Year 0, D.E.

The Eye of the Great Storm - "For those who have never experienced a hurricane, the eye of the storm can prove extremely deadly, luring its victims into a false sense of security as the wind fails, and the rain ceases to fall. Once the unsuspecting leave their shelters, exposing themselves to the elements, the storm strikes again, ripping through their bodies like a swarm of arrows. "It is only those who wait for the storm to truly end that survive." -- excerpt from “A Personal Hurricane” by Agatha Murray found in Natural Power: Poetry and Prose of Nature and Man, edited by Preston Dizon and Callista French Building A World -- Post-Apocalyptic setting with some Fantasy elements Updates on Gangs of Olympia by Essie Essex

[holycandyking]

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Boys play hopscotch, too, 1940s.

Photo: Arthur Leipzig via Luminous Lint

[modelsof-color]

Tina Kunakey for Haper's Bazaar España Magazine March 2026

[catsofyore]

Most important subject goes up front. Real photo postcard from my collection, no date/info.

[gacougnol]

Tish Murtha (British, 1956 - 2013)

Snowball Fight

From the series Elswick Kids (1978).

[oldnewyorklandia]

Peter Sekaer, New York, c 1934.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Kids playing with an old sofa left out on the street, Harlem, 1958.

Photo: Museum of the City of New York (MCNY)

[cosmonautroger]

Leonard McCombe, Dublin, 1957

[questcequecestqueca]

Tish Murtha

[heaveninawildflower]

Photographs of Glasgow entitled 'Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow' (1868-1871) by Thomas Annan (Scotland, 1829-1887).

These images (and others from the series) were used by Glasgow City Improvement Trust to document the overcrowded, unhygienic conditions ahead of extensive redevelopment.

Images and text information courtesy LACMA and Wiki.

[sartorialadventure]

Naeem Khan

[belovedbluv]

Mounia Orosemane in a wedding gown in homage to William Shakespeare,for Yves Saint Laurent autumn-winter 1980 haute couture collection, Salon impérial of the Hôtel Inter-Continental, Paris, July 1980. Photograph by François-Marie Banier.

[wuxiaphoenix]

Worldbuilding: Odd Jobs

If you really want to give a sense of place to your fantastic world, don’t just rely on spaceships and phasers, or monsters and enchanted swords. Stories are about people. The surest way to illustrate how foreign a place is to our normal everyday life is to show how people’s work-lives have adapted to the local oddness. Give people odd jobs.

I don’t mean “weird work schedules”, though that’s pretty likely. I mean things you might never consider possible as jobs, until you run into a RL example. Sheepherding by helicopter in New Zealand. Free-diving “mermaids” for seaweed, shellfish, and pearls in various parts of East Asia and Japan. And in various boggy and acid-river spots in New Jersey and the southeastern U.S., there is wood mining.

Yes, this is a thing. Cypress and cedar are remarkably rot-resistant, and in water or damp soil that’s high in tannins trees and smaller pieces may linger virtually untouched for centuries. Some places lumber was harvested and then lost; others the trees just fell over centuries ago, sank into ground or water, and there they stay. The reason you can find so much specifically in the Jersey Pine Barrens and the Southeast are the pines, oaks, and local iron, producing many streams and bogs with high-acid, low-oxygen waters.

(Side note: This is why an organization like the EPA making national rules on water quality is... well, it works in theory, but in practice? There are many, many natural bodies of water that do not and cannot meet EPA regs for dissolved oxygen, and never have. Florida is one of many states locked in an ongoing biological battle with the Feds over this - there are species that would be wiped out if their native waters were high in oxygen.)

Sunken wood is not easy to get at. It takes either certain special skills (scuba-diving, sometimes) or a level of sheer tenacity and time on your hands that makes it impractical for large-scale commercial extraction. But the wood is good quality, rot-proof, and often old - which can give it a luxury value to woodcrafters and builders beyond modern cypress or cedar. On a small scale, to people already living there, it can be a very worthwhile job. Sunken cedar from the Pine Barrens was used to build WWII torpedo boats; “sinker cypress” may be made into durable log homes, but is often valued more for its appearance and tuned into siding and other decorative pieces.

Just picture the incongruity. You’re going out lumbering, in a wetsuit. Or in waders with a shovel and other muck-handling tools. If that’s not an odd job, I don’t know what is.

Show that to your readers, give them the details of how it works, and they’ll believe they’re in a different world. Awesome.

[essie-essex]

1, 16, and 19 for the writing meme!

