This isn’t very hard when you know some of the most genius strategies in human history were incredibly stupid, circumstantial events that led to victory by sheer luck of that strategy working.
Case in point: Tsun Zu’s rival defended a city with 10 men against Tsun’s army of hundreds by disarming his own soldiers, dressing them in plain clothes, INVITING Tsun’s army to come in, and it only worked because Tsun knew the guy was an ambush master and thought “if we attack the city he’s inviting us into, we will die.” and left without even trying ON THE BASIS OF HIS RIVAL’S REPUTATION AND NOTHING MORE
Another example: Tsun Zu, on being told his soliders were out of arrows during a battle against a city across a river from them, had his men craft scarecrows, put them on a boat, send it out on a line, leave it there for half an hour, then pull it back in and used the arrows the enemy had fired at the boat to restock their own ammunition. It only worked because it was foggy and the enemy couldn’t tell the difference between the scarecrows and actual soldiers.
Stupid things like that work INCREDIBLY WELL if the circumstances favor them, so you really don’t need to come up with some multi-layered, Shikamaru-esque strategy. You just need to come up with a strategy you like for the characters involved, then write the circumstances (weather, environment, individuals involved) to favor it enough that it works.
unlike real life when writing you can always work backwards, too, which negates the need for genius (tho, like, normal smart helps)
so you can start with a thing like “nobody would expect an attack from underneath the castle!” and then design your castle with :
feature that allows this (catacombs from before the ancient cathedral was renovated into a full blown castle)
reason nobody would expect it (the renovators sealed off the catacombs, current occupants don’t know the catacombs exist)
genius reason Our Great Hero thinks to make use of this (his common sense but deeply insightful assessment causes him to question where the rain water drains from the multiple terraced courtyards and grand balconies (the renovators did leave a drainage system that exits via the catacombs, which works so well that the current occupants never had reason to wonder about water drainage)
one or two additional things that help make it genius (Our Hero knows the castle used to belong to the original cathedral people, some of whom still live nearby and are bitter about losing the castle to the current occupants)
optional: additional improvised stroke of genius during the event (Our Hero finds current occupants legendary un-beatable foe [previous occupant’s great grandfather] interred in catacombs and leads the invasion of the castle dressed as said legendary foe in his very recognizable armor that has clearly been sitting in a crypt for a hundred years.)
Note: the thing that makes this genius is that it succeeds, btw, so you write that everybody falls for it. If everybody saw through it right away, nobody would think it was genius, which is sort of how it works in real life too, there’s a kind of survivor bias in the way we see strategic genius
ok follow up poll because i wasn’t clear enough it seems. please note that seeing fandom content is not the same as being an active participant in fandom
to what level have you participated in a fandom without reading/watching the source material?
It used to be a lot harder to get ahold of media in the 90s and even the 00s than it is today. Today we’ve got an almost incomprehensible amount of media on media on media, but in the 90s? It was video rental hell! You relied on reruns or fandoms dedicated enough to make & distribute VCR copies in their free time. It was expensive and time-consuming so it wasn’t the norm.
The norm used to be participating without having seen all of the media because all of the media was difficult to come by, and that’s why fandoms like Due South and Stargate where popular at the time: you could easily read fic/participate by having seen just one episode or even just having read a synopsis. The same goes for procedural dramas.
It was accessible, in a way. It does make me sad that the bar for fandom entry these days seems oddly high for something that’s supposed to be for & about having fun.
Another worldbuilding application of the “two layer rule”: To create a culture while avoiding The Planet Of Hats (the thing where a people only have one thing going for them, like “everyone wears a silly hat”): You only need two hats.
Try picking two random flat culture ideas and combine them, see how they interact. Let’s say taking the Proud Warrior Race - people who are all about glory in battle and feats of strength, whose songs and ballads are about heroes in battle and whose education consists of combat and military tactics. Throw in another element: Living in diaspora. Suddenly you’ve got a whole more interesting dynamic going on - how did a people like this end up cast out of their old native land? How do they feel about it? How do they make a living now - as guards, mercenaries? How do their non-combatants live? Were they always warrior people, or did they become fighters out of necessity to fend for themselves in the lands of strangers? How do the peoples of these lands regard them?
