Zylla Black

@zyllable

(she/they) Lefty video essayist, independent academic, archaeogaming streamer, and sf/f fiction author. Pfp by Birdee Blake

418 Following1,816 Followers2,789 Posts

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Zylla Black@zyllable· May 5

I have an exciting announcement for y'all! I'm part of a brand new podcast, coming out SOON! Listen to me, @saraezzat.bsky.social, and @renthebarbarian.bsky.social discuss and compare DS9 and Babylon 5, episode by episode on @9to5scifipod.bsky.social.

Zylla Black@zyllable· Apr 2

The way I gasped when this list of classic Moon Tweets™️ did not include the best one.

Tweet from Fuck the Moon: Fly me to the moon, and let me kick its fucking ass; let me show it what I learned, in my moon jujitsu class. Reply from Fuck the Moon: Wow this blew up. Wish the moon would.

Zylla Black@zyllable· Feb 20

meme of one astronaut pointing a hand gun at another saying, Always has been.

Zylla Black@zyllable· Jan 28

Hitpoints & History is this Saturday! I'll be all over it- my talk is at 2 EST.

The schedule for Hitpoints & History, a conference on Saturday, January 31. For full schedule and details, go to www.hitpointscon.com.

Zylla Black@zyllable· Jan 20

Sure, these are entertaining, why not.

Get to know me! 1 like = 1 answer.
1. Do you have any nicknames?
2. What is a compliment you've never forgotten?
3. Is there something you want to tell someone, but won't?
4. Do you believe in soulmates? Why or why not?
5. Biggest turn on?
6. What was your first job?
7. What was the last song you sang?
8. What is one of your most treasured memories?
9. What has overwhelmed you recently?
10. Someone gave you $100- what are you spending it on?
11. What makes you feel appreciated?
12. Do you have trust issues?
13. Best concert you've ever been to?
14. Do you care what other people think of you?
15. What are your main hobbies?
16. Describe your dream home.
17. What is your strongest held belief?
18. If you could get on a plane tomorrow, where would you go?
19. What is your most attractive feature?
20. Do you believe in aliens?
21. Biggest turn off?
22. What has made you laugh the most lately?
23. Favorite animal?
24. What lyrics are currently stuck in your head?
25. Is there someone you wish you could forgive?
26. Name 3-5 ways to win your heart.
27. Favorite comfort show?
28. Name one thing that always makes you angry.
29. Favorite type of weather?
30. What are you currently looking forward to?

Zylla Black@zyllable· Nov 17

Hey hey, starting today, @tirrrb.bsky.social is starting another 7th Generation Rising stream for mutual aid in Saskatoon! Come see your favorite creators (and me!) and donate to an Indigenous, Black, and queer-led org doing real work on the streets. www.youtube.com/@Tirrrbstreams

Poster image for 7th Generation Rising Fundraiser Stream, November 16th-23rd, 24/7. Includes images and names of Tirrrb, Jessie Gender, Foreign Man, Elliot Sang, and John the Duncan.

Zylla Black@zyllable· Nov 13

"Always has been" meme showing an astronaut in a spacesuit pointing a gun at another astronaut (off screen) against a starry backdrop.

Zylla Black@zyllable· Oct 7

#classicstober 7: pharmakis

Pen sketch of a woman in Greek finery sprinkling herbs and pouring water into a large mixing bowl of liquid. Other herbs and a carafe of wine sit on tables to either side.

Zylla Black@zyllable· Oct 6

#classicstober 6: Moirai

pen sketch showing three women from left to right: an old woman crouching with a drop spindle, a middle-aged woman kneeling at a loom taking thread from the first, and then handing another thread to the third, a young woman seated with shears

Zylla Black@zyllable· Oct 6

#classicstober 5: Hermes Psychopompos

pen sketch of a young man with a winged bowl helmet, a cloak pinned over his armor with asphodel flowers, and a winged staff entwined with serpents extending his hand towards the viewer.

