“What are you gonna do differently this playthrough?”

Me: 

@nowhere-302

Artwork for recent music releases by Scuba

Space ring: ah cool

Overgrown apocalyptic space ring:

Ah. Cool.

I found this on tiktok and I laughed so hard so I thought I’d share on here

It’s so chaotic I love it

just so you guys are all aware, the only reason gritty exists is allegedly because the NHL made a rule that every team HAD to have a mascot and were apparently assholes about it. so the fliers made him as a chaotic fuck you. hell the first tweet made on his official account was a "sleep with one eye open" threat towards another mascot for making fun of his design

are we not going to talk about how he launched an entire sheetcake into that man’s face, probably killing him?

He also collects crystals

I fucking love Gritty.

Finally.

STOP SCROLLING

consider this:

I could not stop laughing. Have a great day, everybody!

Hey guys what the fuck happened in the desert to make its animals look like that

Sand just makes animals break. See the Tibetan sand fox

The fucking

Like what the fuck happened

I took some historical sword-fighting lessons to make the fights in my novel more realistic - here’s what I learned.

To make the fighting scenes in my low fantasy novel more realistic, I went to see a trainer for historical sword-fighting last week, both to barrage her with questions and to develop realistic choreographies for the fight scenes in the novel. Since I figured some of what she told me might be useful for you too, I put together a small list for you. Big thanks to Gladiatores Munich and Jeanne for making time! (Here are some more pictures if you’re interested.)

Caveat: I’m by no means a sword-fighting expert myself, so take these nuggets with a grain of salt – I might have misremembered or misinterpreted some of the things Jeanne told me. If I did, feel free to tell me.

1.) Weapon choices need to make sense

Let’s start with a truism: always ensure your character’s weapons make sense for a.) their profession, b.) their cultural background and c.) the environment they’re going to fight in. A farmer probably couldn’t afford a sword and might use a knife or threshing flail instead, and someone who doesn’t want to be noticed probably wouldn’t be milling about sporting a glaive or another large weapon. Also, soldiers native to a country with wide open plains would be more likely to carry long-range melee weapons such as spears or large swords, than those from a country consisting of mostly jungle or dense forests. The same applies to situations: if your character is going to be fighting in close quarters (even just a normal house), he’d get little value out of a spear or even a longsword, as there’d be no space to swing it effectively.

2.) Boldness often beats skill

In real swordfights, recklessness was often more important than technique. The fighter less afraid of getting injured would often push harder, allowing them to overpower even opponents with better technique.

3.) Even a skilled fighter rarely stands a chance when outnumbered

While a skilled (or lucky) fighter might win a two-versus-one, it’d be extremely unlikely for even a single master swordsman to win against superior numbers, even just three and if they’re below his skill level. The only way to plausibly pull this off would be to split the opponents up, perhaps by luring them into a confined space where you could take them on one by one. The moment you’re surrounded, you’re probably done for – because, unlike in Hollywood, they wouldn’t take turns attacking but come at you all at once.

4.) Dual-wielding was a thing

… at least in some cultures. I often heard people say that people using a weapon in each hand is an invention of fiction. And while my instructor confirmed that she knew of no European schools doing this—if they did, it’s not well-documented—she said it was a thing in other cultures. Example of this include the dual wakizashi in Japan or tomahawk and knife in North America. However, one of the biggest problems with the depiction of dual wielding in novels/movies/games are the “windmill”-type attacks where the fighter swings their weapons independently, hitting in succession rather than simultaneously. Normally you’d always try hitting with both weapons at once, as you’d otherwise lose your advantage.

5.) Longswords were amazing

Longswords might seem boring in comparison to other weapons, but they were incredibly effective, especially in combat situations outside the battlefield. The crossguard allowed for effective blocking of almost any kind of attack (well, maybe not an overhead strike of a Mordaxt, but still), the pommel was also used as a powerful “blunt” weapon of its own that could crack skulls. Though they were somewhat less effective against armored opponents, the long, two-handed hilt allowed for precise thrusts at uncovered body parts that made up for it.

6.)  “Zweihänder” were only used for very specific combat situations

Zweihänder—massive two-handed swords—were only used for specific purposes and usually not in one-on-one combat as is often seen in movies or games. One of these purposes was using their reach to break up enemy formations. In fact, one type of two-handed sword even owed its name to that purpose: Gassenhauer (German, Gasse = alley, Hauer = striker)—the fighters literally used it to strike “alleys” into an enemy formation with wide, powerful swings.

