Zylla Black
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zyllable.bsky.social
Zylla Black
@zyllable.bsky.social
1.7K followers 400 following 2.4K posts
(she/they) Lefty video essayist, independent academic, archaeogaming streamer, and sf/f fiction author. https://linktr.ee/Zyllable

Pfp by Birdee Blake
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zyllable.bsky.social
"Always has been" meme showing an astronaut in a spacesuit pointing a gun at another astronaut (off screen) against a starry backdrop.
November 13, 2025 at 8:42 PM
zyllable.bsky.social
#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.
October 7, 2025 at 4:38 PM
zyllable.bsky.social
#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
October 6, 2025 at 6:48 PM
zyllable.bsky.social
#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.
October 6, 2025 at 3:31 AM
zyllable.bsky.social
#classicstober 3: Graiai
a pen sketch of three old women in blindfolds and chitons with zonai holding up a single large eyeball
October 3, 2025 at 10:22 PM
zyllable.bsky.social
#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
October 2, 2025 at 9:46 PM
zyllable.bsky.social
#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.
October 1, 2025 at 9:20 PM
zyllable.bsky.social
It is almost TIME. 🤘🦊
Screen shot of a title slide for a presentation, Megitsune: BABYMETAL's Identification of Modern Womanhood in Ancient Fox Spirits. Slide has a black background with images of BABYMETAL members wearing kitsune masks surrounding the neon red version of the band logo.
June 4, 2025 at 6:47 PM
zyllable.bsky.social
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.
April 30, 2025 at 7:55 PM
zyllable.bsky.social
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!
April 26, 2025 at 4:05 PM
zyllable.bsky.social
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.
April 24, 2025 at 9:34 PM
zyllable.bsky.social
@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.
April 9, 2025 at 2:34 AM
zyllable.bsky.social
Shocked pikachu face
March 10, 2025 at 6:29 PM
zyllable.bsky.social
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".
March 3, 2025 at 5:33 PM
zyllable.bsky.social
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.
February 28, 2025 at 9:55 PM
zyllable.bsky.social
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).
February 28, 2025 at 5:04 AM
zyllable.bsky.social
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.
February 26, 2025 at 9:00 PM
zyllable.bsky.social
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
February 26, 2025 at 2:14 AM
zyllable.bsky.social
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
February 25, 2025 at 2:08 AM
zyllable.bsky.social
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.
February 24, 2025 at 12:15 AM
zyllable.bsky.social
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.
February 22, 2025 at 5:37 PM
zyllable.bsky.social
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).
February 22, 2025 at 2:11 AM
zyllable.bsky.social
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.
February 20, 2025 at 6:09 PM
zyllable.bsky.social
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.
A woman in a combination of ancient Greek and North African garb tied to a stake or rock. Detail of Andromeda on a 340 B.C. vase at the MArTA in Taranto, red-figure style with white accents.
February 19, 2025 at 5:59 PM
zyllable.bsky.social
Today's #AncientDEI on #AncientBluesky is Roman Emperor Septimius Severus. He was a Black man born in what is now Libya, and climbed the political ladder in the customary way under the steady hand of Marcus Aurelius.
A round portrait of Septimius Severus and his family, showing Septimius' dark skin clearly. The Severan Tondo, c. 199, Severus, Julia Domna, Caracalla and Geta, whose face is erased (Antikensammlung Berlin).
February 18, 2025 at 6:22 PM