Not to mention leaving open thighs and arms in critical areas with no armour.
Sure just go sword fight people with arteries available for them to stab it’s fine. So long as men get to see you’re women and you’re sexy it’s fine.
The only reason I can see to leave your legs exposed like that is to air out the privates since that island is probably hot af. I’d probably go around wearing a dress and sandals all day if I was told I couldn’t be naked.
Aren’t the Amazons based in Greek mythology? If so, weren’t there gladiatorial fights where women could be naked too? If so, technically they could all just be fighting naked. It’s only training and they’re friends/comrades in arms.
I do have a beef with them high heeled boots though. Fairly sure the didn’t have those in Greek times. So inaccurate.
(If anything and everything I’ve typed here is untrue, feel free to correct me politely or with funny af gifs XD)
OMG I’m a classicist this is my JAM
You aren’t the wrongest. (You are the rightest about the high-heeled boots. Those are a nope in terms of practicality and historicity). The Amazons were a semi-mythic group of warrior women who hailed from Thrace and/or Scythia (basically, “North-east ish”). Whether there actually were warrior women from that area is debatable. Greek depictions of Amazons varies quite a bit. In early art, they were depicted as female versions of Greek hoplites, with the same costume- think tunic-y thing with very short skirt, torso armor (but not with boob cups, and definitely covering the shoulders because how the hell else it it gonna stay up), greaves, helmets, big-ass shields, and knifesticks spears.Over time, elements of Thracian and Scythian costume made their way into depictions of Amazons- things like bows and javelins, a fuckton of horses, patterned tunics, boots, pointy hats, and stripey pants. And maybe tattoos (It’s kinda hard to tell if some craftsmen were trying to depict sleeves and sucked at it, or were genuinely trying to draw people with ink in their skin). The most common depiction of Amazons was as an archer on horseback, with a recurve bow, wearing long-sleeved tunic, belt, furry hat, trousers, and boots. Optional but popular is a half-moon shield.
This one’s pants are boring, but you can see her quiver kinda behind her:
This one clearly shows the hat, pants, tunic, and sassy attitude:
On a horse, bomb-ass christmas tunic, fancy pants fancier than any fancy pants you will ever wear:
horse, half-moon shield, aerial knifestick javelin, complete lack of fucks:
pants and/or furry onesie, big hat, recurve bow, ancient speed-shooting techniques only recently rediscovered:
As for nudity, Amazons were rarely depicted naked (except for the odd stray boob) until the Hellenistic era (300′s BC), and on into the Roman Era, especially during it’s midlife crisis phase (the century surrounding 0 AD, roughly) and it’s post-midlife-crisis have-sex-with-everyone, kill-all-your-neighbor’s-chickens-and-eat-them-deep-fat-fried-all-at-once, act-surprised-when-you-contract-500-venereal-diseases-and-clog-your-arteries phase (Nero-ish onwards-ish. And yes, that is definitely the actual term used to refer to that period of Rome’s history, and not simply a sweeping generalization).
Gladiators were purely a Roman thing. You do get arenas and gladiators in Greece and Turkey and whatnot, but that’s only because the Romans invaded and put them there because bloodsport made them less homesick or something, I guess. Female gladiators were certainly a thing, and may have fought naked for entertainment value (TBH I’m too lazy to go look it up at the moment), but the thing is, gladiatorialism was a sport, just like modern taekwondo, judo, and fencing are sports. Yeah, people are going to get injured, but they didn’t die nearly as often as our modern popular image would have you think, and their fighting style wouldn’t really be all that useful on a battlefield, because they had rules to follow and their purpose was NOT to kill their opponent, but rather to provide an entertaining fight. Gladiators actually considered it a point of pride to never kill an opponent in the arena.
Back to pants, because pants are interesting. To the Greeks and Romans, pants were just about the weirdest fucking thing they’d ever seen. Literally all of their clothes consisted of drapey rectangles. If they were feeling fancy, they’d stick a belt or a nice brooch on it. Pants are a complicated, relatively form-fitting garment and it just freaked those poor Greeks right out. Pants were a visual signal for “really fucking foreign”. The furry-hat-and-pants depiction I mentioned above was also the exact same costume that male Scythian warriors were depicted in, and the androgyny also freaked out the poor androcentric Greeks. Often, in vase art and such, the only way to tell an Amazon from a male Scythian is that the women have white skin. They lack of visible gender differences screamed “foreign” to the Greeks. There are several mythic stories about the origins of pants, and they all attribute their invention to women. One story even has Medea (of “fuck you Jason, I’m going to murder our kids to get back at you you utter fuckpile” fame) inventing pants.
