Because I know tumblr likes pictures, and while I definitely want to update this at some point, it absolutely works for now (EDIT: Also the photos are half mine [second one on the top row, all but the hands on the bottom] and half from Unsplash - the update I want to do is to make all of them mine)

ARGENTUM IN AQUA (Blood on the Snow, Silver in the Ashes, Fire in the Sky) All student magician Jonathan Fest wants is to keep his head down and finish out his first year of university without failing his exams too badly. Unfortunately for him, fate and the two secret societies warring in the shadows of the city have other plans.

Enter stage left Archer, a gentleman scholar with a past a good deal more chequered than his present would suggest; Sabbat, a thief and assassin whose loyalty to the few people he counts as friends is as unshakeable as his temper is fiery; and Viola, lady's maid, bodyguard, and surrogate big sister to the only daughter of the most famous family of magicians in Sacaan. Thrown together by a series of unexplained events, the four magicians soon find themselves facing down a cunning adversary and an escalation in the shadow war which could spell disaster not just for them, but for the city as a whole. Penny dreadfuls, it turns out, are a lot less fun when you're in one. Argentum in Aqua is an ongoing LGBTQ+ gaslamp fantasy serial which you can read for free over at my site: saranadosfiction.com

Content warnings: Contains a fairly large amount of swearing and, given several of the cast are vampires, non-trivial amounts of blood/upchucking (though more Gentleman Bastards/Six of Crows levels than First Law), as well as some stuff around addiction, mentioned suicide and self-harm (as a ‘you won’t get the satisfaction if I take control of my own ending’ response), PTSD and mental illness.

…Lizzy

#this is so freaking funny (itspileofgoodthings)

#adaptations really do often underplay how much#pride and prejudice#darcy’s ‘unexpected’ proposal#is basically the ‘did you just flirt with me’ ‘have been for the past [few months] but thanks for noticing’ meme#like this scene#or the one where Lizzy and him are ALONE in the Collins’ house talking about women marrying and moving far from home#& he’s trying to suss out whether she’d be cool with marrying him and living far away from her own home#and she is like ‘well obviously it’s fine if you have enough money to afford the travel’ and he’s like ‘oh?!? and uhhh…#you’re not super attached to your home yourself are you? like you’d be fine with not constantly visiting [your weird embarrassing family]?’#SHE IS SO CLUELESS

This is why I always say that Pride & Prejudice is not Enemies To Lovers.

Elizabeth is in a one-sided-enemies to lovers story. The book from Elizabeth’s point of view: Darcy: [compliments her] Elizabeth: This man is insulting me. Darcy: [gets up his nerve and asks her to dance after she makes a big deal of liking dancing] Elizabeth: He is trying to make me feel uncomfortable! Darcy: [tries to make conversation about something he thinks she is interested in] Elizabeth: I’m not sure what his angle is, but it must be awful since he said that one unflattering thing about me to his friend in a conversation I eavesdropped on! And also, hot!George says he’s an ass, so clearly him being nice to me must be nefarious!!!

Darcy, meanwhile, is over here in all his awkwardness thinking he’s doing a really good job of flirting with the girl he likes. He’s doing so well. It’s actually working! At first it seemed too good to be true, but she’s saying all the right things! She’s telling him how to meet up with her so they can spend time together! She’s putting up with his awful aunt and still lets him visit her despite all of that! He’s done it! He’s got the girl! He’s planning their wedding because he’s getting an A in romance, you guys.

Awake, Again

Three, Two, One, Dead. My morph shut down, and my ego downloaded to VR before I had a chance to lose the feeling in my fingers. I've always hated the feeling of having the body shut down around me, so I've mastered the timing of hitting the metaphorical eject switch just in time to avoid it. An hour in transit passed in VR like a week of holiday, and I woke up on Plato station, on a free trade orbital somewhere close to Saturn. A brief feeling like your essence being sucked through an hourglass, a synesthesic splash of the taste of yellow and the sound cinnamon makes, and I was back incarnate again.

