bluejaywriter

[bluejaywriter]

Anyway, I've been playing Stardew again on and off, and added a new mod called "Market Town". It's a bit clunky at times, but it adds a new island and building where villagers can visit and you can sell things. I had fun trying to decorate the new building!

Here is the fish room. Someone online had this idea of using the blue flooring to make it look like it's a pond inside, and I really loved it! Also, please ignore my slime hatching stations. :P

Here is the library. I still don't know how to arrange bookcases well in SV.

Here is the lounge/piano bar! Krobus statue has a new job as bartender.

We are ignoring the Christmas Tree room because I don't know how to decorate that one 😝 I was trying to work out a space theme and didn't quite figure it out.

[bluejaywriter]

WONDER WOMAN (2017) dir. Patty Jenkins

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Took a little break to animate this happy proud little friend ❤️

[bluejaywriter]

Light from Light Chapter 2 - excerpt

One morning, a man crashes unceremoniously into their lives, fire and brimstone and man-flesh hurling into the peaceful waters surrounding their island, and Diana—the curious, foolhardy child—leaps in after him.

He is bitter, and impatient, and frazzled, and utterly full of contempt for man’s world. 

Well, somebody’s got to do the dirty work, and more often than not, it seems that somebody’s me, he says, putting on great airs of indifference and inconvenience.

He wears the uniform of a soldier, but he takes no great joy in death, and his fighting style is clumsy, frenetic, improvisatory. 

This man has neither the intelligence, nor the disposition, nor the fitness, nor the moral aptitude of a warrior. What business has he then, playing the role of protector in Man’s World?

But Diana loves him, loves his impatient sighs, loves his boyish bravado, loves the way he guards—poorly—his wonder at all of the Amazons’ creations, inventions, abilities. 

We Americans have barely just learned how to fly, and your people have already conquered space—and on goddamn flying kangaroos no less. Even if I’d brought a camera with me, nobody back home would ever believe it.

He takes great pains not to woo her, the angel that rescued him from the sea. Even when they are alone, poring over maps and scrolls together in the library, or exploring the tide pools that line the choppy waters along the southern banks of the island, or tending to the gardens and stables—he keeps his distance, guarding his body language and his words, and it is only in those rare moments when he is watching Diana explain some intricacy of their island life, the balance of growing and culling the herds, the rotation of crops to ensure the richness of the soil, the precise meter of Sappho’s poetry—it is only in moments like this where his eyes to betray his true feelings, the fact that he is fond of her, perhaps overly fond of her.

Hippolyta does not trust him, but she thinks him too stupid to betray her, to betray them on purpose.

He is utterly human, and barely a man. Look at him. He would be ten times happier to return to his father’s ranch, herding cows and singing songs and wearing a hat. The only reason he is with the soldiers is because their world is crumbling.

Antiope had returned from a stealth mission once with such a hat. It was barely 50 years earlier than Steve Trevor’s ominous introduction to their lives, and she had worn it daily until it was riddled with holes. Hippolyta had begged Menalippe to throw the ridiculous thing into the fire, but the Priestess had only smiled a serene smile that did not yet hide the laughter in her heart.

It makes her happy, sister, and all the more happy since you loathe it. Besides, it is a dashing look on her, and we have fond memories of this mission, and the people we saw there… you should have heard the men singing, Lyta. A rough and coarse people, but hardworking and heartfelt, with a great love for earth and for the beasts in their charge. There is cruelty in mankind, still, but there is contentment, also. 

A contentment built upon lies and the bloodshed of a thousand thousand innocents, Hippolyta had retorted, but she had acquiesced, and Antiope had kept the hat, and when it was worn beyond repair, Hippolyta brought a length of beaver felt to Pallas, and ordered her to fashion another.

It is a pity that Antiope and Steve Trevor never truly met one another. They have similarity in spirit, in boldness, in the art of stealth. And even as Diana leads the man with child-like excitement in zig-zags across their island, Hippolyta sees the grief in her daughter’s face, the way she laughs in delight whenever he says something sarcastic, and glances around to see if her aunt had been there to hear it too; the way she stumbles over her explanations to the boy, looking nervously about as if her aunt is standing nearby, ready to pounce, eager to correct. They lie together beneath the stars, and he speaks in a halting voice of his late father, betraying more vulnerability than Hippolyta would’ve given him credit for, and when Diana weeps, he looks guilty, and moves to hold her only when she flings a gauntleted arm about his shoulders.

Perhaps this one is earnest. His function within their army is that of a liar, but his heart is honest.

But when Hippolyta looks up for a reply, her chambers are empty. Antiope is no longer there to speak, and Menalippe has not left the temple for weeks. 