Historically speaking, pants were invented because people found themselves needing to ride horses to get places, and not-pants are really inconvenient for that. Since both men and women rode horses, both men and women wore pants. (There’s also a fair bit of merit to the theory that the Amazon legend comes from actual Scythian female horse-archers, since once you put a person on a horse and give them a recurve bow, upper body strength advantages don’t mean shit). Pants were actually a key bit of military technology. Ancient China was having a hell of a time fighting off all these pants-wearing horse nomads (this was like 300-200 AD-ish) until the state of Qin finally decided to collectively put on pants and get on horses. They then preceded to kick the nomad’s pants-wearing asses and unify the warring states of China. Because pants.
Of course, because of bullshit, pants came to symbolize femininity and barbarianism to the Greeks and Romans. They think you look very silly in your uncivilized female legsleeves. Funny sidenote, the Romans avoided pants whenever they could, but when they kept invading more northerly places, shit kept getting colder. Winters in Northern Gaul (modern day France) were cold enough that soldiers actually had to put on pants, and the Romans thought this was significant enough that they called the region “Gallia Bracata”, which translates to “Trousered Gaul”, or, if you’re slightly more imaginative, “Pants France”.
(This is just the first image that came up when I googled “pants france”)
So, to bring this all back around to Wonder Woman, I’m really not a fan of those costumes. They aren’t practical and they aren’t accurate, and they’re also cliche and just like every other sexy STRONG female warrior in fantasy media (I will direct you to @bikiniarmorbattledamage for more details and feminist rants). They could have kept the definitely necessary to show thigh skin by dressing them as Greek hoplites, but then they’d have had to give them helmets and cover their precious hair, and give them actual for reals breastplates that protect above the breasts (seriously collarbones aren’t made of steel and PROTECT YOUR SHOULDERS did you see what happened to poor Bucky), and aren’t molded to the torso (seriously- if it’s stiff enough that you can’t stab through it, it’s stiff enough that you can’t move in something that tight). And even if it is only training, and for some reason they’re not hitting anywhere that’s exposed (maybe training to hit only really small target areas? IDK), the armor depicted wouldn’t work- there’s clearly no cushioning under it, and armor (any kind, really, plate, mail, scale, all of it) really doesn’t work unless you’ve got a layer of padding beneath it. Modern combat sports with limited target areas don’t have form-fitting breast-cupping gear, they have thick pads that protect. For instance, two women competing in Taekwondo:
Not at all coincidentally, here’s some modern body armor worn by female soldiers:
Incidentally, the Scythians also had similar armor, made of scales, woven leather, or some form of lamellar.
Anyway, the movie makers could have their characters showing a bit of thigh (if it’s that important that they be sexy somehow) and maintain some sense of accuracy with thick torso armor, which at least protects the vitals, If they wanted to really get back to the idea of Amazons as terrifying warrior women who act as equals to men and fight as equals to men, and keep the Ancient Cultures motif, these ladies would be wearing stripey pants and furry hats.
Basically, I think it would be awesome to put Wonder Woman in stripey pants.
Alrighty, so I just spent an hour looking up stuff about ancient pants. You don’t have to dislike DC’s costumes just because I do, though- they’re just not very accurate to either ancient Greek culture, or to ancient Greek depictions of Amazons. And there’s no pants.
TBH now I kinda want to redesign Wonder Woman to be a Scythian Amazon. Lemme know if you want me to tag you or whatever if I end up posting a drawing of Wonder Woman in stripey pants.
OSRIC You are not ignorant of what excellence Laertes is–
HAMLET
GHOST Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
HAMLET Murder!
GHOST Murder most foul, as in the best it is; But this most foul, strange and unnatural.
HAMLET Haste me to know’t, that I, with wings as swift As meditation or the thoughts of love, May sweep to my revenge.
Ghost I find thee apt; And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf, Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear: ‘Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark Is by a forged process of my death Rankly abused: but know, thou noble youth, The serpent that did sting thy father’s life Now wears his crown.
HAMLET
FIRST PLAYER
….But if the gods themselves did see her then When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport In mincing with his sword her husband’s limbs, The instant burst of clamour that she made, Unless things mortal move them not at all, Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven, And passion in the gods.’
POLONIUS
Look, whether he has not turned his colour and has tears in’s eyes. Pray you, no more.
HAMLET
GUILDENSTERN
Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame and start not so wildly from my affair.
HAMLET
HAMLET I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?
KING CLAUDIUS O, he is mad, Laertes.
QUEEN GERTRUDE For love of God, forbear him.
HAMLET
HAMLET To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, ‘tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover’d country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.–Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember’d.
OPHELIA Good my lord, How does your honour for this many a day?