Like I’m not shitting, it’s literally that easy. You can avoid writing an one-dimensional culture just by adding another equally flat element, and the third dimension appears on its own just like that. And while one of the features can be location/climate, you can also combine two of those with each other.
Let’s take a pretty standard Fantasy Race Biome: The forest people. Their job is the forest. They live there, hunt there, forage there, they have an obnoxious amount of sayings that somehow refer to trees, woods, or forests. Very high chance of being elves. And then a second common stock Fantasy Biome People: The Grim Cold North. Everything is bleak and grim up there. People are hardy and harsh, “frostbite because the climate hates you” and “being stabbed because your neighbour hates you” are the most common causes of death. People are either completely humourless or have a horrifyingly dark, morbid sense of humour. They might find it funny that you genuinely can’t tell which one.
Now combine them: Grim Cold Bleak Forest People. The summer lasts about 15 minutes and these people know every single type of berry, mushroom and herb that’s edible in any fathomable way. You’re not sure if they’re joking about occasionally resorting to eating tree bark to survive the long dark winter. Not a warrior people, but very skilled in disappearing into the forest and picking off would-be invaders one by one. Once they fuck off into the woods you won’t find them unless they want to be found.
My little sister’s new boyfriend got a tattoo for her about a month ago and he wanted matching tattoos so he decided to get uh. The tattoo on her ankle of her ex boyfriend’s name that she hasn’t gotten covered up yet
She broke up with him but I also just got the same tattoo
OK my dad also got it
DYLAN!
It took five months but we finally convinced my stepmom to also get it
“LOL. You think your vote matters? ROFL and LOL.” Yes, I am aware my vote carries less and less relative power the more people I’m voting with, but unlike your glorious violent revolution, it actually exists.
The Glorious Violent Revolution fantasy is the Rapture for leftists.
as my own direct immediate list of game grievances i hate that stardew valley expects you to side against a wheelchair user who is upset that he was moved without his consent. i hate that the mass effect trilogy gives you visible scarring as a direct result of choosing mean dialogue and heals it if you’re nice. i hate that the vampire the masquerade ttrpg has a monstrous player class that can appear as horrible vampiric monsters or as visibly disabled people and both of these appearances are mechanically the same. i hate that dark souls games have a difficulty level implemented in a way that cannot be adjusted for disability. i hate that i can play as a mermaid or a werewolf or a horse in the sims games but can’t use a wheelchair. i hate that the ace attorney games have so much flashing and not all of the games can disable it. i hate that disability is constantly something that happens to teach a lesson, i hate that disability is something that happens as a punishment, i hate that disability is either compensated perfectly with no drawbacks or something that is endlessly sought to be cured. i hate that no character customization will ever include the mobility aids i use, that the player avatars that represent me will never look like me. i am so goddamn annoyed and so goddamn tired.
it’s been said in smarter ways by smarter people. but keeping ‘difficult’ books and topics away from children is incredibly unfair to those kids who Cant escape 'difficult’ life circumstances.
why does little timmy, age 7, white, get to avoid knowledge of racism while little timmy, age 7, black, is expected to navigate a racist world while his peers -unknowingly or otherwise- contribute to his trauma about that heinous status quo?
why does little timmy, age 7, csa victim, have to live in a world where he doesn’t know that what his parents are doing to him is wrong because he’s never heard the language necessary to communicate what’s happening nor does he know it’s abnormal?
why do kids who have good lives get to have childhoods completely free of empathy or the ability to reach out to kids who are having a rough time? why do the kids who are having a rough time need to remain silent and uneducated about their own pain?
who is helped by a lack of information besides those adults who are already in power?
I often think about that post that was a fake dating profile for a cat that was all about chickens, like wanting someone with posable thumbs for opening chickens.
This is one my favourite things the internet has ever made.
!!!!!!
This remains one of the great art objects of modern times and nobody will convince me otherwise.
