Lately, this obscure academic debate about ancient sculpture has taken
on an unexpected moral and political urgency. Last year, a University of
Iowa classics professor, Sarah Bond, published two essays, one in the
online arts journal Hyperallergic and one in Forbes,
arguing that it was time we all accepted that ancient sculpture was not
pure white—and neither were the people of the ancient world. One false
notion, she said, had reinforced the other.
For classical scholars, it
is a given that the Roman Empire—which, at its height, stretched from
North Africa to Scotland—was ethnically diverse. In the Forbes
essay, Bond notes, “Although Romans generally differentiated people on
their cultural and ethnic background rather than the color of their
skin, ancient sources do occasionally mention skin tone and artists
tried to convey the color of their flesh.”
Depictions of darker skin can
be seen on ancient vases, in small terra-cotta figures, and in the
Fayum portraits, a remarkable trove of naturalistic paintings from the
imperial Roman province of Egypt, which are among the few paintings on
wood that survive from that period. These near-life-size portraits,
which were painted on funerary objects, present their subjects with an
array of skin tones, from olive green to deep brown, testifying to a
complex intermingling of Greek, Roman, and local Egyptian populations.
I might be able to come up with a few. Though much of my library consists of games with female protagonists, I don’t specifically aim for lesbian content, so this list is not at all representative – it’s just stuff I happen to have played lately. I hope you like visual novels!
(Note that this list includes both lesbian and bisexual protagonists, though in the latter case I’ve tried to pick ones where t it’s possible to end the game in a non-tragic relationship with a woman.)
Black Closet
– A dice-rolling strategy sim where you play as the leader of an autocratic student council. There are
ways for it to end happily, but there are also many ways for it to end
poorly, and your political enemies may use the protagonist’s
orientation against her, should they discover it. Arguably breaks your
“no villains” rule, as the protagonist has definite villain vibes in
spite of being the player character.
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel – A run-and-gun shooter with heavy loot grinding elements. One of the four playable characters, Athena, is a lesbian – her orientation is textually explicit, but not particularly relevant to the story. (She does turn up engaged to marry a woman in another game in the series, albeit as an NPC; as far as I’m aware, she’s consistently single during her tenure as a playable character.)
Even the Ocean – A semi-nonviolent momentum based puzzle platformer with VN story segments. The protagonist can start a relationship with another woman during the course of the game. Fair warning: the ending is high on the tragedy scale, though not for any reason related to their relationship.
(In the interest of not spoiler-bombing this blog’s entire readership, message me if you want details.)
Ghosts of Miami – An extremely 1980s murder mystery VN in the mode of Phoenix Wright, plus light dating sim elements. The protagonist has both male and female romance options, which end about as well as romance in a detective story ever does (which is to say that most of the people you can date have Issues™, but the same-gender options aren’t particularly singled out for it).
Heartbeat – A traditional turn-based RPG with light monster training elements. Great writing and peppy Super Nintendo style graphics. This one’s something of an edge case; while the cast contains numerous women in relationships with other women, and playable party members often flirt with or display crushes on other ladies, the protagonist herself is merely implied to be into ladies.
Heaven Will Be Mine – A self-described visual novel about “irresponsible lesbians and giant robots” from the creators of We Know the Devil (see below). Whether you end up in a happy romance depends on how you define “happy” and “romance”; in keeping with the game’s explicit conflation of transgender themes with transhuman themes, some of the endings are pretty esoteric!
Her Tears Were My Light – A short and sweet visual novel about the anthropomorphic personification of Space courting the anthropormorphic personification of Time. Some of the endings are happy and some are not, but owing to the protagonist’s nature they’re arguably all canon. Be sure to check out the rest of the creator’s library, too – it’s largely in the same vein, if not quite so high concept as this one.
Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt – A retro RPG where you magically enter sick people’s bodies to fight their illnesses bullet-hell style. The protagonist’s highschool ex-girlfriend is a prominent NPC (which here means that she has more than two lines of dialogue), and you can rekindle your relationship at the end, though the latter is partly a joke – the game will let you marry literally any NPC in the game.
