Grrl Power #1003 – There’s two of… uh, both of them
Yeah, it’s no surprise that Dad was the larger influence on Sydney. More on that soon.
Lots of talk about genetics under the last page. And yes, I know brunette hair plus blond hair doesn’t necessarily equal dirty blonde, or dark blonde or light brunette or whatever Sydney is, but really, a lot of traits tend to skip generations. My paternal grandfather’s pinkies both tilted slightly inward on the last joint. My dad doesn’t have that, but I do. (It’s fairly slight, it makes no difference when wearing gloves or typing, in case you were thinking I have crazy pinky claws or something.)
The purple uniforms aren’t so weird looking, are they? I know some people were like “Purple dress uniforms? Ehhh…” I just wanted the team to have a unique color from the other branches, and yellow and orange were definitely off the table. Granted, they’re a dark, desaturated purple. English doesn’t have a lot of words to describe desaturated colors, which is a shame, because I think a medium-light desaturated purple is one of my favorite colors. There’s just no word to describe it. There are words for non-primary colors like “gun-metal blue” but even those have a much larger range than “yellow.” What some people call gun-metal blue are straight up violet, so if I google some paint swatches and say “mauve” that could be anything from pale orange to peach to lilac to periwinkle to fuchsia. Honestly I think having only like 9 solidly defined colors is a real failure for English.
Speaking of books, is anyone aware of a series in which the MC get transported to a world/time that’s hugely patriarchal, like 1500’s Europe or another world where women are uneducated baby machines/homemakers, only the MC is a woman who’s an ex-Army Ranger or a Valkyrie or even a bio-weapon super soldier or a cyborg or something? I think that would be fun to read. If it was well written. If it was just a series of “Women can’t drink beer in this bar” -One Fight Scene Later- “We were ignorant men! Thank you for showing us how wrong we were! Please drink all the beer you want!” then that would get boring quick. It would still be gratifying to read probably, but not 400 pages of just that. I’m thinking more of the requisite scenes in Isekai books where the MC invariably shows off some odd advantage they have like being 50% stronger than the typical denizen of the destination world or learns their language in two weeks or whatever. And I don’t mean like a story where a woman does math then gets chased out of town for being a witch, more like a horde of orcs attacks, and the men won’t let the women help defend, and they start getting their asses handed to them, then the ex-Valkyrie grabs a spear and annihilates the orcs like they’re 1 Hit Dice monsters and she’s a Tarrasque. Those scenes are always fun to read. I’ve just never seen it done with a female protagonist.
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update: I spent all weekend on the vote incentive. It’ll be done this week, I promise.
This month’s vote incentive guest stars Lana of Spying with Lana. One of my own secret agents, Pixel, is trying to assist, with various levels of success and… nudity. Well, in the Patreon versions. The Vote Incentive will give you a pretty good idea of what might go down. Here’s a dedicated post in case you want to comment.
Check out Spying with Lana. Their current vote incentive features a certain gold-plated glamazon. Also it’s a funny comic with tons of skin.
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Nitpicky thing, shouldn’t Arianna address her as “Mrs Scoville” instead of “Ms Scoville,” since that’s the formal title of someone who is married? (I normally wouldn’t care, but that doesn’t seem like a mistake that someone like Arianna would make) :)
Ms works grammatically. Mrs denotes a woman is married. Miss denotes she is not. Ms is not related to martial status.
A lot of places recommend its use because you are less likely to make errors with it. For example:
“Using Ms. obviates the need for the guesswork involved in figuring out whether to address someone as Mrs. or Miss: you can’t go wrong with Ms. Whether the woman you are addressing is married or unmarried, has changed her name or not, Ms. is always correct.”
-The American Heritage Book of English Usage
Also it removes the implication that a woman’s martial status is important.
Kind of important when within earshot of Maxima…
What would American’s know about speaking English, they don’t speak English anyway
Yah, I remember when ‘Ms’ first entered into the language and thought WTF. Just left wing PC bullshit like so much other crap being generated. It’s like HS kids coming up with a new term to see if it will take off and see if it will offend anyone.
uh… no. Ms first really entered the English language in the 1950s and gained popularity, but it was suggested multiple times in the 19th century as well. As a solution to the very real problem of not knowing whether “miss” or “missus” was appropriate — given that there were both class structure and proprietary issues with using the wrong title that could be extremely offensive, to the CONSERVATIVE minded. It should be noted that even in the 1950s it would be used to not accidentally assign status to a woman who didn’t “deserve” it.
So… no, utterly wrong here, bud.
You don’t know which to use? Use ‘ms.’ That hardly qualifies as “politically correct” speech, even if that WERE an issue.
As for Ariana using it… it is the diplomatic term as well. Does she know if Ms. Scoville is a strong feminist who objects to using a title that identifies her marital status? No, she does not. I’m not sure she’s can be certain Mr. and Ms. Scoville are even still married? Ariana absolutely would use “ms.” over other options unless she had been made aware that the woman preferred a different title.
Only thing to point out is that Ariana would *definitely* know the Scoville’s marital status and specifically where Sydney’s mom stands on key hot topic issues such as Womens Rights/etc from the background checks and briefs done when Halo was being investigated to see if they should integrate her into Archon – after all, if one of her parents had connections with anti-government or foreign-government groups it could have disqualified her and I imagine those checks went even more in depth than normal considering the powers she has, but you are very correct that it is the polite generic term to use.
Ms. is pronounced “Miz”, right? Like The Miz from wrestling? I always thought that was funny for him to be called that, given the pronunciation of Ms. I mean if he wants to use female pronouns, I’m cool with it, but I don’t think that’s what he’s going for.
That’s kinda the point of it with that whole ‘Miz and Mrs’ story line
Er, not quite. Properly, it is pronounced “məz”, with the largely unknown-about “schwa” or “null” sound in the middle. It’s the same sound we normally give to — for example — the “e” in “parents”, or “churches”.
Unfortunately, many people give “Ms” an explicit “ee” because “Mrs”->”Missus”<-"Mistress" (which also often gets the schwa sound in the second syllable).
Wrong liberal! Ms was introduced for a woman who was divorced to denote to everyone she was “used goods” as it were, not for some liberal feminism. Quit with the whole “she is a strong woman” leftist liberal crap. SFCGator is correct so shove your socialist leanings elsewhere. Fed up with all your must tip toe around someone or it “gasp” may cause offence. Fucking snowflakes, get a grip
Vigorously repeating a lie doesn’t make it true.
