I will express my personal opinion about the design of the Sisters of Battle armor. The problem is, it’s not just steel plate armor, it’s power armor. Under the layer of armor (even if it’s thin) is a frame (on which the armor plates are attached) and artificial muscles that set the armor in motion and give the wearer superhuman strength. In other words, it should look like a Crysis nano-suit with armor on top of it. Therefore, the power armor of Sisters of Battle cannot be thin and tight to the body like a latex dominatrix suit with high heels. But in most cases, it is portrayed as such, because it’s canon of GW.
If we talk about chest armor - it’s all about preferences. Personally, it seems to me that the option with a single chest protrusion is more acceptable than the division into chest # 1 and chest # 2. More space for frame and artificial muscles.
In conclusion, I will say this - if I want to look at imperial women in tight clothes, then I will enjoy looking at assassins from the Officio Assassinorum. Or maybe Repentia sisters, they generally fight half-naked. Let power armor be power armor. One that gives the feeling that with one blow of a steel sabaton they can send you flying for five meters or tear off your head with a sharp movement of one hand. — My DeviantArt My Boosty
This is fascinating and I love the part with the mushrooms and the worms if this really works but my favorite part is that we spent decades like “oh no….oil is soaking into fur and feathers….if only we had something that could soak up all this oil”
for chinese new year they get all these famous actors and comedians together and they do a lil show and one of the comedians was like “i was in a hotel in america once and there was a mouse in my room so i called reception except i forgot the english word for mouse so instead i said ‘you know tom and jerry? jerry is here’
jerry is here
my chinese teacher once shared this story in class about someone who went to the grocery to buy chicken, but they forgot the english word for it, so they grabbed an egg, went to the nearest sales lady and said “where’s the mother”
When I was a teenager, we went to Italy for the summer holidays. We are German, neither of us speaks more than a few words of Italian. That didn’t keep my family from always referring to me when they wanted something translated because “You’re so good with languages and you took Latin”. (I told them a hundred times I couldn’t order ice cream in Latin, they ignored that.) Anyway, my dad really loved a certain cheese there, made from sheep’s milk. He knew the Italian word for ‘cheese’ – formaggio – and he knew how to say ‘please’. And he had already spotted a little shop that sold the cheese. He asked me what ‘sheep’ was in Italian, and of course, I had no idea. So he just shrugged and said “I’ll manage” and went into the shop. 5 mins later, he comes out with a little bag, obviously very pleased with himself. How did he manage it? He had gone in and said “'Baaaah’ formaggio, prego.”
I was done for the day.
This makes me feel better about every conversation I had in both Rome and Ghent.
I once lost my husband in the ruins of a French castle on a mountain, and trotted around looking for him in increasing desperation. “Have you seen my husband?” I asked some French people, having forgotten all descriptive words. “He is small, and English. His hair is the color of bread.”
I did not find my husband in this way.
In rural France it is apparently Known that one brings one’s own shopping bags to the grocery store. I was a visitor and had not been briefed and had no shopping bag. I saw that other people were able to conduct negotiations to purchase shopping bags, but I could not remember the word for “bag.”
“Can I have a box that is not a box,” I said.
The checkout lady looked extremely tired and said, “Un sac?” (A sack?)
Of course. A fucking sack. And so I did get a sack.
I once was at a German-American Church youth camp for two weeks and predictably, we spoke a whole lot of English.
When I phoned my mom during week two I tried to tell her that it was a bit cold in the sleeping bag at night. I stumbled around the word in German because for the love of god, I could remember the Germwn word for sleeping bag.
“Yeah so, it’s like a bag you sleep in at night?”
“And my mother must probably have thought I lost my mind. She just sighed and was like ‘So, a Schlafsack, yes?”
Which is LITERALLY Sleeping sac … The German word is a basically a one on one translation of the English word and I just… I failed it. At my mother tongue. BIG
My former boss is Italian and she ended up working in a lab where the common language was English. She once saw an insect running through the lab and she went to tell her colleagues. She remembered it was the name of a famous English band so she barged in the office yelling there was a rolling stone in the lab…
I’m Spanish and have been living in the UK for a while now. I recently changed jobs and moved to a new office which is lost somewhere in the Midlands’ countryside. It’s a pretty quaint location, surrounded by forest on pretty much all sides, and with nice grounds… full of pheasants. I was pretty shocked when I drove in and saw a fucking pheasant strolling across the road. Calm as you please.
That afternoon I met up with some friends and was talking about the new job, and the new office, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the English word for pheasants. So I basically ended up bragging to my friends about “the very fancy chickens” we had outside the office.