[bluejaywriter]

a writing competition i was going to participate in again this year has announced that they now allow AI generated content to be submitted

their reasoning being that "we couldn't ban it even if we wanted to, every writer already uses it anyway"

"Every writer"?

come on

[bluejaywriter]

Not until the last battle, the battle where the tide of war has finally turned, and victory is declared, does Hippolyta lay eyes upon the youngest son of Alcmene. It is at the battle’s end that she finds him, crumpled near the very back of the line, having fainted and fallen to the floor of his chariot…

Your brother is here, Iphicles, Hippolyta calls to the king when she spots the royal crest on the fallen soldier’s armor. She dismounts and kneels to see to the body herself. But the prince is not wounded, he is simply lying unconscious in an ungainly tangle on the floor of his chariot, and when she pulls the helmet from his head, unveiling a mop of inky black hair, an elfin face twisted into a surly grimace, long eyelashes and an aristocratic nose and perfect lips and a pretentious little chin, a thousand things she would come to love and despise…

All these things she saw in a single, unwitting glance, and the world ceased to exist.

Heracles fighting the Amazons. Attic black-figure hydria, ca. 530 BC.

[bluejaywriter]

Not until the last battle, the battle where the tide of war has finally turned, and victory is declared, does Hippolyta lay eyes upon the youngest son of Alcmene. It is at the battle’s end that she finds him, crumpled near the very back of the line, having fainted and fallen to the floor of his chariot...

Your brother is here, Iphicles, Hippolyta calls to the king when she spots the royal crest on the fallen soldier’s armor. She dismounts and kneels to see to the body herself. But the prince is not wounded, he is simply lying unconscious in an ungainly tangle on the floor of his chariot, and when she pulls the helmet from his head, unveiling a mop of inky black hair, an elfin face twisted into a surly grimace, long eyelashes and an aristocratic nose and perfect lips and a pretentious little chin, a thousand things she would come to love and despise…

All these things she saw in a single, unwitting glance, and the world ceased to exist.

Heracles fighting the Amazons. Attic black-figure hydria, ca. 530 BC.

[bluejaywriter]

FYI I'm going to post this tonight

In case anyone is wondering how the Heracles/Alcides chapter of Light from Light is going.

[bluejaywriter]

In case anyone is wondering how the Heracles/Alcides chapter of Light from Light is going.

[bluejaywriter]

The Sun and the Moon, Chapter 48

“When you were growing up, before Diana, did you… fight? I mean, politically. For your rights. Against… the government.”

The line is silent for a moment, then Isabel says slowly,

“Everything was a fight back then, Martha. Existing was a fight.”

“But you did things. Organized and marched and all that.”

“Marching is only a show of force, to attract attention and show that you have the masses on your side,” Isabel says, her voice snide. “Real change comes through threats: threatening someone’s pocketbook, or their reputation, or their legacy—”

“I’m not trying to threaten anyone,” Martha says quickly. “Nothing like that. I just… I’m wondering what to do, now that I’m here. I mean, I’m just a housewife, I don’t have a clear path, an obvious skill set like you. But it seems so useless to just rattle around the house and farm all day.”

“Then don’t.”

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why are they like this

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Yet another Light from Light (Ch. 2) snippet

It was still in their early years together when Martha Kent first asked, before they even touched each others’ bodies, and their days were filled with bliss and discovery, and their nights with storytelling and meaningful embraces that did not yet push too far. They shared many things together, delighted in telling about their lives and experiences, but Hippolyta learned early on how jealous the humans are—and this one most of all. She would tell stories of her rule in ancient times, of the gods and goddesses, of the Amazons’ exploits into an unsuspecting world, but of the many lovers she took during those times, and the many hearts she broke, she says nothing.

You must share at least a little of your past, lest she thinks you led a long life of celibacy.

But Hippolyta ignores Antiope’s hoots of laughter at this far-fetched idea, and she looks out over the training field with darkening eyes, and when her sister follows her gaze toward Tartarus, she quiets, although it is a disgruntled silence.

She is less innocent than you think, Lyta. And far less weak. All this nonsense of making her wait—

It is a sacred thing to touch another’s body for the first time. It is made all the more sacred when there is… when it is meaningful. She still sees me as a god, a creature from the legends. She must first know me as a woman, as a partner, an equal.

[bluejaywriter]

The Amazons do not stay long in Thebes.

Hippolyta orders her warriors to lead the able-bodied men on a hunt for game over the rocky mountains, guiding them over the loose shale and through treacherous passes. Others travel to Lake Hylica to trawl its depths for fish and its shores for mussels, clams, seaweed. Her warriors help the farmers plow their fields with hopes for a harvest in the upcoming season.

But there are those in the city who do not wish to be led by women, even women who adept at providing guidance and resources—and it is not only the mighty warriors who feel their way, men who have spent their lives protecting and plundering without consent, but it is also the merchants, the farmers, the housewives; the common people are superstitious, and they are suspicious of these god-like warriors and their power, doubtful that any good can come from a woman’s outstretched hand.

[bluejaywriter]

Wonder Woman 2 to Gladiator 2 pipeline goes hard apparently

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"It takes longer than Martha would’ve preferred.

Much, much longer, to be honest."

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Anyway, guess who's getting the next chapter of Only One next month (only three years late 🤦🏻‍♀️)

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Good news: Writing actually happened this week (damn sunlight) and the chapter is now 4k

Bad news: By my reckoning, the chapter's only about 1/3 of the way done 🤦🏻‍♀️

but what if I don't want to write about Heracles