A Clockwork Blog

At minimum about 4.5 thousand people liked this without reblogging it.

Progress.

"Ladies and gentlemen" should be distinguished guests/folks (or something else along those lines.)

"Men, women, and children" should be adults and children.

"Girls and boys/men and women" should be people. Or, if you must, girls, boys, & enbies or men, women, & enben.

"Brothers and sisters" should be siblings.

"Aunts and uncles" should be piblings.

"Nieces and nephews" should be niblings.

"Mothers and fathers" should be parents.

"Sons and daughters" should be children.

"Husbands and wives/boyfriends and girlfriends" should be partners.

"Masculinizing or feminizing HRT" should be T or E, or - if you want to be more specific - androgenizing, micro-androgenizing, estrogenizing, micro-estrogenizing, androestrogenizing, or micro-androestrogenizing.

"Transmascs & transfems" should be trans people (as transandrogynous, transneutral, transnull, transgenderless, transxenine, transoutherine, transaporine, multigender, and mixed gender people also exist.)

"AFAB and AMAB" should be raised/perceived as female or raised/perceived as male (as intersex people can be given reassigned genders after birth and/or socially imposed genders, meaning that they could be raised/treated in contradiction to what they were assigned at birth)

Why is it that, even in the queer community, binary concepts of gender and sex are still pushed?

"Welcomed Guests" sounds really -important- and dramatic instead of "Ladies and Gentlemen" which is rote and played out.

"Friends and Family" is so -warm- and inviting as an opening greeting.

"Cherished Allies" is also great for a similar reason!

Here is a free pdf of xanathars guide to everything

Here is a free pdf to monsters manual

Here is a free pdf to tashas cauldron of everything

Here is a free pdf to dungeon master’s guide

Here is a free pdf to volo’s guide to monsters

Here is a free pdf of mordenkainen’s tomb of foes

This is an alternate version of 5e produced by EN Publishing which officially releases all of their content, every class and feat and spell and stuff, on their tools site for literally anyone to use at any time, rather than dropping cease and desist orders on 3rd party websites.

many people have suggested "gal," which is fair. i did not include that on the list because 1) i made this poll on a whim, and 2) for whatever reason "gal" just does not strike my brain as a real word people use. that is entirely a subjective thing, but to me "gal" is either just girl said with an accent, or it's a term i do not hear anyone use casually outside of like. jokes or in a way which feels distinctly not casual or normal to me. which is funny because "chick" is pretty outdated but sounds more natural to me than "gal."

multiple people in the notes have brought up "broad," which unfortunately i think is probably too old & controversial a term to have legs, but i do REALLY like "just some broad" i think its very fun

one person suggested "lass," which i adore. i think "lass" is maybe the best one i've heard so far even though it is unfortunately not a common term in my neck of the anglosphere. but "just some lass" REALLY does hit !!!

did not expect "lady" to be such a popular choice, but i get it. altho i worry that "lady" doesn't fully capture the vibes of "guy" yknow. like to the same extent of "girl" being potentially infantilizing, its like why are men just guys but women are Ladies (tm). at the same time i DO get it and i DO enjoy it, in an "earnest young boy shouting 'hey lady!!!!'" kinda way

also, to be clear, this question is not "what is the objective true feminine equivalent of "guy."" i'm asking about what term you think evokes the same energy as saying "they are literally just some guy" but without the masculine gendering. this is largely if not entirely a vibes-based question.

Women, trans folks of all varieties and intersex folks are culturally considered "not the default", so using a phrase to denote that they are "just an average person" doesn't... entirely exist in our cultural perception, so whatever comes after "just some" will likely read more dismissive.

"Just some chick/broad" seems to look down on the woman in question because chick/broad have that sort of association already.

"Just some lady" seems too formal to be equivalent to "guy" and usually denotes a "type" of woman, thus doesn't feel as generally applicable either.

The same is true for nonbinary terminology as it is with feminine terminology. Of course there is no term that is going to sound natural and have the exact same vibes as masculine / binary language. If I've learned one thing from talking about nonbinary neologisms, its that there will literally ALWAYS be other connotations.

