there are a lot of people on this website who are incredibly, flamboyantly wrong about things, but theyre also like……clearly in gigantic amounts of pain, and arguing with them on the internet isnt going to change the situation of either their wrongness or their pain
Little Joes are a kind of crossbow that look like someone really needed to be able to challenge someone to a quick draw duel and still keep it a surprise, the coal of suspense itself, that they are actually clowns.
Imagine you pull out your six shooter or your flintlock or whatever you wish to use in the duel, the moment the 13th ring of the bell drowns all sound from the canteen, drawing with all the finesse your many years of gunslinging and funslinging have endowed you with, and this jester, this pierrot, goes and unfurls this out of his coat.
And you’re so distracted by the sheer hilarity of this physical shenanigan that he plants a bolt right between your eyes.
And then you go to Saint Peter’s pearly gates and you have to explain that you got done in by this weaponized joke, name of “Little Joe Crossbow”. He laughs at you, then he tells God, and then God laughs at you.
Even Heaven becomes Hell if you are struck by this weapon, and thus, by default, this is the strongest weapon ever
That’s heckin awesome. Where can I get me a hand bow gun?
Hedges have echoes of Circle-learned magic in their casting, because for the most part if a hedge has training it came from a Circle apostate at one point or another. That, or years of superstition; the two aren’t altogether separate, though there’s more willful falsehood in Circle-taught magic. Which is fair; the Circle isn’t wrong in all its teachings: certain materials do interact in ways that makes it easier to use or direct their energy, and signs and symbols can help with a mage’s focus. But that is more alchemy or discipline than rote magic, more science. And foci are useful for channeling energy, especially massive amounts of it, though the idea that it must be a Circle-made stave and not simple any sort of focus is exactly the sort of narrow-minded expectation the Circle thrives off of. (A Circle-taught mage might laugh at the concept of a magic wand, but foci are foci no matter how oddly shaped, and a hand-carved wand will better fit the grain of a mage’s magic than a standard Circle staff. That’s something the Circle doesn’t like its students to know either.) So you get your hedge witches with their spell components (simple science, that) and their foci (more tool than requirement; any mage can cast with nothing but their will, but having a foci is like having a bicycle––it still takes time and effort, but it is a quicker way to get somewhere than walking).
The Dalish, on the other hand, have a history of magic that descends from the time of the ancient elves, and twisted as the stories may be they still have slivers of that old knowledge, including the (correct) assumption that a mage does not need any external source to cast spells; the Fade is the Fade no matter what tools you have on hand. Most Dalish mages who carry staves do it as a symbol of prestige and social status, though for particularly difficult spells they might serve a dual purpose. It is also why Dalish Firsts and Seconds learn to cast still, and silent. That, and the shem tend to get twitchy around the Dalish as it is; Dalish mages raise hackles like no one else (except perhaps the Qunari, I suppose). Of course, that does not mean a Dalish mage can’t channel their magic through words or gestures or materials, or even carvings and the like––to each their own––but that is seen as a shortcut, and only a mage child who can do magic without giving it away makes it to any position of true power within a clan.
The thing about Those White People Baby Names is the way they so poetically express the tension between individuality and rigid conformity. These parents all want to name their child something unique, because they value the concept of uniqueness, yet simultaneously they abhor it in practice… ergo, 30 different spelling variations on the most normative possible names. This homogeneity-masquerading-as-diversity is inseparable from capitalist consumer culture and in fact is directly analogous to the experience of walking into a grocery store and being asked to “choose” between 50 varieties of toothpaste with the same exact ingredients, 12 brands of laundry detergent, etc.
“I’m not big on heroic speeches, and that’s not going to change today, but I’ve got some things I need to say about what we’re setting out to do.
Over the past few months, I’ve been stabbed, shot, drowned,
frozen,
poisoned, electrocuted, set on fire – both consecutively and concurrently! – and on one occasion transformed into a ground squirrel, which I did not care for at all. And I know a lot of you have been through a lot of the same things.
At the time, I thought of it as the hazards of the job. I’m sure you did, too. But with what we’ve learned today, we now know that a singular force – some people would call it a god – has been behind it all from the very start.
Many would find it disheartening, to know that a god has it in for them, but I look at it like this: if there’s someone behind it, then there’s someone to blame for all the ridiculous bullshit that’s been visited upon me – indeed, upon us all. And if there’s someone to blame, then there’s someone who can catch payback.
…
Is this about justice? Maybe. Is it about freedom? Certainly, if we succeed, a lot of people will be set free. But I think it’s important to have a personal reason going into this, and for me, that reason is an ass that needs kicking.
So come on. Let’s go beat up God.”
Voices that folks have informed me they heard this post in:
Farmer, fireman, and community historian best known for safeguarding the farms of expelled Japanese Americans in Florin, California, during World War II. Robert Emmett Fletcher, Jr. (1911–2013) was born in San Francisco and grew up as an only child on a farm in Brentwood, California, a farming community in Contra Costa County east of San Francisco. He attended the what would become the University of California at Davis, graduating with an agriculture degree in 1933. He managed a peach orchard in Red Bluff after college and subsequently worked as a state and county agricultural inspector, in which capacity he got to know Japanese American farmers throughout the state.
With the attack on Pearl Harbor and the eviction of West Coast Japanese Americans looming, the Tsukamoto family of Florin approached Fletcher with a proposal: would he manage the flame tokay grape farms of two of their friends, paying taxes and mortgages while there were excluded? He could keep any profits. Single at the time, Fletcher agreed, quitting his job, and eventually took over the farms of the Okamoto, Nitta, and Tsukamoto families, a total of ninety acres. In doing so, he bucked popular opinion that largely supported the exclusion of Japanese Americans and opposed their return. He was in fact fired on while in the Tsukamotos’ barn. Despite having no experience with grapes, he worked the farms for the next three years, assisted by his new wife, Teresa Cassieri. As agreed upon, he paid down the mortgages and taxes, but only kept half the profits, banking the rest. When the families returned from their incarceration in the fall of 1945, their farms and homes were intact—the Tsukamotos’ home had even been cleaned by Teresa—and their half of the profits was waiting for them. Fletcher continued to help the families after the war, sometimes buying supplies and equipment for them when local businesses would not sell to them.
After the war, the Fletchers bought their own land in Florin and grew hay and raised cattle. Bob had joined the volunteer Florin Fire Department at its founding in 1942 and served as the volunteer assistant chief for twenty years. This led to a paid position as fire chief, a position he held for twelve years before retiring in 1974. He was also active in starting the local water district and served on that board for some fifty years. He was involved in community history efforts, including the Florin Historical Society and East Contra Contra Costa Historical Society and later donated five acres of land for a history center that became the Fletcher Farm Community Center. With changing attitudes towards the wartime incarceration, he began to receive acclaim for his wartime actions late in his life. He died at the age of 101, his actions celebrated in obituaries in the New York Times and other newspapers.
Site Title 