Joan of Bark

Sewing and embroidery take skill, patience, and artistic talent and it was also the ultimate way to ignore the annoying men in your life in past centuries 

If you didn’t feel like talking to a man, you just “took up your sewing” and he’d have to leave you alone, especially if he needed that shirt mended

Women also got together all the time to sew, weave, embroider but also talk, gossip, assist each other’s work, and enjoy each other’s company in peace 

Can you hear me callin’ out your name

You know that I’m fallin’ and I don’t know what to say

I’ll speak a little louder, I’ll even shout

You know that I’m proud and I can’t get the words out

Oh I

I wanna be with you everywhere

- RIP Christine McVie. Could never have got this one done without you.

She speaks the words under breath, those ancient words of grace and beauty, and watches the shadows of her hands cascade over each other in the beam of the ship’s lamp. Hearing those old echoes of the Origin always makes her philosophical. If a clone is a being without a soul, if a being without a soul is invisible to the goddesses, then when she’s alone no one sees her. The veil to end all veils.

Pt. 1 of Long Song of Fate is here on my patreon!

This is a very quintessential story for me, in that it’s an odd, subtle little yarn about an unlikely rebel, and in that it’s a bittersweet love story fraught with uncertainty. What I didn’t expect it to become was such a tour of Bell Town and comment on the position of umbrali in Bell Town, which is something you might enjoy if you, like me, like side stories that tackle minutiae of the setting (I assume you do…it’s kind of my thing).

If you’re new to the SC universe, start here!

After six gotdang years, I finally have a draft design for the flag of the first rebellion!

Cepheid (who’s most responsible for this design) talks a lot about arrows as a personal symbol of revolution—both because they represent the inevitable release of built up pressure (when you pull back the bow string) and because they’re not very effective without careful forethought: speed, wise use of available circumstances, and precise aim.

Overview Map of Basilea (you can zoom in thru the link!)

My labor of love is finally semi-done! (Hopefully the final version will have more infrastructural info like shuttle routes and lighthouse locations; it’ll probably be a patreon bonus).

[ID: A 2D map of a multi-star system with four suns (Sol Jenya, which has eight planets; Sol Atya, which has four; Sol Minerva, which has one; and Sol Suraya, the outermost without any planets). The system is surrounded  and intersected by forty-nine orbits–represented as rings–which are grouped in seven sections. The groups are labeled, from innermost to outermost, ‘the Jenya group,’ ‘the Atya group,’ ‘the industrial group,’ ‘the Minerva group,’ ‘the starlight belt’ (the smallest section with only 1 orbit ring), and ‘the Suraya group.’ The Suraya group has a slight gap and the two rings standing apart from the gap are labeled ‘the palisade.’ Numerous orbiters, satellites, and space stations are represented on the orbits as small white dots in orderly configurations. The orbit rings are labeled from 1 through 49 with roman numerals. End ID/]

Some notes:

While this map is not exactly to scale (if it were most of the planets and structures wouldn’t be visible), it is roughly proportional using the Minerva Unit (the distance from Sol Minerva to Sitheria) as a reference.

Each small white dot outside a planetary system is an astraea-made structure, mostly moon-sized terraformed cities of a few thousand to a few million people.

The orbits of the inner ten orbiters are much more complex than portrayed here as they’re designed to course-correct on a regular basis. Their location on the map is also for readability over accuracy–the goal is for them to follow the habitable zones of the suns as closely as possible.

The inner three rings are uninhabited and are purely for collecting solar radiation and producing these house-sized batteries that have to be shipped in to the “Sun Followers” (the first 6 orbiters built) and their smaller exurbs. Despite getting literally more natural light than anywhere else in the galaxy, these 6 use by far the most power per capita of any residential area, because of course they do.

The “starlight belt” refers to the area of the Rings that gets the least natural light, which despite having no permanent macrostructures is actually fairly populated because it’s the midpoint between the inner rings and the outer ports and also where all the ‘not in my backyard’ stuff, like factory space stations and FTL shipyards, goes. It’s considered the forty-first ring despite not really being a ring so that it can have an envoy to court, although they keep changing who that’s supposed to be. For most people out there unfortunately the law begins and ends with whoever owns the ship/station/temporary building platform they’re tethered to.

