the-unknown-specimen

Latest Posts by the-unknown-specimen

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Family Outing - 7/14/20

When you realize your overpowered goody two shoes, co-worker laughs in the exact way that the mild manner, clumsy, loveable oaf Clark Kent you dated, fell in love with, and then dumped because you knew you could never tell a civilian much less a reporter about your villgantly night “job”. Resulting in ruining the best thing in your life. 

Hi. I like your blog title! And I have a question: What was Isis like in actual Egyptian mythology? What sort of cool things did she do?

Heheheh thank you!

Isis was a pretty badass bitch. Although she was first and foremost a protective goddess associated with mourning, who sustained and protected the deceased, she quickly gained prominence as a goddess of cosmic associations and a powerful user of heka.

Her heka is central to much of Egyptian myth. It was that which restored Osiris to his complete form - sans actual penis, but with a shiny new gold one - and which made it possible to conceive Horus. She and her heka are invoked a lot in medicine. It would also help the deceased in the afterlife, whether commoner or royal. 

Isis was definitely the most powerful of the gods when it came to heka. She’s the only one ever shown as a match for Re - most specifically in the story of Re’s secret name, where she creates a snake from some mud and Re’s own spit, which almost kills him. She did that because she wanted to know his secret name, and basically blackmailed Re to divulge it in exchange for a cure. 

In other mythological traditions she shapeshifted into e.g. an old lady, or a pretty young thing, in order to get what she wanted. For example, when Seth refused to give up the throne of Egypt in favour of Horus, she turned herself into a beautiful young woman and tricked him into admitting that if a man’s son is alive, the son should get his father’s due, rather than anyone else. She is also one of the goddesses who assumes the role of the vengeful Eye of Re.

Basically, Isis takes no prisoners and isn’t above making a pest of herself to get what she needs or wants.

DC/Marvel crossovers by Vasco Georgiev 

This is probably weird to ask, so here it goes. Where there ever any heroes of Egypt like Herakles, Bilgamesh/Gilgamesh, Arjuna, or Jamshid? I noticed that I have never really heard of any heroic epics out of Egypt and I was curious as be to why that may be.

Culturally, heroic epics simply weren’t a genre within Egyptian literary tradition. I think the closest you can come to such a “hero” within the Egyptian body of literary works, is the character of a magician, like Djedi or Si-Osire, or Isis herself.

There are for example the Demotic stories with protagonist Setne Khamwas (based on the fourth son of Ramses II, Khwaemwaset). Setne Khwamwas has two adventures: one in which he finds the Book of Thoth in the tomb of a prince called Neferkaptah, and another in which he meets a magician from the time of Thutmose III, aforementioned Si-Osire. Of course since these are Demotic texts, they’re very late in Egyptian history. The copies we have are from Ptolemaeic and Roman Egypt respectively.

Then there’s the Westcar papyrus, which is a Middle Kingdom text that includes a few “miracles” the 4th Dynasty magician Djedi performed during the reign of king Khufu. This text wasn’t meant as an heroic epic either; rather, it’s one in a tradition of programmatic texts. They reflect the outlook of the class and time in which they were created, but they are also literary works.

But like almost all Egyptian literature, the subjects of these works are either fully mortal (think the protagonists from The Eloquent Peasant, Sinuhe, The Shipwrecked Sailor), fully divine (e.g. the giant snake on the island of the shipwrecked sailor, the two brothers in Tale of the Two Brothers), or the spirit of a deceased person (Neferkaptah in Setne Khamwas). And like most Egyptian literature, there’s a greater lesson to be learnt from the narrative. E.g. in the Shipwrecked Sailor, the sailor admonishes the official he serves to speak the truth of what happened, and The Eloquent Peasant imparts on the reader the importance of good speech.

Powerpuff Girls was actually a show about a group of small children crushing the patriarchy and no one will convince me otherwise

Nick Robles is honestly out here like:

Aerith & the Turks

Just your regular local florist, going about her day.