HAMLET
HAMLET O God, your only jig-maker. What should a man do but be merry? for, look you, how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within these two hours.
OPHELIA Nay, ‘tis twice two months, my lord.
HAMLET So long? Nay then, let the devil wear black, for I’ll have a suit of sables. O heavens! die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there’s hope a great man’s memory may outlive his life half a year: but, by’r lady, he must build churches, then; or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is ‘For, O, for, O, the hobby-horse is forgot.’
FIRST CLOWN A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! a’ poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir, was Yorick’s skull, the king’s jester.
HAMLET This?
FIRST CLOWN E’en that.
HAMLET [Takes the skull]
HAMLET Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge; You go not till I set you up a glass Where you may see the inmost part of you.
QUEEN GERTRUDE What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me? Help, help, ho!
LORD POLONIUS [Behind] What, ho! help, help, help!
HAMLET [To Polonious]
HORATIO Here’s yet some liquor left.
HAMLET As thou’rt a man, Give me the cup: let go; by heaven, I’ll have’t. O good Horatio, what a wounded name–
“I’m sorry,” Bucky interrupted, dropping the pile of dirty laundry on Jim’s bunk. “Did I sound like I was asking? Fresno, you’re on laundry. I need it done by tonight, and Monty can’t keep it in his pants around Julia the washer woman.”
“That’s not –”
“You’re headed to the commissary with Dernier and I don’t want to hear it, Lieutenant.” Bucky rolled his eyes, caught Monty’s left hook in his open palm and twisted, landing on top of Falsworth and tugging the man’s arm high enough up his back to drag out an undignified whimper. “Anything you wanted to say?” he wondered, waiting patiently for Falsworth to growl out a “no” before helping the man back onto his feet.
“But I am to get the weapons,” Dernier declared, arms folded rebelliously, face set in the same scowl he wore when Steve decided they didn’t need to blow anything up.
“Not this time,” Bucky informed him. “Jones is going to handle that. And Dugan, you’re with Carter. I want radio codes, maps, all the information she’s got for us memorized and ready to spoon feed Fresno by the time we fly out.”
Even Jones frowned at that—it was his job to work with Carter. He ran the radio, and he was the one who didn’t make her threaten to clock him on a regular basis.
“C’mon.” Barnes clapped his hands once, sharply, and then spun and headed for the door without waiting to see if the Commandos would obey. “Howard wants us in the hangar by dark, so let’s move.”
“Fucking asshole,” Dum Dum muttered, though he waited until Barnes’s footsteps stopped echoing down the corridor. “He knows Agent Carter wants to set my hat on fire.”
“I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t stop with the hat,” Gabe told him, on his fourth deep breath and his sixth slow count to ten.
“Why can’t I go collect our rations?” Morita complained, shoving the pile of dirt encrusted uniforms off his lap and onto the floor. “In fact, why don’t I? Monty, you can take the laundry—and take Julia, while you’re there—and Sarge will never even know.”
Dernier giggled, and shook his head when the others turned to stare. “He will not know? Barnes, who knew when you tripped over your feet for ze girl who drives the ambulance and she refused your kiss?” Jim blushed, stared at the ground and kicked at the small mountain of clothes. “Who knew when the Captain lied about checking his parachute? When –”
“We get it,” Monty announced with a huff. “Why don’t you tell me all about Sarge’s fucking superpowers while we’re sitting around counting stale crackers and beef paste?”
Dernier’s face fell, at the reminder that he wouldn’t be spending the next few hours devising explosives with Stark, but he sighed and followed Falsworth out the door.
“Why’d he pick today to be an asshole, huh?” Morita demanded, shoving the laundry into a bag. “We had a working system!”
“We’ve only been back ten hours,” Dugan pointed out, tugging half a cigar from behind his ear and lighting it with obvious relief. “And it was three weeks in Poland before that. He’s probably just fussy because his balls ache.”
“So why doesn’t he go see Julia?” Morita muttered, standing up and slinging the bag over his shoulder, nearly toppling over under the sudden weight. “Or at least let Monty see her, so that one of us gets some relief.”
“The last time Monty took down the laundry, he was two hours late,” Jones said, cutting his nails with his pocket knife. “You moped for a week because the medic who turned you down was in the commissary, and Jackie caught Stark on fire and delayed the mission by two days.”
“I didn’t say it was a perfect system,” Jim offered grudgingly, and staggered toward the door.
“Bucky?” Steve’s voice echoed down the stairwell and reverberated through the hall, bouncing ahead of the slap of his boots on the concrete floor. “Buck?” Evidently Cap’s uncanny hearing or eyesight must have spotted their sergeant, because the voice changed direction, growing fainter as it raced away. “Hey, jerk, wait up! I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“I wonder what Barnes is doing, while we’re fetching and carrying and having our hats set on fire by ungrateful broads.”