THIS. Also, to prevent people from misquoting this poem in the future, here’s the whole thing, written by German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemoller in 1946:
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
What’s more Niemoller was a national conservative. He originally supported the Nazi Party, hoping it would bring about a national revival (as did many Germans), until Hitler proclaimed the supremacy of state over religion and Protestant churches, at which point he allied with other pastors and Lutheran organizations against Nazification. He was also anti-Semitic, making many pejorative remarks about Jews, such as them deserving persecution for crucifying Jesus and believing they should be kept out of any positions in the government. He was imprisoned from 1937-1945, during which time he reconsidered his earlier views.
This poem is a warning, not because Niemoller saw it happen. It is because this is his story. This poem is him saying “don’t be how I was, because for however much you support a regime and the hate it doles onto the people marginalized and labelled for extermination, they will one day come for you, like they came for me”. No one is immune from the prejudice of the state - there is never only one scapegoat.
The leopards will eat your face too
You’re allowed to own your shittiness and be better.
I’ve slowly been chipping away at drawing scenes from that imaginary Muppet retelling of the Princess Bride, figured it was about time to share what I’ve drawn on Tumblr!
Whenever I say “sorry guys” or whatever I am exclusively apologising to guys I am not using it as a gender neutral term this is because I hate women HASHTAG MISOGYNY
I was going through my old posts and just found this. I cannot believe I use to be this person and I would like to apologise to all women everywhere for this hate. I’m sorry women. HASHTAG FEMINISM
boy this was less than a month ago
The producers were on a tight schedule so they had to rush my character arc
So obviously, the most obnoxious and useless sort of science fiction criticism is provided by angry dumb guys screaming into microphones about things being “woke”; but I also get annoyed by the people who insist on applying a sort of “roman-á-clé” reading, where everything in the story is merely a disguised stand-in for some real-world human political issue. Like, yes, obviously, sf is used for social and political commentary a lot of the time; but it’s *also* used to just kind of play around on the frontiers of possibility. And it frankly seems kind of demeaning to the genre to pretend that its alien, its bizarre, and its inhuman features are necessarily just stand-ins for some mundane, real-world concept. Like, yes, clearly The War of the Worlds is about colonialism; but it’s also about alien life; it’s also about evolution and ecology; and it’s also about “Wouldn’t it be fucked up if THIS happened!?” And all of these are irreducible from the genre. Is your robot autistic? Well, maybe you can read it that way. Maybe it’s a sincere attempt to imagine a nonhuman mechanical intelligence. Maybe it’s both. Sometimes, you write a story strictly for “Wouldn’t it be fucked-up if…” purposes and it ends up shedding a whole new light on the human condition; in fact, I think that, if you’re taking your concept seriously, it should do this by default. But you have to take the bizarre on its own terms or you might as well be reading realism.
Did you have a kid in your neighborhood who always hid so good, nobody could find him? We did. After a while we would give up on him and go off, leaving him to rot wherever he was. Sooner or later he would show up, all mad because we didn’t keep looking for him. And we would get mad back because he wasn’t playing the game the way it was supposed to be played.
There’s hiding and there’s finding, we’d say. And he’d say it was hide-and-seek, not hide-and-give-UP, and we’d all yell about who made the rules and who cared about who, anyway, and how we wouldn’t play with him anymore if he didn’t get it straight and who needed him anyhow, and things like that. Hide-and-seek-and-yell. No matter what, though, the next time he would hide too good again. He’s probably still hidden somewhere, for all I know.
As I write this, the neighborhood game goes on, and there is a kid under a pile of leaves in the yard just under my window. He has been there a long time now, and everybody else is found and they are about to give up on him over at the base. I considered going out to the base and telling them where he is hiding. And I thought about setting the leaves on fire to drive him out. Finally, I just yelled, “GET FOUND, KID!” out the window. And scared him so bad he probably wet his pants and started crying and ran home to tell his mother. It’s real hard to know how to be helpful sometimes.
A man I know found out last year he had terminal cancer. He was a doctor. And knew about dying, and he didn’t want to make his family and friends suffer through that with him. So he kept his secret. And died. Everybody said how brave he was to bear his suffering in silence and not tell everybody, and so on and so forth. But privately his family and friends said how angry they were that he didn’t need them, didn’t trust their strength. And it hurt that he didn’t say good-bye.
