: when I first came out as a trans woman he approached me in my DMs asking "So you're a chick now?" followed by a 👍 emoji.)

And I think that's a fun contrast. Many games that ultimately do not touch upon queerness in any meaningful way in their themes or gameplay will still get lauded as queer because they will use identity as a coat of paint or a part of their marketing. And at the same time someone writing candidly about their experiences of living with disability via metaphor may end up accidentally writing something that actually resonates with the lived experiences of queer people.

[jamiepaige]

Constant Companions Closeup #9: OBJECT OF AFFECTION

(also on spotify!)

O, wayward soul, I beg of thee an ear; Companionship, a Constant of desire, is all too fleeting. Would thee quell this fire? My love, do you know what you want to hear?

Welcome back to the Constant Companions Closeups - a series of in-depth dives into the songs off of my latest album, Constant Companions! Yesterday was some gay shit (Liaison) and today is some more gay shit (Object of Affection)

---

I'm usually pretty good about letting go of the things I make and letting them live imperfectly, but there is exactly one released song of mine that I've ever been actively unhappy with the final product of, that I haven't been able to let go of my displeasure with.

Honor Majesty, off of Autumn Every Day.

It's not that it's a bad song, or that it didn't have good ideas! In fact, I genuinely think it shares more with the music I make now than a lot of my older work does. Rather, it was incredibly rushed and full of uninspired choices I made for the sake of completing the song rather than making it the best version of itself, and it ultimately ended up falling incredibly flat relative to what I wanted it to be!

I really like the intersection of synthpop/electropop and fantasy. One of my favorite musicians ever is Baths, whose album Romaplasm is chock full of this exact thematic and sonic intersection, and it's so deeply inspiring to me that it still gets put on whenever I want to dream things up. I've always wanted to make things like that! Bubbly and fantastical, brimming with a sense of magic so pervasive it makes even the mundane seem mystic.

...Also I'm just a fantasy dork okay. I like wizards and shit. Sue me

I've been wanting to make a grandiose and fantastical story song for years, and my single attempt to do so felt like it missed the mark entirely. I did touch on fantasy a couple times on Bittersweet, but ultimately, when I started working on this album, I knew exactly what I wanted to take a second crack at.

---

The intended story in question here is fairly vague, but to sum it up as literally as possible:

A rebellious, disobedient, gender-questioning prince has mildly inconvenienced "his" royal lineage one too many times. Their solution is to invoke magicks widely regarded as heretical - what's a fantasy monarchy without some hypocrisy - to seal their "son's" soul within an automaton body, rendering "him" a perfect, subservient doll.

This doll is promptly spirited away under cover of darkness by a mage, and is granted free will once again. She experiences the crushing weight of newfound self-awareness and nearly spirals out of control, before realizing the mage who saved her is the same - a doll. It turns out being a magical-mechanical construct has its perks if you are TRANSGENDER. then they overthrow the monarchy and fuck nasty or whatever idk this is where the story gives way to things like "metaphor"

this is a song about artifice and being transgender

Seriously, though, I know that being an electronic-music-producing transgender lesbian with a thing about dolls or robots or whatever is a major endless-store-shelves-of-identical-buzz-lightyear-action-figures moment on my part, but dammit, I own a copy of Logic Pro and a genuine leather wizard hat, I inject estrogen into my stomach fat every Wednesday, and I think ball joints are cute. I'm posting this on Tumblr, for gods sake, I am unconcerned as an active choice

---

With the exception of Liaison, the entirety of Constant Companions utilizes only three unique vocal synth characters - ANRI, Gumi, and Teto. This trifecta was born organically from simply being the vocal synths I enjoy using the most, and in this song, I wanted to use all three of them almost like one single singer, freely shifting intonation based on the context. I messed with this idea before on Ballroom, my voice meshing and melting into Gumi V3's voice, but it felt especially appropriate for this context; Plus, I feel like there aren't a lot of examples of vocal synths being used/recontextualized in this way, and that's a shame in my opinion!!

I really want to do more story-driven songwriting like this in the future as well. Now that I'm a bonafide VocaloP I've been floating the idea of doing a song series with this trio... I'm mostly just worried I'll want to get too ambitious with it.

Off the top of my head, Object of Affection references at least eight other songs of mine - Honor Majesty is an obvious one, but it also directly samples parts of Autumn Every Day, and lyrically references genuinely just a bunch of things. I'm probably forgetting some, even!

I know I'm the Leitmotif Lover, but it's a lot even by my standards. However, this song's entire existence already served to satisfy a fairly self-indulgent desire, and these days, I don't deal in half measures. I think the final product serves as a lovely little look back at where I've come from, though, and perhaps even a little glimpse into the future!

That all being said, Object of Affection in some sense is also a love letter to a beloved part of my creative process - the voice memo. A lot of the audio I've provided with these posts have been recordings off my phone for good reason! Not only are the chops at the beginning of the song entirely comprised of edited recordings I got on my phone, but the sample at the very end happens to be from a particularly legendary recording, never before heard by the public...

Until now. I present to you an excerpt from "the worst beat on planet earth", featuring none other than unit.0.

That's about it for today!! If you have any questions, I'll gladly answer them below, but otherwise, I'll be back here tomorrow to talk about this album's title track laid askew - My Darling, My Companion!

[artbyblastweave]

Assuming it means the same thing as words such as "steampunk", "cyberpunk", "atompunk", etc. What would a "capepunk" setting look like?

So I think that there's two kindsa settings that are being broadly gestured at when people append "punk" to something all willy-nilly. In the standard one, they're gesturing at a sci-fi universe with tech that's hooked into the aesthetics of a specific decade, or, alternatively, the actual tech-base of a decade super-charged and made capable of the impossible. Art Deco mecha, atomic rocketships, steam-powered prosthetics. Steampunk, Deiselpunk, Atompunk, Clockpunk. Cyberpunk itself is also starting to get hit with this a little bit as we become distant enough from 1980s technology for it to be similarly exaggerated and romanticized.

The other kind of setting is one that's entirely hooked into a line of technological development that doesn't have as much of real-life analogue and therefore has no visual referent to fall back on. These often end up paired with one of the decade-based punks in order for a look to cohere. Biopunk is an example of a common punk subspecies that gets hit with this. Twig and Leviathan are both alternate histories set in the 1910s and 20s, Bioshock is set in the 60s, John Dies at the End is set in the 2010s and the works of Giger could be set anywhen. All of these are clearly visually biopunk under the pornography logic of "I know it when I see it," all of them are wildly different in terms of their final output, all of them are similar in what they're saying or implying about hegemony and how weird technology intersects with power structures.

Under this logic, I think that "Cape Punk" would probably fall more cleanly into the second mold- like bioengineering, Superheroes aren't meaningfully a (social) technology that actually exists, there's no real-life moment to seize on and exaggerate. So we'd be talking about a setting that assumes the existence of, and the sociopolitical impact of, superheroes, with the visual language of those superheroes being a secondary concern, probably outsourced to whenever the story is actually set. Worm is a good example of this- it's the cape punk work to end all cape-punk works but for obvious reasons has no cohesive visual identity. The Venture Brothers, by contrast, is also capepunk but it's capepunk with an extremely specific visual identity informed by the tail end of the raygun gothic era ("atompunk") into Cassette Futurism (this is what they're starting to call the one for the 70s and 80s.) The Silver Age tapering into the Bronze, forever. Heroes, Misfits, and a couple others are awash in the visuals of the early 2000s, when costumes were largely both uncool and impractical from a costuming technology perspective, lack-of-aesthetic as aesthetic. By the nature of its project Astro City is hopscotching all over the timeline- they've got steampunks like Iron Horse, they've got cyberpunks like The Box, they got every kinda punk in there. All of this is very plug-and-play.

