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Blog: Fail (Part 1)

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I have FAILED.

By trade I am a numbers person, but I dabble in sociology. Because of the interest in sociology, I often follow trends trying to understand why people think the way they do.

I, personally, grew up on what my town considered “the wrong side of the railroad tracks” and so my playground companions were a mix of colors and religions. I didn’t consider the skin color difference except when running through the sprinklers, since I had only a short window to play with my pale skin and others had a larger window. This difference was no more important to me than asking the taller kids to get something I couldn’t reach. My early experiences filtered through my mind and entrenched in my subconscious. It baffled me when I went off to college and discovered people attached socio-economic characteristics to skin color, and, to tell you the truth, this pre-judging based on melanin continues to be an issue in my social interactions. At some level, I just can’t and will never understand it, even when I observe these same behaviors based on my adult socialization in myself. Likewise I can’t really grasp judging skills based on visible gender, for instance the assumption of females and math (of which I am glaring example of how wrong that assumption is). Hence the ongoing studies in sociology.

I am just trying to understand humanity.

#AllLivesMatter is basic to how I live. But I know our American society has an imbalance. As of 2010, 50.8% of the United States of America was female, with the average actually higher among adults since more boys are born (by 0.05%) but more women survive – the changeover of more men to more women happening between 30 and 40 (Age and Sex Composition by US Census 2010 – – LINK broken as of 4/20/2022, likely replaced with a pdf related to the 2020 Census) – due to society’s encouragement of men practicing more dangerous behaviors and taking riskier occupations rather than a more equitable split of occupational risks.

Yet even with more women than men, viewing our society through our entertainment, you would think the ratio was closer to 4 males per 1 female.

Then there is the Melanin Split. I am not going to call it a racial split since only one race exists, the human race. I am going to call it what it actually is, a constructed split defined by how well we tan. In America we are 70% white, 15% black, 5% Asian with other mixes added in and 16% identifying as Hispanic. Growing up I didn’t notice a difference in Hispanic Melanin Split since the local white population included a high number of mid-eastern and Italians and they all tan about the same and had similar dark hair, which was all my child-self cared about. In addition one should consider a ratio of 15% of immigrants of all kinds into America, including Russian, Japanese, and English.

Well, the post is getting a little long, so I am going to break it into two parts. Find out about my big FAIL tomorrow.

Art Projects: Smocked Aprons

Erin Penn

Smocked Aprons as Prizes

On Saturday the 24, my local SCA group held its annual event. The lunch is a potluck, and I had a .Brilliant.Idea. late last year to supplement the potluck by hosting a cooking competition. The cope-de-resistance to get people to enter items for other people to eat is having a kickin’ prize. November last year I started making four possible aprons for people to win. Not just any aprons, mind, but smocked apron, with drawn hemwork, all done in linen and by 100% by hand.

Out-of-my-ever-lovin’ mind, I was. I needed four aprons because the local cook’s guild has four colors of aprons for their ranking and, of course, I had to have one in each color because I didn’t know who would win.

All but one were completed in time for the event. Guess which color I needed for the winner? Bingo, the one undone. So I took the apron to DragonCon and sewed like a fiend in the backrow in panel after panel after panel – from Science to Space, Writing to the Apocalypse (maybe more literally then just the panel’s name). Then I did the last bit at home in time to deliver the prize to the woman the next time I saw her after she won. Go Me!

All the aprons were done in Honeycomb smocking and had Hound’s Tooth as the first row of drawn work. Red and Green also got lines of Interlacing.

Flash: Stone Circle Clearing

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Rating: Mature

Another rustle a little further from camp drew Lucius attention. The small Roman scouting party was deep in the unknown lands of this island and he had drawn the second night shift. He squinted through the fog trying to make out the forms deeper in the woods. They had camped on the edge of a forest in the younger trees. Evidentially, the village did not need as much farming land as it did about nine years ago, based on the size of the trees.

The hamlet had made no notice of their arrival, and likely would be a quick conquest once his group reported all they found to the Ferrata Legate. But the woods disturb him. He moved closer to investigate and winced as the armor straps bit into him and the plates clanked together. The rustle moved rapidly away.

Enough.

He grew up herding goats and knew how to move quietly to get in position to kill predators.  He unbuckled the compressing leather. The straps had stretched out in the warmth of the day during their swift march; nightfall had brought the cold and the weird fog. He had seen fog drift across water before, but never rise from the forest floor.

He quietly laid the cold iron aside just outside of camp and muttered a prayer to Mars to keep the Decanus asleep until he had finished his investigation. Being out of armor while awake included many punishments, the least being a reduction in salt. Laying a hand on his broadsword’s sheath to control its movement, Lucius melted into the older growth.

The full moon acted as daylight in the area the forest was reclaiming, but the full branches in this area blocked all but the most persistent light. Even so Lucius was able to place his sandals silently as he followed where he thought the rustle lead. A curious child from the village, or finally a warrior in this timid realm? A silver flash reflected off of cloth passing between the shadows to his right.

Within moments, the solider came into a clearing made by a fallen ancient. He walked around the exposed boulders surrounding the moonlight area. The moss-covered deadwood was taller than his short stature and blocked his view from the other side, but for the first time he heard music. A lute perhaps.