Best thing is, everyone understood what I meant.
I love those stories so much…
Picture a Jewish American girl whose grasp of the Hebrew language comes from 10+ years of immersion in Biblical and liturgical Hebrew, not the modern language. Some words are identical, while others have significantly evolved.
She gets to Israel and is riding a bus for the very first time.
American: כמה ממון זה? (”How much money?” but in rather archaic language)
Bus Driver: שתי זוזים. (”Two zuzim” – a currency that’s been out of circulation for millenia)
that’s hilarious
I am officially screamlaughing at my desk from that last one OH MY
Does everyone know the prime minister who promised to fuck the country?
So in Biblical Hebrew the word for penis and weapon are the same. There is a verb meaning to arm, which modern Hebrew semanticly drifted into “fuck”: i.e. give someone your dick.
The minister was making a speech while a candidate, bemoning the state of the world. “The Soviet Union is fucking Egypt. Germany is fucking Syria. The Americans are fucking everyone. But who is fucking us? When I am prime minister, I will ensure we are fucked!”
What the hell Biblical Hebrew.
Just guessing: The path from something like “give someone a blade” to “give someone a blade, if you know what I mean ;)” is probably not that difficult or unlikely.
^Given that the Latin word for sheath (like, for a sword) is literally “vagina”, I can verify that this metaphor is a time-honored one.
Oh yeah and one time my Latin professor was at this conference in Greece and his flight was canceled, so he needed to extend his hotel stay by one more night.
Except he doesn’t speak a lick of modern Greek, and the receptionist couldn’t speak English. Or French. Or German. Or Italian. (He tried all of them.)
Finally, in a fit of inspiration, he went upstairs and got his copy of Medea in the original Greek (you know, the stuff separated from modern Greek by two and a half thousand years). He found the passage where Medea begs Jason to let her stay for one more day, went downstairs, and read it to the receptionist.
She laughed her head off, but she gave him the extra night.
Reblogged just for Medea
The way I have to find anything on this website. Hair the color of bread, me, 2016.
Just had a dream that a novel exists which is written from the POV of an old man dying in the 1920s in the form of diary entries and bit by bit it’s revealed it’s actually a closeted trans woman who was out during her youth and forced to recloset and now I desperately want to read it
The narrator was like, referring to a girl called Sarah in all the writings, and at the start it’s super unclear who Sarah actually is and it’s speculated by the people around that she may be a lover from the narrator’s youth, until it’s noted that Sarah had heterochromia and that’s the defining trait of the narrator
Oh also Sarah did actually have a lover. They were T4T and lived in a little cottage by a lake until he was drowned in it and Sarah couldn’t make ends meet anymore and had to recloset
Okay a bunch of people have told me to write the thing now so I’ve decided if this post gets 30K I’m turning the thing into an epistolary novel.
Larian studios really said “We are going to create a Baldur’s Gate that is SO queer”
Everyone is romanceable, regardless of gender. You can have he/him, she/her, or they/them pronouns and none of those are tied to what body type or genitals you have (both of which you can pick, independently of each other). The daughter of a literal god who teams up with you is like “me and my girlfriend need to go kiss for 100 years now brb”. Every other npc in Baldur’s Gate will casually mention their same sex partners. The ringleader of the planes hopping circus is heavily implied to be a trans woman. One person who can join you gets captured multiple times and travels the world, all to save a man he loves.
It’s everywhere and it just…is. There’s no stopping the plot for the game devs to pat themselves on the back for including a “diverse” character. There’s no dialogue option to have a character spoon feed you the idea that they could be interested in the same gender. There’s no casual homophobia. No constant casual sexual harassment towards your character just because you chose the “female” option.
And it’s so varied. One queer romance is about doing everything to save the other and the reunion is a beautiful kiss. Another is being completely shot down by someone they risked so much for. A man in the streets will say “Get a load of my husband. Such a piece of work. And I’m the one who fell for the blockhead”. It doesn’t feel cheap if a queer character dies or is a terrible person or if their romance story falls apart completely, because there are just so many. Honestly, that goes for a lot of things in the game, diversity-wise. It’s just really nice.
I get asked now and then why someone should join the IWW as opposed to any of the respected business unions available.
Personally, my industry is not unionised, so there’s that reason. This brief comic speaks to the real, deeper reason.
Those other unions won’t fight for our freedom from wage slavery.
They will try to improve the conditions of our shared enslavement and I appreciate that, but as I’ve said before, I want The Big Win.
