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literary-illuminati · 3 months

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2024 Book Review #6 – Exordia by Seth Dickinson

This is a book I have been looking forward to for quite literally years, from someone who is easily one of my favourite working authors. I also read the short story the book was expanded out from before I even knew it was going to be a book, and so went in spoiled on the broad strokes of what turned out to be the climax of the whole thing. All to say my opinion on this is unlikely to match that of the typical reader, I guess.

Anyway, Exordia is a glorious spectacular mess that has no right to cohere anywhere near as well as it does. It’s target audience is small, but I’m certainly somewhere in it. Please ignore all the marketing it’s so bad you have to wonder if someone at Tor just has it out for the author.

Exordia is a, well, a profoundly difficult book to give any sort of plot summary for. The first act involves Anna, a 30-something survivor of the Anfal Genocide now living a rather unimpressive life in New York City, until one day in the early 2010s she sees an alien eating the turtles in Central Park. Then there’s a cat-and-mouse hunt between terrifying alien snake-centaurs for the future of free will in the galaxy, and the plot jumping to kurdistan, and six more POV characters from as many different nations, and nuclear weapons, and oh so many people dying messily. The first act is an oddly domestic and endearing piece of table setting, the second is (to borrow the idiom of the book’s own marketing) Tom Clancy meets Jeff Vandermeer or Roadside Picnic, and the third is basically impossible to describe without a multipage synopsis, but mostly concerned with ethical dilemmas and moral injuries. It’s to the book’s credit that it never bats an eye at shifting focus and scale, but it does make coming to grips with it difficult.

This is, as they say, a thematically dense book, but it’s especially interested in the fallout of imperialism. The Obama-era ‘don’t do stupid shit’ precise and sterile form of it in particular – the book’s a period piece for a reason, after all. The ethics of complicity – of being offered the choice of murdering and betraying those around you or having an alien power with vastly superior destructive powers inflict an order of magnitude more misery to you, them, and everyone in the same general vicinity to punish you for the inconvenience – is one that gets a lot of wordcount. It is not an accident that the man most willing and able to collaborate with the overwhelming powerful alien empire in hopes of bargaining some future for humanity is the National Security Council ghoul who came out of organizing surveillance information for the drone wars. It’s also not a coincidence that the main (if only by a hair) protagonist is someone with a lot of bitter memories over how the US encouraged Iraq’s kurdish population to rebel in the ‘90s and then just washed their hands and let them be massacred (the book couldn’t actually ship with a historical primer on modern kurdish history, so it’s woven into the story in chunks with varying amount of grace. But it is in fact pretty thematically key here).

Speaking of complicity, the book’s other overriding preoccupation in (in the broadest sense) Trolley Problems. Is it better to directly kill a small number of people or, through your inaction, allow a larger number to die? Does it matter is the small number is your countrymen and the larger foreigners, or vice versa? What about humans and aliens? Does it matter whether the choice is submitting to subjugation or killing innocents as a means to resist it? What about letting people around you die to learn the fundamental truth of the cosmos? Does the calculus change when you learn that immortal souls (and hell) are real? This is the bone the story is really built around chewing on.

All that probably makes the text seem incredibly didactic, or at least like a philosophical dialogue disguised as a novel. Which really isn’t the case! The book definitely has opinions, but none of the characters are clear author-avatars, and all perspectives are given enough time and weight to come across as seriously considered and not just as cardboard cutouts to jeer at. Okay, with the exception of one of the two aliens who you get the very strong sense is hamming it up as a cartoon villain just for the of it (he spends much of the book speaking entirely in all caps). There definitely are a couple points where it feels like the books turning and lecturing directly at the reader, but they’re both few and fairly short.

The characters themselves are interesting. They’re all very flawed, but more than that they’re all very...embodied, I guess? Distracted with how hot someone is, concerned with what they ate that morning or the smell of something disgusting, still not over an ex from years ago. Several of them are also sincerely religious in a way that’s very true to life to actual people but you rarely see in books. The result is that basically comes as being far more like actual humans than I’m at all used to in most fiction (of course, a lot of those very human qualities get annoying or eye-roll inducing fairly quickly. But hey, that’s life). Though that’s all mostly the case at the start of the book – the fact that the main cast are slowly turning into caricatures of themselves as they’re exposed to the alien soul manipulation technology is actually a major plot point, which I’m like fifty/fifty on being commentary on what happens to the image and legacy of people as they’re caught up in grand narratives versus just being extended setup for a joke about male leads in technothrillers being fanfic shipbait.

Part of the characters seeming very human is that some (though by no means all) of the POVs are just incredibly funny, in that objectively fucked up and tasteless way that people get when coping with overwhelming shock or trauma. It’s specifically because the jokes are so in-your-face awful that they fit, I think? It manages to avoid the usual bathetic trap a lot of works mixing in humour with drama fall into, anyway.

Speaking of alien soul manipulation technology – okay, you know how above I said that the points where the book directly lectured the reader were few and far between. This is true for lectures about politics or morality. All the freed up space in this 530 page tome is instead used for technobabble about theoretical math. Also cellular biology, cryptography, entropics, the organization of the American security state, how black holes work, and a few dozen other things. This book was edited for accuracy by either a doctoral student from every physical science and an award winning mathematician, or else just by one spectacularly confident bullshitter with several hundred hours on wikipedia. Probably both, really. I did very much enjoy this book, but that is absolutely predicated on the fact that when I knew when to let my eyes glaze over and start skimming past the proper nouns.

The book has a fairly complete narrative arc in its own right, but the ending also screams out for a sequel, and quite a lot of the weight and meaning of the book’s climax does depend on followthrough and resolution in some future sequel. Problematically, the end of the book also includes a massive increase in scale, and any sequel would require a whole new setting and most of a new cast of characters, so I’m mildly worried how long it will be before we get it (if ever).