From the Wiki, with footnotes:
“Like Miss and Mrs., the term Ms. has its origins in the female English title once used for all women, Mistress. It originated in the 17th century and was revived into mainstream usage in the 20th century”
During the 19th century, however, Mrs. and Miss came to be associated almost exclusively with marital status.[11] Ms. was popularized as an alternative in the 20th century.[12][13]
The earliest known proposal for the modern revival of Ms. as a title appeared in The Republican of Springfield, Massachusetts, on November 10, 1901:
There is a void in the English language which, with some diffidence, we undertake to fill. Every one has been put in an embarrassing position by ignorance of the status of some woman. To call a maiden Mrs is only a shade worse than to insult a matron with the inferior title Miss. Yet it is not always easy to know the facts… Now, clearly, what is needed is a more comprehensive term which does homage to the sex without expressing any views as to their domestic situation, and what could be simpler or more logical than the retention of what the two doubtful terms have in common. The abbreviation Ms is simple, it is easy to write, and the person concerned can translate it properly according to circumstances. For oral use it might be rendered as “Mizz,” which would be a close parallel to the practice long universal in many bucolic regions, where a slurred Mis’ does duty for Miss and Mrs alike.[6]
The term was again suggested as a convenience to writers of business letters by such publications as the Bulletin of the American Business Writing Association (1951) and The Simplified Letter, issued by the National Office Management Association (1952).[14]
….
Even several public opponents of such usage, including William Safire, were finally convinced that Ms. had earned a place in English by the case of US Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro. Ferraro, a United States vice-presidential candidate in 1984, was a married woman who used her birth surname professionally rather than her husband’s (Zaccaro). Safire, though saying “it breaks my heart,” admitted in 1984 that it would be equally incorrect to call her “Miss Ferraro” (as she was married) or “Mrs. Ferraro” (as her husband was not “Mr. Ferraro”)—and that calling her “Mrs. Zaccaro” would confuse the reader.[21] “
Ms was created in the 17th century as a shortened form for Mistress purely for writing purposes, but was reintegrated in 1901 as a verbal and written word of its own merit to denote ‘A woman who is ‘Not married or Young’. So it’s definitely not a ‘Left wing PC’ thing.
Right-wing loons like to claim so many very old things are “left-wing PC things”.
For instance, acceptence of openly gay men in the military goes back at least to Ancient Greece and Sparta. Several Norse gods openly swapped sex at will, etc…
Odin regularly rides his own six-legged grandson(by adoption).
Sleipnir has 8 legs, not 6.
Slepnir has eight legs, not six. But yeah, horse gets ridden.
Right, Slepnir, the horse Loki gave birth to.
Hmmm. Loki was Odin’s adopted brother, so Sleipnir would be Odin’s bróðursonur (brother’s son). But Loki had turned into a mare at the time and was the horse’s mother, so Sleipner would also be Odin’s systursonur (sister’s son)
Loki, was adopted by Odin, as his son, Thor was then Loki’s Step Brother!
Evil stepsibling trope FTW
In the MCU, Loki is the adopted son of Odin.
In the real world, Loki is Odin’s blood brother.
THANK YOU!!!
Only in the MCU. In the Eddas he was a Jötunn and explicitly Blood Brother of Odin.
That’s why in UK TV shows and movies, you’ll hear characters say things which sound like “Are you OK miss?” (that is how “Ms” is pronounced in countries which speak English) because it’s short for “mistress”.
Not entirely sure why American try to pronounce it like “mm-z”, I guess it’s because of ignorance of which word has been contracted (Perhaps it’s American squeamishness over the word “mistress”, thinking it sounds like sex talk or something?) and trying to pronounce what’s written on the page, so becoming part of you regional dialect.
Americans use Miss, Mrs., and Ms. (pronounced Miss, Misses and Mizz). Miss for unmarried women, Misses for married women, and Mizz for women whose marital status is unknown or for those who do not wish to be defined by marital status.
No it’s not, Miss and Ms are different words, not just different pronounciations
I understand some people just gotta be angry, but this is a really silly thing to be angry about, especially considering who came up with the term and whose side you’re claiming to be on. But then, I suspect if you were really alive back in the 17th century, keeping track of who came up with what has long since passed by what you’re capable of, since so many things have changed sides over the centuries.
If you are going to be angry it should be for something silly. The really serious stuff needs calm minds to provide solutions.
It may be small, but it’s not silly. It’s a piece in the war for equality or dominance.
It just seems useful to me that if you’re writing to or addressing a woman, and you don’t know her marital status, you can say ‘Ms.’ without any guesswork. Also, prompting a woman for ‘miss’ or ‘misses’ could also come across as fishing for pick up line eligibility, which I can only imagine gets totally exhausting.
Not at all. Most women these days, particularly in professional settings, go by Ms. since it doesn’t make the most important thing about them “What is the name of the man who has an exclusive contract to fuck me?” Makes it easier for the person addressing her since you don’t have to guess or get embarrassed when it turns out there was a divorce since the last time you spoke, etc.
Mistress used to be the female equivalent of Mister. But as the language drifted it took on a sexual meaning which eliminated it’s original meaning
There was quite a thread about this in the previous page’s comments.
Protagonist has to work quite hard, given that her only cheats are one more statpoint and a set of incomplete memories.
And she decides to hamper herself by going for a healer build first, so it takes quite a while before she can go on solo-raids. And then we learn that all the OP characters we’ve seen so far are actually really week because the area they are in literally eats XP.
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/36299/beneath-the-dragoneye-moons (also available via amazon and audible)
Less sexist world but overall way more OP protagonist:
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/16946/azarinth-healer
I heartily recommend both these web fictions. Ilea (azarinth-healer) is so different to most female protagonists it’s extremely refreshing. Elaine literally runs away from home into a monster/bandit infested wildland to get away from an arranged marriage, while not being epic. Epic comes later.
Ditto on Dragoneye Moons. Story is pretty great and readable. Pacing can be a little off from time to time but nothing too jarring. Characters are unique. There’s no overarching plot or central antagonist, so it feels like a slice of life with each book more or less having its own contained plot.
Can someone confirm this is an actual commenter and not a set of bots looking for clicks? Because it sounds interesting, but it also follows the pattern of crypto currency bots pretty closely.
I know what you’re thinking, but if the chatbots have gotten smart enough to reply that this is actually a person then I’m upgrading them to AI in my reckoning and I will treat them as persons from now on.
Aaand I just realised this was in response to the request for specific books. Which means it wasn’t completely out of context, and that means it doesn’t match bot behaviour.
I apologize.
I can’t verify Aphotep is not a bot, however I can recommend Azarinth Healer, I’ve been following it for a year or so. Note the use on contractions in my prior sentences, thus proving that I at least am not a bot.
Lal used contractions normally.
Not everyone likes to use contractions, does not make them a ‘bot’
‘I’m not a bot’ is probably what a (sufficiently advanced) bot would say. :)
I could have made it more clear by quoting the relevant part of the author’s comment though.
Thanks for this. I’m currently on Chapter 87 or so of Beneath the Dragoneye Moons, and am thoroughly enjoying it. I’ll also check out Azarinth Healer, as well.
I like Syd’s dad, but he was absolutely not what I was expecting. I was expecting a Danny DeVito-looking guy, nerd and civil war buff.
