#children in pool

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Kids seen enjoying the East 23d Street Pool on July 3, 1955.

Photo: Art Whittaker for the NY Daily News

[pistachi0art]

based on real events

[elodieunderglass]

So for some more details:

- I am fairly time-poor with a huge amount of commitments: Grownup Job Senior Promotion, three small kids on summer holidays/starting school, writing a novel fanfic for sick friend, peak growing/harvest season at allotment, etc. so im only offering “what I can actually deliver” at this time

- swan comic is a new idea, people like those don’t they? Not sure of how fundraising mechanism would work here but maybe taking prompts?

- not sure how essay would work but it’s probably my best/most appealing skill?

- material items in exchange for a minimum fixed amount. So offline I’m most known for material works. I’m not a BAD printmaker / craftworker and for this I would be looking at designing a sort of limited print run of greeting card style original hand printed prints. I know you guys aren’t familiar with this work from me, so this would involve a bit of trust that An Art from me would be worth at least £5 lmao. However it’s kind of nice to get something real in the mail right??

- super worried about fandom auction so this would be mostly a register of interest that I’d take to more experienced people and use as leverage to start an auction; I’m not in a great place to provide much actual legwork here. I also have huge guilt from like 2000-something where someone paid A HUNDRED AND LIKE 20 DOLLARS to charity for earthquake survivors and I DID NOT FINISH THE FIC AND I HAD to write to them, weepingly, apologising forever about it, and they were so graceful, they forgave me and wrote off my fandom auction contribution, but I had never watched the tv show they requested and was in the process of romancing dr glass and it all went SO wrong, this MIGHT heal my scars of shame from fandom auctions generally OR might make them worse. It itvery hard to write fic actually it’s my worst skill pls don’t pick this

Anyway

I will dance like a monkey and get sick kids out of Gaza. What would you like to see most?

[notfeelingthyaster]

you don't need to minimize other people's favorite because you have a favorite: it's okay to love damian, you don't need to shit on tim's character/erase his trauma. you can love tim and not shit on jason's run as robin. you can have cass or duke as a favorite and not diminish the other kids relationship with bruce and each other. and on, and on, and on.

[mostlyghostlyy]

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

re: being unable to predict twow and maybe being upset it doesn't do what fandom wants it to, were there any things in adwd you remember being surprised by and that went against common fandom interpretation at the time? :3

I'm not quite sure what was common fandom interpretation at the time, since after I finished AFFC in 2005 I tried the westeros.org forums and was extremely repelled by them and their hate for my favorite characters - and indeed, most female characters - and avoided them thereafter. (And somehow I never thought to check the Livejournal communities at the time, alas, which would've been more up my alley.) I did devour worg's Citadel (their pre-wiki, including the So Spake Martin archive) and fanart collection though lol.

But of course I was still surprised by things in ADWD. Like, I had no expectation whatsoever that Bloodraven was still alive, let alone that he was the three-eyed crow. Or heck, that the children of the forest definitely exist and appear on page as actual characters! I did not expect a Varamyr prologue POV in the slightest, or his warg/skinchanger lore reveals. And I did not expect the Aegon reveal at all, though checking the SSMs afterwards (as well as this ancient pre-AFFC FAQ) showed me that some people had been wondering from day 1 if he had survived. And for that matter, Jon Connington's survival was surprising (at least my memory is very good, so the griffin thing and Tyrion's suspicions of him being a Westeros lord had me leaping back to Jaime's conversation with Ronnet), as well as Jon's POV (including his sexual orientation) and the greyscale thing. Oh man, the whole stone men scene was all new fascinating worldbuilding.

As for existing POVs and known plots, I certainly never expected Theon's state as Reek (tortured, yes, but not reduced to that, though I probably should have), or that he would be a POV again, or that I would find his narrative so heartwrenching or that he would become a favorite character. (From reading a bunch of pre-ADWD fanfics, I don't think the fandom expected Ramsay to be so abusive of Jeyne either, but for that I have no idea why.) I was surprised by Cersei's walk of shame, though I probably should have expected some sort of religion-based sexual humiliation. (Actually, I don't think most people expected the returning AFFC POVs because of the book split, though I'm glad GRRM chose to update us on some of its cliffhangers - like, at least Brienne is no longer hanging from a tree!) I did not expect Tyrion's POV and mental state to be so dark, but again, I probably should have. I also didn't expect him to link up with Jorah (I don't recall what I imagined Jorah to do in his exile but not that - maybe lurk around the fringes of Meereen?) or the slavery plot at all.