The book is also just very...I’m not sure flabby is the right word, but it is doing many many different things, and I found some of them far more interesting than others. I’m not sure whether Dickinson just isn’t great at extended action scenes or if I am just universally bored by drawn out Tom Clancy fantasies, but either way there were several dozen pages too many of them. The extended cultural digressions about the upbringing and backstories of each of the seven POVs were meanwhile very interesting! (Mostly, I got bored of the whole Erik-Clayton-Rosamaria love triangle Madonna complex thing about a tenth of the way into the book but it just kept going.) It did however leave the book very full of extended tangents and digressions, even beyond what the technobabble did. Anna herself, ostensibly the main protagonist, is both utterly thematically loadbearing but very often feels entirely vestigial to the actual, like, plot, brought along for the ride because she’s an alien terrorist’s favourite of our whole species of incest-monkeys. The end result is, if not necessarily unfocused, then at least incredibly messy, flitting back and forth across a dozen topics that on occasion mostly just seem unified by having caught the author’s interest as they wrote.

It’s interesting to compare the book to Anna Saves It All, the short story it was based on – quite a lot changed! But that’s beyond the scope of this already overlong review. So I guess I’ll just say make sure to read the book first, if you’re going to.

#book review #exordia #seth dickinson #lesbian space atrocities #sff

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rotationalsymmetry · 5 months

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The social model of disability is incomplete on its own -- it was never intended to completely explain disability. But it is also really important to give the concept time to sink in if it's new to you I think.

Twenty story buildings have elevators. Because most people aren't up for walking up twenty flights of stairs on the regular. But most people ARE up for walking up one or two flights, so one to two story buildings only have stairs. If everybody could climb 20 stories easily, or teleport or something, 20 story buildings wouldn't have elevators and anyone who couldn't would be screwed.

(I'm expressing this in terms of "most people", but it's less a majority/minority thing and more some people are seen as normal and some aren't. Most people don't have any one specific disability at any given time. But everybody spends some part of their life disabled. We were all born incontinent.)

I have an ongoing daydream scenario involving aliens. These aliens happen to be sort of centaur shaped (ok, probably sort of Andalite shaped, whatever.) They don't do stairs, at all. So their society just doesn't have any. At all. And they can't access places that require stairs in ours -- someone who is not disabled by their standards is by human standards.

But the reverse is also true. My made up aliens have sort of built in texting (you can think of it as telepathy if you prefer) and it's just normal to be able to communicate vocally and by text, either in broadcast mode or one to one, at the same time, and their media often relies on multiple channels to convey information. Humans don't really do that. A human who's fully abled by normal human standards is cut out of a lot of this alien society's culture in a way that's somewhat similar to being blind or deaf or maybe just colorblind in human society.

Anyways, I find the sci fi thought experiments helpful but you don't gotta do it that way. You can also look at history, or compare across cultures. In the modern day, being unable to read is a significant disability. It'll mess with your ability to get a job, to navigate cities, to drive, to date, to enjoy a lot of media, all sorts of things. But in say medieval Europe, it wouldn't be a disability, it would be normal. Most culture is passed along orally. Your local bar has a picture on its sign, not words. Your local church has stained glass windows specifically to help tell Bible stories without words (you're not going to get them from worship, that's happening in a language you don't speak, because reasons.)

You can look at animals. A hawk that can't fly is severely disabled. You've never flown a day in your life.

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stripa · 1 month

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Daan and Karin Romance Mod Alpha 1 (daarin_mod v0.1)

HUH??? SO THE DAARIN IS FINALLY REAL???

uh, yeah. apparently.

This is pretty bare bones, but I was proud enough to release it, in case some of you guys want to go through all the dialogue I made. Took me a while, there are many different options to chat with Daan :)

I feel like I am pretty satisfied with PRHVL Bop. I may add some touch-ups here and there, but It's pretty much done.

Beware, you can still compliment Daan's hair as any character, but only Karin will be able to start a conversation with him, almost as If he's only interested in her! :O

I spiced it up by including some lore about her! I plan to expand the lore of both characters since like with Marina, Levi and O'saa, I feel they are the characters that have most depth, and It would be awesome to add even more to them. Source for the lore is the "Trivia" section in the wiki: https://fearandhunger.wiki.gg/wiki/Karin

(I'll probably change this dialogue to include the fact it's oversized, could get some cool dialogue out of that.)

So yeah, enjoy Daarin gang, as I deploy this Holy Friday's gift upon you. Next week school starts again, so expect mod development to reaaaally slow down. I need to focus on my studies. Sorry. At least you have this.

DOWNLOADS:

They are both the same file. Just decided It would be wise to have two links in case one goes down. Media preservation!

Installation is explained on the readme text file. Just drag and drop onto the root folder of Funger 2 basically.

I recommend 7zip to unzip the file, but I think WinRAR should work as well.

By the way, I have a YouTube channel, yesterday I uploaded a video of me killing Centaur with only Karin and Daan! Check it out here:

youtube

Take care, and thanks for the support! If you notice corny/unbelievable dialogue, let me know here so I may make it more appropriate.

#daarin #karin x daan #fear & hunger termina #fear and hunger 2: termina #fear & hunger 2: termina #fear and hunger termina #modding #rpg maker mv #romance mods #shipping #Youtube

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theartingace · 1 year

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kind of a weird question, but... how do you figure out the proportions for your centaurs? I've been trying to draw a centaur OC of mine but every time i try the human body looks like a weird size in comparison to the horse body...

@snamorta asked:

Question! Do you have any advice on how to draw Centaurs? I've recently fallen in love with them but I'm having a hard time drawing one. Thank you, and I absolutely adore your art!

Grouping these together because without getting into specifics of drawing the hardest parts of both a human body and a horse and then smashing them together.. the hardest part of making a centaur look right -is- the proportion!