I figured he was a moderately (if maybe a bit niche) successful sci-fi author most people haven’t seen. If it had been that it’d be hilarious if Jaberwocky (or DABBLER) had an enormous “OMG IT”S HIM!!!” geek-out.
Danny Devito nerd would have been cliche. It would have been very ‘ugly/dumpy guy or short/goofy looking guy with hot girl’ cliche, which happens a LOT in cartoons and sitcoms. :)
This is the most solid argument for eugenics Ive ever seen.Imagine How sane Sydney couldve been if her dad wasnt allowed to breed so her mom settled for someone with properly functioning dna =).
Hmm.. was not aware ADHD was genetic, am now.
Eugenics is such a bad idea in almost all regards. A significant number of our best entertainers; singers, songwriters, movie stars, writers etc. have mental health issues running in their families. Not sure it is over 50% or something but significantly above the general population. And for science, Stephen Hawkins, Albert Einstein, are among the most prominent examples of people with disabilities providing global insights into the workings of the universe.
The biggest problem with eugenics is the people handling the experiments. They always start from the same flawed premise. “Okay, we need to breed perfection.” Beat. “Welp! We’re already perfect. Time to start culling all the undesirables!”
It wouldn’t be so bad if they did it like proper animal husbandry. Encourage suitable candidates to procreate and produce offspring with greater amounts of the desired trait. “Cull” the rejects by returning them to the general population. Focus on creating something NEW, not wiping out everything that’s different. That way if it turns out you’ve inadvertently bred in some horrible flaw, you still have access to all the genetic material elsewhere in the population.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen because all the eugenics proponents are bigoted xenophobes making an excuse for the same barbaric behavior as their ancestors. “Kill everyone not in the tribe and take their stuff.”
Really, just check out how messed up the pure bred cats and dogs are for arguments against breeding programs.
To be fair, that mainly demonstrates that when you breed for a specific “look”, without caring about health or other consequences, you get exactly the results you’d expect.
For the ‘what about this breakthrough’ argument, it’s often an open question how necessary to the breakthrough itself that particular person was. We know Relativity (for example) as an Einstein theory; if there had been no Einstein, how long until someone else faced with the same data drew the same conclusions?
Special Relativity? A few months at most — Poincare’s paper on the subject was published shortly after “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies”, and other physicists were working on the same problem.
General Relativity? A fair bit longer. Even in the 1950s, it was described as a theory that only about a half-dozen people fully understood.
Of you knew anything about history, especially American history you would not say that. Our Eugenics laws are still forcing sterilization on women solely on the basis of their ethnicity. Those laws and Buck v Bell were explicitly genocidal and we’re the inspiration for most of the Nazi genocidal laws. Buck v Bell is still the Law of the Land
Yeah, uhm… not trying to start a fight, but… I have ADHD, depression, anxiety, some of this severe enough that I can’t function for a bit…
and I just want to give a hearty **** you to anyone who wants to talk, even as a joke, about how I shouldn’t have been born and shouldn’t have kids.
So… please don’t make this kind of joke.
Seconded.
So you’re saying you’d wish your misery on the next generation?
It’s hard to have empathy for those who don’t have it themselves.
That’s a particularly ignorant and bigoted position.
Ignorant, because there is absolutely no guarantee that anything Sailor Porg listed off will be passed on to any children.
Bigoted, because you presume that Sailor Porg must be “miserable” even though that isn’t something they said about themselves.
Bigoted again because you presume that some or all of the things Sailor Porg did say about themselves simply must be reasons to not have children.
Ignorant again because there are very few people for which such a eugenics-based list of ‘undesirable traits’ could not be crafted. Yourself included.
And finally still more ignorance because you presume that having children as a non-perfect person translates into a lack of empathy.
Are you saying people who don’t fit your definition of what is best don’t deserve to live and shouldn’t have the most basic human rights? Really? We have words for people like that. They are not good words. My father’s generation went to war to kill them and wipe out their evil beliefs.
I’m saying that people should examine their own lives, and treat other people accordingly. Act to make other people’s lives better, rather than worse. If you’re not happy with some element of your life, don’t make it a part of someone else’s. Think about the consequences of your actions on other people, instead of just about yourself.
And you are the most convincing argument that time-traveling abortion clinics should be a legit service. Comments like that indicate you should have never been born.
I thought those arguments would be the current (severely mutated) crop of Conservative politicians in the US Gov’t at the moment. If anything would be an overwhelming argument for those services, it would be them…
If her dad wasn’t allowed to breed, Sydney would have never been born. If her parents had gotten busy half an hour later, Sydney would never have been born. Some other person, maybe vaguely similar, maybe very different, would have been born instead. Or maybe no viable fetus would have resulted at all. The millions of factors that go into who a person is would result in a literally different person.
I’m ADD. It’s not always easy to live with, and takes quite an effort to function in a “normal” society. But if someone offered me a magical pill to become a “normie” – no way. I would never give up the wide-angle perception, random creativity and heightened senses.
You want to eliminate ADD? Then the humanity would have had to do without people like Leonardo da Vinci, Einstein, Edison, Mozart, Disney, Verne… the list is long.
And if you take it to the logical conclusion of also not having gay people (I am not advocating for this, just pointing out that this is where eugenics arguments normally end up) then you wouldn’t have had Alan Turing, who is one of the foundational figures of the modern information age.
He committed suicide because the sate forcably sterilised him due to him being gay, btw. Imagine what we could have had if he’d lived a happy life.
Forcibly sterilizing a gay person… just seems cruel for the sake of cruelty. They’re already less likely to reproduce than a straight person, what is the sterilization supposed to accomplish?
No clue, but the UK used to do it.
Not starting a fight or anything (just playing devil’s advocate here again) but how do you figure that Leonardo da Vinci and Jules Verne had ADD? For that matter how would you know that Mozart, Disney, Einstein or Edison had ADD? ADD wasn’t even defined until 1980, and without being able to actually study those people and analyze them, you’d just be making a blanket assertion that ‘intelligent and creative person who have multiple interests, are geniuses, or are incredibly creative and/or driven obviously have ADD.
Many people with ADD can be highly/unusually creative. Or at least I’m assuming so based on what other people are saying here – I don’ t have ADD and I don’t know psychiatry or psychology. But that does not equate to ‘people who are highly/unusually creative usually have ADD. Again I need to be VERY careful when saying this because I do not mean it in some sort of insulting way.
Obviously we can’t interview him directly, but Da Vinci in particular had some pretty distinctive ADD tendencies: in the margins of an essay he’d sometimes doodle sketches of some unrelated device he just thought of.
“in the margins of an essay he’d sometimes doodle sketches of some unrelated device he just thought of.”
Possible, but it still sounds like a guess based on minimal rationales when there are a lot of other reasons for that behavior. Without being able to directly diagnose the person or use a LOT more information to build up a psychological profile, it feels lacking to me.