I wanted to practice backgrounds some more so this is a fanart of both Sector 5 slums as it is of Aerith and her secret bodyguards.

Toph’s Family

Blood. As I shed one last red tear for my fallen sister, I realize the entire world now revolves around this singular word.

VAMPYR (2018)

Another day at the office

*nervous laughter*

heh…ehehehe. Who obsesses over the Winter Soldier? Not me, that’s for sure….

….

*runs*

(please do not use or repost without my permission. thanks :)

Ive been thinking lately about the Tony-deletes-his-brain arc from Iron Man (2008).

Steve is dead, the Registration Act is done, the Skrull invasion has put Osborn in power, and, thanks to Extremis, Tony is carrying the entire Registration database in his head. The logical and very Tony solution is to slowly delete his own brain by traveling the world and plugging into repulsor terminals he has stashed in various places. Each time, he loses chunks of his intellect and his memory and heads closer to total brain death. It’s the culmination of all his angst over Civil War and Steve’s death.

But one thing that really gets me is this scene in issue #17 when Tony is writing an email to Maria Hill:

Tony is thinking about Steve when there’s no particular reason to be thinking about Steve, which is very in character for him. But more importantly, he’s forgotten that Steve is dead.

It’s thing that destroyed him in the aftermath of the Civil War, the one thing he couldn’t live with, and he’s forgotten. There was no reason to put this in the scene, other than to highlight that.

I think this was exactly what Tony wanted, and the real reason why he didn’t just eat a gun or “throw himself into a volcano” as other characters suggested. Tony didn’t want to die. He wanted escape from the guilt and to and dull of his mind and lose his sense of self. And when he reboots, he gets to lose the entire year of memories he couldn’t handle. And it’s so, so in character because those are the same desires that made him alcoholic years earlier.

More than that, I think Tony knew exactly what he was doing when he put the database in his head. If things went wrong, really really wrong, he had a ready made escape. A planned loss of the worst of himself and the worst of his memories. (I’d also like to think that if Steve put these pieces together after he returned and Tony had lost a year, he’d be furious.)

So anyway, that’s my over-10-years-too-late extremely angsty analysis of post-Civil War Tony that no one asked for... carry on

Red Avadat, Red Munia or strawberry finch. 🐦🍓

Okay folks. I didn’t want to directly tie the book to this account because this is my fan account, but you know what? Screw that. I’m not ashamed of writing fanfiction. I’ve read more excellent fanfiction than I could list here. I regularly rant about how great fanfic and fic writers are on here. I would proudly brag about fic in public. I will keep writing fanfiction even if a miracle happens and the series gets optioned by HBO. So to hell with a veneer of separation. My real person account is @caitymschmidt

I’m very unemployed right now, because I work in themed entertainment, and every client is either slashing their budgets or cancelling their projects. I’m not asking for donations, but I am asking for help. My second novel comes out in a couple of days, and its through a little indie publisher. I don’t have a team spending thousands to promote it. Its mostly just me.

I have a mind-meltingly huge number of readers on my fanworks. Thousands of bookmarks. Thousands of subscriptions. Thousands of comments. Tens of thousands of kudos. I hoard them all like a dragon. But apparently I’m doing something that works for y’all.

The only thing I change about my writing when I’m doing original works is that I pause to explain the universe and characters a bit more. Otherwise? Same style. I’ll give you characters that you want to beat to death with a shovel exactly as much as you want to hug them. And, yes, I will scoop the heart out of your chest so you can watch it beat.

The first book is on sale on Amazon right now as a 99 cent download. I totally understand if you can’t afford that; we’re in a global crisis. If you can? I’d appreciate it. But you know what’s even more valuable? Comments. Reviews. Posts. Reblogs from @caitymschmidt Posts on other sites. Have you ever push-started a 747? Because that’s what this feels like. If it could get the thing going, I could probably pull this off and fly, but right now it’s just a big-ass plane that doesn’t want to move that is very much on the ground. Right now, every extra moment of help makes it a little easier. So, thanks, for whatever you can do.

