#spectulative fiction

[committeeof100]

A brief explanation of the world of Anthology of American folk music, the short story series I am presently working on

Around let’s say 2020 (the year is not important) conservatives control all of American government in an increasingly teneous geopolitical standing

And so in a last ditch effort to maintain global supremacy the US pulls out all the stops and declares war on all non western countries in order to protect its trade routes and markets and ensure consumptive flow and production by introducing more low wage workers kidnapped from warzones

A major group which emerges in the fighting are mercenaries who either come from bloodied lineages with ties to America or reactionary movements who work for the US government and eventually increasingly become present in police action at home as the fighting abroad begins to sour

Many of these mercenaries eventually come to work under the Library of Congress who formulate them into the Army for the Remembrance of Content or ARC, as the federal American government begins to weaken, which it finally virtually collapses with the nuking of DC

With DC nuked (by unknown actors, perhaps the Library of Congress themselves, or their rivals in the Smithsonian in some suicide attempt after a merger) the ARC and LOC move their operations to (you guessed it) Michigan, even prior to this nuking they had many feelers in the state.

Several major warlords emerge from the ashes to secure their control over Michigan, though none are able to fully do it

Perhaps the most notable of these is a former academic known as Ronald Reagan II whose pederastic appetites have been sated by the LOC and ARC after he began to supply them with Heroin.

Heroin and drugs become a practical currency, serving as a recruiting tool for the ARC as the mercenary lineages begin to decrease in number. This creates also a demand for a new drug in the face of potiental subservience to Reagan II’s project.

Another notable figure who emerges is Bobby Symanski (this universe’s unabomber) who becomes the emperor of the Upper Penisula.

A recurring figure in this story whose role has yet to be fully decided is Uthman Ibn Al-Mawt, the son of an Iraqi Ba’athist official whose reputation is one of violence in the war, yet in reality is not nearly as bad as the people he works for

The future follows mostly the ARC, who long ago fully merged with the LOC with the main goal of preserving music. The ARC has a series of kidnapped and brainwashed children who serve as its collectors and mechanics in order to ensure their cultural supremacy, and perhaps one day lend their backing to a worthy warlord who will allow the restoration of civilization

Many of the future’s factions will be recognizable as having roots in the stories in the present/past, with The Imperial Real of DaYoop, the Republic of Trawerse, NeuNederland, Halamazue (the only truly new polity in the future), the Soviet of Keecago-Derought, The Oonited States, and The Sultanate of Al-Meshegaan all having traceable origins in the past.

There’s also flashbacks to previous points in American history- I’m mostly thinking the American “Revolution”, the Civil war, the Nixon presidency and the Reagan presidency (the American Rev and Reagan Presidency stories are already written!)

Want to read some of this world??? Check out my medium: Debs Guffaw

Substack: Committee of 100

[relevant-wikipedia-articles]

Guys do centaurs have to eat both horse food and human food?

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

[violetren]

Transistor Chapter 16

“I imagine she would love to meet you,” Eurion said.

Rachel and Samael would probably get along like a house on fire. Or one of them would say just the wrong thing and then a house would be on fire. Either way I'd pay to see it.

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[rosepetals1984]

Review: "Riot Baby" by Tochi Onyebuchi

Review: “Riot Baby” by Tochi Onyebuchi

Quick review for a quick read. Tochi Onyebuchi’s “Riot Baby” is such a uniquely presented story about grappling with the trauma of racism from the perspective of two Black siblings in a speculative coat. I acknowledge that this is not a story that will work for everyone, but it meant a lot to me as a woman who’s observed at least some of the experiences that are touched upon in here. The medical…

[itsoverfeeling]

god i feel that. im currently pretending i do not see the time LOL

spectulative fiction is a genre!! its basically any fiction that departs from reality, it's mostly fantasy, sci-fi, horror (not really realistic horror though), dystopian, etc etc