He hid too well. Getting found would have kept him in the game. Hide-and-seek, grown-up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to be sought. Confused about being found. “I don’t want anyone to know.” “What will people think?” “I don’t want to bother anyone.”
Better than hide-and-seek, I like the game called Sardines. In Sardines the person who is It goes and hides, and everybody goes looking for him. When you find him, you get in with him and hide there with him. Pretty soon everybody is hiding together, all stacked in a small space like puppies in a pile. And pretty soon somebody giggles and somebody laughs and everybody gets found.
Medieval theologians even described God in hide-and-seek terms, calling him Deus Absconditus. But me, I think old God is a Sardine player. And will be found the same way everybody gets found in Sardines - by the sound of laughter of those heaped together at the end.
“Olly-olly-oxen-free.” The kids out in the street are hollering the cry that says “Come on in, wherever you are. It’s a new game.” And so say I. To all those who have hid too good. Get found, kid! Olly-olly-oxen-free.
— Robert Fulghum, “All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten”
in a rare moment of “huh i can maybe contribute to this”, i was reminded of this exerpt from Tim Kreider’s We Learn Nothing, a collection of his essays.
this one was written about a deceased friend of his, Skelly, who was known to spin tales about his life to hide the shameful parts from others. at his funeral, when all the secrets inevitably started to unfold, Kreider writes:
The worst part, for me, is imagining how alone he was. This is the most poisonous thing that secrets do to us—they isolate us from everyone around us and make us feel even lonelier than we already are. I wish he could’ve somehow brought himself to talk to us. I sometimes fantasize about how I would’ve reacted—what I would’ve said to him, how I would’ve tried to help. As Kevin once complained, “I wish he coulda just told us so we could’ve mocked him for it!” But not everybody gets to be free. Some have to stand guard at their own prisons for life. Some secrets we must take with us, as the melodramatic old idiom has it, to the grave.
just abruptly remembered that one of my friends had the absolute best college job, which I am still envious of. If it paid more I would quit lawyering right this minute and go get this job; it didn’t pay enough to live on, but the temptation remains.
She was on call 24/7 as an operator for the Grammar Hotline.
Which is, yes, a phone line that you could call at any hour of the day or night to have your emergency grammar questions answered.
Literally none of her calls were boring. It was like 80% writers who had worked their way into a grammatical corner and 20% people having the pettiest arguments who needed an arbiter to decide who was right, and 100% of the time she got to be the platonic ideal of a stuffy librarian. Best job ever.
Reblogging this because my entire life, all of my bows have looked like my shoelaces. Wrapping presents is going to be so much more aesthetically pleasing now
There is zero chance I will remember how to tie these, and even less chance that any of them would stay tied if attached to the vortex of entropy that is my person. But they’re so cool!
“If stuff was just handed to me I’d have no motivation to do anything! That’s human nature!”
No, babe, that’s depression. Psychologically healthy people are still motivated to do things even when their survival isn’t being actively threatened.
[Image description: tweet by Roxi Horror @roxiqt on March 30, 2022 at 11:13 AM: “’Oh, so you think everyone should just be handed enough money to live?’ lol. lmao. yeah.”]
okay so like, we all know that housekeeping in a hotel is a Shit Job, right?
I worked with a woman who was independently wealthy. But she liked working housekeeping. So she did. And if the manager got bitchy with her, she’d just shrug and be like “Okay, I can quit.”
Like the manager treated her like a human being because she knew she had to because otherwise she’d lose one of her best workers.
Yes, everyone should be just handed the money to live.
I worked with a lady who’s husband made more than enough to support them both. She just did the retail to have something to do with herself part-time.
There’s a lot of people who’d happily do the same sort of thing. Honestly? A lot of the jobs we consider “shitty” jobs? Are shitty because the employees are treated like garbage.
If employees weren’t being screwed over by people higher up the chain constantly or being forced to kiss the asses of customers currently shitting all over them, those jobs would by and large be a whole lot more bearable, and appealing to more people!!