Waking up on Plato was - as going from any orbital to another is - something like waking up in a parallel universe. I entered the same facility I entered a hundred million miles away - identical to the millimetre - but from a dozen centimetres further up, as my new morph was a little taller than the previous one. Not exactly a dizzying change in perspective, but my bones moved differently, my senses caught new things, and slightly differently calibrated eyeware popped reds and blacks strangely. The doors from the facility led out to a mix of the familiar and the strange, brands that stretched over the system next to local options I'd never see again, mixed with francises selling the same food under new names, and old names licensed for new purposes. I picked a coffee shop and attempted to double-caff my way to understanding.

The second sunrise of waking juice was just hitting my brand new bloodstream when I noticed the large screen mounted above the concourse of the commercial way I'd woken up on. It switched from a local new broadcast to the episode currently in progress, and a series of virtual actors and sets appeared midway though what appeared to be an argument that had been in progress for a year or more. It took me longer than I care to admit to realise that not only was this an episode of Twilight's Eden, but one I'd been watching in VR the subjective day before. It was ruinously expensive to send video across the Feed, and so almost all media but the biggest of blockbuster movies were sent as scripts to be interpreted by the local media UAI. Every sector therefore had their own local constellation of stars and background actors, their own version of locations and sets. The words remained the same, the stories could be followed, and it was even interesting to see different interpretations of the same character by MediaAI across the solar system.

I stopped watching. Twilight Eden was comforting, but it was going to take a while to get used to the new cast. I wondered if I could get a copy of the Ultima Station cast and sets, and play the scripts in that locally, but my data budget didn't stretch that far, and I didn't know if they'd keep backups.

My coffee finished, I merged back into the walking crowd towards the dead-drop where my contact's information was supposed to be. Alas, promises to keep, and lightyears before sleep.

--

(The Parables of the Lost Voyage are a short series of fiction pieces exploring the world around an Eclipse Phase campaign I’m planning)

Reblog with where you're from (USAmericans if you're willing to specify state too that would be great)

I need to know if my suffering is just because my school district hates students or if it's a common thing

Eupalette mermaid

You know what’s some crazy $hit?

This fabulous bitch

She makes a shit ton of poses (like 16,000 or some crazy nonsense).  I used this lovely lady to draw so much as a teen.  Whether it was some nerdy pose for my Mary Sue as fuck OCs

or for full on fight sequences

or for tragic deaths of my OCs in the arms of a totally OOC main protagonist.  

this bitch hooked me up.  

And with the wildest, craziest stuff that you could see in your head but had no way or resources to reasonably draw like

or this

or this

DUDE!  INASNE SHIT!!  So I was using her for a pose reference and decided, you know what, I owe this bitch some cash.  Lemme dole it out for her.  BUT then, I looked and saw she only has 286 fucking patrons!!  This chick gives out free shit and spends countless hours arranging these shoots and setting this stuff up.  

I’ll fork up the cash, SenshiStock.  You’re worth it.  

Check out this amazing woman’s stuff, and get knowledged:  https://www.deviantart.com/senshistock

I have been following her for years on deviantart.

Highly reccomend checking her out. She’s the best. If I had any money to throw I’d throw it at her for providing such a big help in my life.

This hero doesn’t wear capes, she instead wears (and looks utterly flawless) in tank tops(?)

Interrupting my regular Star Wars BS to reblog this because @senshistock is amazing and beyond worth the follow and support!  I first started using her refs gosh I want to say back in maybe 2008, and I’m happy to be a supporter of her over on Patreon.  If you’re an artist please go find her stuff on all the platforms, you will not regret it!

Yessss, she is so awesome! Been following her for years. My favorite stock artist is jademacalla, who is, incidentally, in the last two images above. He has a lot of great angles, costumes, gear, etc! I love his hands, too.

rb to save an artists life

Just so everyone knows, she recently stopped using the name SenshiStock and switched to AdorkaStock! All her links and socials have switched to that. Also she has a TikTok of her doing the poses live, which is stupid useful because you can pause it at any point in the pose for just the right reference.