The outer two rings are nicknamed the palisade because at one point when the Rings were very new and the LGA wasn’t quite a thing yet they were important lines of defense. The rulers of the outer orbiters, the Nine Marchiesas (one of em’ was supposed to be ring #50 but in actual practice wound up a satellite to the 46th, but that’s another story), still are considered to have a military post out there even though it’s now almost completely ceremonial.

The industrial group hasn’t been purely industrial for a long time, it’s basically the old starlight belt but it’s been built up and nowadays it’s just considered the middle class/new money orbiters. The “mid 20″ were considered rough/poor in the period when Lux was growing up/a young adult, now they’re hipster

I can’t for the life of me find the posts I made about it before BUT

The tractaea is a very well known and beloved dance in the Basilean cultures and it’s begun by the time of the story to pick up popularity elsewhere in Andromeda too. The basic idea is that it’s done to music where the first beat of each measure is emphasized (time signatures vary a lot and tend to go through fads) and you’re repeating the same arm and foot motions again and again but in more and more contact with your partner–starting out facing away from each other a few paces apart and gradually moving together until you’re eventually spinning in to kiss distance and back out again. There’s a lead and follow choreography to it, but who leads and who follows is meant to trade off in each “phase,” with the other partner repeating the movements back and modifying them. 

The tractaea has its origins in ritual re-enactments of the formation of the Atya-Jenya system, which itself is traditionally envisioned as a courtship dance (as described in The Tale of the Deeds of the Holy Suns). Eventually it came to be considered more of a romantic dance with an element of invocation than an actual ceremony. The tradition actually fell out of favor for a while shortly after the consolidation of the Altamaian and Glasmirian global powers, but was revived in the imperial age particularly within the military and the shipping industry as a “farewell dance” at pre-deployment balls and parties (with the knock on effect that everybody talks about who everybody chose to dance it with. Yeah but are they tractaea official???). This usage has endured into modern times and so the classical significance is often seen as a bit of a paradox–it’s a dance of convergences and separations.

Her first instinct, useful or not, was to make certain the Captain was alright. When Lux looked over her shoulder at her she had lost her footing, but with a blur of her wings seemed to bounce off the stern and suspend herself in the middle of the rocket bay. “Is this supposed to be happening?”

Lux turned back to the controls, tense with her determination not to panic. Free fall was tugging her body upwards; she had to grab hold of something, so she grabbed the wheel. Suddenly her voice was sharp and deep with urgent consequence. “Hit ‘em again!”

There was no time to count it off—they watched each other’s eyes to push their respective levers in unison. Together they hit the deck and the chair as the tug jolted to stability. Together they felt the push of g-forces, shooting now as they were across the spaceport’s zodiac, tearing its speed limits up in their wake.

The whole cockpit shook as if with nervous energy. She heard a sound behind her like something breaking loose, and then the Captain was clinging to the space over Lux’s head with an arm across her chest, wrapping her in the gold crush of her coat. “You’re doing it!” she said, Lux feared prematurely.

The April excerpt is here on my patreon for all patrons to read! It’s a flashback chapter in which (21-quinturn-old) Lux gets in some impromptu flight hours.

If you’re new to my original universe check it out here :)

this is the laziest comic ever and i have no justification for why it’s hot pink but it made me laugh so here

"I'm looking forward to getting home and being a fringe lunatic for the rest of my career, and I do mean that sincerely."

(I can still take questions for Revelator Crew II until the end of the month! I'm just making comics slowly haha)

Image description below the cut!

The underground sisterhood, whose stronghold she still visits to this day, has given her something vital—a sense of belonging in the outside world, a commiseration and companionship independent of her place. When the inevitable occurs, as she thought it was about to on that first despairing day, they will be waiting for her with hiding space and sympathy, and she is grateful.

Still, she doesn’t dare talk to them about the failure. It is partly hers. The first task, the first lesson, is to let go the talisman of your lady’s love–because if it were real, it would pass the test.

It would defend your honor.

It would respect your wishes.

It would let you go.

The third in my series of 4 excerpts from Vol. 2 (which are available to patrons at any tier) is now available on my patreon! This chapter is quite a deep dive into SC’s world, revealing all kinds of machinations above and below the surface. It’s also got Gay Yearning ™

If you’re new to my stories, I recommend starting here!