Zylla Black@zyllable· Oct 3

#classicstober 3: Graiai

a pen sketch of three old women in blindfolds and chitons with zonai holding up a single large eyeball

Zylla Black@zyllable· Oct 2

#classicstober 2: Thanatos

pen sketch of a young man with black eyes, dark curly hair, and a dark wrap over butterfly wings helping the shade of a woman out of her deathbed

Zylla Black@zyllable· Oct 1

#classicstober Day 1: Hypnos

A pen sketch on a lined paper of a young man with dark, curly hair and dark wings asleep on a couch cuddling a sleeping cat. His chiton is secured by a poppy-shaped pin.

Zylla Black@zyllable· Jun 4

It is almost TIME. 🤘🦊

Zylla Black@zyllable· Apr 30

You're definitely not the first to ask this question (Madeline Miller has a whole blog post about it, IIRC). I.... think?... I see it? If you zoom in on a single petal, the outline is kiiiind of an A and the line in the middle could be an I.

Close up of a hyacinth flower with the mid-lines in petals extra visible.

Zylla Black@zyllable· Apr 26

Hitpoints & History starts today! I'll be hopping on to a live play of Baldur's Gate 3 with @alexvandewalle.bsky.social and @richardcole.bsky.social at 2 p.m. EDT to see what we can talk about in terms of historical analysis. My talk on history in Stardew Valley and Roots of Pacha will be tomorrow!

Zylla Black@zyllable· Apr 24

In better news, you can come listen to me talk this weekend at Hitpoints & History! It looks like an awesome lineup.

Does It Belong in a
Museum?: A Case
Study on Stardew
Valley and Roots of
Pacha
With Julie Levy
Sundav April 27. 11:15 am US Central Time
A popular genre of gaming that doesn't get a lot of
attention is the cozy/farming life sim, but almost all of
them rely on archaeology and historical revelation for
part of their story. Stardew Valley, perhaps the most
notable modern entry in the genre, has the player
unearthing artifacts and housing them in a local
museum, albeit haphazardly- a familiar Western idea of
interacting with pieces of the past. I want to compare
this to Roots of Pacha, an Indigenous-inspired game,
where unearthing the ruins of a previous civilization
leads to storytelling and sitting with those remains in
situ instead.

Love history and video games? Check out Hitpoints & History: An Archaeogaming Conference, Saturday April 26 and Sunday April 27. Tickets on sale now at hitpointscon.com.

Zylla Black@zyllable· Apr 9

@3rdworldmiss.bsky.social could use your support. Anything helps.

Request for mutual aid describing ThirdWorldMiss' situation as an abuse victim trying to stabilize her and her son's lives. Total request, $5000; individual requests, $1, $2, $5, or $10 per person to assist with basic necessities. Paypal: thirdworldmiss1.

Zylla Black@zyllable· Mar 10

Zylla Black@zyllable· Mar 3

Texas friends and family, please, I'm begging you to get active. If you're not safe, I will do my best to help you get there.

A blue stripe with a white star, then a white stripe with black text saying, "Don't mess with Trans Texans!", and then a red stripe with white text saying, "Withdraw Texas HB 3399! Bill's author: Rep. Brent Money, 512-463-0880, brent.money@house.texas.gov, district2.Money@house.texas.gov, PO Box 2910, Austin, TX, 78768".

Zylla Black@zyllable· Feb 28

For the last day of February, my #AncientDEI spotlight on #AncientBluesky is... ordinary people. We have so much evidence that ancient Greeks and Romans lived in a world where light-skinned W. Europeans, Black Africans, Near Eastern Semitic peoples all mingled in the highest and lowest classes.

A Greek pottery jug in the shape of a Greek woman's face on one side and a Black African woman's face on the other. The inscription reads, beauty. c. 520 BCE

The Dying Gaul, a Roman marble c. 230 BCE, depicting a man with a Western European phenotype and a Celtic torque bleeding from a side wound. Capitoline Museums, Rome.

The Fayum mummy portraits: A collection of painted portraits of Semitic or North African men and women in Roman garb, painted onto wood panels. c. 1st century CE-3rd century CE.

Zylla Black@zyllable· Feb 28

Oh shoot, almost missed the window for today's #AncientDEI on #AncientBluesky! Today, let's talk about Dido, an African (Carthaginian) queen of Semitic (Phoenician) origin. She was so powerful and clever that she built her country out of refugees on a foreign shore. Dux femina facti!