I also have a hard time consistently nailing the proportion of human to horse halves, and even now frequently have to lasso and shrink the human torso early in the drawing process! So if you're drawing digitally, don't be afraid to really chop up and rearrange your drawing early on until it feels right! But if you're working traditional or still having trouble visualizing them- hopefully this helps!

For guides on how to draw all the various bodyparts in more detail, I highly recommend The Etherington Brothers and their 'How to Think When you Draw' guides, I really like the way they break down shapes and structures of all kinds of subjects! Including horses and human upper bodies! They do a better job than I ever could showing how I think about anatomy and shapes, ect.

Basically a more detailed text/image described version of the infographic below the readmore!

Overall the best way to maintain general proportions for centaurs is to make a right angle over the withers/hip region and see if each arm of the angle is roughly even in length! Another way to check is to check the height of the human hip, it should fall very roughly about 2/5ths of the total height of the centaur.

These are very rough approximations that I have figured out from my years of drawing centaurs, but playing around those figures will give you various types of centaurs! With pushing the human torso a little larger and making the horse legs a little shorter you will get an individual that feels pony-sized, and making the horse body and legs a little longer you can make something that feels more like a clydesdale!

One last way i often check to see if a sketch is feeling balanced early on is to picture the human torso with normal legs! If the hooves are falling right around where human feet would be, those are either some short legs or the horse body is too small! Generally for an average centaur the height will be a bit taller than a human of the same proportion! I hope that makes sense 😅

#asked and answered #centaurs #long post #it always gets out of hand #the centaur compendium #proportion #how to draw a centaur

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henry-fox-biggest-stan · 1 year

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My favorite parts from the songs of the percy jackson musical

- We’re halfbloods!!! Not gods but demi!!!

- I’M GOOD ENOUGH FOR SOMEONE (six schools in six years six schools in six years six schools in six years)

- The way The Minotaur / The Weirdest Dream is the same tune as Annabeth singing about Percy on In The Same Boat.

- Oh kid you have no idea about this place and your former mentor, I don’t have time to fill you in on the details but look, he’s also a centaur, god!😒

- But, hey! That’s life and life’s not fair!

- “Why, my brother and I arrived here just yesterday! May 1st … 1939! 😊”

- ‘cause you’re the two best friends this screw up ever had

- “Are we ever gonna once have it easy?” “Nop :)”

- Daddy doesn't love me and mommy is a god! Mommy can't protect me and daddy is a god! Mommy is too busy, and daddy is too busy, busy, busy, busy, busy being a god :(

- She can capture your heart I’m gonna ca-ca-ca-capture the flag🎤🎤

- “Grover, you’re a good friend” “aww … dude I’m your only friend.”

- So if you think you are a halfblood, better get headed to the exits now, ‘cause folks will think you're lying, better run and don't start crying 'cause you're monster chow! Or stick around and maybe you'll learn from me 😒 This ain't Odysseus' Odyssey, so hear me out, if you're so compeeelleed, but, nobody listens to me, they never listen, nobody listens to me, they never listen, oh!!!

- My mom raised me all on her lonesome, when I would reach out no one else would be there! Well I want my birthday cards and fishing trips, child support and homework tips 💃💃

- But I don't care where our parents may be, as long as you are here with me. We don't care where our parents may be, as long as you are here with me!! (Nico exploding them with his mind from the distance).

- Luke’s part on The Last Day of Summer.

- And I'll be back next summer, you'll see me again. I'll be back next summer, I'll survive 'til then.

- “My mom doesn't believe in war!” “Oh yeah? Then why does she keep texting my dad?”

- The last verse of Strong sang by both Percy and Sally

- The entire song “Pick a Side”

#pjo #percy jackson #tlt musical

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tuxedo-floracat · 1 year

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All 1/19/2023 Update Item Text Changes

for anyone curious about all the item description changes, here they all are! format is:

Item Name

Original Description

Updated Descrption

and all changes to the text are italicized!

List under the readmore ⬇

Eye of Talona

These deceitful harpies claim to be defectors of Talona, striking out to forge alliances with dragonkind. Little do many know that they are actually her most talented spies.

These deceitful harpies claim to be representatives of Talona, striking out to forge alliances with dragonkind. Little do many know that they are actually talented spies seeking to benefit from conflict.

Dragonfish

Named by beastclans for its greedy appetite and 'stupid face'.

Named by beastclans for its greedy appetite.

Shining Feather Cluster

These brilliant blue and green harpy feathers are often affixed to various pieces of beastclan weaponry to symbolize unity.

These brilliant blue and green harpy feathers are often affixed to various pieces of weaponry to symbolize unity.

Condor’s Breastplate

It was once uncommon for harpies to wear armor, but recent run-ins with dragonkind have seen them prepare for the worst.

It was once uncommon for harpies to wear armor, but trade with centaur herds facilitated by longneck brokers has enabled them access to bronze armor.

Historical Text

A long, storied history of the rise of the beastclans is scrawled on this parchment, written from the perspective of a serthis too young to fight.

A long, storied history of the rise of the Serthis is scrawled on this parchment, written from the perspective of a Serthis too young to fight.

Simple Raptorik Sash

A simple waist sash emblazoned with the united Beastclan sigil. The fabric is rough and primitive.

A simple waist sash emblazoned with the united Beastclan sigil. The fabric is worn from years of use.

Crystalcourt Ambassador

Of those that are granted audience with the Crystalcourt elite, the centaurs are especially lucky. Beastclans cavorting with affluent dragonic society is almost unheard of. (Rockbreaker's Ceremony 2018 Holiday Item

Of those that are granted audience with the Crystalcourt elite, the centaurs are among the few artisans from outside Earth's sway. (Rockbreaker's Ceremony 2018 Holiday Item)

Harpy Ancestor

An ancient ancestor to harpy-kind that has never known the breath of dragons.

