The final Calvin and Hobbes, which appeared in papers 30 years ago today.

Rainbow x Lionfish

When I met my wife, I was constantly telling her not to get too attached because I wasn't sure I'd be sticking around very long. Well, I lived along enough to see five years of marriage and hear my mom call me her daughter.

Love it 🙌

New column from me on why interstellar space travel will never, ever be a thing, and how it's kind of weird that they keep telling us otherwise: jasonpargin.substack.com/p/interstell...

Look, we're not saying that primarily we write out of spite or anything, but there is a fairly direct line between having to read hundreds of pages of dense, sexless mlm for book club and the five thousand words and counting of lesbian erotica we've written this week.

women make life worth living

#Septopolis wrap up. We missed a few days at the end because our headspace and lack of ability to work to our own satisfaction in much but the written word. But overall we really appreciated the event, it was a lovely chance to walk through Castine again and find bits we'd never seen before.

#Septopolis (29) We wanna shout out @writing.aksan.dev for introducing Us to this monthly challenge, and MythAugust before it ^^ We don't normally post on social media much, so this was a fun way to get immersed and make something.

#Septopolis 27 Look, it's the dragons, they conquered the city, tamed the volcano, and now most of the city is part dragonblood. Teryte is about dragons, be that their intimacy with humans, each other, or the impact of them on the machinations of the gods. And that's just our active WIPs.

#Septopolis 26 What is 'now'? We're never writing in less than three time periods at a time to be honest. In one section we are writing the Exile Mages are returning after 700 years. In another a plague is ravaging the city. In yet another the city is tearing itself apart in fear. It's odd.

#Septolopis 25 We will make it to the end! Oh gosh, loads. So, there are the solstice and equinox celebrations, these show up in all sorts of stories, including one Queen announcing her pregnancy at the summer one by standing in the pure and letting it burn away her dress to show the bump.

#Septopolis 24 Honestly, there is a touch of other settlements thinking of Castinians as a 'hoity-toity elite' and that it is an excessively queer space, neither are exactly wrong, but, also, neither are taken to a true distain. Now, what the Inigne North think of Castine . . . That's for a book.

#Septopolis 23 Okay, so this is going to feel like it escalates quickly. Crime in Castine is fundamentally the lowest in the New Federation, which has low crime rates due to measures like UBI, the Queen's Grace, and collectivist values in their education, philosophies and beliefs. 🧵 of 20 sorry.

#Septopolis 22 The city of Castine is the seat of the Monarchy, but governing the city itself falls on a council of twelve. They are a split of elected, from regions of the city, four from the outer city, two from the inner, and the rest are appointed, by various authorities of the city.

#Septopolis 21 Education, medicine, or the arts and crafts on offer is the short version. Promising mages, if not taken in by Eagle Rock to the east, are offered a significant stipend to their family to come and train. The ability to access such vast libraries and networks of academics is unique.

#Septopolis 20 So, Castine has the usual, parks, inns, tearooms even. Notably the alcohol content of what the inns server is closer to historic light bear, then what we drink now, and caffeine contents are also low. There are also the huge public baths which can become a gathering spot.

#Septopolis 19, late because psych appointment days take it out of us sometimes. Honestly, refined goods and a service economy. Castine aims to have the most expert craftspeople, mages, writers, musicians, anything learnable; and through the colleges manage it. All raw materials are imported.

#Septopolis 18, let's go! The Royal Quarter is dominated by the palace and its gardens, both elegantly woven into the remains of the lava flow that shapes the Eastern Slope of Etara, and are built upon the First Vault of the Royal Armouries, grand halls built in stolen magical steel ingots.

#Septopolis 17 Going to try and make an effort today, might touch on some of the things we skipped yesterday due to poor #MentalHealth. A dozen posts. Generally though, Castine is a city with low slopping roofs, and buildings either defined by the black stone of the mountain, or white plaster.

#Septopolis 16 Castine is divided between the inner, walled city that rises up the slopes of Etara, and the outer rings, separated by the ring of park land that keeps the walls meaningful. The inner city residents number around 100,000 while a little over twice that live in the outer city.

Have a poem that Alexis wrote last week and we are rather fond of. #poetry

#Septopolis 15 So, there are the old ways, #MythAugust call back there, but probably the most notable set of rituals and beliefs exist around the Final Flame, a direct continuation of the flame from the campfire that Passantra lit the night before her capture and killing by the Inigne.

#Septopolis 14, barely fitting this in before bed after a decent chat about it to our partner on a walk this morning, then, um, stuff. Castine has almost everything that Teryte has to offer food-wise being a trade hub that brings in every spice and grain and protein known to human or dragon.

#Septopolis 13 Oh this could be thesis length too. So, the best description of Castine is that magic has dominated their technology and things that we pursued, like gunpowder, they have ignored because they have better tools. But, let's start a thread of 10 and dive into this.

#Septopolis 12 The whole theme of the world is building up what Castine believes so it's hard to sum up neatly, but we will try. 1. Integration 2. Doing what you can for the greater cause 3. That what you do today, not what you did yesterday, or what you promise tomorrow, defines you (1/5)

#Septopolis 11 Castine, like most of the New Federation is bilingual between the common tongue, taught to humans in their early days by Fate, and the common sign, taught by humans to Fate. On the page these become English and transcribed BSL, with ambitions towards SignWritten editions later.