A manuscript illustration of Dido, a dark-skinned woman, llying on a pyre, surrounded by mourners. Aeneid, Book IV, Death of Dido. From the Vergilius Vaticanus (Vatican Library, Cod. Vat. lat. 3225).

Zylla Black@zyllable· Feb 26

Today's #AncientDEI on #AncientBluesky highlight is Elagabalus, the trans woman* who was Emperor of Rome! *Modern categories can only be applied loosely to other cultures and times, and reports on Elagabalus in particular are fraught with posthumous distortion. But we think so.

A Roman marble bust of Emperor Elagabalus, an effeminate young person with curly hair and a light mustache. Capitoline Museums, Rome.

Zylla Black@zyllable· Feb 26

Today's #AncientDEI on #AncientBluesky is Callisto. She was a devotee of Artemis, one of her dearest companions... How dear? Well, Zeus got her pregnant by impersonating Artemis, so, pretty close I'd say! Artemis turned her into a bear, but both Callisto and her cub rule the north sky.

Drawing of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor as bears over the stars of their constellations. Image from the University of Louisville Cosmic Explorer images, https://louisville.edu/planetarium/images/kid-program-images/cosmic-explorer-images/ursa-major-and-ursa-minor/view

Zylla Black@zyllable· Feb 25

Today's #AncientDEI on #AncientBluesky is another gender-bender of a deity, Dionysus! He's usually male, but the god of boundary-crossing has no respect for your gender binary. Break women out of their roles, break crossdressing taboo, and incorporate foreign customs, too!

Red-figure vase of nude Dionysus with a feminine hairstyle embracing a female follower while a satyr provides service. Photograph by Maria Daniels, courtesy of the Tampa Museum of Art, October 1991

Zylla Black@zyllable· Feb 24

Let's have another #AncientDEI for #AncientBluesky: Hippolytus! My sex-repulsed ace boi, son of an Amazon and a Greek, devotee of Artemis. His fool of a father Theseus called down Poseidon's curse on him for the suicide of Theseus' far-too-young wife, Phaedra, who had fallen in love with Hippolytus.

Black and white photo of a red-figure Greek vase showing Hippolytus in his four-horse chariot with the bull emerging from the sea to frighten them. Photo from the British Museum.

Zylla Black@zyllable· Feb 22

In honor of my streaming game, today's #AncientDEI on #AncientBluesky is Inari, the genderfluid fox god of Shinto! Inari is one of the principle kami, ruling over such varied realms as fertility, sword-smithing, and rice. Inari is both male and female, and their foxy kin are shapeshifters!

Ukiyo-e print by Ogata Gekko, held in the Gallery Dutta in Geneva. Inari in masculine form helping a swordsmith forge a powerful weapon.

Painting by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, 1798 - 1861. Inari shows herself as a beautiful woman to a samurai warrior.

Zylla Black@zyllable· Feb 22

Oh right, time for more #AncientDEI on #AncientBluesky! Ever hear of the great blind seer of the heroic age, Tiresias? Did you know that he spent years and bore children as a woman? Genderfluid? Detransitioned? Who knows, but apparently you can transition by smacking a pair of mating snakes!

Tiresias strikes two snakes with a stick, and is transformed into a woman by Hera. Engraving by Johann Ulrich Kraus c. 1690. Taken from Die Verwandlungen des Ovidii (The Metamorphoses of Ovid).

Zylla Black@zyllable· Feb 20

Another day, another #AncientDEI on #AncientBluesky! Today's entry is a long-time fave of mine, Medea. She was a princess of Colchis, modern-day Georgia. To the Greeks, she was dangerously foreign, from a land almost beyond imagining. And she was a powerful sorceress!

Red-figure vase painting of Medea bringing a whole sheep out of a cauldron to demonstrate her magical prowess. c. 480 BCE. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

Zylla Black@zyllable· Feb 19

Today's #AncientDEI on #AncientBluesky is Andromeda, princess of Ethiopia. Her mother bragged she was more beautiful than a goddess, and the Greek gods couldn't be having that. Her skin is often depicted as white, but don't be fooled- that's kinky hair and an Ethiopian hat on this vase painting.