An ancient ancestor to harpy-kind that has never known the sight of dragons.

Greenwing Razorclaw

This warrior's uncanny ability to mimic draconic speech allows it to repeat the battle cries of its foes.

This warrior's uncanny ability to mimic the speech of other species allows it to repeat the battle cries of its foes.

Stonewatch Prince

Males are a rarity among harpies, and are forbidden from taking up a warrior's mask.

Males are a rarity among harpies, and it is unusual to see one take up the warrior's mask.

Windcarve Fugitive

Some harpies prefer solitude to participation in the hierarchy of their warrior society.

Some harpies prefer solitude to the cacophony of the cities of large harpy flocks.

Masked Harpy

Harpies build their nests in many of the same locations where dragons make their lairs. Territory is highly contested.

Harpies build their nests in many of the same locations where dragons make their lairs.

Mesacliff Royal/Noble

Harpy royalty is based less on who establishes the most valuable treasures, and more about established families.

Harpy nobility is based less on who establishes the most valuable treasures, and more about established families.

Stormcloud Harpy

Willing to make the best of a bad situation, these Southern Icefield refugees use their spelled snow to cool the ground where they keep their homes.

Willing to make the best of a bad situation, these Southern Icefield immigrants use their spelled snow to cool the ground where they keep their homes.

Tengu

Tengu will attempt to confuse and lead the unwary dragon astray.

Tengu will attempt to confuse and lead the unwary traveler astray.

White Squirrel

This species of squirrel spends its life on the ground, perhaps because it can't jump.

This species of squirrel spends its life on the ground.

Antlers (all 3 are identical)

Nice rack, but they probably aren't natural.

An impressive set of antlers, but they probably aren't natural.

#flight rising

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foolishfoolsgold · 11 days

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Immune system go brr

A few designs I’ve done since I had this mutated brainchild back in October. I have others like eosinophil and dendritic but I wanna redraw them. I was still learning the way of the cell creature back then lol. Image IDs under the cut

[Start ID: The first image shows the AU design for U-1146. The background is white with a gray triangle pattern. He’s wearing his usual uniform, but he has a rounded, noseless snout, long ears without holes, and his one eye that is showing has black sclera and a round silver iris. His skin, turned cell membrane, is pure white with faint gray striped that resemble the markings of a raccoon. He has a tail with the same colors, it’s long, skinny, and has multiple lobes on it. Who on the very end, and a few dorsal lobes along its length. Again, like a raccoon, the tail has those faint stripes on it. He’s standing and staring at the viewer with his one visible eye, with his left hand in a fist, and the other gripping a silver knife. There’s some text next to his head that reads: “Only has one eye, and it can’t un-dilate so he always has that big sauger pupil we see in the media.” Another text box reads “Some raccoon inspiration because the official art makes it look like he has an eye mask.” There’s a piece of this official art in the top left corner of the image for comparison, and in the bottom right, there’s my watermark.

The second image shows Killer T Cell’s design. The background has an orange-yellow triangle design. He’s standing with his usual uniform, head turned and arms crossed. He doesn’t have bones, though, so his arms look more like they’re tied in a knot. He keeps his canon skin tone and hair style, but his membrane has dark blue markings that make him resemble a peregrine falcon. He shares the basic physical features with U-1146, except his tail is thinner and only has two small lobes on the end. His tail is yellow, like his hair, and has an arrow pointing from it to a picture of a banana flavored Snack Pack pudding package, noting that his tail looks a lot like banana pudding by humorously noting “Is it worth it?” Unlike 46, T’s hazel eyes are made up of multiple pupils that coalesce like a lava lamp, and this is true for all future entries as well. Again, there’s my watermark and an actual picture of killer t for reference.

The third image shows Macrophage’s design, and a cream-colored triangle background. Macrophage has large, frilled ears, and a darker cell membrane that looks almost like light coffee. She’s wearing her normal ruffled dress, but instead of legs, she has long tentacles without suckers, built almost like Ursula. She’s covered in white patterns with ripple-like stripes and spots, resembling a cuttlefish. With her right arm and one of her tentacles, she’s holding her signature cleaver, dripping with red blood, which also stained another tentacle and parts of her dress, and the other arm is held up to her face in an “I didn’t do that!” pose. She’s accompanied by a picture of anime Macrophage and a microscope photo of a real macrophage, reaching out with its “arms” to some bacteria. There’s a text box under it that reads: “like come on I HAD to make her a sea monster, have you seen real macrophages? Look at this bitch.” Another box reads: “lots of cephalopod inspiration, octopus-like build with cuttlefish markings and frills.” A final humorous box says “it’s ok she just had to refill the ketchup at McDonald’s,” referring to the blood.

The fourth image featured NK’s design with a green patterned background, as are the following images. She keeps her skin tone and clothes for the most part, but she has a centaur-like build. Her black tank top is extended to cover her chest and has short sleeves for her first set of legs, and ends with a belt around her midsection to her green shorts. She has green boots on all four of her feet, and her tail is black with green splotches, and has lots of lobes, almost like that of a leafy sea dragon. She has army-green spots resembling a cheetah, and she’s smiling and looking confident, with her left hand in a fist. She has her saber in a sheath on her back, and a brown bag secured to her belt like a saddlebag. There’s an arrow pointing to the photo of anime NK from a text box that says “there is something about this SPECIFIC png of NK that cracks me up sm and I don’t fucking know what it is.”

The fifth image shows Helper T, who shares many basic traits with Killer T such as bipedalism and a two-loved tail. While he still has the creature features like the big ears and rounded snout, he’s race-swapped as a black man, and has dark stripes along his arms and face like a peacock. His eyes are blue, and he’s holding a cup of green tea, dropping a cookie in it. There’s a small figure showing that his hair (flagella) are each coiled rather than straight.