It could just be that he was very inventive and would write his ideas wherever he could so he wouldnt forget his ideas. I’m just not sure how that’s indicative of ADHD. I’ve written in the margins of notebooks when I have stray thoughts on questions to ask or topics to pursue as well, including when I’m in court or when I would study for tests, but I don’t have ADHD.
To be fair I also think that a lot of people tend to think they have different disorders when they just have normal personality quirks and psychologists and doctors over-diagnose people (ie, prescribing ritalin to kids that are just exhibiting normal behavior for children, etc), so that might be coloring my opinion a bit.
Most disorders aren’t real, distinct things. They’re a trend or a pattern. They’re a collection of symptoms that we’ve given a name to. But we have an obsession with putting things in buckets, especially when there’s money to be made.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case, but I’m not a psychiatrist so I probably stop short of saying something that extreme. I wouldn’t argue against it though because I think that what you’re saying is very plausible.
Still, I have sometimes dealt with psychologists and psychiatrists from a legal setting before I went into IP Law (mainly when I worked at the ADA’s office for a year), plus I’ve worked on some cases that I can’t go into that did involve medical-related patents, and at the very least, I think we have an habit of over-diagnosing certain behavior as disorders. And yeah I think most of the time it’s because there’s money to be made, especially in the pharmaceutical sector.
Well, that’s the ambulance-chasing angle. I look at ADD from another perspective, having lived with it for more than half a century.
You can call it a “disorder”, sure. It makes living a normal life as a good, productive worker drone very hard. But show me *any* creative genius, and I will show you a package of “disorders” the person has or had. I don’t claim to be a genius myself, but neurotypical and creative very seldom go hand in hand.
“You can call it a “disorder”, sure.”
Well, I mean I’d refer to it as a disorder because that’s what the last D literally stands for. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Although I do think it’s EXTREMELY overdiagnosed when a better reasoning is common behavior of children – especially overdiagnosed in boys in particular.
“But show me *any* creative genius, and I will show you a package of “disorders” the person has or had. ”
Okay this is going to sound a little rude but it’s not meant to be, I promise, and if anyone takes offense at this I apologize. Like I said, not a psychologist or psychiatrist and I don’t have ADD or ADHD or any other sort of psychologically debilitating disorder (as far as I know).
If I show you creative geniuses, you can show me what you want to think are mental disorders. But not necessarily that they HAVE mental disorders. You’re sort of putting the cart before the horse. Most people with ADD will find monotonous, boring jobs difficult to focus on. BUT… most people who find monotonous, boring jobs difficult to focus on are probably not suffering from ADD.
And yes, I’m coming at it from the ambulance-chasing angle but also from the ‘psychologists and pharmaceutical companies want to make a lot of money’ angle. But in your case, it sounds like it might be (and I’m playing Devil’s Advocate here as usual) you coming at it from the ‘This is a normal thing – I’m on the outside group but not the WAY outside group’ angle. IE, an attempt to make the disorder less ‘outside the norm.’ Which is odd considering it’s called a disorder for a reason, but understandable that people might try to see things this way because people do not like to feel TOO isolated from the norm – humans generally being socialized animals. I don’t mean this in a cruel way btw – I’m just going at the argument based on accepted psychological definitions, just like I do with accepted legal definitions.
A psychological disorder is defined as ‘a condition characterized by abnormal thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.’ The key word in the definition is ‘abnormal’ – as in not the normal state of behavior of most people. You say being a good worker drone is hard, but I’d argue that many people think being a ‘worker drone’ would be unfulfilling and boring without them suffering from ADD. People who don’t have ADD get bored as well when they’re in a boring position. That’s just…. being bored. And I think that maybe too many people try to cure the very normal act of ‘being bored and not wanting to work when the work is boring or drone-ish’ with medication.
“but neurotypical and creative very seldom go hand in hand.”
Why do you think that? I know that there are five big ‘personality traits’ in psychology’ – extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. Having high openness (ie, very creative and open to trying new things) doesnt mean you’re not neurotypical. It’s one of the ‘big five’ personality traits for a reason, after all.
https://www.verywellmind.com/the-big-five-personality-dimensions-2795422
Eugenics, in its original form, is a solid breeding practice based on what was known about genetics at roughly the turn of the 20th century. It’s what got us all those breeds of [insert domestic animal/pet here], after all. With a more scientific underpinning of heredity slotted in in one of the Big Question Marks of the time.
And applied to humans, it was not about “not letting people be born” , or even “culling the herd” as the more… enthousiastic.. proponents abused the principle. It was about preserving trait-lines by having the “right” people breed ( preferably a lot) , and dissuading people with “less desireable” traits from breeding.
With of course the inevitable discussion about what was “desireable” , and whether or not a certain trait was even inheritable to begin with…
And besides a few idealists, the practice wasn’t meant for the hoi-polloi.. It was meant to address the inbreeding problems the old nobility, and later the Bourgeoisie, en even later the New Elite had. The enthousiastically handwaving peeps in the brown shirts actually nicked the idea of the Master Race off the brits and americans. Academia, eh….
Of course.. The generation time of humans being roughly 15-16 years at its shortest, and more practically about 20 years, it’s always been pointed out from the start that any attempt at actual application would be a *very long term* project. At least a century or two of careful selective breeding to get stable results.
Didn’t stop various idiots ( and no… not just the germans.. by a long shot..) from trying shortcuts though.
It absolutely was not. Its proponents were unapologetic monsters. Whole ethnicities – Black, Native, Irish, and others – were automatically considered to be subhuman and needed to be eliminated. And we forcibly sterilized hundreds of thousands right here in America. It is still the Law of the land and is still done to “purify the race”. Environment, education, nutrition, enrichment, home life, wealth and all the rest were just declared to be meaningless. If you were declared inferior you would not be allowed to have children.
For pretty looking Anglo Saxon whites there was help and government money and the assumption that with a hand up you could be great. For Those People there was no education, no help, just “scientific” prejudice, prison, poverty, and extinction.
The Nazis sent their eugenicists to the US to model their policies on ours. We know what that led to
It was based on wishful thinking, pseudo science, and horrible misapprehension of the primitive science of the day. Eventually the biologists rebelled against the evil, bit only after decades of collusion. The politicians are still running on it even if they have to change the language in public.
To their credit the only major group which fought hard against eugenics in the US was the Catholic Church. They and they alone said “Every human being has worth and deserves human rights including the right to have a family no matter what color they are, no matter if they don’t look or sound or come from what you think they should. Life and dignity do not depend on the prejudice of the people in power.”
So no. Fuck your smirking conceit that you are the Master Race, that you get to decide who lives and dies, who is allowed to have children, and who is worthy of the rights and benefits of full humanity. And fuck your hateful ignorance.People like you are the reason most of my relatives perished in Ravensbruck, Auschwitz, and Theriesenstadt. They are the reason hundreds of thousands of Native women, Black women, Asian women, Irish women, had their wombs ripped out by American doctors in an effort to cleanse the Nation and why we have felt free to use Black men as medical guinea pigs.