The greatest tragedy of Among Us is making friends and then accidentally disconnecting before you get to say goodbye

A Bingo’s Coming!

Do you like Steve, Tony, and/or Bucky in all four of their particular combinations? Then do we have an event for you. Starting on Nov 1, you’ll be able to order cards for a four-way bingo - Stuckony, Stucky, WinterIron, Stony. Any of the squares can be filled by any of those four ships! 

Fills open Dec 1 and close June 30, 2021 - so plenty of time to get the creative juices flowing. Badges will be awarded for the traditional reasons (participation, bingo, blackout) but also for some special surprise reasons as well. 

Excited? Us too! Spread the word and we’ll see you back here on Nov 1 with further information. 

Review of ‘The Good Soldier’ by Ford Madox Ford ---- 5/5 STARS

Three months ago, when I stumbled upon a beautiful collection of Alma Classics at a book sale, I hardly imagined that one of the volumes I selected would turn out to be one of those rare literary unicorns that ticked all my boxes. It seems unlikely, but The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford fascinated me from practically the first sentence. “This is the saddest story I have ever heard.”

The first thing you should know about The Good Soldier is probably that it’s being told from the viewpoint of an unreliable narrator and has no strict chronology. It reads like a confession and the sequence of events is jumbled according to the mood and flow of conscience of the main character, John Dowell (whose name you will likely have forgotten by the end). The story is written in such a way that you don’t untangle most of its lies and mysteries until the very last page, which gives the book the impression of being a puzzle you must put together. The suspense definitely had me race through the later chapters. 

On the surface, Ford sketches how, at the beginning of the 20th century, the lives of two couples -- one American, one British -- intertwine themselves over the years, giving way to a secret romance and betrayal. On a deeper level, Ford examines the mental processes these people underwent to get where they are now in their lives. It spares us no dirty details. Even our dear unreliable narrator finds plenty of faults within himself and ends most parts of the book on a self-critical note. The Good Soldier is brutally honest in spite of describing an intricate web of lies and the feelings of one man who was the sorry victim of it. 

Despite being first published in 1915, so many elements discussed in this book are incredibly relevant and it’s obvious why that is: The Good Soldier is a portrait of humans, and humanity has not really changed in the past century at a base level. We are still driven by love, pride, jealousy and all that other good stuff. This has led many reviewers to call the characters ‘despicable’ or ‘the worst of humanity’, but I think that’s too quick of a judgement. It was refreshing to see the dark corners of the human psyche portrayed with such stark honesty. The characters felt like people I could possibly encounter in the street; some reminded me of people I knew. Best of all, I could understand all of their motivations at any one point.

Honestly, this book handles so many subjects that we are still struggling with today. Here’s a selection: sexism, male entitlement, the objectification of women, abusive relationships, religious tension between branches of the Christian faith, the downsides of cultural conservatism, and many others. But it also brought some brighter topics to the fore, namely asexuality, polyamory and serial monogamy, male-female friendship, and the importance of responsibility and trust in any relationship. If that doesn’t sound modern then I don’t know what does anymore.

And the ending, damn, it was all I could have wanted. It was realistic and so quietly tragic that I could not help but feel sympathy for all those involved in the tale. It’s true you won’t get happy vibes from The Good Soldier, but you get tonnes of satisfaction from it instead. It’s got my full recommendation.

Steve and Tony + the foreign concepts of “family” and “stability”

Topical Legstagram I did last month and never posted. For some reason I find it really soothing to make fake chats!

Gandalf has had the gc on mute for a year.

May I also point out that Lady Eivor is a towering, thick, muscular woman that isn't an "IG Fit" model with a shaved head and tattoo, scars on her face, a strong jawline and features, and a deep, raspy voice.

She goes against EVERY stereotypical Beauty Standard "Norm" that society expects all women - fictional or not- to follow...