And, of course, circling back around to what I said last time- you gotta be careful not to let "Cape Punk" just become synonymous with "Superhero Fiction That's Doesn't Suck." Batman Beyond is interesting to look at here, because aesthetically, is the setting cyberpunk? Yeah, with shades of biopunk along for the ride. Is it thematically cyberpunk, interested in how that technology impacts society and intersects with power structures? Actually yeah, quite a lot of the time it is, at least superficially. But is the show meaningfully coloring outside the lines of a conventional-but-competently done superhero narrative? Well, no. Almost never. Maybe a little bit towards the end, centering the fucked up stuff that happened to Tim. But for the most part it's good, but it's also what it is. And that's fine.

[stillness-in-green]

Chapter 423 Thoughts: Further Reading

I'm going to try to clear out some inbox/message/AO3 comment backlog in the next week, but in the meantime, having gotten my own post up on the chapter, I also want to share some posts from others that are in a similar vein as my own thoughts, or that I otherwise find worthwhile.

From @codenamesazanka: 

Nal has been doing a lot of post-writing and ask-answering since the leaks first dropped, and it’s all on-point, but there are a few posts I want to specifically link to:

Firstly, this post on how the U.A. kids in general and Deku specifically have, despite fans’ expectations, long been underprepared to truly acknowledge and address the structural problems of the system they’re upholding, as well as how Deku bears that out in the Edgy Deku arc.

Secondly, this post is on how the warning signs for this ending have been there all along offers a good concise rundown of some key places where, if Deku had ever cared about Shigaraki Tomura as a person (rather than just the Crying Child as a metaphorical construct), we should have seen him acting differently than he did. 

Thirdly and fourthly, these two posts talk about the Japanese BNHA fandom’s response to the chapter.  I think it’s interesting and worthwhile to consider the target audience/native culture’s response to a work when possible—there’s a lot you can learn about a story and its author’s intentions by knowing how the story’s audience is receiving it!  It can tell you about the audience the story is written for, what the values infusing the story are understood to be, whether those values align with the values of the audience, whether the author is trying to be populist or challenging, and so forth.

The culture gap between Horikoshi and his Western/U.S.ian audience can result in a lot of crossed wires, and checking how the Japanese BNHA fandom is reacting to the story can clarify some of that confusion.  It is, of course, up to the individual to decide how much to mitigate one’s own response to the story in light of that culture gap; I don’t think any creator is owed unquestioning carte blanche just because they’re from a culture with different popular values.  I certainly wouldn’t want someone in Japan watching, for example, Top Gun: Maverick and concluding that it’s beyond criticism because the fetishization of military hardware is just American culture!  Having at least some grasp on the author’s personal context is thus helpful in balancing open-mindedness and critical thinking when analyzing/critiquing a work.

(So, just to be clear, I understand the cultural context of Deku "saving Shigaraki's heart" being considered a worthwhile victory even in the absence of saving his *checks notes* life. I just disagree in the strongest possible terms.)

For good measure, have another post about the disparity between how destructive Deku’s focus on the Crying Child is to any chance Hero Society has to improve in the future.     

From @itsnothingofinterest: 

This reblog of an older post discussing the increasing power of quirks over the generations and how that problem would logically intersect with the precedents Deku sets here.  Bleak stuff!      

From @class1akids: 

First, this post runs through some of the fans’ desperate attempts to second-guess Shigaraki dying here but explains the various ways each would be in some fashion unsatisfying, because there’s no solution that doesn’t ruin some key aspect of the story.

Second, this very short post raises a very good point—one I hadn’t considered!—about how Shouto may not have talked as much to Dabi as Ochaco did to Toga, but Shouto’s always valued actions over words, and his actions indicate loud and clear how much he wanted to save Dabi.  And in ways that thematically tie into his arc about how he perceives and defines his quirk, no less!  It’s not about Chapter 423, as such, but it’s a very instructional contrast between Deku and Shouto, the latter of whom was actually trying to both stop and save the Villain he was fighting, the former of whom…was not.     

From @linkspooky: 

Spooky’s got a pair of posts contrasting BNHA with Yu-Gi-Oh GX, both of which are very long and very worth reading.  I don’t know if they were always intended to be companion posts—the first one was posted last month, and the second less than 48 hours after the leaks landed—but they function well in that capacity now.

The Supreme King Judai vs. Dark Deku: How To Do a Dark Deconstruction of your Shonen Hero! is an arc comparison post between the titular arcs and discusses in detail the way GX’s Judai and BNHA’s Deku are put through the paces of a dark hero arc, and why Judai’s works and Deku’s doesn’t.  What it boils down is that GX is willing to let Judai make the bad decisions his prior characterization always foreshadowed that he would make, leading him to fail, horribly, in consequential, lasting ways that paint him as being very much in the wrong.  BNHA, conversely, has the characterization foreshadowing but is unwilling to the point of open terror of letting Deku fail or be wrong in ways that will actually do lasting damage to him, his friends, or his relationships.  This is the same core problem the overarching series faces, and thus, while not about Chapter 423 itself, this piece is an excellent preface for the next one.

Shigaraki Vs. Yubel: How To Save Your Villain deals with the total collapse of BNHA as a story due to the way it fails to recognize Deku killing Shigaraki as a failure of its main character’s personal arc.  In comparison to GX’s resolution of Judai and Yubel’s relationship, It describes the story BNHA seemed to be promising us it would tell in its endgame, then discusses how that story is fundamentally broken by its actual depiction of Deku’s actions wrt Shigaraki and the other Villains Deku faces.  I particularly enjoy the breakdown of why the language of “forgiveness” thrown around by Deku and Ochaco is so wrong-headed and off-base.

A handful of pithy witticisms and bleak humor:

At least we’ll always have Spinaraki.

Imagine the story we’d have gotten if Deku had walked out into the hallway and thrown it into the nearest trashcan.

This would have been a lot less work than the concert, admit it.

[prismatiger]

AGREE WITH YOUR PREVIOUS POST. I like mean Loop as a facade only, but we know they still care and love...

Now I have a question, what's your favorite Loop takes/headcanon

Oh my god I'm so sorry I took like two weeks to answer this one I prommy it's not bc I'm exclusively a hater or whatever. I just straight up forgot to answer Oopsie. I'm putting this under cut bc it got long enough that you all would shoot arrows at me for putting it on your dash

Anyways there's a lot of Loop Thangs I like frankly. A big one that I enjoy is when fic authors in postcanon make the transition of Loop into the party structure kind of rocky. Usually bc Loop's neuroses creating a level 12 psychic barrier between them and the party + the inherent awkwardness of meeting somebody who's apparently super close in a way (that you'll never fully understand) to one of your friends. Who let's be real I feel like half the party (coughIsabeauandMirabelle) would catch the aura of "oh they do not like us at all" from Loop. I want Loop to be happy and with their family but you just know this bitch is going to make it as difficult for themself on purpose. The Siffrin Special.