As the meme says “Fight me.” I sucked “Never Again” with my mother’s milk. It’s not just a slogan. It’s a matter of no-shit life and death. that goes for Uighurs, Romany, Yezidi, Tuareg, Australian Aboriginal people, people who are physically different or disabled, and everyone else people like you might think are lesser.
Well, The Passing Critic, eugenics also included murder through forced euthanasia. And with how you are psychopathic to suggest eugenics, you’d be the first to be removed from the gene pool. So how would you like to go, The Passing Critic? Castration, with complete removal of all of your genitals? Or euthanasia? Saying no means you’re getting euthanized, as per historical policy.
Now go back to your hole and stay there where you belong.
Eugenics largely got a very bad history on Earth because of the nazis, who took Eugenics to a psychopathic result. It was a lot more popular in the 19th century and before without the stigmatism created in the 20th century. This has also influenced fiction as well to a very negative result, like in Star Trek (Khan Noonian Singh and the Eugenics Wars, in which the writers were probably VERY influenced by World War 2) or the Viltrumites in Invincible, or Brave New World by Huxley. It also sometimes was used to show how society can be unfair to people who do NOT use eugenics (like in the movie GATTACA), where Eugenics is not evil, but people’s behavior to the ‘outside party’ is evil.
Although in the comics, there are a few advanced species that used eugenics for their society, like Kryptonians and Tamaraneans.
If you want a positive outcome from eugenics in fiction, then I have two words for you: Bene Gesserit.
I always forget Dune. :) Good call.
Except it didn’t have a good outcome.
It just had a slightly-less bad one.
Because the opposing thing was extinction of humankind.
You two are forgetting all the BS involving the Honored Matres from the later books. Or ANYTHING to do with Alia.
In my defense, I haven’t watched Dune in over a decade and I have not yet seen the remake (yet – I plan on seeing it though since people say it’s really good). Soooo I might be a little ignorant on the details on this. I’ll let Illy handle any arguments on this. :)
Honeslty, Its been a while since I read the books as well.
Paul II was certainly a success from the BG breeding program, but I don’t want to get into the morals of his rule just now.
Positive? They claimed the right to decide if someone was a human being or not, and if not – that was gom jabbar on that needle, sorry, kid.
And if something exceptional was achieved but it did not toe the party line, it was claimed to be an Abomination.
I disagree with most arguments against eugenics since they come from a seriously flawed idea of how genetics, evolution, and even basic causality work. That said, all arguments in favour also come from seriously flawed ideas about the same subjects.
There is but one argument against eugenics that matters to me, and that is that the width of a genepool determines the adaptability of a species, while eugenics is a form of artifical selection, and like natural selection it narrows the genepool while deepening it. Basically, selection is bad for a species’ survival chances in the long run. I may regularly hate most members of my species, but I’m not yet at the point where I prefer us to go extinct.
I understand it fine, BTW I have a near-genius IQ.
I doubt anyone is going to believe that claim, for the same reason you feel the need to tell people about it.
You did NOT just claim that someone with ADHD has somehow “Wrong” DNA.
There’s no such thing as “Properly” functioning DNA. Just differently functioning. That’s how Evolution works, dumbass.
There is totally such thing as a not-properly-functioning DNA. Examples include Cockayne syndrome, Bloom syndrome, Louis–Bar syndrome, Xeroderma pigmentosum or Werner syndrome, and those are just the ones who survive long enough to be studied – there are plenty of harder cases who don’t survive to end of pregnancy.
Yes, but that’s not what the original poster was talking about.
It does no such thing. It is not a good idea, the failures are executed.
So, should we sterilize anyone we think isn’t as tall as Himmler, as slender as Goering and as blond as Hitler, or should we humanely do away with them so that they aren’t using resources that could be better used by the Race?
How do you decide who is one of the Untermenschen and who is one of the Herrenvolk?
The question I have is this. Is his hair dyed blonde? Because it doesn’t match his facial hair at all.
Though I can’t talk considering my “so dark brown it’s almost black” hair and eyebrows and my “light brown with hints of blond and red” mustache and beard.
I’ve been asked multiple times why I didn’t dye my facial hair to match my head, lol.
Though I have to say I’m not sure how those two parents made a kid that looks like Sydney. All she looks to have of her parent’s features are her mother’s eye color.
Facial hair often tends to be darker. I know a number of blond men whose beards are red, for instance.
Yup, I had blond hair back when I was “not old”, but my beard has always been red or red/blonde mix. Well, until as Mgnostic says, the gray kicked in. Even so the beard remains significantly darker than what’s left of the hair on top of my head.
Truth. And very strange. I and my siblings were all very light blonds as kids. This darkened at ~20 to a dirty blond for my sisters and a mousy brown for me. When I first grew facial hair I was very surprised to find that while I had a brown mustache my beard had about 20-30% red in amongst the brown. And my facial hair went solid grey long before my scalp hair had more than some grey hairs mixed in.
And then wait until the gray kicks in. I started going gray early. First the head and then a decade later the beard and moustache. The head and the bears have never matched. From the shoulders down I’m still dark brown.
Mine went the opposite way – the beard starting going, not just grey, but black in my forties, while my hair was still dark brown with just touches of grey(which is why I stayed cleanshaven for years – it just looked too weird, and I didn’t feel old enough to rock a white beard yet). These days (at 60) the hair has caught up with the beard, but the moustache still has a generous smattering of dark hairs
AND I meant white, not lack – don’t know what happened there
Not that unusual for color changes. My hair on my head started as brown with red highlights. My facial hair was red/orange.
Now the hair on the head is darker (highlights are gone) and the facial hair is pretty much all gray.
If you spend time in the sun in a place in the world that has either low lattitude or intense summers, your hair will sun-bleach paler than your beard. The sun hits the top of your head dead on, but your beard from the side. The gradation from sunbleached top of your head to the back of the head to your nape will be gradual, but because there isn’t a continuous band of hair along your face (…unless you are so hairy that there is…) the color break will seem obvs.
All Sydney Sr. has to do if he spends time outdoors is: not wear a hat.
I live in Las Vegas and the hair on my head just seems to keep getting darker.
From platinum blonde as a kid, to dirty blonde as a teen, to the almost black now I’ve nearly completed the spectrum.
Grammar nitpicking here: In the first panel Ms. Scoville says “The difficulty curve my daughter…” It should read: “The difficulty to curb my daughter…”. Unless you are referring to a difficulty curve as something akin to a learning curve.
