I am currently away from the office and have intermittent access to email. If your email is not urgent I will in all likelihood still reply within 10 minutes due to ineffective self-regulation and an inability to maintain work-life balance.
When I don't understand my friend's hyperfixation but I'm still here to support them
me @ my own dam self tbh
having anxiety is like being given permanent unwanted custody of a halter arabian. like okay buddy is it panic time again. cool you probably need more exercise and an apple and then maybe you'll calm down.
taking my stupid walks for my stupid mental health with my stupid hypervigilant brain horse
thoroughly enjoying the notes on this post because it's equal parts people with anxiety going "yeah that's what it's like" and people with arabians going "yeah that's what they're like"
Just a casual question: What lightsaber style do you prefer out of one-handed, two-handed, double-bladed or dual wielding?
We’ll leave out the Lightsaber Forms from the EU, because they are inconsistently defined between sources.
No, no, no. You ask me what my favorite lightsaber is, you get the answer whether you want it or not. The answer may surprise you. It’s (probably) considered the second dumbest lightsaber weapon ever invented in the extended universe with the exception of the lightsaber nunchaku.
Are you ready? Do you have your guesses?
The Lightwhip.
The chosen weapon of Dark Ladies of the Sith and the Nightsisters of Dathomir back when the Sisters weren’t all dark side practitioners and rode rancors.
(This is my favorite. For reference, Starke’s favorite is single blade Form IV: Ataru. He’s boring.)
Now, I agree with the general fandom that the lightwhip is a dumb, impractical weapon that’s more likely to dismember its wielder than it is their opponent. Only someone with a high level of skill, prescience, and telekinesis could make effective use of a lightwhip’s dismemberment murder frenzy without killing themselves. Fortunately, that’s exactly the base level of skills most Force sensitives possess. Probably most important, the lightwhip is the exact sort of dumb we see with real weapons in the real world. This includes the more wild examples like the urumi, the chain whip, and the three-section staff. And, it should be said, I have watched living black belts concuss themselves with the three-section staff while trying to figure out how to use it. All for the Rule of Cool. So, while I accept its impracticality, I refuse the argument that the lightwhip being any more unrealistic in use or invention than the rest of the lightsaber weapon family. Does it have a high skill floor? Absolutely. Is it a safe weapon compared to the rest of its very dangerous family? Absolutely not. Would a student potentially dismember or murder themselves learning to use it? Yes, and that’s why it’s fun. (I’ll add a small caveat that the average student could also dismember themselves with a normal lightsaber, so this isn’t just a danger posed by the lightwhip.)
The lightwhip is a weapon of the Dark Side. Its battle style would be (and should be) wild, chaotic, and nigh uncontrollable. There’s no way to use it safely and it belongs in the hands of a wielder who is straight up thrilled to cut down both their allies and enemies in equal measure. This is the weapon of a murderous lunatic in black leather, and gets even more wild when it switches to a Cat o’ Nine to bring on nine weaving laser tendrils instead of just one. The lightwhip is the sexy Catwoman reference that transcends its genre when we really start to think about how intimidating it’d be to see that thing on the battlefield in the hands of a novice and, especially, an expert.
The standard use for a whip in the real world is as a support tool for your primary weapon, such as a rapier. The whip doesn’t do much damage on its own, leaving only small, painful cuts and lacerations so it transitions into a means of harassment. The advantage of the whip is that it attacks at odd, circular angles which are difficult (if not impossible) to block and will curve into a strike around the opposing weapon. The rippling movement makes it difficult to see and even more difficult to predict. If kept in constant motion, this difficulty triples because the disparate movements blend together.
Now, take this setup and add the lightshow. Instead of a weapon that does light lacerations, we have a weapon that deals massive burns if it doesn’t straight up dismember. It will cut through everything and everyone. Conventional fighting styles fall apart against it. More importantly, because it is a burning plasma ribbon, it doesn’t need to follow the standard rules of physics. The lightwhip is beautiful in its raw, chaotic brutality, it’s high risk, high reward nature, and I love the way it hard counters the standard philosophy of lightsaber combat with a literal curveball. Any opponent who faces it is forced into new, creative approaches for their very survival.
Lastly, I love what the lightwhip says about its wielder as an expression of their vicious, ferocious, highly aggressive personality. This weapon requires commitment and dedication. It’s absolutely fair to say the person who wields a lightwhip has a fanatical, if not suicidal, bent. After all, they’d willingly risk death to master it. They love destruction. They don’t care about outside consequences or property destruction. They go it alone.