BELOVWD MUTULA!!!!!!!!!!!Hello!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HELLOOO!!!!!!!! HOW ARE YOU?? ive been talking about speculative fiction in the askbox tonight :]

[kmalexander]

Raunch Review: Firefly

Raunch Reviews is a series about profanity. Not real profanity, but speculative swearing. Authors often try to incorporate original, innovative forms of profanity into our own fantastical works as a way to expand the worlds we build. Sometimes we’re successful. Often we’re not. In this series, I examine the faux-profanity from various works of sci-fi and fantasy, judge their effectiveness, and rate them on an unscientific and purely subjective scale. This is Raunch Reviews, welcome.

Raunch Review: Firefly

The Author: Joss Whedon

Work in Question: Firefly

The Profanity: “Gorram”

Joss Whedon’s much-beloved Firefly did a lot of fascinating things with language. The mixing of refined Mandarin Chinese with backcountry dialects helped layer a world with a myriad of linguistic possibilities. Throughout the series, we see this intermingling of language with many characters shifting between English and Mandarin as they talk. While many bits of “profanity” are uttered in Mandarin, the word we’re looking at today isn’t one of them.

The minced oath “gorram” crops up a lot. Unlike the interplay of language, this term happens to be more of an exploration of linguistic drift borrowing from a more blasphemous origin and becoming a bit of a minced oath. (Not unlike “by golly,” “gadzooks,” “holy moley,” and “jeepers,” before it.) From a language standpoint, drift is essential. The English we speak today would sound like a foreign language to English speakers from five hundred years ago. So it’s easy to see how five hundred years in the future common parlance has shifted and corrupted further. Language tends to drift towards ease—words are simplified and shortened; binary becoming singular is a common occurrence. We see that with “gorram”—a drifting portmanteau of “god” and “damnation.”

As it stands as both a minced oath, a curse, and an example of linguistic drift “gorram” is a fantastic example of faux profanity. While you couldn’t do it for the entire show—it’d be impossible to understand—it’s nice to see little touches like this sprinkled throughout. They help a world feel as though it’s evolved; it gives it a sense of history.

So “gorram” does Firefly justice. But, you might be interested to know while generally attributed to Firefly, that short-run series wasn’t the first use of “gorram” in the English lexicon. Its origins are actually much older.

Score: 

(5.0)

Previous Raunch Reviews

“Prawn” from Neill Blomkamp & Terri Tatchell’s District 9

“By the Firsts” from K. M. Alexander’s Bell Forging Cycle

“Smurf” from Raja Gosnell & Jordan Kerner’s The Smurfs (2011)

“Dren” from Rockne S. O’Bannon’s Farscape

“Quiznak” from J. Dos Santos & L. Montgomery’s Voltron: Legendary Defender

“Smeg” from Rob Grant and Doug Naylor’s Red Dwarf

“Burn Me” from Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time

“Slitch” from Robert A. Heinlein’s Friday

“Yarbles” from Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange

“Cuss” from Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox

“Feth” from Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts from Warhammer 40k

“Shazbot” from Garry Marshall’s Mork & Mindy and Dynamix’s Starsiege: Tribes

“Seven Hells” from George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire/Game of Thrones

“Mudblood” from J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series

“Frak” from Glen A. Larson’s, Ronald D. Moore’s, & David Eick’s Battlestar Galactica

“Jabber” from China Miéville’s Bas-Lag series

“Storm it”/”Storms”/”Storming” from Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archives

Have a suggestion for Raunch Reviews? It can be any made-up slang word from a book, television show, or movie. You can email me directly with your recommendation or leave a comment below. I’ll need to spend time with the property before I’ll feel confident reviewing it, so give me a little time. I have a lot of books to read.

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[autistic-swanprincess]

Another The Dragon Prince video from Fictional Crystals, she theorizes about Callum getting an amulet for his magic abilities and Runaan’s lover possibly helping them.