I think she was referring to how…”Different” Sydney’s personality is compared to the typical “military” mindset and training/fitting her into ARCHON.
well the sentence included the word “difficulty curve my daughter no doubt adds to your job” is a legitimate statement. and accurate
tried to say “included THE word ‘Add” then wound up steamrolling past that
> Grammar nitpicking here: In the first panel Ms. Scoville says “The difficulty curve my daughter…” It should read: “The difficulty to curb my daughter…”. Unless you are referring to a difficulty curve as something akin to a learning curve.
No, it’s correct as written. “Difficulty curve” is a term taken from video games (AFAIK) and it refers to how the difficulty of a challenge changes over time and practice. She’s saying that dealing with Sydney starts off extremely difficult but gets easier over time at some unknown (possibly very small) rate.
“medium-light desaturated purple” – as in: “lavender”?
I would consider lavender to be light purple (as pink is to red) or possibly pastel purple, which is maybe a very slightly desaturated light purple. I’d say periwinkle or mauve is closer, but as I complained about above googling those colors gives you a pretty massive range of results.
The color palette covers a few colors, but “bleached cedar” appears to be the closest I could find:
http://veli.ee/colorpedia/?c=1F1828
“Black Russian” also comes close, but is a bit darker:
http://veli.ee/colorpedia/?c=0B001C
Though I’m sure some people in Congress would pitch a fit if they knew their supers’ dress colors were “black Russian”. Two things they hate.
Apparently the comment code got rid of my winking smiley emoticon at the end there. That last paragraph was just supposed to be a joke. :-P
Yeah, Congress hates alcohol :P
Military uniforms have been all sorts of different colors, especially once cheap dyes became available. Just off the top of my head during the 18th and 19th century there were black, blue, white, russet, green, pink, purple, and red. And of course plaid before Culloden and afterwards for Highland regiments. An understated purple for dress uniforms is definitely historical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nantucket_series
There are lots of characters, but there are several strong women who have to deal with existing prejudices. A really good read – historical fiction crossed with time travel and some mysticism.
I legitimately didn’t notice that their uniform was purple until someone pointed it out. Of course I didn’t know that navy-blue wasn’t just slightly faded black until I was told that either. My hearing tests are above average but it would seem I’m a touch color blind lol
And yet with the contrast between the 2, both parents still show they give a crap
Island in the Sea of Time. Has what your asking for in a book
No, definitely in a weird way.
The protaganist isn’t OP, but instead is a tactical thinker with a natural brawlers instinct, but not much strength. Because her class is [Innkeeper]! And an [Innkeeper’s] power comes from her friends. She slowly gathers a variety of influential and powerful individuals with a draw of good food and irresistible charisma.
The worldbuilding is vast and diverse, and it really ties together remarkably well. We get foreshadowing and implications of great mysteries, then a chapter that focuses on an individual or small team, highlighting the people and places that populate the world.
It’s The Wandering Inn, and it’s the best thing since tummy rubs followed by a punch to the heart.
wanderinginn.com/
Just got book 5 and I absolutely LOVE the whole series! PirateAba is a genius!!
The series Outlander is about a WWII nurse/doctor in 18th century America along with her Engineer daughter.
My recommendation isn’t an isekai, but I’ve been a fan on the Cassandra Kresnov series for a while. MC is an android created for war by the other side who decides she doesn’t want to fight anymore. Of course she ends up fighting again, and she can totally kick ass. There’s not really any patriarchy, but she faces a lot of antagonism due to being artificial and in a place where her creation is illegal. https://www.amazon.com/Crossover-Cassandra-Kresnov-Joel-Shepherd/dp/1591024439
Sounds wishlistable.
When you called for a book / story where a top-rank female soldier ends up in medieval times, I was reminded of Michael Anderle’s series beginning with “Death Becomes Her (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 1)”. It has some excellent similarities to grrlpower–vampires & werewolves are thinking, functioning characters–on both sides of the aisle. There are plenty of issues in the series if you find you enjoy the dominant military lady kicking (first terrestrial / super-natural, then alien) ass, training new recruits and building a high tech army (again, first on Earth, later across the galaxy), while shutting down ignorance bureaucrats & greedy business/military types. It’s even on Kindle, for free, with a subscription to Prime.
“Women can’t drink beer in this bar” -One Fight Scene Later- “We were ignorant men! Thank you for showing us how wrong we were! Please drink all the beer you want!”
So, Captain Marvel, and every Marvel Movie of Phase 4 then?
Why does her dad have no eyelashes? It looks *really* weird hes got such big round eyes with no eyelash border at all. Makes him look fake or plastic
He does. They’re just faint and hard to see because they’re blonde too.
No really, it’s a thing with some blonde folks.
Usually, in comics, only females have eyelashes, but do be notarizing how Junior’s eyelashes disappear in the same panel
This is the wrong question.
Sydney Sr. has oversized anime eyes just like his daughter. Nobody else on this page besides these two has eyes like that.
Wow. Look how many bobby pins Sydney had to deploy to keep her hair under control.
I’m not real big on female MC’s being OP physically. GirlPower is the exception only because of superheroism. Kill 6 billion demons has a female MC and to make her seem dominant they have basically turned her into a man with tits. I know the current zeitgeist is all “rah rah women power” but it just isn’t the case when it comes to the beating ass. I watched a UFC match where one of the bouts was two arguably world-class female MMA fighters. one of the girls put an unblocked picture-perfect standing sidekick into the jaw of the other girl. it pushed her back a foot or two but the girls kept fighting. if it would have been men, that kick would have been a KO and a broken jaw. There is such a wide gap between the power of a man and a woman that the overlap on the bell curve is not that pronounced.
You do realize women actually have superior lower body strength to men, right?
Ever thought that maybe that world-class female fighter didn’t, you know, HAVE A GLASS JAW? Some people can just take hits that’d knock other people out. There’s several MALE MMA fighters that’re the same way and beat their opponents via just being so goddamned able to take punishment they beat their opponents by outlasting them and tiring them out.
What you saw wasn’t a case of “Women are weaker.” It’s a case of “Most Guys you’ve seen take a hit like that fucked up and are better at dishing it out than taking it.”
Women have superior lower body strength? where did you hear that? if it is so how come Trans women are beating the shit out of natural women in Track & Feild, Weightlifting and Powerlifting? oh and look when you compare lifting scores for women to the same scores for men the men’s lifts are higher. My ex was arguably an abusive person. during our 10 years together she hit or kicked me in anger no less than 500 times. In high school she was the #2 track and field champion for the school. She worked construction with her dad laying bricks. I worked on a farm, but I was arguably a nerd. She never even left a bruise on me, when she would hit crazy I’d wrap her up, take the blows and hold her until she worked it out that she wasn’t getting away with that shit. Sure, there are some crazy strong women out there. but they are the exception, not the rule.
Where women really excel is in the long game. conditions that will kill the men graveyard dead due to starvation and exhaustion, women will still be going strong. it’s not as flashy as where men excel but it’s arguably the other pillar that keeps society together during a bad disaster or lean times. it’s also the reason for the old saying “The man will work from dawn to dusk, but a woman work is never done.