Jones kept his gaze focused on the blade of his knife, so that Dum Dum and Jim couldn’t see the edges of his smirk. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said quietly, grinning at his hands. “I’d guess he’s getting some relief.”
(Author’s note: If Bucky is the oldest in this, Gabe is totally the middle child, Jim is the youngest, and the others shove their way in and elbow each other down the line.)
Eve Online (“spreadsheets in space”) is the infamously intricate massively multiplayer space trade/conquest game where in-game currency can be exchanged for real cash, making the battles fought there consequential in a way that sets it apart from other games.
But now the game has been brought to the brink of a battle that beggars belief, as the notorious Clusterfuck Coalition (formerly the Goonsquad) has used a tribute system based on ancient Persian tithing to create a galactic empire they call “The Imperium,” whose leaders have waxed fat and arrogant (and have attempted to cash in on in the real world).
It’s got to be too much for the other players. Working with a war-chest supplied by one of the bankers behind I Want ISK, a virtual casino that allows players to gamble with in-game currency (which, remember, can be exchanged for real-world money). The looming battle looks to be the biggest in the game’s history.
This is the most surreal shit I’ve ever read. Members of The Imperium swore fealty to a cosplayer. The owner of I Want ISK is hiring mercenary troops to fight in absurdly gigantic battles. There may be a real dollar value to the damage done in game. It’s more like reading about a parallel universe where space war has broken out than an MMO.
Don’t be scared! Or at least, not more scared than anyone considering parenthood! Autism will NOT make you automatically a bad parent. There are numerous autistic bloggers who happen to also be parents, and resources for disabled parents. We share them periodically, so keep your eyes out!
Some Autistic Bloggers who are parents include:
Morénike Onaiwu, who is an autistic Woman of Color who has both natural and adopted children, some of whom are autistic and some who are HIV+.
Judy Endow Is an autistic who is also a mother, though her posts tend to come from her experiences as an autistic with an MSW.
A non-exhaustive list of things first and second graders have done in my classes:
broken a glowstick over their hand and become immediately convinced that the fluid on their hand was going to kill them
proceed to come to me for the rest of the day, after the offending hand was washed and no damage found, and ask if they could do x activity with the not-really-injured hand
fallen out of a tree
kicked each other in the ribs while cartwheeling
informed me I looked like a monster when I wore black eyeliner instead of brown
wrote a rhyming ditty about me in which I got hit by a car
illustrated me before and after the aforementioned fictional car accident (smiling on the left, x’s over my eyes to the right)
cried hysterically for ten minutes upon not receiving the prompt card labeled “cat”
coined the phrase “so-and-so is feeling like the snail today,” to indicate when a peer is feeling overwhelmed and momentarily antisocial
inquired, in a very skeptical tone, if I was always smiling and always this happy
exclaimed that I am “really pretty!” under my uniform smock
collectively decided that I am the ideal human coat hanger, both in the sense that I myself am human, and as well as in the sense that tiny humans are the ones that hang themselves off of me
angry!cried for fifteen minutes straight upon hearing that “ballet” had a t in it
touched my waist when I showed her what I was wearing under my smock, and said, “wow, you aren’t fat at all.”
pointed at the cover of my Greek Mythology book, at one of the shirtless and ripped men, and asked me very skeptically if that was what Hades looked like.
Easter Camp edition!–expanding out to some older and younger kids, hot topic being Ancient Greek mythology:
asked me, for almost two hours straight, to “tell another story!” about Ancient Greek mythology, thus coming to hear about 90% of my knowledge of the Greek mythos (and unknowingly engaging in the several-thousand-year-old oral tradition)
asked me skeptically why the gods invented man, but not woman until much later (I told them that the gods have no imagination)
carried out a discussion, wrt Chronos, as to why eating your own children is bad
decided to act out the Pandora myth, namely performing Pandora opening the box, and all the little miseries that fly out of the box
proceeded to characterize the little miseries, e.g. “I’m the old-age monster. I’ve got saggy flappy muscles and lots of wrinkles!”
upon telling the version of the myth in which Pandora is heroic, for having closed the box on the last and worst misery, Foresight, thus saving humanity from knowing every bad thing that would ever happen to them, and thus becoming hopeless: one little girl insisted that this was actually awful, because “if we knew every bad thing that would happen to us, then we could just give up!”
consequently, all interested got to sit through a brief explanation of nihilism
ok but did every kid have a certain historical time period that they were REALLY into?? like I was super into the california gold rush when I was 9 for no reason
Kimchi and Justice 