seeking academic articles
Any JSTOR wizards here? We are looking for a couple articles that we can't get through any of our usual methods (& yes, we tried sci-hub). Here are the links:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44080355
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44080345
Trying to work on the travelogue I said I'd write. Making a little progress, but it's rather slow: I want to keep it to a bit of a theme, but also summarise my trip well, and I'm not sure I'm managing to write it in a very engaging way, partly because I don't have the mental energy to do as much research as the project wants.
And then there's also the issue that I shouldn't make it unreadably long... halp.
Australia politics, trans issues, positive
It's sickening that this sort of thing is wielded in elections to start with, but fundamentally for better and worse most people in most places don't care that much: TERF sentiment at least in a form strong enough to move votes is a tiny minority opinion, and conservatives who try to win on the basis of it will probably keep getting embarrassed which is no bad thing.
Australia politics, trans issues, positive
Just saw an interesting & hopeful discussion on Australian TV regarding conservative politicians highlighting opposition to trans women in sport as a campaign wedge issue: unanimity, including from the Liberal (that is, Australian conservatives) senator present, that it had failed utterly for the Australian right wing as an electoral line and if anything had been derailing for their campaign.
Health, music
My throat tension problems have been awful in recent weeks, and it feels very weird and strained if I try to sing with any range or volume: even when the tension relaxes a bit, using my voice doesn't feel right because all the throat muscles are exhausted and strained.
Singing is really important to me having creative vents and it's useful for deal with anxiety, so having it hit so badly by a stress symptom is a real catch-22 :(
Another sketch for my #boardgame project. This time it's an NPC: Kiki the frog shaman. Her deep connection with the spirit of the mycelium network grants her insight into all that happens across the land. I made this sketch digitally in #Krita and just wanted to give it a very quick coloring afterwards, though its still a bit rough. Very pleased with the sketch!
#MastoArt #DigitalArt #FantasyArt #GameDev #GameArt #frog #mushrooms
necromancy
‘I want to see dragons,’ he said, gazing longingly through the scrying mirror. ‘I want to see fire and wind, and feel the sun on my face. Do you understand?’
She didn’t, but she wanted to. She stitched the wings of a raven to a crawling lizard, and filled it with the cold spark of her heart. She held it out to him; it leapt from her hands to his, and clacked its jaws at him cheerfully.
‘What’s this?’ he asked.
‘A going away present.’
‘I love you, mum.’
This evening it's our monthly virtual meetup, which we have on jitsi - it'll be starting in 10 mins and going on for about 4 hours or so, you can drop in any time and if you'd like the link to join please just shout.
You can drop in any time during the meetup, it's very relaxed, just a time to have a drink and hear some friendly voices nattering about creativity, geekery, and the world :)
(Boosts welcome, the more the merrier and all that.)
Hi! I'm Fio.
I'm a writer and artist so far only by passion but I've been trying to get over my utter lack of entrepreneurial spirit and try to make something of the things I love doing. I heard putting your stuff out there for people to see is part of that, so... here I am.
(Still horrified! 😨 How does this social Media thing work? I'm sure I'll figure it out ^^' #introduction felt like a good start)
I'm big into #Dnd and have started uploading stuff on ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/fionir
Indeed! Some people never see each other's posts because of differences in time zone or personal schedules.
It is okay to boost your own post so that people in other time zones can see it 👍
There is no timeline algorithm on here, everything is chronological, so self-boosting may be the only way to get your posts visible in other time zones.
I came across this webcomic today, which is a trans Camelot story, I'm enjoying what I've read of it so far and it seems like the sort of thing a fair few Fedi people might like:
In The Exile Princes, I've mostly very solidly gone down the freeing-rep route: the game doesn't change significantly according to your character's gender, the romance lines work literally the same regardless (they vary according to characters' social status and personality a LOT, but gender makes minimal difference). But I wonder/worry if that sort of representation just ends up being kind of flattening by not picking up some really big specificities of other people's experiences of the world.
In the real world, societies and cultures do develop in part as a result of pressure and oppression: if you have a world that resolutely doesn't have those things, you lose some stories that are important to people.
Some fantasy creates its own oppression vectors or plays with real ones too: this can square circles by letting a writer have freeing rep for real groups while writing about analogy-oppressions, but it's easy to get wrong & be (sometimes literally) dehumanising in close analogies.
Been thinking about tensions between "experiential" and "freeing" representation in games: when do you try and make a game that says "people don't have the limitations real societies oppress them with" versus "this mirrors reality precisely so we can talk about those oppressions in this story"?
The latter can be got wrong easily & normalise oppressions in fantasy, but the former risks being hollow/not resonating with people's real reactions and cultures.
I think I have about thirty "reference holes" left to fill in this thesis. Made some progress today, but that's still quite a lot. Also keep finding sections where I obviously need to fix wording or left bits not-quite-done, which is frustrating. And I'm getting more annoying tension & stress symptoms, I keep working quite late but I'm being really slow so don't know how else to keep the pace up and when I rest I just start stressing anyway?
Kartvelologist, historian & digital humanist at the University of Vienna, doing a PhD on medieval Georgian prosopography. Also game designer, liberal policy nerd, provider of cute animal pictures, writer in various formats, etc.