I also just generally like when they keep Loop as a star postcanon. I'm not at all a hater towards Human Loop (in fact I think it can be itself an interesting setup for a Loop fic) but I do like Loop as a star more thematically. Something about having to accept that things have changed and moving on from it regardless. Also bc Loop being dysphoric about their body scratches a very transgender projection itch in my brain Yessss little star you're stuck in a body that draws unwanted attention and which you have no control over how it looks and functions in a way that feels fundamentally wrong to you. (Pointing at canonically transgender character) Yooooo this guy is such a cool trans allegory omg

Hmm what else. This is more of a sloops thing but I always enjoy in fics when they lean into the fact it's selfcest frankly. I've become a selfcest enjoyer bc of this ship I'll never get over that act 5 dialogue abt the cautionary tale where Siffrin says he never understood the moral of the story bc the idea of having somebody just like him who understands him. Oh my gyoooooooooooooooood. I want them to melt into sludge I'm always thinking of that analogy from superflyghtheart on discord comparing Loop and Siffrin to endlings of an endangered species. 💥💥💥It's like. This is less sloopy now but I'm caught between the intersection in my head of "Loop would probably benefit from developing their own identity as a person separate from Siffrin bc they need Something they have control over" and "Loop is of the Siffrin Species and they are significantly too sentimental to let go of the shreds of what they used to have, especially after having lost all of it once already". Both of these things are yummy as fuck when ppl smarter than me explore them and they're kinda the main Story Paths for postcanon Loop anyways so I'm always winning. So like idk tldr I like it both when ppl have Loop diverge a lot as a person and when they have Loop try their best to stay as much of a Siffrin as possible!

I'm limiting myself to four paragraphs so you don't all want to hit me with hammers but I do have Loop Biology Headcanons. I've explained mythoughts on their guts before and don't feel like recounting them but whatever True #codacheetahwarriors remember my deranged rambling. ANYWAYS I kind of mentally run on the assumption of Loop's body as like. The Universe couldn't keep Loop in Siffrin's body, bc they needed Siffrin to be in it (and I guess a system situation introduces too many factors of its own? idk). The Universe operates with the goal of fulfilling wishes with the least intervention possible, so The Universe makes a body out of cheap inorganic material (star-scrap basically). Miniature star for a head fueling the body with Craft energy (I'm not going to get into my conspiracy that all Craft is the same here). Molds the star scrap into a vaguely Siffrin-shaped/sized vessel and plonks Loop's conscious into it and calls it a day. So Loop's body as a poor simulacrum of a human body is like. They're capable of breathing but they only really benefit from doing it on a psychological level. They can't eat or drink and don't have a mouth because it would require a significant level of added effort to make a digestive system, when they can just derive energy from their star. They don't have reproductive organs because they're not made from organic material anymore anyways. They don't need to sleep bc their body never gets tired but they still do it because it's not really a great idea to leave your brain on running for too long anyways.

I fucking lied I'm on paragraph five bc the block of text is annoying me. To continue that's all a preface to say I think it's super fun when Loop has body functions that are weird and unpredictable. Their little frizzles on their body are reactive to their emotions the same way their headstar is, and feel like static if you touch them. Their head has a vague boundary so their eyes have something to be rooted to but the function by which their optic nerves work is unclear to everybody including themself. They glow based on intensity of emotion and the temperature of their star changes via specific mood. Bc I think it would be fun if the battlefield in twohats when from ice cold to boiling hot frankly. Ok these are all just my headcanons (temperature one very loose though I'm not a hard subscriber to it) but they're not uniquely mine it's just examples of what I mean. One I don't have as a personal headcanon but I do enjoy is when Loop feels the same physical sensations as Siffrin bc it's funny and I like inflicting misery on the star.

I'm going to shut up now like actually . Loop for your troubles

[whencyclopedia]

Dolia: The Containers That Made Rome an Empire of Wine

The ancient Roman love for wine is well-known, but how was all that wine stored? In “Dolia,” Caroline Cheung puts dolia, the largest ceramic storage vessel made in the ancient world and capable of holding a thousand liters of wine, at the center of the ancient Roman wine trade for the first time. Best suited for scholars and students, this book explores the lifespan of dolia and the people who made, used, and paid for these massive vessels through a range of archaeological and literary evidence.

Caroline Cheung, an assistant professor of Classics at Princeton University, seeks to fill a rather large gap in the scholarship of the ancient Roman wine trade by centering the storage vessels themselves, the dolia (sing. dolium). Historically, these supermassive ceramic vessels, capable of holding well over a thousand liters each, have been understudied and overlooked. Combining various archaeological and literary evidence, Cheung argues that dolia formed the backbone for the Roman wine trade and that their development was the key factor in satisfying the Roman thirst for wine from the 2nd century BCE to the 2nd century CE. She pays particular attention to the many people involved in every step of the dolia industry and how dolia can function as a lens into the intersections of wealth, social mobility, and labor. The book focuses on three case-study sites in west-central Italy: Cosa, Pompeii, and Rome with its port Ostia.

Cheung organizes her book thematically to draw out each step in the life of a dolium. After the introduction, Chapter Two traces the development of the dolia industry from the 2nd century BCE to the height of the Roman Empire. Chapters Three to Six detail the various uses of dolia on farms and villas, as part of a complex trade system in the Mediterranean, and cities. Chapters Seven and Eight then turn to how dolia were maintained, repaired, and eventually reused and abandoned. Cheung concludes in Chapter Nine with reflections on studying dolia and their legacy today.

Cheung does a masterful job of marshaling a truly staggering amount of archaeological and literary evidence to make this book possible. From the largest dolium-tanker shipwrecks to the smallest epigraphic stamps and tax records, Cheung excels at drawing out the particular importance of each piece of evidence. Some of the most interesting moments in the book are when she slows down to focus on a specific site or detail amidst the wealth of information she provides, such as in Chapter Four, when she draws out the story of the Sestius and Piranus families as examples of how wealthy families could take advantage of different stages in a dolia-based wine trade to accrue wealth and influence. A slate of images and figures also complements her prose well, including full-color plates of many images in the book.

At times, however, Cheung seems to struggle with her two competing priorities of exploring the life of a dolium from production to abandonment and examining the ramifications of dolia on the Roman wine trade and Roman imperialism more broadly. Her prose sometimes switches quite abruptly between the two, leaving the reader to try to pull together disparate threads of the narrative. In focusing mainly on west-central Italy, with only a brief foray into southern France and Spain, Cheung’s narrative can feel quite restricted, leaving out as it does the rest of the Mediterranean world, let alone the rest of the Roman Empire. Some discussion of what we do know about dolia outside of the book's case study areas would have been worthwhile to help provide a fuller picture of the role of dolia across the Mediterranean. As the first step in synthesizing much of this material, this book is a very needed addition in illuminating the crucial role dolia played in the Roman wine trade.

Cheung is one of the few scholars working on dolia currently, and perhaps the only one synthesizing the material on such a broad level, and her mastery of the material shows in this book. In centering dolia in the narrative of the Roman wine trade, Cheung takes a completely different tact to previous studies of this topic with great results. She argues persuasively why dolia deserve to be seen front and center in future scholarship. This book demonstrates the value of studying the logistics of the Roman wine trade just as much as the Romans’ love of wine itself.

Continue reading...

[deception-united]

I'm making a fantasy novel and I was curious if you can use the main cast's character arcs to get across a story's message or theme?

Thanks for asking! Using the main cast's character arcs to convey a story's message or theme in a fantasy novel is a powerful way to engage readers and drive home the central ideas of the narrative. Here are some tips:

Establish the Theme: First, identify the theme or message you want to convey in your fantasy novel. This could be something like the power of friendship, the importance of self-discovery, the consequences of greed, the triumph of good over evil, etc.

Develop Diverse Characters: Create a main cast of characters with diverse backgrounds, personalities, and motivations. Make each character representative of a different aspect or perspective related to the theme.

Introduce Character Arcs: Give each character a unique arc that explores their growth, struggles, and eventual transformation throughout the story. These arcs should be directly tied to the theme and contribute to its exploration. (See my post on character arcs for more tips!)

Interconnect the Arcs: While each character has their individual arc, ensure that their journeys intersect and influence one another. This allows for a richer exploration of the theme as characters learn from each other and grow together.