— transcript —
Why am I in the Industrial Workers of the World? [a little black cat sits in a field of red, asking the audience this question]
For the logo. Let me explain… [the little black cat is looking up at the insignia of the IWW, a globe in a circle beneath the letters I W W with three stars among them]
The better-known business unions in the states all have logos of varying appeal… [a collection of business union logos, including the Teamsters, the UAW, the SEIU, the AFLC-CIO and the UFCW]
But for all their history and iconography, none of them have what this logo has… Those three stars. [little black cat looks up at the IWW insignia, with the 3 stars glowing]
Really, for me, it’s the last of the three stars that matters the most. It represents the third and final aspect of our work… [The star is glowing in the center of the frame]
Emancipation [chains being broken]
Emancipation of the working class in struggle and at war, and the Earth that feeds and holds us all. [chains encompassing the planet Earth being broken]
Both the IWW and the business unions fight for higher wages and better benefits, which are both critically important, but… [a big, buff black cat flexes imposingly next to a big, buff dog. They are intimidating a blue duck who is sitting behind a desk labeled ‘boss’ and sweating nervously]
We seek to abolish the wage system, to realize Industrial Democracy and live in harmony with the Earth. We want The Big Win, not concessions. Learn more and join at iww.org! [the little black cat is saying all this while the third star glows nearby]
Visible mending is a decorative way to fix up an item. Instead of trying to make your mend as invisible as possible, the idea is to make it part of the garment’s design.
Visual mending is not a single technique: it’s more of a mindset. If you’ve got an item you love, it deserves to be mended, and if you’re going to put that love into stitches, why not show them off?
That being said, there are some specific techniques that are popular with visible menders. Let’s take a look!
Sashiko:
Sashiko is a type of traditional Japanese embroidery that is used to both decorate and reinforce fabric. In visible mending, sashiko is often used to cover up holes with patches or to reinforce thinning fabric. This technique uses a variation on the running stitch.
Regular embroideryis also a popular technique to accentuate your mends. Check out my embroidery 101 post to learn how to get started. You can embroider patches, or use embroidery to hide or accentuateany stitches you’ve made to fix holes. Embroidery’s also a great way to cover up stains.
There are many ways to add patches to a garment. My tutorial on patches is a good place to start if you want to make custom-shaped patches to sew on top of your fabric. You can also sew your patch on the inside of your garment and have it peek out from beneath the hole you’re trying to fix. Fun ideas for this are lace or superheroes.
Darning is a technique used to repair holes in fabric by using running stitches to weave extra fabric over the hole as to fill it up again. While traditionally darning is done in an invisible way by using the same colour of thread as your fabric, you can also use contrasting colours to accentuate your fix. Check out this written tutorial on darning by TheSpruceCrafts.
Visible mending is a creative way to fix up your clothes and give them some personality at the same time.
You should be proud of the fact that you took the time and learned the necessary skills needed to mend your clothes! Show off what you did!
A fun side effect of wearing these obvious mends is that people will notice them. They’ll remember your fixes the next time they’re faced with a hole in their wardrobe, and it will make them more likely to try it for themselves.
These are just a few ways to visibly mend your garments. Want more inspiration? Check out Pinterestor r/Visiblemending on Reddit.
imagine hiring an assassin and they talk to you in a customer service voice
“Hello, how can I help you today? Wonderful, can I get a first and last name? And how would I spell that? Awesome. And would you happen to have an address for this individual? And place of work? Fantastic.
Now, I’m going to give you a number, and I’m going to ask that you send in a photo of your target alongside any additional information you may have- family members, security, combat training, medical conditions, just anything you can think of that might be helpful.
Wonderful, you are all good. All we need now is a piece of government-issued ID, for insurance purposes, and a location for payment pickup. We accept cash, gold, processed uranium, and etransfer.
I’m sorry, we don’t take american express.
Good, okay, so it looks like we are all set- when the job is complete, you will be notified VIA discreet codeword that a stranger will whisper to you on a crowded street.
We do not issue receipts, but if you’d like, I can arrange for a specific breed of tropical flower to be sent to your home address. Our associates will be able to validate it should the need arises.
And is that everything you were looking for today? Great! Thank you for coming to us. Have a nice day!”
Alternatively,
“I’m sorry sir, but I’m afraid the Pope is a high-status target that is beyond our area of service.
Yes, I- no, I’m sorry, I’m not able to do that for you.
Okay. Okay. Yes, I understand.
Sir, if you’re going to use that sort of language, you should know that our HR department does operate in a hands-on capacity.
Wonderful. You take care.”