This gremlin version does not resemble you in any meaningful way, or act like you, or think like you, or convey thoughts and emotions like you. But for this person?

This sign just blithely put Red Dwarf and HHGttG in the same fucking canon as DS9? And also MST3K?

Yoyodyne Propulsion is a defense contractor in the satire novel "V." from 1963.

The Banzai Institute was from The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.

Rick Berman ran the show and it's Berman's Dilithium Supply. Which runs ships.

Cavor was the first Astronaut according to H.G. Well's "The Time Machine"

For negative situations I take a note out of Krod Mandoon's book and yell out "DAGGERS!" in frustration.

Once in a while I'll channel Goldblum and hit a "Jubilation!" or other old-ass word meaning 'happy'.

Leaf-bladed swords are a very popular fantasy style and were real, though unlike modern hand-and-a-half longsword versions, the real things were mostly if not always shortswords.

Here are Celtic bronze swords…

…Ancient Greek Xiphoi…

… and a Roman “Mainz-pattern” gladius…

Saw or downright jagged edges, either full-length or as small sections (often where they serve no discernible purpose) are a frequent part of fantasy blades, especially at the more, er, imaginatively unrestrained end of the market.

Real swords also had saw edges, such as these two 19th century shortswords, but not to make them cool or interesting. They’re weapons if necessary…

…but since they were carried by Pioneer Corps who needed them for cutting branches and other construction-type tasks, their principal use was as brush cutters and saws.

This dussack (cutlass) in the Wallace Collection is also a fighting weapon, like the one beside it…

…but may also have had the secondary function of being a saw.

A couple of internet captions say it’s for “cutting ropes” which makes sense - heavy ropes and hawsers on board a ship were so soaked with tar that they were often more like lengths of wood, and a Hollywood-style slice from the Hero’s rapier (!!) wouldn’t be anything like enough to sever them. However swords like this are extremely rare, which suggests they didn’t work as well as intended for any purpose.

I photographed these in Basel, Switzerland, about 20 years ago. Look at the one on the bottom (I prefer the basket-hilt schiavona in the middle).

A lot of “flamberge” (wavy-edge) swords actually started out with conventional blades which then had the edges ground to shape - the dussack, that Basel broadsword and this Zweihander were all made that way.

The giveaway is the centreline: if it’s straight, the entire blade probably started out straight.

Increased use of water power for bellows, hammers and of course grinders made shaping blades easier than when it had to be done by hand. This flamberge Zweihander, however, was forged that way.

Again, the clue is the centre-line.

Incidentally those Parierhaken (parrying hooks - a secondary crossguard) are among the only real-life examples of another common fantasy feature - hooks and spikes sticking out from the blade.

Here are some rapiers and a couple of daggers showing the same difference between forged to shape and ground to shape. The top and bottom rapiers in the first picture started as straights, and only the middle rapier came from the forge with a flamberge blade.

There’s no doubt about this one either.

The reason - though that was a part of it - wasn’t just to look cool and show off what the owner could afford (any and all extra or unusual work added to the price) but may actually have had a function: a parry would have been juddery and unsettling for someone not used to it, and any advantage is worth having.

However, like the saw-edged dussack, flamberge blades are unusual - which suggests the advantage wasn’t that much of an advantage after all.

Here’s a Circassian kindjal, forged wiggly…

…and an Italian parrying dagger forged straight then ground wiggly…

There were also parrying daggers with another fantasy-blade feature, deep notches and serrations which in fantasy versions often resemble fangs or thorns.

These more practical historical versions are usually called “sword-breakers” but I prefer “sword-catcher”, since a steel blade isn’t that easy to break. Taking the opponent’s blade out of play for just long enough to nail him works fine.

NB - the curvature on the top one in this next image is AFAIK because of the book-page it was copied from, not the blade itself.

The missing tooth on that second dagger, and the crack halfway down this next one’s blade, shows what happens when design features cause weak spots.