[neverhavingtogiveareason]

Just Write Challenge #15 - Write about a character attempting to redeem themselves

Just Write Challenge #15 - Tried to write a kind of dystopian, kind of hitman, kiiiind of surveillance state piece... I’m just really into exploring new ideas for fictional universes right now so I’m gonna roll with it until one sticks! #writing #fiction #shortstory #flashfiction

If my recent work is anything to go by, I must really love a vaguely-designed dystopia. I’ve been enjoying playing with little segments of different universes where I might be able to create a more elaborate, cohesive narrative later.

This one is largely serious in content but I’ve tried for a sarcastic/dry tone to the narrator, and I don’t know if I’ve achieved it but nothing ventured and all…

[dykebookclub]

So many bad wlw books. As other anon mentioned it: not your sidekick was cute in a fluffy way but it was SO underwhelming, w no concept of the world. I think bad wlw authors often get a bit caught up in narration and annoy i ng inner monologue and forget about worldbuilding, esp in fantasy types. So many bad spectulative fiction books too 😪

I see your critique of the worldbuilding by lesbian and bi authors, and raise you The Priory of the Orange Tree. 

(Honestly I’m probably not gonna shut up about this book for like 5+ years lmao)

[nbapprentice]

there’s so, so, SO much nonsense surrounding this game that i’m gonna do my best to separate it into digestible bits, with its own categories. even then this is... wow. it’s big.

Warning tags will be added at the start of every section, but the general gist is: incest, pedophilia mentions, fetishization of rape and abuse, fetishization of mlm, fetishization of people of color, racism, ableism, nb erasure and transphobia. aside of the warnings, this post will also touch upon Scummy Business Practices

let’s get going

Dana Rune’s and Elle’s lack of moral fiber: #incest #pedophilia#rape and abuse fetishization #homophobia

tl;dr: dana loves incest porn, elle loves guy on guy rape, and the both of them are friends with at least one pedophile

dana rune has run, is still running an incest zine (please visit my faq on what i think about “thats not really incest” and “it’s just fictional!”). The Arcana, as a dev team, clearly does not care, as shown in their e-mail responses.

dana also very much doesn’t care and has reacted to any criticism on this by dismissing people and blocking actual incest victims who tried to contact her about it claiming it was for her “mental health”

in some tweets she claims she “interprets” the characters as not siblings, but she never really cared enough to cover her ass when it all began (she happily admits she’d “cross the incest line”)

dana has commissioned artists who also ship incest, draw near-pedophilic art that’s supposed to pass as acceptable because the character involved is supposedly not a minor despite looking like a child down to wearing pigtails (the character is also wearing a racist-ass belly dancer outfit), AND even made white-washed fanart of The Arcana.

dana follows twitter user kapymui who also produces incestuous Fire Emblem art

dana has retweeted omocat long after it came out that omocat is, at the very least, consuming pedophilic content (on “omocat didn’t know what shota meant!”: yes they did)

moving on, elle has a long, long, LONG history of fetishizing mlm and the rape and abuse that comes with yaoi and had a rich, RICH “yaoi” tag before they deleted their tumblr

they curiously deleted their tumblr right after i made this reblog

shortly after that, tumblr user thalassiq remade and started attacking and insulting any blogs criticizing them - even people providing support in IMs. Since this doesn’t match Dana and Elle’s normal pity parties I’m personally willing to believe they were just a person wanting to start shit - but it’s so telling how Elle used this chance to dismiss everyone who disagrees with them by calling them “children” and did not even bother to offer a kind word to people who were harassed and even had their trauma mocked by this person. It costs 0 dollars to say “that was not me but I’m sorry about people who were hurt.”