Queen of Thieves – A light dating sim/dungeon crawler hybrid about a trio of sisters who form an adventuring party to search for their missing mother. I’ll be honest, the writing isn’t great, and the mechanics are only so-so, but I found it to be an engaging time-waster. Plus, there are just enough same-gender romance options to pair every single party member up with a lady, which is novel.
Super Lesbian Animal RPG (forthcoming) – A traditional turn-based RPG with a trans lesbian protagonist. You start out already in a happy relationship, and in fact can make out with your girlfriend in battle for stat buffs. This is only a demo for a forthcoming game, so I can’t rule out the possibility that their relationship will end tragically in the full version, but given the game’s tone I rather doubt that will be the case.
Ticket to Earth – An oddball cross between a minifigs-on-a-grid tactical RPG and a match-three puzzler set during a planetary revolution. The main character starts out in a relationship with another woman. In the interest of full disclosure, I haven’t gotten around to finishing this one yet, so I don’t know if their relationship ends badly or not – maybe someone who has can clue us in!
We Know the Devil – From the same creator as Heaven Will Be Mine (see above), this one’s a visual novel about a trio of girls at a Christian summer camp who’ve been forced to participate in a bizarre ritual that culminates with fighting the Devil. Definitely not light reading; homophobia and transphobia are prominent themes, and there’s some (generally text-only) body horror in places.
alright don’t be mad but. i never read the great gatsby. i know i was supposed to. yes, it was assigned to us. i even know, more or less, what happens in the book. technically, i wrote an essay about it, i think, once or twice.
at the time, i hadn’t read any book assigned to me. ever. it wasn’t that i didn’t like to read. i loved reading. but homework took place in a function of my brain that i couldn’t access. i would sit in libraries or at my desk and just. not do my homework. i spent hours like this, days like this, years like this. just not doing what was assigned to me, no matter the consequences, no matter how badly i wanted to be doing it. i just wouldn’t. and i wouldn’t go to class because i didn’t want to deal with the fact i didn’t do the homework. and then i wouldn’t get the homework. so i didn’t do it.
i remember realizing while i was doing college applications that i had actually, real-life fucked up. that it was permanent, what i had done. that i had a C- of an average and no future to look rosy at. and i still couldn’t make myself do things. i tried to submit applications only to realize i’d shoved off the date to the very last moment. and i was fucked.
it takes me three years and two transfers and three new starts before i am actually real-life trained how to study, how to read, how to enjoy being assigned things.
and i watch parents of my students yell at students for being the same person i was six years ago: screaming at an A-, confused at skipped classes, punishing missed homework. and these students don’t have an answer. they just don’t do things. even if they want to. and they look at me, confused and defeated and without an answer for their parents. “i just can’t,” i hear a lot, and i understand.
parents don’t like “executive dysfunction” as a reason. “anxiety” and “depression” are often misdiagnosed as “procrastinating” and “lazy”. kids just learn they’re like this. that they’re always going to be. that it’s their fault, permanently. they are surrounded by books they didn’t read. and it doesn’t feel good. it feels like suffocating.
today i started “the great gatsby.” i promise. one day, it’ll feel easy.
Random thought: I suspect the reason that most nerds are terrible at fantasy worldbuilding – and I’m absolutely including myself in this assessment – is that we have a tendency to impute agency to technology.
That is, when we look at historical examples of societal change or upheaval that are accompanied by a technological paradigm shift, we tend to analyse that upheaval as an obvious and inevitable consequence of that technology; the social and economic milieu surrounding the event is considered, if not irrelevant, then at least of secondary importance.
It’s like we’ve recognised the inadequacies of the Great Man theory of history, but rather than adopting a substantively different approach, we’ve simply subtracted the Great Man, resulting in a historiography in which new technologies spring fully formed from the aether and work their will upon the world’s stage, with no acknowledgment that technological paradigm shifts are at least as much products of the material conditions of their development as they are drivers of those conditions.