They create a perfectly normal call cemter staffed by decidedly amoral college students and paying them at least 4x minimum wage.
hiring manager: you’re not concerned about the ah, services we offer?
a college student who has eaten ramen twice a day for the past year: for $25/hour i’ll pull the trigger myself
Look, the difference between Assassins and Customer Service is that Assassins are paid a lot of money to kill people and Customer Service isn’t being paid nearly enough not to.
Okay but seriously folks - as often as I joke about this movie stirs my loins and as weirdly popular as this text post got a while back, I wanna rap with you all about why the George of the Jungle remake is a pretty important piece of cinema.
It’s literally the only movie I can think of that is based completely around the unheard of “FEMALE gaze.” Granted, while I’m a huge movie buff I’ve not seen every movie ever made. But even so, even if there’s another example of the “female gaze” in cinema that has escaped me it’s still damn impressive that a kids movie from 1997 based on a Jay Ward cartoon from the 60’s managed to turn gender representation in media on it’s fucking ass!
First things first, let’s look at our leading lady and love interest - Ursula, played by Leslie Mann.
Let me just say that while Leslie Mann is adorable and a talented actress, she does look a little less conventional and a little more plain compared to the bombshells that Hollywood likes to churn out. Leslie, in comparison, looks much more like a real women you’d meet on the street. She dresses pretty conservatively and plain throughout the film ; Wearing outfits that are more functional than fashionable for trekking through the jungle, pulling her hair back and so forth. Not that if she was dolled up and more scantily clad it would give her character any less integrity, but can we appreciate how RARE that is in the male dominated industry of film? Just think about all the roads a film about a woman in the jungle COULD have taken but didn’t - no scenes with her clothes strategically ripped or anything! You can say this is a kids movie, intended for children and that’s why the sensuality of the female lead is so downplayed but there are PLENTY of kids movies that handle women in a very objectifying and sexualized manner despite the target audience is pre-pubescent. Like, a disgusting amount. So I don’t think “it’s a kids movie” is why the film doesn’t take ANY, let alone EVERY, opportunity to showcase the main female character’s sex appeal…
…especially considering the sex appeal of the film rests squarely on the well defined shoulders of our male lead, George of the Jungle played by Brendan Fraser in the best god damn shape of his life!
*Homer Simpson Drooling Noises*
Whenever members of the reddit community try to compare the sexualization of women in fiction to the design of characters such as Batman and Superman, I always want to just sit them down and show them this movie. Because THIS is what the female sexual fantasy looks like, and Batman and Superman are male power-fantasies. Look at him - his big blue eyes, his soft hair, his lean, chiseled physique built for dexterity rather than power. He’s wild and free, but gentle. It’s like he fell right out of that steamy romance novel your mom tried to hide from you growing up.
Hell, the whole plot seems to be designed around how damn hot he is! First, for the majority of the film, he wears only a small strip of cloth to cover the dick balls and ass. Everything else is FAIR GAME to drool over for 40 minutes. Then, after he meets Ursula she takes him with her to San Francisco just so we can enjoy him in a well-tailored suit (as seen in the gif set), running around in an open and billowy shirt along side horses while Ursula and all of her friends literally crowd around and make sexual comments about him, and my personal favorite, ditch the loincloth entirely and have him walk around naked while covering his man-bits with various objects while one of Ursula’s very lucky friends oogles him and makes a joke along the lines of “So THAT’S why they call him the ‘KING of the Jungle’…”
And yes, it’s also a very cute and funny little movie. Out of all the movies based on Jay Ward cartoons, it was the most faithful to the fast-paced humor and wit of the original source material (yes even the new Peabody and Sherman movie which honestly I thought was too cutesy-poo.) But that’s not why this movie is popular with the gay community or why we all became women in 1997. It’s just really cool that there’s a film out there where the sensuality of the female form takes a back seat for the oiled up, chiseled, physique of Brendan Fraser (in his prime that is)
One thing to add: in the scene mentioned above where the ladies are watching him in the billowy shirt running with the horses, it pans back to about 50 feet away to two guys in suits at this party looking at the women and one of the guys says, “Man, what is it with women and horses?” So not only does this movie highlight the female gaze, but it blatantly points out that western male sensibilities don’t have a clue what actually appeals to women.
ALSO
he’s non threatening
as mentioned above, he looks built for dexterity rather than power, but he’s still a 6+ foot tall extremely muscular man, and not once are you worried for Ursula when he’s with her
ALSO
let’s take a look at his rival - Lyle is a cravat-wearing trust-fund kid (who, interestingly, is into Ursula’s fortune more than her, which kind of makes this a gender-swapped gold-digger thing too). He’s blonde and Ursula’s mom LOVES him. He’s more uncomfortable and less prepared to cope with the jungle than Ursula is, in his pastels and shiny shoes.