Dana and Elle are close with Ava’s Demon creator Michelle Czajkowski aka that one person who endorses child porn of her characters, and even had her draw a promo image for the game. Michelle has been creating highly sexualized content of her minor characters for a while now.

ok so elle and dana are gross freaks, how is that related to the game?

oh it’s very very related

Dana Rune’s and Elle’s lack of moral fiber that’s Actually Inside The Game or The Game’s Blog: now with more #racism #fetishization of poc and mlm #whitewashing #fat hate #pedophilia #nb erasure #transphobia

tl;dr: the arcana is filled to the brim with racism! so much of it! haha holy shit! and that’s not even where it ends!!!

their game is rated PG-13 but includes incredibly sexual situations such as Julian making this fucking face while getting off on pain. This isn’t the only time Dana and Elle use their videogame aimed at young teens to showcase their kinks and fetishes. I have no issue with NSFW or titillating content, as long as it’s rated accordingly. This content is NOT and it’s a blatant disregard for their audience just to have a larger, more pliable demographic and have more money sent their way.

if you start your argument with “well, teenagers look at porn” 1. shut up 2. theres a HUGE difference between teenagers going after adult content aimed at adults, and adults creating content they know will be seen by kids barely starting puberty

as pointed above, dana has 0 qualms literally commissioning people who make whitewashed fanart of her own fucking game that’s supposed to be all about the inclusivity and safe spaces

thearcanagame blog has a pattern of reblogging whitewashed fanart (before you come in swinging with the good ole “ITS THE LIGHTING”: 1. no it isnt 2. the artist should’ve picked better lightning then 3. i draw and post shit online too so dont come telling me i just dont understaaaand),

fanart of their fat characters showed skinnier than they are in their sprites (although to be real for a moment - Portia is curvy at most and them behaving she’s fat rep is HILARIOUS).

going back to NSFW content: nadia and asra are overwhemlingly sexualized in the game, and were the first to have sexualized CGs and sprites introduced.

CGs: Asra’s here, here aND HERE, Nadia’s here with a NSFW warning because she’s just got her whole fucking ass out. Sprites: Asra’s thank god for whoever compiled it all in one image, Nadia’s and once again, NSFW warning lmfao!

Julian’s sprites on the other hand are noticeably tamer, including the one where he’s fucking strapped in leather. His only sexual (NSFW warning because its literally softcore tentacle porn WHICH, ONCE AGAIN, SHOULDN’T BE PUT IN A GAME AIMED AT 13YOS) CGs were also included months after Nadia and Asra received any of theirs.

Through all of the updates, people have constantly requested that Asra and Nadia’s sexualization be toned down, and time after time The Arcana just churned out fetishistic, hypersexualized content at an absurd rate, especially when compared to the one white love interest.

Oh, speaking of the one white love interest: Julian is based off of Jeff Goldblum (this is not spectulation - they p much bring it up at any given time) but like. If Jeff Goldblum was white. They base their favorite love interest off their supposed favorite man in the world but casually leave his skin tone behind. Lmao.

they also play favorites very obviously - in the prologue, Nadia and Asra have a romance paid scene each. Julian has a scene... that requires no coins. Julian was also the first LI to receive three CGs, two of them requiring no coins, while both Asra’s and Nadia’s first CGs were behind a paywall

Dana and Elle have been notoriously skittish about confirming or denying their characters’ ethnicities. After hyping for weeks on thearcanagame that they would confirm the character’s races they basically made a post that amounted to “well they’re not white lol!”

they only relented after the perfectly understandable outrage... and posted a thread about it on Elle’s twitter. Nothing on the actual thearcanagame blog. Anyway, here’s the thread. Note how there’s mention of Julian being Jeff Goldblum... but nothing about him and Portia being Jewish (or “fantasy Jewish” as it were).

