“Authors can’t use it in fantasy fiction, eh? We’ll see about that…”
–Terry Pratchett, probably
Try to implement anything but a conservative’s sixth grade education level of medieval or Victorian times and you will butt into this. all. the. time.
There was a literaly fad in the 1890′s for nipple rings for all genders(and NO, it was NOT under the mistaken belief that it would help breastfeeding–there’s LOTS of doctors’ writing at the time telling people to STOP and that they thought it would ruin the breast’s ability to breastfeed well, etc). It was straight up because the Victorians were freaks, okay Imagine trying to make a Victorian character with nipple rings. IMAGINE THE ACCUSATIONS OF GROSS HISTORICAL INACCURACY
people just really, REALLY have entrenched ideas of what people in the past were like
tell them the vikings were clean, had a complex democratic legal system, respected women, had freeform rap battles, and had child support payments? theyd call you a liar
tell them that chopsticks became popular in china during the bronze age because street food vendors were all the rage and they wanted to have disposable eating utensils? theyll say youre making that up
tell them native americans had a trade network stretching from canada to peru and built sacred mounds bigger then the pyramids of giza? you are some SJW twisting facts
ancient egypt had circular saws, debt cards, and eye surgery? are you high?
our misconception of medieval peasants being illiterate and living in poverty in one room mud huts being their own creation as part of a century long tax aversion scam? you stole that from the game of thrones reject bin
iron age india had stone telescopes, air conditioning, and the number 0 along with all ‘arabic’ numbers including algebra and calculus? i understand some of those words.
romans had accurate maps detailing vacation travel times along with a star rating for hotels along the way, fast food restaurants, swiss army knives, black soldiers in brittany, traded with china, and that soldiers wrote thank-you notes when their parents sent them underwear in the mail? but they thought the earth was flat!
ancient bronze age mesopotamia had pedantic complaints sent to merchants about crappy goods, comedic performances, and transgender/nobinary representation? what are you smoking?
me, the first palaeontologist to dig up a triceratops skull, whispering softly: what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuckkkk
fun fact: modern paleontologists and archaeologists have pointed to some greek vase art of mythological monsters as being evidence that the greeks dug up dinosaur skulls and were like “what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuckkkk”
and then they did the Greek Thing and painted naked men fighting the monster
or, well, a deeply flawed representation of what they imagined the fossil had looked like while alive, an early form of paleoart.
but sometimes they also just. drew the skull and slapped a black blob monster onto it? anyway i love the greeks.
Archaeologists in the Burnt City have discovered what appears to be an ancient prosthetic eye. What makes this discovery exceptionally awesome is the striking description of how the owner and her false eye would have appeared while she was still alive and blinking:
[The eye] has a hemispherical form and a diameter of just over 2.5 cm (1 inch). It consists of very light material, probably bitumen paste. The surface of the artificial eye is covered with a thin layer of gold, engraved with a central circle (representing the iris) and gold lines patterned like sun rays. The female remains found with the artificial eye was 1.82 m tall (6 feet), much taller than ordinary women of her time. On both sides of the eye are drilled tiny holes, through which a golden thread could hold the eyeball in place. Since microscopic research has shown that the eye socket showed clear imprints of the golden thread, the eyeball must have been worn during her lifetime. The woman’s skeleton has been dated to between 2900 and 2800 BCE.
So she was an extraordinarily tall woman walking around wearing an engraved golden eye patterned with rays like a tiny sun. What an awesome sight that must have been.
CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW AN ANCIENT CRAFTSMAN WAS PRESENTED WITH PEOPLE LOOKING FOR HELP TO NORMALIZE THEIR DISABILITY. AND THEN SAID ‘NAH FUCK THIS WE’RE GOING TO
Daily reminder that I have a discord channel, a mastodon account and an AO3 account all linked up in my profile. Discord and Mastodon are new to me, but if you want to check them out, I am there
Basically what I’m saying is “thing that moves like a distorted gif, but in meatspace” works much better than “thing with tons of tentacles” as a visual representation of cosmic horror, IMHO.
Nowadays, sure, but human depictions of cosmic ineffability are always informed by time and place. In the early days of deep-sea exploration, “thing with tons of tentacles” was the very pinnacle of “holy shit what is that”; it’s just that the symbol has aged in a way that the substance has not.
CEPHALOPODS IN 1918: horrors from the unknowable depths of blackness only made only the more horrific by animate motions suggesting a flicker of intelligence within their shapeless, fleshy coils
CEPHALOPODS IN 2018: squashy frends 🐙😍
The Uncanny Valley migrates …
1918
:
CEPHALOPODS
2018
:
CEPHALOPODS
Four cats and a racoon. There was another critter. May have been a cat. Maybe. But I don’t think cats’ eyes usually shine that color of blue.
In response to the NSFW ban being enacted by Tumblr Staff, on December 17th 2018 I propose that we all log off of our Tumblr accounts for 24 hours.
The lack of respect and communication between staff and users is stark. Users have been begging staff to delete the porn bot outbreak, which has plagued the website for well over a year. The porn bots oftentimes send people asks and messages, trying to get them to go to a website full of viruses. They also spam advertisements on others posts.
Users have also begged that Tumblr ban neo-nazis, child porn, and pedophiles, all which run rampant on the site. The site/app got so bad that it was taken off the app store.
However, instead of answering the users, Tumblr has instead taken the liberty to ban all NSFW content, regardless of age. But users have already run into issues of their SFW content being marked as sensitive and being flagged as NSFW, not allowing them to share their work.
Not only does this discriminate again content creators, but it also discriminates against sex workers. Disgustingly, the ban will be enacted on December 17 which is also International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.
This ban is disgusting, and while I (and plenty of others) welcome porn bots and child porn being banned, the Tumblr filtration system is broken. It tags artistic work’s nipples as NSFW (when it is art), it tags SFW art as NSFW (when it is not), and does not stop the porn bots, neo-nazis and dozens of other issues.
This ban is discriminatory. This ban is ineffective. This ban is unacceptable.
To protest, log off of your Tumblr account for the entirety of November 17th. Log off at 12 am EST or 9PM PST and stay off for 24 hours. Don’t post. Don’t log on. Don’t even visit the website. Don’t give them that sweet ad revenue.
Tumblr’s stock has already taken a hard hit. Let’s make it tank. Maybe then they will listen to the users.
If
you want to get super fancy, do a second ring on the outside of 4’ tall
sunflowers then a third outer ring of the 1’ tall teddy bear
sunflowers. If there are any gaps you can interplant with cosmos,
amaranth and nasturtiums or (if there are huge gaps) gourds.
My mom used to do this for me in the backyard as a kid- it really works and I always loved it! Spent so many summer days having tea parties with teddy bears in my sunflower house.
The elementary school I went to had a similar setup except with lilac bushes – it had an open space in the middle and little enclaves here and there that were the right size for a group of three or four kids (a lot of the girls liked to play with My Little Ponies in there). It was beautiful and smelled amazing.
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