Symbolism and Allegory: Include different elements, symbolism, and allegory throughout the story to deepen the thematic exploration, such as making inner struggles or external conflicts metaphors for larger societal issues.

Resolution and Reflection: As the story progresses, bring the character arcs to a resolution that reflects the overarching theme. Characters should undergo meaningful change or realisation that reinforces the message of the narrative.

Showcase Contrast and Conflict: Highlight contrasting viewpoints or conflicting beliefs among the main cast to add depth to the thematic exploration. This allows for a more nuanced examination of the theme and keeps the narrative dynamic.

Use Dialogue and Interaction: Dialogue and interactions between characters are crucial for revealing their growth and highlighting the theme. Encourage meaningful exchanges that challenge beliefs, offer insights, or facilitate personal growth for your characters.

Hope this helped! Happy writing ❤

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[songoftrillium]

Meet The (Updated) Art Team

Hello Kinfolks!

I've been really looking forward to this post for a while, and it's now time to unveil the art team I've assembled to put this project together! They're some heavy hitters that y'all ought to recognize, so without further ado let's meet them!

Bek Andrew Evans

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Mx. Bek Andrew Evans (he/they) is a freelance writer and illustrator from Jackson, Mississippi. He's been doing art since he was young and takes inspiration from comic books (particularly in the 90s), Jhonen Vasquez, grunge, and Carvagio. His favorite mediums are loose inks, watercolors, oil paints, and digital styles that replicate the looks of traditional mediums. He uses body horror and attention to expressions and lighting to convey stories through images, often queer in nature. He explores themes of mental illness, disability, abuse, poverty, and the many intersections of these statuses.

iezeradd (They/He)

Carrd

They are a mixed media artist and writer hailing from Quebec, Canada. They explore concepts of queerness, identity, generational trauma, and otherness through his illustrations of werewolves, often contrasting tenderness and violence in his works. They use transformations and inner conflict as a reflection of his own experiences as a queer individual.

iezeradd is joining the team to provide a myriad of art, ranging from props, to textures, and tribe artwork! We're very fortunate to have them on the team!

Dogblud She/Her (Dogblud is no longer a part of the art team)

Dogblud (she/her), is a Midwestern cryptid working as a freelance artist and writer. Her work is near-exclusively sapphic, centering primarily around werewolves, werebeasts, and their strong thematic ties - horrific or otherwise - to all forms of womanhood.

A long-time fan of Werewolf: the Apocalypse, she's joined our team to produce all of the tribe artwork for the book, in addition to a number of other contributory pieces!

Meka (Any Pronouns)

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Meka is a Scottish comic artist with a flair for the dark and extremely bloody and a long-standing love of monsters and what they let us all explore-- for better and worse. Vehemently underground, they build stories about horror, grief, depersonalisation, and the isolation that comes with being just a little too weird and too angry to swallow whole. Art and catharsis go hand in hand, as far as she’s concerned.

In a throwback to the original game series, Meka has joined to produce a 22-page fully illustrated comic for the series entitled Cracking the Bone. A postgraduate in traditional comic artistry, we're extremely fortunate to have them on the team.

Mx. Morgan (They/Them)

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Mx. Morgan G Robles (they/them) is a freelance artist and illustrator based in Seattle, Washington. Their work is best known for its use of macabre themes, animals, and nature. They use these themes to explore mental illness, gender identity, or simply to make neat skulls.

They're known for producing book covers for several major publishers, and they've been brought in to design our book covers as well. In addition, they've developed a number of inside pieces as well!

M.WolfhideWinter (He/Him)

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He is a part-time freelance illustrator from Scotland. His work is heavily inspired by the rugged terrain (and rain) of Scotland with a focus on werewolves inhabiting the wild landscapes both past and present. He explores themes of mental illness, societal stigma, dark folklore, and sad werewolves in the rain.

WolfhideWinter has joined our team as our monster-maker, dedicating their time towards depicting our primary antagonists of the garou: The Black Spiral Dancers, and the Wyrm's brood! We can hardly think of a body horror artist more fitting for the role.

[pyrotechnicarus]

what's your experience re: the difference between writing prose and scripts 😭 i have to write plays for the first time for school and i miss my wife Purple Prose

Congrats on writing your first play! And I definitely empathize -- switching from one form to the other was hard for me, and something I still struggle with. Musical theater is arguably the novelist's crutch into scriptwriting because we have access to songs -- the kind of access to the characters' thoughts and intentions you get throughout a novel, you can inject into a song, whereas straight playwrights (especially realist playwrights) don't always have that built-in genre convention for theatricalizing their character's minds.

Unless you're working at a level of heightened text in your play that allows interior monologues to be spoken aloud or narrators to describe things (which, hey, you might want to consider!) then you'll have to really work on externalizing both beauty (your beautiful descriptions of things in your short stories? now someone has to say them out loud. Who would? What sort of person would speak this way? Would anyone?) and character development (often my playwriting teacher says that every shift in a piece has to be signaled through an action. A character can't just change their mind. That change doesn't exist to the audience until they do something with that new perspective -- hurt another character, avoid a situation, indulge in something they've opposed before, etc.) Writing for theater really forces you to make your character arcs visible in a way that prose doesn't.

On the other hand, you now have access to a ton of other tools that you didn't have as a prose writer! These usually fall under the broad umbrella of "theatricalization," but really just mean everything you can do in the theater that you can't do in any other medium. The intercut scene before Me, Myself, and I in Adamandi -- the casual, silent cohabitation of the past couple and the present couple at the start of Ghost Story -- the use of the edge of the stage to represent suicide in Adamandi -- all only work because the theatrical audience is willing to accept thematic intersections of space, time, and character because of the boundaries of the stage. When can two things happen simultaneously? When can your character make eye contact with an audience member? When can they leave the stage? What does having collective physical bodies perceiving your art allow you to do - when are they crying together, laughing together, when does their pulse race? Can you make them feel scared? Try out writing scenes that take place in the dark, in a spotlight, with a silent actor onstage, or with significant costume changes that can carry an equal amount of the story to your stage directions and spoken text.

Finally, I guess my overall advice would be to study plays you admire (my benchmarks are currently Is God Is, Escaped Alone, Streetcar Named Desire, M. Butterfly, and various Paula Vogel plays -- And Baby Makes Seven is my fave but The Baltimore Waltz is probably a gentler introduction to her) for their conventions and copy the shit out of them. Imitate their formatting, for a bit. Steal a staging that works in your context. Cut your dialogue down viciously -- words and exchanges that take a few seconds to read on the page take precious minutes to say out loud. Watch out for conversational cul-de-sacs -- ideally each line should advance the scene, advance the characters, and advance the plot. If your character is saying stuff like "What's your name?" then maybe the scene needs to start later -- you want every line to be one that only that character would be able to say.

Relatedly, and I think a failing of mine when I made the switch that is now getting better: don't rely on tone indicators to do the work of adaptation. Your actors and directors will ignore them, first of all, but also each line should contain its proper reading -- it should be clear from the context of the scene whether your character is saying "Hello." (angrily) or "Hello." (haughtily). I try to limit myself to 10-20 tone lines per 90-page musical script, if that's a helpful benchmark for you (this is different from stage directions, but you should also not be using stage directions to take the place of good dialogue. Anything inconsequential -- he paces or chewing his lip or with a sly grin -- ought to be cut.)

Anyway, overall, have fun and do whatever it takes (including disobeying all the advice above) to FINISH IT! You'll only know once you have a full draft A. whether you want to keep going with this medium and B. what your storytelling is Like; how you can improve it. Good luck!