I think the fandom in general expected more... plot-advancement, I guess, more battles involving KL again, more movement of Dany towards Westeros, though they always have, lol. (There are ACOK-era theories that she'd come to Westeros right away, marry Robb and destroy the Lannisters together, etc.) I'm sure some expected Stannis conquering Winterfell and getting the Boltons out, though at least there they were mostly right, as the battle of ice (as well as the battle of fire) got cut from ADWD last minute. As for plot advancement expectations from me, I personally hoped that Marwyn would reach Dany in ADWD, though considering he leaves at the end of the last chapter of AFFC and the distances involved, I really should have known better. But I did expect to hear at least a little about Rickon, and Davos learning he's on Skagos (and getting sent to retrieve him) was a pleasant semi-resolution there.

Anyway, hope that helps! If/when we get TWOW, despite the fandom doing like 15 years of speculation and theories (not to mention the show), I'm sure there will be plenty of surprises, both positive ones and disappointments, as well as completely unexpected things.

[jadafitch]

Went out to the pond to take this photo, and heard the first spring peepers of the year. Yay! It's officially spring in Downeast, Maine.

This illustration is one over 100 I did for the forth Nature Smarts activity book from Mass Audubon and Storey Publishing. Nature Smarts Workbook: All About Water, Ages 4-6 is available for preorder now, and out May 21st. You can find it through Amazon, Mass Audubon, and other book sellers.

[lale-txt]

i knew Soft Launch reached the right audience when the comments about the wlw dating being deeply relatable piled up lmao

[g1deonthefirst]

I think that fandom glosses over how fucked up the Alexandrites are: In Doctor Sex, Pal jokes about Cam being stolen away to the Alexandrites--but Cam is a CHILD here. IDK, the Alexandrites are straight out of the Handmaid's Tale, and it's just another example of how the Empire both enables and commits sexual violence against people

YUPPP. we've talked about this so much in the discord server because it really is so wild. it certainly doesn't seem like non-necromancers on the sixth choose which soldier division (hot and competent, hot and incompetent, ugly and competent) they're pulled into, meaning they're being judged on their physical abilities and attractiveness, which is both beyond fucked up and imo def plays into the cavalier-as-female gender binary analysis. and it also seems like non-necromancers don't have a ton of options (in any house) if they don't train to join the cohort — non-necromancers cannot rule, and how high they can ascend in house society seems limited. i might be mistaken, but it certainly seemed like all the scientists in doctor sex were adepts considering their psychometric abilities, and camilla says that if she weren't pal's cavalier she would have gone into data entry. which, once again: one section of society is categorically barred from even taking the tests that would allow them to rule/gain significant political say, based on a seemingly immutable characteristic? rings a bell...

[efsungeradam]

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Rusty Eads's enthusiasm for the water doesn't match his sister Beatrice's as they play at the East 23rd Street pool in Manhattan, August 1, 1947.

Photo: Tom Watson for the NY Daily News

[mwagneto]

as a child i was always so mad we didn't have a pool. coz all the kids in every show and movie i watched always had pools. and it's like, we have a garden, why don't we have a pool like all the children on tv and thus all the children in real life must do (nevermind that i hadn't and still to this day haven't met anyone who has a pool)??? then i grew up and realised it's coz the people in my tv all lived in the united states of america and we lived in eastern europe

[shannonsketches]

also while i'm here the best way i can describe how I write goku and vegeta is that goku wants to race and vegeta says he's not going to race him that's dumb and goku says okay and starts walking faster and vegeta speeds up a little like i'm not racing you and goku says okay and walks a little faster and vegeta's like knock if off we're not racing and goku's like i know and starts jogging and vegeta's like stop i'm not playing and goku's like okay and runs and vegeta's like godfuckingdammit and runs after him

[monsieuroverlord]

All of today’s Pride Preview snapshots, along with the list of featured stories this year.

Source here

[jadafitch]

Tidepool maze illustration, from Nature Smarts Workbook: All about Water (Ages 4-6), Mass Audubon and Storey Publishing . Out May 21st!

[golden-stag]

Last time I went looking for references for Venom I found this specimen-

And just now when I tweeted about him I found out there’s two different versions of this figure!!

They’re both so ugly and misshapen, I need them more than anything.