But he talks over Ursula, insists he knows what’s best for her, ignores her autonomy. In spite of the fact that Lyle Van de Groot is a rich, educated, social climber who cares deeply about his clothing and appearances he is a point-by-point checklist of unhealthy masculinity in a way that beefy, inarticulate, uneducated George could never be. Ursula is off on her own doing her own thing and Lyle hires two FUCKING POACHERS to track her down in the middle of the jungle while she’s working (or on vacation? It’s never made clear because he interrupts her before she can explain why she went on the expedition). Lyle ignores the local guides, claiming his experience with a bridge in Maui means the bridge they’re on is safe - which leads to a significant injury for one of the guides. He then tells Ursula the guides are conspiring against him, trying to make himself and his poachers seem safe and the Africans who make up the rest of their party seem dangerous.
Check that body language! A post above points out that we’re never worried about Ursula when she’s around George. That’s because Lyle talks to her like this. Look at his aggressive lean! Look at him literally looking down at her! She’s tilted away from him in the least threatening position possible and he’s so aggressive about whatever point he’s making. When he finds her after he pushed her toward a damned lion he kisses her and she pushes him away. Want a textbook example of gaslighting? Here you go: she says “don’t get all smoochy with me! I remember what happened with that lion” and he responds “What are you talking about? I was fighting that lion the whole time - you were just so terrified you don’t remember.” Then he shoots George! And then he kidnaps Ursula and attempts to force her into marriage!
Now look at how George and Ursula interact (slightly NSFW):
Even though he’s a big strong dude and he thinks he’s doing what’s okay he lets her set the tone for their interactions. He accepts that he’s out of his wheelhouse and even if he doesn’t understand it he does what she says is culturally appropriate. He learns from her! He listens to her! Compare Lyle leaning into Ursula above to this image of George and Ursula talking:
He’s listening to her, all of his attention is on on her, but he’s totally nonthreatening. His torso is turned toward her but he’s not invading her space, his hands are clasped, he’s smiling, and she’s the one leaning into him. Look at that smile she has, look how happy she is to be listened to. Her posture in both images is vulnerable but in this one with George she’s vulnerable because she has chosen to share with him instead of because she feels threatened.
When George rescues Ursula from Lyle at the end of the film it isn’t a typical damsel situation - George doesn’t have a knock-down-drag-out fight with Lyle, he swings into a tree and offers Ursula a hand so she can reach up and save herself (and before he does it he acknowledges how much it’s going to hurt and *whimpers* and looks human and scared). And you’ve gotta remember that George rescues everybody. It’s not just Ursula - he also rescues a parasailer and gets shot rescuing Shep and Ape. He just likes helping, dammit!
AND this movie offers a perfect counter to the “nice guy” thing - Ursula starts engaged to a jerk who her mom thinks is a “nice guy” the moves on to actual nice man George who isn’t *just* nice - he’s also patient, listens to her, has his own skills and talents, is okay with being goofy, has his own social circle and isn’t totally dependent on Ursula, and looks amazing. Ursula doesn’t go with George just because he’s a *nice* guy who rescued her from an asshole, Ursula goes with George because he’s an interesting, fun person who is supportive of her different way of being an interesting, fun person. AND he’s emotionally available. Google image search George of the jungle and see how many smiles you can find, see how many open looks of confusion there are, see how much sadness you can see in George’s face. Now look for images of Lyle. His two expressions are a smirk and cartoonish fear. I know this is a cartoonish kid’s movie, but it is SO powerful that the hero shares his emotions while the villain masks every emotion but fear. Lyle doesn’t want to open up, he doesn’t want to be vulnerable, he wants CONTROL. George wants to learn, to protect people he cares about, to explore new places, to laugh when he’s happy and to be sad when he’s sad, and that he does that while being a broad-shouldered, physically powerful dude who is NOT totally self-involved is just…
Like, look, I didn’t sign on to tumblr dot com for George of the Jungle discourse, but I’m just now realizing that this movie may have done the most for destroying my conception of stoic masculinity and gender roles as a child.
Like
Damn.
2nd reblog because this is even better.
George of the Jungle discourse is definitely what I signed up to this hellsite for me thinks
It’s been seven years and this post is still one of my all time favorites.
Wish I could do a lit unit on this movie…
It’s been seven years
and this post is still one of
my all time favorites.
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
ALT
ALT