The one time they did confirm their jewishness dana then backpedaled and said she shouldn’t have done that lol.

another fun tidbit of how well The Arcana handles race and how much it cares about feedback from fans: an ask was sent about an anon begging for Nadia to step on them. The blog, with the finesse of a bunch of horny dumbasses, didn’t just publish the ask, but approved of it (even though the fans of color had long, long, LONG been telling everyone not to fetishize Nadia into a “step on me kween” wet dream). People were outraged, of course, and the blog ~apologized~ and said they were still learning.... then a new chapter included a scene of Nadia stepping on the Apprentice. 🙃

not to mention elle, on their twitter, made a passive aggressive “women can be doms?” tweet, trying to twist it into a “yr oppressing women” angle (when the issue is that women of color are always constantly portrayed as aggressive and domineering)

Now for a wombo combo of racism and Elle’s fetishization of mlm:

the devs have spoken at length of how Julian’s and Asra’s relationship was quite unhealthy. In a paid scene in Asra’s route, they’re depicted as Asra being disgusted w Julian touching him+Julian following Asra to his shop when Asra refused his offer to go with him (aka julian... stalked him lmfao).

.......... this scene is promptly followed by a highly sexual scenario where Julian’s pain fetish is played up. Remember how this game is rated PG-13? Me neither. Asra’s previous disgust with Julian is also forgotten, for some reason (and by some reason i mean Elle wants to make them fuck w/o buildup or logic).

Then Asra’s route has yet another paid scene dedicated to Asrian, even though he’s supposed to not even like Julian! And be head over heels with the Apprentice! But Elle just has to make these two be entangled despite insisting their relationship was not good for either of them!

Now here’s the kicker: Julian doesn’t have any paid scenes related to his romance with Asra. Note how it’s one of the brown LIs whose route is highjacked by the white LI, but not vice versa. Hmmmmm.

Now, on the topic of Asra: thearcanagame has said repeatedly that he’s nb and uses he/him pronouns, and promised (since last year) that there would be dialogue where he speaks about his gender

as of the making of this post such dialogue still does not exist

so basically asra is the nb to dumbledore’s gay: anyone who just plays the game w/o keeping up with the official blog has no idea of what asra’s gender is supposed to be.

aka he’s not nb. he’s just a cis guy. the arcana just doesn’t want to put its money where its mouth is, i dont care if elle is nb themself. the team made a promise which has not been fulfilled yet and i suspect will not be.

instead, our introduction to canon nb characters is... these two.

By “these two” i mean neither vulgora nor valdemar are even fucking human, and stick out like sore thumbs with their monstruousness.

so our nb rep is... non-human villains. a few books later one of Nadia’s sisters with they/them pronouns shows up, but that’s too little too late on top of the fact that we should’ve known Asra was nb from the first to begin with. It’s a fucking embarrassment and an insult.

at least two villains are visibly disabled (Lucio’s missing arm and Volta’s blind eye+intentionally asymmetrical face). Julian’s eye doesn’t count because, spoilers, he’s not lacking an eye and even if he was it’d still be hidden behind a dashing eyepatch instead of grotesquely displayed as a sign of his lacking morality.

BUT WAIT! IT DOESN’T EVEN END THERE!

The Arcana Exploits The App Business Model To Price Their Full Game at $500, $1000 if the three extra routes make it out, and they never delivered their Kickstarter rewards:

tl;dr: you heard me

the original price per route was planned on being $1.99

they took that “subject to change” really seriously, it seems, because now each route, once the game is fully out, is estimated to cost around $170 each.

both those screenshots are taken from this post which explains in detail just how truly scummy all of The Arcana’s business model and decisions are: https://mysticmicrotransactions.tumblr.com/post/174308723344/dishonesty-from-the-arcana

the tl;dr is basically what’s listed in the beginning of this section, but other highlights from that post are: the use of addictive gambling mechanics such the Wheel of Fortune, and the dazzling calls to action in the new mini-game.

something that The Arcana supporters forget (or choose to ignore) is the fact that for a long, long time the game did not have the mini-game or the log-in rewards for coins. Players depended only on the gambling of the WoF or paying absurd amounts of money for the new chapters.

