Superbolie

You FIGHT against Miette?? You freeze her body like a an ice cube? oh! oh! Jail for little man Jail for little man for one thounsand years!!!!

💚steddie || ronance💛 parralels / chaotic 😜 gay || cool 😐 bi

You don’t have to dodge by a foot. You only have to dodge by an inch.

Not all swords are made the same way. You wouldn’t fight with a katana the same way you would fight with a broadsword.

You don’t need to aim for the heart or the head. Get the vein in wrist, and you could incapacitate that hand.

Small cuts matter. If you’re cut up enough, you’re going to start suffering from blood loss, and that’ll put you at a disadvantage.

The blade isn’t the only thing that matters. There isn’t some set of rules in sword fighting where you can only stick the stabby end into the other person. Hit them in the head with the hilt, and they’ll feel it.

by a foot. You only have

to dodge by an inch.

But also, regarding the not-just-the-stabby-end advice: significant sections of the numerous medieval-and-newer swordfighting manuals now available in translation are devoted to the art of clobbering or otherwise messing up people with the hilt of your sword in numerous inventive ways. Many of these are potentially quite lethal, and mean you won’t have to waste time cleaning your blade.

…Additionally, while thinking in this mode, feeling the need to mention a favorite move of my iaido master, back in the day: the one where you spear your (seated-across-from-you) opponent in the gut with the hilt of your katana as you’re drawing it… then finish the draw and chop your opponent’s head off. The move is called “Mutiny” (don’t ask me what it would’ve been in Japanese; if he ever told us, I can’t remember). But I can’t tell you how many times Shihan made us practice that damn move. There was just something about it that appealed to him.

Anyway, generally speaking: if you’re going to write swordfights, you may not have the time, inclination or money to study the sword yourself, but you can at least read the fecking manuals. They’re easily found. Here’s a link to one of the best-known ones, circa 1459.* These will break you quickly of any idea that medieval-period swordfighting was some kind of inelegant boring bash-clash-bash-clash operation.

…Oh, and re the recommendation about not going for the heart or the head: This is definitely on the money. If I was in a swordfight and was in a rush to get it over with, the femoral artery would be my choice. Wait for your opponent to expose it (or get them to, usually by you stepping back out of range so they have to step forward, exposing any opportunities offered by their leg armor while it’s flexing). When they do, chop deep on the inside of the leg above the knee. Then get out of range again so your opponent doesn’t fall over on top of you. Two minutes or so for them to go profoundly shocky: then five to seven minutes for them to bleed out. But regardless of the timings, since you’ll likely have bisected one or more of their adductor muscles on that side, they definitely won’t be getting up to run after you…

thank you so much!! and not that much, really! i tend to draw the older teens more. but the kids have occasionally appeared in some of my tiktoks. also some time ago I got this lovely ko-fi sketch request to draw some byclair and it has some of the kids in it. :)

most of Those White People Baby Names are originally Mormon baby names. they’re chosen (or invented) by women in Utah; they tend to filter out to the rest of the world through things like “mommy blogs” and “baby name books” and “parent forums.” 

you know how every culture has a “hey, welcome to the world, lil baby!” ritual? the mormon version of that is called a baby blessing. the baby’s father, and a handful of other men in the family, go up in front of the congregation during a Sunday service and say a special prayer. it begins by reciting the baby’s full name and then saying “I give you a name and a blessing.”  It’s not something you can avoid doing- if you try, people will think that you’re trying to hide something. baby blessings are mandatory, and everyone in the congregation will watch and judge you.

because of this, your baby’s name gets a good bit more of a spotlight in Mormon culture than it does in secular culture, and that’s saying something. 

 Mormon women start picking out names for their hypothetical future kids in fourth or fifth grade and snipe at each other for picking “weird” or “bad” ones. it’s something that’s supposed to be in the back of your head long before you have a kid. and because people will judge you if you pick a name that’s “too boring” or “too weird”, it is already an intricate dance of finding something that’s “interesting” enough to pass muster but not so “interesting” your kid won’t survive kindergarten.

and that dance becomes even more intricate when Baby Name Drama gets involved. 

see, because you’re supposed to put so much time into your baby’s name, a lot of women get… overinvested, let us say. the perfect name they picked for their baby is THEIR baby’s name and NO ONE ELSE’S. if you so much as dare to BREATHE that you’re naming your baby/pet/favourite laptop the same thing, you have STOLEN their BABY’S NAME.  

so here’s the thing… say you really wanted to name your daughter Amy. You love the name, it’s classic, it’s cute, it’s perfect for your little girl-to-be… and then your sister-in-law gets pregnant and LOUDLY ANNOUNCES that she’s naming her baby Amy! and you know for a fact that she’s the type of person to throw a massive petty shitfit over you STEALING her BABY’S NAME. your family will take sides. her family will take sides. 

if you want to avoid the drama, and you’re dead-set on naming your daughter-to-be Amy… well, then you name your daughter Aimee, or Aimi, or Aimy. It’s not the same name, it’s pronounced the same but it’s not the exact same name, so you can shut up, sis-in-law. 

from what I understand a lot of the Crazy Name Spellings came from this root- “it’s not Kaylee, it’s Kayleigh, I swear I didn’t steal your idea”- and then once it became a trend, people named their kids that to be ~trendy~ just like they did with every other stupid trend. 

Henry VIII had three wives named Catherine, and they spelled it that way but also Katherine, Katharine, Katerine, Katherina, Catherina, and- in the unfortunate young Howard’s case, Katheryn. yes! the modern-looking Y spelling is actually centuries old!