The final image shows B cell’s design, which has a lot of bird inspiration. He has a longer snout, plumed tail and ears, and big flat lobes along his arms that look like wings. His eyes are silver md his stripes are brown and green, patterned like that of a blue jay. He’s also holding his antibody gun. A text box reads: “Bird boy! B cells were first discovered in birds and are named after the bursa of fabrics, a thymus-like organ for B cells that only birds have.” There’s also a note that says “face shape inspired by the Hilda bird because look at him,” accompanied by a screenshot of the raven from the Netflix series Hilda. He has a simple, completely black design with a rounded face, stick-figure legs and small wings. End ID.]

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loominggaia · 2 months

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Sorry, I'm going to be *that* person. My question is, what does the genitalia of each race look like? Or do they all just look human but different colors?

No need to apologize, that's a totally valid question!

I think for the most part, yes, many peoples have very human-like genitals. There are a few exceptions and interesting facts though, which I will explain below.

(NSFW-ish text ahead)

ELVES - the rumors are true...elven males have smaller penises than most other peoples. Likewise, female elves have smaller vaginas. Everything about the elven body is kinda wimpy and delicate, and their private bits are no exception.

OGRES - It's rumored that female ogres have spikes in their vaginas, but this is not true. However, they do have thick mucus in there to accommodate male ogres' leathery, armor-like foreskin. Yeah, turns out W.A.P. was about ogresses all along...

TROLLS - Males have smooth little bumps all over their penises. Females have similar bumps in their vaginas. It's a bumpy ride! These creatures are lumpy and bumpy all over, so I guess it's no surprise.

CENTAURS - Centaurs totally resemble horses below the waist...that's all I have to say about that.

SATYRS/MINOTAURS/FAUNS/GNOLLS - The males of these species all have the same deal going on: their penises are hidden in furry sheaths when flaccid, but become visible when erect. Female satyrs have notably large clitorises, which might explain their high libidos. Otherwise, their genitals are quite human-like in appearance.

GORGONS/SIRENES - the penises of male gorgons and sirenes are retracted into their bodies when flaccid. They can force them out at will, though becoming erect will cause them to come out involuntarily. Females' vulvas are very low profile and basically invisible, but become more obvious when aroused.

CECAELIA - Don't have genitals at all. Males instead deposit sperm through one of their tentacles, and females have a single cloaca which passes both waste and eggs. The male cloaca only passes waste. The cloaca is located between the legs of walking cecaelia, or in the space where a drifting cecaelia’s tentacles all converge.

DWORFS - Their genitals are identical to a human's, but uh...the pubic hair is another story. Ever fucked a brillo pad?

ROSHAVA - Males have large penises relative to their body size. The elves are seething! There is a popular rumor that they have four testicles, but it's not true. Also, female roshava have kegel strength so insane they'll crush your dick like a pancake. Fun!

SPRIGHTS - When females suffer prolonged stress, they take on masculine traits and transform into "pseudo-males". This process causes the ovaries and vagina to atrophy, while the clitoris grows into kind of a penis-like shape. This genital transformation ultimately leads to infertility.

That's all the hotdog and hamburger trivia I can think of at the moment!

Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

Read the Series

#ask #asknsfw #asksexuality #askbiology

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mask131 · 1 month

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The Dionysos gallery (3)

We continue our journey down the gallery put together by the Museum of Wine to explore the depictions of Dionysos and his cohorts through the art... Previous item of the gallery was here. Today... Dionysos' entourage. And we begin with...

The Triumphal Cortege of Dionysos, by Maerten van Heemskerck

A) The Procession of Dionysos

(As usual all text here is loosely translated from the website)

The motif of the Procession of Dionysos, or Cortege of Bacchus, tends to be heavily inspired by Ovid's description of this triumphal parade within his Metamorphoses - but it is the culmination of Dionysos' entire earthly life.

To shield baby Dionysos from Hera's wrath, Zeus took him far away from Greece, into the land of Nisa, where he was entrusted to nymphs that raised him. Once adult, Dionysos discovered the grapevine and how to make wine. But Hera struck him with madness, and he wandered throughout Egypt and Syria, before finally reaching Phrygia where the goddess Cybele welcomed him, healed him, purified him and initiated him to her mystery cult. Now sane, he returned to Thrace where the ruling king, Lycurgus, proved himself hostile to the young man and tried to imprison him. Dionysos escaped Lycurgus by fleeing to the Nereid Thetis who welcomed him under the sea. But Lycurgus captured the Bacchants that were with Dionysos - before the god rescued them and struck Lycurgus with madness, making him cut his own leg and kill his son with an axe as he believed he was cutting Dionysos' plant, the grapevine. When Lycurgus regained his sanity, the land was cursed with sterility and the oracle announced only the king's death would return fertility to the soil: he was torn apart by four horses.

Dionysos then left Thrace to go to India. With a magical and supernatural army, he managed to wage war and conquer the land - and this is where the "triumphal procession" motif comes from, as he paraded in a (typically Roman way, since Ovid was the source of descriptions) chariot in a chariot pulled by panthers, decorated with ivy and vine, and followed by Silenos, satyrs, centaurs and Maenads.

Bacchus' Triumph, by Benvenuto Tisi

Bacchus' Triumph by Nicolaes Moeyaert

Here, Bacchus' chariot is a large barrel of wine pulled by two angry panthers. The cohorts of Dionysos are joyful and merry, drinking a lot of wine - but a few details have to be caught. To the right, there is a satyr vomitting. Behind him, there is a knight all in armor, and a sick old man visibly suffering from the gout. The painter was thus trying to warn the audience about the negative consequences of alcohol abuse: near Bacchus' procession, war and disease lurk.