I’ll admit the lightwhip’s true potential is too violent for most of Star Wars and, like most Star Wars weapons, it very much lives on the Rule of Cool. One of the sadder aspects with the lightwhip is that, while I love the weapon and its potential, any discussion of it gets mired in sexism. Every appearance of the lightwhip comes with the sexy NSFW Dark Side Dominatrix bent and leads to the lightwhip not being given the consideration it’s potential deserves.
My favorite saber is Darth Maul’s saber staff from The Phantom Menace, because versatility allows for use of both one and two. My favorite lightsaber form (which should now surprise no one) is Form VII: Vaapad.
All that said, I do enjoy a good Dark Side Dominatrix as much as I enjoy a moody and hooded Dark Side Goth. And I genuinely love dumb and, seemingly, impractical weapons when the reward justifies their risk. If there’s a general writing advice takeaway here, always consider the practicality of an impractical but cool weapon, address i’s rewards as well as its risks, and pair it with a suitable personality. The lightwhip is not a weapon that belongs in the hands of a Jedi or, really, any individual who possesses any degree of restraint. It’s for a character who merrily expresses raw, raging power at every opportunity and willing to risk destroying themselves along with everyone else for victory.
There’s a weird angle with the Star Wars EU where they tried to establish the lightwhip as weaker than the lightsaber (*cough* woman’s weapon *cough*) with less cutting power even when it doesn’t use a physical cord, which makes absolutely no sense. The lightsaber is the more versatile weapon, while the lightwhip is more specialized and circumstantial. Which fits with the patterns of real world weapons technology.
This a long circle round to saying that the weapons we choose for our characters act as personality tells. Which is why it’s important to give a lot of thought and consideration to any weapon’s historic use and purpose before attaching it. Weapons communicate more than we might expect, both via their situational viability and associated cultural myths. It’s important to choose whether you’ll address this, especially if you’re not planning to intentionally communicate that message or make those personality traits part of the character’s identity. Weapons are tools and, like with all tools, different tools attract different personalities. In fiction, we the authors often decide this from an external perspective. Once a choice has been made, always give yourself a chance to think about it from a character’s internal perspective. Why did Character X choose this weapon? Why do they want to use it? What does this weapon do for them that another weapon doesn’t? Or, what makes that other weapon less attractive?
You might find yourself with an answer or story beat you hadn’t previously considered.
Food for thought.
-Michi
1. Fist: Make a fist around the epi-pen, don’t place your thumb/fingers over either end
2. Flick the blue cap off
3. Fire. Press down into the outer thigh (the big muscle in there), hold for 10 seconds before removing (the orange cap will cover the needle). Bare skin is best but the epi-pen will go through clothing. Avoid pockets and seams.
- Ring an ambulance even if everything seems to be fine!
aroacelukeskywalker
Oh my god. So as someone who has to carry an epipen EVERYWHERE I am so happy to see that there’s an info post about them. Like in the extreme case that I can’t inject myself, somebody else would have to do it, but nobody knows how to do it! Thank you, this may just save my life some day.
dontbeanassharry
Don’t be wimpy about it, either. I know friends who are like, “but idk if I could stab you with a needle!” Please stab me with the needle, don’t be hesitant about it.
In my case (I can’t speak for all allergies), an epi buys me 20 minutes of breathing to get to the hospital. It is not a magic bullet, it’s a few critical minutes to help get me where I need to go.
For those who don’t know, people with serious food allergies carry epinephrine which is an adrenaline shot just in case they have anaphylaxis, which is a life threatening allergic attack. This shot is life-saving and must be administered to someone who is having an anaphylactic attack as SOON AS POSSIBLE, because an extra waited minute could mean their life.
It doesn’t hurt much at all to use this needle. The first time I used mine, I didn’t even feel it. But be sure to stab it IN THE OUTER THIGH. Do not stick it anywhere else or you could seriously hurt or kill someone. Just right to the outside of the thigh and then call the ambulance - even if your friend starts doing better, they could have a biphasic reaction, meaning a reaction that comes back (or they may need a second dose, be on the look out). If your friend has an epipen, then they have an epipen trainer that doesn’t have a needle and you can try it out just to be sure you know how to use the real thing if you have to. I’d also advise holding it a few more seconds then 10, maybe go for 14 just to be sure all the medicine is administered and that you didn’t count too fast - that’s what I did.