…and she’s on here!

@adorkastock

While we’re at it, let’s pile on

@null-entity

@jookpubstock

@theposearchives

A Bird in the Hand

Monster Researcher Eclair (and Andie) study the Steppes clan Centaurs and Mountain Harpies.

The children are learning about the US Civil War. I can’t say it’s going well. (On the bright side, they’re very clear about slavery. We’re solid on that front. It’s the actual war we’re having trouble with.)

“Ms. T, why would his parents name him that?”

I frantically flip through the possible Civil War leaders they could be referencing. “… Well, you know how Stonewall got his nickname, and we’ve talked about Tecumseh, so there’s Sherman, and -”

“No, not them.” They roll their eyes at my ignorance, then pivot back to the point at hand. “That other guy. Useless.” As this describes a number of Civil War leaders, I blink uncomprehendingly at her. “You know, Ms. T, Useless. Useless Grant.”

“Um. … Well -”

Another child raises their hand. “Ms. T, I don’t understand number three.”

Number three is a question about the Battle of Bull Run, asking for explanations about a Confederate victory despite Union advantages. “What paragraph are you looking in?” I ask in a monotone, because I’ve been fielding this question all day.

The student points at the correct paragraph, even focuses in on the quote about Jackson holding off a Union advance. “It says Jackson and the men ‘screamed like furries,’ Ms. T, but why would that help?”

I cough. I cover my mouth with both hands. “That’s ‘furies,’ sweetie,” I inform them, still wheezing. “Like they’re insane with anger,” I elaborate, deciding to skip describing actual furies at this point in time. “Not … not like furries.”

So, here’s how the war is going, one week in: Useless Grant has been made general of the Union forces, but a bunch of furries are preventing him from gaining much ground.

Teaching is more interesting than I ever thought

see also, why teaching kids to read needs to include teaching them both phonics and the use of dictionaries

Lemon🍋😛

Some fanart of this ancient figurine! Also got commissioned to draw her hanging out with a friend!

sorry i cant hang out i forgot how to mimic human like behaviour

I mean if you wanna just loom in the corner like some kinda creature that's cool, we just don't want you getting left out

Potoo says A

Me when I have a dry throat or perhaps a cold

jim henson is loose again

helen “trans people are perpetuating gender steriotypes” joyce is now upset that the scientific american is writing about how women were hunters too back in the day, not just mothers and caretakers. feminist win!

I think I found the article!

Read it if you have the time, it's very interesting.

Reading the article I see why TERFs are mad about it; it explicitly makes the distinction between gender as a social entity and sex as a biological category, and defines biological sex having multiple factors, both of which are anathema to TERF philosophy.

It also includes these fascinating paragraphs about the role of estrogen in different types of physical activity, directly debunking the widespread notion that estrogen is the weak human's hormone and only does weak human things:

The article also talks about sexual dimorphism in different species, concluding that "Modern humans have low sexual dimorphism compared with the other great apes," and that overemphasis on averages obscures the wide dispersal of individual traits, which is what I keep saying.

Hey btw, here's a piece of life advice:

If you know what you'd have to do to solve a problem, but you just don't want to do it, your main problem isn't the problem itself. Your problem is figuring out how to get yourself to do the solution.

If your problem is not eating enough vegetables, the problem you should be solving is "how do I make vegetables stop being yucky". If your problem is not getting enough exercise, the problem you should be solving is "how do I make exercise stop sucking ass". You're not supposed to just be doing things that are awful and suck all the time forever, you're supposed to figure out how to make it stop being so awful all the time.

I used to hate wearing sunscreen because it's sticky and slimy and disgusting and it feels bad and it smells bad, so I neglected to wear it even if I needed to. Then I found one that isn't like that, and doesn't smell and feel gross. Problem solved.

There is no correct way to live that's just supposed to suck and feel bad all the time. You're allowed to figure out how to make it not suck so bad.