1. Are there any themes you tend to explore?I like to write about people’s darker sides. I tend to focus on characters who are either considered to be “bad” people or are “good” people who get into situations they can’t handle without going against their morals – I want to show that these people are still human and flawed, just as everyone is. I love putting myself in another person’s mindset and then just writing. 16. Pitch your story novel to me.Our setting is a gray, post-apocalyptic world but with fantasy elements. Before the Great Storm, a magical hurricane that engulfed the entire world, the world was somewhat like our own, except there were elves and dwarves. Mostly, they lived in isolated places. There are certain areas called Places of Power, which are basically protected by magic. It’s always sunny, there’s always food and water, etc. Elves have claimed most of the natural places of power and then invented a way to create new ones with special crystals. In the world after the Great Storm, the places of power are untouched, while the rest of the world is destroyed. In the area I’m focusing on, which used to be the city and surrounding suburbs of Centralia, we see a few human civilizations pop up over the years. The first was Fossil, a partially destroyed natural history museum that was built into a city. However, Fossil became overcrowded, due to the fact that it was advertised as a free city where people could go for shelter, food, and medical attention.The city of Olympia was created by a group of seven people who lived in an underground bunker community. It started out as a simple encampment where people could stay and build their own houses. Others made money (I still haven’t figured out how money works yet) by building apartments and charging people to stay. After run-ins with bandits and slavers, the camp became a city, complete with walls and modern conveniences. Entry into Olympia was restricted, and news of the outside was highly censored. Our story takes place three generations after the founders first established the city. The older parts of Olympia that were part of the camp became an area for the poor and people who snuck into the city illegally. As this area was neglected for the most part, gangs started to emerge, claiming territory and becoming the authorities of the slums. Right now, there are three main gangs: The Bastard Aristocrats, The Belles, and The Blackhearts. The Blackhearts control the industrial areas, the Belles prostitution and goods smuggled from the other side of the city, and the Bastard Aristocrats focus on local businesses, drugs, and the marketplace. The Bastard Aristocrats is made up of people who claim to be the bastards of certain aristocratic individuals in the city. Of course, there’s no way to prove this, so most aren’t. The gang is mostly made up of children and teenagers, but it’s proven itself time and time again and has become one of the major gangs. Now on to the story!Gangs of Olympia focuses on their leader Kitt Monroe and a newcomer named Middi Dayton, a half-dwarf and daughter of Samward Dayton, an aristocrat. Because of a series of misunderstandings mixed with bad judgement, the three gangs are at war. Further adding to the tension is the new housing project, which will “clean up” the slums, basically building new houses for those who have money and can afford them. Kitt is unsure of what the founders will do about all the poor, but with an increase in Peaceman (police) presence in the slums and crackdowns on gang activity, she fears that there may be no room for them in the new Olympia. However, this all serves as a backdrop. The Brothers of Harmony are a small and mysterious group living in the slums who are rumored to have magical powers. They usually do not bother the gangs, focusing on their own affairs.They broke off from a group of people with magical powers who use them to attack the Places of Power that have been seized by the Temple of Illumination, the current major religion, which is responsible for the slaughter of the area’s Aelven (elven) residents.For some reason, the Brothers of Harmony have begun to take land from the Bastard Aristocrats, sending mysterious and gruesome threats to Kitt and her followers. Kitt wants to find out why, but no one knows where the Brothers of Harmony live. Kitt must find the group and speak to their leader before the Bastards are completely wiped out. However, the gang’s loyalty starts to waver as people die off and disappear, and Kitt finds herself wondering if someone will stab her in the back, just as she did to their former leader. Rumors that she is working with the Alphas, a shadowy mob-like group, don’t help.Then, there’s Middi. She was born rich and knows next to nothing about the slums, but she has a violent side that can only be satisfied by breaking faces. She learned this new behavior and more from a maid named Lia, who worked at the Dayton Manor for a few months. However, Lia was very influential to Middi, encouraging her to do things for herself, instead of letting others do it for her. After being sent out to pick up a package by one of the Bastards, Middi finds herself in trouble as she wanders into the wrong neighborhood. She mentions Lia’s name, and suddenly she is welcomed and given a place to stay. The reason for this is revealed when a certain aristocrat makes his way into one of the Belles’ brothels. And then there is the matter of the package Middi was sent to pick up, which she still has in her possession. The Bastards are not happy about its disappearance.And then there’s another story related to this one that focuses on an Illuminator and a boy with magical powers, but I won’t go in-depth into that one. So, basically there are three main characters: Kitt, Middi, and Victor Cahill.19. What was the first idea that eventually turned into the story? How much has it changed?It was probably the Dishonored fanfiction I wrote called Love, Your Bastards. It focuses on a gang called the Bastard Aristocrats, made up of the bastards of aristocrats sent to live on the streets. The whole reason I wrote it was for a 200 followers thing a few years ago, where I would make the winners characters in a story. I had them answer questionnaires about themselves and the Bastard Aristocrats were born with the winner as their leader. I’m not writing about the same Bastard Aristocrats for the most part. Kitt is not like Val at all, and Kitty has been cut out and replaced by Essie Essex (OC whose name I absentmindedly used as a user name one day and then it stuck).Anyway, you can learn more about Gangs of Olympia at my novel blog gangsofolympia.tumblr.com

[through-a-historic-lens]

Gang Of Teen Girls, Estonia, 1930

[federer7]

Milano, 1960

Foto: Virgilio Carnisio

[6h35]

Fred Herzog.