#nates

[etriva]

from The Memory Palace, by Nate DiMeo

[nateconnolly]

40,000 years ago, early humans painted hands on the wall of a cave. This morning, my baby cousin began finger painting. All of recorded history happened between these two paintings of human hands. The Nazca Lines and the Mona Lisa. The first TransAtlantic flight and the first voyage to the Moon. Humanity invented the wheel, the telescope, and the nuclear bomb. We eradicated wild poliovirus types 2 and 3. We discovered radio waves, dinosaurs, and the laws of thermodynamics. Freedom Riders crossed the South. Hippies burned their draft cards. Countless genocides, scientific advancements, migrations, and rebellions. More than a hundred billion humans lived and died between these two paintings—one on a sheet of paper, and one on the inside of a cave. At the dawn of time, ancient humans stretched out their hands. And this morning, a child reached back. 

[specialagentartemis]

My feelings about queernormative worlds in SFF is that I can often enjoy it, but I rarely believe it.

Almost everything surrounding gender, sex, and sexuality, and all the different social norms and expectations that different cultures build up around them, derive ultimately from the various realities of sexual activity and pregnancy: who can have it, who can’t, for how long, who does have it, who doesn’t, and what that means for society. I’m not being bioessentialist here, because human bodies are all quite different and different cultures develop different ways to react to that, and rates of and reactions to fertility can be different, and what different sexual and gender roles mean in different cultures and who can and can’t embody them can get extremely different. (Hell, how pregnancy itself even works can be different depending on where you live, what your lifestyle is like, and what your diet consists of!) But like, the reason gender even matters, historically, has been because of reproduction. And the reason reproduction matters, in agricultural societies anyway, has very often been because of property ownership and the need to work on farms.

So I’m totally here for queernormative worlds. But to interest me you have to answer the questions of: okay, but how does your culture work though, and how is kinship structured, and how is reproduction seen, and how is property inheritance understood, and how does gender fit into all this, for me to feel like you’ve actually tried. (And don’t say that there ARE no norms, so no one falls outside of them. There’s no culture where that’s true.)

Sci-fi worlds can get away with this easier than fantasy worlds, imo. Partially because they can posit that it is our future but we’ve gone through all of the Social Justice Struggles already and solved them, but also because technology can really alter all of these topics. The Vorkosigan Saga, for instance, makes it clear that Beta Colony is as gender-egalitarian and free-love as it is because of contraception and uterine replicators, which FULLY decouple “the ability to have children” from “the need for anyone to be pregnant.” This is huge, and the Vorkosigan Saga treats it as appropriately so! Ancillary Justice is another one that thinks a lot about how the genderless culture that decenters romance as a core social organizing principle works. But I read so many low-ish-tech fantasy worlds that are happily queernormative and gender doesn’t matter and they just feel shallow. I don’t believe this world. I don’t dislike it, exactly, I just don’t believe it, I don’t believe people would be like this because you’ve put no effort into imagining a world that works like this makes any sense.

Which is totally fine for people’s D&D games and cute oneshot comics and personal works and such, but when you want me to take your worldbuilding seriously, you’re going to have to convince me! And a lot of it is not convincing.

[fallloverfic]

"Scarlet Morning" by ND Stevenson - new prose novel to release September 23, 2025

ND Stevenson is releasing a new prose novel! You can order here.

Summary: "From the powerhouse creator of Nimona comes a breathtaking illustrated novel following two orphans who leave the only home they’ve ever known to sail with an eccentric crew of pirates.

Viola and Wilmur have been waiting for their parents for fifteen boring years in the colorless town of Caveat. Their lives are a drudge of salt, trash, pirate stories, and what-ifs . . . until one very stormy night, when Captain Cadence Chase breaks down their door. They cut a deal with the captain: Chase can take their most prized possession, a mysterious book, but only if she takes them, too. After all, if their parents aren’t coming, Viola and Wilmur might as well have a grand adventure to find them.

Setting sail into the treacherous and beautiful world beyond Caveat, the two inseparable friends must uncover the facts behind legend—and the key to saving all of Dickerson’s Sea from obliteration—before the truth tears them apart.

Wickedly funny, deeply emotional, and sharply incisive, Scarlet Morning is a tale of love, betrayal, and the extraordinary lengths we’d go to save a world broken beyond repair."

Nate promos: Blue Sky, Twitter, Instagram, Nate's blog

International orders

Nate's blog, Nate's tumblr

[cointelangel]

ONE YEAR AGO TODAY. Head fallout 4 “writer” Emil Pagilarulo made a tweet so iconic, so ridiculed, so important to our group chat that we knew we had to celebrate. so my boyfriend and i got a cake printed. happy birthday the event he has dubbed. NATEGATE

[venusbyline]

i can fix him (no really i can)

[aardvaark]

[jourke-rourke]

Leverage (2008) // S02xE01 // "The Beantown Bailout Job"

i like this exchange because depending on how you reverse that statement, you end up with three possible interpretations, each funnier than the last and all equally true:

solving poor people's problems

creating rich people's problems

solving problem rich people

[ghostlyarchaeologist]

"Turns out they’re just audio recordings of static. Hundreds of hours of it."

Leverage S05E03 The First Contact Job.

[thecommunityoftrustworthysinks]

the funniest thing nate ford ever did was run up like twelve flights of stairs racing an elevator to press every floor button to stall sterling

[nateconnolly]

Blackout Poem Made of Disability Benefits Applications and Denial Letters:

[Image ID: A blackout poem. The edges of the black are straight and rectilinear. I will indicate breaks in the line using the slash symbol /. Some of the excerpts include boxes where you could draw a check mark. I will indicate these by writing (box). The poem goes

Answer every question. / Please tell us if you want us to return them to you. / Select the heaviest weight lifted. / Using fingers to touch, / (Box) One hand (Box) Both hands / Using hands to seize, (Box) One hand (Box) Both hands / reduction / refusal / Termination / Penalty / You can give us more facts to add to your file. / You do not meet with the person who decides your case. / Notice of Decision — Unfavorable / Disabled worker’s name / Date given when disability began / Date of death. /end ID] 

The final three lines are from denial of benefits paperwork for workers who died before the end of the mandatory five month waiting period. How many of those deaths are connected to poverty? I don't know, but I can guess.

[damnwhattaman]

Nate Kasper / 20yo

[gnar-slabdash]

actually i need to borrow this gif because holy shit this is EPISODE THREE and Nate can just DO that. Can just. Grab Eliot Spencer while he’s holding a knife.

[happygirl2oo2]

Slowly collecting my favorite descriptions of Leverage x

[ @alphacrone @sharpbutsoft @respectissexy @artsybi @reinanova @astralpenguin]

[yaolmao]

Special Wammy’s Christmas @dnsecretsanta gift for @applestorms