Bacchus' Triumph by Nicolas Poussin

This painting depicts Dionysos' triumphal return after his victories in India. At the bottom right you can see a river-god: he symbolizes the river Indus, and by extension the entire Indian subcontinent. The Oriental nature of the journey is also shown by how a Maenad riding a horse is wearing a leopard's skin. Silenos has a vine in his hand, and while Bacchus holds a thyrsus, his traditional attribute, all the other symbols are however typical of a Roman general and of the "triumphs" of the military of Ancient Rome - for example the red cloak typical of triumphing Roman generals and Roman emperors.

B) Silenos

Silenos is both the teacher and adoptive father of Dionysos, and as such he follows him everywhere. But Silenos is also the personifiction of Drunkenness, and as such he is at the same level as the other minor deities present in Dionysos' parade, such as Comos (merriment/festivity) or Coros (Satiety). From Renaissance onward Silenos became a recurring pictural motif. Tradition depicts him as a joyful and pot-bellied old man, as ugly as he is lustful, his drunk state making him grotesque. "Silenus" also became a generic term to designate an old or elderly satyr.

The Misadventures of Silenus, by Piero di Cosimo

In this painting, Silenos actually appears three times. In chronological order, we first see him at the center of the picture. hile still riding his donkey, he tries to get honey from a hive in a hollow tree, only to be attacked by the bees. On the left we can see him being healed with berry juice, while on the right people are trying to put him back onto his feet.

Drunk Silenus, by Jose de Ribera

Here Silenos appears as an obese human. The one that holds his head is his father, the god Pan.

Drunk Silenus, by Pierre Paul Rubens

C) Satyrs

The satyrs are ambiguous creatures, half-goat half-man, who lived in the wilderness. Associated with the Maenads, they formed together the "Dionysian cortege" that paraded with the god. They are also associated with the god Pan. They are frequently hanging out or flirting with nymphs, minor deities renowned for their youth and beauty. Nymphs are female spirits that inhabit most places within the landscapes: they are found within woods and forests, in valleys and meadows, by streams and rivers, in mountains and grottos... They are also typically associated with various major deities - including Dionysos.

Nymph and Satyr, by Christiaen van Couwenbergh

Two Satyrs, by Peter Paul Rubens

Satyr drinking the juice of a pressed grape, by David de Haen

D) Maenads and Bacchants

The Maenads are the female followers of Dionysos, who escort him in all of his adventures, including his journey to India. They are his servants, not his priestesses, but they do have an important role in his religion and in his worship. They participate to all the mysteries and all the festivals in honor of the god. They are dressed with lion skins, their chest bare, and they hold the thyrsus, a lance surrounded by ivy. They personify the orgiastic spirits of nature, and are renowned for their frenetical dances that place them in a mystical ecstasy. Some heroes fell victim to their inhuman strength - the Bacchants (Roman name of the Maenads) were known to act like ferocious and savage beasts.

The Dance of the Bacchants, by Charles Gleyre

Pentheus hunted by the Maenads, Charles Gleyre

The Death of Orpheus, by Emile Lévy

E) Centaurs

The centaurs are creatures appearing as half-men half-horses. They are part of the Dionysian procession, and for the Ancient Greek they symbolized all of the bestial appetites (drunkenness and lechery). Their fight against the Lapiths was an allegory for the fight between civilization and savagery.

The Battle of the Lapiths and the Centaurs, by Piero di Cosimo

The Battle of the Lapiths and the Centaurs at the wedding of Hippodomy, by Karel Dujardin

Battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs, by Lucas Giordane

These three paintings depict the same legend. Pirithoos married Hippodamia and invited all the Olympian gods to his wedding. However, since there were most guests than the palace could contain, Pirithoos had to place several of them within a cavern nearby - a fresh and shadowy, very pleasant grotto. Within this cavern were Nestor, Caeneus and several Thessalian princes, alongside Pirithoos' cousin the Centaurs. The Centaurs were not used to drinking wine. Upon sensing its smell, they rejected the fermented milk they had been offered, and swallowed all the wine. But in their ignorance, they took the wine without cutting it with water as it was tradition - as such, they took pure alcohol, and became so drunk that when the bride arrived with her handmaidens to salute them, a centaur named Eurytion broke all the furniture and took her by the hair to drag her away. All the other Centaurs imitated him, snatching away all the women and girls (and young boys) they could find, and trying to rape them all. Pirithoos, with the help of Theseus, went to rescue Hippodamia - he cut off Eurytion's nose and ears and, with the help of the other Lapiths, he threw the mutilated Centaur outside of the grotto.

A battle ensued that lasted all night, and during which Caeneus the Lapith was killed. This was the start of a very long war that would forever oppose the Centaurs and their neighbors the Lapiths.

F) A last thought

André Lhote's "Bacchant"

The character of the Bacchant reappeared within the art of the 19th century, all the way to the beginning of the 20th. Originally, the Bacchant attracted the artists in its role of member of the procession of Bacchus, the thiasis - the Bacchant (or Maenad) is primarily the priestess of Bacchus/Dionysos, and has specific attributes: a skin belonging to a wild animal (usually a panther), a cup of wine, a crown of ivy or vine, a thyrsus... But the Bacchant of the 19th century, entirely devoted to the service of the god of wine, becomes a being of flesh. She listens and obeys to her impulses, she shows a savage sensuality, she offers to the artists the possibility to depict an ecstatic, equivocal nudity - not to say licentious. Slowly, painters and sculptors will use the myth as an excuse to depict the eroticism of a body arching and rearing. The bacchant loses her mythological attributes, and becomes simply a naked woman, free from all constraints. However, the idea of drunkenness and sensuality is well-kept.

The Bacchant of André Lhote is an exemple of this new Bacchant: she is a naked and fleshy woman with generous curves. In a posture of lascivity and complete abandon, she eats grapes in honor of Bacchus within a rural landscape. She celebrates the sensuality of the pleasures of life. Rodin created on the same motif erotic drawings that he called "Bacchant". Indeed, to call a naked, sexual model a "Bacchant" was a way to avoid the fury of the numerous "Leagues of Virtue". This results in the ambiguity of the title, since the modern Bacchant is very different from her Antic sister, even though they are united by the presence of wine and grapes.