Yet she is STILL absolutely Stunning

She was never intended for the male gaze, and the men are freaking out about it. Because at least with Kassandra she was still stereotypically beautiful, and therefore they could use that as an excuse for their sexism (she's too weak, not gritty enough etc)

But now Lady Eivor has been shown just how brutal she can be, in ALL her glory! Something that poor Kassandra was never allowed the opportunity until her game came out.

This is a woman who is truly ferocious, and for the first time she gets to be ferocious in her marketing...and that terrifies certain types of people who are still stuck in their misogynistic ways.

Let them cry

I love how many Golden Age “World’s Finest” covers are basically just Superman and Batman taking their adopted son Robin out for fun activities like good supportive parents (though not above a little harmless fun at each other’s expense).

Mera Cross-stitch update 02/10/2020 ----- 50 - 55% done!

The weather and lighting has been horrendous for the past week, so I had to muck around with a filter, but this is pretty representative of the actual colours.

Ya know how in Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan exists in all times at the same time? That’s what watching this felt like. I am both in 2020 and 2005. Who is this intrepid time traveler???

“I’ll take my leave of you, Kassandra.”

It would’ve been a lie to say that those words didn’t cause her shoulders to drop.

Kassandra had gotten used to Brasidas’ presence during their days in Arkadia that she’d almost forgot he wouldn’t be accompanying her to Boeotia, returning to Sparta along with her mother instead. She watched as he did a small bow as a parting gesture, like the gentleman he ever was, and tried not to let her disappointment show.

But then Brasidas glanced up at her—those soft, gentle honey eyes she would never have expected to find in a battle-hardened Spartan man before—sending her a certain look. And just like that, she understood the unspoken words behind them, and found herself returning his smile with one of her own.

I’ll be waiting for you back at home.

Because Brasidas bowing to Kassandra before they part ways in Arkadia always makes me soft.

for no particular reason and certainly not because of a certain shitbag author publishing yet another shitty book, here’s a list of science fiction/fantasy books by marginalized authors.

with special focus on trans, indigenous, jewish, asian and/or disabled authors because these are groups she-who-must-not-be-named has been particularly shitty about!

note: i got the idea to do this from @queerpontmercy​​​ - hope you don’t mind! i’ve read most of these, and i’ve tried to organize them by subgenre. now go read!

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi. Young adult SFF written by a black nonbinary author, with a black trans girl main character.

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger. Young adult speculative fiction written by a Lipan Apache author. Main character is an asexual Lipan Apache teenager.

Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan. First book in a YA fantasy series in an Asian-inspired setting by a mixed-race author of Malaysian descent, featuring a F/F romance.

Blanca & Roja by Anna-Marie McLemore. A young adult fantasy about two sisters in a cursed family, written by a Mexican-American nonbinary author.

Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones. A contemporary, coming-of-age fantasy about a boy and his werewolf family, written by a Blackfeet Native American author.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo. First in a high fantasy novella series by an Asian-American author, featuring a queer cast including a nonbinary main character.

The Black Tides of Heaven (Tensorite Series) by JY (Neon) Yang. A fantasy novella series with nonbinary and lgbtq+ main characters, written by a nonbinary Singaporean author.

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey. Pulp Western science/ dystopian fiction novella with an all-queer cast, written by a nonbinary author.

The Golem & the Jinni by Helene Wecker. Historical fantasy combining elements of Jewish and Arab folk mythology by a Jewish author.

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik. Fantasy by a Jewish author with Jewish main characters.

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders. Fantasy about witches and scientists trying to save the world by a trans author.

Jade City by Fonda Lee. First in a fantasy series in an Asia-inspired setting written by an Asian-Canadian author.

Bone Universe trilogy by Fran Wilde. Fantasy trilogy featuring cast of disabled characters written by a disabled author.

Parable of the Sower (Earthseed series) by Octavia Butler. Science fiction / dystopian series written by a black disabled author.

Y’all can pry alterous attraction from my cold dead hands.

It’s such an important concept. As a community we cannot let it die.