Then we turn around and attempt to imagine a fantastical world by asking a series of questions of the form “how would this particular magical ‘technology’ change society?“, when we should equally be asking: “what sort of society would develop this kind of magic in the first place?“
The problem with the idea of 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep and 8 hours of recreation as a structure for a day is that it simply can’t work that way. If I’m expected to be at work at 9, then my work day must begin at 7. Allowing myself a rushed experience to wake up and get to work. And I live close to work. So either my recreation or my sleep needs to take a hit, but for some people it could be more. 8 hours a day, 5 days a week as a basis for full time work is honestly unreasonable at that point. Because it isn’t actually 40 hours a week, it’s 50 hours a week lost to a job, of which 10 is unpaid.
some of my coworkers have 2h of transit to get to work, which takes 4-5h off their free time. working full time is a bad idea and shouldve never been a thing
And let’s not forget that maintaining a clean home and providing food for yourself takes over 20 hours a week (appx 20 hours in-house, and varying hours spent running outside errands) if you are completely abled.
I always hear those statistics framed as “employees waste so much time while at work” -_-
I’ve seen a number of posts floating around where people ask how to start reading the Venom comics, so here’s my little take on the subject. Given that the comics have been around for 30+ years, the “continuity” is a jumbled, nigh-meaningless mess, so let’s focus on the goods here. And by “the goods” I mean “Eddie and Venom being really gay and romantic with each other”. So here are a few series that DELIVER on that front. This list is by no means all inclusive– feel free to reblog and add more! I haven’t even come close to reading all the comics.
(Most of the links below are to Comixology, because that’s where I have them, but you know. Get them wherever.)
1. Venom (2018) written by Donny Cates – this is the current ongoing series, with 6 issues out so far (the 7th comes out on 10/10). The quality of the writing is top notch. Venom becomes very ill because of an evil symbiote god who looks like he stepped right out of a Castlevania game if Castlevania was made by David Cronenberg. Despite the unspeakably powerful goth energy radiating from the art, this series has many tender, soft moments between Eddie and Venom and it contains the crown jewel of any OTP: Venom says, right there on the page, “I love you, Eddie”.
2. Venom (2016) written by Mike Costa – collected into 4 volumes. This is the one where Eddie and Venom rekindle their relationship and then have a baby together, complete with on-panel birth. Has some cute slice-of-life scenes and lot of Eddie and Venom working on trust and communication in their relationship. They call each other romantic pet names. And fight dinosaur people. In the sewer. Like you do.
3. First Host (2018) written by Mike Costa – 5 issue miniseries. A direct continuation of the above. How fares Eddie and Venom’s bundle of joy? Highlights include Eddie in peak Dad Mode, Eddie being super protective of his spouse and child, and the entire plot ripped straight from a soap opera. Not even joking: the Venom symbiote’s ex suddenly shows up out of nowhere and demands Venom return to him. When Venom says it wants to be with Eddie now, the shitbag ex threatens their child! *mustachio twirl*
4. Venom: The Hunger (1996) written by Len Kaminski – 4 issue miniseries. Overflowing with X-Treme 90s Energy, Eddie is insufferably self-righteous and has He-Man hair, all bodily fluids are neon green, and Venom looks like an H.R. Giger painting. This little gem tells us the origin of Venom’s chocolate obsession. Eddie cuddles Venom a lot and there’s panels of Eddie basically moaning with pleasure while Venom wraps him in tentacles. The story revolves around Venom leaving Eddie because it needs certain brain chemicals, and Eddie’s brain alone can no longer provide it enough so it has to go on a vore spree. Eddie and Venom do, of course, make up and get back together again in the end, so fear not!
5. Venom: Lethal Protector (1993) written by David Michelinie. Not nearly as overtly gay as the more recent series, but the movie is (VERY) loosely based on this, so there ya go. Get ready to see Eddie bopping around San Francisco in a killer mullet, crop top, and mom jeans! Still very loud queer subtext between him and Venom, as with every Venom series. Except the most recent ones– only because it’s not subtext anymore, it’s canon!
Plot Designing 