Something called literally every fucking Human Biology class in the known world.
Here is an artilce in the Atlantic, comparing women times in swimming and T&R to men’s.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/08/the-golden-ratio-the-one-number-that-describes-how-mens-world-records-compare-with-womens/260758/
Pardon me, I misspoke, T&R should be T&F short for track and field.
here is an article by a strength group comparing men vs women powerlifting and weightlifting records.
https://www.castironstrength.com/elite-strength-sports-ipf-and-iwf-a-comparision-of-sex-and-performance/
looks like your biology book forgot about Testosterone.
“beating the shit out of natural women in Track & Field, Weightlifting and Powerlifting?” They aren’t, they do badly!
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/246620/education-department-reverses-stance-on-connecticuts-transgender-athlete-policy
Oh and here is an article in the guardian talking about how a 43 year old Trans woman is headed to the olympics after qualifying under the new rules. he lived 35 years as a man, before becoming a woman. so he had all the advantages of increased bone mass, increased musculature size and density.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/may/05/trans-weightlifter-laurel-hubbard-set-to-make-history-at-tokyo-olympics
She. And you could have added the conclusion of the whole thing, which was her placing last in her group. So much for beating the shit out of ‘natural’ women.
Funny thing about hormone therapy is that all that muscle mass testosterone gives doesn’t stay.
Similarly with Track and Field, there is no indication that trans athletes outperform their cis peers (talking averages here, individual performances are an insane metric to use in this case), and no amount of overblown anecdotes by hate groups can change that.
He. and while the Muscle mass can fade Things like tendon connection points, male skeletal structure do not. so while HE may have to muscle density of a woman, he still has an advantage. also where did you read that he placed last? please post it.
and please don’t conflate the desire to let natural women compete in a fair and even playing field with hate. I know snowflakes are so sheltered that they cannot handle any kind of negative criticizim, but hate is a strong word and belittles the struggles and sacrifices that folk who have had to endure actual hate.
She. You may not get it, but calling trans people by their old pronouns or deadname is just as bad as outright insulting them.
For her placement, simple search for her name on Wikipedia would have given you her placement and further links to the sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel_Hubbard#:~:text=In%20front%20of%20a%20large%20contingent%20of%20media%20Hubbard%20struggled%2C%20with%20three%20failed%20snatch%20lifts%2C%20placing%20last%20in%20her%20group.
Leaving aside that the notion of ‘natural’ women is also transphobic, I don’t know how to spin it that a group that actively tries to legalize discrimination or revert existing protections against it is anything but a biased hate group.
Mmmm, not really. The disparity is much less for lower body strength than for upper body strength ON AVERAGE. There is significant overlap but IN GENERAL and at the highest levels of performance people who are biologically adult male still USUALLY (but not always) have an advantage, albeit less so for core and lower body strength. Testosterone takes away in terms of heart attacks, lowered resistance to infection, and a few other things, but it helps with muscle mass, muscle and bone density, and similar.
To reiterate – on average, overlap, exceptions, etc. etc. etc.
What do you mean when you say they turned her into a “man with tits”?
Also, it doesn’t really make sense to bring realism into a discussion that involves Kill Six Billion Demons. It’s heavy on the supernatural.
aggressive, dominant, and chasing pussy.
Could you explain how that applies to her? Those descriptions don’t make sense to me.
Like, what do you mean by “chasing pussy”? If you mean womanizing or promiscuity, that’s inaccurate. She’s basically in a monogamous relationship.
she beats ass every time someone looks at her strange. and yes it’s a momogamous relationship with a woman. I.E. chasing pussy. that’s what men do for about 99% of the male population.
Being gay or bisexual is entirely separate from being masculine or being a man.
“she beats ass every time someone looks at her strange.”
Do you have specific examples of what you are talking about, because that’s basically the opposite of what has happened in the story.
She definitely doesn’t fight people just because of them looking at her. She’s lost or ran from a lot of fights.
She hasn’t beaten any major or plot important characters. She’s only won against cannon fodder and minor characters.
And most of the time that’s with other people’s help (incubus or the other main characters).
The closest she’s come to winning a fight against a named character by herself was in a tournament. She barely won by a technicality (ring out) and the matches were being fixed in her favor to make them easier for her.
The guy she beat (Eris lo kai) was a minor character.
She definitely isn’t going around “beating ass”.
And i think Achieving victory through violence is also against the theme of the story.
A major villain is literally invulnerable. The other main villain “died” before the start of the story.
Okay, maybe the story has progressed some since I last read it, which was a few years back. but she’s defiantly fully mounted the stereotypical male role up to and including fighting and fucking women. she’s a guy with tits.
I’m guessing that it sounds like you last read it during book 3, when they were trying to break into Mammon’s vault.
At that time Allison’s personality was (temporarily) changed by a deal she made with incubus. The deal made her control over her abilities stronger, but it also made her personality more ambitious and rather cutthroat.
It sounds like you have unhealthy, though probably common, definitions of men and women.
my unhealthy defintions have kept the generations from failing for millennia, and they will again when things go tits up one day in the future.
They’re among the reasons things will reach the breaking point in the future. Your perspective is just too short to understand the flow of history.
I think Dave’s looking for L. E. Modesitt Jr.’s *Spellsong Cycle.* It’s a series of novels, starting with *The Soprano Sorceress* about a middle-aged academic singer who gets pulled into another world where she is suddenly a powerful sorceress. It has the “women are second-class citizens” in full force. She does have some learning curve to use her new powers, but after that casually attacking bandits and would-be rapists find themselves quite dead, quite quickly…and yes, she makes some large adjustments to the social order.
I was going to suggest this one as well.
Excellent series. Take a modernly trained singer and put them in a world where singing is magic. Fun things happen.
That sounds tasty. And those covers? Man, flashback to high school Piers Anthony books and Larry Elmore paintings.
Personally I did not hear Akira music. I visualized Weird Al’s song “Mission Statement.”
https://youtu.be/GyV_UG60dD4
As for book recomendations, 1632. The first books free at https://www.baen.com/1632.html
The short version is a typical small west Virgina town with its Powerplant coal mines Military retireees and UMWA Invoke their Second Amendment rights to enforce freedome of religion in Europe during the 30 years war.
One of the sceens has “the Jew, Lee Simms, ” (it makes scence in context, she is not Jewish) Sigle handedly stops a small army dead in its tracks with a sniper rifle, gets a minor Scotish noble to endure dentistry without anethetic to “correct 25 years of 17th century lack of dental care”, then trains him to be her spotter and husband, and then they Gives Gustavus Adolphus an education on what the future holds. By shooting Walenstine at extreem range (for a modenr sniper rifle (he gets better)
I am currently working my way through that series.
I know of “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s court” though I haven’t read it yet.