the devs went from playing the victims who were unable of controlling prices to (as spoken of in the link from mysticmicrotransactions) saying the making of the game (a pathetic little app game backed by a studio and a kickstarter) justifies the prices

they also gave people false hope about maybe changing the prices in the future, all while bleeding money from loyal players in “micro” transactions

the arcana literally added a $99.99 coins option on their latest update

in case it hasn’t sunk in yet: you can pay a hundred dollars upfront to the arcana, and you still will not have access to the whole game

there is no defense to this

none

“it’s free stop whining” let me explain:

“spend months on end accumulating fake currency or pay hundreds of dollars up-front to be able to play” is a scummy business model no matter how you look at it

if i can spend $60 upfront to play an AAA game there’s no excuse to demand more than that for a game with much smaller and, honestly, inferior content

the combination of there being already far and few games featuring lgbt characters and characters of color AND the little cult of personality set up by Dana and Elle makes people feel that spending money to support them is an acceptable expense.

it’s not

manipulating people into spending ridiculous amounts of money and then claiming “it’s their choice” is just scummy business, baby, and thats all the arcana does

the devs are brats who instead of admitting $500 is absurd for a game instead write petty little caricatures into their game - like, lbr: dana, elle, if i could afford diamonds in my hair i wouldn’t have even bothered with your shitstain of a game

despite bragging that ppl would get the full story w/o needing to pay, the paid scenes are pretty much required - the first few books of julian’s route have no romance without accessing any of the paid options. you dont even get so much as a kiss in without handing coins over. many, many people were baffled when julian had a teary break-up scene when from their perspective they hadn’t even started building a relationship.

wow that’s more than i ever thought it’d be

and i’ve been aware of their bullshit for near a whole year now!

i don’t have much of a note to end this on, other than: the arcana just isn’t even that good. it suffers from weak writing, pathetic character development and above all actually harmful content. do not try to argue with me on any of these points unless you’ve read all of that, because whatever you have to say i’ve likely mentioned before. if you still are that determined to yell at a me on the internet, please preface your argument with the phrase “I’m a pee pee poo poo man” so I know you’ve read everything in here. thank you!

[goneontherun]

some brief thoughts from nearly a month of quarantine:

in this interview, sally rooney talks about “meeting characters at different places” and the need to meet them in these sorts of different situations to understand or explore what’s at stake in their relationship and how these situations change how they relate to one another etc. she also talks about being interested not in the individual as a unit, but as how they exist within relationships, i.e. connor and marianne in normal people. 

i’ve been thinking a lot about how i start writing, in the sense of trying to be conscious of my own process. and how that is affected by my own beliefs and interests and influences. the theory or books i read. the places i’ve lived etc. i find myself writing a lot about characters who want to leave, or who leave. this act of leaving is sometimes a choice and conscious decision. sometimes it’s temporary and other times they never come back. i used to be preoccupied with the past (throwback especially to around 2016), but now i find myself more interested in the present. a lot of what i’m working on these days centers on the relationship between nature and individuals. this is somewhat predictable, given what my undergrad diss was about, but i don’t find myself drawn to spectulative fiction, or in a deliberately ecocritical fashion. i’m not keen on climate grief or representing the anthopocene in descriptive terms within my work. i’m curious about how nature presents different situations for characters -- for people -- to renegotiate and work through their relationships to self and to others. the kinds of conversations and relationships i’ve had while hiking and running have been so unlike any others -- at once deep and transient. there’s nothing quite like sharing a trail with someone else. there’s also nothing like being alone in nature. 

