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@kujou10
「 With a smile you can enchant You light up our world We'll fly the moonlit sky together 」
~ 'Under the Sign of Winx'
Happy 10/15 🫶
Happy 8/9 🫶
Come my darling, have our fingers intertwine Let me taste your lips as we cross the line~
why don't people in zombie apocalypse stories ever just wear suits of armor? you think any zombie is gonna get their shitty rotting jaws through this?
I'm gonna rip and tear my way through the zombie apocalypse completely unharmed because none of the undead hoards will be able to get through my plate mail
everyone else is like "oh we gotta stay inside the most secure places possible and never leave" and I'll be storming through the wastelands in my bloodstained suit of armor, blasting the Doom (2016) OST and plowing my way through waves of the undead. one of them tries to bite me but his shitty rotting teeth don't even leave a dent in my armor before I turn his head into paste. I'll be unstoppable until I die of dehydration or something like an idiot
this goes along with my other pet peeve about zombie apocalypse stories, namely: why does no one ever think to ride a bike?
bikes are quiet- if the zombies react to loud noises, they won’t hear you on a bike the way they might hear you in a car. bikes don’t need gas, meaning you won’t be stranded if you run out. bikes are much, much easier to maintain than a car- there’s no computer that can short out, no fiddly engine bits that could kill you if you mess with them wrong. you can learn how to maintain a bike with a couple weeks’ worth of classes. almost every adult knows how to ride a bike, and without cars on the road, it’d be much safer to do.
what i’m saying is
American author Mark Twain (b. 1835) lurches from his grave only to give you a massive thumbs up and die again
Mark Twain essentially invented the genre of a bystander sent into a time-travel sci-fi plot just to get someone to draw this image for him. And today we can simply search for such a picture. It is a time of wonders
#this post has everything. zombies. knights. bicycles. knights on bicycles. mark twain.
I love this post for the sheer ridiculousness of its progression, but the "regularly re-enacts this exact medieval period" part of me has already started cataloguing the various downsides to this plan. It is at war with the "regularly uses bicycle for transport" part of me. They are moments away from forming a union. Help.
@plainsimpletailor Tell us more? 👀 I'm genuinely interested.
I figured a person in plate armor would be loud enough on their own, and it'd be even worse on a bike, but Idk enough about how tiring wearing plate armor or riding a bike in rough terrain is to really comment.
Also, polearms. I feel like polearms would be good for a zombie apocalypse situation, I'm just not sure which ones, or how they'd interact with the armor and bikes. Same problem with shields.
OK. So.
The thing people don't really think about when it comes to bikes is, they work best on even, stable ground - ie, roads. That goes double for today's bikes, the majority of which are engineered for a tarmac surface. And roads require upkeep - sure, they'll last longer once there's no semi trailers pounding them to pieces, but they'll still degrade pretty quick just due to weather and mother nature.
Try riding a racing bicycle, or even a general city commuter, across a grassy field and see how you feel at the other side. It's a lot harder to pedal across springy grass than solid concrete or tarmac, right? Now mentally add potholes, divots, mud, rotting limbs, random pieces of metal and plastic that have rotted off or been discarded by previous travellers, broken glass, bits of rusty wire getting caught in the chain guard.... Bicycling in the zompocalypse will not be a fun time.
Do off-road bikes exist? Yes, but they're nowhere near the norm. Most bikes you'll come across in your standard urban centre of zombie decay, in general descending order of price/build quality, will be:
Racing bikes - these tend to be well built. But, they're also extremely optimised for Going Fast - so all that construction quality is aimed at making a very light frame that's not designed for zombie abuse. They're zoomy on proper surfaces, but have awful tyre grip on corners and are NOT comfortable to ride. Pretty sure our plated knight wouldn't be able to keep their arse on the seat, let alone use the toe clips with those sabatons.
Commuters/tourers - generally these have good sturdy steel frames, though there's starting to be lower-cost (and thus lower quality) brands out there. The tyres, handlebars and saddles are designed for comfort and grip on a greater range of surfaces, as well as decent speed. But they're still not great over rough terrain. Probably our best choice for armoured travel owing to the higher weight capacity. Plus, many come with a basket and/or rear panniers - perfect for storing your armour cleaning supplies and sports bras.
'mountain' bikes - These are most likely to be crap from a big box store that will fall apart within a few years, zombie-evasion manoeuvres or not. And honestly I don't know how anyone rides these on the regular anyway - the straight handlebars are murder on your forearms. (Plate armour will not improve this experience.) Plus, the tyres are usually still city standard - unless the owner *actually* goes mountain biking with it, in which case it's more likely to have a decent build quality. The one upside is that the shock absorbers will give you a slightly nicer ride over that zombie-infested grass field we talked about before.
Frankly, the only bikes I could see being feasible post-zompocalypse are the cargo bikes and longtails. I'm biased, since I ride one of these puppies as my regular transport, but the frame is full steel and the whole thing has a load capacity of 200kg. This is important when one is wearing 25-35kg of plate armour and chain. (The Yuba Mundo was designed specifically for use in developing countries, where roads are often terrible or non-existent, so it has good odds of surviving zompocalypse terrain.)
Now that we've covered our trusty steed, let us turn to our armour.
First, as I already said, that shit is heavy. Wearing 25% or more of your body weight is tiring, even just standing around or walking. Fighting, or any other strenuous activity, ramps that tiredness up considerably. (I stuck on a suit of armour early on in my HEMA adventures, and just wearing it around the club rooms for 10 minutes tired me out and set off my asthma enough to let me know my knightly dreams were on the RIP pile.)