[rontra]

Tell us about they/them lesbian Cinder with text to back it 👀

askfbhs okay but this post is like 2000 words long

statement one: doing a reading of a text, and then using that analysis to draw a particular conclusion for one's own enjoyment, is largely disconnected from the authorial intents that created said text. it's common for a piece of text to be able to be read in many ways, and for those readings to be able to used as supports for a multitude of conclusions. by no means should this post be framed as a comment on what "the canon text Means", because that is fundamentally not what we're trading in. we're not "proving" anything

statement two: cinder's character is complex, deftly written, and can be mined for a lot of meaning, much like all of rwby. there's a lot going on at all times in this show, and many parts remain to some degree an open question since the story hasn't finished yet. you can draw dozens of readings from almost everything in this work. by the same hand, some parts of this post were necessarily abbreviated for time lmao

statement three: cinder's relationship with gender SPECIFICALLY is genuinely textually interesting no matter where you go with it in the end, so if nothing else, at least enjoy Thinking About It... 😌

the core idea here is actually really simple hahaha. we'll take a scenic route though, to affix that idea into a more complete picture. a Pattern if you will

cinder is very strongly characterized by two linked ideas: the fear of being powerless, and the annihilation of the previous self that was powerless. the outward face of cinder's identity is very unstable because of the latter; a lot of conscious effort is expended trying to erase the cinder fall that once existed--the one that was at other people's complete mercy (and received nothing of the sort). cinder is always in "survival mode", trying to achieve some sense of personal safety and to avoid being perceived as weak and vulnerable. that terror and hunger nipping at cinder's heels is what leads into salem's claws--into a new grip of abuse, of course--because salem promises to solve it and give all the power cinder could want and more. yeah?

the most easy-to-track manifestation of those twin drives is, of course, where they intersect with a major piece of rwby's own thematic language: weapons! in rwby's language, weapons are closely tied to their wielder's identity--"They're an extension of ourselves! They're a part of us!", famously! (v1e2)

(...which also gives us very funny little unrelated nuggets like the eternally faceless and repressed "i was the machine, just following orders" winter having weapons whose names--if they even have any--we don't know. but that's a knowing smile for another day)

cinder was trained by rhodes to wield two swords, an idea that's later combined with archery into what we consider "cinder's weapon", Midnight. in the flashbacks of v3e7, Midnight is in its earliest and most ordinary form. this Midnight is made of normal weapon stuff like metal lmao and cinder uses it very effectively in taking down amber. HOWEVER, as soon as cinder lays hands on half of amber's power, this version of Midnight is thrown aside and destroyed: the pyre that destroys Midnight is used to demonstrate cinder's power and intimidate the Fang. after this—for the duration of the beacon arc—cinder instead uses glass to form a replica of Midnight. this "imitation Midnight" lasts until cinder is maimed by ruby atop beacon tower (and presumably medevac'ed by one of salem's other guys LMAO)

after 1) suffering this defeat, and 2) obtaining the rest of amber's power, cinder flat out stops using Midnight. beyond this point, cinder solely relies on magic to create an ever-changing roster of weapons as needed. with the completion of Autumn's power, so too is the killing of Midnight completed: as far as cinder is concerned, the "self" that was connected to Midnight no longer exists. the part of cinder's story and identity that was in Midnight has been buried and no one will ever know about it again. preferably everyone would just act like none of it ever existed and cinder has Always been powerful (and did NOT just get rent asunder by a teenager! please and thank you!)

the incremental deaths of Midnight really show the crutch that power is to make cinder feel safer and more confident, and the urge to destroy the past/the version of cinder who was not as powerful. once cinder has the maiden power, Midnight is unnecessary. it's also interesting to see that many of these magic-made weapons are visibly fractured, fragile, and expendable, which i'm sure in the Weapon Symbolism Show doesn't mean anything its fine 😭😂

anyway in this new era of relying completely on magic we start to observe another quirky aspect: rather than drawing on personal identity, cinder will frequently imitate other characters who were in some way "powerful" (or at least "impactful"). see: floating array and miló. cinder imitates people who left an impression of strength or skill; in endlessly chasing "power", cinder is nabbing pieces of what makes other people powerful and cobbling them together, to cover the "flaw" (heavy quotes) that is cinder's own identity.

without you, i am nothing.

still, what does cinder keep falling back on, like a habit you can't shake? the original! and when cinder defies salem's orders in v8, what do we finally see again, for just a brief moment? hey, i thought you were dead! for as much as cinder wants to pretend the past is dead and buried, it sure seems to be Haunting us: right there underneath the paint, as soon as cinder stops thinking about copying someone else, or is defiant of salem's control and has to rely on Just Cinder (god forbid!), there it is again.

"okay, that's fine," you might be saying, a few million words into this gigantic post, "but what does any of that have to do with cinder fall's gender". listen to me. this was all setting up very important context for the funniest thing about cinder fall.

like, anyone that's even half-awake while watching rwby will notice the huge differences between how cinder acts and looks in the beacon arc VS how cinder has acted and looked Since Then. beacon arc cinder is smooth and in control and mature and dangerous. and of course, she's feminine. i've seen people outright call this incarnation of cinder a femme fatale! and i guess i can see why; she has mystery, beauty, a little bit of seduction to sway people. she plays manipulative games. and of course, she's dangerous. cinder in the beacon arc is exceedingly threatening because of how good she is at being the underdog; when she has to use cunning instead of brute force and scheme her way uphill in both directions, she kills it! literally!

--hey that was a lot of she/her all of a sudden. hmm. let's talk about women (audience cheers) NO I MEAN. evil women (audience cheers louder)

cinder's life is strongly marked by two women in particular: the madame and salem. both of them exert an immense amount of power over cinder; when we talk about situations where cinder has been powerless, these two people are the ones that spring to mind. in cinder's world, which is very coldly divided into people who Have Power and people who Do Not Have Power, both madame and salem very much Have Power. they have maybe the Most Power It's Possible To Have, by cinder's math. this also makes them Very Important figures for our examination, because what they are will reflect back onto cinder's malleable self.

madame and salem are both feminine, both older, both powerful; examine these two and suddenly you start seeing the pieces being stolen. the mature shade of red the madame wears. salem's levelheaded control paired with her distance and mystique—(trying not to say "and her cleavage")... v8e6 even places explicit focus on the sound of the madame's high heels as a herald of incoming danger.

their bearing, their ways of navigating the world, the way they dress. their… oh my god… their gender presentation!!!

the thing about cinder fall is that the mimicry of power does not stop at weapons. this is a Pattern that extends BEYOND merely "doing the floating array trick". the entirety of beacon arc cinder, including gender presentation, is mimicry. because in cinder's mind at this point, the most powerful thing a person can be is a mysterious older femme.

to cinder, ideas traditionally associated with femininity, specifically the femininity of adult women, are explicit markers of power and threat; and these things can be picked up and worn and imitated. these things can be performed. but there's never a sense that cinder owns these things or is particularly attached to them (i mean, beyond cinder's conception of Power). furthermore, cinder doesn't fully understand how these two women operate, and (being far younger) lacks the experience to fully embody them.