being prematurely home after nearly five years abroad has left me with a lot of questions about how i’ve lived and how i’ve emerged from it. i feel changed. i’m sure, most of the time, that i have. one youtuber i was watching the other day spoke about how when you go abroad, and everything that is possible is put in front of you, you find out through your choices (what to keep, what to pursue, what to cull, what to obsess over) the kind of person you really are. sometimes i’m worried that i’ve lost the drive i used to have in high school -- jl and i talked about it that night in lyon. i’m happier now, for sure. i used to be so good at pretending to like the things i didn’t. sometimes i’m worried i’m not doing enough for myself and am wasting my potential. i feel my old self coming back from the grave. most other times i tell myself not to be such a neoliberal subject and to stop being complicit in perpetuating the idea that you need to be defined by your work and how hard you hustle. that i have to (as i thought in high school) to work myself punishingly hard in order to feel that i have any sort of self-worth. in another interview i just listened to, the writer being interviewed says that she knows she has to have a job and make money to support her art. she accepts that as a fact, but she doesn’t define herself on those terms. so she doesn’t talk about it. it’s another way of thinking about what i’ve believed for a long time now -- that life expands beyond work, so my intellectual interests and my hobbies don’t have to line up with whatever i will do to survive capitalism. 

[mewmewtwo]

To come: On Ai as the Cataylst

I can happily say that my spectulation of Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution being based on the English version appears to be wrong. After reviewing the updates at Dogasu’s Backpack since my last writing, it appears this remake is being quite true to the original. Thus far, with the exception of a few structural differences in sentences, everything has been the same in the dialogue. We also have the talented Sachiko Kobayashi returning to once again sing the ending theme “Kaze to Issho ni” (”Together with the Wind”). I am truly excited about this remake. I’m sure you have watched the newest trailer by now, but if not, you may view it here. Anyway, as this remake has created a new spark in interest for me discussing Mew and Mewtwo, I have decided I will be writing an analysis I never got around to doing when this blog was popular: exploring Ai as the catalyst in Mewtwo’s life.  And just for the hell of it, would anyone be interested in me doing a biopsychosocial assessment on Mewtwo? I do these all of the time for work. And I’m currently in my advanced year of social work school, and my professor said I need to do a biopsychosocial assessment on any fictional character (I chose Jenny from “Forrest Gump”). But I do think this is an interesting, fun idea, so let me know if you’d like me to do one on Mewtwo!

[mcwhatt]

Spectulative Fiction and Sofonisba

Tonight I attended the last meeting in a Zoom series about secular speculative fiction and its use in envisioning a better, more progressive future. In this final meeting we discussed a story in which--among other evolutions and revolutions--capitalism and assault have more or less ended, and people are no longer afraid of or barred from using their voices to speak up for themselves and their values.

As part of unpacking this idealized and unfortunately difficult-to-imagine society, we discussed intermediate steps--what we would need to do to get from our uncertain social atmosphere today to a point at which we can say “yes, our protesting and persistence was worth the struggle.”

A lot of these steps are challenging and require concerted effort towards unlearning prejudice, dismantling oppressive systems, and uplifting people. However, discussing progress toward the future reminded me of a painting in the National Gallery of Ireland by female Renaissance artist Sofonisba Anguissola, which represents an inadvertent social step forward. The painting was the first painting by a woman to be purchased by the gallery, and the displaying of Sofonisba’s work in a respectable space is a form of social progress in that it promotes the presence and achievements of oft-overshadowed female talent. (Or, at least, that could be considered considerable progress in the 1860s when the painting was acquired)

(continued below this fabulous photo)

But, apparently, the National Gallery of Ireland acquired the painting without knowing it was by Sofonisba. At the time, the work was attributed to male painter Alonso Sanchez Coello. Does this take the progressive/social importance out of its acquisition? 

I find it interesting that this step towards showing more historical art by women--of recognizing the place of female artists in history--was taken unintentionally. Whimsically (and probably too idealistically-passively), I enjoy the idea that this step was taken as if by chance, as if the world recognized it was time to display the achievements of women in art. Social progress certainly cannot happen without conscious effort, yet I appreciate that a step toward the future simply, silently, came about and drove us ever so slightly forward.

[violetren]

Transistor Chapter 10

The two of them, or three of them, or fifty trillion of them, however you wanted to count, got out of the car and headed into the Walgreens while the Guardian Angels watched the sky.

I am going to go with "the fifty trillion of them" thank you. The potential mind fuck that would be for anyone without context gives me the fizzy brain feeling.

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