Plus rich people are just handed a lot of money, whether they earn it or not, and no one questions that. Only poor people getting money gets interrogated over and over and over again.
I’d like to add a footnote to this thread that the US gives more money (by way of the income tax reduction) to homeowners than it does to poor people who need subsidized housing.
My best teacher in high school was the guy who had previously made a ton of money that he could’ve retired at like 30. Man just wanted to teach teenagers.
If people as a whole were handed enough money to live on, maybe more people like him wouldn’t be put off by the poor salary teachers make. (also teachers should be paid a lot more)
There’s also this assumption that if people were just handed enough money to live that they’d do absolutely nothing, as if they’d be satisfied being completely bored all the time.
They’d still buy food. They’d still buy video games. They’d still go out and get coffee and put money into the economy even if they didn’t want to work because they still want to LIVE. They’d buy movies. They’d go DO stuff.
I review comic books on the internet and I love doing it, but I often have to compromise on some things because I just can’t afford to do otherwise and I stress out about stuff because I need to earn money.
“Psychologically healthy people are still motivated to do things even when their survival isn’t being actively threatened.”
Speaking for myself, I would be even MORE motivated to do things if my basic needs were guaranteed met. IJS
👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾
What I think some people miss about stuff like UBI (universal basic income, the idea that everyone gets a staple amount of money that could cover basic housing and food needs) is that… It doesn’t really need to be a lot of money. The idea isn’t “give everyone so much money they’re now rich and can do whatever they want forever.” The idea is to provide enough for their most basic needs (food water shelter). It’s enough that if your job mistreats you, you are safe enough to leave it without the threat of becoming unhoused or starving. This, in turn, forces employers to treat their workers better because if they don’t, then they don’t get workers.
But the other side of this coin is that ONLY a person’s basic needs are covered. As someone above said, people still want to do fun stuff! Fancy coffee and vacations and doing leisure activities like movies or bowling or whatever. Keeping pets. Having get togethers. If someone wants the extras in life, THAT’S the stuff they “should” be working for. That’s the “well if they don’t want to work then they don’t get [whatever]!” that is the consequence of not working. Are some people gonna be fine not doing any extra stuff and just living basically? Sure! And that’s okay. But most people DO want extra stuff and will work for it if they can (and if they can’t they should still get extra basic income! Humans deserve enrichment!)
But “You don’t get the vacation” is not the same consequence as “you don’t get to live in a home or eat food today.” The consequence of not working should NEVER be no longer having your basic needs met. And it’s absolutely ridiculous that so many people have normalized that you work or you perish. We live in a society! We invented civilization to make it easier to care for one another and ensure everyone’s basic needs get met! Human civilization began when we decided it’s not “survival of the fittest” on our watch, but “survival of everyone we care about.” We have lost our way if we cannot protect each other.
April Fools day here is always funny because my dash is full of “here’s a Rick roll but it’s actually a different song” “here’s ‘do you love the color of the sky’ just kidding! It’s not the full long post!” “Here’s a drawing I made of a kitty! Just kidding! It’s two kitties and they’re best friends” and we do this unironically and completely ignoring the blood lust we all experience every year just two weeks prior
A shirtless man with surgical scars on his chest replies to a comment reading, “poor lady what did you do to your”.
The man says:
“So, I’m actually not transgender, and this is a really good example of why it’s important to be aware that different medical procedures can leave very similar types of scars. And also just not to make assumptions about people in general.
For example, yes, the scars I have do look really similar to what they call, um, I think top surgery scars. But they’re actually from, uh, getting a set of my ribs removed, so I could suck my own -”
the booping is cute and all but lets not forget the violent transmisogyny and antiblackness of this site. ok
“thanks for ruining the joke, i bet you’re fun at parties” sorry for not wanting people to brush over staff’s shitty actions. especially on trans day of visibility
Everyone can enjoy the silly little boop this boop that but we do need to remember that just because it happened to one popular trans girl person doesn’t mean it isn’t happening to others. Hell, tumblr forced two people to unfollow me and doesn’t show my account unless you’re logged in last I checked