#the art of the myth #dionysos #the dionysos gallery #bacchant #maenad #dionysus #greek mythology #satyrs #silenus #silenos #dionysos gallery #centaurs

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st-just · 8 months

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is there anything enjoyable about the gods are bastards or is this like a morbid curiosity thing. not that your snarkposting isn't a cherished part of your blog but at this point reading tgab does seem a bit like reading ward

Oh I'm absolutely enjoying it overall! I wouldn't have read nine books worth in four days and change, otherwise (I wouldn't normally anyway, but not like I've been getting out of bed much the last couple days anyway).

It just suffers from the very unfortunate condition where the ostensible protagonists who consume the plurarity of the screentime are the least interesting thing - though I have a nonzero amount of hope that the text's actually self-aware about all the heroic moral dissonance with them.

The actual issue is that I have a pathological need to root for the underdog 90% of the time and they all started out being the most overpowered teenagers in existence even before you started drowning them in Plot and levelups. Makes a decent amount of their chapters an exercise in hoping they screw up or cheering for the people manipulating them, the extended action scenes where they kill whatever morally acceptable cannon fodder it is this book (centaurs/demons/skeletons/chaos cultists/etc) just get old.

The other plotlines don't suffer from this to nearly the same degree, and have the advantage of having persistent antagonists who are fun characters in their own right. The whole Darling/Justinian/their respective openly scheming adventuring parties ongoing clusterfuck is an absolute joy to read. Principia and everything about the Draconic Conclave are also great.

Also complaining is fun.

#the gods are bastards #web serial #reply #anon

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script-a-world · 7 months

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Submitted via Google Form:

Hi, I'm trying to figure out how effective would species with multiple arms can use them at the same time. I mean, say for fighting, it's well known that dual wielding is very much just a trope and while it's been done, research says it's less as effective. So yeah if I have an alien with 6 arms it doesn't mean I should put a weapon in all of them. I get that. But how about other things. Can they like, drive a car with controls that need all 6 hands? Would that perhaps be even more effective since they don't need to take their hands off something to move toward something else. Maybe this species handles the pedals with hands instead of feet. Then two extra hands for changing gear and other things. Maybe it's a different kind of transportation system too that isn't comparable to us. Or maybe it's more dangerous because there's too many moving parts. Or say, a waiter using 6 hands to hold 6 trays, dangerous or more useful? Obviously there are a lot of other aspects but these are just a few examples.

Licorice: It’s not just about the limbs; it’s about the brain. Apparently an octopus has a mini-brain in each of its eight arms, so the arms are able to act independently of each other. It also has a central brain for when the arms need to be coordinated. An octopus could probably octo-wield eight different weapons if it had to! Natural History Museum: Octopuses Keep Surprising Us

A human who suddenly grew four extra arms might become a clumsy menace, but a creature that’s had six arms since it was born probably wouldn’t have any trouble juggling six trays. That would be its normal.

Since you’re designing this creature from the ground up, you’re free to decide whether it’s more octopus-like or more human-like when it comes to limb movements - or perhaps neither human nor octopus, but something else altogether.

Addy: Limbs exist for a reason: to fulfill a purpose. As humans, we do foot stuff with our feet and hand stuff with our hands. A creature with more than four limbs would have a brain set up for using those limbs in an effective manner to fulfill their purpose. Like a centaur would be able to walk and do stuff with its hands at the same time - we generally don't question that.

It's really a matter of focus, in my opinion. Could someone with four arms play two different songs on two pianos at the same time? Probably not, much like how most human people can't play two different songs on two pianos at the same time – we focus on one thing at a time, regardless of how many hands we're using on that task. That's part of the problem with dual-wielding – not only are you messing with the momentum of your swings, you're also splitting your focus between two weapons.

For reference, imagine that humans only came with one arm by default, and someone asked if a two-armed creature would be able to use both limbs effectively. As humans, we know the answer is yes! Sure, we have a side that we favor, but we're able to use both of our arms at the same time. We're just generally limited to doing one thing with those two arms – laundry, driving (steering wheel + changing the volume, etc), knitting, whittling, texting, etc. There are some mindless things that we can do with one hand (holding a pet while talking on the phone), but we don't really multitask. I imagine that the same set of ideas can be extended to whatever creature you've got in your head.

Feral: Have you ever had to turn the radio down while driving in order to read the signs on the highway? It's a pretty common thing, and it has to do with our brain’s ability to switch attention between different sensory inputs. Using both your hands and your feet while attending to one specific task - say shifting gears in manual transmission - is something we are pretty capable of doing. It’s when we’re trying to split our focus to different tasks simultaneously that we begin to have trouble.

So, let’s break down each specific example-

Driving a car with only hands and no feet involved. My paraplegic great-uncle did this actually. He had a specialty steering column with the gas and brake pedal. He had to use both hands at all times, obviously, but there’s nothing that says this can’t be done as a normal convention even with two hands.

Using all six hands to drive. We are able to effectively drive with between three and four limbs (or two limbs as previously stated) depending on the type of transmission we have, so it just seems superfluous to require six, unless is some kind of scifi tech that travels in different dimensions like a fly car. At that point, the question becomes, how much attention switching is needed? The more attention switching, the more dangerous.

Can a waiter carry more with six hands rather than two? Having worked in food service and knowing people in food service, stacking is actually the great skill of a waiter. I can carry as much food stacked properly in one arm as I can spread out between two and be much safer doing so because I am therefore taking up less space, which means there is less likelihood someone would bump into me.

So, when are more limbs actually better?