7.) It’s all about distance

While I was subconsciously aware of this, it might be helpful to remember that distance was an incredibly important element in fights. The moment your opponent got past your weapons ideal range, it was common to either switch to a different weapon or just drop your weapon and resort to punching/choking. A good example of this are spears or polearms—very powerful as long as you maintain a certain range between you and your opponent, but the moment they get too close, your weapon is practically useless. That’s also why combatants almost always brought a second weapon into battle to fall back one.

8.) Real fights rarely lasted over a minute

Another truism, but still useful to remember: real fights didn’t last long. Usually, they were over within less than a minute, sometimes only seconds – the moment your opponent landed a hit (or your weapon broke or you were disarmed), you were done for. This is especially true for combatants wearing no or only light armor.

9.) Stop the pirouettes

Unfortunately, the spinning around and pirouetting that makes many fight scenes so enjoyable to watch (or read) is completely asinine. Unless it’s a showfight, fighters would never expose their backs to their opponent or even turn their weapon away from them.

10.)  It still looks amazing

If your concern is that making your fight scenes realistic will make them less aesthetic, don’t worry. Apart from the fact that the blocks, swings and thrusts still look impressive when executed correctly, I personally felt that my fights get a lot more gripping and visceral if I respect the rules. To a certain extent, unrealistic and flashy combat is plot armor. If your characters can spin and somersault to their heart’s content and no one ever shoves a spear into their backs as they would have in real life, who survives and who doesn’t noticeably becomes arbitrary. If, on the other hand, even one slip-up can result in a combatant’s death, the stakes become palpable.

That’s about it! I hope this post is as helpful to some of you as the lessons were to me. Again, if anything I wrote here is bollocks, it’s probably my fault and not Jeanne’s.  I’ll try to post more stuff like this in the future.

Cheers,

Nicolas

She is obsessed with him. (Btw her name is Petunia and my black beast is Atreyu).

He’s given up trying to get away from her. They sleep like this almost every night.

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Since everyone liked that photo so much, here’s the last two weeks of their love 😂😂

1920 c. Just before the emergence of Art Deco, here is a last gasp of Art Nouveau design in this bracelet by Luis Masriera. It’s made of gold, colored glass, diamonds and cameo. From Art Deco, FB.

aaaaa ‘colored glass’ doesn’t even come CLOSE, my friend. This is not like leadlighting. That is plique-a-jour (light-of-day) enamelling, on a curve, with multiple colors, in tiny ‘cells’ made out of gold wire no thicker than your fingernail (which in and of themselves would have been a stone cold bitch to make aaa they are so tiny and those joints are so perfect HOW DID HE DO THAT).

Every. single. cell, has to be ‘hand-filled’ with wet enamel, which has a texture very much like watercolor paint, allowed to set, refilled until the surface tension holds, and then fired in a kiln at a very precise temperature and time, which is different for each color. And then the enamel shrinks back to the edges of the cell so you have to let it cool, refill, and then fire again. I’ve had to refill a single cell as many as four times to get color fill.

Blues and greens are the easiest, so you do them first. You take the kiln to a slightly higher temperature, have a few more seconds of leeway before they go horribly discolored on you. Oh, and this is using a modern kiln with a precise, digital temperature controller, not whatever this dude had back in the 1920s which would have involved a lot of guesswork and standing by the kiln counting under his breath because enamel fires in SECONDS.

Guess which colors are the hardest? That’s right, REDS. The colors this stunning bracelet is full of. I LOATHE working with reds. Ten seconds too long, five degrees too hot, and they’re ugly, black-flecked disasters that have to be dissolved out with acid, not incidentally trashing the other colours you’d spent forever on too. Yay.

And when you’ve finally finished, having spend probably hundreds of hours getting all those tiny cells fired and filled? Time to sit down with a bowl of water and a hard grinding stone and grind every single one of them flat, my friend, because the enamel when properly filled actually domes up slightly. Yes, this part is still best done by hand, even today.

Don’t forget to repolish your gold, making sure to get out all the scratches left by your glass-polishing stone, and set all those diamonds and the cameo!

What’s that, you say? One of your glass cells fractured because you used a tiny bit too much pressure setting a diamond?

Dear me. Time to UN-set all those stones and go back to the kiln again. Have a lovely time!

‘Colored glass’, indeed. Hmph.

heartbreaking doctor who moments ♢ vincent hearing his worth

i d in alt text

feathers

only address me as The Friend from now on

1. nonbinary people have always been around

2. omfg imagine pulling this on conservative religious relatives today

Princess Mononoke [ もののけ姫 ] (1997) dir. Hayao Miyazaki