(--the way cinder handles emerald in particular is very revealing of this disconnect, as the dynamic shown as early as v2 is a clear attempt to wrangle her the way salem does her own minions; but cinder fails to understand and execute the crucial part, which is tapping into what emerald actually wants. because cinder, living in their own "survival mode" priority list, can't understand or relate to what emerald wants from them. the attempts made to replicate salem's affectations only push emerald away and strain her loyalty.)

but goddamn if cinder doesn't think power is stored in the gender!

it's interesting, then, that after the beacon arc blows up and a huge L is handed to Femme Cinder, they gradually drift further and further away from this; the illusion has broken. in lockstep with their drift from salem—cinder's exile, then intentionally testing the ice to see how far salem will let them stray—the further they go, the more they assert themselves, the further they also stray away from those "markers of power" associated with salem and madame. in the era of the blink-and-youll-miss-it flash of cinder's own identity, of Midnight, we also witness the ever-increasing straying from the performance of femininity that the beacon arc cinder clung to. huh!

so, let's see, we have a very intentional and consistent streak of cinder attempting to annihilate their own identity and replace it with something else (something strong) (something no one can hurt); this theme is visible both in their armory and wardrobe. cinder is terrified of who they'll be without these masks, because that person has been victimized, betrayed, and abused by every person who had power over them. the solution cinder has in their mind is to Become So Powerful that no one can do that to them ever again, no matter what they have to do or sacrifice to get there. and a lot of that conflict is slathered in this layer of Gender Stuff! this is INTERESTING!!!! no matter what people take from this post i at least hope you can find this aspect interesting, especially if you hadn't really thought about cinder's mimicry before...

anyway the very Gendered tension in their character comes bearing down twice as hard when considering that madame verbally invokes ideas about "being ladylike" while she's abusing them, reinforcing this mental link between Being Ladylike = Having Power, Not Being Ladylike = Not Having Power (= being crushed under the (high) heel of those that Do). cinder's femininity is ungenuine at best and coerced at worst; in my opinion, that much has been gestured at pretty overtly

from here, you can draw whatever conclusions from it that you please; e.g. would cinder LIKE to claim femininity for themselves in a genuine way, or would they not? do they feel attached to it, or not? in the Midnight glimmers of cinder's own real human self—the one they try so desperately at every turn to kill and bury, by directly coöpting pieces of other people they think are powerful—what do you see there? that's a conclusion for you to draw, of course…

you've no doubt twigged by the pronoun heehoos happening in this post that i'm quite fond of they/them cinder lol. i like my non biney lesbian struggler (the lesbian part Specifically i don't have a whole post locked and loaded for, that's just because im a lesbian and i like it<3). i rotate the disconnect between cinder and their identity and their performance in my mind and go "huh! your gender is Lesbian. congrats sweet prince" well anyway i think salem shoulda been cool FOR ONCE and offered to give them top surgery when she was gluing them back together after beaconSJHBHBNSDHB

of course, there's a myriad of ways to take this and make it serve whatever gender and pronouns headcanons you like, so i'm not saying it definitely means exactly what i personally like. like i said at the start, i'm not interested in "proving" anything or whatever. i'm just observing that it's interesting, and then im applying it to beef up headcanons i personally like... so you do as you will, too 😌

but to me, no matter what final conclusion is drawn, gender is a performance and cinder fall is trapped on the stage! goodluck up there!

[indigovigilance]

Sodom and Gomorrah: A Speculative Meta

on Ao3: Sodom and Gomorrah: A Speculative Meta

Sodom and Gomorrah is the story of a land so steeped in sin that many prayed to God for intercession, and God sent two angels to see for themselves if the rumors were true, and determine based on their testimony whether the cities should be destroyed.

In Season 1, we learn that Sandolphon was there, doing a lot of smiting and turning people into salt. The way that Aziraphale talks about it, we are led to believe that he was there too, bearing unhappy witness to the destruction, his plastered-on smile faltering as his vision fades into the middle distance:

In this meta I am taking an alternate stance to the wonderfully presented interpretation by @queerfables in my speculation of what happened in Sodom and its relevance to the GO story arc overall, if canonized. I hope that readers will consider the merits of both arguments in their own formulations of Aziraphale and Heaven in the GO universe.

TW: discussions of homophobia, sexual assault, death & destruction

Verses are taken from this translation of Genesis, chapters 18 and 19.

Genesis 18

20 Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous

21 that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.”

(Notably, the allegations made against Sodom and Gomorrah are never discussed. It is simply left at “sin so grievous.” Though it seems like there may be more information in Genesis 12)

But God herself did not go down to Sodom, instead sending two angels. I, like queerfables, read this and quickly came to the conclusion that for GO narrative purposes, the two angels that God sent to Sodom were Aziraphale and Sandolphon, where the former is playing tour guide to the latter, who has the real authority in the situation.

Upon arrival, the angels are met by Lot; he invites them to stay with him. At first they refuse, saying they will stay in the square, but he insists.

Genesis 19

4 Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. 

5 They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we may know [have sex with] them.”

There is a lot of baggage to unpack from these two lines, especially in the 2023 context of politics in the Western hemisphere. Same-sex marriage is nearly ubiquitous, a near turnaround from only twenty years ago, but so is homophobic rhetoric, and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is cited a lot for those purposes. Intersectional communities of faith have done a lot of work to try to reinterpret these two verses, insisting that what God finds so abhorrent about the actions of the men of Sodom is not that they are homosexual but rather that they are attempting to gang-rape two newly arrived strangers in their city.

For the real world, this is a very important discussion and a solid position to maintain, if one wishes to defend the concept of a benevolent God who made homosexual, bisexual, transgender, and every other flavor of human as lovingly and intentionally as was made every cisgender heterosexual person.

But we’re not talking about real-world God. We’re talking about the God in Good Omens. And She is not a very nice person. 

We have only to look at the contract that would allow the murder and then replacement of Job’s children, or the abject poverty under which Elspeth suffers that forces her to commit [apparent] atrocities, and ultimately drive her to attempt suicide. Whatever your feelings may be about the God of our shared meatspace, the God of Good Omens is not a character we are meant to admire, sympathize with, or make excuses for.

Returning to Sodom in the Good Omens universe.

I propose that it is thematically in keeping that the men of Sodom were not attempting to commit gangrape, but rather, they saw Sandolphon and fell in love on the spot. Because yes, Aziraphale is a fine scholarly-looking fellow, but it’s approximately 2000 B.C., the Bronze Age. Sodom and Gomorrah are most likely agrarian societies, and Sandolphon looks like he could throw a bale of hay like a javelin. He’s a whole lot of man, and the men of Sodom are into it. I mean, c'mon, Paul Chahidi in some biblical garb, is, uhh...

...not an eyesore, iykwim. [image source: imdb.com]

So they go to Lot’s house and ask if they can see this man, in hopes that they can ask him on a date. They are smitten by Sandolphon. Sure, the ultimate goal may be to have sex with them, but not right there on Lot’s doorstep, and the gross misquoting can be attributed to Sandolphon’s own libelous report of events, not to the Sodomites themselves. History is written by the victors, after all.

While we’re at it, let’s consider Lot’s response:

Genesis 19

6 Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him 

7 and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. 

8 Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

In the true spirit of Good Omens comedy, I can envision Lot walking out among these men, complaining that not one of them has asked permission to court or marry either of his daughters of maritable age, and perhaps rather than simping for his houseguest, perhaps they would consider dating one of them instead. Is it homophobic? Sure, but I’m not here to defend Lot; he doesn’t need it. Because standing next to Sandolphon, he’s an absolute poppet.

(The remaining stanzas regarding the Sodomites breaking into Lot’s house, I am going to selectively set aside and chalk that up to Sandolphon blowing some Sodomite choice statements about Lot being a homophobic asshole way out of proportion.)

Sandolphon, a True Believer, is not about to stand for this insult to his heavenly purity. Angels do not have relations with humans, and to insinuate that he would even consider it is blasphemy. He takes it as a personal insult that the Sodomites would propose such a thing. He finds this to be evidence enough that the Sodomites are truly corrupt and worthy of destruction.