It’s alright, but I like Whoopie Goldberg’s take on it better than the book.
Never knew that was a female Yankee…
*cues up a bit of Weird Al*
https://youtu.be/GyV_UG60dD4
of course she takes from her father
remember, she is Sydney Scoville, Jr., her FATHER is Sydney Scoville, Sr.
“Dad! You’re embarrassing me! Not in front of the Colonel!”
Good Salvador Dali-inspired drawing there in panel 4.
For book recommendations, the collection that starts with ‘Chicks in Chailmail’ has several short stories that fit the description.
I can think of a few series that would apply. Lois Bujold’s “Vor” series starts with a prequel, “Lady Cordelia’s Honor.” Cordelia Naismith is a Captain of the Betan Exploratory Force… basically, she’s a Starfleet captain. Over the course of the first half of the book she helps the planet Escobar defeat an invasion force from the Barrayaran Empire… then she quits and goes to Barrayar to marry the commander of the defeated forces. The second half is about her trying to fit in with Barrayaran society.
What makes it especially interesting is that she both admires and criticizes Barrayaran culture, seeing both the good and bad aspects of it… and also, she does NOT ever turn into “Rambo with tits.” Yes, she’s competent at fighting, but what makes her particularly formidable is her INTELLIGENCE. At the end she’s told two things by the Vor lords. 1: she’s not to have any power in the new regime. 2: she’s responsible for the boy Emperor’s education. Cue her looking at her husband in abject confusion, “…are they really that oblivious?”
I love that part! “You get to raise the next Emperor but you will have no power here” HAHAHAHAHA!
I would second, third, and fourth any of Lois McMaster Bujold books. “Lady Cordelia’s Honor” is actually two books (Shards of Honor & Barrayar) and the rest of the series goes on to have some AMAZING female characters (Ellie Quinn, Bel – technically a hermaphrodite, haut Rian, Taura, and Ekaterin to just call out a few). The MC of the rest of the books is Cordelia’s son who has many health issues and looks like a dwarf on a planet that feels like feudal soviet Russia (read: they don’t like people who aren’t “6 feet tall and super strong”). He goes on space adventures and is SURROUNDED by strong valkyrie-type characters (no real harem-style scenes, but romance aplenty). When these characters come in contact with parochial Barrayar, it’s Barrayar that changes, not the women. Later in the series, when you finally meet “Lady Vorkosigan”, she is fairly amazing as well. The final novel (well, last written so far) is full circle back to Cordelia. Because she is Betan, she has a life expectancy of over 200 years and it’s a fairly grand love story. The whole series messes with gender roles, stereotypes, prejudice, and racism/muticism (if that’s even a word) and does so with understanding and heart. I’m 47 and have been reading this series for most of my life and I can honestly say that it has positively affected how I act towards people. The writing ain’t half bad either.
On another note, the Mageworlds books (starting with The Price of the Stars) by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald is another female lead series I love. Not a throwback to the 1500s but she’s running away from being the heir to the throne and wants to be more like her privateer father. Think Star Wars with a LOT less whining and if Kylo were a girl and didn’t go dark side (I am oversimplifying GREATLY).
I read the whole series last year after some recommendations here, lots of fun and some very creative sci-fi inventions along the way. Also, I tire of many series after the 3rd book or so because nothing really new happens, but the author did a great job continuing to develop the characters and universe in interesting ways.
OK, @DaveB , I know what happens to folks like us when we start internet research, so be sure you’ve got 3-4 hours clear before you click here!!
This article on how both genetics and language alter the ability to perceive colors will help with understanding why we can’t get solid definitions of colors.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-98550-3
And here’s the click-bait version for those who also care, and don’t do Footnotes:
https://qz.com/1454466/your-language-influences-your-color-perception-says-a-new-study/
Based on the fights my brother and I got into over sorting laundry back in the day, I suspect it’s even more complex than this, and that if I could [see] what you call “purple” I would have called it something different, like green or blue, but that’s the color they drilled into us was “purple” and so now we use that word when we see that wavelength, regardless of how it’s perceived. This leads to the Zen Koan: Everyone has the same favorite color, but different words for the experience.
I’ll repeat. Favorite character.
(And to all those who ask what about Deus, again – Deus goes beyond just being a favorite webcomic character. Deus is love. Deus is life. Deus is all. All praise Deus amen).
And you’re not just saying that because you’re in his book,right? ;)
Ahem….
I … um… am not at liberty to discuss that.
Okay I got to say something a lot of these comments are kind of a bit messed up like that Eugenics comment, like what the hell I mean Sydney’s dad is just overly excited not only has his daughter graduated from the military with honors she is also has real life super powers. He is just overly excited and said something dumb, every parent has done that.
Maybe he does have a bit of adhd but who cares he’s in the stable relationship and he has a beautiful daughter, and Sydney for the most part is a functioning adult, she had/has a job as a co-owner of a comic shop before joining the military and she can drive a car. Seriously that Eugenics comment was really inappropriate and extremely dumb.
Also the whole miss or Mrs thing to be honest who really cares it’s just such a small thing to get worked up about and this is the first time their are meeting and they don’t really know each other that well.
We try not to feed the trolls (much) here; overall this forum is one of the friendlier and more level-headed I’ve ever come across, especially given the nearly non-existent moderation. But still, it’s the Internet, so we can’t always have nice things. :(
Who thinks Dad is gonna invite Max and others for a RPG session at a local eatery. Famous for their spicy cheese sticks and homeless. Find out owner is a super dwarf who’s only powers are toughness, strength and brewing kick ass beer. . Also penchant for spiciness. Get Max to try “Earth Core Stout.” His beers should be nigh magical too. Has Brooklyn accent vs Scottish.
Homebrew not homeless…autocorrupt strikes again.
Huh. I thought they were wearing a really dark blue, almost black. I didn’t realize that ArcSWAT wore purple.
….
OMG ARCSWAT ARE THE REAL VILLAINS!
Book rec:
The second Honor Harrington book (by David Weber) involves a female mc from a very equal sci fi world visiting a backwards, patriarchal world. After putting up with a lot of bullshit from the locals, she ends up saving the day rather dramatically.
I’ll also second the Bujold mention, though while Cordelia is a badass, she isn’t much of a fighter. She’s thoughtful, smart, caring, and accomplishes great things, but she doesn’t punch people. And then the rest of the series focuses on her son, who is possibly my favorite character in fiction, but whose hand-to-hand prowess tops out at “lose slowly while his allies clean up”.
Darn, was still hoping that her dad was the scuba instructor from CH 94
I see that Sydney’s “anime eyes” gene was inherited from her father.
Dave, typo in panel one: “I’ve BEEN curious …”
Traci Hardings ‘Ancient Future’ starts off like like DaveB is after but slowly depends into more what am I reading kind of thing.
I just love the little detail in the last panel that it is taking a dozen hairpins to keep SyHalo’s hair neat and in place XD