Syrean Painted Banners, Carved Into Wood And Fretted Over Whether It Looked Good Enough. It Had To Be

Syrean painted banners, carved into wood and fretted over whether it looked good enough. It had to be just right… 

It had taken some doing, finding the right tarnish for the metal to stain it different colors in different areas. The coating was one she used on her clockwork toys, something to keep them from losing their shine. Milli hoped it would hold up against fingerprints and sea water. But it was flashy. The Admiral had asked for flashy.

In a few weeks I’ll be reaching my one year anniversary with Guild Wars 2. The past year has been an interesting one, one filled with many laughs and tears. I’ve met a lot of people that’s changed not only how I play video games, but other aspects of my life… so, as a way to give back to the community, I figured it would be a good time to do a little giveaway!

One lucky person will win:

10 gold

10 Unidentified Dyes

100 Wintersday Gifts

and as a small thank you to my followers, if the winner has been following me before this post (before December 16th, 2013 at 7:30pm EST) they’ll also get:

10 Ectoplasms

5 of two random T6 mats

~*Rules*~

One Reblog and One Like per person (counts as two different entries)

Open to everyone that has a Guild Wars 2 account

The winner will be chosen randomly

No giveaway blogs

Ask box must be open

You must be comfortable with giving me your GW2 username (so I can send you the stuff)

Interested? Reblog and like this for your chances to win! Ends December 29th, 2013 at 7:00pm EST

For one brief, horrific moment, she'd thought someone had sent her a human head.

Then she saw the gears and mechanical bits, made sense of it as a machine. A device of some sort. Milli lifted it out carefully with both hands and found the key in the back. She wound it and then watched it go.

Despite the initial horror of the thing, it was rather interesting to watch. She turned it on the table, leaning over and peering underneath to see where the pistons went and what they did. "Sorta neat," she breathed in the soft silence of her shop.

If she put any thought into it, she might have been able to place who'd sent it to her. But she very carefully didn't think about it, just found a place for it on one of her shelves and put a little 'NOT FOR SALE' placard next to it.

She wound it often when she was alone, especially on rainy days, and sat, watching the gears turn.

Steam of Consciousness Handmade polyurethane skull (1/2 scale) with fully functioning custom built miniature steam engine.  Materials: Brass, carbon steel, stainless steel, glass, polyurethane, and wood.  Size: 6” x 9” (15 cm x 23 cm) including glass dome. Christopher Conte

In one experiment, mothers were asked to guess the steepness of a carpeted slope that their 11-month olds would be able to crawl. Then the children actually crawled the slope, and the difference between actual and mother-predicted angles was noted. The results showed that both boys and girls were able to crawl the same degree of incline. However, the predictions of the mothers were correct within one degree for the boys and underestimated their daughter’s ability by nine degrees. What this shows is that the presumption that boys are more physical causes parents to encourage their boys more in physical activities while cautioning their girls. This further translates into providing more opportunities for boys to be physical and fewer for girls. The result? Boys actually do develop stronger physical skills than girls. But not because of anything innate or biological, but rather because of the gender roles that the parents subconsciously projected onto their babies.

Gender Neutral Parenting: 5 Ways To Avoid Implicit Sexism (via Everyday Feminism)

The experiment mentioned is available in full HERE.   

(via notes-on-intersectional-feminism)

Stop. This is important.

(via james-tiqueerius)

Myself, I think there are areas that women tend to do better in than men, and vice-versa, so I don’t believe that boys generally developing stronger physical skills than girls is entirely due to the way they’re raised. I do, however, think the difference is greatly exaggerated, and treating said differences as far more significant than they are greatly exacerbates them. 

(via tuupii)

My daughter is extremely strong, tough, and athletic. She's three, but she's shown those tendencies from an early age. And I encouraged that in her, letting her test her boundaries where I felt the chance of injury was limited or the injury itself would be minor at worst. That is hard as a parent. But I feel like it's something that will help her as a person. It means she does more daredevil climbing things, jumps from more high places than I'm strictly comfortable with, and balances in places that I think she should be holding on tight with both hands. If I think it's dangerous, I correct her. But overall, I let her extend her physical control of the environment.

She's never going to be a little girl who plays quietly with dolls in the corner and I'm okay with that.

She's not alone...*goes back to stalking*