I feel the need to emphasize here that while this contains some distinctly queer themes, Sandolphon is not angry because they are men; he is angry because they are human, a different species from himself (in the same way that angels are different species from demons), and furthermore that anything resembling love the way humans do it is disgusting and vile to him.

Aziraphale, meanwhile, is standing helplessly on the sidelines, desperately trying and failing to de-escalate the situation. But it’s no use, Sandolphon has already made up his mind. There’s nothing left for Aziraphale to do but to try to save as many people as he can, beginning with Lot and his family.

Genesis 19

12 The two [angels] said to Lot, “Do you have anyone else here—sons-in-law, sons or daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you? Get them out of here, 

13 because we are going to destroy this place. The outcry to the Lord against its people is so great that he has sent us to destroy it.”

Again, in the fashion that GO takes liberty with biblical narrative, I propose that it is Aziraphale alone who warns Lot that Sandolphon will destroy Sodom come sunrise, and sends him out into the night to gather his family and get them out as quickly as possible. I propose, additionally, that Aziraphale is the one who leads Lot and his daughters by the hand out of Sodom and then protects the village of Zoar from destruction so that they can take shelter there.

Genesis 19:

15 With the coming of dawn, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Hurry! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away when the city is punished.”

16 When he hesitated, the [angels] grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them safely out of the city, for the Lord was merciful to them.

17 As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!”

18 But Lot said to them, “No, my lords,[or singular, lord] please! 

19 Your[singular] servant has found favor in your[singular] eyes, and you[singular] have shown great kindness to me in sparing my life. But I can’t flee to the mountains; this disaster will overtake me, and I’ll die. 

20 Look, here is a town near enough to run to, and it is small. Let me flee to it—it is very small, isn’t it? Then my life will be spared.”

21 He said to him, “Very well, I will grant this request too; I will not overthrow the town you speak of. 

22 But flee there quickly, because I cannot do anything until you reach it.” (That is why the town was called Zoar.[“small”])

While yes, this is a fictional interpretation of a biblical scripture, let’s take something from the fact that Lot is supposed to be addressing two angels, but the pronouns he uses to do so are all singular in the original Hebrew: that is to say, it seems like he is only talking to one angel. So in the victor-edited retrospective, the story is written to seem like two angels were rescuing him, but from the faithfully quoted words of his own mouth, it was only one. It seems like Sandolphon tried to write himself in as one of the good guys but couldn't bring himself to actually change the words that were coming from Lot's mouth. (Again, this is unnecessary work to do for the biblical narrative to be molded to a GO narrative, but it is an interesting feature of the original text nonetheless.)

At sunrise, the destruction begins: 

Genesis 19

23 By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land.

24 Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens.

25 Thus [S]he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land. 

26 But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

So goes the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah: The cities are slandered before God, who sends Aziraphale and Sandolphon to investigate; Sandolphon is so incensed by human men flirting with him that he determines that the city shall be destroyed in the morning, and Aziraphale races against the clock to save as many as he can, knowing that he cannot save everyone. He bears witness as the men who resemble himself so much, who committed no greater crime than to seek out a forbidden love, perish in a rain of fire and brimstone. He must feign heavenly delight that a sinful blight was erased from the world, while mourning thousands of lost souls. He wonders if they have been sent to Hell. Even Lot’s wife, whose only crime was to question, to wonder what is behind her and perhaps regret leaving it behind, is turned to salt. He sees the vicious glee of Sandolphon exacting his revenge for the crime of impugning his celestial celibacy. He wonders what Sandolphon would do to him if he ever found out about the stirrings in his heart for a demon who, 500 years prior, had sat beside him on a rock, looking out over sea, comforting him as he nursed his wounded faith. He wonders just how far along with Heaven he can go, and what the consequences will be when he dares to say, “I will go no further.”

~~~

[image source: Wessex Archaeology]

For those who (like me) are interested, the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah seems to have been merged from two historical events, which was common in a period preserved primarily by oral history. The tale seems to resemble a volcanic event that occurred nearby and around that time, but Sodom and Gomorrah were most likely destroyed by an earthquake and a subsequent flood, since they were located in the Jordan Plain, the lowest dry land in the world, a full quarter of a mile below sea level at its lowest, and very near the Dead Sea. Additionally, the area is rich in bitumen, sulfur-rich near-surface petroleum deposits that, when disturbed by a major earthquake, may have sent hot tar flying into the air, which if it landed on anything flammable would give the impression that fire and brimstone were raining down.

✨ the more you know ✨

~~~

Blending together the biblical canon and archaeological speculation, I'm going to make a wild, unsubstantiated proposal that Crowley turns the people of Sodom into fish so that they survive the flood. Because one biblical flood was enough, and he'd heard around the water cooler that She had promised not to do that again (lying liar). This creates a tentative connection with the raining fish we see in the title credits of both seasons, and I'm also going to reference it in an upcoming meta.

[thydungeongal]

I am making a ttrpg about transgender magical girls with a kind of ugly somber Disco Elysium meets Madoka Magica tone to it, you've seemed to have talked some about the foibles of queer ttrpg lately and was wondering if you had any advice or suggestions

So, I actually have a lot of new thoughts on this topic stemming from that recent discussion about fiction/narrative/thematic elements in TTRPGs (where I feel that one person kept overusing the term "thematic elements" in a very reductive way. Goblins are not thematic elements, they're just guys in the fiction.).

The most common foible when it comes to queer RPGs is mixing up the idea of an RPG that lets characters be queer and maybe even uses queer identities as part of its fiction with games that are actually about queerness. The former category actually covers most RPGs: due to the nature of the infinite possibility space it is nearly impossible for a game to actually prevent characters from being queer. But just because characters can be queer doesn't make a game a queer game.

In this sense it's good to separate the game's fiction from its themes. What the game is about from what the game is about. As someone really succinctly put it in the notes of a recent post, on the surface Monsterhearts is about monster teenagers doing monster teenage drama, but on a thematic level it is about alienation, adolescence, and queerness. The monsters are stand-ins for those themes in the fiction and the game's mechanics also help carry those themes.

D&D and Pathfinder both have queer elements in their fiction and they utilize their identity as games where queer folks are welcome as part of their marketing. But neither of those games is about queerness on a thematic level. Monsterhearts and Dungeon Bitches are games about queerness.

Anyway, what does this mean for your game? Well, your game is going to be about transgender magical girls, so that already makes me think you've already thought about the intersection of magical girl fiction with themes that relate to queerness, but I think it's a good thing to keep in mind: it's not necessary, but if you want your game to be meaningfully queer then the transness needs to be engaged with on a thematic level and not just as a coat of paint on top of the game. (Actually, I think it is entirely possible to make a magical girl game that is about transness without actually having transness as an element in the fiction. Magical girl fiction often engages with themes of gender, identity, the expectations society imposes upon young women, and growing into womanhood. All themes which are a short leap away from discussions of transness.)