#Septopolis 10, we will try to keep this below thesis length. Castine is the most diverse city in Teryte, bringing together not just all groups of the New Federation, but communities of the Krinaale, from the now fallen nation of Dentre, as well as descendants of the refugees from the Inigne north.

#Septopolis 9 Not much to say today. Castine is on the river Cas and sounded decent. There might have been more but we have lost track of it. It has Royal, Harbour, College, and Dragon Quarters, with the Merchant and Artisan Quarters being recognised in recent centuries. Simple.

#Septopolis 8 Definitely ended up on the who yesterday, but it's wrapped in the why. Lets unpack it somewhat. (1/7) The Mage Lord Ethrad founded Castine as a power play due to the diminishing power of the Mage Lords in general. This was due to the encroaching thread of dragons killing them all.

#Septopolis 7 Castine was founded by arrogance. The Mage Lords that ruled at the time had an abundance of it. While the dragons were threatening their power more and more of them did foolish things to hold onto it. For one, this was founding an impossible city carved from the slopes of Etara.

#Septopolis 6 Helps if we spell the event correctly. Added this as much so it turns up on our own tag lists as anything. Foolish.

#Septopolos 6 There is of course Etara, the mountain that the city of Castine clings to. It is a harsh black rock, and utterly lonely in the plains. Overall Castine is rather lonely. The river Cas runs south, cutting through the plains, and farmland extends east to the west are great forests.

#Septopolis 5 Castine has fresh water, hot baths, arguably a defensible position, warmth through winter, and acts as the seat of the Ashlands to the east where fertilised soil results in the bread basket of the south. The volcano is now tamed and considered a resource, with work to exploit it.

#Septopolis 4 Castine sits far inland, towards the western end of the Southlands of Teryte. It encompasses the slopes of the volcanic mountain Etara, sprawling onto the surrounding plains and is the source of the river Cas by means of volcanic springs. Tiny bit of a thread; two more posts.

#Septopolis 3 This is a tough one for Castine, our influences are a real milieu that even we can't easily unwrap. There is likely some Mont Saint-Michel, and Minas Tirith, but also weirdly that quote about Phoenix, AZ being man's folly. It is also driven by an urge to make an equitable city.

#Septopolis 2 Castine is a setting in the truest sense; a lot of stories of Teryte occur here or at least pass through. It is, at different times, a folly, a trophy to be claimed, and 'The Flame of the Federation.' At its heart it shows what is possible, both in the text and beyond it.

#Septopolis 1. For this we're going to focus on the city of Castine in the New Federation, a city we've put a lot of time into and hope to be able to share some of the wonders of. We have a poetry collection WIP set there amongst other stories, and oddly it doesn't exist when our stories begin.

Day 31 of #MythAugust, a month of posting that we have truly enjoyed, a huge thanks to @professoremily.bsky.social for all that went into this. We're going to take the freebie to mention that one of our WIPs is a meditative piece, very focused on the gods of Teryte. www.aksan.dev/books/histor...

#MythAugust day 30. Subtly, but pervasively. The main conflict in the world is shaped by religion. The inciting event of the entire series might be down to the gods. The gods turn up at various key moments to offer opinions. The narrator is the god Memory.

#MythAugust number 29. There is a lot of inspiration from the nebulous Christianity that Alexis grew up around in the Inigne sec, and no doubt a lot of inspiration from the Greek pantheon for the gods themselves, as well as inadvertently creating some parallels to Sikh beliefs about death.

#MythAugust day 28. Subtly. The deference to birds often becomes a more general deference to nature, leads to being less strict on timings because people will often move slowly, even on city streets, to not worry the birds, and to greener cities as parks are adored and expanded. It's subtle.

Day 27 of #MythAugust. We've talked a little about Death her namesake process. But today we will talk about a lesser tradition of the old ways, introducing a child to the gods. They would be bundled up, laid on a blanket and seed scattered around them, then left for the birds to investigate.

We don't post here half as much as we maybe should. But we just planned a load of community events over on our Discord server so thought we'd shout that out for anyone looking for an excuse to connect! We've got games nights, book readings, writing workshops, we're really trying stuff out.

Ah, #MythAugust day 26 has family notes here. No priests. No temples. But to claim any sort of connection to the gods you need to have met them, your words carry a little weight if you have listened to an Aspiration speak, or been given a favour by Fate, or been laughed at by Chaos, in person.

Day 25 of #MythAugust. A simple answer here, solstices and equinoxes, the calendar of Teryte is defined by them. They are huge feast days in the South and where huge kitchens are put in motion to feed whole cities it is not an uncommon sight to see Love herself working in them, though few realise.

Day 24 of #MythAugust. The Aspirations rarely need, or act upon, encouragement to give their blessings. But Fate is amenable to the trading of favours if she likes your cause and will offer guidance to those who ask. In return you may have to give you life, or simply learn a few lines of poetry.

Day 23 #MythAugust. The Fall of Basilia brought with it the active destruction of many of the texts of the old ways. Those that remain are rare and treasured with a move to oral story telling, but include the Leviathan (unedited versions), the Dyad of Fate and Chaos, and the Fable of the Orphan.

Day 22 of #MythAugust is simple. No priests, no temples. It didn't take too many occasions of the gods descending to destroy them for people to start doing it to each other.