Staying in shadows he made his way around until he saw the two most shapely women he had ever seen. Stunned, he forgot to watch his step and last year’s leaves gave him away. They turned as one towards him. Somehow the haze cleared from his eyes and he clearly saw their faces matched their beautiful shapes and they were wearing traditional Egyptian outfits. Their full breasts fully exposed above flowing gauze.

“Come.” The black haired one invited. Then modesty made her bite her bottom lips for so bold a request. The blonde quickly glanced at the other and then nodded.  Turning her emerald eyes back to him, the blonde offered out a hand. “Yes, please come.”

Lucius didn’t even remember crossing to them. He just grasped the pale hand and pulled the blonde against his body and erection. His leather skirt was left with the armor, so the woman should easily feel his lust through the linen shirt and subligaculum.  As the woman pressed herself more firmly against him, the Roman gave silent thanks to Bacchus and crushed her centurion scarlet mouth with in a ravaging kiss.

Behind him the raven hair beauty stroked his back and commented in Latin accented from his home village. “Do I not get a turn?”

Somewhere his mind whimpered warning as he twisted his head around. The second set of lips met his as his thumbs traced the first female’s nipples. The two drew him down to the forest floor.

His ears felt the sweet female breath. “You must be hungry. Would you like something to eat?”

Lucius blinked and saw the women had come into the woods to have a picnic. But not just a simple country meal … before him was spread delicacies that rivaled Ceasar’s table.

“In a moment my lovely” he said as he lifted the gauze from the brunette’s ass. Her sapphire eyes glanced over her shoulders as he mounted her. Her hiss of pleasure was all he could ask for. As he felt cock get squeezed by the pale ass he was penetrating, the blonde kneeled in front of her companion and laid a lark’s tongue across each of her nipples.

Sex and food, what more could a solider want? He leaned forward, going deeper into the woman underneath him and sucked the morsels from blonde’s breasts.

The Ferrata Legio never found what happened to their scouting party in Hibernia. And somehow they never managed to conquer the Isle. It was as if the very spirits of the land worked against them.

 (814 words – originally appearing in Sunday Fun for Breathless Press on 11/11/12; republished new blog format 8/27/2017)

Related story: Captivated

Other Cool Blogs: Neil Gaiman May 12, 2017

Erin Penn

“The impostor syndrome does not become you.”

Something I said recently to a fellow writer at a con – someone who had multiple publications in a variety of genres through large, small and self published means. He didn’t feel he had the right to speak about writing on a particular topic on a panel because he had only published one book in that genre and it was co-written.

The Imposture Syndrome eats at you as a writer or artist. “I’m not good enough.” “Everyone knows I am faking it.” “Why do people think I can ‘adult’ this?” “I didn’t learn this in school.” “I’ve only done it once.” … the list of the internalized dialogue goes on and on.

Thanks to our culture, it’s worse for women than men, but no one is safe. Even if you have been a published author for years and years. Even if you were the point of a very long spear of people getting you to a remote location.

Neil Gaiman’s anecdote really brings this home. You can find it at his blog here: May 12, 2017.

So when your impostor syndrome flairs up, remember the malady is common … and tell that inner voice it doesn’t become you.

Writing Exercise: Born Sexy Yesterday

Erin Penn

In May, the writing exercise took a trope and made it unique. Often writers take a troupe, flip it, and use that as a social commentary. After all, tropes exist because of expected action and situations, and expectations are instilled by society. So today I would like to take one of the more unquestioned one – Born Sexy Yesterday, and ask people to flip it around.

Born Sexy Yesterday is about an uneven power dynamic to a relationship, a teacher-student situation where the student has absolutely no knowledge and the teacher has all control of dispensing that knowledge, and then initiates a romantic or sexual relationship with the student during the instruction. Colonialism performed it when military leaders took the local (conquered) girls; sci-fi does it by having women emerge in fully realized adult female form with an untrained mind.

Born Sexy Yesterday is nearly 100% related to the woman being the weaker half of the relationship. The few times you see it with men, it’s played for laughs. I think the reason is, in American Society, women are the primary caregivers of children and it gets creepy thinking about making a play for a child-mind. They have been told by the culture to take care of the mentally young and ill. Men don’t have the training of “don’t touch children” banged into them beyond “check the ID for jail-bait”.

WRITING EXERCISE: So here is the writing exercise, write a story with the Born Sexy Yesterday trope turned on its edge. With the woman the teacher and the male the student but fully realized naive adult male (at least 24), but don’t play it for laughs. Make it as sexy and acceptable as Splash and Fifth Element, but with the guy needing to be dressed, hugged, and kissed. In this particular case the relationship must remain hetero, because the object is to study the socially ingrained dynamic American (and like) societies presently have. This is a social commentary piece. You can work it in high fantasy, sci-fi, urban fantasy, or other genre, even humor, so long as the relationship itself isn’t where the humor comes from. For example, in Splash much of the humor is based on her naivety, but the love developing between the Ordinary Joe and the Born Sexy Yesterday was not played for laughs. You might find it easiest to write the piece with the standard male-female setup and then reverse genders after the initial bit is complete. Aim for between 500 and 2000 words.

Further information can be found in the link below from Pop Culture Detective and from TV tropes: Born Sexy Yesterday.