Anyway, that's really as deep as I can go into it right now, because I'm tired. But I hope that gives you some food for thought. :)

[andreabandrea]

regarding that post about it not making sense to same gender trans headcanon a character who is tortured by their gender in canon, i think probably two of the biggest reasons you see this anyway is that, first, sometimes people want to see a character be a trans man for fetishizing reasons in their yaoi fics and dont really care if it thematically 'fits' or not (and im not saying the only reason that people would make a character trans in a fic is to fetishize them, but if you look at the way the majority of trans characters are written by cis authors on ao3, then i think you can excuse me for being a little suspicious and exasperated).

then, secondly, you have the ones like jesse pinkman where i think sometimes its just a case of he's a popular character who can be kind of relatable and a lot of transmascs want to see themselves in media, thus projecting onto him-- and i think anyone can have a battle with toxic masculinity, whether they're a normal man or a cis man. it doesn't have to be inherently transphobic for a trans man to struggle with what it means to be a man.

and sometimes it's just vibes based, i get it. bernadetta von varley is hard to sell as a transfem reading because of her abusive father training her to be a wife and spread the crest and so on, but she's an anxious loner in a hoodie so like she's sooo boymoder etc. and sometimes you dont care about canon/authorial intent and think to yourself actually i could do a really interesting piece about the intersection of misogyny and transfemininity with bernadetta, and that's awesome too.

however. i think though- and this is why i started typing this long-ass post- that the most insidious reason people might do these headcanons is pushback against transfem headcanons. i've seen a lot of sudden interest in nonbinary/genderqueer and/or transmasc laios touden ever since some transfems pointed out that he's tortured by masculinity and seems oddly interested in the alternate universe where he's a girl, among other points.

and i think- again- a lot of this just comes down to fandom/yaoi culture having a certain focus on men (notice that when dungeon meshi became popular with its anime adaption, the roving yaoi fans found labru and it overtook farcille which was the largest ship on the ao3 beforehand), and i dont think its always transmisogynistic on purpose.

'on purpose' are the keywords there-- sometimes i think people might not know how they come across. i see a lot of interactions on this site from sapphics and/or trans women like "i love women" or "this is a post i made about women" and well-meaning gay and/or trans men will add on "what if this was about MEN!"... and i want you to celebrate your identity and we can enjoy this interesctional lgbt community together, yes i know The Cishets are coming for all of us fuck infighting etc, but sometimes you have to realize when you're being rude and speaking over a woman. ask yourself why a trans woman might be offended that you took her personal post about her femininity and misogyny she's facing from men and said "this is so me except about men".

anyway laios and falin are both trans women.

[mythaura-blog]

Development Update - August 2023

Hi folks, Miyazaki here with quite the colorful update for you all!

In this update we're going to cover all things color, including:

New additions to the wheel

Magical color-shifting items

A shiny new page displaying the full wheel

Ways that you can design your own color via Ko-fi

A contest for you to design your very own color

We'll also cover the Quarter 1 (2023) Ko-fi sponsor rewards, two new sponsored companions, and our annual Beast Creator Contest.

More info available under the cut!

New Colors

We've been asked frequently if we'll be adding any additional colors to Mythaura's color wheel. We can now say with confidence: yes we will!

Koa found a sustainable way to add these new colors for Beasts, meaning that we have the ability to add in new colors even post-launch.

In the update where we talked about Seasons, we mentioned each Mythaura Season will have its own unique theme. This theme will determine the unique Seasonal items that are available for players to earn. We are planning to add one new color to the site per Season, which will be thematically appropriate as well!

To kickstart our color wheel expansion, each member of the dev team came up with a new color:

Fossil by MunkeKing

Pidgeon by Kymara

Racecar by Sark

Periwinkle by Luciellia

Sunset by Koa

Padparadscha by Sashie

Sunrise as a partner color to Sunset

Patina by Miyazaki

Color Wheel Page

Earlier this month we added a color wheel page so that the entire color wheel could be viewed at a glance. We've also got a handy Beast previewer in the middle, so that you can see what the selected color looks like for a Beast's base, top, bottom, and eyes. The wheel can be organized by either Hue or by its Standard order, which is the order the site uses when calculating colors during breeding.

This page also shows the relevant Ephemeral Inks that the selected color may be included within.

Ephemeral Inks

Magical brews of shifting hues...Ephemeral Inks and Ephemeral Eyedrops are Harpy-crafted products that shift a Beast's colors.

Ephemeral Inks will shift a Beast's:

Base color

Top color

Bottom color

Any Specials colors

Any Supers colors

Ephemeral Eyedrops will shift a Beast's:

Eye color

There is a wide variety of Ephemeral items. Each one corresponds to a pool of colors. For example, Ephemeral Blue Ink contains all colors in the "Blue" category based on its hue while Ephemeral Dark Ink contains all colors with a lightness value below 50%. The Ephemeral Dark Blue Ink is the intersection of those, containing colors in the "Blue" category that are also dark.

In addition there are three Ephemeral Inks which contain all colors...

Ephemeral Prismatic Ink - Completely randomizes the beast it used on

Ephemeral Analogous Ink - Shuffles to colors that are analogous to one another (e.g. yellow, red, and orange)

Ephemeral Complementary Ink - Shuffles to colors that are complementary to one another (e.g. orange and blue or purple and yellow)

Ko-fi Custom Color Sponsorship

Are you interested in sponsoring your own color to be part of Mythaura's color wheel? We are now offering this as a service in our Ko-fi shop!

Work with our art team to bring your custom color to life! After providing input and direction to our art team, we will come back to you with a proposal for your color. Up to two rounds of changes beyond the initial design will be offered.

Name suggestions are welcomed, but the final name will be left to the discretion of the dev team.

Turnaround time will vary based on the current workload of our artists. An ETA will be provided upon purchase.

NOTE: custom color sponsorshp will not be available post-launch. This is exclusively a pre-launch service.

Custom Color Contest

To celebrate the cooperative nature of the color wheel that we're making with you, we're opening a Custom Color Contest. We want to offer the opportunity for you to make a permanent impact on Mythaura's color wheel!

This contest is free to enter, and only has the following parameters:

Only one entry allowed

Fill out Google Form by Saturday, November 25, 2023 at 11:59pm PST

The dev team will reach out to the winner on December 1 to begin the color design process. Winner will have until December 22, 2023 to complete their color design.

Winner will also receive 3x copies of the Empemeral Ink that matches their color's base hue (Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue, Green, or Violet).

We're so excited to see what you come up with!!

Quarter 1 (2023) Rewards Reveal

Our Quarter 1 rewards have been completed and are ready for their public debut! Thank you to the Ko-fi Sponsors who voted on the different Glamour and Companion concepts, we appreciate your support and feedback.

Q1 (2023) Glamour: Twilight Dreamscape

Q1 (2023) Companion: Filigree Moth

Q1 (2023) Solid Gold Glamour: Adult Peryton

Ko-fi Sponsored Items

Pygmy Tunneler

Sponsored by: Skadiv

Shambling Rotcrawler

Sponsored by: Sark

Beast Creator Contest

We're back with another Beast Design Contest! We're looking forward to all the fantastic creations that this community comes up with.

Here are the parameters:

Each individual can submit one (1) Beast option for consideration

Any species fine (babies included)

Fill out Google form; provide both a picture and the preview code

We’ll pick three winners to have their Beasts featured on the front page for Quarter 2 (October 1 - December 31). Winners will also receive:

1x Beta Key

1x Quarter 1 (2023) Glamour: Twilight Dreamscape

1x Quarter 1 (2023) Companion: Filigree Moth

These rewards will be applied directly to your account.

Submissions for the Beast Design Contest are due by September 29, 2023. The form will close at 11:59pm PST. Winners will be announced in the October 1, 2023 Development Update.

Mythaura v0.22

Color wheel added

Color changing items created

Sustainable pipeline for new color creation added

Tile and floor refactor to support map builder

Adds integer ordering to colors and refactors ordering to use new integer

Forum categories and group structure created

Refactored tooltip and select dropdowns

Initial buildout of beast party selection and abode

Asset Updates

New icons for Dale Wanderer, Stonecrop Queen, and Gruffalow

Bogbint radiant alignment updated

Boreal & Umbral Vigilhound elemental effects adjusted

Breezetail lines darkened

Thank You!

Thanks for sticking through to the end of the post, we always look forward to sharing our month's work with all of you--thank you for taking the time to read. We'll see you around the Discord!