Here’s a graphic of where to stick it:
THANK YOU FOR THE GRAPHIC I was about to ask because my mom carries one around and so do some of my friends and I wanted to make sure I would do it right if I ever needed to!
Learn about this or get a refresher, if you’re not already familiar.
Reblogging from myself because it is good information, but also it is an underappreciated benefit of Ozempic that there are now lots of people around who know how to use these one-shot inject thingies and aren't afraid to do it. Yay Ozempic!
i don't think the hulk exists due to gamma radiation. i think getting 7 PhDs just does that to you
the downside of following a bunch of people with impeccable taste who are all mutuals is that sometimes a Good Post will enter the ecosystem and you will have to scroll past it eight bajillion times for the next three days
starting to suspect that tech bros actually just don’t know what reading is
rezindian-deactivated20210804
my anatomy used to be so good. what happened to me
rezindian-deactivated20210804
could be. you would never know.
"idc about surveillance, i've got nothing to hide." Okay well maybe you should then? Get some goddamn. flavor in your life already
i will never complain about a book seeming like a fanfic with the serial numbers filed off because that means the author had the invaluable ability to tell when their au had diverged enough that these were just straight-up different characters now
even as we speak there is probably someone out there writing a delightful 100k+ word gay romance novel about a genderqueer bisexual single parent who lives in a beach town and fixes classic cars and falls in love with the sexy tentacle monster mermaid that saved their life, and that writer could probably make pretty good money self-publishing it, but they won't because that would mean admitting that they aren't really writing destiel anymore
Go read an old fic.
There’s such recency bias in fandom. As an author you post something, get a few reactions, and then it goes off into the bin. As a reader you check the tags, see what’s new, and move on. But a lot of old stuff is really good. It’s just sitting there, gathering dust, waiting for someone to take a peek.
So go on. Treat yourself.
Read an old fic.
I’d argue there’s a bias against like… middle-aged fics in particular. A lot of people sort by kudos or bookmarks, but that’s going to be strongly biased toward older fics, which have had more time to accumulate them. Then there’s people that sort by date and read the newest. But there’s so much good material in that middle area.
A friend taught me her trick for smaller fandoms, which is to sort by kudos and use the published date filters to go through the fandom in 6-month increments. Within a 6-month time span, you’re not really going to get the kudos-over-time bias. Basically, you end up reading the best fics of each 6-month period until you start hitting fics below your quality threshold, wherever that is. You’ll find so much good material that way that would never have crossed your line of sight otherwise.
This is a clever idea, and I’m reblogging it so I remember to do it.
I feel like a lot of people don’t quite get what a butler is. The role tends to get rounded off to ‘male servant’ pretty regularly in some media, whereas actually butlers are typically not just servants but chief servants. The butler was generally in charge of either all male servants or just all servants, period, in the household of an aristocrat or other very wealthy person. This meant that butlers have often been fairly powerful and influential people, and sometimes even had a manservant or two of their own.
(Also, fun fact: Mary Roberts Rinehart, the early 20th century mystery writer who is widely credited with popularizing the whole ‘the butler did it’ trope was nearly murdered by one of her own servants, a chef whom she had passed over for promotion to butler. He came at her with a pistol, but it jammed, allowing her chauffeur time to wrestle it away and restrain him.)
You didn’t answer the key question things brings up: did she popularize the trope before or after the would-be butler tried to kill her?
according to wikipedia, before
There’s something glorious about the fact that the author who popularised “the butler did it” had a servant who a) failed to become the butler and then b) failed to do it.
If he’d been butler material, he’d have finished the job.
Me: the writing in Star Trek is so good.
The writing in Star Trek:
The discovery that we had it backwards and that more realistic cave paintings are generally older than more abstract ones is exciting from an anthropological perspective, because it demonstrates that art movements have existed for as long as art has, but I have to imagine there’s some poor biologist out there somewhere going “you mean to tell me that our Paleolithic ancestors had the ability and means to record realistic, highly detailed depictions of contemporary flora and fauna the whole time and simply chose not to?”
Well everyone knows what these things LOOK LIKE, Thag, why would you just COPY them?
Surely the trick is to evoke what they are at SOUL, Thag. If I want to look at a mammoth I can just GO FIND A MAMMOTH. DUH.