I don't post often for personal reasons. However, I recently received some pretty concerning messages and comments, and there’s a lot going on that I am still processing.
(I'm admittedly a little rattled right now, tbh.)
To keep it simple: Please be kind to one another. Life is already hard, don't make it harder on others.
if you or someone you know is struggling, here are some resources:
Y'know, I'm kinda surprised I haven't seen Jack Chains more in fantasy tbh, like it's a really interesting and low budget armor style, I'm legit surprised I've almost never seen it in media
Actually kind of! It's built with a very interesting principle behind it and I'm gonna explain it below because it's neat
So, say you've got a sword or axe or something and are fighting some guy who can't afford a full suit of armor, and like someone who thinks it's a good idea to protect their brain from harm, they go into battle with a real good helmet, but don't have enough money for a full breastplate
So, obviously, this guy's helmet is solid, well-built, and strong. You're absolutely not getting through that with anything short of a mace or warhammer, which you forgot at home or something. So, you want to instead throw some cuts at their torso and arms, since if you can't get at their brain or throat, the entire torso is a pretty good target, and without arms your opponent will have a much harder time both hitting you with their weapons and shielding that torso of theirs
So you start throwing cuts, probably like so, since these are usually the most common, instinctive, and usually efficient cuts to throw (or a rough MS Paint approximation of them lol)
Normally, on someone unarmored, those'd do a lot of damage! You'd probably even win the fight!
However, with even something as small as these weird little guys on, it just sort of...
Obviously these things are like, clearly less effective than most styles of armor, doing little to protect against things like thrusts or trebuchets, but even with as minimal as they are, the humble Jack Chains are bizarrely more effective than one would think just by looking at them!
They work because they close off the most common angles of attack, essentially trying to get the maximum value out of minimum materials. Despite their rarity in media they were pretty common, mostly because of their low cost, but also because they did their jobs surprisingly adequately
In a weird way, it kind of reminds me about that one post about army planes, actually
genuinely when you log off and are only exposed to the lives of those around you as god intended you realize how much shit does not matter. i know this is not a hot take but we were not meant to hear every thought, feeling and opinion of people we will never see face to face. it’s so much easier to pile on people for harmless but annoying opinions when you will never have to spend extended time with them.
Btw much as I love to make fun of twitter and reddit's business decisions, I have 0% trust in tumblr's management to not go a similar route so this is your gentle reminder that you should regularly go to your blog settings to export your blog. That's a fancy way of saying you can download a backup of your blog so if everything goes down you'll still have a backup of your posts & convos.
It's gonna come as a surprise to most of you, but if you don't want to do that for whatever reason you're allowed to not reblog this post. I'm not holding a gun to your head here I'm just trying to spread the word for people who do want a backup of their stuff.
I must not buy. Buying is the purse-killer. Buying is the little-dopamine that brings total bankruptcy. I will face my wishlist. I will permit the limited time sale to pass over me and through me. And when it has expired I will turn the inner eye to see its impulses. When the mania has gone there will be nothing. Only $ will remain.
The gator is the whole point. It's a stand-in for the author that has felt the need to suppress the aspects of themself that others find unappealing, their anger, their sadness, the things people find abrasive or just "weird" in order to make themself more digestible for the people around them because the alternative is to be alone. The gator is only "cute" and "lovable" because it was not allowed to be anything else.
Saw an op-ed that was on the surface a complaint about kids not wanting to take on family heirlooms but read like an elegy to dying traditions. The hardest part was the anxiety without recognizing that they didn’t pave the way for the decisions they assumed their kids would make.
(This is written entirely within the dominant white/western culture - about traditions that have neglectful stewardship rather than those actively suppressed)
The anxiety makes sense. You’re seeing, too late to do anything about it, that there’s no foundation - no space - for the traditions you expected to pass on. Your kids _can’t_ take your mom’s fine china. So now instead of enjoying what you have you worry about its future.
I see a pattern in these op-eds though - a pattern in what’s left unsaid. There were responsibilities tied to these traditions. You collectively assumed they _would_ be passed along. So collectively, what did you do to ensure those traditions _could_ be passed along?
Op-eds never speak for everyone, but it’s worth acknowledging the pattern in what speech is deemed worth sharing widely. And in this particular pattern, there’s an answer: that answer looks like “nothing.”
You want the china passed down but your kids have no room in their rentals. You want grandkids but your kids don’t have the financial stability. You want that cross-country RV neverending road trip but you’ve had decades of wanting lower taxes more than you wanted infrastructure.
The bleak outlook for traditions is a direct result of the unmaintained foundations for them. The second best time is always now - if it’s important enough to op-ed about, what are you willing to change to get it back? What will you give up or re-prioritize?
I kinda think that world-defining assumptions are always gonna break without maintenance. So rather than getting mad at whoever’s next for not carrying on the norms we didn’t do upkeep on, when it’s my turn, I hope I’m introspective enough to help instead of externalize & blame.
The bleak outlook for traditions is a direct result of the unmaintained foundations for them. The second best time is always now - if it’s important enough to op-ed about, what are you willing to change to get it back? What will you give up or re-prioritize?
I follow a Facebook group of “Memories of …” for my hometown - a rustbelt community that has gone from a thriving hub of industry to a much-less-thriving place.
The group is a collective lament. Decades-old pictures of well-kept churches. Aerial shots of the main intersection downtown, lined with big cars. Scanned advertisemetns from local stores featuring pictures of their interiors. These alternate with the drumbeat of news: the Catholic diocese is closing churches. Selling them. Tearing them down. STores downtown are closing. The traffic light has been replaced with a four-way-stop.
“That’s the church my parents were married in!”
“How could they tear down that beautiful building. Such memories!”
“All the businesses are closing. It must be the taxes.”
”They’ve sold the old lodge downtown.”
“They’re not opening the skating rink this year. We always used to go.”
And sometimes I chime in.
“Do you attend that church? Do you give? Or do you just want the building to look pretty for you? “
“Do you volunteer at that park? Why not?”
“Did you vote for that recreation bond issue?”
“Are you a member of that Lodge? Why not?”
“Do you shop downtown? Or did you start shopping at Walmart and Amazon to save a few bucks?”
If you feel something is worth preserving, why do you not participate in its preservation?