Our knights do two half-hour long theatrical shows at the local medieval fairs, usually about 3 hours apart, and we need a minimum of 10 knights to 1) put on a decent show and 2) make sure they all get enough rest between bouts so that no one collapses. Each fight averages 1.5 to 2 minutes, and they are NOT pushing themselves to max killage potential during their bouts - we're kind of like the WWE of medieval fights, we want it to look good and entertain the crowd more than we want to cave each other's heads in. (Caving heads is what the Buhurt people do. They are great and terrible to watch, and from what I can tell every single one of them is as mad as a jackrabbit.)
But say you're fine with the weight. You're a zompocalypse survivor! You've been double-tapping and cardio-ing your way through this brave new world, you can take the strain! That's all well and good. But does the stuff actually fit you? A lot of plate armour is like tailored clothing - it's sized and shaped to the wearer's measurements for the most comfortable fit possible.
Some pieces and styles are more versatile than others, but there's still limits. eg when one of our knights bought a pair of hinged greaves similar to the ones linked, he had to give the armourer over 30 different measurements to make sure he got something that fit properly. I might be able to stuff myself into them, but I won't be anywhere near as effective nor comfortable as he is.
If you put a small helmet on a medium head, you will be extremely sad. If you put a large helmet on a medium head, you will be extremely sad and also concussed. If your gloves aren't the right size, there's a good chance you'll end up pinching nerves while you're wearing them. (I know all these things from personal experience. I do not recommend them.)
But perhaps we were very fortunate, and the museum you raided had armour that fits you good enough. Do you have the soft kit to put under it?
You NEED a gambeson/pourpoint/arming doublet on your torso/arms. One, it absorbs the impacts that your armour takes and stops you rattling around in there. Two, you need the arming points in the arming jacket to tie the shoulders and arms in place. Three, you do not want chain mail on your skin. It will find every hair, every wrinkle, on its way off your body, and it will take them with it. (Better make sure you have enough fabric to cover your hair when you put the helmet on, for the same reason.)
Also, while I think of it - you DO have a helper lined up, right? A good buddy who will help you with the two dozen or so buckles that need to be done up? Someone to stick that chest plate on you? Someone to get their fingies in between the damn chain mail links and fish out the arming points so that the bloody spaulders will stay put this time? It is basically impossible to get in and out of a full suit of armour unassisted - that's why squires were invented.
(To be fair, once you're actually IN the stuff, you have remarkably good range of motion. About the only thing you can't do is kneel on both legs, and then fall straight backwards - the knees lock up and physically prevent the motion.)
But OK. We got there. We found our soft kit, our armour, and our buckle buddy. We are finally kitted up and ready to wade through the undead. Look at you go!
But wait. What's that? That right there - behind you...
That's uh, quite a lot of poorly protected flesh for the zombies to mung on, huh. You can give the calves extra by using hinged greaves (see above), but I don't know of any plate that protects the back of the legs. Remember, knights rode horses. It's a lot harder to do that when the underside of your legs is stuffed in a tin can. Even chain mail shirts with long skirts had front and back slits so the knight could get onto their horse.
But don't worry. It gets worse! So much worse!
Yes. Indeed. I am sorry to inform you that when you get knocked off your bicycle and overwhelmed by the zombie horde, the first thing they will eat is your arse.
hey. You should love trans women more than you hate terfs. You should love trans men more than you hate radfems. You should love nonbinary people more than you hate conservatives. You should love intersex people more than you hate bio-essentialists.
That’s all
Join in to IDOLiSH7 Prompt Week 2024! Starting July 7th and running until July 13th, there will be seven days of themed prompts for fans to create, analyze, and dedicate to IDOLiSH7!
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A traditional summer sleep-away camp for men of transgender experience over the age of 18.
Help build a more connected future for trans men!
Happy Pride!
Every pride, you must reblog this. No exceptions
I love that four different people on my feed scheduled this joyous person to reblog by 8am on June 1. I look forward to seeing this a dozen more times today.
reblog with your sign + if you’re a denim jacket, a leather jacket or a bomber jacket person it for science
The best piece of advice I ever got was not meant as advice, but as an edict. If I was going to threaten people as a joke, it had to be so far out of proportion with what happened that it would be obvious I was joking. This changed how I expressed frustration with others. It then changed how I expressed frustration with myself.
Not “I’m going to hit you” but “I am going to buy a tuna sub from the gas station and hide it under the seat of your car”
Not “I’m going to kill myself” but “I am going to walk into the desert and let the scarabs take me”
The other side then happened. When I mess something up, instead of saying it’s bad and perpetuating negative thoughts, swing hard the other way.
Not “this art is terrible” but “this shall be framed and mounted on the wall in my museum exhibition as testament to the suffering I had to overcome”
Have been doing this since high school. It was my drama teacher who asked me to please stop scaring the actors. The other half of the edict was that I had to say it in a polite tone, and end it with either please or thank you.
Life changing. 10/10 Mr Muëller. Highly reccomend.
lol
#Queued
Which means you saw this, could have told me, but instead, you chose this course. You chose violence. I'll be adding you to the list of traitors to be embroidered in the tapestry of my throne room.
upon (un)popular request on twitter TennHaru redraw of Alien Stage round 6
This is probably the most inclusive post ever made on Tumblr
“What country is this about?”
“Yes.”