So there you go: a quick overview of fantasy sword features in real life.

Here’s a real-life weapon that looks like it belongs in a fantasy story or film - and this doesn’t even have an odd-shaped blade…

Just a very flexible one…

If you want more odd blades, Moghul India is a good place to start…

In fact one incredibly effective sword came right out of sci-fi in the 80s and has become a darling of the HEMA community for it's surprisingly effective design which is not remotely similar to a cruciform arming or long sword.

Granted, the bat'leth has never dominated other weapons in HEMA. But there's a couple of important caveats to that:

There are no Bat'leth masters.

There are Longsword masters.

In almost every video you see of someone using a bat'leth in HEMA it's someone who is used to traditional weapons using a bat'leth against someone used to traditional weapons using a traditional weapon.

Which is to say, someone goofing off a bit against someone who is actually good with their weapon.

And in those situations it's not useless which is kind of a shock.

Weird weapon structures that did work throughout history may not have been adopted because of a myriad number of reasons. The minor increase in efficiency may not have been worth the increased time and expertise required to craft it. People may have found the weapon socially unacceptable for it's style. The material costs may have been too much for the resource availability. Etc etc etc.

What it -actually- comes out as is 31%. SCARY!

They asked 23,000 people across 29 countries.

Halt. Stop. Wait. What?

Not 23,000 men. 23,000 people. So the big scary number is already kinda "Are you sure about that?"

Assuming a relatively even distribution of polling that's 11,500 men being asked the questions and giving responses.

ACROSS 29 COUNTRIES.

Assuming even distribution that's around 369 men per country.

Obviously it won't be a clean and even split, but you've already entirely lost the plot in this way because different countries have different cultural expectations that don't always align.

They explicitly list the US, UK, Australia, Brazil, and India as 5 of the 29 countries. Doing a quick check of the women's empowerment index world map... https://ourworldindata.org/women-rights That's Australia at 0.91, US at 0.87, UK at 0.86, Brazil at 0.81, and India at 0.66.

That's a MASSIVE swing to be presented as scientifically neutral and irrelevant. It also leaves the other 24 countries unnamed and their social markers utterly unexpressed. (Here's a hint, unless they're in the EU or South America it's likely their number is below 0.8)

They do a better job, overall, of hiding the refraction of the lens on your face by being curved rather than hard lines that follow the refraction.

I'm sorry for doing this, but also I'm not. Andrew Wilson is the one who should be sorry.

If you divided his paycheck by the number of employees, he's being paid $2,137.93 per employee per year.

Only he's not working with those employees. Or helping them. Or doing anything that the department heads right under him who are all paid significantly less than he is could do as a council.

He, and all other CEOs, exists as a figurehead for the shareholders to enact their will through a single mouthpiece.

source

[…] Jews are not a religion…

[then explains you are totally, 100% Jewish even if you don’t believe in Gd.]

the Jewish “religion’s” definition of what a Jew is, is that it’s a people. there simply is no such thing as a Jewish religion, it’s a people, and it has always been a people. and whatever the heck its definition is, it’s older than the word “nation,” it’s older than the word “religion,” which come into use in early Christianity, using Latin words.

all of this discourse, is just a discourse of people who think they get to sit in judgment of whether another people lives or dies, or whether its identity is real or not real.

the very idea is utterly bigoted, like unbelievably, like ridiculously. and we should never allow for it, and never accept it. and if they insist on doing it, we walk the hell away, and f**k ‘em.

Where’s the lie?

Check the entire comic to also see what the female armor looks like (hint: it’s worthy of our positive examples).

Women's armor in games isn't just about being skimpy. It's about the woman being presented as a sexualized object. Smooth, clear, skin, relatively low muscle volume, curves, etc.

The 8 pack ripped male hero wearing a loincloth is a men's Power Fantasy. All the Boris Vallejo and Conan the Barbarian stuff is about big oiled up muscles and being powerful. Wearing very little doesn't make those characters into sex objects.