Consider monkeys with prehensile tails (essentially a fifth limb) or insects, arachnids, and other anthropods, What can they do better than animals with only four limbs?

#google submitted #species #evolution

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t00thpasteface · 1 year

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Hey, you obvs know a lot about mythology. I'm tryna learn more all the time. So, what's your favourite book/resource on mythology?

i mean, i always like to read stuff straight from the centaur's mouth. i LOVE the iliad and the odyssey! and i read metamorphoses for a class a few years back and had a blast... i think that was the same class where i read agamemnon. i've been told anne carson is a great translator of ancient texts and plays... maybe start by looking up collections of her published work? but she's certainly not the only one in the biz.

the best resource is whatever's at your local library! or available online from other libraries. get a library card and show your support!! although tbh i'm the kind of person to just check random books out at a glance and see if i like them, so... i guess i'm not the right person to ask if you're looking for a more precise approach. i read like a grazing herd-animal!!

#theoi dot com is a pretty good reference site but there's no substitute for reading (translations of) the source material #shebbz shoutz #HOORAY primary sources!!!!#greek mythology #pagan #ask

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thewapolls · 5 months

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We really starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Pretty soon there won't even be any shared models left, just a few straight lines of recurring enemies with their design being updated game to game.

GOLPA, the SEO on [ゴルパ] has been entirely overrun by a Japanese golf supply company called Golf Partner, but it might be referencing an Ultraman monster called GORBAGOS[ゴルバゴス] but which I've seen written as GORPAGOS[ゴルパゴス] and abbreviated to GOLPA[ゴルパ] before. But more to the point, it bears no resemblance to the monster in WA2, so I dunno....

BABALOU I don't know much about the source on BABALOU other than this one is definitely the name of an alien from Ultraman Leo. But again, I'm not sure why that name was applied to this character model...

GIRTABRYL was a mangling of GIRTABLULU, monstrous scorpion men from Mesopotamian mythos.

PABILSAG is likewise pulled from Mesopotamian mythos, a god whose larger role in the mythology has been mostly lost over time. He was associated with the sagittarius and depicted as a kind of centaur but with a scorpion tail, but at some point popculture just kinda rolled him into being more scorpion than anything. (sometimes people compromise and make him a dwayne the rock johnson in the scorpion king(2002) kind of scorpion-centaur while still ditching the horse bits.)

ITEM CARRIER on the one hand it's a super generic pair of words to slap together, but for that same reason I can't shake t he feeling it's a reference to something specific. but the only thing I could find using that specific term is Final Exerion?? But while that's a reboot of the classic 80s arcade game, that specific sequel just came out this year. Did they call the things you shoot to gain power up items ITEM CARRIERs in the original arcade game too? I doubt it had ingame text designating things, so what did it maybe appear in a manual of a home console port at some point later, or in some kind of design notes that could maybe have been released in a art book or something? I have no idea, and no means of verifying.

JUSTA is another one I can't seem to really pinpoint. The character model is so weirdly specific conceptually that I have to assume it's something, but I don't even know where to start with trying to make sense of it.

#wild arms

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edgar-allan-possum · 2 years

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🖊 An OC you haven't had the chance to tell us about yet, if there are any

🖊 Alice

🖊 Rick

🖊 Tammy and Tam

An OC I haven't talked about, huh?

Gilbert Swann, the Automatist.

Swann was a brilliant inventor of the 19th century who built myriads of automata for all different uses. His wife had died in childbirth, and he was extremely protective of his daughter, Francine, to the point of rarely letting her leave the grounds of their home, and assigning her at least 4 bodyguard automata when she did go out.

Eventually, Francine escaped and eloped with Raoul Morrow. Swann pursued them to Texas where there was a terrific battle between his mechanical forces on one side, and Morrow and the centaur Sheriff Buck on the other.

Defeated, Swann returned home with nothing to show for his journey but a load of scrap-metal and a chunk of contraterrene. He used the mineral as the power core for a new invention-- an extremely lifelike (for 1800s standards) automaton that he named Francine II and guarded even more closely than his real daughter. Eventually, Francine II also escaped after seeing a performance of Coppelia. Swann swore off inventing after that, and never saw either of his daughters again until the day he died, when they both visited him on his deathbed.

Alice Freeman (I've finally decided on her last name)

If she concentrates, she can actually say different things with different mouths at the same time. Little known fact.

That said, it's rare to hear her speak because she's embarrassed about the sharp-toothed maws scattered over her limbs and torso. She prefers to use sign language when possible. Or a text-to-speech device.

If Alice does speak, she can command vermin to follow her orders. Possibly other foul things as well, though she's never gotten to try on anything larger than a raccoon. She's not sure she wants to experiment that much.

Rick Manley

Here's something even he doesn't know about himself. He was bitten by the werewolf because he was defending someone, a stranger. The first night he transformed, he killed that same man. They never actually met so he never found out. Rick does know he killed someone, though, which is why he's so vehement about making sure he's secured during the full moon.

Tammy and Tam

For new people, these two are a fairy girl (Tammy) and a human (Tam) who are changelings for each other. They also don't exist in the same world as the other OCs because fairies are very different there.

Both of them are named Tamara Lindsey Thomson, but their nicknames are obviously different, since Tammy grew up with humans and Tam with fairies. Tam was kidnapped by Lord Lankin when she was 6 in anticipation of his own daughter having to one day be part of the fairy tithe to hell.

Now for the fun fact: while Tam is treated like a servant in the Lankin household, she has a secret suitor in the form of a Dullahan who sometimes steals her away from her duties and takes her on long horseback rides through the countryside. When Tam's mortal brother, Jack, eventually found out, he was very concerned.

The other fun fact is that bees and cows are both extremely scarce in Fairyland. Tammy is pretty much rolling in the lap of luxury getting to eat honey nut Cheerios with milk every day for breakfast.

#my ocs

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